Category: 2016 Travels

Ok, this is not really a legit camping trip, but it is where Dory spent the last week. We had trouble with our Caravan Mover a while back and got one side replaced about a year ago. We sent the original right side unit back to the manufacturer, Kronings, for diagnosis after they sent us a new one. However, it wasn’t long before we noticed the replacement seemed to be struggling as well. Many conversations followed with Kronings. First, they diagnosed our original unit as having had a fluke problem with water damage. Then, we learned that our replacement had come from a demo floor model. Safari Condo stepped in and agreed to send us another unit from their stock that was brand new, since we were predicting that the replacement would fail before long. Safari Condo really does have the BEST customer service!

It has been getting steadily worse and the last couple of times getting up the driveway, we have had to take long breaks and come out and try again in order to move a couple more inches forward. The first time we had problems, the right side motor failed quickly and rather definitively. You could smell smoke coming from the covered motor area right behind the wheel. The replacement unit has simply been limping along, making funny sounds and cutting out frequently when we get to the steep part. We have had our BFF, Randy, on standby every time we’ve been on our way home, just in case we need him to come rescue us.

Randy had an idea almost immediately after the last time he came out, which was to hook us up with a winch system in order to spare the CMs the hardest part of the driveway incline. This would also serve as a backup system. He is all about backup systems. At its steepest section, our driveway has a 17% gradient. This is within published specs for the CM, but we figure we are really pushing the limits going out as much as we do. It made sense to use the CM for the dicey maneuvering section, but to use a winch for the heavy hauling.

So, we arranged to drop her off with Randy after our last weekend out. Now, I realize Dory is a camping trailer, designed to explore the vast and wild outdoors, but it really bothered me to leave her outside in his lot. I also realize there were far more expensive RVs parked next to her. But, come on, this is Dory we’re talking about here. Might as well leave our children sitting outside next to cuter children and hope for the best. Randy let us put her in the back and we spent a while slowly backing her in, trying really hard not to hit the very expensive RVs lining the narrow space I wanted to put her in. There may have been some yelling over the walkie talkies. There were definitely a few back and forths before getting the right approach. After we got her all unhitched and thoroughly locked, but not wanting to leave her, I noticed all the security cameras. And then Randy texted Richard a picture of Dory in the lot, taken by his cameras. I wondered if he had been sitting there chuckling, watching us the whole time from his monitor.

We’ve been without her in the garage the past week and we do not like that. I keep wanting to go get things from her, like my jacket for example. But she came home today and is all fixed up! She’s got the new Caravan Mover on her passenger side and we had Randy give her a yearly check up, including doing the bearings and seals thing that everyone keeps talking about that I feel is above my skill level. But whatever that is, she’s good for at least another year. Plus, he arrived with a winch.

He mounted it with gigantic bolts into the floor of the garage. It is powered by the battery we took out when we upgraded to the Trojan. The winch line hitches onto Dory just like hitching her to the car. Randy gave us lots of training on how to run the thing, how to use it if the CMs fail completely, and how to not kill ourselves. There are lots of safety features and backup safety features because he knows us pretty well at this point. We got to try it all out and it worked like a charm! She’s all back in the garage looking great! Randy said she even got a mani-pedi, which I guess is a reference to checking out the brakes and bearings.

He’s a funny guy, Randy. He knows a crazy amount about lots of things besides trailers and it is always entertaining to see him. It’s good to have the CM back to functional and it will be even better to know we have a backup system so at least we can get in and out of the garage.

Another new favorite place! I really loved this campground and I bet we’ll be coming back in the future.

Our weekend began with some excitement. I was nearing the end of the day at school when I got a series of confusing texts from Richard.

Now you tell me. What would you think if you saw that? What I thought when I saw that was connected to the fact that Richard had just replaced the sacrificial anode in the hot water heater for the first time this past week. My assumption was that he had blown up the water heater while Dory was in the garage and was being incoherent because flames were engulfing the house. What was actually happening was that a house one street over from us was being engulfed in flames and he was freaked out and trying to use Siri to send me a text message. We are working on his communication protocols for future emergency situations.

The fire was actually quite dramatic. After rushing home, my first priority was making sure our daughter had medical supplies ready to evacuate if need be. My immediate next concern was getting the process rolling to move Dory out of the garage so we could make a quick getaway. Evacuation was unnecessary, thankfully, and the fire was contained to one house, which was completely destroyed. My across the street neighbors now know the precise location of all wedding photos and precious keepsakes. Close call. Yikes.

So once we knew things were safe and stable, we pulled out, albeit with a bit of trepidation. We checked in with our neighbor and our daughter the whole drive until we finally lost service at the campground. We pulled in around 6 and enjoyed the delicious Shuttle Chef meal Richard had been preparing when he was trying to text me. Then GoT, then bed and a very sound sleep.

