Month: August 2019

On Wednesday, we moved a couple of hundred miles down Hwy 101, and then, CA-1, to our next stop, Bodega Bay.

The drive down Hwy 101 is always entertaining, what with the dicey, narrow roads in some sections (where you feel like you’re slaloming between giant trees) and the beauty of the northern California wine country.

If you’ve ever seen the Alfred Hitchcock thriller, “The Birds”, then you might remember the tiny coastal town of Bodega Bay, which was besieged by thousands of maniacal avian creatures who bombarded the local citizenry. Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren (Melanie Griffith’s mom) were the stars in that flick.

It is necessary to drive on some narrow roads to get here. Once you leave Hwy 101, and head west on CA-12, it is necessary to negotiate the tight confines of the small city of Sevastopol, a bit of traffic in Bodega, and then, once you hit the Coast Highway (CA-1), there are a few tight spots driving through Bodega Bay (coupled with the obligatory “Road Work” signs and cone-narrowed lanes) before you reach the RV park.

This is a very small town, with a nice harbor, a couple of small hotels, and a few stores. Tonapah was a booming metropolis compared to this flyspeck of a place. But, the harbor is beautiful, as is the spectacular coastline in this area.

(And, it is 67 degrees and sunny today…spectacular! It will be 40 degrees warmer back in Mesquite today.)

The harbor is created by a huge, ragged chunk of land which juts out into the Pacific. It is evidence of the San Andreas earthquake fault, which enters ocean a couple of miles north of our current location.

The “Anti Nuclear” Movement got it’s start here, in 1958, when public utility PG&E proposed building a nuclear power plant on Bodega Head. Local citizens and the Sierra Club threw a fit, protesting its proximity to the San Andreas fault, and the project ended up getting canceled in 1964. The unfinished reactor hole is still evident; locals call it the “Hole in the Head”.

The Bodega Bay RV Park is small but nicely maintained. Pull-through sites are plenty large enough, graded nicely, and covered with pea gravel. And, there is a nice restaurant (La Bodeguita) on the property which serves Mexican and seafood dishes. The Chile Verde, which is my favorite Mexican dish, is excellent here. I had some with my nachos, while Charlie had some very tasty shrimp quesadillas. We will go back.

Today (Friday) we drove down to Rohnert Park near Santa Rosa to go to WalMart, about a 35 minute drive. There are a couple of Mom and Pop markets in Bodega Bay, but they’re not economy, by any means. We saved some by going to WalMart and we also had a beautiful drive out in the Northern California country.

It was nail cutting/polishing and teeth brushing day for the dogs this afternoon. Here’s JayJay relaxing in the spa:

Baby is done, wondering why we tortured her:

Booger’s back in sleep mode:

We got word today that our tile guy, Enrique, completed our Mesquite kitchen backsplash project today. It looks great!

Well, we’re not really in Eureka right now, but we’re close: Riverwalk RV Resort in Fortuna, California.

This is a very nice RV park, one that we’ve visited a number of times. It is very clean, has beautiful trees (huge redwood trees between sites), has the nicest office/store of any RV park that we’ve visited, and has a swimming pool, too.

Fortuna is located about a dozen miles south of Eureka on Hwy 101. There’s not much in Fortuna except all of the basic stores. However, it is located maybe 5 miles from Ferndale.

Ferndale is a little tourist magnet that has quite a few Victorian buildings, many of which are nicely preserved in bright colors. The downtown features a bunch of them and has a couple of shops that Charlie likes to visit. We were there yesterday, and she bought several Brighton jewelry items. It made her week.

The Humboldt County Fair is in session this week, and we dropped by after shopping to mosey through the place. It was Seniors’ Day, so admission was free to us old coots.

That was totally appropriate, because it was a very puny County fair. Not much to see, really, so we focused on finding some totally unhealthy “fair food” to munch on.

Charlie had a $10 hamburger and I had some curly fries that were topped by a miniscule amount of chicken, bleu cheese, and Buffalo sauce. Three guys couldn’t have eaten all of the fries, and the crappy meal cost me $14! I’ll bet that the ingredients didn’t cost $1.50.

We concluded our short visit by purchasing: (1) a hat for Charlie; and, (2) a couple of tee shirts.

All in all, we donated about $100 to the local economy.

(Walking through the fairgrounds involved some deja vu on my part. I managed the Riverside County Fair/National Date Festival from 1988 through 1994. It was a very large fair…10th largest County fair in the U.S. (we did over 220,000 in attendance in ten days). We also had Off-Track Wagering, a locally-televised Presidents’ Day Parade, and an Arabian Nights Pageant, to boot. Our rear parking lot was larger than the Ferndale fairgrounds. We had good times there, both Charlie and I.)

