California – RV Travels in Europe and North America

January 23, 2020 Death Valley NP

I woke up early and decided to head over to one of my favorite places. Zabriske point overlooks the gold canyon, and after today I think it is my favorite view in the US. I have been thinking about places that I really enjoy, and Zabriske point at sunrise is hard to beat. My writing style (military log book may be the best description) does not allow me to do justice to the beauty of Zabriske point at sunrise. The way the light cascades over the desert and hits the different colored light is magical to me. I could spend days on end watching sunrises there and never tire of it.

I do not have the photographic skills or equipment to do Zabriske at Sunrise justice.

Now that I was up early I had to decide what to do until my first planned event of the day which was a ranger talk at the old borax production site and mine. I headed over to the visitors center to watch the park movie to get some ideas. The movie was good and I enjoyed it but I did not get any ideas. So I finally just started driving north up the valley to see if anything drew my attention and before I knew it I was near Beatty Nevada which is the closest source of reasonable fuel so I decided to head over there to top off Scout. The fuel at the center of the park is $5.37 a gallon which must be close to the most expensive fuel in the US. There are two gas stations in Beatty one was $3.20 and the other was $3.09 when I tried the $3.09 the pump told me to go see the cashier. The cashier told me that their system was down and they could not do credit transactions, I asked about debit and she told me with a bit of an attitude that it was the same system and today was cash only. I went down the street and paid the higher amount with a credit card.

I ended up being late for the ranger talk due to my running around Beatty. I watched the last few minutes. A lot of the people at the talk were like me attending every talk while they were in the park so I was beginning to recognize faces. One guy told me I had to try the Indian Fried Bread Taco at the Timbisha Shoshone reservation in the park. The Timbisha are the native Americans who lived in this area. I decided to follow the recommendation, though I doubt this is really traditional fare of the tribe as beans, cattle, and corn would not have been native to this area. But as some one in France when I asked if a dance was traditional, he said no, but it could be in a hundred years. So Fried Bread Tacos may be traditional Timbisha food in 100 years. I now have had one, and I can cross it off my list.

One of the original 40 mule team wagons used to haul Borax out of the canyon in the 1880’s, the rear wheels are over six feet tall. The rear wagon is a water tanker as there was only water source on the 10 day trip.

I spent the afternoon hiking Mosaic Canyon a nice flash flood canyon with interesting rock formations. The road to the trail head was a mess and gave Scout a workout, but the first 400 yards of the trail were worth the drive. The ability of water to carve the rocks in the west never ceases to amaze me. The rest of the hike was nice but not super spectacular.

Mosaic Canyon had about 300 yards where water has cut down to the bedrock which is quite pretty.

I ended the day with a nice ranger talk at sunset at Mesquite dunes.

January 22, 2020 Death Valley NP

I started the day by heading over to the visitors center to see what ranger talks were available today. I was there as they opened and one of the Rangers was running up the flag for the day. I talked to her on the way back in after the flag was done, she told me there were two talks for the day and she was leading one of them.

So with a little time to kill until the first talk at gold canyon, I decided to do a little exploring. I had noticed a sign for another campground above the one we usually stay in here. The problem with Sunset campground is that there is no electricity so all of the big RV’s run their generators all day to power all of the stuff in them. They require generators to be shut down from 7pm to 8am, but nothing ruins sitting outside to enjoy the sunset than the buzz of three or four generators running around you. The Texas Spring campground costs $1 more than Sunset but is generator free and prettier so I moved up here and bought two nights.

Part of Artists Pallette Drive. A really nice one way drive in the park on the way to Badwater.

The first talk of the day was in gold canyon which is one of Ton and my favorite hikes in Death Valley. The person leading it was not a ranger but a young man on an internship at the park. He took the duty very seriously and one thing I learned is that some of Star Wars 1 The Return of the Jedi was filmed in the canyon. Besides that I learned a great deal about fan canyons which Death Valley is famous for.

The second talk was at Badwater Basin which is the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere at 280 feet below sea level. It is one of the must stop photo stops in the park. Besides being the lowest spot in the West it is also an interesting salt flat, and does have a spring which is 4 times saltier than sea water.

Badwater Basin, the lowest spot in the Western Hemisphere.