Saturday Richard took off for a bike ride and I relaxed a bit and wrote a report. That kept me busy until around 2 and then I decided to clean the big windows. I need to research window cleaners apparently, because for all of my hard work, I was left with a disappointing level of streaking. However, any concerns over sparkling, streak free windows would evaporate quickly.

It was around 3 that I started to get worried that Richard hadn’t returned and I had no service to check in with him. A ranger walked up to Dory while I was outside cleaning and my heart stopped. Again, emergency averted, and the ranger was simply there to relay a message to me from Richard that he was too tired to make the rest of the climb and could I please come pick him up with the car on Avery Sheep Ranch Road. Or at least, that would have been a nice, clear message to have gotten. What I got was the product of the game “telephone” and not only directed me to the wrong pick up location, but also did not indicate why Richard needed to be picked up. So I drove worriedly as fast as I could, knowing only that he was “ok” (i.e. Not dead, but possibly lying on the side of the road with broken limbs. I had no idea. It was not a fun drive). It was damn lucky he had, just minutes earlier, biked his way back to Highway 4, because otherwise I would have missed him and would have continued another 15 miles only to find him not there. Again, we are working on communication protocols for the future, but in the meantime, we got milkshakes and drove back to camp.

After lots of water and carb re-loading, he was ok enough to do the North Grove Interpretive Trail with me. This was truly glorious. Giant Sequoias are some of the most amazing and awe inspiring life forms I have ever seen. Branches the size of respectable size trees grow out of the sides of these massive towers. It ends up looking like an entire world exists, high above us ground dwellers. Stunning. The forest floor is lush with dogwoods just beginning to turn for the fall. We saw a perfect little woodland deer family partially hidden in the brush, and an enormous fallen hollow trunk large enough to fit a brass band inside (true story). I absolutely loved this trail. The whole campground in fact was simply gorgeous with all the different varieties of trees. Our campsite sat right next to a large meadow and stream. It must be a whole extra level of beautiful in the spring when the wildflowers bloom and the stream is running.

So, to follow a feast for the eyes, we returned to Dory to cook up a feast for, well, a feast! We recently started getting Blue Apron dinner deliveries and have loved it so far. I must admit, for the past many years, loving and healthful meal preparation has not been my most conspicuous skill. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the cooking part, but the planning and shopping have made it too time consuming to get my head around. Dory has inspired me to explore the world of grilling and the time appears to be right for a foray into honest meal preparation. What rocks about Blue Apron is that they do all the thinking and shopping for you. What you get is a step by step recipe card and ingredient portions in the exact right amount. All that is left is to prepare some of the veggies or meat, like by washing and/or chopping, and you’re pretty much good to go. It’s not a quick process, but I’m finding it is really fun. I cranked the tunes and joyfully minced fresh ginger and scallions, using all of my carefully selected, yet inadequately used, Dory cookware. Our nesting bowls make excellent mise en place containers, and our Magma nesting cookware handled the job of stir fry and rice just perfectly. Good thing there were no bears around that night, because dinner smelled and tasted fantastic! I will say there is a lot of packaging that comes with Blue Apron. But there is also a lot less food waste, at least for us, because we always find ourselves buying an overage of ingredients for dishes when we only need a tiny amount. And factoring in what we’re not spending on eating take out or pre-prepared meals, it seems pretty reasonable.

Sunday we walked over to the visitor center, which is quite nice. I got an offensively cheap pair of blue binoculars that I’ll bet we end up using more than the big heavy expensive pair we never want to take with us on hikes. By noon on Sunday, the park was nearly empty and we enjoyed a casual stroll along the trails back to our campsite. It looks like there are a couple of campgrounds here and many trails to be explored in the future. All in all, this was one of my favorite places so far.

Total miles: 132.7, 15.5 mpg (19.1 on the way home when it is all downhill), 3 hours 41 min (just about 3 hours going home with no traffic). Site 7. Sites 5, 6, or 7 are all really lovely. We think 6 might be the best, with a bit better solar. No cell service for either of us in the campground. Verizon starts to kick in a few miles down Highway 4, but AT&T had no service until Murphys.

What a perfect Labor Day weekend. All weekends should really be three days long, don’t you think?

This pick was intended as a less crowded way to go Dorying on the holiday weekend that was relatively close by and had hookups. It delivered on all counts. I won’t say this is a spectacularly scenic park or anything. It is just a nice county park that happens to have some RV campsites as well as some walk in tent sites. Very pleasant, though lots of partiers. We pulled in Saturday around noon, after a very short drive, and settled in for a lovely, lazy afternoon. We gave a few tours, had a bit of lunch, and I basked in zero gravity chair heaven. I need a name for the chair I think. Since we are now “Game of Thrones” people, I decided to lay out my never-been-used LL Bean fuzzy throw to make it look regal and imposing. I don’t know if it carries the same level of gravitas as the sword throne, but I may ask people to bow as they approach, just because. And the sword throne is clearly inferior anyway, as it lacks a cup holder.

