OOP'S

July 26
Today we decided to use the bus tickets we bought.  We would have 2 days to do both the day tour and the night tour.  So we head for the ferry buy our ferry tickets get a sandwich and wait for the ferry.

This is the lighthouse on Alcatraz.  This tour was sold out until the middle of August.  These pix are taken from the ferry.

 

 

The ferry lands and we get off.  We are headed for the bus stop and Bruce says you do have the tickets don't you?  I say no don't you have them.  You made me put them in the car so I didn't lose them.  He says no, I say your kidding right.  NO!  So we run for the ferry.  Get back on and head back to Vallejo.  Then we figure out if we get the tickets and head back we will have only 45 minutes until the last ferry back to Vallejo.  OOPs!  We decide we will go to the pie place and get a hamburg and some more pie.  We get there order and sit down.  When we get our order Bruce has his cheeseburger plus everything I ordered on mine and mine is totally wrong.  As I am unwrapping it the girl says we gave you the wrong burger so I give it back reorder and wait.  When I finally get it, it is still wrong but I eat it anyway.  The whole time we are eating we are watching these to old black dudes ask people for money.  We get our pie and head to the car when the one old dude sets his sites for Bruce.  He follows us to the car I thought for a minute Bruce was taking him home with us.  Neither one of us had anything smaller than a $5, so it was this old dudes lucky day.  He practically danced a jig back to his buddy to show him what he got.  We jumped in Ruby and got out of there.

Went backed to the bus and had pie.  Life is such an adventure!

 

 

 

Wine Train - Napa Valley

July 25

Today we are taking a train ride through wine country in Napa.  We will be having lunch on the train.
The meal is prepared on the train and we will eat in a fully restored 1952 Vista Dome railroad car.  The tracks were laid in the 1860's by a San Francisco business man to take his friends to the hot springs in Calistoga, CA. 

Our dining car

 

 

 

Our waitress's family owns a vineyard so she was knowledgeable and could answer a lot of questions.

She said each owner had their own way of keeping their vines trimmed.  So you see some shaggy and some very regimented  She said the vine is like a tree and can live a long time.  We saw some that were as big around as a small tree.  She also, pointed out that there is a lot of competition between the French and Italian wineries. 

The wineries all have fancy tasting rooms, but there are only about 4 that are still free.

 

This building is over 100 yrs. old.  One winery has it's building made out of grape vines, so you can see through the walls.

Lots of pretty landscaping.

This area is home to several really large eucalyptus trees.  They are not native to America and our waitress said Robert Louis Stevenson liked the furniture he saw made out of it's wood so he brought a bunch to America where he found out he had the wrong variety.  So he sold them off the docks for $1 the homesteaders bought them.  So some of these trees are over 100 yrs. old.

Well our trip is almost over.  So here is a toast to all of you.  CHEERS!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fisherman's Wharf and Jack London Square

July 23 & 24

After yesterdays adventure we decided to take it easy.  We find out that there is a ferry which takes us to Fisherman's Wharf and one that will take Bruce to AT&T Park for the Cubs game so we go and check it out.  Bruce got his ticket for the game and we took the ferry over to the wharf.  While we were there we saw these open top buses that would take you all over the city.  We bought tickets for 48 hours of bus time.  I put the ticket in my purse.  We go home.  a nice easy day.

Today we decide to go to Oakland to Jack London Square.  This is where Jack London grew up.  It has a historical bar called Heinold's First & Last Chance Saloon.  The building was built in 1880 and turned into a saloon in 1883.  In the 1920's the Alameda Ferry stopped next to Heinold's.  Since Alameda was a dry city this was the first and last chance for the passengers to get a drink.  It is known as Jack London's Rendezvous because as a school boy he studied here and later he wrote notes for Sea Wolf and Call of the Wild here.The bar is the only commercial operations in California to use its original gas lights.  When the 1906 earthquake struck the pilings underneath the saloon settled in the mud.  The bartender said it took 30 years for the building to stop settling

 

 

The place is loaded with historical stuff.

The clock is stopped at the exact time the earthquake hit.

We had dinner at a place called Scot's.  Good food.  We had heard about a place called Nation's Giant Hamburgers and Pie, so we decided to go get pie for desert.  The place is a little seedy but the pie was awesome!  Headed home.  When we got out I dropped the bus ticket and Bruce made me leave it in the car so I didn't lose it.  Another good day

 

 

 

Are We There Yet!

July 22

We are leaving today for San Francisco.  We discuss our route.  Bruce has talked with some guys at the RV parks we stayed at and they assured him we could go down Hwy. 1 as far as San Francisco, so we decide that's what we will do.  We take off.  Now we are only going approx. 180 miles.  Not far.  We get to the turn off for Hwy. 1, I am looking at the map, Bruce turns and then he says to me did you see that sign?  I said no what did it say?  He says no vehicles over 40 ft allowed.  Well the big bear express is 43 ft. plus the golf cart carrier and Ruby.  We are definitely over the limit so I say we better turn around and he says where!  It is impossible.  So we just keep going.  Talk about a nail biter.  It took us 6 hrs. to go 100 miles.

