Both of us are now reaping the benefits of being ill. Peggy said she didn’t really feel too bad and I thought I was getting better so we decided to take a exploratory drive to the coast. Neither of us have been on any of the roads in this part of the world so we knew everything we would see would be new.
We drove south into Cloverdale where we turned onto a road shown on the map as leading out to Stewarts Point which is over on the coast. We were moseying along happily until we drove past a sign indicating a locked gate 8.5 miles ahead. We thought the sign was in error since we were convinced we were on the right road. We fired up the Garmin which confirmed that we were bollixed up and we needed to turn around and backtrack about 6 miles. Peggy broke out the DeLorme Gazetteer and it confirmed we had indeed turned the wrong way. We were not too brokenhearted because there was absolutely stunning scenery along what we now knew was something called Rockpile Road.
We went back to where we fouled up and turned onto the unmarked Stewarts Point Road which is very twisty with quite steep hills and long single-lane sections sections through gorgeous but very rough and rocky terrain. On the ridges we could see stands of timber and massive but steep pastures and in the valleys we passed through redwood groves and followed streams.
After about 40 miles, we broke out to the coast and the scenery was magnificent. We turned north along CA-1 at Stewarts Point and were treated to almost magical vistas of coastline with turquoise and blue ocean on one side and big pastures mixed with Monterey Cypress groves in the drainages. Nobody was on the highway with us and we could stop right in the travel lanes without pissing anybody off. We passed through the towns of Sea Ranch, Anchor Bay, Gualala, Point Arena with its skinny lighthouse, Manchester and Elk on the way and they are about what we expected – tiny communities with wonderful old houses. CA-1 is a pretty good road but none of the travels we did today passed over roads over which I would pull a big trailer. Curves are sharp and nothing is level.
Near Albion we turned southeast on CA-128 through the Navarro Redwoods State Park which was spectacular. The road travels right next to the Navarro River and we started spotting quite a bit of wildlife. Peggy spotted some bears and either a bobcat or mountain lion hanging out near the water and deer were everywhere. The groves of redwood trees we passed through are in the bottom of a steep river valley and and they block out so much of the daylight that our automatic headlights came on and stayed on throughout the park. It is an extraordinary place and we vowed to return.
We continued on CA-128 through the towns of Navarro, Philo, Boonville (where they speak Boontling, an undecipherable language) and Yorkville before arriving back in Cloverdale. We stopped at a CVS Pharmacy to pick up more cold medicine. Peggy seems to be getting better but I seem to be sliding downhill. Time for some NyQuil.
Some pix can be seen if you click here

We awoke this morning to fog outside but the sun soon burned most of it off and presented us with a beautiful day. Unfortunately, I am such a generous guy that I have now given the nasty illness I have to my beloved spouse. She doesn’t seem much happier about having the epizudiac than I do.
In order to give ourselves time to get better, we elected to loaf around all day, watching movies and reading. Nothing really happened other than lots of people coming into the park where we are camped. It is Saturday and I suppose we should expect bigger crowds. By evening the place was almost filled.
It is pretty plain why folks come here. The campground is located just north of Cloverdale right on the banks of the Russian River. The river water is crystal-clear. There is ample shade thrown by abundant madrone, oak, walnut and conifer trees along with some other species I can’t identify. The grass in the campground is bright green which is a change from the last time we were here back in July, 2014.

I am still sick but not so miserable that we can’t move. Today we pulled up stakes in Calistoga and headed north. CA-26 turns into CA-128 near Calistoga and heads through the Alexander Valley which is a gorgeous grape growing area. There are a few really skinny, serpentine sections before CA-128 hits 101 but we got through them okay. The paving along this section is a bit iffy. It was only after driving through this area that we consulted the Good Sam road atlas and found the “RV friendly” part of the route through the whine country stops at Calistoga.
After a very pleasant spin on 101 we arrived in Cloverdale and pulled into the Russian River RV Resort, a TT campground where we have free access for 21 days at a time. When we arrived, the park was only about 20% full so we pulled into a very nice pull-thru site and set up house for an 8-day stay. I got all the outside utilities and supports set up but noticed I seemed to be gasping and wheezing more than my decrepit body normally does so I went into the trailer to rest after I finished. I hate being sick or any sicker than normal.
Peggy was very sweet and said we could spend the rest of the day doing nothing so we did.

