A Simple Beach Day

We were supposed to head out at 6:30am across the island to pick up a whale watching tour, but when we woke at 5:45am there was a thunder storm going on outside. After five minutes thought, we all headed back to bed. This turned out to be the right choice, as we received a call from the tour people at 7:30 am - when the boat Was supposed to leave harbor - saying it had been cancelled.

The rain came down, often as hard as it had at the start of our vacation. Eventually we tired of looking through the window at it and decided to head down to the beach anyway. Hubby and the kids went into the water, while Dr Mom sat in a beach chair, under a black umbrella, reading the third Harry Potter book. All pretty standard mad English behavior.

After lunch, we played another game of Life, which Deep Thought won yet again - demonstrating for the second time that the most important thing in life to do is become a lawyer - then we went out for cake and coffee. The afternoon ended with a viewing of "Finding Nemo". A much quieter day after our recent adventures.

We might go to Pearl Harbor tomorrow, but then again we may stay in bed late and roll out onto the beach again....

Blown Home by the Wind

The wind continued to roar around the van all night. We didn't actually have a lot of trouble getting to sleep - Hubby told us all to think we were on a boat rocking on the waves, which seemed to help some of the family - but the van was cold in the morning from the drafts finding their way through cracks and crevices. That said, we weren't as cold as the two guys who had pitched tent in the site next door after we'd gone to bed. It was a dad and his son and, boy, did they look cold and miserable putting the tent away at 7:00am. It was not a night (or a location) for tent camping.

Everyone got splendidly clean in the campground showers. It was a revelation. Deep Thought had a bit of a problem with her towel and robe becoming soaked because Dad didn't warn her that she had put them on a seat for disabled people in the shower, and not a bench, but apart from that all went swimmingly (if you'll excuse the pun).

We set off promptly for our longest drive, 322 miles north to Merced and the McConnell State Recreation Area.

The kids watched "Guys and Dolls" on the portable DVD player while we drove along I-15 away from Calico, through Barstow - another depressed town going nowhere - and back to Mojave. Our route traversed a stretch of the Mojave Desert. I am glad that I didn't make more effort to find places for us to camp in the Mojave Desert, as we now feel like we've seen enough of it. Dry and flat with a lot of rocks. Impressive for its scale, and the contrast between the desert plain and the mountains, but not a place you'd much want to hang out. Or live. I guess some people choose to, though I'm not sure why... It seems clear from the state of most of the little towns that the young people leave and never return. One day these small towns will fall into the desert like the mining towns that preceded them. Some of them are half way there already. Quite a spooky thought, really.

We backtracked along our earlier route from Mojave through Tehachapi to Bakersfield. The landscape around Tehachapi is appealing, with rolling hills, more greenery, and a winding road that meets and greets the long distance railway in numerous places.

Bakersfield was as lovely as we remembered. This time there were no diversions. We stopped for lunch at the China Town Buffet off I-99 just at the edge of Bakersfield, and it turned out to be just what we needed. Imagine a bland single story building filled with 150 diners of all shapes, sizes, colors, and ages. About 85% of the men have facial hair - something we noticed was a lot more prevalent in the central valley - and everyone has at least three plates of food in front of them. It was a help yourself to everything buffet for $10 each, and we sure did. Little Starlet focused heavily on the meat options. Deep Thought consumed mostly appetizers, though she also tucked into some teriyaki chicken. Hubby ate ribs and shrimps, while I focused on brightly colored food skewered on sticks. It went down very well in all senses.

By the time we'd finished gorging ourselves, the rain had started to fall in Bakersfield. We decided to out run it. The kids armed themselves with "Nanny McPhee", and we set out along the ever-so-slightly-dull I-99.

Reaching Fresno, the rain was really coming down hard. Hubby put forward the crazy idea of abandoning our last night of camping and driving home. We decided to have a family conference in Merced, just short of the McConnell Recreation Area. Fortunately we were able to hold it in a Starbucks! Nectar of the Gods! (Our first sighting of a Starbucks for several days was in Bakersfield, which is how we knew that Bakersfield counted as civilization, and that we'd been experiencing the wilderness before that.)

