Author: Ron Corbin

September 24, 2018 Chartres FR

Our plan when we arrived was to head towards Spain, so of course we drove north today to Chartres.  Along the way we decided to visit Normandy and Brittany on our way to Spain, so we had to divert north to get to Normandy.

We decided to visit Chartres primarily to see its Gothic Cathedral.  We visited Sens Cathedral the other day which is billed as the first Gothic Cathedral, and Chartres is supposed to be the best example of a Gothic Cathedral.  Chartres still has its’ original stained glass as during both wars they removed it and stored it safely.  During WWII the cathedral was in danger as the allies moved towards Paris, but an American Colonel successfully negotiated with a German General to declare Chartres open, so there was no  battle fought in the city.

The exterior of the Chartres Cathedral.  Note the contrast between the recently cleaned upper part, and the uncleaned lower part.  The maintenance of these buildings is daunting.

On our way out of Chinon we decided we wanted to visit a winery, we drove thru the countryside only to find it was closed.  Disappointed again, we wrote off getting a taste of any Chinon wine, but on our way out of town Ton spotted the new tasting room for the winery we had driven out into the country to see.  Pierre and Bertrand Couly had opened a new tasting room on the highway to Chartres, Chinon Red wines are what we call Cabernet Franc in the US.  We spoke to the wife of the owner and she did a great job explaining the wines of the area.  She was aware of Oregon wines as her husband had spent some time at Sokol Blosser winery in Oregon in the 1980’s.

The very fine winery Pierre & Bertrand Couly.  As the owner said you do not have to have an old facility to make traditional wines.

The three hour drive to Chartres was uneventful as the “N” road that we used most of the way was quite good.  We parked in a free overnight spot, and walked about a mile into town to see the cathedral.  The cathedral was indeed impressive, and the interior stain glass windows were among the best we have seen in France.  The cathedral was constructed in the early 1200’s after the previous Romanesque Cathedral had burned.  The cathedral is deservedly a UNESCO world heritage site.  Besides admiring the beauty of the building we also again discussed the maintenance of these immense buildings.  Just keeping the exterior clean is a full time job. 

One of the stain glass “Roses” at Chartres, this one dates from around 1210 and is the original glass.

After touring the cathedral we decided not to wait for the light show, so we walked back to François.  Frankly we were a little peeved with one of the attendants who would not let us take the last crypt tour, and did it in a way that seemed unnecessarily officious to us while simultaneously refusing to speak English, even though we had just heard him giving an explanation of the tour in perfect English to another person.  I hope he was just having a bad day.  We had a light dinner and a relatively early night as we have a long drive to Normandy tomorrow.

Some of the art work inside the Cathedral.  

September 23, 2018 Chinon FR

We woke up to another blustery day. The weather forecast called for rain most of the day and they were right.  We are trying to get back into the rythym of France, and we forgot that Sundays are really a day of rest.  

Our plans were to drive to two towns to visit wineries and walk around the towns. Most of the drive today was on a road which is on top of a levee for the Loire River, it was quite pretty, and would have been even better if it was not raining most of the way.

This was about the only blue sky we saw today.

The first town we stopped at was Bourgueil.  It seemed like a nice enough town and there were a bunch of wineries that looked interesting but everything was closed up.  We took a quick stroll thru town and then it started to rain so we headed back to François.

The Abby in Bourgueil.  Built around 1150.

We had decided to treat ourselves to a proper campground with showers and indoor plumbing so we are parked in the municipal campground looking at the Fort of Chinon.  When we arrived it was raining quite hard so Ton made a nice lunch, and prepared dinner while Ron lounged around in bed until the rain stopped.  

The Fort of Chinon, with the town below it behind the trees.

The castle at Chinon is another medieval fort that is partly in ruins but dominates the area.  It is quite a climb to the top so we decided to take a look at it from the bottom of the hill, and head to a winery that google said was open.  We had a walk thru the town which also has some examples of half timbered homes which are common in the area.  It was a nice walk and it did not rain which was a good thing because the winery was not open.  Finally learning that Sunday is indeed a day of rest (despite what google might think) we headed back to François had dinner, a long hot shower, and listened to the rain on the roof.

