Mustard, grapes and rain

Wednesday February 7th

We awoke to a rainy day in Santa Rosa. After breakfast we headed over the mountain to the Napa Valley. Napa Valley is a very special place. I love the Central Coast area, but Napa will always be number one. We came down into one of our favorite towns, St. Helena. If I ever go missing you might want to look for me there.

It's early spring so the vines are bare, but the wild mustard is growing up between the vines. Even in the rain it is a beautiful place. The contrast of the orderly rows of vines with the curves and shapes of the hills and mountains make this a photographers dream. Oh, and by the way, they just happen to make a little wine here. If you were to go to four tastings a day, which is a lot and I don't recommend it, it would take months to go to all the wineries just in Napa Valley. Then there is Sonoma, Alexander, Russian River ....... the list goes on and on.

One of the first wineries we visited here years ago was V. Satui. We enjoyed our visit this time even more. Good, mid priced wines, nice people, and stuff we can't get in Michigan. We also visited Merryvale in St. Helena, which is beautiful but too expensive for our taste.

We then headed down the valley to Yountville looking for a nice but inexpensive place for lunch, but struck out and ended up down in Napa. We found a little Italian restaurant but lunch was an overpriced bowl of soup, a plate of calamari and a waitress with a “who cares” attitude. One of our pet peeves is restaurants that are overpriced and pretend to be more than they really are.

After lunch, we drove back up the valley and visited the small but upscale Andretti winery. Yes, it is partly owned by the famous race car driver Mario Andretti. This winery has a decidedly Italian influence and would be considered a boutique or cult winery. Almost all of their production is sold either at the tasting room or through their wine club. We enjoyed our visit there and signed up for their wine club as well.

We moved on up the valley on the Silverado Trail. It is amazing how many new wineries have been built here since our last visit. A favorite place of ours to stop is the Mumm Winery. They are known for Champagne style wines. I should say though that we don't go there for their champagnes. What is special to us is their photography gallery. They have an extensive Ansel Adams collection as well as other contemporary landscape photographers.

We then continued up the Silverado Trail to the town of Calistoga. Unfortunately, we have yet to spend much time here and I really want to come here sometime and get a mud bath. Then it was back up over the mountain and back into Santa Rosa.

After supper and a little writing, it was time for bed.

2 Santa's and a bridge

Morro Bay to Santa Cruz to SantaRosa

February 5-6

Monday morning we pulled out of our campsite at Morro Bay and, needing to fill up with diesel fuel in Paso Robles, so we headed east on highway 46. What we didn't realize before we started was that highway 46 over to 101 is about 15 miles of switchbacks as it winds and twists it's way through the mountains.
While this type of road may be fun in the jeep, it's a little more unsettling in an rv! But John did a great job getting us safely to Paso Robles and on to Santa Cruz.

After an over night stay in Santa Cruz we made our way up to Santa Rosa where we planned to stay for 2-3 nights. But first we would have to endure a BRIDGE CROSSING and I have to confess, driving over long bridges in the rv isn't something I enjoy at all. And John's not that crazy about it either.

We decided to drive around on the Oakland side to avoid going through downtown SF and the golden gate bridge. However, that meant we would have to cross the San Francisco Bay on the San Rafael bridge, a double decker, and even longer bridge than the golden gate. We had the privilege of paying the state of California eight dollars and 40 cents for this dubious pleasure.
Once again John did a great job maneuvering us through traffic and getting us safely over and across the bay . (while I silently kept repeating to myself that we were almost across...almost across!! ) :)

We found a great campground in Santa Rosa behind the Sonoma County fairgrounds. We have full hookups and free wi-fi connection for just $10 a night with our Passport America membership. And one of the best things about this park is we practically have the place to ourselves. It's very quiet and there are only a handful of other rv'ers staying here.

