Carpe Dory (2)

This was a foggy beach weekend in a place we should really visit more often. The Olema Campground is a private place, ideally located if you’re looking for a day trip to Pt. Reyes National Seashore. We’ve stayed in this RV park a few times, and it is nice if you have a spot on the outside of a loop. There are other sites that are right next to other campers, and you can’t reserve a specific spot when you make the reservation online. If you call, you might be able to request a certain spot. We lucked out this time. There is a large, open field with a volleyball court and dry tent sites on the edge of the park, and this is where they hold an annual T@B rally. This would be a great place for an Altogather actually. Someone should make that happen. Hmm….

We could see the fog rolling in over the hills as we drove down into Olema, and sure enough, all day Saturday the coast was socked in. It was plenty warm though (Thanks climate change!) so Richard got in a bike ride to Limantour Beach. I met him out there and we went on a hike along the Limantour Spit trail. This is a brushy, uncrowded hike that takes you out along the other side of the dunes until it kind of disappears. It is a short walk over to the beach at that point, so we strolled back in the sand, enjoying the sound and smell of the surf.

We noticed a whole lot of jellyfish stranded on the shore. I’d never seen that many on a beach. When we got back, we Googled it and I guess that just happens some times. I also looked up whether any creatures eat jellyfish, and that’s a no. They just shrivel up like lost contact lenses and that’s it. Seems a waste somehow.

There were multitudes of shore birds all up and down the beach. There was one group that was particularly entertaining because they were clumped together, facing the same direction, into the wind I assume. It just looked very much like they were collectively saying to each other, “Wow. Would you look at that. That’s not gonna end well.” Then, every so often, a wave would lap their feet and they would all flap and complain and move a few inches farther from the surf. Fun times. Dory’s windows got a good cleaning after the rains from last weekend. Her roof is still a mess, but at least that doesn’t ruin my view.

On Friday, we drove out via Lucas Valley Road, noting the subtle, yet high tech entrance gate to Skywalker Ranch. Once upon a time, I got to go through those gates for a job interview, and that was quite thrilling. Now I just notice its existence as we go by, wondering how my life might have been different if I’d gotten that job. All things considered, I’m glad I didn’t because I’m pretty happy with where I landed. I am also happy, however, that I got to see a real live Yoda.

There is a very dicey part on Lucas Valley Road now. They are in the process of trying to build back a section where one whole lane seems to have fallen off down the hillside. They’ve got traffic control lights to let one direction of cars go at a time, but I wasn’t filled with confidence that what remained of the road would stay there. We went back via Novato Blvd. and past Stafford Lake instead. That’s a pretty way to go, and gets you to Highway 37 eventually. We noted the low levels in the Nicasio Reservoir, and also in Stafford Lake. There is no denying the drought.

It was a lovely weekend, with a lovely Blue Apron dinner, pretty good movies on the big screen, and ample margarita down time. I also slept better than I had all week. I think my body relaxes more in Dory than at home. And that makes perfect sense to me.

Total miles: 63.6, 16.0 mpg. Site 128, nice and out the outskirts of the loop. Hookups. Dump not so great but not awful. ATT had some service at the site, but dark in other places in the campground. Campground wifi pretty useless. Laundromat on site. No generators allowed.

Have you ever spent a weekend so thoroughly lazy you’re not sure if you walked even fifty steps? That was us. It was raining Friday night and all day Saturday, so it was kind of perfect. We must have needed a lazy weekend because we were both awfully content to do nothing.

When I say ‘do nothing’ I mean we went nowhere. We actually did a lot of talking and thinking together. That is a lot of what these weekends are all about. It’s like a forced pause from the whirlwind work week. We catch our breath, think through stuff that’s on our minds, or things that are difficult to sift through without a lot of time. Or I revamp my reading comprehension program, deciding the acronym “PRICS” (predicting, reading, imagining, clarifying, summarizing) sounds too close to “pricks” and would not be good.