The French often refer to the retail part of a winery as the Cave, it is the French equivalent of cellar.  In this case it really is a cave.

September 22, 2018 Chateau de Chambord FR

Well, plans change. We had originally planned to go to Orleans for the day, but last night we discussed spending a few days in the Loire Valley.  When we woke up it was spitting rain and a little windy, The Weather Channel said it was going to improve as the day went on so we decided to skip Orleans, and head to Chateau de Chambord.

Ron plugged a GPS coordinate into the Garmin which was supposed to be for the motorhome parking at the Chateau and we took off.  The Garmin said it was only a 68km drive, and the roads were good.  Right at the end we started to think something was amiss as we suddenly started to get on smaller and smaller roads and this is maybe the largest tourist attraction in the Loire Valley.  At the end the GPS proudly announced we had arrived, but we were looking at a field next to a little village.  Either Ron inputed the coordinates wrong or the coordinates were wrong in the app we use to find places to stay.  Anyway after a little more research we were on our way to the Chateau.

Thirty minutes later we arrived and what a first impression.  The chateau is magnificent in scale.  As we walked up to the entrance Ton said that this must cost a fortune to maintain.  This would become a theme of the day. 

The first view of the Chateau, it really is immense.

The Chateau was originally constructed from 1519 to 1547 by King François I.  It is built in the Renaissance style and has 11 towers on the roof that are supposed to look like Istanbul.

The rear of the chateau from the immense gardens.

While it is really something to look at it is indeed difficult to maintain.  When you watch the movie of the history of the Chateau it goes something like this, François builds it, and then loses interest in it and it deteriorates, another king gives it to someone who spends a fortune on it and then loses interest and it deteriorates, it passes to another owner who spends a fortune etc.  In fact it may be the greatest white elephant in France.

The ceiling on the third floor, the salamander was the symbol of François I.  

It is now maintained by the French National Park Service and they are clearly spending a fortune to restore and maintain it.  Hopefully they will succeed as it is worth keeping.

These gardens were just restored last year.

September 21, 2018 Orleans FR

It was time to get moving.  Last night with some encouragement from Robyn we decided to head to Normandy.  Orleans seemed like a good first leg for the trip.  The first few days of the trip the weather had been perfect, but when we woke this morning it was just starting to rain.  It pretty much rained the whole way to Orleans though the roads were good and pretty stress free.

Our first stop was the aire which is about 5km from the city center.  When we got there the weather was still pretty unsettled so we decided that Orleans could wait for tomorrow and settled in.  The one thing interesting was the aire shared its space with the local pétanque club which is the French version of Bocci.  Unlike other pétanque games we had watched this group was really good.

The view from the aire tonight.  

In the evening we decided to take a stroll on the footpath along the River Loire.  Not expecting much we were surprised when around a bend in the river about 200 yards from the campground there was a really nice church.  Exploring a little further we came into a little village with a park on the grounds of an old Chateau.  It was an unexpected find for us.

September 20, 2018 Sens FR

Today the jet lag won, so we slept in very late.  After we were finally going we had a nice lunch.  As we were getting ready to head into town to see the sights in Sens, we met our neighbors who were a nice Australian couple Peter and Robyn who had rented a RV from French Motor Home Hire.  After some introductions we realized that they were on the last day of their motorhome trip, and were trying to get rid of some stuff before they turned their RV in.  As a result we received some things to stock our vehicle with.  Their agenda for the day matched ours so we decided to walk into town together.

We visited the cathedral in Sens which adds to our list of magnificent cathedrals in France.  The size and the intricacy of the construction is really awe inspiring.  The special thing about the cathedral in Sens is the stained glass windows.  They have examples from the 12th century thru to the 18th century.  Sens cathedral is also where Thomas Beckett from England spent his years in exile, before returning to England to be executed  by King Henry II.

