Allspice Westward

 12/31- Scotia CA    We started the day out in the fog. It might have been better if it had stayed foggy at least for the beginning of the day. As we drove along on this twisting mountain road we found that we were in a different climate. Gone was the semi-arid desert of yesterday. Once we climbed over the pass the climate became very wet. The trees were covered with lichens and moss. I mean all the branches were covered with this pale green lichen. It was almost the same as Spanish moss. It was almost like they had leaves.      We dipped down into some of these deep river valleys which were so dark it was a wonder the sun shone at all. The redwoods just blocked out all the light. Amazingly we saw people living in these deep dark hollows. That’s where the fog would have been nice because where there were people there was junk. There was a couple mile stretch that had more junk cars and trash than most dumps. Still it was amazing to see someone eking out an ...

 12/30- Willits CA    We wove dove twisted climbed spun dipped rose twirled on the drive today. We shot down out of Paradise and cruised across the Sacramento Valley. It is very flat and the road goes mostly straight just dodging a few river beds. We went right by the Sutter Mountain range which is the smallest mountain range in the world. It pretty much consists of three peaks but they jut up out of the valley floor to an impressive height. Interestingly they are privately owned and while they do allow hiking you need to have a reservation and they only allow so many people at a time.     Once we hit the coastal range we did our best imitation of a top, spinning this and that as the road wound its way up and over the pass. We passed along the shore of a large lake called Clear Lake. We drove along the shore for over 20 miles.      The scenery is kind of all the same but it is interesting nonetheless. It is all tall and steep rolling hills co...

 12/29- Chico CA    The sun made an unexpected appearance today and the temps immediately improved to the high 60’s. We have been walking in several of the many parks that exist here. These parks invariably have baseball diamonds in them. They sometimes have several. Baseball is big time here and Chico has produced major league players. Right now the fields are empty but baseball starts in about a month in February. We went into Dicks and saw an impressive amount of baseball gear being sold. There is way more gear than would be sold in Vt.      A issue I have noticed around town, and it’s hard to miss, is homelessness. There are many homeless people here. I guess if you have to be homeless this climate is probably a good place. You see people everywhere. I saw someone sleeping under the streetlight in a parking lot. The city occasionally makes sweeps and pushes them out to somewhere else. It’s hard to imagine where else they would go. At least it’s warm eno...

 12/28- Chico CA    The rain let up a bit this afternoon and gave us a chance to get outside for a minute. We visited A’s mom and then came back and decided to go hear some live music.     We left for the first bar which was called the Barn. That is pretty much what it is. It’s a large post and beam structure with a tin roof. The band sets up at one end and they have tables and heaters all through this big open space. One thing that I really like about this is that first the band starts at 5 and runs till 7:30. This is perfect for us geezers. The other is that a lot of people bring their kids. They do serve beer but there are many families here trashing their kids hearing. The band was a little loud and the acoustics were very poor. Usually they have all the doors open and most of this takes place outside.     The next bar was called the Common. The band here was again forced to play inside in a space that couldn’t really accommodate the numb...

 12/27- Chico CA   The Pacific Ocean has decided to keep splashing its way inland. The rain and fog continued all day today. At least it is relatively warm (at least to us). Everyone around here is complaining about the cold. While we find it chilly 50 is better than 10 degrees.      We drove down the hill to Chico today to stay at A’ s little sister’s house. We will be here for a couple of days to help out with A’s mom. In case you’ve been wondering Chico is about 20 miles down the canyon from Paradise. We braved the dense fog this morning which cleared near the bottom of the skyway.     We just hung out inside for most of the day. The rain did let up for a couple of seconds to allow for a quick walk.     Chico is busier than the last time we were here and growing all the time. A field next to the facility was pasture and now it is close to 300 condos. This is in the middle of the Sacramento Valley which is a huge flat area between two ...

 12/26- Paradise CA    The atmospheric river was in full effect today. It rained or felt like rain all day. A fog descended over the town so thick it made driving anywhere a challenge. Even with the rain and fog though the relative humidity was still only 80%.     We just sort of lazed around the house all day and read. We tried to go out to visit a museum which had artifacts from the fire including the broken hook which started it all. We were blocked at every turn as many of the stores up here were still closed for Christmas. We tried to drive around a bit but the fog drove us back and we eventually capitulated to the couch.      The fog lifted somewhat late in the afternoon so we hopped in the car and drove down to Chico. Here we met up with Alayne’s other sister at the big Sierra Nevada brewery. We had a nice meal and some fine conversation before heading back up the Skyway to Paradise. I always love saying that- go up the skyway to parad...

 12/25- Paradise CA    I hope everyone had a great Christmas and that Santa brought you some fine presents. We just spent the day hanging out here and then heading down to Chico for another family dinner.      I want to thank all my faithful readers for following along. We hope to get on the road again sometime next week.      Peace

 12/24- Paradise CA   It was a long day of over eating and over drinking with family. I was up for my middle of the night bathroom break when I glanced out the window. The motion light had come on and I saw an Amazon truck pull into the driveway. As it was closer to morning than night I was curious about the late night delivery. Then the side door opened and out popped a rather rotund individual who quickly strode towards the house. I started towards the stairs to head them off before he could wake up the rest of the house.      When I got to the top of the stairs I was shocked to see he was already inside and fiddling around the tree. I froze as I watched him remove some packages from his Walmart shopping bag and lay them around the Christmas tree. What the hell is going on !!    He then turned and headed for the kitchen. Along the way he reached into the cookie jar and filched a cookie.  I got a better look at him as he opened the fridge. He loo...

