Road Trip Days .5 & 1

Yep, another road trip. We kinda both came up with the same idea simultaneously – San Francisco! Rick negotiated a second week of vacation every year so he decided to take a day or two every now and then and make a bunch of short vacations instead of a long one since we won’t financially be able to do that for a year or two. We’ve discussed the San Francisco idea from time to time because he’s never been there and I haven’t been for quite a few years. My dad had relatives that lived there and we would visit, so I’ve been there and mostly visited China Town. I remember seeing Ghirardelli Square once. And since that’s right across the street from Fisherman’s Wharf we saw that too, I’m sure. But it’s been like (gulp) 40 years! So it was time for another visit.

Rick threw in the idea of doing part of the drive south on the coast highway and seeing the redwoods. We’d drive down I-5 to the southern Oregon border, then slip over to highway 101 or 1.

So that’s how our trip began, we headed straight down I-5 after Rick got home on Wednesday, put a good dent in the driving before our vacation even began you might say! Rick started to feel a little leery about the trip, though, when, in a construction area south of Olympia we hit bump so hard that it turned the wipers on, and then we watched a pop can get thrown into our windshield by a truck before we even got out of Washington!

The rest of that day was uneventful to the best of my recollection. We ended up stopping in Roseburg. I was hoping to have a good experience there since we both had only bad things to say about Roseburg. I’d just run into some very rude people when I stopped there on a previous trip and Rick got a speeding ticket there. Well, our experience was nice, our motel 6 was the nicest room we’ve stayed in so far as a couple. We even got 2 beds! Rick enjoyed being able to spread himself over the whole bed and I could fidget to my heart’s content without fear of disturbing Rick. The wifi worked very nicely too!

We got a fairly early start toward the coast (which was 2+ hours away) but even so, it turned into an exhaustingly long day. I had scoped out a few lighthouses to see while on the coast and we found “The Avenue of the Giants” off highway 101 to get some spectacular redwood shots. We kinda just blew by the Trees of Mystery with the giant Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox statues that seem to be a necessary shot for every tourist driving through to stop and shoot. I was a little bummed that we just flew through the redwoods without stopping for one single picture but, fortunately, the redwoods hadn’t ended and we saw some very fairyland-like settings, with ferns and oxalis covering the ground in the shade of the giants looming overhead. We also did another very touristy thing – we drove through the legendary “Chandelier Tree” that people have been taking pictures of while driving through for over 100 years! Cheesy? Yeah! Worth it? Heck yeah!

The cut over to the coast, to highway 1, was not the 10 mile straight shot that it looked like on the California map I’d picked up at a visitor center in Eureka. Instead it was a twisty, hilly, 22 mile road that top speed averaged in the 20’s, so took us nearly an hour to navigate! But the similar drive along the coast on that infamous highway was breathtaking. The drive from Crescent City to San Francisco was supposed to be a 7 hour drive but I’m sure that was NOT on highway 1. When it got dark and we wanted to eat and find a bed everything was closed and/or locked. We couldn’t even find a place to pull over to eat a bowl of the Costco potato salad that I brought (thank goodness I brought it!). Every “Coastal Access” road was gated and every other one was marked “Private – No Trespassing, No Parking”! We finally just found a wide shoulder and pulled off and ate. Then we decided to just put miles under our tires so I plugged in the GPS and the first thing it did to find “the fastest route” was to get us off highway 1! So back to 101 we went.

At this point, after being on the road for a grueling 15 hours we were just ready to find a room and crash. Even the internet was not calling out to us, only a bed. We got to Petaluma and the first exit had about 5 or 6 motels but Rick said “let’s see what else there is”. About 7 or 8 miles later there was no more town, we’d missed our chance. Next up? Novato in 9 miles. We spotted a Day’s Inn about a mile before town and I insisted that we get off the freeway at the next exit and find our way back to that motel – we were NOT going to miss this one! I don’t recall if there were any more motels in Novato but this one was fine.

Check back in a day or two for the next installment of our summer road trip '11!