The exterior of the cathedral in Sens.
And the interior.

After spending some time in the cathedral we decided to try to find a store to get a French mobile phone.  After some issues we decided that it would be good to get a local phone.  There was supposed to be an Orange store in downtown Sens, but when we got there it was out of business.  We also decided to make a final stock run to Auchan and Lidl for more food.  Now our refrigerator is really stuffed.

We had separated from Peter and Robyn to take care of the phone, but when we returned we ended up joining them for a beer and to exchange stories and information about places to go.  One beer led to a couple, and we ended up at a Pizza place across from the aire.  It was a great night and we hope we run into them again in the future in our travels.

September 19, 2018 Sens FR

Today we picked up François the motorhome at France Motorhome Hire.  Sally and Simon did a great job walking us thru the paperwork and showing us around the motorhome.  It was a pretty easy to learn how to operate as we bought the same motorhome that we had rented in the spring. 

When we bought the motorhome we did add three things; one is an inverter so we can have access to the power points when we are not plugged in, we also added a solar panel and a second battery to give us the power to stay off the grid for a few days if necessary.  In addition we added a safe for obvious reasons.  The last thing we added was a propane system that allows us to fill the tanks at LPG gas pumps in gas stations. This should allow us to avoid the issue of incompatible bottles and regulators from country to country in Europe.  

Our first stop after unpacking was to head over to fill the LP system.  Ron was a little worried as Propane dispensing in the US is not something that is done self-service, but when all was said and done it went pretty smoothly.  Since the gas filling station was next to a grocery we made our first stop for groceries.  After that we headed to the Aire (For those of you who did not follow us on our rental adventure in France an Aire is an overnight spot for RV parking that is not a campground, usually a parking lot designated for overnight stays, very common in France.)  The Aire here is quite nice as it used to be the municipal campground.  It is conveniently located next to a Lidl grocery, and is walking distance to downtown.

Our new to us RV François in the Aire at Sens.

September 17-18, 2018 Sens FR

Another easy travel day with everything working as it should courtesy of United Airlines.  Both of our flights actually departed a little early, and with an early departure we arrived in Paris an hour early.

As we had 4 bags this time between our clothes and stuff to equip François the motorhome, we decided to hire a car for the drive to Sens.  This was a little pricey but we have no regrets given the logistics, and we certainly saved more in bringing the two bags worth of stuff over from the US than we spent hiring the car.

We arrived at the Ibis hotel in Sens before 1pm on Tuesday with no problems or adventures, we took a nap.  After the nap we headed over to the Auchan Grocery near our hotel to do a little shopping.  That done we headed back to the hotel and went to bed.

August 22-23, 2018 Long Drive NV/OR

There is not much to write about these two days.  We did our best imitation of long distance truckers covering about 970 miles in two days.  We did our normal route from Vegas to Reno and saw a few of the vehicles heading towards Burning Man in northern Nevada.

The next day we covered the ground home mostly on the east side of the Sierra Nevada/Cascade mountains.  The smoke from the multiple wildfires was very dense in places and reminded of our drive last year going to Alaska.  At one point we passed within about a mile of a 38,000 acre wildfire in Northern California and could actually see some flames on the hillside as well as a couple of fire trucks attacking the fire.

This is the end of the trip that we dubbed “Urban Camping”.  This time we used scout primarily as a substitute for a hotel room (except in Las Vegas).  While we did not see our normal sites we did get to visit with our Son’s and some best friends, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

August 21, 2018 Las Vegas NV

Alex had to teach so we had a day to kill in Las Vegas.  We are not gamblers so we decided to have an easy day taking in a movie and doing a little shopping in Costco and another Mexican Supermarket.

Later we met Alex for dinner at one of his favorite place in Las Vegas Nacho Daddies. As you can guess from the name they are famous for their Nachos. They have been featured on one of the restaurant shows on the Travel Channel.   Alex and Ron had big plates of Nachos while Ton ordered soup and ceviche.  

