Airstreaming with Sally & Betty

On Tuesday, November 13, we set off to our winter home in Heber City, Utah. Even though I think we could have gone a more northern route that may have been shorter, we chose the southern route to be sure to not run into any weather issues in the mountains. This meant we drove south on the 101 some more through Ventura County which was really pretty. The highway is very easy to drive and hugs the coast providing beautiful views of the ocean along the way. The 101 turns into the 134 and then the 210, all while heading east toward San Bernadino.  Of course, I knew that being ringed by mountains is the source of the LA smog, I guess I didn’t really understand that a good part of the city is actually in these mountains, or at least in the foothills. This is the prettiest part of the city that I have seen. We eventually ran into the 15 which would take us all the way home – almost. The entire journey was about 850 or so miles. Our first logical stop was back in Las Vegas. This time

Jeff, Jay and Jay's birthday socks We left Santa Barbara after only 2 nights at what I would say is the worst RV camping spot we have had so far. We were warned of course, but there really was no other choice. We think our friends Nicole and Jess should build their RV/Tiny Home Resort in Santa Barbara now! They are pretty set on Oregon, so I doubt this will happen, but someone should open up this college town to some RV traffic. We were lucky enough to have Jay and Jody drive up from Long Beach to meet us there and we all enjoyed lunch and shopping along State Street, the main drag downtown. Several purchases were made at Lucky, a Clark family favorite. On the following day, Jeff and I got our exercise on the UCSB campus in order to check it out for Isabelle. This is one of her 3 top choices for grad school along with Tulane and Oregon. We sincerely hope she gets a good deal at UCSB because the area is just lovely. I have decided that we will come back next s

On a Sunday, we were finally poised to move from Bodega Bay down to Half Moon Bay. This meant we would in fact, drive our rig over the bridge and through San Francisco. A quick check of the map showed that we were passing right through Mill Valley where Scott's best friend and his family live. The Rossingtons graciously entertained us with lunch and a tour of their beautiful home. Phil, Maeve, Drew and Flynn Phil is an architect and Maeve is a real estate agent. Together they could entertain and educate me for months and I would still want more. When I heard about the massive renovation that they did on their house, including lifting it to create taller ceilings and turning it from a duplex into a single family home, I was even more impressed with the final product. Flynn and Tule They had just completed a landscape redesign when we arrived. While we were there, we all wondered what sort of critter was pulling up the mondo grass by the front sidewalk.  As we were abou

Pt. Reyes National Seashore We have now been staying 4 nights in any given campground along our way down SR1. It really makes the trip much more enjoyable, especially now that our weather could start changing on us. Since we stayed out of order (meaning we first stayed in Olema and then traveled back north to Bodega Bay) on our way to San Francisco, I am mixing up the blog entries a bit so that it actually makes a little more sense. The Olema RV park was very nice. There were lots of Airstreams here and we even met a couple who were pulling their 25 foot with a VW Toureg. This vehicle is basically the same body frame as Sally but without the Porsche styling. We have also seen a Mercedes SUV pulling an Airstream, but everyone else has trucks. Both Jeff and I have wondered if Sally was the right call for us, but so far so good. We certainly look good while driving down the road, for whatever that is worth! The following passage is copied from a postcard, actually THIS post

From Trinidad we had over 6 hours of driving to get to our next desired campground. However, that is well above our normal driving time, so we split up the trip to Olema, CA by stopping for an overnight in Fort Bragg. We continued our journey south on US Hwy 101 for a little over 100 miles to the northern terminus of California State Route 1. Our goal was to drive as much of SR 1 as possible all the way down to Paso Robles, CA. We knew from the beginning that parts of the road were closed near Big Sur due to land/mud slides and we expected that we might run into other issues. It was a rainy day and Jeff was still recovering, so it would have been wise for me to be on my best behavior, but... I do get really anxious when driving on the side of a mountain with seemingly a thousand foot drop off to the Pacific Ocean a couple feet from my side of the car. To make matters worse, there were several sections of the road that were under reconstruction due to slides, forcing us to travel

Well, we were back in California for the first time since the end of July. Our first stop was not far across the border in Trinidad. We stayed at The Emerald Forest, a beautiful resort that really felt like authentic west coast camping. The grounds included at least 10 cabins, some old enough to have a blanket of moss covering their roof shingles, and both tent and RV campsites. The picture to the left of Jeff and a redwood stump is actually IN our campsite - I am standing next to the car to take the shot. We were so thankful to be staying in our very own little Redwood Forest since Jeff got very ill while we were there. I still think it was allergies; he got very dizzy and couldn't hear (worse than normal) for the better part of the two days we were there. Behind our campsite they were storing chipped redwood for compost or mulch to keep the campground pristine. It smelled really lovely and woodsy, like the first day that you bring in your Christmas tree, but was so extreme tha