Category: West Coast Van Trip, Summer 2021

Time to head home! The driving part is never as much fun as the visiting part. We left at dawn to try to make it through Los Angeles before the afternoon traffic got impossible. But it was already impossible by the time we got close, so we swung east early and skirted north of LA, then dropped down to San Bernardino and out to Palm Desert for the night.

My initial vote was to stay in Ventura for the night and hit LA first thing on Sunday morning. I was imagining one more evening walk on the beach. And LA is a breeze early on Sunday mornings. But then we would have had a really long drive on Sunday, and we were getting anxious to get home. So all the way to Palm Desert it is.

I know there’s some beautiful resorts in the Palm Springs – Palm Desert area (I’ve seen pictures; I’ve not actually stayed at them). But we just picked a regular hotel on the freeway. It was a newer area, but had a vague feeling of apocalypse because the desert sand was drifting over all the new sidewalks and shop patios. I got the feeling that if everyone turned their back for a week, the whole place would disappear under a sand dune.

Plus really bizarre weather.

Look! A UFO! The next morning there was a UFO out the window.

Oh, wait, I guess that glowing white saucer is sitting on top of a building painted the same slate blue as the hills and the sky behind it.

I wouldn’t have been surprised though. Seriously, the place was odd.

We expected the rest of our drive to be uneventful. Southern California to Tucson is generally a fairly easy drive because there’s not much traffic. The traffic can pick up a bit in Phoenix, but there’s a loop route around, and it’s never been an issue for us.

I was confidently barreling along in Phoenix when all of a sudden the skies opened and visibility went to zero. Rain was sheeting across the freeway and accidents were happening right in front of us. Right-hand lanes were being closed by emergency vehicles, as water under the underpasses started ponding too deep to drive through.

We got off the freeway initially, but then got back on, thanking heaven for our extra-large tires and high clearance. I almost got off a second time, to sit out the storm in a parking lot, but instead we exited to a different freeway to head around downtown on the loop road. The new freeway headed up and out of the low area, and it looked a lot clearer – high and almost dry.

But just when I thought I was clear of the potentially deep water, and was accelerating uphill on a curving overpass, I hit deep water and started to hydroplane. How is is it possible to have so much water on an incline?

There was literally a river flowing down the overpass, in the steeply banked left-hand lanes with the freeway curving right. The leftmost lanes near the top of the crest had the highest elevation of anywhere nearby and were the absolute last place I would have expected to find deep water. But suddenly we were inundated with water everywhere. I couldn’t see anything. The anti-lock brakes triggered and I could feel the back of the van slip. It felt like the van was going to continue straight as the road curved right. I imagined us sliding sideways over the side of the overpass guardrail. It was terrifying.

An instant later the tires made contact with the road again and we were fine, but I felt so stupid afterwards. I spent the first half of my life in the Pacific Northwest, and I’m used to heavy rains and a lot of water on the freeways. I thought I knew all about how to avoid hydroplaning. I just didn’t expect the water to be so deep, so far up on a hill like that. I expected it to be pooling in the low areas. But the rain was coming down so fast that it turned even the inclines into rivers.

We made it home safely, but that was not the last of our issues with too much water in the desert.

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Meanwhile, despite monsoon storms and trees falling back home, I was having a great time with my friend Tracey in Livermore. She carved out most of her week for me, which was so special!

The first day we went on a long walk at Sycamore Grove, which is a very pleasant park near her neighborhood. It’s a good long walk, about 5 miles around the loop. I did a lot better than on my visit last summer, which was only a month or two after I finished my chemotherapy. I think we didn’t even do the whole loop last summer. And Tracey said I was walking faster this year too. Next year I’ll be jogging it. Twice!

After our walk we had lunch at Garré Vineyard, which has a large outdoor patio with beautiful views of the surrounding vineyards. Unfortunately I forgot to take any pictures! But we had excellent salads and enjoyed the views, and were grateful it wasn’t smoky like it was when I visited last year.

Then we hung out in her backyard, which is very comfortable and the weather was perfect. I failed to take any pictures of the first day, except for this drink because it was yummy and I wanted to remember what it was.

I really like fizzy waters that aren’t sweetened. This one has a little bit of fruit juice in it, but many are magically flavored with nothing in them at all. How is that even possible? My sister introduced me to the La Croix brand a couple of years ago, which is still my staple, but there are a lot of other good brands too.