Afterwards we did our favorite thing in Las Vegas which is watch people.  It is a great place for people watching, and our favorite place is the outside arcade in the old town.  We enjoyed a nice walk and the people did not let us down providing great free entertainment.

The Fremont Arcade our favorite place to people watch in Las Vegas.

August 20, 2018 Las Vegas NV

When we were doing the planning to see both of our sons we new that it would be hot in Las Vegas but our experience was that it cooled down at night to a point where it was comfortable.  The night before we left Dylan looked up the weather for Las Vegas and said it was quite hot, the high was supposed to be 106 degrees.  

Driving over we stopped at a rest area about 50 miles outside of Las Vegas.  The thermometer on the dash said 111 degrees, and as we stepped out of the truck we were hit with a wind of about 20 miles per hour that felt like a blast furnace.  As we pulled out of the rest area Ron asked Ton what she thought a room would cost in Vegas.  Without hesitating Ton began the research.  It turns out rooms were cheap, The Rio was offering a rate of $30 plus a $34 dollar resort fee.  We both decided that was cheap enough to not bother stress testing the A/C unit on Scout as the overnight low was supposed to be 92 degrees.  The deal got even better when we checked in as Ron asked if they had a military discount and that got us down to $15 plus the resort fees.

Elvis and a show girl.  After all it is Las Vegas.

Alex had to work late as this is the first full week of school in Las Vegas so we decided to eat in the room.  Ton whipped up some food in Scout and we carried it up to the room for dinner.  We spent the evening talking about teaching and particularly teaching in Las Vegas which is infamous for having a low priority for schools.  Alex earns every penny of his salary.

August 19, 2018 San Diego CA

Our final day with Dylan on this trip was the San Diego Zoo.  Dylan is a member of the zoo so we were able to tag along for free using his membership.  The San Diego Zoo is world famous and rightfully so.  We spent 5 hours going from exhibit to exhibit.  We hit all of the big animals and really enjoyed ourselves.

Impressive big cat at the San Diego Zoo.
The San Diego Zoo specializes in taking care of elderly elephants.  This one is over 40 years old.

Our other priority for the day was to find a fan.  Our roof fan has decided to stop working and probably needs a new rain sensor, as it seems convinced it is raining and will not open.  After the zoo we went to Costco and Ikea and they were both out of fans as it has been unusually warm here.  Finally we found a fan at Target.

Dinner was another great meal at a seafood market and restaurant.  It is an old part of town, but the food was really outstanding and the line to get in never ended while we were there.  San Diego has really been a good food experience on this trip from the unexpected Thai Hamburger to the great sea food.  It was good to see Dylan and we really enjoyed ourselves here.

August 18, 2018 San Diego CA

Dylan swung by to pick us up about 930.  After a breakfast of noodles prepared by Ton we headed off to our first stop of the day the Tijuana Slough Wildlife Refuge.  It is one of the areas that the office Dylan works in manages.  He took us on a nice walk through the slough and he explained some of the challenges of managing wildlife refuges in a metropolitan area of nearly 3 million people.  

Tijuana Slough Wildlife Refuge.

The next stop was some shopping at the Navy Exchange and Commissary in San Diego where we saw a food cart advertising Thai Hamburgers.  Of course we had to go see what Thai Hamburgers were.  Well they are not hamburgers at all.  Dylan actually guessed that the “rolls” would be sticky rice and he was right.  The meat is barbeque pork that Thai call Meu Ping, and it was delicious.  The three of us split a “hamburger” and pronounced it a messy but delicious meal.

The final stop for the day was to join the Timbers Army San Diego group to watch the Timbers.  They were going to meet in a pub downtown so we headed downtown but were quite early.  We wandered around for a while and blundered into one of Ton’s other items on her list, Oscars Mexican seafood.  We each had  an excellent Fish Taco, and some ceviche.

The game was a huge disappointment as the Timbers looked listless, and were never in the game.  We left a little early to head back for the night.

