RV Rampage 2: The Not So Fast, Occasionally Furious

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Crumbs it's hard to find the time to write these updates. Hopefully I'll get to the end before it's time to go away again.



So then, last time we'd just completed a perilous 333 point turn trying to leave Yosemite and were counting our blessings as we headed due west towards San Francisco...



San Francisco

Having always dreamed of rolling onto the Golden Gate Bridge to the sounds of Scott McKenzie imploring us to go floral in the head department, we surprised ourselves by missing the Golden Gate altogether while driving to the strains of some pretty intense jazz. Still, jazz seemed necessarily cosmopolitan, especially having spent the previous evening eating in a restaurant that hit the sweet spot between Twin Peaks and Deliverance.



Here was a city we'd been very excited about visiting and we were more than ready to roll over and let it tickle our collective tummies with all its groovy charms...and get some washing done. It had been over a week and we were getting into pant-reversing territory. So rather than heading straight into town to seek out San Fran's Friday fun, we instead spent our first evening loading quarters into several industrial sized washing machines and guzzling quesadillas.



But we had the whole weekend to explore the place and so Saturday began with a scenic ferry ride from Larkspur into town, splashing past Alcatraz and the much lauded bridge en route. While waiting for the ferry we'd got chatting to another couple doing the RV thing with their young boys, and found that they live about a mile away from us back in Peckham. Small world blah blah blah. We could see in their boys' eyes the relief at the prospect of another four year old to play with, so set a plan to chuck the boys together at the end of the day. Before then, we had a date with our old room mate from Sydney, Bruno.



I say room. Bruno had actually lived in a shed at the bottom of the garden which our landlady - not one to miss a money-making opportunity - decided was habitable. Since then we'd hooked up with him in his hometown Rio, and now here he was again, studying in San Francisco, to give us another native's tour. Sydney, Rio and now San Francisco - Bruno's got very good taste in cities.



We met in among the hubbub of the dockside farmer's market where delicious coffee was reassuringly expensive, and barely ventured more than 100m from the sea front all day, taking in the sea lions at Pier 39, the incredible vintage amusement arcade and, somewhat randomly, having a poke about the USS Pampanito submarine. We could quite easily have spent the entire day in the arcade, watching Fred do everything he could to cheat at the games until he set off an alarm on one and couldn't be seen for the dust of guilt. It was awesome to see Bruno again and he was so good with the kids that we were only too happy to let him have Fred on his shoulders most of the day (thanks Bruno!)



Bumping into our Peckham neighbours on the ferry back over, both families were clearly quite knackered, which might be why both us dads managed to get distracted by the beer on sale, taking our eyes off the boys whose energy levels and hijinks were enough to get themselves a bollocking from a terrifying security lady. Ahem. The kids' party continued back in their RV which was sufficiently wider and longer than Harvey to give us some serious RV envy. It had pop out sides (pop out sides!) and was seven feet longer, which somehow had the effect of making it dwarf poor old Harvey.



Still, it was nothing compared to some of the ginormous, shiny, spaceships passing themselves off as RVs - they were obscene and they were everywhere. Not a day would go by where you wouldn't see several glistening monster motor homes with a pair of white-haired dots hovering on cloud-like armchairs behind a humongous windshield (those seats were too comfortable looking if you ask me. Don't old people always fall asleep in their armchairs?) At any one moment there must be a million of these fuckers zigzagging their way between the four corners of America and back again, pinging around, literally burning their children's inheritance until they run out of cash or sight or life.



Where was I?



Oh yeah.



So we had another day in San Fran, which allowed us to explore a bit deeper. We saw the apparently regular sight of someone getting their bike wheel caught in the tram track and nearly being sliced in two by the tram (my audible gasp was particularly manly) and decided, in spite of that, that this is somewhere we could quite happily live (watch this space).



Highway 1 (North)

By Monday we had clean scruds, had drunk good coffee and were dead excited about the next stretch, a several hundred mile pootle up Highway 1, hugging the coastline all the way to the top of Oregon. Within about 10 miles north of the city limits, we were already driving into beautiful national parks and past ridiculously lovely little towns as we made our way towards the very cute town of Olema. Nothing much happened there...oh, apart from Fred getting to sit in the driver's seat of the town's fire truck! Oh...and then walking along the actual, real San Andreas Fault line! Oh...and then seeing a real life snake!!



Just a regular Monday in supercoolamazingadventureville.



It would have been hard to top the triple whammy of wonders that that Monday had given us, but as we headed north along the wonderfully wiggly coast road, we knew that more lay in wait. First up there was the lighthouse at Point Reyes (closed). But fear not, because there was to be another one the following day...just there, see...up ahead...in that massive cloud of...ah...fog. Buggeration. Still it turns out that if you're four years old you couldn't give a monkeys about actually seeing out of a lighthouse, so long as you can climb up it. What is disappointing though, is when the bulb (that's meant to be flipping massive, right?) is instead so disappointingly, brilliantly efficient that it's barely any bigger than a head torch.



Not that that dampened the enthusiasm of the young tour guide waiting at the top of the lighthouse who poured out his well rehearsed patter with such exprtise and enthusiasm that it was almost possible to overlook how we couldn't see anything that he was talking about. Can't remember his name (it was probably Randy) but - like all his fellow Americans working in customer services - he really puts us half-arsed Brits to shame.



