OK...one more day on the road....

Friday morning at Pismo Coast Village

We left Pismo Beach around 9am and headed headed south on HWY 101, our last day on the road...about 248 miles to go. It rained on and off most of the night, but morning provided just heavy overcast, that is until I decided to dump the tanks one more time....then it started raining again...lol! The driving was mostly dry roads, and great views even with the heavy overcast. Around 11:30am we were approaching Rincon Parkway, just north of Ventura, CA and decided to exit to take a break, and make some sandwhiches, plus Elaine had a conference call in which she wanted to participate. While she started her conference call I walked down to Faria Park...a small county run RV park with full hookups....maybe a dozen sites right on the ocean....I mean 30 feet from the waves....I saw that there were about 8 spots open on a Friday....must be because of the weather. Elaine was just wrapping up her call when I got back.....I said...."you know, there really is no compelling reason why we have to be home on Friday....why not snag one of the open spots in Faria and spend the afternoon, and night?" Of course, she agreed, so we have stretched our trip 24 more hours. About the time we finished setting up it started raining, and I mean raining HARD.....it stopped about 30 minutes later and we had a little sun showing itself, so we took a walk north along the beach.

"We're just stopping for a snack...."

Snagged a spot!

Taking a walk while the sun is shinning!

Our view out the front windshield

After our walk it began to rain again, and rained most of the night......it was great waking up during the night and hearing the rain on the roof.....very soothing. We spent a few hours reading, and hit the sack around 11pm......only 128 miles home!

Rain again......

Well, our sunny disposition these past 11 days had a wet blanket thrown on it about 12:30pm today.....the rain started as we were exiting HWY 101 in Atascadero to have lunch at an In-&-Out Burger.....our first since the first day of our trip. It has continued to rain steadily, sometimes quite hard, and rains as I type this post at 4:30pm. We were planning to drive no further than San Luis Obispo, but the RV park options are quite limited in that fair city, so we pushed on another 15 miles to one of our favorite coastal cities, Pismo Beach, exiting at HWY 1 and pulling into the first RV park we came to, which ended up being Pismo Coast RV Village Resort, a little pricey at $44, but it's only money....LOL.....we are in a back-in spot right on the lagoon, with a view of the freakin' ocean...how great is that.?...even with the rain....what a nice last evening in our moving home....we're sitting here listening to "rain on the roof", and watching the angry ocean pound the coastline just a few hundred yards away.....life is surely good!

The drive south on HWY 101 was very pleasant....I really prefer travelling 101 as an alternatie to I-5. Easy driving.

We'll have some more of the great Chili Elaine made a few days ago....it's been aging for 5 days, and then settle into a little light reading.

Anyone for a bike ride?

Wednesday dawned clear, and cold....overnight temps got down to 29. About 11am I decided to get to cleaning the road grime off the bikes so we could take a ride through the wine country. When we finally started riding it was just 42 degrees, BUT the sun was out, which made it feel warmer....."honest, Honey, it does feel warmer than 42, doesn't it??" At any rate we headed off to Old Town Napa and found the visitor center. They provided us with an excellent map of all the wineries, and a second map of all the local bike paths, lanes, etc. We decided to head out Silverado Trail, north, and just stop in at a few wineries for some modest wine tasting. As we pedalled northward the clouds began to roll in, and the temperature began to drop. "Why can't I feel my toes?"

Just a few of the wineries we passed by

This is a family owned winery, and they only sell over the internet...we sampled 6 wines......5 of which I personally thought were unique.

We tasted 6 wines at Van der Heyden Vineyards Winery....Savignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Sirah, Rose, Cabernet Sagivnon, and a late harvest Cabernet Savignon. With the lone exception of the Cabernet, I loved the other 5. The late harvest Cab was almost like a Port, although unfortified. The Rose, really an early harvest Cab, was amazing. The Chardonnay had this surprising creamy aftertaste. This winery does not do retail sales through stores. They offer a wine club, which we will join.

We also sampled 4 wines at this winery...I was not too impressed.