The vote was taken and the decision made to return home. So that is where I am writing now, in our family room with a cup of tea.

From Sand to Silver

Yesterday afternoon we went back to the sand dunes on Mesquite Flats, near Stovepipe Wells. It was a bit windy, which had obviously put people off because it was much quieter than the last time we’d visited. We walked out to the largest sand dune – according to the Park Service, over 700 feet high. Hubby and the kids walked across the top of the sand dune, a dramatic curve, while I remained on a peak below to take photos. Just like everything else in this area, the scale and colors were amazing. We spent about an hour and a half walking out and back, a distance of about two and a half miles. Going up and down the dunes, up and down, it was pretty good exercise for the old calf muscles.

Overnight it rained a bit. Not enough to make the campground significantly damp, but enough to wake up Deep Thought at 5:00am with the drops drumming on the roof of the cab. There was also a bit of additional dampness inside the tin can: Little Starlet peed in her bed for the second time on this trip. We couldn’t remedy the situation with her still asleep this time, but she is claiming that she had no recollection of us getting her up, fixing her bed, going to the toilet etc. I think the poor little thing was very tired again.

In the morning we saw another road runner scurrying over the sand in front of the RV. (This is the only photo we succeeded in taking of one.) They’re cute. We haven’t seen much other wildlife in Death Valley. A couple of little lizards, ravens at the campsite, hardly any insects (though we did see big black beetles at the sand dunes), an antelope ground squirrel, and we heard the coyotes yapping in the darkness.

We drove away from Death Valley along highway 190. At Death Valley Junction – a sad, derelict community steps away from becoming a ghost town – we turned south on highway 127.

This straight road took us through the bottom end of Death Valley and into Silurian Valley, back into the Mojave Desert. We didn’t see any Joshua trees in this part of Mojave. We did see some spectacular sand dunes in the distance at Dumont Dunes Natural Preserve. They looked even taller than the ones at Stovepipe Wells. We also passed many dry lakes.

The little town of Shoshone was in fairly good shape, with a health center, gas station, motel, café and several houses in good repair. At Baker, we turned west on interstate 15. Baker was most notable for having “the world’s largest thermometer” at the side of the road. It was a very easy drive from every perspective.

Calico Ghost Town is a few minutes from I-15. The campground at the Town is pleasantly laid out. We are in site A25, which has full hookups. This was essential as we ran out of water in the van this morning. Unfortunately it is incredibly windy. The van is rocking from side to side as the wind whistles through and up the canyons. It’s a whole new experience for us (and makes us very glad we aren’t in a tent). This will be the first evening that Hubby and I do not sit out by a campfire. It is just too darned cold – and we’re not even sure we’d be able to light a fire at all. Hubby tried parking the van to shield the fire pit, but there is simply too much wind for that strategy to work.

So here we sit. Deep Thought is writing something creative on one computer, I am blogging, Little Starlet is reading (and eating chocolate), and Hubby is in the RV shower! When he gets out, we’ll play a game.

Now to reflect on Calico Ghost Town. Calico was founded as a silver mining town in 1881. The boom years continued till the end of the 1890s when the price of silver fell dramatically and the population fell rapidly from its peak of twelve hundred (1887) to three hundred (1893) and down to only ten in 1951. During its active years, over $86 million of silver was extracted from the hills around here. The population also supported twenty-two saloons, a China Town (for washing and laundry), and a red light district. The town fell into decay until 1951 when Walter Knott, the founder of Knott’s Berry Farm near to Los Angele (a theme park precursor to Disneyland), decided to spend a bunch of money purchasing and “restoring” it. He donated the town to the County of Bernardino in 1966.

That’s the history lesson. The town today is basically a middle-grade tourist attraction. The entry fee is included in the camping charge, which was a good thing, or it might have offended Hubby’s Scottish sensibilities. The town consists of two main streets, with a short walk up to a school house, a mine, and a railway. The mine and the railway have separate charges.