A giant fork of cloud continued to poke at the land from out at sea as we progressed north, and it started to get a bit chillier. This wasn't the California that the Beach Boys had been telling me about relentlessly as our Spotify playlist developed a preference for their songs over the likes of Jefferson Airplane or The Red Hot Chilli Peppers.



We shunned the guide book's advice to stop in the picturesque Mendocino (home of Murder she Wrote), and instead hung about in the significantly less picturesque Fort Bragg. But we did get a bit of a win when we stayed at the MacKerricher State Park where the sight of seal pups brightened up an otherwise post-apocalyptic-looking beach.



The road from here went inland, first to Leggett then onto the stoner's town of Garberville. It wouldn't surprise me if some stoners had also got involved in building that stretch of Highway 1 which wriggled and squirmed indecisively through the woods like someone with the munchies searching the ground for a bit of chocolate. Its insane bends and perilous drops didn't perturb the logging trucks though, razzing round the bends at high speed, almost as if they were being driven by maniacal rednecks with no sense of danger.



Jenny had slept through some of this rollercoaster journey, but once she'd opened an eye to see the white knuckle ride I'd been navigating*, she soon had her fingernails dug firmly into the dashboard.



*I should point out that this white knuckle ride was conducted at about 15 mph.



A heated discussion ensued as to the reason there were no roadside crash barriers. I felt quite sure that the trees that lined the road were so strong they'd prevent any cars from tumbling down the ginormous drops. (They were very big trees - that's why we were there). Jenny thought it was one of the stupidest things I'd come out with, which is saying something. If anyone can set the record straight, we'd both be grateful.



After a short stop in Garberville, we found a cracking spot in the Humbolt Redwoods State Park, right next to a massive tree stump we imaginatively named Stumpy, which was spacious enough to house all of us and became the site of many mock battle re-enactments and a few cups of tea. We then spent the next 24 hours mostly looking up, craning our necks at these spectacularly massive trees. And yes, of course, we visited the famous Drive Thru Tree...Mother Nature's gift to the drive thru generation. Harvey was far too big to get through (pride restored), so we satisfied ourselves with sitting on a bank, watching others nearly write off their hire care premiums.



Nearby, a tiny little store had a very big sign in the window shouting 'WE LOVE GOD, THE SECOND AMENDMENT AND THE TEA PARTY'. Not having a sign of our own to shout back 'WE'RE QUITE LIBERAL ACTUALLY, WE'RE VERY KEEN ON WINE AND I LOVE CARLISLE UNITED', we skipped that one and continued on our merry way.



Oregon

Excitement was growing for Oregon as we left the Redwoods and our to-do list for California came to an end, for now. Really living in the moment, our final few miles of California were spent desperately attempting to get a signal so Jenny could narrate the Twitter commentary of Carlisle's last game of the season (dramatic 3-2 win, spectacular stuff).



I'm not sure what we were expecting as we entered Oregon: a fanfare, a marching band, perhaps. It shouldn't have been a great surprise that there was just a piddly little sign. It was just a state border afterall, but for us it marked over 1500 miles of roadtripping and felt like a significant moment that needed to be celebrated. But lo! Hold that disappointment. There were signs. Lots of big colourful ones stating 'Bongs', 'Blunts' and 'Weed This Way!' hoping to grab the attention of those stoners imbibed enough to require giant neon letters to alert them that they'd arrived in their promised land.



Such delights weren't for us though, this was an altogether more wholesome family trip (besides we couldn't be that groggy in the mornings). Instead we cracked on until we arrived at the Oregon Dunes National Park, home to some random yet spectacular sand dunes.



Jenny was disturbed. We'd found a lovely little camp ground, it was a Saturday, yet there was no one else staying there. How could this be? And in spite of my assurances that it was still pretty cold and term time, a nervousness crept in. Visiting the camp host's caravan didn't help. She had all the assuring qualities of Kathy Bates' character in Misery, peeling an egg whilst keeping her caravan door as closed as possible.



We took ourselves off for a stroll on the dunes to try and normalise things which massively backfired when I saw a footprint that was definitely, absolutely, one hundred per cent too big for a dog. Do bears visit sand dunes? We didn't think so, but this didn't look good. Maybe it was a mountain lion! Attempting to be calm and quiet, I suggested we head back...quickly.



Too late! Over the next dune we saw it! This hellish beast with paws like King Kong and ears like pyramids, the colour of a Rottweiler and the muscle tone of Serena Williams...it's a...it's a...



Ok, so it was a dog. But it was EFFING MASSIVE and terrifying and dragging on its leash a cluster of people who didn't look like they'd inform the police if their hell-hound devoured a family of British tourists.



We made it back to the relative safety of the RV. 'Relative' because it was completely safe in my mind (and reality), and a horror film waiting to happen in Jenny's. But we managed to get to bed time without being murdered (though Fred did decapitate the shower head) and while three of us dozed gently, Jenny's mind was clearly racing.



So much so in fact that by midnight she'd decided that there was only one thing for it, we would have to move the RV to the far end of the campsite, where we would be closer to the camp host. That would be the terrifying Kathy Bates in Misery camp host then? No.



We slept. We survived and we lived to drive another day...

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