I was woken from my zero gravity dozing by a highly amplified “Everybody Wang Chung tonight”. Then came The Bangles, then Bon Jovi. Finding it odd that I would be familiar with songs played at this volume, I sat up and saw that there was some kind of retro 80s party happening a few sites over. Parents and couples way younger than I were dressed in shiny, skin tight pink pants, leg warmers and tutus. There were lots of big hair wigs going around too. It was amusing until I realized none of these people could possibly have grown up in the 80s. I may remember the tunes, but I must have missed the tutus craze. Luckily, the festivities toned themselves down and weren’t too obnoxious (or the partiers got busted by rangers).

Dinner Saturday was grilled veggies and pork fajitas. It was yummy. After dinner, I wrote a bit of a report because I’m back in the groove of doing a report a week. I’d whine about that, but it really wasn’t that bad and I got to listen to post-80s music in Dory while snacking on snickerdoodles. Tough life eh?

Sunday we went on a hike up to a reservoir. Richard kept us on the trail with his Gallileo Pro app and I kept expectations realistic by noticing the contour lines on the map. The trail was clearly going to do some climbing so we just took it very, very slow. It was all nice and shady so that was good, but our calf muscles definitely noticed the next day. Once at the top we got to sit under a big beautiful tree, enjoy the small reservoir, and spot a California King Snake. There is a mountain bike trail that we could have taken to a vista point a couple hundred feet up, but we both opted instead for a stroll along the flatter part of the trail that had been labeled “easy” on the trail map. By that time, we were ready to walk back. And by the time we got back to Dory, we were both the kind of tired you can only be if you were already entering adulthood in the 80s and had just climbed and descended about seven hundred feet. Back to chair throne.

Sunday dinner was grilled shrimp and asparagus with the Fettuccini Alfredo in a grill bag trick. This is working really well. We set the grill on medium and put the pasta foil bag inside for 15 minutes. We line the foil bag with parchment paper to keep it from sticking and allay any fears regarding cooking on aluminum. Then we put on the asparagus and shrimp and cook for just about five minutes or until they seem nice and done. Delicious. A little more report writing, a little GoT on the iPad, and that makes for a damn nice day.

Monday we meandered on home and got back around two. There were lots of trailers on the road, so I guess this is the thing to do on Labor Day weekend. Works for us.

Richard wants me to mention that the sites are rather slanty and the water hookups at this place are weird. You have to pull down on the gold spigot at the bottom and then lift up on the big handle to get water to come out continuously. And I wanted to mention that there were some interesting structures at the reservoir whose purpose eludes me. Anyone know what these structures are for?

What is this for?

And this? What’s that?

Total miles: 65, 15.4 mpg (there is a lot of climbing at the end to get out of Saratoga and up to the park), 1 hour 52 min. Site 3. All sites are next to each other and pretty much the same. Sporadic, weak cell service for both.

Making sure that the only obvious trail anywhere around is, in fact, the right trail

What is this for?

And this? What’s that?

The shadows make it look like there is a huge eagle swooping down, but it’s a cool nighttime shot anyway

Last Spring, we were bringing our son to Chico with a car full of stuff. This weekend, having put him on a plane a few days before, we were picking the stuff back up, as he starts a new life on the other side of the country. Ah the circle of life….

Have I mentioned I am a special education teacher? This past week was the first week of school and boy, it was a doozy! So besides getting our son’s things, we did absolutely nothing blog worthy. I’m wondering whether this weekend should even count. We did watch Season 3 of “Game of Thrones” though, so that was something. We cleaned up exploded beer on the floor and discovered the CO alarm is apparently also triggered by Anchor Steam. Perhaps it’s the carbon dioxide that triggers it. No, I did not collect data on whether wine all over the floor would also trigger it. But it probably saved us by catching the spill at the beginning of the trip when we were getting gas. I heard the alarm going off inside and noticed the beer coming out of the fridge. Looked like one of the caps was not on tight enough and the bottle had been stored on its side. I’ll have to not store them that way I guess. So Dory kind of smelled like a frat house until I really got serious about cleaning it all up. Since we have been watching the Cooking Network, we just decided that everything we ate had been enhanced with “essence of beer”. If you say that with a French accent and add, “I wasn’t so sure about the idea, but it really worked for me.” it helps.

