RV Sabbatical Trip - Day 11 through Day 13

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Day 11 - See Golden Gate Bridge, travel to Manchester, CA

 Day 11's Pictures

We got up and dressed and headed up to Sean's house again. He told us that he wanted to make us waffles and they were good. After we visited briefly we headed to a local Wal-mart to stock up on supplies and then headed up to San Francisco. We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and stopped briefly to take pictures, etc. Samuel didn't care about the bridge but had a blast trying to chase the pigeons around all over the grounds!

Then we headed up along highway '1' or the Pacific Coast Highway. This particular leg of our journey was not very well thought out! The scenery was breathtaking, however, the road was horrific. It was excruciatingly windy and even John thought he was going to puke and he was driving! We averaged about 30 mph and thus it took us from 2:00pm at Sausalito to 7:30pm to get 120+ miles up the road to the Manchester KOA! Brother!!! We should have just taken the 101 up and backtracked slightly to this KOA, but what did we know? We're just tourists!

After we got the kids bedded down John took off down to the coast. It was about a 20 minute walk and was very cool. He turned his flashlight off and just sat there yards away from the waves looking at the stars. Very cool. Then on his way back he stumbled upon 3 deer (mother and 2 fawns). He turned his light off and walked towards them quietly and then turned the light on again. They were about 25 yards away! It was very neat. They just looked at him then scampered off.

Tomorrow we'll probably go down to the ocean and mess around there a bit, then head up to just below the Redwood forest. Over the last days we've had lots of challenges come up. We've just had to smile through them and realize that we'll get over them and that we're on this trip to have fun and get closer as a family. It's hard sometimes when the kids won't mind and mom and dad are both grouchy with each other, but we're trying.

Day 12 - Travel to Eureka, CA

 Day 12's Pictures
Today we got up and had a good breakfast with bacon, eggs, hash browns, etc. Then we took the kids down to the ocean. It was a pretty long walk and Samuel slowed us down of course. Once we got there John changed into his swim shoes and took Samuel out into the ocean on his shoulders. The water was very cold, but they had fun dodging the waves.

We walked back, packed up shop and went back 6 miles from the KOA to the only gas station around to get raped for some fuel. We left on highway 1 again at 1:00pm after having sandwiches for lunch. The road really wasn't bad until we got past Fort Bragg. Then it really sucked. We went over a huge mountain side to side to side and back again. We probably averaged about 20 miles per hour. It was horrible. We finally got through the mountain where highway 1 turns into the 101 and the road became divided and a two-lane highway so we were able to haul butt up to Eureka.

We were so exhausted from the rough drive that we decided to scrap our plans to stay up near Trinidad and just pulled into the KOA at Eureka. It had a nice swimming pool (heated) and hot tub. Samuel and his dad enjoyed it thoroughly. After that they went back to the RV where mom had made them chocolate chip cookies! Yum! We all ate too many of them .

The Pacific Coast Highway had some stunning scenery along the way, but all in all, we wish we'd just stayed on the 101. The driving through all those windy roads was just awful and made John's neck hurt and gave him headaches two days in a row.
We looked at a relief map of CA inside the recreation room of this KOA. The driving is pretty much OK tomorrow until we head into Oregon. We've got to go over a bloody mountain again, so that's not going to be fun. At least we only have to cover roughly 100 miles tomorrow instead of 200+ like we have the past two days. This windy driving has just sucked our will to live and the kids haven't enjoyed it either. Thank goodness Jennifer taped "Rolie Polie Olie" for Samuel to watch. It keeps him entertained in the back most of the time. A lot of the other time we have been teaching Samuel to count. He can count from 1 to 10 pretty well now!

Day 13 - Visit Coastal Redwoods, travel to Cave Junction, OR

 Day 13's Pictures Day 14's Pictures
After doing the daily breakfast ritual we headed out from Eureka towards Redwood National Park. As our luck would have it we missed the turn off for the actual park itself and didn't realize it until several miles up the road. We'll just blame it on the very thick fog that was there that day. We backtracked and found our way to an information station. Wouldn't you know it that the bloody RV's length was a curse to us again! It turns out that the really big trees are several miles in from the park entrance and up on the top of a mountain preserve. The only road up to these tree groves is of course far too windy and dangerous for vehicles over 22 feet. Bummer! But, the Forest Service was actually thinking--there is an "alternate" drive-through section of the redwoods designed for larger vehicles. We found our way to this place and were quite happy with the trees we did see. There were lots of places along this road where big vehicles could pull over. At each of these stops there were entrances to trails created by the Forest Service so that you could walk through the redwood groves. We traveled along many of these for an hour or so (basically until the kids wouldn't stand for anymore!). There were some spectacular trees in these groves. The only problem encountered was with the digital camera--there wasn't a lot of light in these huge groves of trees so some of the shots turned out fuzzy due to the lack of light. Oh well, at least the trees are in our memories!

Then we had lunch and were on the road to Cave Junction, OR. We passed over another mountain range which wasn't quite as bad as all the driving we had been doing, so John was quite grateful. We arrived at Jennifer's grandparent's house around dinner time on Saturday and had beef stew for dinner. Cave Junction is a fairly small town and they live on a nice 2 acre plot of forest land. We sat up talking for quite a while as the kids played with toys and experimented on the piano.

The next day, Sunday, we got up and drove into Grants Pass with them to attend church. We sure are fortunate to live where we do with church buildings so close because the drive into Grants Pass took over 30 minutes at highway speeds! We'll take living in a large city (at least for now)! The rest of Sunday we sat around, talked, read, played on the computer, played with toys, and just relaxed.

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