Our Travel Blog

The day dawned clear and sunny with an expected high of 24ºC. We got moving quickly this morning as we were heading about 70 miles south to San Francisco. We decided to take the scenic route down the PCH; scenic it was, fast it wasn’t, but well worth the drive.

As we got close to the Golden Gate Bridge traffic started to build, I am not sure whether it is always busy here, or whether March break may be causing an increase in tourism.

First View of the Bridge

The bridge was completed in 1937 and is 1.7 miles long and 220 ft above the water. There is a $7 toll to cross southbound, but free for northbound traffic. There are no toll collectors, the toll is either collected electronically via a transponder, or in our case they photograph the licence plate and send a bill. There is an option to pay on-line, but they don’t accommodate Canadian license plates. Hopefully they may not bill us!

We’ve decided that neither of us are city lovers, so we did our old faithful hop-on hop-off bus tour.

Colourful House

TransAmerica Pyramid

Iconic Cable Car

Entrance to China Town

China Town

City Hall

Sold Recently for $3 million

Victorian Houses

Into the Hippy Section

Botanical Gardens

Sycamore Trees at the Science Museum

Guess What

Tall Ship off Pier 41

Seals Taking over the Moorings off Pier 39

Seals or Sardines?A  Store for Our Son, Paul

Although we came home the “fast” route, it took just as long as the trip down, even the 10 lane freeway out of the city slowed down to a crawl.

Tomorrow is clean-up, pack-up day ready for an early(ish) start ob Friday.

A dull and cool morning to wake up to, around 12°C. Looking on the bright side, these cooler temperatures are acclimatising in preparation for the trip back home.

Today we had to get some stuff to prepare the trailer for storage, and there is nowhere around here to get it. The nearest town with the stores we needed was about 30 miles away across a small range of hills. I wanted to make this trip so that I could determine whether the road would be suitable to take the on when we move it to storage. I am glad we made the trip as the road was not suitable for the trailer. We came back a different route which was far more suitable.

After lunch we (mostly Lyn) treated all the wood in the trailer to help prevent it drying out while in storage. After that we went for a short (just under a mile) walk, back through the area with the bells memorial. A couple of days agoe when we were there we looked for two geo-caches, but only found one. Today we found the other one, it was well hidden!

While in the area we took a few more photos of the memorial.

Locals Added Their Own Bells on a Nearby Tree

Memorial Plaque

Lyn was Excited to See “English” Daisies in CaliforniaTrailer on Site

Tomorrow we are heading off to San Francisco.

A much clearer start to the day, blue skies and sunshine but a little cooler at 11ºC.

Today we headed north up the Pacific Coast Highway to Fort Ross. On this trip the PCH ran close to the ocean for most of time, giving a good view of the rocky coast line.

Fort Ross was a Russian Settlement on the California coast up until the mid 1800’s. The settlement was originally located where we are staying in Bodega Bay, but was moved further north to get away from the threat of Spanish / Mexican invasion. The settlement was established to supply provisions to the Russian settlements in Alaska (which in those times was still part of Russia). The fort was run by the Russian America company, very similar in some respects to the Canadian Hudson’s Bay Company. One of the main products was otter pelts to make clothing for the Alaskan seal hunters. So many Otter were hunted that the company banned further hunting to allow the otter to re-populate; one of the earliest cases of population management.

General View of Fort Ross

California’s First Windmill

Russian Orthodox Church

Inside the Church

Looking up the Tower (Cobwebs and All)

The Managers House

This was the first house in California to have glass windows.

Decorative Woodworking

Decorative Woodworking CloseupInteresting (to me at least) Way of Joining Timbers

Turkey Vultures (I think)

We stopped at a couple of lookouts on the coast, and Lyn managed to spot a seal in the water. We took a wander down to one of the beaches, the sand further north was much coarser than the other beaches we have visited.

Another misty morning, around 14°C. As usual it was a slow start to the morning, mainly because there was no need to rush! Gotta love the pressures of retirement.

We found out from the office staff that there is a path through the fields and woods down to the beach, so we headed off in search of it.