I also took a picture of her hand soap to remember what it was, because it smelled exactly like meyer lemons. Often lemon-scented things smell like cleaning products to me, but this one smelled wonderful.

The next day we drove up to Lafayette Lake near Walnut Creek to go for a walk around the lake.

There are also hiking trails up into the hills, but it was a fairly warm day and we decided just to do the lake loop.

Finally I remembered to take a picture of us!

We noticed they had row boats and paddle boats – and idea occurred to us – let’s come back tomorrow with the kayak!

After our walk Tracey (who is an excellent tour guide) had lined us up at yet another great little outdoor patio café in yet another nearby cute little downtown.

The next day we came back with my inflatable kayak.

They had to inspect it for zebra mussels, which took all of 3 seconds, and charged me $10 to launch it, but it was easy. We carried it down to the dock and off we went!

Tracey is not an experienced kayaker and I’m a bad tour guide and we almost ended up with her falling between the dock and the kayak while getting in! I felt so bad, like, oh my gosh, I’m going to dump my friend in the lake! I was trying not to panic – what do I do? But she’s a trooper and managed to stay out of the water, and hopped expertly into the kayak on her second try. Disaster averted! She’s a good sport.

It was such a pleasant paddle.

Selfies!

We saw deer along the shore and got quite close, but I didn’t take any pictures of them. Here’s a blue heron on the shoreline.

And there it goes!

I could get used to this, walking or paddling around in the morning, having a salmon salad outside at a nice café for lunch, hanging out in the backyard all afternoon. That is totally my style of life. All this striving and trying and flying and driving – nah. I just want to take walks, go to cafés, and sit in the backyard and talk.

On our last day we met Tracey and Bob for one final patio meal. Looking good!

As a going away gift, Tracey gave me a can of the sparkling water I had enjoyed, as well as the meyer lemon hand soap I had coveted, plus the same two items in grapefruit flavor for John (grapefruit is John’s favorite), all wrapped up in a festive gift bag. It was perfect; modest yet thoughtful, and funny too. John and I are both really bad at gift giving, so we were in awe. The restaurant thought it was my birthday, but thank goodness they didn’t sing!

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Since we were in California, we decided to tack on a work week for John before heading home. He can only get about half his work done from home, the other half needs to be done onsite. He can do his onsite work in either Albuquerque or Livermore, which is the far east edge of the Bay Area. We decided it made sense for him to work a week in Livermore, because then we could go back to Tucson rather than all the way to Albuquerque. After two weeks of vacation, he needed to get caught up with his onsite work.

On our second morning in Livermore, I got text messages with alarming photos from my gardener and from my neighbor. Uh-oh. There had been a big storm in Tucson.

Our gardener started working on clean-up right away. He assured me the branches had not hit our pickup truck or our roof.

The backyard was even worse.

In the backyard we had a big section of tree down on our fence.

The fence was still standing (there is a good strong fence on the other side of that bamboo screening). So no major harm done, just clean-up to do.

We’re realizing we’re going to need to take out that huge tree in the front. It’s brittle, one of the two major trunks is splitting down the middle, and the other major trunk leans dangerously over the house.

It’s a huge tree; it’ll be a couple thousand dollars to remove. I have no idea when we’re going to be able to get someone out to do it – everyone is going to be booked for months because now there’s trees down all through Tucson. We’re getting record monsoon rains. I hope it hangs on until we can get it taken down. It’s a beautiful tree and we got it trimmed up last year in hopes of saving it, but we can’t have that enormous tree coming down on the house.

I was having a fun time in Livermore with a good friend of mine (I’ll write about those adventures in my next post), and John was getting a lot of needed work done. But we were also starting to feel like maybe it was time to get home!

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After Mendocino, the next stop was Santa Clara to see Laura and Alex! We enjoyed the drive down Hwy 101. We stopped for a picnic lunch near a river in Healdsburg.

The weather was perfect.

It was all quite nice until we reached San Francisco. I’ve never really been a fan of this famous city. The golden gate bridge looked like it usually looks.

Cold and foggy. (With bugs on the windshield, lol!)

The freeway dumps you out right in the middle of the city, which is really stupid. I have no idea why there isn’t a real freeway through San Francisco. There is an option to go around, across the Bay Bridge and through Berkeley and Oakland, a route which is invariably backed up. We always went that way when we lived in the East Bay, but this time, due to the fact that we were going south, and due to heavy traffic in Oakland, it was slightly faster to just wade through San Francisco at near-walking pace. Ugh!