We once again did not explore the lake that I assume exists at Lake Oroville State Recreation Area. We brought bikes, but forgot helmets. We brought laptops but got zero work done. We did not go hiking. We did not explore the area. We did not write down which sites would be the best ones to select if, for some reason, we were to ever come back. I didn’t even take my traditional picture of Dory in her site. What we did do was talk about our week. We processed the landmarks of our former children becoming adults. We analyzed what it is we love and hate about our jobs and what it means to be part of a community with shared history. We slept in. We had beer enhanced pain perdu for breakfast and microwave broccoli noodles for dinner. We looked at the stars and I spilled a second beer while lying in my zero gravity chair gazing at the Milky Way. We unhooked and decompressed and completely let go of a stressful week.

This may have been the best weekend ever.

Total miles: 144.3, 18.1 mpg, 3 hours 38 minutes. Very limited and sporadic cell service for both of us.

Well, that did not go entirely as planned, but what did go as planned was fun.

A fellow Altoiste was on her way home to Southern CA after her grand maiden voyage from Quebec, and several of us west coast people arranged to meet her in Tahoe. In all, there were four Altos at Sugar Pine Point State Park and the ranger checking us in asked if there was “some kind of convention” going on. The campground is really nice. The sites are large and private and there are paved bike paths going all through. My main focus was delivering washers to the intrepid Altoiste because she was having problems with her shelves falling down and washers could fix it. My other focus was checking out the Perseids meteor shower because this was the weekend for it and all reports indicated it was supposed to be a good year.

All was well on the first day. We got there after an uneventful four hour drive and enjoyed some margaritas before getting together and making a communal taco dinner. That was great fun. Lissa (of Alto number etching fame) brought a handy screen tent and that proved to be a perfect way to take shelter from the yellow jackets. We sat around and chatted for a while after dinner and saw a few impressive meteors, but we were all too tired to stay up super late. We turned in around ten and I experienced what can only be described as a cold flash. Richard assures me it was not that chilly, but I was freezing and put on extra layers for bed. That was probably a bad sign right there.

The next morning we were treated to Lissa’s grilled banana and blueberry pancakes, which were simply delicious. After that, we dilly dallied a bit and then decided to go biking with Bruce, our resident astronomer. We went only a couple of flat and easy miles up to a pizzeria and stopped for lunch. It was at that point I started feeling really un-well. I couldn’t tell exactly what it was, but I was feeling like I couldn’t breathe properly. Everything from “Am I having a panic attack?” to “Am I having a heart attack?” crossed my mind. It was not fun and it did not really go away for the rest of the afternoon. We ended up going back to the campground after lunch and I just tried to rest and maybe take a nap. Sleep was definitely not going to happen, so I mostly just tried not to panic more. Eventually, Lissa brought over her zero gravity padded (blue!) chair and lying back in that did in fact help me feel better. So that was where I stayed pretty much the rest of the afternoon, evening, and up until midnight (because we did manage to stay up to watch the meteor show).

From talking with the others, it became pretty clear that what I was experiencing was actually altitude sickness. I had this once as a kid, but it was up at around ten thousand feet. I have never heard of having altitude problems as low as six thousand. But others had experiences that supported the theory and in some ways it was a huge relief to put a cause around the symptoms. The diagnosis explained the chills the night before, especially if I was becoming dehydrated (remember, margaritas). Maybe had I not gone biking, I would have acclimated. But at least I stopped there and it did not progress to a serious level.

Plus, I was well enough to be able to enjoy some serious astronoming. Bruce brought some impressive equipment to the party and we got to see an amazing view of Saturn, rings and all! We also got to see the craters of the moon in exquisite definition. Before dark, we got to bird watch with some really nice binoculars, which we both wish we’d had for the whale weekend. I predict new binoculars will be in our future. Later, we moved to a dark parking lot from ten to midnight to get a better view of the sky. Yes, we saw some meteors, but mostly it was cold and we are not night owls on that level. I felt a little bad having highjacked Lissa’s awesome chair for the entirety of the evening, but also, I was unwell and it was super comfy. Yes, one has already been ordered, should be delivered tomorrow.

The next day we were supposed to move on to Yosemite. I’d already pretty much decided that this was unlikely, unless I felt completely great. Waking up, I felt ok, not great, and mostly just really wanted to descend and go home. Richard did all the packing up. I still did the driving but we’ve both decided it would be a good idea for him to start practicing that. But man, as soon as we started dropping down lower than six thousand, I really did start feeling better. It was like I could feel the oxygenation improving throughout my whole body. My mind started functioning normally again, and by the time we got home, I was 100%.