After we finished our second wine tasting at Regusci Winery Elaine's toes were still numb from the cold...the temperature had dropped to 35 with the increasing cloud cover, so we turned back south to Napa Valley Expo RV Park.....about 10 miles back. We arrived back "home" around 4pm, and were very cold. Our total ride distance was around 20 miles.....with a little more sunshine we may have gone on, but, let's face it, wine tasting loses its luster when the temperatures get close to freezing and your mode of transporation is a bicycle....LOL! We were grateful for the much needed exercise. Only the second bike ride we have been able to take on this trip.

Later, around 5:30, I put on our last 2 filets and my wife, the chef, made some zuccini, summer squash, and broccili....man, that woman can cook vegatables!

We watched an interesting episode of CSI N.Y., and hit the sack at 11pm. Our plans for Thursday are evolving, but we are very sure we are not going to pound 450 miles home in one day....thinking about San Luis Obispo, which would leave around 200 miles home on Friday.....we'll see....

Into the Valley of Wine

Wine Country...

Looking at the 10 day weather forecast I appeared that it would be raining on Thursday when we had planned to be in Napa, CA. So, instead of stopping in Willits, CA today, we pounded out 229 miles all the way to Napa, so tomorrow, Wednesday, it will be clear....we'll do some bike riding around old town, and do some wine tasting. We'll be here two days. We'll then head home on Thursday, a day early since it is forecast to rain so there is no point in still being here Thursday. We may break up the 450 mile home stretch into two days.

Scenic HWY 12 - Sonoma Highway

The drive south on HWY 101 today was very pleasant.....mostly divided highway. It stayed cold all day, but is supposed to get into the 50's here in Napa tomorrow! We are staying at the Napa Valley Expo RV Park.....it's part of the County Fair complex....with our Good Sam discount it costs us $31 per day......full hookups, including 50amp.

Elaine is making Fajitas for tonight's feast.....the sun has set, and life is good.

California Dreamin'

The beginning of the Redwoods....

We exited California on November 20th on our journey into the frozen tundra, and re-entered California today, December 7th....Pearl Harbor Day....the "Day of Infamy" always sneeks up on me. Thank you to all those servicemen past and present who dedicate their lives to keeping us safe, and enabling us to lead this amazing lifestyle!

After stowing the portable fire place away in the basement storage we bid fairwell to Harris Beach State Park....a place I plan to spend time at in the future warmer months, and headed into

Brookings in search of fuel....this would be our last chance to get diesel under $3.00 for sometime. We pulled into a Chevron station on the southern edge of town and pumped 80 gallons of diesel at $2.79...best price since Idaho Falls. As soon as we crossed the border the price jumped to $3.09, so we saved $24.00!

The great scenery does not respect borders.....

A few miles later we crossed back into California and immediately were directed into a border check station where we were asked if we had any "Christmas trees, or any other kinds of trees on board"...we saw that they had, indeed, confiscated a couple of Christmas trees......apprently it's against the law to smuggle the odd Christmas tree into Caifornia....the only contraband of any interest to the inspectors were the apples we had purchased in Aberdeen, WA, but since they were store bought, no problems.

We stopped at the Safeway in Crescent City to stock up on a few supplies for the rest of the week, and were on our way within 30 minutes.

Originally, we were only going as far as Arcata....about 103 miles, but after about 20 miles of narrow, windy road we were blessed with divided highway all the rest of the way to Eureka, and then again after Eureka, so we continued on to Fortuna, where we are now, courtesy of River Walk RV Park and Campground.....a very nice park, albeit a little "close"...free WiFi, and grass....sites could be a little more level, though.


Our day was over before 2pm.......both of us needed to do some "work"...you know, that stuff that results in money being deposited into your checking account a couple of times a month. It is going to be cold here tonight....around 24 degrees.....yup, the block heater has been on since we docked.

"red sky at night....sailor's delight"

20 miles north of California border...

World headquarters of Rogue Brewery.....one of our favorites!

The Newport dawn saw cold temps, and a brisk wind....dawn being close to 7:30am......I decided to dump the tanks again, and to add fresh water...we were down to 50 gallons. When we move every day I don't hook up to city water....we just leave the water pump on and use our fresh water.....our capacity is 160 gallons, so we can run for a long time off that. My hands, though gloved, were still getting numb....the wind chill was probably down below 20. When we dump the black tank I fill it at least twice with clean water and dump again.....so far through two motorhomes we have never had any odor.