I do love the Bay Area, getting anywhere is horrible. If I end up managing to live until I’m really old AND I can afford it, I can see myself as an old lady tucked away in quiet corner of the Bay Area enjoying the near-perfect weather (far enough inland to avoid the fog), spending my days sitting in a little courtyard with my daughter. But I wouldn’t be going anywhere. At least not without self-driving cars!

When Laura was a teenager and we lived north of Los Angeles together, we used to just bomb around LA, no problem. I got my first cell phone when I lived down there (I still have that number too…it’s the one I use for coaching). After my whole life of trying to follow paper maps each time I moved to a new city (which was about yearly), it was so amazing to be able to use a cell phone for navigating through LA. “Oh, looks like the 405 is slowing up, lets hop onto the 5 and then over to the 10…” (That’s how they say it in LA, they put the word “the” in front of the freeway number.)

Laura and I used to bop around on those freeways, no problem. Laura learned to drive out there! And in LA, they come to screeching halts on the freeways with NO WARNING. It always seemed to be much more sudden in LA than the continual but gradual slow-ups in the Bay Area, where you usually had some warning as traffic slowed. In LA, one minute traffic is going 85, the next minute it’s completely stopped. You really had to be on the ball and paying attention! Well, I still pay close attention, but my nerves aren’t up for it anymore. I’ll just stay home, thanks.

Anyway we made it safely to Laura’s house. Here we are the next day having lunch in Palo Alto. Laura and Alex really seem to fit in well in the Bay Area, bicycling around enjoying the cafes and working from home for the big-name companies out there.

It was all so very quintessential Bay Area.

The next night Laura and I and her friend, Melissa, met up in Pleasanton for dinner. I had been eating so much restaurant food recently that I literally did not want to eat. All I ordered was some plantains to go for John. It was a shame because it was a very good restaurant.

(No, it wasn’t Peet’s Coffee, it was a Mexican restaurant next door called Wild One Grill.) Many of these über expensive Bay Area towns have cute, walkable “downtown” areas with excellent restaurants and great patio seating. Nothing like the skyscrapers of big city downtowns.

Melissa is a rheumatologist, so we quizzed her on all sorts of questions because our entire family has autoimmune issues. We were total geeks, and pulled up our recent blood work results on our phones so Melissa could explain it all to us (John had to help me from back in the hotel and email my records to me, because my phone didn’t know how to access my records, but my computer back at the hotel did).

Melissa’s optimistic opinion was that because the weirdness in our blood work was similar, we’re probably both fine because it suggests that’s just “how we are” in our family. Well, that would be good. But after a recent, completely unexpected bout with cancer, I am highly aware that the unknown can be lurking undetected. And like any mom, I don’t want there to be anything wrong with my daughter!

It was really excellent to be able to see Laura again. We saw her in Boise and then in Santa Clara and then again in Pleasanton. It almost felt like we lived nearby and could casually see each other every week. Well, that would be nice!

The day after I left she sent me a picture of the first ripe fig on the tree in her backyard.

I missed fig season by one day!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com

I don’t have much to say about this post other than lol, we always go to botanical gardens when we’re on trips if we can! This is one of our absolute favorites though, because in addition to great plants, it has a beautiful coastal bluff walk.

https://www.gardenbythesea.org/

I’m going to get bored uploading all of these photos. But you’re worth it 😉 Hope you enjoy them! It’s the next best thing to being there.

By chance I’m listening to Japanese music as I upload these (which is unusual for me), but it turns out to really work with the photos. I should learn how to make my blog play music 🙂

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com

It would not be wise to take our little blow-up kayak out into the ocean proper, but we figured we could handle the relatively flat water of this cove.

Here we are getting it ready to be blown up. It’s easy and fast to inflate with a foot pump.

There were nearly no waves at all, so launching from the beach was easy.

After awhile we decided to paddle around a near point to go into the next cove over.

We needed to go fairly far out in order to stay well wide of the point, so as to not be pushed into the rocks by the waves.

We got most of the way out there, and realized the waves were bigger than we were comfortable with. We quickly rowed back. We don’t have any pictures of all that because we were too busy paddling! However, after we got safely back into the cove, John took this short movie.

Then we spent some time trying to get that perfect picture of seaweed. (I never did get one as good as that first one I missed.)

Then we headed to shore. Here’s John trying to wash the mud and sand off the kayak in a muddy and sandy area.