Redwoods don't just grow in the national park.  They pop up in groves all along the coast.  And they are always awesome!

 

 

 

These are signs that we are on the WRONG road.  Ziggy was so upset with all the horn blowing to warn people we were coming around the curves and the thumps of the center strip Bruce was driving on to keep away from the edge of the road that he growled at us.

 

 

 

The coast was awesome when we got to it, but still curvy.

 

I don't know what kind of trees these are but they were really neat.

I am putting these pix on in the order I took them so you can see how often the landscape changes.

 

 

Is that Jack Sparrow?

Back up we go

Is that what straight road looks like?

 

Their back.  Another grove of redwoods!

And then there were grapes.

What?  I think Bruce made a wrong turn!

We finally made it to the divided Hwy. just in time for rush hour.  When we got to the RV park I told the guy checking us in that it took us so long because we drove Hwy. 1.  He looked at me and said you can't do that.  I said well we sure did and it was a nightmare.  The people staying next to us drove it one day in their jeep.  They couldn't believe we did it either.  I bet those guys who told Bruce it was OK to drive it are sitting somewhere laughing about those dumb people from Indiana!  We checked in and ordered pizza delivery.  A very, very, very long day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Avenue of Giants & A 3 Hour Cruise

July 20 & 21

We left this morning and headed south. 

We traveled through the redwoods for quite awhile.

As we climbed up along the coast we ran into some fog.

Then we went down along the coast.

We stopped at this beach and I saw this sign.  I think it was a sneaker that got Lanny's toenail at Gulf Shores.  They need signs!

We arrived at Benbow RV Park and had an early night.

The next morning we decided we would have an easy day.  Just drive thru the tree and part of the Avenue of Giants.

 

 

I think the Carroll granddaughters would like these for playhouses.

Harry

After we drove through the tree we were going to get lunch, but we saw a dirt road and Bruce cannot ignore a gravel road.  It said it was a loop, but it turned out to be a half circle so we ended up farther back then when we got on the road so we looked at the map and found the town of Ferndale.  It is the best preserved Victorian town in California and they said they had restaurants.  So our short day just got longer.  When we got there we found out most of the restaurants were closed on Sunday but the old hotel was open so we stopped there.

As were waiting for our lunch we see this map that shows a road along the ocean going back to Benbow so I tell Bruce I will drive so he can look at the scenery.  So we eat and I start driving so Bruce is now taking pix.

 

 

This town was gorgeous.

The one thing we did not think of was we had to go over the mountain to get to the coast.  So I am driving on this narrow curvy road.  Bruce then says how much gas do we have.  I look and tell him just under a fourth of a tank and should I go back.  He says no we should be fine, WRONG!  Because of the road we were sucking down the fuel and shortly the low fuel buzzer goes off. 

As we come out of the woods and start descending we notice the fog creeping in.  Bruce is getting worried so he tells me to let him drive.

 

 

As we come into Cape Mendocino we are hoping for a gas station No Luck, just a large cattle ranch.  So back up the mountain we go.  As we come down the other side we discover the lost coast of California.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is one of the most beautiful areas I have seen.  We certainly would have enjoyed it more with a full tank of gas. Eventually we headed inland to the town ? of Petrolia with high hopes.  We see a run down store and in the back are 2 gas pumps. We pull up to them one says it is out of order and the other one is all beat up but Bruce goes in anyway.  Thank the lord we got $20.00 of gas and 2 diet cokes.  So we feel pretty good now.  We take off and decide to go see the black sand beach and the Punta Gorda lighthouse.  This is a strange area there are hardly any people and the ones living here are kind of scary.  We get to the end of the road and here is this strange campground.  The first thing I see is a wanted poster for a murder.  What we don't see is the lighthouse so we hike over this dune we see the black sand beach but still no lighthouse.

 

 

As we hike back over the dune we see this guy coming out of the port-a-potty and Bruce asks him where the lighthouse is.  He points to a path along the side of the hill and says when that ends you have to hike a mile.  We got in Ruby and left!  The scenery changes to rolling grassland with cattle.

We come to the town of Honeydew which is a crossroad.

Nice one lane wooden bridge outside of Honeydew.

Now we have to climb 3,000 ft. to get back across the mountains.

We come across a doe and twins. One baby runs across the road so we stop and wait till it goes back to its mom.

 

 

We head down and the road takes us into the Rockefeller Grove of Redwoods.

 

We wind our way thru the trees and finally come out at Hwy 101 and we still have 20 miles to go till we are back to the bus.  I felt like Gilligan on a 3 hour tour.  Zig had his legs crossed and so did I when we got home.