San Francisco & Northern California: May 19-24, 2005
Journals
Lisa and I drove from Lake McClure to the Ligeski's place in Rohnert Park, north of San Francisco, on Thursday. We've been to San Francisco before, and were able to navigate around the city with the camper in tow without much trouble. $7.50 to cross the bridge to the 101 though-extra axles! The wine country north of San Francisco is beautiful, and the Ligeskis live in a great area in Rohnert Park. Ed and his friend Cy have done an outstanding job of remodeling Andrea's (Ed's sister) place inside and out-serious contractor grade work. On Friday, Lisa and I headed into San Francisco and spent the day with our friends Caroline & Stephen-folks we met in Guatemala on our Christmas 2003/04 trip. Stephen and Caroline are from New Zealand and Belgium (respectively), and have traveled around the world: they did a trip very similar to ours about this time last year, so they were a good source of information for some of the things we'll be seeing and doing along the road. Congrats to them as they now have green cards, bought a loft, and are permanent (??) residents of the United States! We spent the afternoon at SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art)-as you may know, I'm not a huge fan of museums, but they had some pretty cool exhibits that were worth the trip. Saturday was a day to reload the camper with food and supplies, and then PIZZA! For those of you who don't know Ed Ligeski, let's just say that he is the master of pizza. He could open his own pizza parlor, but he's retired now, so you've got to be a lucky member of the family to sample his pies. A few of you in Clear Creek County have recently had some homemade pizza at our house-I got my dough recipe and cooking techniques from Ed. Let's just say I've got to keep practicing! Sherri has a good handle on the local wines, so we had quite the party out on the deck. We were able to get up and hit the road Sunday morning-driving north on US Hwy 101 towards Oregon-first time we've really headed north on this trip, and also new territory for Lisa and I. We stopped to meet Andrea in Willits, CA (about 125 miles north of Rohnert Park) for breakfast. She lives in Covelo, CA-a bit off the road, and hard to reach with an RV in tow. Had a great breakfast with her, and caught up on our lives and such. We continued on to Crescent City, CA which is only about 15 miles from the Oregon border. Found a sweet campground in Redwood National Park-very big trees (Yuki-O happy!). We planned to spend 2 nights there and then head into Oregon; but, we found out that the local river is good for float boating. We did a little research, and planned a float trip down the river in our sea kayak. Put in above the campground, take out below. Since we've got only one vehicle, and don't like to hitchhike, we used our bikes for transit. We drove to the put-in, dropped off the boat and river supplies (read beer), and then drove down to the pull-out. Parked the truck there, and then biked back to the boat. Locked up the bikes, and then floated down the river for about 3 hours. Truck was waiting as planned, and we loaded up and drove back to pick up the bikes. A bit of work, but well worth the effort as both the bike ride and river ride were spectacular (redwoods in both directions!). About a 9 mile river ride, and not much more on bikes since the river is mostly close to the road. We also spent a day on the Pacific in Crescent City-water a little cold, but I got in some body surfing anyway-good "real" surfing here too. On Wednesday the 25th, we packed up and headed north up the Oregon Coast-see the next section.
Click any of the above photos to enlarge the image!