As for the campground, this was a new one for us in a frequently visited location. Bodega Bay RV Park sits right behind the parking lot to our favorite restaurant in Bodega Bay: La Bodegita. We’ve never been tempted to stay there, because it looks like your typical big rig parking lot from the entrance. Maybe our expectations were really low, but we actually found it to be quite cute and pleasant. The sites weren’t exactly spread out, but we weren’t bumping up against our neighbors either. It was clean, there was cell service and wifi, and the location is good. Good that is, if you wanted to do anything in Bodega Bay. Which we didn’t. We were looking forward to getting takeout, but sadly, our place seems to be closed, hopefully not forever.

There were some cute vintage trailers in the campground and Richard found a touching memorial to a boy, Nicholas Green, from the area who had died in Italy and donated his organs. Today, there is a foundation in his honor. One of the bells was blessed by Pope John Paul II.

On Saturday, we devoted part of the day to thinking of a dear camping friend, who passed about six months ago. Ralph, you were one of the good guys. Patricia, we hold you in our hearts, looking forward to the day when we can camp together again.

Life is short. Lazy is good. Rain is good. Pricks are bad. Choose wisely where you put your energy because those are the minutes that make up your life. That’s all I got.

Total miles: 84.7, 16.4 mpg. Site 55 hookups. Cell service and Tengointernet wifi. Good dump, but you have to back in. Level gravel sites with little fences between. Clean, quiet, safe. Like a KOA. Even has a tiny putting green thing and a corn hole game area.

Beautiful Sonoma Coast! We could not have asked for better weather and the air quality was legit normal. Funny, after all the times we have camped on the coast, this was the firs time I put my boat in the Russian River down by the ocean end. I think that might be my new favorite thing.

Since we weren’t sure how parking might go at the boat launch, and since there is no cell service, at least for me, down there, we decided to do a drop off/meet up plan. We drove to the Visitor Center in Jenner, where there is 10 or 20 min parking to load/unload boat, and then Richard drove the car back to Dory. From there, he did an out and back ride up Bay Hill. This gave me a good three hours to paddle around before he planned to come back with the car.

The mood on the river was cool and foggy, but not cold. There were tons of Pelicans and a smattering of Harbor Seals. No otters spotted, but the seals sure were cute. The water was calm and peaceful and all the boaters I passed remarked on the perfection of the day and how lucky we all were to be out there experiencing it. Total bliss.

After dinner, we went out to the dunes at the campground Day Use area and caught the first nice sunset I’d seen in a really long time. You know it’s a good weekend when I have to delete dozens of sunset photos and narrow it down to the top six.

Nothing else to report. You can feel a chill just starting to form at night, signaling the real end of summer and a reminder of heater weather coming down the pike. It’s all good.

Total miles: 89.2, 16.2 mpg. Site 60, no hookups. Great solar. LTE for both, though not quite as good for ATT. Dump is finally fixed! Be prepared for a long line if you come at or around noon.

Happy Labor Day weekend! We did something weird for the long weekend. Way back in March or April, I started to see advertisements for the “Immersive Van Gogh” exhibit in San Francisco. At the time, things seemed way too COVIDy to consider it. So I got tickets for a date so far out, I was certain we would be over this by then. Oh well. Once again, I have underestimated the general stupidity of a significant portion of the population. Still, we had tickets and they were mandating masking and proof of vaccination for entry, so we decided to go.

There are not many places to stay with an RV in the San Fransisco area, but I found a private place in Pacifica. I knew it was likely to be a big rig fest, and boy howdy, was it ever. For the most expensive place we’ve ever booked, it was one of the least scenic. It didn’t help that there was dense fog obscuring views and sunsets, but at least it masked the smoke. You’d never know the air quality was bad unless you looked it up. Shame Richard is obsessed with looking that stuff up.