We got here in time to fix lunch and squeeze in a trip to the Korbel winery in the near by Russian River valley and returned to the rv via the Nuclear free zone of Sebastopol. Yep this town really has declared itself to be such a zone. It was reassuring to know we were safe from Missiles and nuclear waste.

Supper, a little writing, and it was time for bed.

Judy n John

Elephant Seals, Scones, and Harmony

With the weather to be sunny and in the upper 60's we decided to drive the jeep up Highway 1 along the coast just to see what photo opportunities we might come upon. Highway 1 is a winding, twisting, beautiful stretch of highway that runs right along the coast from southern California all the way up to San Francisco.

Just after passing the little town of San Simeon we saw a turnout off to the side of the road that seemed to be attracting a lot of people. So we decided we would see what the attraction was for ourselves. We pulled in , parked the car and discovered an awesome sight. The beach area was literally covered with elephant seals basking in the sun. Apparently, the females come ashore around the first part of February and give birth on the beach. The pups were small so we figured they had only been born about a week before. The males(bulls) were there as well but stayed closer to the waters edge protecting their little harem of females and keeping other bulls from getting too close. We throughly enjoyed what we were seeing and could have watched and listened to their interaction for hours. But, we needed to move on.
North of San Simeon, Highway 1 is literally built into the side of the Santa Lucia mountain range. At times only a guardrail is separating the road from a drop of a few hundred feet into the ocean.
We love this highway and it's awesome views but it was now 12:30 , and we were getting hungry. We had decided earlier that we would skip lunch and have afternoon tea at the Tea Cozy in Cambria. So we decided that we should turn around and head back and about an hour later we arrived back in this cute coastal town about 20 miles north of Morro Bay.
The Tea Cozy ( http://www.teacozy.com/ ) is a small (very small...about 8 tables) english tea house and restaurant housed in an old house that was built in the 1890's. All the tables were full when we arrived We were told it would be about a 15-20 minute wait so we did some window shopping at some other shops down the street while we waited for a table to open up.
In the past, we have thoroughly enjoyed the British tradition of afternoon tea, both in London and at the Grand Floridian resort at Disney World so we get excited whenever we have a chance to have it.

John and I each ordered the Dutchess tea selection of a cheddar and chutney tea sandwich and a scone with clotted cream and jam to go along with our pot of tea. Now, this wasn't a lot of food and while we both would admit that most of the fun is in the experience, we were still hungry when we left the restaurant! We went back home and declared it to be peanut time! Oh and by the way Harmony really is a town, population 18. We've had a really good time in Morro Bay and Paso Robles area but it's time to move on.
Tomorrow it's on to Santa Cruz.

Parade of the RV's

The site where our rv is parked is right in front of the entrance/exit road at Morro Dunes RV park and as you might guess, there is an almost constant parade of rv's and trailers coming and going throughout the day. Not that I'm complaining much since we have an awesome view of the ocean and the 'rock' , but it is much different from our larger, quiet site in Q.
The park isn't quite as full as it was over the weekend and from where our rv is parked we can now look over the fence and see the ocean waves coming on shore. The last couple of days have been partly cloudy with temps in the 50's. And not a flake of snow in the air!!
John is enjoying the workshop he's attending this week in nearby Los Osos about 7 miles south of here. There are 11 people in the class coming all the way from Pennsylvania on the East coast to Hawaii on the West coast. This morning the group went out on location to do some photography but since this is mostly a photoshop type of workshop , they spent Monday and Tuesday in the classroom. In fact, he came back last night with some very impressive looking prints that he had been working on.
Since I have a lot of time to myself during the day I've kept busy working on my knitting, beading, reading, cooking, basically doing whatever I want!! Yesterday I finished my first bracelet ,which I am proudly wearing, and made some progress on another one. It's a lot of fun and but am I ever thankful for beading needles with large eye holes!

