In San Francisco I took an Uber to an RV park near to the airport to meet my friend Kees.
Kees had planned stops at 3 different RV parks to give me a flavor for the different options for RV camping. We had chosen to find locations north of San Francisco.
I remember how I used to love driving our VW Kombi in Grahamstown, stepping up into the front seat and sitting more or less at the head-height of the other drivers on the road. Stepping into Kees' RV to drive to our first campsite was a couple of notches above that. The RV is as big as a single-decker city bus and is towing a small Suzuki Samurai jeep (also known as a Barbie jeep).
The road was mostly highway and we drove north through San Francisco over the bay bridge. The fog was in and we could barely see the bridge until we were right on it.
The view from the other side was quite amazing - I did a double take at the floating city looking back after we had crossed the bridge.
The scenery north of San Francisco is beautiful. I ended up taking many photographs from the RV - another advantage of sitting so high above the ground.
Our first campsite was purpose-built for RVs, but as much used by people with tents and other mobile camping arrangements. We were completely off-grid which meant we had to use a generator for electricity (within the designated hours) and we had no water supply so used the on-board water tank.
At the back is a similar slide-out that extends to make a comfortable bedroom with a double-bed. There are two panel doors that slide out to separate the rear bedroom and the front of the bus - in between them is a toilet, basin and shower.
For those of you wondering - because I did too - the toilet is fully functioning but there was no way on God's earth I was going to use it in that confined mobile camper for anything other than my regular night-time trips for less serious business. It turns out that this is a general rule given that most campsites have ablution blocks with toilets and showers and if you time your visit to just after they have cleaned them in the morning you have a fairly tame experience.
Kees promised that he would show me later in the trip how to empty the grey and black water. No further explanation was necessary once he explained that grey water is from the shower and sink, and black water is from the toilet.
The campsites are populated by many happy people who were generally very friendly. Kees makes it a habit of socializing with new people at every site and we stopped to chat to a couple of people while we were there.
The site is right in Bodega Bay situated on the San Andreas fault line and has beautiful views on both sides. Facing across an inlet on one side
and across the bay on the other side.
I was pretty jet-lagged for the first few days so I struggled to stay awake until 9pm but was wide awake at around 5am every morning so had a walk on the pre-dawn beach after our first night.
There was a fog horn out in the bay with some sort of timer on it that made a bhaa sound at fairly short intervals. When Kees came through in the morning I discovered that I'd dodged a bullet in the middle of the night because in his semi conscious state he had reached the conclusion that the sound was my cell phone on vibrate receiving txt messages from family 8 hours ahead of us. Fortunately the misapprehension was short-lived and he didn't come through to visit hell on me.
Our next stop was along winding narrow cliff-side roads that had been damaged by the rain and mudslides in recent months so we were stopped a few times to go on single-lanes with excavation and building equipment blocking the other half.
My jet-lag innoculated me because I didn't feel anxious at all but then again I wasn't driving. I lazily remarked how close the RV was to the edge of my side of the road, not realizing at the time that it was very close to the edge on the driver's side as well.
The Barbie jeep is attached to the back with a metal structure that forces the steering to move with the turns but Kees was concerned that the jeep was not turning as well as it should have been. It is a very light vehicle so we wouldn't have felt it and it would have simply dragged the wheels. Later in the trip I filmed the jeep from the inside as we drove around an RV park and it looked as though the wheels were turning just fine.
I remember reading how these redwoods are a single organism, joined together with their extensive root system. They are majestic and magical.
The next morning I woke with a message that my temporary residence visa was ready at the consulate. After all the anxiety about having to wait in the USA for them to complete processing I was free to return as planned.
I had one other admin task to do - that was to get the signed/apostilled driving records for both of us to replace our USA driving licenses for Portuguese ones. Anne and I managed to apply for the certified driving records online and so it would be a waiting game to see if they arrived by mail in time for me to get them processed before the July 4th weekend. Many companies close for a 4 day weekend if July 4th is on a Tuesday or Thursday so my worry was that we only had the 3 days of the week to complete the additional tasks.
In the meantime, though, nothing could be done and I was a lot calmer knowing that my worst case now would be having to book another ticket one or two days later rather that my earlier fears of being stuck waiting for weeks for the visa.
This second campsite had a hookup for water and electricity and we enjoyed a few bike-rides to visit the town and the coastal cliffs nearby.
We also visited an art center near the campsite that had a couple of exhibitions.
We got some firewood for the second evening and Kees prepared a great meal on his outdoor gas griddle. The next morning the coals were still hot so I stoked up a new fire for our morning coffee.
Our neighbors were from Mexico but have lived in the USA for something like 30 years. Kees and I both had separate pleasant conversations with them on our first night which was also their last night there. They told us that they have been coming to this particular campsite for years. They sat around their fire singing - the couple and their adult daughter - after I went to bed.
We drove back to a different campsite in Bodega bay after our two nights. Kees decided that we might be able to drive more comfortably if we unhitched the jeep and I followed him in convoy. I was totally game for that. The little jeep reminded me of the clunky army jeep I had driven many years ago in the army so it was quite nostalgic.
We stopped a couple of times and I took photographs of the interesting rock pinnacles that are remnants of collapsed cliffs in the sea along the coast.
Our last stop was in an RV park arranged more or less like a parking lot.
The aesthetics weren't great and we had a noisy neighbor (on the other side of the park) who was holding forth on his political views until I got the portable speaker out and drowned him into the background with some 70's hard rock.
The scenery outside of the park made up for the rather dull setting inside. We went on bike rides to overlooks and hiked to and along a beach.
Something surprising to a new visitor in northern California is how generally cold it is along the coast. There is a cold breeze (usually quite strong) blowing much of the time and I found that I had to have my mid-layer winter jacket with me most of the time.
On our last night there we were sitting outside and a family of hawks came to the nearby tall trees. I was able to take a couple of photos of one of the parents coming back from scouting and calling to the chicks.
I had to get out of the bus and order an Uber for a rather expensive 2 hour drive to Sacramento. The alternative google-suggested route involved a bus, train, bus and then another bus via Oakland which would have taken me 5 hours. My driver was a sweet Nepalese woman studying computer science at a local university and so we had a wonderful conversation about Nepal, Nepalese food, computers, AI and life in general.
My flight left at just after midnight so I was going to arrive in Boston like I had in California, exhausted and having to fight sleep all day to adjust to the new timezone.
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