I woke up this morning happy that I swallowed some NyQuil last night because it made me being sick less miserable, I think. I felt okay this morning and foolishly thought I was cured. I wasn’t. I hate being sick.
To make me feel better and to spread horrible contagion around the whine country, we went over the little range of hills west of us and popped into a Costco and a Trader Joe’s to stock up on liquor, wine and food. We are slowly moving north and shopping for important staples, like booze, is going to be problematic. Oregon has state liquor stores that don’t sell Kirkland Irish Cream and their hard liquor costs about twice what it costs in California. Peggy wisely had us pick up a case of Cabernet Sauvignon made by Charles Shaw, otherwise known as “Two Buck Chuck.”
We will need to get some whiskey before proceeding north and I should have acquired some Jack Daniel’s today but I screwed up. I will have one more Costco to go to in Eureka before heading into Oregon and Washington, where liquor is more difficult to acquire or horribly expensive, like in Washington. A year and a half ago when we were in Washington, a half gallon of Jack cost nearly $70. It costs $30 in California Costco stores.
I’m gonna quit now and drink some more Robitussin.

CA-29 runs through the Napa Valley from Vallejo to up by Cloverdale and we drove the section south of Calistoga today. This section of road is peppered with houses that benefited from wonderful architectural design and some wineries that also were designed and built in gorgeous styles. However, some of the wineries, particularly Dick Del Dotto’s estates, were designed by those who favor cheesy Italian-like statues of Neptune, other mythological characters and big pointy urns. The statues appear to be made from concrete instead of marble and give an all-around feeling of cheap imitation. It is actually kind of fun to gaze upon them and snicker.
We did spot an enormous stainless rabbit structure which was pretty neat and Berringer, Beaulieu and Christian Brothers have magnificent winery buildings. Roads leading off to the sides of CA-29 also have an abundance of beautiful houses and some extremely wealthy folks are busy renovating some of them. The wine business must generate tons of cash and a good portion of it is being spent here in the Napa Valley. The architecture here offers many architectural confections for viewing by riff-raff, like us.
A quick perusal of the internet indicates the wine coming from Dick Del Dotto’s (remember the “Cash Flow System” on lengthy, idiotic infomercials?) start at $38 a fifth and quickly escalate to $600. One average cost drunk with his wine will be not less than $200. The Cash Flow System must have generated a bunch of loot for Dick because he has amassed an enormous amount of property with the proceeds although I am unaware of any people other than him who may have benefited from his foolproof wealth generating scam. We chatted with his caretaker at one of his fiefs and found Dick was currently cooling his heels in Florence, Italy, while micro-managing his empire building from afar. Dick may be a dick.
I don’t think Dick had anything to do with it but I seem to be getting sick today. I hope it is over fast.
A few photos of today’s fun can be seen by clicking here

It was moving day today so we broke camp in Morgan Hill and headed north. We started north on 101 until we got to I-880 which runs through part of Silicon Valley and Oakland. Once we passed the east end of the Bay Bridge, the highway designation becomes I-80 and we continued northbound until we crossed the Carquinez Strait at Vallejo. Shortly after that we exited and proceeded northwest on CA-29 through Napa, St. Helena and finally to Calistoga. We traveled mostly at midday and the traffic was pretty good except for what seems to be an extraordinarily high number of idiots on the road. These folks have little regard for lane discipline, happily passing traffic on the right, using the slow lane. Merging with traffic when they are entering the freeway is a lost art for these folks who enter the high speed lanes substantially below the speed of traffic and only accelerate after they finally realize people are trying to pass them by bailing into all the adjacent lanes. At that point, they accelerate, sometimes to almost terrifying speeds, before falling in behind some motorist blocking the right lane while driving 25 mph less than all the other cars. They may be a bit short on attention span. We only had to slam on the brakes a few times to make room for these important folks.
Once we made it to CA-29, things became less hectic. 29 initially has two lanes each way and ample signals but as progress is made northward, the road gets skinnier and the signals disappear except where some are installed in St. Helena and Calistoga. It is a very nice drive through the whine country even when towing a trailer. The wineries and houses are beautiful. At Lincoln Avenue in Calistoga, we turned off and found our way to the Calistoga RV Park and Napa County Fairgrounds. This park mostly resembles a large RV parking lot although there are lots of naked trees. They may throw ample shade in the spring, summer and fall but they look like the skeletons of deformed people in the winter. Recent rain has not been kind to this place; there is an abundance of mud. They do, however, have full hookups, only cost $25 per night and the park boasts of having wi-fi.
We set up all our utility connections, lit off the satellite antenna and climbed into the Barbarian Invader for a nap. Neither of us fell asleep but we did get some drinking in and had wraps for lunch.