The railway takes a short loop around the top of a hill, allowing a view of some derelict miners’ houses built into the rocks. (In its previous life the train hauled materials away from the mines.)

“Maggie’s Mine” is a genuine silver mine. Interestingly for those of us experienced in passing through mining exhibits in the UK, this one allows everyone to stand upright (and they didn’t insist on us wearing safety helmets, which they would have in the UK). It was fairly interesting to walk through the mine for a few minutes, though there was a minimum of interpretation – not even an arrow saying “Look, silver ore here”.

The kids wanted to pan for gold, but that exhibit was closed. We ate lunch in the Calico House Restaurant (burgers) and dessert in the Miners’ Café (ice cream). We also went into all the different shops, of which there were many, all selling the most bizarre things….like teddies with wings, cowboy statues, dream catchers labeled “Not an Indian Product”, a piggy bank dressed flamboyantly in feathers and sparkles, frilly toilet roll covers, scoop-your-own bath salts and, our absolutely favorite thing, a singing deer’s head which opened and closed its mouth and also told jokes. Honestly.

Deep Thought’s rating out of ten: five, because it was strange and it was a bit too touristy. She’d have liked it to look a bit more like a real ghost town. Little Starlet also rates it at five, because the stuff in the stores didn’t seem like it would ever have been in the town when people lived there. Hubby rates it more generously at six because all the effort at Disneyfication hadn’t completely hidden the mining town atmosphere. I’d rate it at seven, because I like the look of the rugged frontier town architecture (some of which was even real and not a 1950s pastiche).

Bay to Breakers in less than four hours

We drove out of the Bay Area and got all the way to Gilroy before we had to stop for lunch. The Gilroy Outlets on Leavesley Road offer lots of options. We went for our favorite standby Fresh Choice. The kids are far too posh to go to McDonalds these days.

Full of salad and pasta, we headed south on Highway 101. Oh dear, what a dull drive. In this direction, 101 follows the Salinas Valley, along the route of the Salinas River. It is framed by large hills on both sides, but the valley itself is a flat, pretty uninteresting plain. I must admit that I dozed off somewhere south of Salinas. Hubby struggled to stay awake, while the gruesome twosome asked the classic “Are we nearly there yet?” at half hourly intervals.

One point of interest was the San Ando(?) Oil Field, which had a romantic collection of nodding oil derricks visible on the horizon, and there was even one working just a few feet from the roadside. This was also near to the major vineyard in the area, the Calivega(?)vineyard, which was so large Hubby thought they must have cornered the market in two dollar chuck; but that might be grossly unfair.

Other than that we couldn’t get tremendously excited: The road carefully bypasses all the little towns, so you get no sense of what it might be like to live there. In a few places there are shopping malls which look like the shopping malls anywhere in the Bay Area – same design, same architecture, same layout, same stores …. Very anonymous.

We arrived in Pismo Beach at 4:15pm - the whole journey took 3 hours and 45 minutes, give or take. It was a lovely sunny day, so the crowds were out in force. After one mistake, trying to book into the campground at North Beach, we were directed to our correct campground at Oceana. We have site 48, which has no hookups. I had paid for hookups, but the site where those are located is like an RV mobile home park, with all the vehicles just a few feet apart. We opted for the more spacious back loop without facilities. It was obvious the ranger thought we were mad as hatters.

Tempers were becoming a bit frayed in the tin can by this point so, after a quick pasta dinner, we walked down to the beach which is 0.1 miles out of the campground. Alas, it turns out that the campground backs onto the Oceana Recreational Vehicles Beach – in other words, cars and trucks are allowed to drive up and down it day and night. What a great shame. Why turn a lovely white beach into yet another road?

We saw some bats and two deer on the way to the beach. We also discovered a trail that heads over the sand dunes, so we plan to walk that in the morning, and then see if the ranger can suggest a non-vehicle beach nearby where we can take the RV for the afternoon. (We’re here for two nights so we get a full day at the coast.)