You can tell there used to be more land here, and that much of it had fallen off into the ocean. I looked at pictures on the website and it shows another ten to twenty feet of former premium sites with a nice bluff trail that all got wiped out a few years ago during a big storm. Those might have been nice, but everything else is a tightly spaced sandwich shop. The rig that pulled in later along our passenger side was so big, it hit the electrical panel when it tried to open up the slide outs. And when people are getting things out of their outside storage compartments, they have to make a conscious effort not to brush up against neighbors. We were the smallest thing there by a lot, but you know what they say: location, location, location.

Saturday we decided to head down the coast so Richard could get in some riding. The air was good enough and the skies were clear and blue. In fact, traveling just a couple of miles north or south exited the fog bank. Temperatures were mild and crowds were not bad, at least not in the places we went. I got to sag his route: up Higgins Canyon, down Purisima Creek, then to Verde and up Lobitos Creek, down Tunitas Creek, and finally a short jaunt on Highway 1 to Stage Road all the way in to Pescadero. Be aware that these roads are very narrow, often no more than a single lane, but they are pretty. Once in Pescadero, we completed our mission, which was to get pie and takeout from Arcangeli. We had a pulled pork sandwich, plus freshly made potato salad, Italian orzo salad, and Cherry Berry Pie that was still warm from the oven. We took it all to Pescadero Beach to eat in the car while we watched the waves. That sufficed as dinner and we headed back for shows and bed.

Sunday we drove into The City. It was only about five miles, but took over a half hour and lots of confusing highway interchanges. We are country mice and do not enjoy city driving. We found a parking lot a block from the venue for $15, which I think is normal.

The exhibit itself was way cool and worth the expense, imho. The hour long show consisted of animated images cast onto four walls of a large empty room. They used something like 44 ceiling mounted projectors running in sync with a score that included classical music, jazz, and even some Edith Piaf. The images morphed and changed constantly, building pieces of some of his most famous works, revealing and growing them, bit by bit, so you could watch the details come to life. Sometimes there were compilations of themes culminating in wall to wall irises, or portraits, or hayfields. I’ve been a fan of Van Gogh for a long time, so the show was quite enjoyable for me. I think even if you were not familiar with his work, the visual feast would be worth the rather hefty price of admission. I have since learned that there are at least five different exhibits like this one, traveling from city to city. Each is slightly different, but all of them seek to bathe you in the vibrance of this artist’s unique work.

Back when I was on my junior year abroad in Italy (where Richard and I first met), I took a side trip up to Arles specifically to see the place Van Gogh had immortalized in person. That was thrilling. Many of the subjects of his work, like the little town square, or the draw bridge, are still there. One can imagine him sitting there, hour after hour, day after day, trying to capture the essence of what he saw and felt. Nothing tops seeing his paintings in person, where you can see the texture of the globs of paint, mixing and swirling colors together in frosting like peaks. I could stare at these little globs for hours. “Punti di bellezza” we called them – little points of beauty.

Being a three day weekend, we got to enjoy an extra night out. We had originally thought to make it a city night and go to some fancy restaurant, but between feeling COVIDy and sensorily overloaded, we opted for parking lot campground grilling. I cooked up a delicious Blue Apron steak and panzanella salad dinner while we sat in our chairs, feeling chilly, looking out at a wall of fog.

I hope your weekend brought you some punti di bellezza. We enjoyed ours.

Total miles: 35.0, 17.0 mpg. Site 136. Full hookups but sewer on wrong side. We waited for the people next to us to pull out and drove over to theirs. Great LTE for both. Not gonna lie, this place is just a tight parking lot. But if you’re trying to do SF, it is a safe place that is close by.

This was an incredible last minute cancellation. We had reservations inland and would have been smoked out. The air quality at home was pretty dismal too. But this opened up, Richard grabbed it, and we were happy campers.

The coast was much, much better, but not immune to the effects of the horrible wildfires currently blazing around Lakes Tahoe and Almanor. Again, the post summer months are playing out as they did last year, with beautiful treasured places becoming completely engulfed in flames. I’ve seen posts of AQI measurements in excess of 450, so numbers ranging between 50 and 100 were most welcome. Still, a little too much for the bike ride Richard wanted to do, so we mostly chillaxed.