I pulled the electrical umbilical cord around 9am, and then eased out of space #44 toward HWY 101 south. Our "plan", which is always fluid, was to drive 176 miles southward to Gold Beach, however, the road was so easy to drive today that we continued on past Gold Beach to Brookings. Brookings, we learned, is also called the "banana belt" of Oregon. Day time temps often reach 70 degrees in the winter. It is a good 15 degrees warmer at this time of night compared to last night in Newport. We are overnighting at Harris State Beach......$18 for full hookups, plus cable TV, and a view of the Oregon coastline. We have 30amps of power, but the pedestal also provides a separate 15amp plug in on a different breaker, so I have plugged that into the engine block warmer enabling us to run both electric heaters inside with 10 amps to spare. They also provide good WiFi for $3,99 per day.....Elaine and I are both using the same account as I blog. Good thing, because my Verizon aircard only gives me 250 megabytes per month....I chose not to keep the unlimited usage and save $15 per month as I rarely use more than the 250, but on this trip I have been using it a lot. Fortunately for me just as I was getting upwards of 220 megabytes around the 2nd of this month the biling cycle ended and I got another 250 megabytes!


The views today were just amazing all day long....we found ourselves "ooohing and aaawing" continuously, and stopping a lot to take pictures. Even with all the stopping we covered just over 200 miles today, and it only took us 5 hours.....5 hours is my driving sweet spot. We mapped out the rest of our trip before leaving Newport this morning. We will travel southward to Arcata, CA tomorrow, then from there down to Willits on Tuesday, and arrive in Napa on Wednesday where we will stay 2 days and do some exploring. We'll leave Napa early Friday and beat it home on I-5....only about 450 miles.

We had our first camp fire of the trip tonight. After I got the fire going I set up the BBQ and grilled a couple of Filets while Elaine whipped up some fried potatos, and a great salad. While the steaks cooked we sat by the fire drinking some more of that great Rogue Brewery Moca Porter. After dinner we sat by the fire with some egg nogg and Kalua, and listened to the best of Johnny Mathis.

Sitting here watching Sunday night football on NBC.....Vikings losing 7-14 to Phoenix in 2nd quarter......life continues to be good!

Heceta Head Lighthouse

Do you see what I mean about the views? These pictures are mere feeble attempts to capture the beauty of the Oregon coastline. Tomorrow the Redwoods!

On the road again....

Friday night (December 4th) got down to 21 degrees in Jewell, OR.....ouch! That's the kind of temperature where skin sticks to metal. Saturday's dawn revealed another crystal clear day....our fourth clear day in a row. We haven't seen this much blue sky since southern Utah back on November 21st.....can that be true? We've been on the road for 15 days? Man, oh man, let's just stay on the road for a couple more months!

Our tentative plan was to leave Jewell around 10am....I've been trying not to deploy every piece of equipment we own each time we stop for a couple of days, and it really pays off when I can button up the coach in about 25 minutes and be on our way. It was still under 40 degrees when I started up the Detroit Diesel....we left the block warmer on all night, which meant we could only use the gas furnaces to heat the coach and the water bay, or we would go over our 15amp ration...as it was we were right at 13 amps most of the night, and I had to turn off the block warmer for 10 minutes to make coffee as that put us up to 17 amps...didnt' want to have to run into the garage to reset the breaker again....I had to do that the first night, because I got a little greedy.

Near Nehalem

Nice little rest stop....
Further down the Oregon Coast

Yaquina Bay Bridge in Newport, OR

The drive down the Oregon coast through Nehalem, Tillamook, Lincoln, Rockway, Arch Cape, and Depoe Bay was as wonderful as it was the last two times we passed through them over the past 15 years. There are hundreds of interesting little RV parks, shops, antique stores, etc. in these quaint little ocean front towns.

We arrived in Newport, our destination for today, around 3pm, and checked into the Port of Newport RV Park and Marina, and walked over to the world headquarters of Rogue Brewery for dinner, and some great beer....I had a couple of pints of Mocha Porter...what a yummy beer! The picture above was taken right around sunset...the bridge in the background is the Yaquina Bay Bridge. There are dozens of beautiful bridges along the Oregon coast, and this, in my opinion, is the most beautiful of them all.

Right now I am sitting here updating the blog, and watching the Texas v. Nebraska football game...Nebraska is up 6-0 right now, but Texas is driving.

Life gets better and better....Cheers!