Point Reyes and farther down the Coast

Let's continue on the drive down the west coast in 2005: November 01 Our 2.day at the Olema Ranch Campground. Since there is wireless Internet I do my "homework" and update the web-site. Meantime Bea makes the run to the laundry. After 2 weeks on the road there is quite a bundle to wash. The morning is beautiful with bright sun, so I make plans for the afternoon to explore the surroundings. We drive to Point Reyes, the little village only a couple of miles away from Olema.

Snake Dance	View towards the Pacific
	The Point Reyes National Seashore

The place has only one little main street but there are plenty of little stores and they have nice street fronts. We decide to follow the Sir Francis Drake Blvd on it's last leg, where it runs out to the Point Reyes National Seashore ending at the Lighthouse Visitor center.  Again we get on a roller coaster, but without the trailer it is not much of a problem. By now the weather has changed completely and sea fog has come in over land.  The landscape is hilly and formed by the dunes. The road follows most  it's narrow valleys. The sides are grown with myrtle trees, some willows and dogwood. When getting into the outer area the tree are more sparsely, and dairy farms are lying besides the road. The cows are grazing the hilly land and there are many of them. These farms are from the 1800's and they are numbered alphabetically. The grasslands with it's rocky coasts out here remind us of Scotland or even the Norwegian coast. Whipping winds keep vegetation low and into protected places.  On a day like today with wallowing fog you might forget that you are in sunny California at all. But from the parking lot 4 miles from the Lighthouse we catch a view of the long beach far down under. We also check out the Chimney Rock Road. Here, on the south side of the peninsula, the coast is so steep, that you hesitate to approach the edge.  We find a beautiful spot of fall-colors on a cacti species when we drive down to south beach.

Back home at the campground we download all the pictures we've taken and do some e-mails. November 02. Today we leave Olema and are heading farther south. We avoid the City of  San Francisco and choose to drive the Richmond Oakland Bridge which leads us over to the Oakland side and onto Hwy 580. From Oakland we take Hwy 880 through Alameda until we come to San Jose. There we return to Hwy 101, which will be our main road connection all the way down to the Los Angeles Area.

On our way south we cruise through one of the biggest vegetable gardens and vineyards on earth, the Salina Valley and Monterey County. The fields seem endless as they stretch across the wide bottom of the valley. Workers are to be seen on the fields and huge machinery is parked besides or in active use.

Pismo Coast Village
What we noticed in San Francisco is getting more and more obvious: We've come into the spanish speaking part of America. Mexican-style radio stations offer Mariachi music all day. It fits the landscape though and I feel on real holiday for the first time since leaving home. We stop for the night at Pismo Beach and have to wait in a long line in front of the reception office. When we finally got registered and drive through the gate we realize that this is the most luxurious upscale campground we've ever seen. And upscale is also the mixture of camp guests. The biggest and most expensive rigs up to the 500,000 Dollar mark can be seen in this ocean-front resort. For the overnight price they offer a complimentary WIFI and a heated pool. There is a store, laundry and washroom nearby. A security guard watches the entrance. All roads paved and full hookups on every site. But the best here at Pismo Beach is --- the beach. It seems endless and huge waves are rolling ashore. But that we first get a chance to experience tomorrow morning.

A Glance back to the Start
Nothing is so interesting as the first time you do it, and that is certainly true for traveling. When we started out on our first RV-journey to the south we chose the Pacific Coast as our guideline. From Vancouver, BC we traveled on I-5 through Washington State, Oregon and finally California. Of course the beautiful coast line was one of the reasons for choosing that route. So when we grew tired of the 4-lane I-5 we simply veered off to the waters edge. North of San Francisco there is Bodega Bay and there is Point Reyes National Seashore. Before we reached the ocean we had to cross the coastal mountains and since we just had replaced our tranny due to mountain driving on the Coquihalla,BC, we were careful not to get into more calamities.


