Eureka CA to Cloverdale CA

Yesterday was the ocean. Today was mountains--the Redwood Highway.

It was all beautiful. At times we were driving through dense, and dark forests, with large trees--Redwoods I guess. At other times we could see for miles--hills covered with trees. The mountains are different from those with which I am most familiar--the Rockies and the Cascades.

It was slow going though--the poor old pickup really labored on the passes. But it made it to the top.

But it's not like when we got to the top that we could go "wheeeeee!" and zip down. At least on a bike when you huff and puff up a hill you know that you'll have an opportunity to wheeeee down the other side of it later. But in our top heavy camper, I can't do that--much to the chagrin of the vehicles behind us. I go slow, mindful of the signs that show the warning of a truck leaning on two left wheels. I don't want to be that truck.

I also found out today, because of the numerous signs alerting me to our speed, that the speedometer on the pickup is off by about 5%--so we are going even slower than we thought..... which is saying something. That's a lot of discrepancy for a modern vehicle, and I don't quite understand why. The tires are the correct size.

It also means our gas mileage is slightly worse than I had thought, if that's possible. I think we get about 9.5 on flat roads and 9 on mountain ones. Yikes. (If anyone is unhappy about that, please let me know about it by buying us a new $55,000 F250 Diesel--they get about 20 miles per gallon. And make it red, if that's not too much to ask.)

Here's a representative sight along the way:



Today was a milestone. I passed somebody. I was so pumped that I asked Vicky to take a photo while I was doing it. Here it is--somebody with a worse looking camper than ours:



What I feel obligated to tell you, though, is that about 30 minutes later, the guy passed me. "Take a number" I yelled. Vicky delighted in taking photos of tractor trailers passing me.




I try to pull off and let people pass me. Jeez some people can be in a hurry. Am I like this when I'm following a 41 year old camper? I hope not.

Our plan had been to drive to Cloverdale, Calfornia, spend the night, and then get to Carmel tomorrow. But after we found our campground, we decided we'd spend an extra day here. We are close to town and close to Lake Sonoma, and the campground is great. Not like last night's, which was basically a huge lot.




This campground is on a hill, and extends for many acres. About half of the sites are permanent residents, who have clearly made it their homes (complete with carports, storage sheds, etc.). We appear to be the only single-night campers here. (doing this in the off season was a stroke of great fortune--everything is available and easy, and people are so grateful to see us).

Now, if you are in the Seattle area and are reading this, please skip to the next paragraph because there is something I want to say............OK--for the rest of you. It is REALLY WARM here. We walked for about an hour, and I was wearing only a shirt. Ahhhhhhhhhh!

The hour walk was my goal for today, continuing to push my foot. Along the way Vicky noticed a tree with acorns stuffed in hundreds of small holes on the trunk. I guess those holes were formed by woodpeckers, and then squirrels stuffed them with the acorns. I've never heard of anything like this. I hope the photos do it justice:


An acorn was in each one of the holes you can see. Fascinating.


Vicky wanted me to take this photo to prove that she needed 22 hair ties so that she could have matching outfits. She also mentioned something about the relative size of the boxed wine I have on-board versus her hair ties. I know there was a point there, but it was lost on me.

Isn't she beautiful?

Today we also passed another milestone: we are like real RVers. We not only hooked up to electricity, but also to water! And to the sewer! I'm so happy!

The guy who owns the campground showed us where to dump our sewer line, but when we showed him our set-up he was confused. As I mentioned in an earlier post several months ago, we don't have a sewer system in our camper--we had it bypassed so all we have is a tank for storing sink water. But it looks like a sewer system in other campers, so that's why he was confused.

We decided that carrying our sewer system on-board our small camper didn't sound like a really fun thing to do. (are we weird or something?). So we tore out the bathroom to build storage, and then had a plumber re-do our system so we could still use and store kitchen water. (as an aside, I thought it was interesting that when we entered California we had to go through a mini-customs place, where they asked us if we were bringing in any produce to the state. But they didn't ask about our sewage tank. I guess it's a problem to bring oranges into the state but not raw sewage. And that's reason enough to not live in California).

So far, we have been able to get a campsite about 20 feet from the bathrooms, so we haven't needed the one we tore out. While convenient, I do have to admit that it has been COLDER THAN CRAP, so to speak, in the middle of the night. Hopefully now that we are about 900 miles south of Whidbey Island, the middle of the night sojourns to the bathrooms won't be as unpleasant.

So, here we are, real RVers, hooked up to water and the sewer. We have arrived.


Tomorrow we hike and bike. We are so excited.