It was at least 4’ tall. We really would have liked to have some, but figured the road film would over whelm it. Also there was no place to stop and pick it. Nancy Fenton or church office please tell Lucille Bellamy about this. She has grown dill for us several years. In fact we have some with us. Moving closer to Petaluma on an unnamed road we started seeing dairies and of course more grapes which were much more serene than the city life of San Francisco, but only about 20 miles away.When we arrived in Petaluma at noon, it was HOT, and I don’t mean just a little. No breeze to help the temperature. We checked into the fair ground campground and sweated as we unhook and got the AC going. By various estimates it was from 98 to 104 degrees. After cooling off we headed to the Chevy house to check on the car ac fan noise. There we made an appointment for Monday morning to find what had fallen into the fan area making a noise. Then we made a trip to WM and Target to pick up necessary items. Teenya and Alan introduced us to Kashi cereal. We have been mixing the high fiber cereal with dried fruits and nuts and share a dry 12 oz cup each morning. Wally World has the best price so when we are near, we pick some up. This time it was on sale for $2 a 15 ounce box. We have gone through a 14 roll package of Viva so we bought another. Upon our return to the trailer, we discovered things had cooled off and the heat wave was over. Thank Goodness! Locals tell us heat waves never last long here. The hot air rises and draws the much cooler pacific air inland. This is especially true late in the day. What a good idea for Texas! Except, I don’t think we could get enough pacific air for Texas!!
Saturday, May 17 we remembered our main reason for moving to Petaluma was to make another run into San Francisco, so we took off. The road Hwy 101 was much better both with traffic and paving than I-80. The day was glorious, clear and mild. As we approached the Golden Gate Bridge, we could see the fog was rolling in on the bay and we could barely see the bridge as we crossed it.
There were lots of walkers and bicyclist on the sides. Myra this picture is for you. Once across the bay, the weather was great. The fog was just above the water! Fred wanted to see the Haight/Asbury neighborhood so we drove through and around it. 
These hippies were from our generation. I didn’t understand them at the time. Maybe we do now. The HA houses are painted very decoratively and there was no available parking.
At the harbor we parked in the same place as Wednesday and ate crab cocktail and lobster bisque from a street vendor. Again we enjoyed watching the bushman and seeing all the other people watching him too.
Then we strolled along reading menus for our big meal. We settled on Pompei’s Grotto and Fred relished his fried seafood platter of scallops, rock shrimp, scampi, fish and French fries. Olivia loves crab meat and since it is abundant here, she had crab on an avocado. Then we sent the girls and their families a novelty - sourdough bread from Boudin Bakery. 
They have a demonstration window and make all kinds of bread novelties as well as the bread bowl for clam chowder. In fact this is where the idea came from. We are anxious to hear what the families do with their Crab shaped bread. Fred wanted to send an alligator to Teenya, Alan and Blaire since they have had several in their pond, but Boudin’s doesn’t send those. It will be enough for the whole neighborhood. We also picked up a few souvenir t-shirts.
We both thought fondly of our good friends, Doyce and Felicia, who first met in SF.
Sunday, May 18, my how time flies. We have been gone over 2 months and we have been in California over half that time. We found the Petaluma UMC and attended this morning. Their service was very international. The pastor was Korean?, the Worship Leader was Jamaican? and the Sunday school leader had a British Accent. The service was in English with all those accents. It was a blessing to be in their church.
After church we loaded up and went to the Laundromat then took off to the up Sonoma Valley for wine tasting(s). We drove along a little road called Dry Creak and saw about 50 vineyards. Several had tasting rooms and we stopped at 3. The first was Lambert Bridge Winery where we found this area is red grape country, they did have 2 white wines which were very good, and we moved on to a small family owned vineyard/winery. The young man was very informational as we tasted their reds. He told us the areas of California which were better for each wine. Then we found the Raymond Burr Winery. Home. We have both watched Perry Mason, both the original and reruns so this was a real novelty. In their store was a t-shirt that said. “Raymond Burr Winery, with winning cases.” Too bad they didn’t have Fred’s size. The chardonnay was excellent, even though we aren’t fans of chardonnay. It seems Raymond Burr bought the land, cleared it and planted the vineyard along with a partner and the partner has kept it going. We thought of Felicia and her like for the Perry Mason show.
Monday, May 19 is a day off. However the suburban is in the Chevy house seeing about the fan motor. Olivia is catching up on letters, pictures, and starting a sweat shirt. She had plans to make a bunch of jeweled sweatshirts but her spare time is spent on the computer with letters, pictures, and banking. This has been her craft project for the trip. Fred is babysitting the car.
We wish we could send every one of you some of these extra sweet strawberries we bought in Winters, CA where we found out Jerry’s son lives. We sure hope they like strawberries as much as we do. They are good to the leaves and soooooo sweet! Later we found the operators of the best strawberry patch in all of California are originally from Vietnam. They also sell roadside in nearby Vacaville, Winters has a population of about 3,000, Vacaville about 100,000. The woman from Vacaville, whom we met later, says these strawberries are very popular in Vacaville.