I returned to Texas Springs for sunset and climbed a hill above the campground to watch the sunset. Since the mountains on the west side of the valley are about 5000 feet higher than the valley but quite close, sunset happens about an hour and a half before the light fades which is kind of weird.

January 28, 2019 Death Valley NP

We are both still struggling a little bit with our medical issues so it is time to head home so we can see see our proper Doctors. Ron prefers to drive home east of the Sierra Nevada mountains rather than deal with the heart of California so we left San Diego and headed north and east towards one of our favorite National Parks to spend the night.

The drive to Death Valley was pretty uneventful, even the traffic from San Diego to San Bernardino while dense was moving pretty well with no significant slow downs. After you get out of the southern California metropolis, you quickly get into the Mojave and go from bumper to bumper freeway traffic to almost no traffic as you travel thru the desert.

When we arrived at Death Valley we checked in to see what had reopened after the shutdown. It turns out only a couple of the campgrounds have been re-opened so we are in a big gravel lot across from the visitors center with about 100 other RV’s. We took a walk and Ton got some nice sunset pictures, and we had a couple of short conversations with some of out other campers before settling in for the night.

January 27, 2019 San Diego CA

Today is Dylan’s birthday so we planned a big day around town to celebrate. We started out with a seafood brunch at Point Loma Seafood. It is part fishmonger and part restaurant, definitely a laid back California experience, but the food was really exceptional, and was a good start to the day.

Our next stop was Cabrillo National Monument on a bluff overlooking San Diego harbor. This was the first day it was open after the government shutdown and a lot of people were coming out to use the facilities. It is an interesting place located on former military property with stunning views of the harbor and the ocean. The monument has exhibitions on Spanish explorers, as it is believed the monument contains the landing place of the Spanish explorer who was the first European to land in San Diego. It also has a whale watching platform, some nice tidal pools, and exhibits on the military uses of the area. We really enjoyed it.

The Cabrillo Monument to the first European to see San Diego Harbor.

Next we headed over to another San Diego brewery located right next to Point Loma Seafood. We had a couple of rounds of really excellent Lagers and IPA’s and were quite impressed with Epigg Brewing. Our next stop was going to be Pariah brewery for Pizza and beer. When we got there Pizza was not available so we headed down the road for a great Mexican meal to wrap up the day. Thanks Dylan for a fun week in San Diego.

The shore line at Cabrillo National Monument.

January 26, 2019 San Diego CA

Dylan suggested we head up to San Juan Capistrano to visit the mission there. It is about an hour north of here and you have to transit thru Camp Pendleton. The Marines were out playing today. There was an amphibious ship off shore, and we saw some ship to shore movement including some helicopters, and amphibious tractors. It brought back some nice memories for Ron.

A CH-53 helicopter stopping traffic on I-5 as it passes thru Camp Pendleton.

San Juan Capistrano is one of the best preserved of the California Missions. When the Spanish were colonizing Alta California in the 1700’s they built a string of missions along the coast about one days horse ride apart. Each mission was part fort and part Catholic church. They were designed to encourage the native Americans to convert to Catholicism. California uses the missions as part of the 4th grade curriculum for elementary schools. We remember helping Alex with the construction of his model mission when we lived in California. The mission at San Juan Capistrano used to be famous for an annual return of swallows to the mission. These days the swallows are going some where else due to urbanization around the mission.

The interior of the chapel at Mission San Juan Capistrano.

After the mission we stopped at a couple of breweries, and swung by Walmart to buy a new water hose for Scout as our old one gave up the ghost yesterday. We have been really impressed with the quality of the breweries in San Diego.

January 25, 2019 San Diego CA

This morning Dylan came over to give us his car for the day. We planned a shopping trip to stock up for the ride home, and to pick up a couple of things only available in California.

After spending the morning shopping on the Navy Base, we joined Dylan for a nice pizza lunch in a restaurant in his neighborhood. After lunch we headed over to Costco to pick up Ton’s favorite noodles that are only available in California. When Dylan finished work he joined us at the RV park for dinner and a couple of good Oregon microbrews we had brought down. We had a nice chat for a couple of hours before turning in for the night.

The good news is that the government shutdown is over, and Dylan will be able to return to a normal schedule on Monday. He was telling us that he attended a conference in Washington during the shutdown, and despite the shutdown they arranged for him to get a tour of the Department of Interior headquarters. He said it was quite weird walking thru the empty building with the Christmas decorations still up in mid-January.