Do not go to this campground if you don’t want to be around people. It is literally a parking lot on the beach with a walking path running in front of the sites all the way down. Richard scored the site right on the end, so we had an unparalleled view. But we also were on full display for all the walkers and strollers, and Altos are natural people magnets. It is laugh out loud funny to watch people approach the Alto. The fact that they can’t see us looking at them is a testament to the effectiveness of the tinted glass, but they will come right up to within a foot or two and just stare. If they are in groups, they will group stare, and then speculate about the roof, and then make the requisite arm gestures. It feels a little like being in an aquarium and sometimes people have the funniest expressions as they’re trying to figure things out. One guy was standing there for so long that Richard eventually opened the door and offered him one of our calling cards, which have Altoistes information and web addresses for Safari Condo. He startled, then laughed a lot, and then apologized for staring. We assured him we were quite used to it. We thought it would be funny if we could install some giant hand that would suddenly pop out, offering business cards.

I mostly read and mammal watched. I got to see a whale and several dolphins swimming around the bay, so that was fun. Plus, there was a guy practicing martial arts moves on the beach, using long sticks and swords. He was very good and kind of mesmerizing. Richard went on a small local ride and got out to the pier by a crumbling concrete ship called the “SS Palo Alto.” It has sunk noticeably more than the last time we were here and offers a sombre, though comforting reminder that all things will eventually return to Mother Earth. After dinner, we’d walk up a short path to Marianne’s to get ice cream. They have it down with all outdoor ordering and pickup.

All in all, it was a fun weekend. We’re surprised by how much we like the parking lot at the beach. It doesn’t seem like our speed at all, but we’ve had so much fun both times we’ve come. It’s easy to see why it is so damn hard to get a reservation.

Total miles: 88.5, 18.5 mpg. Site A1. No hookups, no bathrooms. Must be fully self contained. No Dump. Dump at New Brighton, which is now charging $10 even if you were staying at a state park. Great solar. Amazing view. Tons of people. LTE for both.

This was a last minute desperation move based on air quality. It is becoming predictably consistent that there are fires in the summer and fall months, enough to make breathing dangerous across much of the state. So much so in fact, that I need to learn to make reservations only on the coast until well into winter. At least there it is usually better. Last weekend we bailed on reservations near Nevada City and could not find anything last minute to take their place. We ended up sleeping in Dory in the garage because 1) we can, 2) we get to watch big screen projector movies, and 3) I sleep better in Dory. This weekend was the same, with reservations planned for Coloma, except I was able to find this place. It’s not a great place. But it had an AQI under 50 for the most part, and was close enough to Moss Landing that we could get in an otter fix. #winning

We had a lot of adulting to do that we’d been putting off since coming home, so it was productive to be out. When we’re out, we can have long sustained conversations about stuff. Sometimes it’s stupid stuff, like how are Corn Nuts made? But sometimes it’s hard stuff that is easily avoided when we’re home. And our daughter certainly appreciates having her space, so it’s all worth it, even at a silly KOA. I went ahead and moved all the reservations that were inland over the next three months, to places near the ocean. It’s really hard to get spots on the coast, so some of them will be weird private places. But that’s fine. When you close the curtains at night, you could really be anywhere.

Plans have continued, slowly and haltingly, to investigate the possibility of having Dory1 in the backyard as a living space. All of the logistics of that have proved to be daunting; from finding information about ordinances and permits, to finding a contractor who will talk to us, it’s been slow. As it stands, we’re not hopeful. So part of the adulting was talking through what that might mean and what options we might have. The downside of having such amazing summer trips is that we go though low level, extended release, nervous breakdowns when we come back. It’s subtle and you’d think we were fine because we’re functioning, but it’s a lot to shift off two months of national parks, to back to the same old same old while COVID is ramping back up and everything is on fire again. And public education can be really hard sometimes. I need to work on what I let bother me and what I don’t. That’s a big to do that I need to figure out, because there will always be times when people just suck.