I guess that was a lesson learned about altitude, but I can’t say that part was fun. I think if we’d ascended more gradually, perhaps staying the night a little lower, it would have been ok. But it’s something we now need to pay attention to in our campsite booking. All in all, it was better to have cut our losses than to have pushed on. We didn’t get to try out our backup battery solution, but there was some solar anyway, so we may not have needed it. Wasn’t what we expected, but could have been worse.

Total miles: 195.9, 17.3 mpg, 4 hours, 19 minutes. Site: 109 – very nice site. No hookups, ok cell service for both ATT and Verizon.

This weekend was a repeat visit to Half Moon Bay. Last time we were here, we got a not so great a site on a very packed weekend. This was much better.

In the days leading up to departure, we made a little purchase. After having experienced some pretty “non-solar” sites in the redwoods, and knowing that next week we will likely also be in non solar situations for more than two days, we wanted to have some kind of backup plan for the battery. Cutting to the chase, the two currently viable options are: get a generator, or get a spare battery. I’ll leave the generator discussion for future posts, because we decided to go the second route, at least for now. The spare battery idea sounded a whole lot more reasonable before I went and picked up our new one. Although, I didn’t actually pick it up. The big golf cart store guy with the heavy duty dolly picked it up and put it in the back of the car for me, causing the whole back of the car to sink a little. *Batteries are really heavy. Our thinking here was this: we’d upgrade the trailer battery to one that is slightly bigger and has slightly more storage capacity, but does not require altering anything about the trailer and does not add significantly more tongue weight. Then, our thinking went, once we were getting low on that battery, we could “just swap it out” for the old battery and we’d be good to go for another two days. *See previous note.

So just a little bit of messing around with this plan convinced us we will not be “just swapping” anything out. However, we do think we can fairly easily disconnect from the main battery and run leads to a backup battery sitting on the ground without too much heavy lifting. That will be our next step project. In the meantime, we got everything hooked back up and we now have a whopping 130 amp hours and a battery that a highly respected Altoiste has vouched for and that Richard says is “really good”. The Trimetric battery monitor wiring makes installation just a bit more tricky, but not prohibitively so. I’m not saying *I* could wire it up. In fact, most of my attempts to “help” caused something to spark. But Richard did it with minimal additional expenditures and it seems to be working (lights go on when switch is flipped, that’s how I know). If this plan works, our thought is that we could carry a fully charged backup battery in the car when we go on longer trips where solar recharging is questionable. If we were going to do this over a longer period of time, we’d still need occasional hookups to recharge the backup battery, but we have to do that anyway in order to keep the coffee machine up and running. We already have a plug-in charger that can handle the job. This is really an attempt to get us from two days to four days, in deep shade, without having to turn the fridge off or not shower daily.

So we pulled out Friday afternoon and I dropped Richard and his bike in Pacifica, like we’ve done before. I had a nice drive down to the park and got set up before Richard pulled in. I decided to spin Dory and aim for the ocean view and that was awesome. I could see the ocean from inside in my comfortable couch spot. Pity my hearing aides filter out the ocean sound unless I’m outside. Richard said he could hear the gentle background sound of waves on the shore as he was drifting off to sleep.

Friday we had grilled pizza and continued with Season 3 of GoT. Fun. Saturday I made french toast with cinnamon raisin bread and that was fabulous. We called it pain perdu though, because we’ve been watching the cooking channel a lot lately, and that obviously makes it taste better. As I was eating, I looked out the window and saw two huge somethings coming out of the water. It could only have been whales, but I’d never seen anything like that, except on TV. Without explaining what I’d seen to Richard, I just went, “Oh my God. What the hell was that??” and walked outside directly to the beach. I thought whale season would be over by now, but a whole bunch of them, a pod I guess you’d say, was hanging out in the bay. Every so often, a giant head would come up out of the water, sometimes two or three together! They looked like those graboid things from “Tremors”, where they just shoot straight up, I guess getting fishies on their way? It was wild. So we watched that all day. We also talked about needing to buy binoculars until I remembered that I had stored binoculars in Dory. Richard wants a second pair however and told me things about magnification and light, but it involved random numbers, so I don’t remember any of it.

Saturday night we tried grilling premade Trader Joe’s Fettuccini Alfredo in aluminum foil bags. I wasn’t sure this was going to work, but it really did. I grilled some shrimp next to the foil packets as they heated and mixed them in with the pasta when it was done. We like pasta, but find that for camping, the logistics are not great. You always end up with a lot of hot waste water and Richard is not crazy about putting that into the grey water tank. Whatever. But I still like pasta. So this is a very low clean up way to achieve that and it means I could do the same with any of the heat and serve pasta meals in the frozen section. I’m excited.