And now to drink tea, each salt and vinegar chips, and generally relax. Crackling fire, waves on the beach, hooting freight trains in the distance….

The Final Stretch

We belatedly discovered that the RV is supposed to be dropped off before 11am on the last day of rental. Of course I had not figured this into the plans, and since we were in Lassen on Monday morning, there was no way we could make it. I telephoned the rental agency on Saturday to request an additional day of rental, which they said we couldn’t have as the RV is due to go out again on Tuesday with another party. So I told them we’ll just have to be late, and they’ll charge us $30 per hour after 11:00am. It’s all very annoying, but there you are.

We set out from Butte Lake at 7:30am, allowing ourselves plenty of time to traverse the gravel road again, then it was along highway 44 to Redding. Alas Little Starlet threw up just outside Palo Cedro (about a mile from the freeway) causing a short stop plus a slightly unfortunate odor to waft about the RV for the rest of the drive. At Redding we joined I-5 and drove for many wearisome hours through the dull, flat landscape. On I-505 we stopped at Winters for lunch in a Round Table Pizza (the worst pizza we have had on this trip by far) and then plunged into the madness of the Bay Area's traffic. The GPS reckoned it was a 316 mile trip.

We got home about 2:30pm, threw everything into the house, and Hubby set out again for San Leandro at 3:15pm to return the vehicle. He had to empty the waste tanks and refill the gas en route; and did not get back to Palo Alto till around 6:00pm. It was a very long day for him - but he was a total star, and drove the beast beautifully every day, the whole way.

Highway 62: An Official "Scenic Byway"

After Medford, Highway 62 takes you through a wasteland of RV vendors, chain fast food restaurants, places to rent cranes and boats, and many opportunities to buy rocks, boulders and plywood. It was really very horrible. The landscape is flat and dry, with the mountains in the background. It could be lovely, but I guess they have to put the electrical substations somewhere. Our overall impression of Medford and environs was of a fairly tatty, semi-industrial town with the obligatory giant lumber mill and Veteran’s Hospital. A bit like a macho Coventry with mountains.

After Shady Cove, everything changed for the better. The landscape isn’t as breathtaking as our route through northern California, but it has pleasing mountains in the background and a lot of trees. As Hubby said, “Aren’t there a lot of trees in the world….?” These ones are a variety of pines and spruces: Juniper, Ponderosa, and Lodgepole, to name just three. They are a bit scrubby looking, but then you can’t have majestic 350 feet high redwoods everywhere, it would just get boring, wouldn’t it? The land further up Highway 62 seems to be used for ranching: We saw horses and cows, and there were even some vineyards. At times the road ran high above the Rogue River, which was obviously popular with kayakers for its white water rapids.

After Prospect, we found ourselves back among the trees, as the road winds through the Rogue National Forest. At Union Creek, we took a short diversion to see the Rogue River Gorge – much tutting and sighing from the kids - and it was spectacular. Congress has determined that this should be preserved as an official “Wild Scenic Place”. I’m not sure whether the ashphalt path and the chain fences help meet that desire, but they did enable us to get close to the edge of the Gorge and have some wonderful views of the rapids and waterfalls. The Gorge was created by a combination of the collapse of lava tubes (lava from the Mount Mazama eruption about 7,000 years ago that is), and the force of the Rogue River water. Over a distance of some 500 feet, the water cascades in impressive leaps and eddies through a chasm probably no more than 25 feet across.

Once again, the kids had got out of the van with their best “This is boring” sighs, and by the end they had really enjoyed the stop. And, of course, Hubby was able to get his camera out again and take several hundred photos of the water, many of which are very good. (Got to give him his due…)

Lunch On Tuesday.

Tuesday: We had lunch in a restaurant called Apple Peddler. And when we got desert . . .