I spent some time this week rejiggering the rest of our trip. We had been scheduled to go from here to Bodega Bay, then to Marin, then to Monterey, then down to Oceanside. However, the more I thought about spending one whole week in Marin (it’s a small, tight park), the more I didn’t like it. What we decided to do was reduce our stay there to three days, add one day to our stop near Monterey (Marina Dunes), and add a 2-day stop at Half Moon Bay.

(Although I lived in Santa Cruz when I was a teen, I never visited Half Moon Bay, which is just up the coast a bit. I’m looking forward to it. It is near the location of the famous “Mavericks” surf spot.)

BTW, I think we’re going to scrap the plan (?) to euthanize Jay Jay. He has kicked his diarrhea problem, has resumed excreting hard turds, and his bubbly personality has returned. I think our threats…to plant the dude…worked. HaHa.

We had a very nice time at our last stop, Driftwood RV Park in Brookings, Oregon.

The park is located right adjacent to the Brookings harbor, so there are a lot of seafood joints right there within walking distance (or, short drive). Plus, there is a very nice beach, with real waves, rock mounts out in the sea, nice sand, and scads of driftwood piled up along the shore.

The beach is about a five-minute walk from our space (87), which was to the rear of the RV park. I took Baby down there several times, where she played fetch with driftwood sticks. Gee, the coast is pretty in southern Oregon!

The park is nicely-maintained, with clean restrooms/showers and a very pleasant office staff (“Alice”).

We met some neighbors who advised us on some good eating places in Brookings. We tried a few. “Catalyst” is a seafood joint about 1/4 mile away. It features FRESH seafood that was caught that very day by the restaurant’s own boat, “The Catalyst”. We enjoyed their Calimari (the best that we’ve ever had, and that’s saying alot, because we have Calimari whenever it is on a menu!), and their Black Cod fish tacos. Muy bueno! We will come here again, for sure.

We ate lunch one day at a Mexican joint in town which was next to a pet store and mail center. Anyway, the food was good…I had Chile Verde. But next door, at the pet store, we met up with an old friend from Coos Bay, “Jessie”, who has relocated to Driftwood RV Park along with husband “Luke” and their TWO BOSTON TERRIERS, “Enza” and “Odin”. Those little dogs are SO cute…Odin looks like a bookend to Baby, with the half Black half White face. Cool guy!

Another place that we tried is “Fat Irish” pub, which is only about 1 minute drive from our coach in the RV park. They have typical pub food, and it was good, although we ordered too much of it.

There is another highly recommended bar in Brookings that we missed this time around: “Superfly”. Our RV friends raved about it. Next time.

Brookings is just the right size: 6,000 population, with everything located along the U.S. 101 corridor. They have a Fred Meyer, which is better than a Wal Mart, a very exceptional vet hospital (where Jay Jay was treated for his chronic diarrhea!), a Chase Bank!, and a couple of nice pet supply stores.

We really like Brookings: we’ve committed to do 2 weeks there in 2020.

Yesterday, we drove a measly 30 minutes south on Hwy 101 to Crescent City, California. (Yeah, Baby, we can buy booze now!)

We are staying a week at Bayside RV Park, which is adjacent to the Crescent City Marina. It is a pretty run-down park, mainly uneven asphalt with a few trees. There are mostly full-time residents living in this park, probably guys who work in the harbor area, fishing or repairing ships in drydock.

Most of the motorhomes and trailers in this park are empty during the day, some with dogs in them! Those poor wretches…alone, holding their pee, nothing to do but sleep, no exercise, etc….it’s a crime! Charlie doesn’t like the blue collar atmosphere here and doesn’t want to return here in the future.

(In her defense, she is not used to camping in this kind of environment. Typically, because we can afford it, we stick to A-rated RV parks that have all of the nice amenities, level paved pads, landscaping, etc. In our traveling, we’re not used to seeing the underbelly of distressed American communities. We lived in prosperous Southern California all of our lives, and now we’re in Mesquite, Nevada living among other retired ex-pats from California and other well-to-do places…folks like us who are not worrying about our next meal or whether or not we will have a job next week. Suffice it to say, we have been blessed.

We both worked hard throughout our lives to get what we have, but benefited from a thriving local economy and the excellent infrastructure that prosperity can afford. Some of the places that we have stayed at thus far during this trip (like Tonopah and Crescent City) are pretty run down and marginally viable. Crescent City itself has been struck by two devastating tsunamis in the past 50 years which wiped out their harbor and parts of town. When will the next one arrive?

It must suck to live in these places, where there is not much promise of a better day. The American Dream seems to have passed them by. It makes me sad to see people struggling to survive, day-to-day.

At least we’re helping a bit, by spending money here on RV park rent, groceries, fuel, and having an occasional meal at local restaurants.)

