California–Oregon Coast

 

We left the Napa Valley area as we totally drained our wine budget for the entire year!  We followed US-101 north to Klamath, California.  For those of you who have not traveled US-101/CA-1, it is a real treat.  The highway goes along the coast of California and Oregon and gives you some spectacular views of the Pacific Ocean.  The downside is that it is mostly a two lane highway with many hills and sharp curves.  So if you get behind a semi or, someone like us towing a trailer, you end up going really slow.  When driving it you need to add additional time as you will only average 40 MPH.  For us, besides the slower driving, it was the horrible gas mileage.  I do not want to know the actual miles per gallon but I am sure on the trip to Klamath and then Seal Rock, it was probably around 6 miles per gallon.  It is all worth it!

So, as I mentioned, we first stopped in Klamath, California.  This is right in the heart of the redwoods.  The Redwood National and State Parks are north and south of the city.  We had a nice time taking the scenic drives through the forests, although US-101 actually goes through a big part of it.  The weather was much cooler as we moved north and the clouds and rain moved in as is the case in coastal northern California and into Oregon.

Here are some pictures from our stop in Klamath.

Redwood forest

  Herd of Elk next to the highway

  Neat lighthouse in Crescent City

From Klamath we continued on US-101 into Seal Rock, Oregon.  It is a small town right on US-101 about half the distance from Klamath to Portland (our next stop).  We found a nice little RV park right next to the ocean. The downside was that it we were very close to US-101 so the road noise was a little loud.  It was not bad at night and views of the ocean made up for the traffic noise.

Here there were great ocean views and beautiful coastal drives. 

  View from our RV

  Oregon coast

  Devil’s Punch Bowl in Otter Rock, Oregon. 

We leave here on Thursday for a two week stay in the Portland area where we will get to visit with our daughter and son-in-law and meet up with our friends the Sherwood’s to do some wine tasting in the Columbia River Gorge area.

Rout:  From Cloverdale, CA we took US-101 north into Klamath, CA and then to Seal Rock, OR.

Been a few weeks, where are we???

 

In my last post we were in Moab, Utah visiting the last of the Utah National Parks.  It has been a few weeks so a good time for us to get caught up. 

Following Moab we drove to Salt Lake City for just a few days.  This was a good stopping point for the weekend and it allowed Fran to fly to Kansas City to attend her nephew’s wedding.  It was a short trip for her but she had a good time seeing her sister and family.

Fran with her nephew

From Salt Lake City we made two stops in Nevada, just overnighters, and then proceeded into the San Francisco Bay Area.  There are not a lot of RV parks that service the San Francisco area, so after looking at all of them and reading the reviews we settled on one in Bethel Island, California.  It is somewhat further out than we would have liked but since they extended BART to Pittsburg, CA it ended up not being that big of a deal to get into the city.  However, it was a fairly long drive to the Napa wine country area.  It was an OK park but I do not think we would stay there again.  The spaces were very close together and you had to park your car right next to your trailer, leaving no room at all outside your trailer.  In fact, our neighbor opened his truck door and gently hit our bedroom slide.

While in Bethel Island we visited with a former co-worker of mine when I worked in San Francisco.  It was fun to catch up with her and her husband.  The best thing of this stop was our youngest daughter, Kim, flew in to spend a few days with us.  She was very young when we lived in the area and does not remember San Francisco, plus she enjoys wine and wanted to see the wine country.  We toured San Francisco on the weekend and then wine country on Monday and Tuesday.

The famous Painted Ladies homes in San Francisco

Kim on cable car

Outdoor lunch in Little Italy

Golden Gate Bridge

Kim learned of an ice cream sandwich place called Cream that had a shop  in San Francisco.  You pick the cookies, the ice cream and any toppings and they make a cookie sandwich.  It was a little bit of a walk to find it, but then we discovered it was very close to a BART station for our trip back home.

The ice cream sandwich at Cream

In wine country we first did the Silverado Trail on Monday, visiting about 5 wineries. 

This was our second stop, Andretti winery.  The former race car driver, Mario Andretti, is a part owner.

On Tuesday we toured the main tourist area of Highway 29.  We had a great picnic lunch at V. Sattui winery and then finished up the day taking the cable car to Sterling winery for the great views.

In the cable car for the ride to the top of the mountain to see the Sterling winery.

We did a lot in the four days but had a great time visiting with Kim, tasting wine and seeing the sights.

As I write this we moved from Bethel Island to Cloverdale, California for Mother’s Day weekend.  This is the northern part of the wine country area.  We took a drive through the hills and stopped at one of our favorite wineries, Mauritson, to do some tasting and buy some wines, before heading to Healdsburg for an outdoor lunch at Oakville Grocery.

Next up is Klamath, California before heading into Oregon.

Route:  From Moab, Utah we took Highway 6 north to Interstate 15 north into Salt Lake City.  From Salt Lake City we took Interstate 80 west to Highway 160 and Highway 12 into Bethel Island, California.  From Bethel Island we took Highway 4 north to Interstate 80 east to Highway 37 north to US 101 north into Cloverdale, California.