It was time to continue the trek south down the west side of the U.S. so we put our stuff into travel mode and split from Cloverdale. We actually got out of the Russian River TT Campground before 10:30, which is extremely early for us. We are not early risers.
We got back on US-101 near Cloverdale and headed south. There was some rain a couple of days ago which gave the firefighters toiling to extinguish Crispy California’s hellish assortment of wildfires a break. Near Santa Rosa, we could see where they had held their ground when we passed through some burned and extinguished areas on both sides of the road. It was pretty evident where the firefighters had made stands – there are buildings, underbrush, bushes and trees where they were successful and flat, scorched ground covered with beige and gray ash and masonry chimneys where they weren’t. The city has reported 5700 destroyed structures.
We headed into increasingly heavy traffic as we approached San Rafael but we veered off onto US-580, over the Richmond Bridge and, alakazam!, we were on the other side of San Francisco Bay. We had figured that traffic was going to be light because today is Sunday. It would seem our reasoning, which was based on supposition, conjecture and speculation, was suspect because the traffic was atrocious. It was so heavy, in fact, that it was stopped. We thought we could zing down the east side of the Bay, missing the RV driving nightmare that is San Francisco. We merely found a nightmare elsewhere. Our clever plans were in tatters.
After a loss of only 2 years of my longevity and a half dozen scary panic stops to avoid driving hooligans, we emerged near San Jose where we got back on US-101 southbound. We must have been going the right direction because we noted the northbound traffic was stopped and backed up all the way to Hollister. Right about time the traffic got better, we bailed from US-101 onto CA-25. We skirted Hollister and meandered along, eventually passing through a small clump of buildings called Tres Pinos. Continuing, we soon passed through an even smaller clump of buildings called Paicines. Not too much further along we turned off on some farm roads ultimately pulling into the San Benito TT facility. We were here back in 2014 and were not dazzled with the place.
We pulled into the park and found some changes. The roads are better. The electrical system functions, which is much better than in 2014 when I needed to run our generators to supply power. The place looks much better. Both adult and family pools are open which wasn’t the case in ’14. There are big scrums of softball-sized quail charging in all directions. We actually got a spot with full hookups and shade. Last time we just had the shade. It seems better, now. The sewer system works but they have signs warning that RV enzyme compounds typically used in RVs can’t go into their system. It’s strange that biological organisms that eat poop are worse than poop but I’m no chemist.
We must have become substantially more wimpy as we age because it seems that a six hour drive we used to make in 2014 was much easier than the same drive now. It was a long day for us geezers so we set up our trailer and hopped inside for the rest of the day. One or more of us may have napped a bit.
We got a picture of a campground buddy. Click here