Today I took apart our water system and removed some trailer stabilizers in preparation for our departure from Morgan Hill tomorrow. Tomorrow we will be going to Calistoga up in California’s wine country or whine country. We have found if we get out early and complete our day’s drive before about 1:00 PM, we may get better camping spot in the destination park. We will see if that works out tomorrow.
We did have time for Peggy to go to a Columbia sportswear store where she perused the selections before leaving empty-handed. It was strange. We also had time to pick up some food to go from a place called A.J.’s in Gilroy. We took the food to Redwood Retreat Road to again see if we could spot some wild turkeys. We were rewarded with getting to scope out two herds (flocks?, bevies?, murders?) of turkeys and again the males were putting on very impressive mating displays that seemed to be ignored by all.
We got back in time to spot a dog-walking miscreant cutting through our neighbor’s campsite where the miscreant stopped long enough to let her dog pinch a loaf. She had just started to wander off when a she heard a voice say, “Hey! Pick up that shit!” In an RV park it is quite difficult to pinpoint the origin of sounds so the woman looked around, unable to find the source of the command. She must have thought it was her conscience. She backtracked to the locale of the fresh dog poop, studying the area for clues. She spent about five minutes looking for the apparently well-camouflaged crap. She finally wandered away with a plastic something in her hand. I feel great about getting her to do the right thing.

Today we drove up to see my brother, Pete, in San Francisco. He has a gorgeous house directly across the Great Highway from Golden Gate NRA. Nobody will be building across the street from him blocking his excellent view of the surf breaking against the west coastline of San Francisco because it is owned by the government or us. After only getting bollixed up a few times in transit, we arrived in front of Pedro’s house and went up the stairs to pound on the door.
Pretty soon Peter’s grinning face appeared and invited us in. Once inside, we found Pedro’s now all grown up and quite striking daughter, Maddie, and her beau, Jack. Making sure we didn’t do anything suspicious was a new dog, Indie, and a cat whose name I can’t remember because I’m ancient. Indie was a little worried about us but soon figured out we were harmless and almost wooden in action so we didn’t get bit. After a few minutes, Pete’s wife, Karen, came back from a vital re-supply mission and joined the hobnobbing.
I have always preferred to dine in an old San Francisco restaurant called Tommy’s Joynt at Geary and Van Ness. After fooling around for a bit at Pete’s, he was nice enough to put Peggy, Maddie, Jack and me in the car and set off for the Joynt. We went in all directions getting there, due to the unique, convoluted San Francisco roads but ultimately we pulled up near Tommy’s and hopped out to gorge ourselves. Tommy’s has very strange interior decorations, unlike almost every other eating establishment I have visited. Hanging from the ceilings one can find hubcabs, bike parts, an artificial leg and other oddities. The walls are completely covered with informational and beer signs, little displays of things like medicine bottles from the past and other items not usually utilized in the interior decorating trade. The sandwiches are simple and very tasty. The beer selection is superb. They have a regular bar for those preferring booze.
Peter picked up the food tab which was very generous on his part. After a leisurely feed and some staining of my shirt, we hopped back into Pete’s chorro and wandered over to the casting pools in Golden Gate Park. The ponds were pretty slick and the park itself was absolutely gorgeous. Their grounds crew must be top-notch because the place was beautifully maintained. Pulling away from here we drove by some buffalo (actually bison) that they have penned up in the park. Strange place to see these critters. Back to Pedro’s for some more light banter and then we headed back to Morgan Hill. We had good traffic all the way and managed to get back to the park right before dark. Good day today.
A couple pictures can be seen by clicking here