We tried to see if we could extend our stay through Sunday night, but the campground was full. So we pulled out around noon and headed home. The only other tidbit to report is that I decided it is now time to lose the “Finding Dory” promotional decal and go with something a little more subtle. I hope you all have seen the movie by now. It is a gem. With the beginning of a new school year looming large on the horizon, we will soon be bidding adieu to the summer. We have one more trip to sneak in, then it’s back to “normal” life. We both agree however, that full time life in Dory would be a pretty wicked normal. Perhaps some day…

Total miles: 51.2, 16.2 mpg, 1 hour 45 min. Site 32 (see previous HMB post for list of good sites)

Thus ends our summer rally trip. We stayed one last night in the Olema RV park before heading home, but I’ve posted about Olema before, so I’ll just include it here.

From MacKerricker to Manchester, it was only 43 miles and Richard rode the whole way. Apparently, I took only 1 picture. Again, this was Highway 1 in all its glory, and on the side of the road closest to the edge. There were a couple of places where the road was very narrow and there was no guard rail going around the outside corners. I was really clutching the steering wheel at times, lest any sudden wind gust cause me to veer in any way. It’s all psychological of course. Given the same road with land on both sides, I’m fine. The key to this drive is to engage in silent conversation with any hapless travelers behind you. “Chill your jets back there. I promise I will pull over just as soon as there is a paved turnout that doesn’t make me hyperventilate. In the meantime, I am going to go as slow as I damn well need to, so you just relax and enjoy the view.” There may have been some more colorful words strewn about within that narrative, but this is the PG version. The stretch between Little River and Elk, and the so-called “rollercoaster” between Stewart’s Point and Jenner, seem to be the ones that stick out in my mind. It’s ok if you go slow and don’t have a fear of heights. I like guard rails.

Richard’s head cold slowly turned into my head cold over the last two days of the trip. We have mixed feelings over this. On the one hand, it was kind of a bummer of a way to end the vacation, but on the other hand, it may well have helped to stave off the post vacation blues because we really like our local Chinese restaurant for hot and sour soup when we’re not well. Also, we can be glad we weren’t sick during the rally. Oh right, and since this whole trip was our version of a do-over from our bicycle adventure, I was able to remind myself (frequently) that at least I didn’t have to bike eighty or so miles to our next tent site while sick.

Back to Manchester though. This is a really nice KOA, as those go. Yes, the sites are closer together than in many state parks, but ours did not feel cramped at all. There was a lovely pool, hot tub, and playground, none of which we were inclined to use, but I noted they were nice. Also the bathrooms were new looking and clean, and there’s the camp store. We drove over to Point Arena to see if we could get something for dinner we didn’t have to cook and found a cute little market with hot soup and chili. Perfect.

Our last leg of the journey took us back to the Olema RV park. We’ve stayed there before and have traveled that stretch of road enough for it to be somewhat familiar. On our way, we stopped at Wright’s Beach, just north of Bodega Bay. I noted some sites that looked like they would have pretty spectacular ocean views. There’s no cell service down there, but there is if you go back up to the highway. This will go on my list of places we should reserve some time. I’d want to make sure I got one of those sites though, because there are some along the entry road and upper loop that didn’t look nice at all.

Before you get to Olema, if you’re coming from the north, you get to have a nice long tour of Tomales Bay. I could see that being a fun place to do boating things and we’ve been bouncing around the idea of kayaks during this trip. Of course, mostly we bring it up at times when we’re glad not to be dealing with kayaks. Like when we’re sick. Or when it looks like there is a big storm on the horizon. But on this day, I will admit that it did look like something that could be fun. After I’d finished the drive and parked in the site, I pretty well konked out for a long nap. We had dinner in the restaurant that is walking distance from the park, and they had some of the best clam chowder I can remember having. Or maybe I was sick and super appreciative of any hot soup I didn’t have to cook. I’m pretty sure it was decent clam chowder though.

The next day was a slow pack up, fuzzy headed, coughing drive home. We warned our daughter that her two weeks of peace and quiet were coming to an end and she left us a message on the white board: “Alissa & Richard: I’ve been informed that you’re both sick and coughing a lot. Do not touch any of my possessions. Avoid using my doorknob unless absolutely necessary. Cover your mouth when you cough. Welcome home, by the way.”

Smart ass. No idea where she gets that.

Total miles to Manchester: 43.1, 15.6 mpg, 1 hour, 50 minutes. Site 42. Total miles to Olema: 102.9, 16.0 mpg, 3 hours, 54 minutes, site 147. They don’t let you make site specific reservations, but I asked for 145, 146, 147, or 148, and they accommodated that request. Those are nice because they’re at the end of the loop and private on one side, and by the “river”, which is a stagnant algae pool at the moment.

