They have an RV park, but Doreen wasn't too interested - I really don't understand why! So we went on to Hogan Lake, another Corps of Engineers campground (N38 10 33.7, W120 47 54.4). At this campground, they seemed to specialize in non-level sites. We finally found one, that with using all the levelling blocks we had, we were able to almost get the motorhome level - enough to just about satisfy our refrigerator, I think. This was another really nice spot, and with hardly anyone around, I was able to play my banjo around the campfire.
3 December, Saturday
When traveling from the south of California towards the north, you have to make a decision: do we go on the east side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, or on the west side. Once you make that decision, there is no tuning back. There is just no way across the mountains later than about November 1 when the one or two roads across get closed for the winter. The east side, route 395 is by far the nicest, a really pleasant drive, but it is at high elevation, and somewhat cold at this time of year. If there is any precipitation, it is likely to be in the form of frozen stuff. For a couple of reasons, we chose to go the uglier route, on the west side of the mountains.
Although this was another really nice sunny morning, it turned out to be a hectic day of driving. We set off on route 12, which goes almost east - west between Stockton and Sacramento, and north of the San Fransisco area. There is no way to get from southern California to northern California on the west side of the mountains without dealing with these populated areas. It was a hectic drive with horrendous traffic all wanting to go away faster than the speed limit. And the wind came up really wild, so we needed to go slow, otherwise we would end up in the ditch. There is a reason why there are numerous places like this in California - these propellors look stationary in the picture, but believe me, they were all in whirling around:
We finally made it to route 29 and up through the Napa Valley. All the way from morning to night, we passed through vineyards. It is hard to contemplate just how much land in California is taken up with vineyards - big ones, with vines as far as the eye can see, and small family ones. The latter is the case especially once you get into the Napa Valley, with grape vines covering the sides of hills, and pretty buildings (all with wine tasting, if you were so inclined). It was pretty hard to get a good picture because the traffic was so horrendous, and there would have been far better examples than this, if it were possible to get stopped at a good spot:
We finally made it to Lake Sonoma Recreation Area (another Corps of Engineer's lake), but then we had to climb and climb and climb up to the Liberty Glen campsite (N38 43 02.6, W123 03 32.2). I don't know why they put the campsite so high up in the mountains - it is no where near the lake! We found a pile of firewood here, so we had a real rip-roaring campfire, and it was warmer to sit out tonight (the temperature dropped overnight to 42F here, as opposed to 30F the night before).
4 December, Sunday
We left our campsite late, and just traveled up highway 101 a couple of hours. But we had a hard time finding a campground. Pretty much all the public campgrounds along the California coast here are California State Campgrounds, and they are either closed or so expensive for what you get, that we just couldn't bring ourselves to stay at one. So we ended up going to a private RV park, that was equally expensive, but at least we have electrical hookup, and shower facilities here at Benbow Valley RV Resort (N40 04 11.2, W123 47 13.3). On the way here, we passed through a town called Cloverdale. It happened that as we were passing through, there was some sort of motorcycle rally going on. There were hundreds of motorcycles - this picture cannot begin to show the numbers:
No comments:
Post a Comment