Lick Observatory east of San Jose was our destination for today. We left our place in Morgan Hill and headed north on 101. Near San Jose the retarded Garmin directed us to exit and take Quimby Road east to County Road 130. The first mile or two of Quimby was a multi-lane parkway but soon it shriveled to a two-lane blacktop before morphing into a twisting upward incline with a width just inches wider than our four ton, 21 foot long, 6 foot wide F-250 pickup. We crept around miles of corners with sight lines of about 10 feet but, fortunately, we only encountered a few vehicles going the other or wrong way. After going up 1500 feet and then dropping about 1000 feet, we finally joined 130 for another 2500 feet of climbing on skinny, terrifying, poorly paved road to the observatory complex.
Although the access road is doo-doo, the views from the top of the mountain are spectacular. When it is clear, you can see Yosemite looking east and San Francisco looking northwest. It was clear enough for our visit to see about 1/4 of California. The Lick Observatory main building houses two telescope domes with observation slits, a 38″ refractor telescope and a 40 inch reflector. We waited around for a tour and were treated to a trip into the dome of the refractor built by old Lick himself, back in the 1890’s. The thing still works but its capabilities have been overwhelmed by the intervening 125 years of technological improvements.
After the tour and some impoverishment in the gift shop, Peg and I walked over to a nearby dome housing a 120 inch reflector telescope passing a small dome housing something called an automatic planet finder. Every clear night, the APF scans space looking not for stars but for the planets surrounding those stars. According to the staff, the APF has found thousands. At the 120 inch telescope, astronomy nerds were working on the telescope despite it being late on a Sunday. The nerds looked like the kind of guys that rarely leave the mountain, preferring to get as much time on the telescope as possible.
It takes a while to get to and leave this place. The last 18 miles of road to the observatory complex is mostly single-lane although some sections have a center line separating the two half-lanes from each other. Just this 18 mile section requires an hour to drive so if you are in a hurry and not riding a motorcycle, forget it. Once on top, though, the views and the observatory are great. It is free with the exception of the fuel and time required to get here.
A couple photos can be seen by clicking here

Today we intended to loaf around for most of the day and we were pretty successful. We got in long showers in our shower pipe, had a big breakfast and settled down for some protracted lounging. After a while, however, we got bored so we hopped into the truck for a local spin.
Not too far down Watsonville Road from our campground there is a side road that takes you a back way up Hecker Pass, which we have repeatedly traversed on our way southwest on CA-152 to Watsonville. We turned off Watsonville Road onto Redwood Retreat Road for about 150 yards when we spotted a big flock of turkeys not far from the road. The males must be getting a bit frisky because they are offering up gorgeous displays of their full, breath-holding size and fanned tail feathers for the females. The females seemed pretty uninterested and merely continued their busy pecking for treats in the grass.
Not 300 yards further we spotted another flock of turkeys numbering more than 30 that were calmly strutting along with the females showing their usual disdain for the males’ exuberant displays and showboating. Another quarter mile up the road and we spotted half a dozen deer browsing around some farmer’s pasture. They looked pretty robust for wintertime. There seems to be no shortage of wildlife in this tiny valley.
We soon turned off Redwood Ridge onto Madonna Mountain Road which initially looked great with real paving and yellow lines running down the center. Very quickly, however, the yellow lines disappeared because the road became too skinny to support two lanes. Not too far after that, the paving quit. We continued up the dirt road for a mile or two before chickening out, turning around and retreating back to the house for a sip and a puff. The turkeys had split by the time we passed their former location so I was glad we got to see them on the way in.
For pictures, click here