Lol, I think he was just making it worse! I suppose I could have been helping rather than laughing at him and taking pictures, but I figured it was a lost cause.

Fine, hon, do whatever you want. I’m going to sit on the van steps and take a selfie for my blog.

I’m looking unusually wild. Yep, that’s me, the bad-ass wilderness woman. LOL, not really, but I did go kayaking in the Pacific Ocean!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com

Brrrrrrr!!!! It’s so cold, it’s shocking. Highs had been in the 100’s for it seems like months now in Tucson, as well as our whole trip so far. Record highs over 100° in Boise, suffocatingly hot and smoky in Oregon, searing hot even in the mountains, and suddenly a high of 55° with damp wind and fog.

Shortly after arriving we ate an early dinner in Mendocino, outside at a restaurant patio – where they had two different kinds of gas and electric heaters set up at every table. And we needed them! It seemed crazy to be heating the great outdoors while the rest of the country sweltered in wildfire smoke. But we were all out there in our coats, shivering.

The coast is so crowded right now it’s insane. There’s not a single hotel room, RV spot or campsite to be had anywhere up and down the entire coastline. The restaurants are so crowded and understaffed, most are refusing to offer take-out because they can’t keep up with demand. They all just have lines out the door of people hoping for a table.

We are luxuriating in a gorgeous hotel room, which we doubly appreciate after camping for the past week. I reserved it months ago, and couldn’t remember the exact details. So when we arrived we were surprised and impressed with how nice it is – for an affordable price too!

It has a large window view from the bed, a small sitting room, and a sliding glass door off the sitting room.

It doesn’t have a full kitchen, unfortunately, but it does have a small refrigerator and microwave and a good sized table.

Someone got caught watching golf 😉 He looks a little sheepish, although I honestly don’t mind when he watches sports.

We’re grateful for the gas fireplace, which seemed so crazy since 100+ degree heat had become our life these past couple of months! But we’ve been using it.

The first day was cloudy.

We went on a nice hike. John liked this tree growing from a stump.

Not everything red and shiny is poison oak. This is Oregon Grape (Mahonia, actually, it is called grape because it has little blue berries but they aren’t edible, don’t eat it.)

The next day the weather got sunny, but it was never really warm. It was beautiful though!

This is the mouth of the Noyo River in Fort Bragg. You can’t see them in the photo, but there were seals in the water.

This patio at Silver’s has a great view! We go here every time we visit Fort Bragg. Most of the food is only so-so, but John really likes the caesar salad with crab cakes and I like the coastal salad with rock cod.

Here’s a pretty little beach near Montesano.

People were building structures out of the driftwood.

It was a short beach – we couldn’t walk very far. The Mendocino region is mostly an area of cliffs and bluffs. John was eyeballing that next cove. I just knew he was thinking he could wade through that water to the next cove – it wasn’t very deep…maybe the tide was going out…

Nope, I vetoed that idea while it was still a just glimmer in his eye. We did go out in the water though – in our inflatable kayak! I’ll post about that next.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com

We weren’t able to get a campsite in any of the redwood state park locations, but we did have time to stop for some hiking as we drove from the northern California mountains out to our next destination on the coast.

This next one is John’s favorite, with tiny little me on my tiptoes, staring up at that big tree.

John kept trying to use me for scale. But all he really wanted was pictures of the trees. After awhile I started making grumpy faces, ruining his pictures, lol. (I’m not posting those.) Here’s one of my last few fake smiles before he had to resort to just taking long distance or backside shots of me.

John had no trouble posing. Aaaand…here he is folks, King of the Log!

In the desert, a sudden and unexpected peek-a-boo view of water would be a big deal. Here it was, oh, huh, there’s a pond or something over there.

Here it’s all about the trees.

It was magical.

It almost makes me understand why people used to buy bright green carpeting for their houses, back when wall-to-wall carpet was a brand new thing. Who wouldn’t want to live in a fairy glen?

When I was a kid, I wanted a real live tree growing up through the middle of my house. I’m not sure exactly how that would have worked. But I have seen houses that are about the same age as me that have atriums. Our neighbor in Placitas had one that included an indoor water feature and large plants when you first walked in her front door.

The top of that burned snag looked even more precarious in real life.

It was a wonderful place for a walk!

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Originally we were going to go to the Illinois River in southern Oregon, but the area we were targeting burned a few years ago and is no longer scenic.