There is a walking path/coastal bikeway right adjacent to the RV park and a very beautiful beach is only a five-minute walk from our unit. Baby and Booger have been to this beach a couple of times and really like it. Lots of driftwood sticks to chase and fight over. Barking seals, too.

The harbor/marina here is beautiful…lots of money was spent here restoring and improving the facilities that were devastated by the tsunamis.

The docks in the new marina are built to accommodate ocean surges of 8 to 12 feet, which should protect from future tsunamis.

Right across the park from us is a shipyard where there seems to be a lot of activity repairing and restoring vessels, old and new. Some of the ships awaiting their turn are pretty rough…

We went to a nail salon on Friday: Charlie got new nail “dips” and I got a pedicure. We are going to return on Tuesday for haircuts. Nice people.

There are several seafood joints in our RV park vicinity; maybe we’ll try one? We went to Wal Mart today, following out nail jobs, did some shopping, and enjoyed a Subway sandwich for lunch. Excellent!

Charlie is amazed at the appearance of the locals: a rough-looking crowd, lots of facial hair (and that’s just the women!), obese bodies, lots of flannel, missing teeth, run-down cars, etc. In the space across from us there sits a very small, very old travel trailer…maybe 100 square feet in size. An old, disabled woman lives in that trailer by herself.

It is Blue Collar Land, for sure. I think the economy around here is: Logging; Fishing; and, Farming. No fancy cars, malls, or upscale housing. But, I did find some nice Camo cargo shorts at Wal-Mart: less than $20!

(Speaking of the Camo thing, I was standing in line at Wal Mart just in front of two local twenty-something males with mullet haircuts who were chatting about the recent mass killings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio. The redneck good ‘ol boys seemed to be concerned about their gun rights, but one guy assured the other that Trump is only targeting “Mexicans” (?!) As if…Latinos, illegal or legal, were the ones doing the mass murdering instead of the White Supremecists!)

Speaking of murdering, I’m about to terminate our fucking Norcold refrigerator. It has developed a water leak…despite the fact that I’ve turned off the water source for the ice maker. I don’t know what to do, but it’s really the only thing that isn’t working correctly in the RV, so we might be sending this Norcold S.O.B. to the happy hunting grounds after this trip. Go to Hell, Sir!

I made Chicken Tortilla soup the other night for Charlie. It’s a store-bought mix, but I spice it up with sliced avocado, tortilla strips, chicken, and sour cream. Es una comida muy deliciosa.

BTW, Jay Jay seems to be recovering from his recent doldrums. His front paw that was annoying him (possible small thorn?) for a month seems to have gone away. And, (drum roll, please!) his three month-old case of raging diarrhea has abated, thanks to some new meds we got at Brookings Town and Country Vet Hospital. The preliminary diagnosis is pancreatitis, but we’ll know more once we get to Old Town Veterinary Hospital in Murrieta (Sept 11th) and consult with Dr. Black.

This week, the lad has recovered the bounce in his step, and he’s pumping out some recognizable turd-like objects. He’s also back to his specialty: major league food begging.

Fingers are crossed that he’s over the hump, health-wise ’cause he’s my BFF.

Oops! Charlie just pointed out to me that our front windshield has a crack in it!!!!! Sonofabitch. That spoiled an otherwise nice day. Fuck me.

I know exactly how it happened. Just like in Coos Bay, five years ago, when we had a poorly-leveled site, the air leveling system tried a bit too hard to make things right when we set up here, tweaking the chassis. The weak spot in the rectangular box that is the motor home is, in fact, the glass windshield.

One more good reason to avoid this RV park (“Bayside”) in the future.

I hate to turn in a claim to my insurance carrier; they’ll have a fit! Maybe I won’t, because we are going to replace our Norcold refrigerator this year anyway, and, to do that, the RV repair folks are going to have to remove the window to get at the refrig. We’ll probably get both repaired at the same time…and eat the cost of the new window. My bad.

Right at the end of our Crescent City visit we met a nice couple here in the park: Clinton and Cathy Ritchie. He’s an artist who does woodcarving and sells his stuff at street fairs and coastal souvenir shops. He finds his raw material (pine tree knots) in the Oregon forests.

Here he is with Charlie:

Here’s some of his woodcarving products:

I didn’t get a photo of Cathy but she’s a dead ringer for Nurse Ratched, the gal who tormented Jack Nicholson in “Cuckoo’s Nest”. Cathy is nicer, though.

The two of them travel from town to town selling their wares in a Class C motorhome with their two dogs, both Cocker Spaniels. One of them, a very large one, recently got special haircut from his artist/BFF, Clint.

Tomorrow, Charlie and I set sail for the Eureka area (“Riverwalk RV Resort”). More coastal sights to see!