August 17, 2018 San Diego CA

Today we headed into San Diego to spend the weekend with our son Dylan who is working there for the Fish and Wildlife Service.  We had a slow start as we wanted to wait for traffic to die down before taking off.

Ton saw a Mexican Grocery next to the hotel so while Ron went to get some fuel for Scout she had a good time shopping for good cheap vegetables and a Mexican pastry for breakfast.  She was very impressed with the quality, variety and cost of the vegetables.

The drive into San Diego was thankfully uneventful and we arrived at the Navy RV park we will be staying at around 130pm.  Dylan was able to get off work a little early so we knocked off two of Ton’s items from the agenda.  The two breweries she wanted to visit in San Diego were fortunately only a couple of blocks apart so we were able to visit them both.  The first was Alesmith and we were quite impressed with both the facility and the beer.  The next stop was Mikkeller Brewery.  Mikkeler is an interesting operation as they are from Copenhagen Denmark.  They consider themselves gypsy brewers who work out of different breweries around the world.  The brewery in San Diego is the first brewery they have had that is their own.  The beer was interesting and the art in the brewery was very nice.  When it came down to voting on the best beer Dylan and Ron picked Alesmith and Ton declared a tie.

Dylan enjoying a taster at Ballast Point Brewing.

We ended the day with a nice meal at the campsite.

August 16, 2018 Victorville CA

Today was a travel day.  We wanted to avoid Los Angeles so we decided to head east and go around LA.  So we headed east and across the central valley.  We are always impressed when we drive across the huge central valley.  We have a good time trying to identify all of the different crops and trees we pass by.  Truthfully we spend most of the time going that is a tree but not sure what kind of tree unless there are big orange things hanging on them, but we have fun nevertheless.

An “Okie” display in the central valley.

Today we stopped at Blackwells Corner Store.  It is famous as the last place James Dean was seen alive when he filled up his Porsche there on his way to a car race in Salinas.  He was later found a few miles down a back road having wrecked his car and killed himself and his passenger.  Ron commented that he never really got the obsession with James Dean, Ton said it was because I was never cool enough to get James Dean.

Ron was not cool enough to get James Dean!

As we headed into Victorville we realized we were surrounded by pretty large thunderstorms.  Ton checked the weather app and we learned that there were flash flood warnings for Victorville so it was a good time to park up for the night.

August 15, 2018 San Luis Obispo CA

Today we started the day visiting one of our favorite places in central California.  Near San Simeon there are beaches that are covered in Elephant Seals.  We have visited this site three times previously and always enjoyed ourselves. This time we again enjoyed ourselves though as advertised there were fewer seals than normal, though many of the full sized males were there and really impressive.

The elephant seals at San Simeon.  Some of the males are 16 feet long and weigh 5000lbs.

After visiting the seals again we had a nice burger at a general store that had been in the same family since 1916.  It was an interesting set up as they had a burger place selling Hearst Ranch burgers, a high end wine tasting bar, and a post office all in one large room.  We split a burger as it was quite large.  

A wine bar and post office.  Only in California!

After heading over to Paso Robles to get some fuel we eventually headed back to our campsite and had a nice dinner.

August 14, 2018 San Luis Obispo CA

It was time to finally leave our friends Pae and Supachai.  For our going away Pae prepared a great Thai breakfast of Cao dom.  Ron really loved it.  Thanks to our good friends Pae and Supachai for hosting us and showing us around the bay area.

Ron enjoying a beer at Central Coast Brewing.

Heading south we camped up in San Luis Obispo.  We visited a really nice brewery called Central Coast.  We enjoyed a couple of beers and were really pleasantly surprised when the bill came as we did not realize it was happy hour and the beers were $2 off.  The last stop for the day was the Madonna Inn.  It is a hotel that has been the place to be in San Luis Obispo for decades.  Trip Advisor describes the decor as eccentric and Ton says they are right.  Below are a couple of pictures that prove her point.

The dinning room at the Madonna Inn.  That is a lot of pink.