Cultural Interlude in Ashland

Today we caught the number 10 bus on Highway 99 outside the campground and five minutes later found ourselves on the main street of downtown Ashland (cost a very reasonable $.50 each). After a quick snifter at Starbucks, and a trip to the box office to pick up our theater tickets, we sauntered through part of Lithia Park to the duck pond and playground. As we left the park later, we discovered that we'd hardly discovered any of it - at 93 acres, it rivals Golden Gate Park and was, in fact, landscaped by the same man, John McLaren. (See, this blog is educational as well as entertaining...!)

We pottered along East Main Street, popping into a couple of art galleries and mystic goods stores. Little Starlet bought more rocks, while Deep Thought bought a pink dragon emerging from an egg. The store keeper of "Tibetan Friends" (Ashland has a fair number of Tibetan-themed stores) showed us how the dragon bowl worked - we had mistaken it for a water dish for his dog, and he wanted to set us right. Dampening the palms of his hands, he rubbed the handles of the bowl till the metal vibrated with weird shrieking sounds, and the water jumped in little jets. The kids declined to have a go.

We walked down to the old railroad district of Ashland, which a guidebook assured us was an artists' area, and could find nothing more exciting than Ace Hardware. But the walk along the side streets allowed us to see many lovely little Victorian houses. It reminded me a bit of Los Gatos, with more services for your chakra. It is a very picturesque town. Cheap too - there were a number of very pretty houses for sale with 4+ beds, some with land, at $800k or less. Hubby's eye was caught by a Tuscan estate (clearly it had taken a wrong turning at the cross roads in Milan) on offer for $3.5 million that would definitely have been $12m or more in Atherton or Woodside.

Anyway.

We ate lunch at the Larks Restaurant next to the Ashland Springs Hotel. That looks like it might be a nice place to stay for an adult only visit to the town. Larks provided us with tasty fish and chips, a steelhead fish salad, and charcuterie plate for lunch. Yum.

The object of the day was to go to see "All's Well That Ends Well" at the New Theater, one of the Shakespeare Festival's productions. We had been facing this with some trepidation, wondering what the kids would make of it. Turned out that they enjoyed the experience. We debriefed the kids at intermission, getting them to tell the story back to us, and they were separately able to explain exactly what was going on and who was who (and why). We were impressed, especially with Little Starlet's ability to judge what was happening when two scenes were essentially playing at the same time (e.g. when Helena is in Rosillion worrying about what is happening to Bertram at the war, while Bertram is talking to his fellow soldiers at their camp in Florence). The production values were high, the performances were good, and the theater was excellent - clear sight lines everywhere. It was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon.

I'll Take Some Food With My Pie

We stopped for lunch on the edge of Crescent City at The Apple Peddler Restaurant, a fine establishment channeling the spirit of Denny’s. Actually the fish and chips wasn’t half bad, though the appetizer salad came out of a bag and the mixed veg on the side was shudderingly reminiscent of school lunches.

Things did, however, go a bit awry at dessert. This was odd since the APR was clearly the local king of pie. A cold case at the entrance displayed a number of pies and cakes: “Take Home a Whole Pie!” it offered. The menu offered pie by the slice. Deep Thought opted for a safe brownie, while Little Startlet had a caramel ice cream sundae (which arrived in a semi-melted state and proceeded to smear itself over her face and across the table). Hubby and I shared a slice coconut cream pie which consisted of a crust; a soft, sweet, bright orange filling of indeterminate flavor (though not unpleasant); and a large pile of soft, white, whippy stuff (that looked very like shaving cream) on the top.

We all tasted the whippy stuff. Not whipped cream. Not even whipped cream out of a can. Not frosting. Not, in fact, anything we’d ever tasted before. It had the texture of melted something. It was like eating a theater prop, all visual satisfaction and no need to worry about flavor. Then it came to me: This was marshmallow fluff. Hubby and I were eating a food product made of sugar, chemicals, and more sugar, with a bit of coloring thrown in.

It was a glorious enhancement to our all-American road trip experience.