January 28- Sunday
Just a brief explanation is in order regarding the picture in our last post. This gentleman, a bona fide free spirit who usually wears nothing but a thong, runs a used book store in Quartzsite. The day we visited his store, the temperature outside was only in the 50's which is why he had put a sweatshirt on. Needless to say , his lack of attire was a bit distracting!We will spare you a view from the front!!
We arrived in Morro Bay, CA last Friday afternoon after a drive up Highway 101 from Ventura.
Morro Dunes Rv park is only a few yards from the Pacific Ocean with 576 ft Morro rock looming in from of us. It is the last in a chain of long-extinct volcanoes known as “The Morros” ...totally awesome!
Today we woke to another beautiful sunny day. Our plan for the day was to drive up the coast about 15 miles to Cambria and then drive over to Paso Robles and check out the area and a few wineries.
But I don't start my day without coffee so I got the coffee brewing and John started fixing breakfast while I took a quick shower. After sitting down to a great breakfast of eggs, canadian bacon, and a whole wheat dried cherry scone (south beach friendly of course...thank you Linda) we headed out for the day.
The drive up Highway 1 to Cambria is breathtaking with the ocean on the left and the rolling hills on the right. Cambria is a cute coastal town with some interesting shops but this being Sunday morning and only 10am there wasn't much happening yet.
One of my goals during our time on the road is to visit shops/restaurants/bakeries/etc. that I have read about or heard about on tv . One place I wanted to check out was Linn's of Cambria. This family run business started out in 1977 as a farm stand about 5 miles from town and became well known for their Olallieberry pies ( pronounced lolly- berry). The Olallieberry looks like a blackberry but is genetically about 2/3 blackberry and 1/3 red raspberry.
I had seen their business featured on the Food Network show “Food Finds”. Well it turns out that the Main Street location had a major fire this past summer and they are in the process of rebuilding. Their restaurant on Bridge St. is only open for lunch and dinner. So, we decided to go out to their original location on Santa Rosa Creek Rd. This is a winding 2 lane road with awesome views. The shop was open and after looking around, buying some Olallieberry jam, and admiring the noisy peacock we continued on working our way up to Paso Robles. The pictures don't do this area justice...the views are breathtaking!!
Paso Robles is about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco and about 25 miles from where we are here in Morro Bay. We visited a couple wineries and then had lunch at the Odyssey Cafe in the downtown district. Very nice, casual and the food was very good.
And just so you don't think we only do wine tastings, we stopped at Pasolivo Olive Oil Co. and had our first ever olive oil tasting! And as an added bonus got to play with the resident golden retriever. They have nuevo(new) oils as well as citrus flavored oils...quite good. We joined their olive oil club so we'll be getting quarterly shipments throughout the year.
We were both impressed with this area and we hope to go back over there this next weekend.
By the time we got back to the rv it was peanut time. Roasted unsalted peanuts in the shell. Bob and Linda of http://www.because-we-can.net/ introduced us to this wonderful afternoon at 4pm ritual and we've adopted it in our daily lives as well. Dinner was just a snack meal of hummus, guacamole, salsa and bean chips with fresh carrots on the side. John worked a bit on the blog, I did some knitting, and then it was time for bed.
Another wonderful day of RV living.

Thursday January 24th
Our stay in Quartzite has come to an end. If everything goes well we will be in Ventura Ca. tonight.