August 12, 2018 San Francisco CA

Today we played tourists in San Francisco.  We headed into the city early to beat the traffic and headed to the Embarcadero area.  We lived in the “Bay Area” in the late 90’s so had done the San Francisco tours in the past with visitors.  We were trying to convince our friends that they did not need to do this.  Luckily they insisted as we really enjoyed ourselves.

We covered the Embarcadero area in detail, and hit a couple of the big tourist sites along the water front.  It was a beautiful day so we had nice views of the bay.  As we kept walking we visited the Ghiradelli chocolate factory for an ice cream sundae.

Ton liked this painting from a small museum on the Embarcadero.

We ended the day at the palace of fine arts which Ton and I had never visited.  It was built for the world exposition in 1913 it is quite impressive and fortunate to be still around.  Originally it was built to only last for the exhibition, but people loved it so much they decided to keep it.  Over time some of the love faded and the maintenance deteriorated, during World War II the army took over as it was located on military property, and used it as a motor vehicle maintenance area.  After the war it had deteriorated to the point where they considered tearing it down, but fortunately did not.

Tourists. Alcatraz on the horizon in the background.

All of our touristing around resulted in a new step record for our friend of 30,000 steps in one day, so we decided to reward ourselves with some Chinese food for dinner.  It was a really nice day.

August 11, 2018 San Jose CA

Today was much more relaxing than yesterday.  We started with a nice breakfast near our friends apartment.  On Saturdays they close the street in front of our friends apartment and have a giant Yoga session.  So while we were eating our high calorie breakfast we watched about 300 people doing a group yoga session.  

Feeling guilty, we decided to go and do some walking ourselves.  We started at the Santa Clara Mission.  It is one of a string of missions the Spanish used to control California when they colonized it.  The missions reach from San Diego to just north of San Francisco.  Everyone in California knows the stories of the missions as it is a main part of the curriculum for all students in 5th Grade.  Even if you move here from another state or country like we did, if you have children you get to know all you could want to know about missions.

Santa Clara mission.  The first mission in California named after a woman saint.

Santa Clara mission is probably the most well maintained of the missions as it is on the campus of Santa Clara University which is a Jesuit college.  This school is well endowed and the church building is obviously well loved.  We were going to go inside to take some pictures, but there was a mass going on.  We stood in the back for a few minutes and were wondering about how well attended the mass was on a Saturday, when we realized that they were consecrating about 10 new priests as Jesuits.  

The campus of Santa Clara University.

Later we did some walking around the neighborhood, and had a nice Vietnamese lunch in a giant Vietnamese shopping area in San Jose.  

August 10, 2018 San Jose CA

We had the alarm set for 6am, so we could meet our friends Pae and Supachai for happy hour.  The early drive was easy but like last year in British Columbia the smoke from the massive wild fires in California and Oregon reduced visibility to around a mile for the first 200 miles.  The fires in California this year are really bad, and the worst of the traditional fire season has not even begun.

We covered the first 340 miles in about 6 hours and we were looking forward to meeting our friends for a happy hour drink, but when we merged on to I-80 near Sacramento the freeway came to a complete halt and traffic was stopped as far as we could see.  Searching the radio we found out that there had been a serious accident about 3 hours prior and a California Highway Patrol Officer had been severely injured.  Only one lane of the freeway was open and the backup was 15 miles.  Not knowing how bad it would be we ended up gutting it out and it took 3 hours to cover the next 12 miles.  As we were driving it turns our the CHP officer and the person he had pulled over for a traffic violation were struck by another car at full speed and killed.  The snowball effect was now we were still about 70 miles from San Jose, but instead of being thru before rush hour we were in the middle of rush hour and those 70 miles took another 3 hours.  So the bottom line was today we covered 340 miles in 6 hours and 84 miles in 6 hours, for a total of an exhausting 12 hours.

We had a nice Japanese dinner that we just made with our friends and another couple, and Ron crashed into bed about 9pm.