From our diary 2005:
Arriving at Bodega Bay we learn that angels guarded our safety today as well. As we read about Bodega Bay in the local tourist brochure we understand that Highway 1, which we would have taken, had we ever found the turn-off from Willits, contains a very dangerous steep stretch of 11 miles south of the village of Jenner, which lies just north of Bodega Bay. 
Bodega Bay is connected to Highway 1 which runs all along the California Coast. It was the backdrop of Alfred Hitchcock's "BIRDS" in 1962. 
The bay is named after Don Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Cuadra, who took refuge in the natural harbor in October 1775. Bodega y Cuadrao is the first known European to have landed at Bodega Bay. The harbor was known for many years as Porto Bodega.
By 1874 it had two hotels, three stores and a livery stable.
Today the place lives of tourism coming west from Highway 101, from the close-by San Francisco and from the north over Highway 1. In 1976 the well-known Artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude chose Bodega Bay for putting up their "Running Fence". Both had become famous from their various projects of  wrapping buildings. Needless to say that they met a lot of local resistance here in Sonoma County. Their art can still be seen as documentation at the Bodega Landmark Gallery.
The only RV-Park we can spot is the Bodega Bay RV Park. Here we have Wireless Internet and a full-service camp site.
 
October 30
We decide to leave Bodega Bay and proceed to the Olema Campground which is a little farther down the coast and close to San Francisco. Luckily we have no idea what the road to Olema is like. It goes up and down and by all means with this incredible traffic from behind us and meeting us it turns out as the big adventure. After reaching Point Reyes we miss the entrance to the campground by the length of the rig. Since we cannot turn we have to back up against the traffic. Bea is stopping cars and I back up. Almost hitting a fire hydrant but no we come clear. The Olema Campground is beautifully treed and with 400 sites it is one of the bigger campgrounds. However it's only sparsely populated. We book in for 2 nights but decide to stay a 3rd night. There is plenty room for dogwalks too. A U.S. Postoffice and a grocery store is also available.


October 31
Today we go to San Francisco. U.S.Highway #1 runs from Olema down the coast and joins up with the Hwy 101 north of the Golden Gate Bridge. We travel without the trailer but Bea gets the creeps, because this is the narrowest and most dangerous road i have ever seen in my life. DON"T DRIVE IT WITH A TRAILER!!! The lanes are smaller then our truck is wide and the curves way up on the high cliffs have no rails. A moment of missing attention and you'll find yourself down below the cliffs. Trouble is, this is also the most scenic road I have ever seen. A rolling landscape shaped of dunes, with Eucalyptus trees in between. Little farms for vegetables can be seen down the road. So keeping you attention on the road and NOT on the nice blue way-down Pacific Ocean is not easy. The locals seem to use this road as a test drive to show their chauffeur-skills to out-of-state-drivers. The entire part of Hwy 1 is one endless slalom-drive and roller coaster. Most curves follow directly after each other and many have only straight parts in between not longer than our vehicle. 

Paradise for bird watching	Eucalyptus Trees	Stinson Beach

Down by the water we come to Stinson Beach, a beautiful little place with a very scenic main street and a true bird watchers paradise. 
We are caught by a steady stream of traffic racing towards the Golden Gate Bridge. Before entering the bridge we turn out to the right and go up to the Golden Gate Bridge Recreational Area. From a couple of vista points we can overlook the entire San Francisco Bay. Here, we have been standing once before, back in 1997.  The remains of old WW2 military batteries can be seen on top of Hawk Hill and down at the first turn-out directly over the bridge.
After having our lunch we go for the City. There is a $5.00 toll to pay when passing over the bridge. We enter the downtown over famous Lombard Street, then turn down to the water and the piers.

A beautiful park with palm trees attracts our attention. Through it we walk over to the piers. Looking over to Alcatraz, the known island where a U.S. penitentiary housed the most ruthless ciminals in history. Today Alcatraz is one of the big Touristattractions and you can ride over for a visit with one of the regular tourist shuttles. We recognize Fishermens Wharf from our 1997-stay. Fishermens Wharf is the other tourist attraction everyone has to visit when coming to San Francisco. We simply love to hang out in this mixture of a fairground, seaport and fishery harbor.