Wednesday January 17th.
Today we walked up to Tysons. This is a giant flea market. One of 5 or 6 in the area. We were invited last night to go with Bob and Linda to a Escapees B.O.F.
Ok I'll explain. Escapees is an organization of primarily full timers. We are members. Escapees has many B.O.F.s This stands for Birds of a Feather, another name for a group within Escapees sharing a common interest. There are many you can join. This BOF is a Christian Fellowship group. They were having a family bluegrass gospel group performing, followed by a Potluck meal. Did you ever know a group of Christians getting together without food? All of us brought our own chairs and sat out in the desert listening to this family perform. Afterwards they brought out the food, Judy brought her broccoli salad, and everyone lined up and dug in. The food was actually pretty good. Then we pulled our chairs around a big campfire and just talked for a while. It gets dark early here and the stars are so beautiful. I even learned about Orion. Kind of reminds me of being on the boat in the middle of lake Michigan. We were back home by 8:30. Another good day in the desert. I am not going to write much more about Quartzite. Frankly if you go to the website http://www.because-we-can.net/ and check out the archieved blogs you will learn all you need to know and if you check between the 14th and the 24th you might just find a few pictures of us. So why the picture of the guy on his Amigo? Sometimes the traffic moves slow in Q, so slow that this guy passed me, No kidding!!!

Sunday January 14th
Just another beautiful day. Cold but very pretty. Just relaxed, read, went for a walk. Boy this sure is hard work. We got out the old boat binoculars and have enjoyed watching the coming and going of people.
We were invited to Bob and Linda's for Peanut hour and dinner. Bob and Linda have been full timers for a year. They started a tradition on sitting outside at 4:00 and shelling a few peanuts and just enjoying the afternoon.
Dinner followed and we didn't end up leaving until 9:00. We are parked about a half mile from them. The walk back in the dark was both beautiful because of the stars and spooky because it was so dark. No street lights in the desert, what were they thinking??
Our little flashlight helped us find our way home. Note, next time leave a light on.

Thursday

Thurday, January 11th
Getting ready to go spend a couple of weeks dry camping in the desert. Should head out on Friday.
Here's what we did today.
Camping World
Photo art gallery
Biosphere 2
Great Mex lunch
Used bookstore
Worked on blog
Filled water tank
updated blog

Tuesday

Tuesday, january 9th
Van Horn Texas to Tucson Arizona. Passed a guy driving a school bus pulling a car. He looked to have his life's work on board. Shortly after passing him I commented to Judy that his electrical system must not be working as his headlights kept flashing on and off. Silly me, he was trying to signal me. Turns out one of our baggage doors had come open. Fortunately nothing fell out and we were able to get stopped and relatch the door. About an hour later we caught up with him and waved to show our gratitude. Lots of RV's on the road. Spending a few days in Tucson at the South Forty RV ranch. We may be the youngest people in here.

Monday

Monday, January 8th
Road day. I-10 to Van Horn Texas, about 130 miles from El Paso. Staying at a KOA, suppose to have wi-fi, but can't make it work.

Sunday

Sunday, January 7th
Today was an interesting mix. The warden decided we could eat out. But before that we went to the herb farm. Judy has been here twice before. I'm not sure this time lived up to her expectations. The Texas winter has done it's work on the gardens. Need to see this in the spring. Then it was off to Cranky Franks bbq. Finally brisket the way it should be. Last but not least we visited a winery in the hill country. Not bad but not 5 star. I don't think Cal has anything to worry about. Tomorrow it's back on the road.

Saturday

Yesterday we drove back roads through Arkansas. Other than rice fields, cotton fields and people living in poverty, not much notable, spent the night in another flying J. Today we drove to Fredricksburg Texas. Again not much to talk about. Driving through Austin is difficult, glad to be out of that mess and into the hill country. We are spending 2 nights here in Fredricksburg.

Friday

Friday, January 5th
We drove for 8 hours yesterday,most of it raining. We spent the night in a flying J truck stop south of Sikeston MO.

Thursday

Thursday, January 4th.
Wow, we spent last night only 75 miles from home. We stay in nothing but the finest spots. Actually we spent last night in the parking lot of Meijer in Benton Harbor. Coffee this morning and on the road. Judy has some great idea to stay off the interstate as much as possible, we'll see.

Wednesday

Wed, January 3rd..
Well we are officially on the road. Of course it is 4:00 p.m. I have a feeling we will not be going very far but it feels good to be underway. We are having problems with our towbar so will have that looked at when we get to Portland.