We’ve got some nice sites lined up for the future though, and fun plans on the books, so it’s ok. It’s all ok. My school has chosen flamingoes as the ambassador of Optimism. I have flamingos sitting on my desk and will put on my best flamingo-tude, hoping for rain to give the poor firefighters a break. Meanwhile, here are some pictures of otters munch munching on crabs.

Total miles: 100.0, 18.0 mpg. Really small and cramped, right next to the highway, but I didn’t hear traffic noise. I am hearing impaired though, so… Hookups and all, and KOAs are what they are. Close enough to Moss Landing for an easy day trip.

Fog. That’s this week. Fog, as in yay, it’s not smoke. Fog, as in, “What is this thing called “work”? And “house”? And why are we not moving every three days? Why are there piles of paper on my desk? And why do I have a desk?”

We are both predictably adjusting to the shift. Which is to say, every year we re-confirm our love of extended trips. There is plenty to love about home, but we always get a bit melancholy when the excitement of new destinations comes to a close for a while. I think we’re getting better at it though? Like no panic attacks, just sort of …. fog.

It worked to not give myself any time to think before the start of the school year. I just dove right into preparations and that takes up all of my brain. We emptied Dory of all laundry and we washed the sheets as soon as we got in last weekend, Richard washed ALL of the dishes, and we emptied food storage. Our big, lovely 4.3 cu ft refrigerator is total overkill for weekend jaunts.

We were very happy to get take out from our favorite Bodega Bay restaurant: La Bodegita. They’d been closed for a while and we were worried. But they were up and running and crazy busy Friday night. The wait times have increased, just as they have for most restaurants still in business, but we were in no hurry. The owner apologized and offered complimentary drinks. We assured him that there was no need and that we were not the least bit bothered, and he looked like he doesn’t usually get that answer. It’s brutal out there I guess.

Saturday I did slow foggy things, like wash the filthy windows and reorganize Bruce. We took out the things we didn’t use and that freed up space to make the rest more accessible. I got many people coming by to ask about Dory, which did not seem to happen much over the summer. Maybe we were just out and away more, doing crazy hikes and things.

I take it back about saying the inverter is not a game changer. I heated up La Bodegita leftovers in the microwave for lunch (you can only do that if you have hookups or an inverter) and that was awesome. The solar panels don’t seem to be bothered by inverter use, nor by fog. The battery just keeps smiling away with a happy face, so it’s pretty worry free. Also, we still have not used up a whole propane tank. Richard did a bike ride up Bay Hill, which has been partially repaved. In the evening, we just walked up and down the bay looking at pelicans through the fog.

On our way out, we looked at Spud Point for crab cakes, but the line was crazy long. Instead, we went just a little further down the road to Anello’s. There we got crab cakes and clam chowder and it was really good. I’m not enough of a connoisseur to do a comparison of the two places. I don’t know why one had a line and the other didn’t. I liked Anello’s just fine and they call everyone “hon.”

When we got home, Dory2 got her first driveway bath to rinse off two months worth of magical travel dust. Now she’s shiny again. On getting her back in the garage, we’ve noticed that the wire loops at the front of the solar panels sit a little farther forward and are therefore not one of the highest points on the roof. We were concerned because they look bigger than the ones on Dory1 and Lola, so we weren’t sure if we would still be able to get her in. Those are a non issue now, but the top of the keder rail on the passenger side is just brushing against the garage frame. When we take her in for a Randy checkup, maybe we can lower the suspension on that side.

Not much to report. It was foggy. We are foggy. But we are happy to have weekends lined up and we are happy not to be currently on fire.

Total miles: 90.3, 16.3 mpg. Site 34 no hookups. Right by bathroom and garbage, so kind of a thoroughfare site. But it was fine. It’s all fine. Good dump, but now you have to pay $7 at the kiosk if you’re going to use it. Strong LTE for both.