One thing to note about Sunset Bay SP campground is that they do not have a dump site. Although they do have some full hookup sites (not ours). They are apparently very used to directing people either north or south to the next nearest campground, and they directed us back to Bullard’s Beach, which was on our way anyway. Richard rode from the campground along a road called “Seven Devils”, which he had also taken when he went to Honeyman. I took that way too, but made straight for the campground and dump station rather than sag him. It’s a nice road with views of wooded mountains and not too much traffic. I waited at the campground for him and had enough service to check in and get caught up on the blog.

Following that, we had a fairly easy drive back the way we came, along the coast, though the redwoods, and past the turnoff for Highway 199 and Jedediah Smith. The Mill Creek campground is quite a descent from 101 and I would not advise it at all for bikers. Flying down 3 steep miles from the highway is no problem, but climbing back up on the way out might come as an unwelcome way to start the day. Once on the valley floor, you are treated to a magnificent setting of old growth trees and large, private sites. The bathrooms are ok, but we happened to be there at the same time as a large group of giggling teenagers. We put up a “full blue” campsite, mostly just to air and dry things out after a drizzly departure from the rally. We took everything down the next day because these are views you do not want to obscure with an awning.

Wednesday, Richard woke up feeling not so great. Just a head cold, but we decided to take it easy. He did want to do a ride along Newton P. Drury Scenic Highway, so we put his bike in the car and I drove him to the start and met him at the end. I may be getting jaded with all the huge tree drives. It was spectacular and all, but my favorite moment was taking a picture of a sign that pointed out “Big Tree”. I understand it stood for some specific viewing area, but I was amused nonetheless.

We had to go all the way to Orick to find a place for lunch and happily, I got to see some Elk along the way. There are so many signs alerting you to be careful of Elk, there’s even a radio station you can tune to that will tell you interesting facts about Elk. Yes, of course we did that. On the way back, I insisted we stop at a place called “The Trees of Mystery”. This was by far the most touristy thing we did this whole trip, but come on. They’re mystery trees. How can you resist? Plus, there is a ginormous talking statue of Paul Bunyan and his blue ox right in front AND there is a SKY RIDE! Our take: totally worth $16. It’s essentially designed like one of those long lines to get onto a popular Disneyland ride, set in the forest, with a sky ride at the end. You end up walking about a half a mile along a gravel pathway while looking at carved wooden signs saying interesting “facts” about trees, or pointing out specifically named trees. The sky ride itself was fun, and I guess it’s just like a fancy ski lift, but we don’t ski, so it was very exciting. Last, we drove down a road called “Endert’s Beach Road” to a viewpoint where you could see all of Crescent Bay. That is amazing and I would recommend it. For dinner, we boiled water and had cup o’noodle soup. That seriously hits the spot when you’re not feeling well. Also, we’ve been carrying around peppermint tea for many months and we finally felt like having that.

Overall, Mill Creek is one of our top sites because of its beauty. I knock a point or two off for having no cell service whatsoever. Sites numbered above 45 will fit a trailer and even a pretty big rig. Do be aware that it’s a good climb out though. And, there is little to no solar. We made it two nights but would not last another night without a generator or backup battery. We got there with a full battery, fridge set to “2”, fan running at 10% overnight. Woke up to 84%. It was down to 74% by 5:30, and 56% in the morning. Our six hour drive to MacKerricher the next day brought us back up to 79% and we don’t have hookups there. We’ll be ok, but cutting it close.

Total miles: 143.0, 16.2 mpg, 4 hours, 5 minutes. Site 45. No cell service.

Gorgeous place! Tough drive.

I’m not exactly sure what I was thinking when I planned this. I believe I did not fully appreciate the road conditions between Mill Creek and the coast. When we went north, we took Highway 1 all the way until it intersects 101 at Leggett. Been there, done that, didn’t really want to repeat. So heading south, we stayed on 101 all the way to Willits and took 20 over the coastal range to Fort Bragg. We tried really hard to get as much data as we could before committing to this and it seemed like a reasonable plan. And really, it’s about equal I guess to the other route. I’m not sure. To directly compare the two, I guess I’d say Highway 1 is a little harder only because, in addition to the constant hairpin turns, there are cliffs of death. 20 didn’t have quite as much death and it seemed maybe like a wider road and didn’t go on as long? Let’s just say, either way, it’s going to be an intense drive. We saw the recent remnants of a head on collision along the way and it looked like a sports car took a turn too wide into the oncoming lane. The good news is that no on was hurt and that is probably because even sports cars can’t go that fast there. Coming from where we started, it was a six hour day and I was oh so ready for a very strong margarita by the time we pulled in.

We haven’t been taking as many pictures because we’ve already been on most of this route and I figure at this point, you get it; big trees, beaches, very nice. You might occasionally wonder why we have a Dory balloon still living with us. She is now our pet and we crate her in the bathroom while towing. We have not yet introduced her to our Dory wind sock pet. We’re taking it slow and letting them establish their territory.