Tuesday May 20 was travel day. Leaving Petaluma we drove by contented (or not) dairy cows. They were all lying down. Many, many dairies on this road to the coast. There were rolling hills with lots of grass. We marveled at the outskirts of Petaluma there were vineyards, cattle, rolling hills, dairies and it was only 32 miles to San Francisco. We passed a Coast Guard training station and thought of Marianne. Is this where she trained? .
We found Wright’s Beach camp ground and settled into a spot Fred calls a cave. 
The bushes surround 3 sides of the trailer. See if you can find us in the bushes? Not the obvious trailer on the left. It is just a short walk (about 60 feet) to the beach.
Some of the spots actually are on the beach. There are yellow tree lupines everywhere.
We were expecting some mail to catch up with us at Jenner, so we drove in to the post office.
Jenner is typical of the rural central coast - lightly populated, expensive, exciting and gorgeous. Jenner has about 100 people living there full time. Most of the homes are B & Bs. There are small inns, but very few chain or large motels. As we were parked in the parking lot a young couple drove up and commented that we were 7th generation Texans (our Texas vanity plates read “7 GEN”) and we bantered amiably with them about it. Inside the post office, we picked up on the conversation along with the Postmaster, and where we were going. We asked what to do in the area. One thing led to another we introduced ourselves. He said he had discovered how to barbeque oysters and the next thing we knew we were headed to buy oysters and bring them to their house for supper. We will continue to be very outgoing on this trip. This approach has produced many interesting conversations and several new friendships. We drove to Drakes Bay Oyster Farm, (shells & growing) and bought (@ $10/doz) 30 medium oysters. This was on Point Reyes peninsula in Marin County – just across the bay from San Francisco. As we drove closer, we realized this was Sir Francis Drake and had to bring back our history lessons. One of the many bed & breakfasts along the way was the Golden Hinde. We drove about 10 miles on each side of Tomales Bay. It is very long and skinny.
At the scheduled time we drove toward Goat Rock Beach and turned on the first gravel road to the left into a jungle with a no trespassing sign to a parking area with, as promised, a red car in it. At that time we were to honk and they would come and meet us. Sure enough Catherine came up the path just as her landlord was coming to see who we were. She led us down a very winding narrow path to her home. There were a multitude of flowers growing all around the place. She explained it was part of an old Coast Guard place and the landlord had bought the land and buildings. As he could he had remodeled them and rented them for vacation houses. We could not see the ocean or the Russian River from her house because of the dense vegetation, but they live at this confluence. They are about 300 yards from the river and about 1/8 mile from the ocean. Catherine contracts with area school districts training teachers to do the correct thing and use of the district’s computers. Hal is retired. We learned they are both interested in plants and eating editable native plants, that aren’t necessarily sold in stores. We talked about dewberries being (Fred’s favorite berry) in that category, in fact we had brought a small cobbler from home and shared it for dessert. They served a nettle soup. Yes, it is stinging nettle, but doesn’t look like the Texas variety. They must wear gloves to pick and process the nettle. Once blanched, you can discord the gloves – they are now harmless! Fred said he now feels he has revenge! During his early years he was always getting into stinging nettle. It would attack about the ankles and burn and make you want to scratch. It was more the “nettle” to Fred. Now, he gets to eat some stinging nettle. Ah! Revenge!! The soup was very tasty. Next were the BBQ oysters, followed by a mixture of (?) oranges and ? topped with grilled salmon, salad with avocado & cilantro dressing, and grilled asparagus. Delicious! We heated the cobbler and served it with ice cream. We really enjoyed this California hospitality. It was a delightful evening getting to know native Californians. Thanks to Catherine and Hal for a wonderful time. Now they are on our travel log list!
Wednesday, May 21 we slept in, since we had stayed up way passed our bed time. We checked for the mail, still not here, then drove to Goat Rock Beach
and walked down the beach to Blind Beach picking up soft rocks. Catherine had shown us some she had picked up there and we thought they would make nice souvenirs. We found plenty of rocks. We especially looked for mint chocolate ones, but only found a few. The BIG rocks along the beach are different colors and the pieces of them have been tumbled so much they are soft. Some are red, mint green, white, browns and they are all pretty. We picked up about half a bucket.
There are no showers in this campground, but about 5 miles down the road at Bodega Bay is a sister campground and we were told we could have access to their showers, so we took off to get our daily shower. We enjoyed driving along the coast with the wind blowing a gale and the waves breaking on the rocks. It has been very windy for several days. At the beach it is difficult to stand at times.
Thursday, May 22 we stopped at the Post Office and received a package that followed us to 4 post offices. On our way north we drove through miles and miles of a community named Sea Ranch. All the houses were the same weathered wood with the same architectural style. We never saw a store, gas station or any kind of town. Strange! Olivia drove for a while and even drove into and out of a filling station! One of the hardest things to do with a trailer! Fred said she did well! We drove out to a Point Arena light house
and Fred took pictures of an unusual shore line.