Very close to the campground on, the way to the beach, is memorial called  “The Children’s Bell Tower”.  It was erected in memory of a seven year old Bodega Bay boy, Nicholas Green, who was killed by a highway robber while on vacation in Italy in 1997. His parents agreed to donate his organs to seven Italian recipients.

From the memorial  hang 140 bells, almost all of them sent by Italians; school bells, church bells, ships’ bells, mining bells, cow bells etc. The centerpiece is a thirty inch high bell, from the Marinelli foundry in Italy, which has been making bells for the papacy for a thousand years. Nicholas’ name and the names of the seven recipients are on it, and Pope John Paul II went to the foundry to bless it.

After the memorial we headed across a couple of fields before following a road in search of the beach. We finally found it hidden behind some high sand dunes. These dunes make an excellent wind break as it was quite blowy in the beach area, but very calm back at the campground. As this is California, there were the mandatory surfers on the beach.

We headed back cross country rather than follow the road, who needs roads when you have a GPS and a geo-cache to aim for. We walked through some redwood groves, the trees here were massive, and obviously very old. We successfully found the cache hidden inside a redwood.

We made it back to the campground after a 2½ mile walk and ready for lunch.

Mid afternoon we drove out to Bodega Head, a few miles down the road. From here you can view pods of migrating whales. From the information that Lyn read, the migration continues through to April, but the information at the headland said the migration ends at the end of January. No whales  today, but a few views from the headland.

Flowers Grow Anywhere

Back at the trailer I started to sort out what of my “toy collection” stays here, and what goes home. I have also sorted out the route home and booked the hotels, we stop in Nevada, Wyoming, Iowa and Michigan.

Just had a strange thing happen here. Turned on the TV and no satellite reception. It was raining lightly, but not enough to kill the signal. After a little thinking, I realised that we had put the trailer awning out earlier in the day. It wasn’t the awning per se that was causing the problem, but the 18 ft. metal housing at the end of the awning was perfectly aligned with the path to the satellite. Brought in the awning, picture returned.

A cooler day than we are used to. The day was partly overcast  with a lot of sea mist hanging around, the temperature only made it up to around 15°C.

We hung around the trailer this morning, Lyn was quilting and I went outside to try and “debug” the trailer. Unfortunately California is suffering from a prolonged drought and washing of vehicles in not allowed. After the travelling we have been doing the trailer is pretty dirty, and the front was caked with dead bugs. I used some bug solution on the area and it cleaned up the mess pretty well. The rest of the trailer will have to wait until next year I guess.

After lunch we walked down to the local village, about a mile away and 100′ below. The village is very small and sort of “yuppy”, that’s about the best way I can describe it. There was little in the village apart from a couple of galleries and a couple of small general stores.

Back at the trailer I got the 3D printer kit out, and finished off painting the rest of the parts.

Apart from a day trip out to San Francisco, this will be a quiet week, followed by 5 full days of driving back home.

Much to our amazement we were packed and on the road by 09:15 this morning. It was partly cloudy and 14°C when we left, although the temperature did climb to 22°C inland it dropped back to 14°C as we got nearer the coast.

The area we passed through on the way north was obviously very fertile with lots of vineyards and fields producing lettuce, cabbage etc. Again manual labour was in use, even in fields of many acres there were up to 50 people working the land with hand tools. I guess migrant labour from south of the border is very cheap.

We headed north through silicon valley, and the traffic started to build even though it was only 2PM. We had a couple of slowdowns which seemed to be caused by nothing other than volume of traffic. Once we got north of Oakland /San Francisco we had to cross a body of water on a toll bridge, $5 for cars, $20 for me, because we had 4 axles…. not amused!

Once off the 101 highway we had to drive through a fairly busy downtown area, then it was onto small country roads for the last 45 miles or so. We finally made it here around 4PM, about 30 minutes later than we expected due to the traffic.

We got the trailer set up pretty quickly, I even managed to get the satellite tuned up in a couple of minutes with no help from the TV setup channel.

The camp ground and the town of Bodega Bay in general seem to be lost in the middle of nowhere, so apart from a trip into San Francisco we may be having a quiet time here.