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.
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.
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.
Our last day in California on this trip was magnificent from a weather point of view. The skies were blue and it was relatively warm at about 60 degrees. The views going up the coast were spectacular.
The coast line of Northern California and Oregon are wild and spectacular.
Todays drive though was not about views but about brews. Let me say that on these beer tasting days we are very careful to only have a small tasting of tray of 4 or 5 shot sized glasses. I do not want anyone to think we are overindulging. Todays first stop was at Arch Rock Brewing in Gold Beach. This was by far the smallest brewery we visited. The tasting room was an alcove inside the door of the warehouse. In addition to tasting the beer we were able to observe a business meeting between the owner/brewer and some suppliers. The beer was truly terrific, particularly their porter and lager.
We continued north to Bandon which is one of the cutest towns on the coast. A brewery had opened there in the last year. The facility is really nice and the beer was good. They were a little optimistic and had the garage door open to the outside seating. But with a light jacket it was fun to pretend like it was summer.
Bandon Brewing.
Ron was still fighting the effects of the flu so we decided to stay in Bandon for the night. Our campsite is at Bullards Beach State Park near the ocean in Bandon.
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, one of our favorites.
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 coastal mountains of Northern California are really rugged.
Tonight we are urban camping in a casino parking lot near the brewery in Blue Lake.
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.
The Russian River Brewing home of a very sought after beer called Pliney the Elder.
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.
Bear Republic Brewing, no four wait, and good beer.
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.
Some happy California cows just across the fence from the campground.
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.
Eric Schaatz Bakery.
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.
Sierra Nevada Mountains with almost no snow in February.
Today was a travel day. We got up early and tried to clean some of the sand from Scout. Parking directly on the beach is really great, but it comes with a ton of sand which managed to get everywhere. Ton did a great job chasing most of it out, but will probably take another shot at it this afternoon.
The downside of being on the beach is sand everywhere inside. Not much of a downside.
We were up early and had another visit from the local Marines. This time a company of Marines were using the beach in front of us for physical training. All of the women in the campground were fascinated to watch the women Marines in the unit doing the training alongside their male counterparts, and I think the mother in all of them came out a little bit. I know the women Marines would not want to be treated any other way.
Physical Training on the beach, just like their recruiter promised.
We reluctantly departed our ocean front property, and headed out into southern California traffic. Ron was a bit under the weather so we were focused on getting down the road.
One of the weird things about driving around in the Mojave is that fairly frequently you come across these large airports with hundreds of mothballed airplanes parked there. This one was near Adelanto.
We had a slow start to the day. One of the things about staying on a military base is that sometimes you share your campground with Marines training. This morning a platoon of amtracks (a floating armored personnel carrier) went thru the camp.
Going thru the campground.They then took off down the beach.
We headed over to Oceanside for the afternoon we shared a fish and chips lunch at a nice restaurant. We then had a nice walk thru town and down to the pier. A lot of California coastal towns have piers, and Oceanside’s is nice, and not quite as commercial as some of the others.
The Oceanside pier.
We watched the surfers for a while from the pier. Ton pointed out one older gentlemen mixed in with all of the younger surfers. After a while though it was clear the old guy was by far the best surfer.
The first job for today was to try to sort out our camera. It suddenly stopped working. We are not sure if the battery has given up the ghost or it is something bigger. It is 6 or 7 years old so it may be just at the end of its’ life despite Ton’s meticulous maintenance. For now we are in possession of a new camera we bought at Costco. While Ton was sorting out the camera and doing some grocery shopping, Ron took Scout for an oil change.
After that we headed out to check out the north part of San Diego county. Once again Ron is shocked that an area he remembers so well from 20 years ago has changed substantially. Oceanside has gentrified tremendously, and Carlsbad is positively upscale now. We really enjoyed checking out the town including the Belching Beaver Brewery, a Pizza place that also brewed beer, and the farmers market. In fact we had such a good time that we decided to spend another night here.
Not sure what Ron is so focused on, a nice brewery called Belching Beaver.
Last night most of the sites around us were empty, when we returned tonight we were surrounded by a bunch of large RV’s. It turns out it is a group of Elks from around Moreno Valley California who are here for the weekend. They seem like a bunch of nice people and invited us to join them tomorrow for a card tournament. We will see.
Ton brought up the idea of heading over to the coast. Our original hope was to stay at the Navy park on Coronado Island in San Diego, but as with every other time we could not get a reservation. We instead are at the Marine Base with an ocean front spot. We are not disappointed with not getting into Coronado.
We started out trying to get up for sunset but did not succeed. Ron ran out to try to get some just past sunset pictures but they did not turn out. On our way out of the park we stopped at one of Tons favorite spots the Cholla garden. The Cholla Cactus has one of the nastiest thorns of any cactus, but it has really nice flowers.
The cholla garden in Joshua Tree.
We took a back road from Palm Springs to Temecula which kept us off the freeways. The highway was called the Pine to Palms Highway and takes you thru the Santa Rosa Mountains. The climb out of Palm Springs is quite steep as you quickly go from Sea Level to 3000 feet. You go from desert to alpine and pass thru at least three different plant types. While the road is windy and narrow for Ron it is less nerve racking than dealing with Southern California Freeways.
We arrived at the beach and as we were setting up a nice couple came up and struck up a conversation about our drive down and the Tiger. Ron was hooking up things and Ton was outside speaking with the wife. A few minutes later Ron noticed water coming out of the truck. Sometime along the way one of us had bumped the water in the kitchen sink on. While we are driving we store some stuff in the sink so that was blocking the drain, and we had a flood. So tonight we are drying out the floor, and some of our dish towels and things are hanging up to dry.
Sunset from our campsite.
We ended the day by doing something we have never done in seven or eight years of camping. We built a campfire and sat on the beach eating our dinner and enjoying the sound of the surf.
Today we visited one of our favorite national parks. Ton really loves cactuses and Joshua Trees. It was originally in our plans for the trip with our friends last fall, but we cut it out due to time constraints, so we decided to head over on our way to the coast.
Near our campsite in Joshua Tree.
The drive took a little longer than we thought, and we ended up driving around for over an hour looking for a place to spend the night. At that point Ron realized that we probably needed fuel, so we ended up driving back out into town to the Marine Base to get fuel. The fuel there was 50 cents a gallon cheaper than in town.
Part of the trip was along an old section of Route 66.
We got back to our campsite just in time for sunset, and had a nice walk shooting pictures of the sunset, rocks and Joshua tree’s. It was also fantastic weather, clear and 79 degrees, so for the first time on the trip we will not need the heater.
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.
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.
Gold Canyon.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