Every time we look at the shore it is different. Angie there are white cal lilies growing wild out here and they are beautiful. They really thrive here. We saw Mendocino, the town where “Murder She Wrote” was filmed.
We drove around in the pretty little town. Nearly every home has a white picket fence and a lot of flowers. In Mendocino harbor 
we ran across a uniquely named bar. It was “Cappy’s Bar”.*
One of Olivia’s high school class mates is named “Cappy”. She hasn’t seen that name anywhere else. Too bad it wasn’t open or we would have investigated the name. That night we found a home in MacKerricker State Park. No vacancies after this night due to the holiday weekend coming up. This was a nice park with lots of families. It reminded us of camping when our girls were young and all the kids took their bicycles. In this park it was the rule to wear a helmet if on bikes or skateboards. Olivia heard about Glass Beach so before leaving on Friday we had to go pick up glass from an old dump or glass plant (we heard both) now a beach. Teenya we did find a few green ones.Friday, May 23, we drove 40 miles, turning inland (still on Cal 1) to the Redwoods. At Leggett, we reflected on our adventures along highway 1. Leggett is north end of 1. Highway 1 is beautiful! Here we visited one of the drive-through trees. Of course we were too big to go through so we walked through.
There is a new freeway route for US 101 through this portion of the redwoods along the Eel river, but the old road is now the Avenue of the Giants.
For 31 miles the trees formed a tunnel or cave with light at the end. This is a must if you come this way. We entered the Humboldt State Park and drove through the maze of one campground. It was on the side of a hill with lots of ups and downs and redwood trees. Finally Fred said, “Let’s get out of here, if we can!” He told the ranger he had met his match. Fortunately, she told us of another campground 10 miles down the road that was flat and they had a space for us for the night. This was Friday night of Memorial Day. Gratefully, they had a very flat pull through spot and Burlington Camp Ground 
was so beautiful with very large spots and only $18. We were able to stay through Saturday night and probably could have stayed a 3rd night, but we want to move on. This campground is a definite must, if you come this way.
Saturday, May 24, we awoke to rain drops hitting the trailer roof. It was only a slow drizzle, but enough to stay inside. The campground was very quiet until about 11 am when the rain stopped. We walked to the visitor center and museum. It was very well done and answered most of Fred’s questions. We watched a movie about a flood. In 1964 this area of California with 8 big rivers flooded. Our campground was 13’ underwater and it is a ways from the river. The next town downstream, Weott, was 33’ underwater. Weott is no more!! 18 California highway bridges were washed away plus many county bridges. This was a major catastrophe. After the museum, we rested, napped, fixed nails, etc. Then we had Tortilla Soup from the freezer. We enjoyed seeing this rain forest. We were told one large redwood tree drank 400 gallons of water a day. Very close to our camp was a nurse log already nurturing new life.
Sunday, May 25 we moved back to the coast to Eureka CA. The part of the coast we missed is called the “lost coast’. There are essentially no roads covering this area. The only exceptions are roads to a point on the coast – none up and down the coast. We heard about the Samoa Lumber Jack restaurant and had breakfast with them. We ate like lumberjacks, biscuits and gravy, scrambled eggs, sausage and French toast. All we could eat. Very tasty! Fred says spare him from “all you can eat” restaurants!
Coming back over the bridge we noticed the Kinetic Artistic boats 1-9 arriving at the finish line so we found the fairgrounds, parked and went back to watch all the crazy “Artistic?” boats/cycles. Yesterday was the first of 3 race days for these entries. It was in the sand dunes. Two ladies told us of watching and said the racers turned over and slid down the dunes and even 2 men trying to slow the descent down, held on to the back and were buried head first into the sand. All of the entries have an artistic theme and the crazier the better. Costumes? Of course! Today’s race was in the water.
And tomorrows is on land. These entries have to be able to negotiate all three. # 3picture is 2 high school girls who wanted to beat the time of a jilted boyfriend. And #2 was the police department with a motorcycle. We were told there were about 10 of this type of races in California and a few other states. It might be a fun thing for Rockport to do.
Monday, Memorial Day, May 16, we drove to Ferndale and joined the finish line activity of the kinetic Art competition. They were judged on time, and ability to acomplish all three events and the artistic decorations of their contraption. The finish was in Ferndale which the whole town is on the NATIONAL HISTORIC REGISTER!
The houses and buildings are beautiful and sorry Waxahachie, we look sick compared to this town. The following pictures include the activities of the day, the picturesque town and the rhodedendrum that is blooming everywhere. Enjoy browsing the last pictures. They don't need titles, they tell their own story. Look closely at the paint jobs on the buildings. Would you like to paint it? Fred said standing in line at the rest room was a first for him. PAY BACK!
We are enjoying all the places we have stayed and the campgrounds in those places. Most are beautiful in their location. Some have hookups and some don’t. We try to alternate so we can charge our batteries and have cell and internet service. We have been in California since April 12 and it is certainly a land of CONTRAST. Deserts, mountains, ocean, beaches, flowers, grapes, fruit, vegetables, wines, seafood, and big trees. We have enjoyed all but the freeways
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