A fun item of the day was that we were apparently camping in Mill Creek with another post-rally Altoiste couple and didn’t know it until we were both at the dump station. Later, going through Eugene, I think they took the only photo of Dory actually rolling down the road that I’m aware of, and posted it to the group. That prompted Richard to look in the rear view camera (because he checks Facebook while we drive when there’s service). There they were! Now that’s real time social media for you. We spotted them later from a rest stop passing us. Fun!

Richard drove back into town to get dinner so that I could not drive for a while. He found a place called “Cafe del Mar” and we give it thumbs way up. We had fish tacos and chicken tacos and it was awesome. Then we took a lovely romantic walk around a trail and boardwalk going around a little lake. We ended up at the beach in time for sunset. Pretty nice. Richard is feeling a bit better, but the nose spray we had stored in the medicine box seems to have slowly leaked all over everything inside. Ew.

A bit on the battery/solar front: After spending two nights in the sunless Mill Creek redwoods, we knew a third night with no hookups might be iffy. We were at 56% on the battery the morning after the second night in Mill Creek and the 6 hour drive got us back up to 79%. Recharging the battery from the car while driving is very slow. This particular site in Mackerricher was good for solar and we kept charging after we’d pulled in, so no worries. As we discuss energy options, the thing we are keeping in mind is that when you are off grid in the redwoods, it really doesn’t matter how many solar panels you have.

We’ve been running the fridge on “2” and we put a tiny fan in there to help regulate the temperature. We think that has helped and the fridge seems to be running its duty cycle less frequently. Ice still frozen, milk still cold. It also looks like if we can rebound to 70% before the sun goes down from any kind of solar input, we’re ok for the night and won’t go below 50%. Charging from the car won’t bring us back up that much, unless it’s a long drive. So… if we want to go for more than two nights, or we want to hop from one shady off grid place to another, we may need to either up our battery capacity and/or look at a generator. Research continues…

Total miles: 250.6, 16.4 mpg, 6 hours, 20 minutes. Site 131, nice. Also sites 125, 127 would be nice with perhaps ocean views, 133 and 141 might have lake views. +1 point for LTE cell service for both of us.

The day after the rally officially ended was our denouement day. We took a very long time getting up and going in the morning and it was a good thing we didn’t have far to travel. I think my original intent on reserving sites was for Richard to bike from Honeyman to Sunset Bay, but it was cold and kind of drizzly and we were both on post-rally-moving-slowly mode. So we drove it. I think we’re also both a bit blue at turning back south toward home, because eventually that will mean the end to this particular outing. We both truly love extended time in Dory. Weekends keep us going, but this is the life out here.

Our little bit of excitement happened after we got to our site. Sunset Bay campground has quite a few sites with pretty difficult approaches for a trailer. The paved slots come at a 90 degree angle and there is no place to pull up across from you to get a less steep approach. All things considered, we decided to unhitch and Caravan Mover into the site. When we do this, we are cognizant of trying to be very fast, since anyone who might come along would be completely blocked. Our first fun moment was when Richard unhitched just slightly before the CM rollers were engaged and Dory started rolling. It wasn’t bad, and we weren’t on a hill, but it did get our hearts beating just a bit faster. Richard grabbed all 2,000+ lbs of her and stopped the roll, and we proceeded. Once in the site, we raised the roof and got inside because we hadn’t had lunch yet. We chocked the backs of both wheels, but not the fronts, because the site sloped toward the back. As we were sitting there inside, Dory started to roll forward into a pothole. Again, it wasn’t much of a roll, but this time Bruce caught her. Thanks Bruce. Sorry about that fog light. 🙁

After chocking the hell out of her and stabilizing everything, we drove off to go to a wildlife viewing area. There were tons of highly audible seals lying around on rocks out in the water, but we could only barely see them in the fog. Beautiful area. Then we drove back into Coos Bay to get wifi and groceries and that is surprisingly satisfying. We also got take out Chinese food to take back to Dory. I figured, since we were at Sunset Bay, that we ought to at least try to see the sunset. After the two shots I took, a big cloud bank rolled in, so our sunset was obscured, but still perfect. We talked about life, and worry, and unpredictability. For example, for all the worrying we do, we had not thought to worry about crashing Dory after she was unhitched and parked in a campsite. And the things we have worried about have pretty much not come to pass. So worrying is pointless. Still, easier said than done. One thing we both notice when we’re out on extended trips is that it is automatically easier to live in the moment because the moments keep you very busy. It’s all good.

Total miles: 54.5, 16.1 mpg, 1 hour 53 minutes. Site A 37 (tight fit and didn’t scope out good alternatives).