January 24, 2019 San Diego CA

Not much to talk about today. We did the laundry, and both tried to relax and recover from our ill’s. Dylan joined us for lunch, but had a dinner date, so we ate some leftovers and turned in early.

This Pelican posed for us while we ate lunch.

January 23, 2019 San Diego CA

Not a very interesting travel day. Both of us have been dealing with nagging medical issues so we decided to use today to go by a clinic and get them looked at. We both had our diagnoses confirmed and got some prescriptions to deal with the issues.

In the afternoon we went to downtown San Diego for dinner at Melvin’s. We had a great dinner of Thai Curry. This brewery is originally from Wyoming and was the house brewery for a Thai restaurant, which is an unusual way to found a brewery. Their beer is considered one of the best micro breweries in the country. We then finished the night by taking a walk around downtown San Diego.

Ron and Dylan in front of a monument to craft beer.

January 22, 2019 San Diego CA

Today we shifted to San Diego to see our other son Dylan. The drive over was pretty uneventful.

Ton and I were talking about the difference in how we treat distances here versus Europe. We decided to take it easy driving on the trip. Taking it easy in the US are 300 to 400 mile drives each day. As an example the drive to San Diego today was 328 miles. Our easy drives here would be 500 to 600km drives in Europe which is much farther than we would ever consider driving there. Some of it is the nature of the country. The next closest town to Las Vegas would be San Bernardino which in itself is about 180 miles, so there would be no short drives. When we come home it is interesting how quickly we can switch to the American sense of distance.

We met Dylan for dinner and went to a nice brewery. We had an interesting conversation about the government shutdown, as the office he works is closed though he is getting paid because he is working thru the University of Montana.

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 end 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.

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 knock 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 were relatively sparse today.

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.

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.

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 other 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.

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

February 12, 2018 Blue Lake CA

Good Brew Hunting continued today with two stops as we continue our very slow pub crawl north. After a slow start in the morning we headed towards Boonville California to a brewery that we had targeted called Anderson Valley Brewery. To get there we covered about 25 miles of twisty mountain roads until we dropped into the valley. The beer was delicious, and we debated calling it a day there, but decided to push on north.

Anderson Valley Brewing our favorite brewery on the tour.

After another three hours we ended up at the Mad River brewery in Blue Lake. The beer was good but not quite up to the standard of Anderson Valley. However, they were having a sale on cans so we picked up a case of a nice lager for the next trip in Scout.

The scenery among the coastal mountains of California.

Tonight we are urban camping in a casino parking lot near the brewery in Blue Lake.

February 11, 2018 Petaluma CA

Ton has dubbed the rest of our trip north good beer hunting. The plan is to move north roughly following US101 through Northern California and Oregon searching for breweries.

With Ron still a little under the weather the plan was to take it easy and only visit one brewery today. We chose Russian River brewery in Santa Rosa. It is famous for two IPA’s Pliney the Elder and Pliney the Younger. They have a national reputation and even though we have tried them both we thought we would go by the brewery to try one on site. When we got there, the line to get in to the brewery had about 300 people in it. It turns out it was the release day for this years Pliney the Younger and also the San Francisco beer festival. When someone from the brewery came by and informed us that the wait to get in would be five hours we decided to go somewhere else.

Russian River Brewing where the line to get in was 5 hours.

The second place was about five miles away called Bear Republic Brewery. We had a taster tray of 9 beers ranging from a pilsner to a stout. There were several good beers though we thought the lighter beers were better than the darker beers.

Ron is still a little worn out from the flu, so we headed over to a nice campground in dairy country near Petaluma that came with over 180 channels on their cable. While Ron took a nap Ton was able to watch her favorite hockey team on the TV.

The California Dairy Association has been running adds featuring their “happy cows.”

February 10, 2018 Baker CA

Ron is under the weather so today was about getting as far north as Ron could take and then to rest. We did make one stop at a landmark bakery in the town of Baker California. Eric Schaatz bakery is famous for it’s Sheepherder bread, which is supposed to be based on bread brought over in the 1800’s by German shepherds to the area. We split a sandwich and brought a couple of loaves of bread.

We passed over several 7000 and 8000 foot passes on the way to Reno with absolutely no snow. California is really having a bad drought this year.