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Published: November 15th 2006
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Nancy, Doug & Copper
2006 NORTH AMERICAN TOUR
November 2006
November 1/06 Cloudy 15C
We spent the day touring around Crescent City and surrounding area. We visited the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park. This was an enchanting trip over a dirt road that winds its way through the giant Redwoods, over a 10 mile in length, and probably took us an hour. It was one way, so when you met someone coming the other way, someone had to pull over. We toured the Battery Point lighthouse in Crescent City, built in 1867, and is only accessible at low tide.
November 2/06 Cloudy 10C
Left Crescent City at 10:30 am and started down the coast and are headed for Redding, California, on the other side of the Coastal Ranges, some 150 miles away. Well the first hour was a slow drive down the coast, through beautiful Redwood National parks and along the Coast. We finally said goodbye to the ocean at Arcata and headed east through the Coastal Range. Once we passed Willow Creek, the last 75 miles were driven at the breathtaking speed of 25 MPH. Up and down mountains, no guardrails and with the cliffs on
Nancy’s side, she didn’t fair to well. The last 8 miles we went from Fog and 15 MPH and twisty, turning, downhill road to finally arriving in Redding at about 4:30 pm and stopped for some gas. After we filled up and pulled out onto the street, terrific grinding sound came from the front right side of the motor home, once I stopped and investigated, I found the centre strut on the steps had fallen down and was dragging along the roadway. We finally reached Mountain Gate RV in Redding at about 5:00 pm. Our most harrowing day in the motor home. Oh, I forgot to mention that I almost lost Nancy when a Snow Plow passed us halfway through the Coastal Range.
November 3, 4, 5 and 6/06 Cloudy 18C
We decided after yesterday calamity we would stay put for a few day, so we are booked into Mountain Gate RV until Monday. Doug spent two days washing the motor home and car, they both really needed it, especially the car. We had a get together on Friday night, put on by the park, a little wine and cheese party and invited the guests, well three hours later,
after much discussion with all the guests, we staggered back to the motor home. Got up Sunday morning, all ready for church only to discover that we had a flat tire on the Jeep, so we put the Jeep in park, put on the emergency, jacked it up and as we went to put on the spare the car rolled backwards and came down off the jack, to a few mild curses, with the help of the park owner, we finally got the tire changed. Too late for Church.
November 7, 2006, Sunny 24C
We left Mountain Gate RV Park in Redding, after a very relaxing 4 days, ready to take on the world again. We fueled up in Corning CA. at a Flying J, paid US - $2.54 for diesel and US - $2.36 for unleaded. It was a very interesting drive as we saw our first orange groves then into huge rice fields with enormous rice storage silos similar to grain storage silos in western Canada. We also passed groves of olive trees and walnut trees and eventually fields of small plants being grown for nurseries and on to fields of workers picking red and green peppers.
We arrived in Vallejo, CA., a subdivision of San Francisco, about 30 miles to Fisherman/s Wharf or Pier 39. Traffic wasn’t too bad except for the last 30 miles, a little heavier than the rest of the trip. We have booked into Tradewinds RV Park in Vallejo, CA. which is only 10 miles from the Nappa Valley Wineries and will do downtown by ferry from Vallejo.
November 8/06, 2006, Sunny 25C
Got the computer looked at today, it wasn’t picking up my e-mail properly, seems to be fine now. We traveled by car to the Golden Gate Bridge, viewed the bridge from the north side of the bridge, from a state park. We had a toast to Milton and the boys at the Hunt Camp at 10 to 3:00 pm., the agreed upon time with the members of the Hunt Camp,, when they would also toast Milt, who was a member of our Hunt Camp and who passed away last February. I haven’t heard anything about Cookie, so I assume the operation went alright. Kevin, from the Camp, will advise once he returns home.
November 9/06 2006, Sunny 22C
We left Vallejo by ferry and took the one hour ride to Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. We visited Pier 39, had a nice lunch at a restaurant on the Pier. Watched the mimes perform on the street corner, saw a cross dresser on another corner, saw people sitting on the sidewalk with signs saying “ need money for a drink”, watched the sea lions at Pier 39, took lots of pictures of Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, street cars etc. We arrived home around 4:30 pm after leaving at 9:00 AM, a long day for Copper, alone, in the Motor Home.
November 10, 11 & 12, 2006, Sunny 18 to 20C
We did some day trips from our RV Park to Napa Valley, the wine growing area in California, very similar to British Columbia wine growing area, except there are a lot more winery’s in Napa Valley. Then we got ready to travel.
November 13/06, Cloudy 15C
We left the Tradewinds RV Park this morning and headed for Groveland, Yosemite Pines RV site, just outside Yosemite National Park. The trip over from San Francisco was uneventful until we had an eight mile climb up 3,000 ft on a turning and twisting road. Nancy wasn’t the best, what with no guardrails and sheer cliffs, and her on the outside, again !! We moved her back onto the couch and she seemed to handle it a little better. Once we settled into the RV Park, we went for a tour of Groveland, an old gold mining town, visited the museum and the “Iron Door Saloon”, where we got Nancy back to normal after she downed a pint, the second oldest saloon in California, has been open and operating since 1850, and looks it inside.
November 14/06 Cloudy
The sun started to peek through around 10:30 so we left for the day, traveling through the Stanislaus forest region and into the Yosemite National Park. A very beautiful drive on a great road, at least there were guard rails in appropriate places! We had lots of stops along the way to view the scenery, sheer cliffs and several breathtaking waterfalls, it’s almost hard to describe the beauty of it all. We spent some time in Yosemite village, another waterfall seen from the village just started flowing to-day after being dried up for months. Left the park around 3:30 to return “home”, Copper got a dog biscuit from the park ranger on the way out and then a run in the forest so she was happy! We have changed our plans a bit and plan to leave to-morrow , heading further south and on to Vegas eventually. Hopefully I will survive the trip down the mountain!!!
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Janelle
non-member comment
WOW
The pictures are fantastic, it sure is nice to see the two of you so relaxed. Glad to hear you are having so much fun!! Sam is running at warp speed!! Talk to you soo.Janelle