I was also interested in visiting the Marble Mountain Wilderness in the Klamath National Forest in northern California, but it didn’t look like there would be a lot of places for van camping. It looked better for backpacking, but I don’t feel well enough yet to backpack. Maybe we can add backpacking in the Marble Mountain Wilderness as a future goal.

The current big Bootleg fire in southern Oregon, the early stages of which was impacting our Pelican Bay trip, continued to impact the air quality in the entire region, restricting our choices. In addition, last year’s August Complex fires impacted a lot of northern California forests.

As we attempted to avoid recently burned areas and currently smoky areas, we were pushed farther south and west than originally intended, and ended up along the Trinity River in California. It’s a beautiful river, but deep in a canyon with difficult access.

The first forest service road we randomly chose into the canyon was terrifying. I swear, Californians will pave anything! Everywhere else in the country one can assume that if the road is paved, then it’s reasonably easy access. But no, the road we ended up on was barely wider than our van. On most sections of the road, it would have simply been impossible to get by an oncoming vehicle without one of us backing up. It would have been very challenging to back up our long van on that road.

The twists were insane and the drop-off was absolutely vertical. I didn’t understand how the road even stayed on the mountain! Some stretches of road were covered in rock that had fallen from the bluff above, and in other areas the road was crumbling away and falling down into the ravine!

After several terrifying miles of that ridiculous, so-called road, we ended up camping for the night in a gravel parking lot. What a let-down! At least it was an empty parking lot. Because, who would want to camp there? Lol.

There was a short, steep hiking trail down to the river, heavily fringed with poison oak.

The river was beautiful, but lacking backpacking equipment we couldn’t actually camp by the river. We settled for taking some scenic shots and hiking back up to sleep in the van in the parking lot.

We hiked back down to take some more scenic shots the next morning.

I’m like, yep, it’s a river.

It was really beautiful in the morning.

We spent most of that second day trying to find a spot to camp with our van along the river, or along any of the smaller creeks and tributaries.

We had high hopes for a couple of campgrounds. One no longer existed (signs were gone and the area contained road construction equipment). Another turned out to be closed.

I don’t know why it says it’s closed for the season in July. What other season is there?

We gave up on campsites and tried to find some sort of van pull-out near a creek or tributary in the area. Even that proved too challenging, and late that afternoon we settled for a random hillside far above any water. It was pretty enough. And no one was out there, probably because there was no water.

The next morning we went on a hike up what looked like an old, abandoned road.

It started off gentle enough, but after awhile we were trudging straight up the side of the mountain. It turned out to be much steeper than we expected! It was a real workout! I certainly wouldn’t have been able to do it even a few months ago, much less a year ago. I am getting stronger.

You can see smoke in the distance, but it wasn’t bad where we were.

This is a relatively flat section near the top as we started to head back down. Some of it was so steep I had to go down sideways to keep from slipping.

John regretted not wearing long pants! He was a good sport about it. Hilarious!

Not only were these grass seeds sticky like velcro, they were also sticky like sap! They were all over my pants; both the sticky seeds as well as a black sheen of sticky dirt smeared all over the bottom of my pant legs. I don’t know what plant it was, but all we were thinking was – thank goodness we don’t have the dogs on this trip!! Can you imagine that mess in curly poodle fur?

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com

When we pulled in that first evening, we were initially extremely pleased with our campsite at Rocky Point Resort on Pelican Bay in southern Oregon. What a view!

By about mid-day the next day we realized the campsite had a complete lack of shade during the hottest time of the day. We were baking! Good thing we came to spend time on the water, not sit around at our campsite.

Here’s John checking out the kayaks for rent the next morning.

This is the restaurant on the rocky point. The food was only so-so. Burgers & such. But the view from the deck was awesome!

John’s not actually sunburned. The red table umbrella was reflecting on him.

We went out on kayaks several times during our visit. It was so beautiful!

One evening we rented a motor boat.

It got windy and choppy as we headed out into the Upper Klamath, so we came back into Pelican Bay to fish.

The old guy on the left caught a big fish and released it. He said it was his second one for that day.

We didn’t catch anything, but we enjoyed being on the water.

There was a fire east of Klamath Lake, which got worse during our 3-day visit.

You can see it billowing in the distance (these marsh grasses are between us and the main part of the lake, which is very large).

This first picture was taken shortly after we arrived, and the second one shortly before we left. You can see how the smoke just kept getting worse.

By the time we left, the smoke had completely obliterated the local hills.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com