 12/23- Paradise CA    I headed out of town on a road trip to Sacramento. I needed to bring the rv in to Mercedes for some service work. We thought about doing the service work before we left but the nearest Mercedes dealer is in Albany. When we bought the rv I had no idea of what its service record was so I figured we could drive out to here and get it done. The Mercedes dealer in Chico wouldn’t deal with our van so I called one up in Sacramento who would. Sacramento is about a hour and half drive and away I went.     This was quite the experience for me as this is a luxury car dealer. The rv was getting an oil change and a new fuel filter and I thought they might offer me a mani pedi while I waited. I had planned on changing the transmission fluid but when we checked the service  record it showed it had been changed relatively recently. That alone saved me $1000. It’s quite expensive going to the dealer for this but without the space to work I didn’t...

 12/22- Paradise CA    Daylight definitely came earlier this morning. I think it was something like 4 minutes sooner but I’ll take it. It was another cloudy and rainy day as the atmospheric river tried to pour it on us. With not a great deal to do we took off and headed down to Chico. Amazingly the clouds lifted a bit and the sky brightened even if the sun did not actually shine through.     The drive down the Skyway has always been a trip and this time the clouds retreated enough to be able to see down into the canyon. We have driven this road many times and each time I get mesmerized by the view. The canyon is not as deep as the Grand Canyon but to an eastener like me it still commands the view.     You probably have heard about the big fire here in Paradise six years ago but they had a bunch of fires near here this year. Bidwell Park which was a popular hiking destination had a major fire which was caused by some guy pushing his car off a ...

 12/21- Paradise CA    Well Happy Solstice. It is all uphill from here. It was a rainy day all day so we borrowed a car and drove down into Chico to do some more visiting. The weather for the next week is not especially appealing as it calls for rain almost every day. This is what you get on the western slope of the mountains. It was an interesting sight as we drove down the Skyway to be above the clouds. The whole valley was shrouded in a thick cloud bank and this is a large valley. It wasn’t that thick down in Chico but it made everything a misty.     Chico is now a city. When we first started coming here you could convince yourself that while it wasn’t a small town it had the feel of a smaller community. Now there is tons of traffic and megastores upon megastores. While it used to be a younger community what with the college here it feels, to me at least, that it has grown older and less carefree.     Christmas is closing in on us and at l...

 12/20 - Paradise CA    We hung out and visited with Alayne’s sister and her husband. We took a walk through Paradise and you could still see damage from the fire 6 years ago. What was once a heavily forested community is now a barren and raw place. It is coming back though. There have been 2600 new homes built since the fire and new businesses are popping up every day. It’ll be a long time for it to get back to the way it was but these are a very determined people.      In the evening we went down to the old folks home for their annual Christmas dinner and to visit with A’s mom. There was quite the traffic jam of walkers and wheel chairs trying to get in. It was fun and a good meal and everyone was in the Christmas spirit.     We will be staying here through Christmas and then some. We talked about taking a side trip up to Oregon but the weather here is turning foul. There is a 90% chance of rain every day next week as an atmospheric river m...

 12/18- Pinnacles National Park     Today was an amazing day! We left on a hike this morning that was full of promise and it did not disappoint. It was a long 2 miles of flat ground to get from the campsite to the trail head. From there it went up, passing through groves of huge live oaks as we climbed up the canyon. We followed a stream bed for a while before the mountain goat path began. Then it started winding through these huge boulders as we climbed higher and higher. The drop off off the trail is steep and deep and we even passed through a tunnel. The pinnacles soared above and around us making us feel quite puny. We then came to a cave section where the trail went into a cave formed by these house sized boulders. It was cool and dark but the path was well marked out. There were places where I had to get on my hands and knees to crawl through. This went winding on for about a half mile before we finally came out to gorgeous little lake.  After a nice lunch...

  12/17- Pinnacles National Park        We have no internet tonight so I will download this as soon as I can get signal.       It was a short drive today of only 30 miles. As we were driving through town yesterday we saw signs for this national park    and we thought we would check it out.       It’s a very nice park with some impressive scenery. We hiked up a trail that reminded me of the Grand Canyon. The trail was carved into the side of the hill. At least the drop off off the edge was only 1000 ft instead of the 5000 ft of the Grand Canyon. The Pinnacles are a series of rocks that jut up out of the landscape. There are caves and balconies and beautiful canyon views.        This is also one of the view places with nesting condors. These are huge birds that can have a wingspan of ten feet. They also can fly as high as 15000 feet. They are bringing them back from near extinction and this is o...

 12/16- San Lorenzo Park, King City CA    I had a very restless time last night. We were camped literally seaside. The van shuddered from the crash of the surf. I know folks think that the sound of waves breaking is relaxing. I did too , that is until I became a sailor. Hearing breaking waves on your sailboat means danger is near as land is the enemy. It turns out that last night was a full moon and so the high tide was also a king tide and it brought the waves that much closer to us. Fortunately we had about 15 yards of parking lot before the waves washed over us. This morning, at high tide, the waves were crashing onto the rocks at the edge of the parking lot. So needless to say with the sound of the waves that close and that loud I didn’t get a lot of sleep.      I was getting tired of some of these mountain roads in my top heavy motor home so we opted to take the 101 the whole way today. We had picked a spot about 200 miles away to spend the night. This...

 12/15- Hodson Beach, Ventura CA    We headed further down the coast this morning navigating a bit of fog on the road. We went down another of these winding narrow steep roads. There were some scary parts to this one. In particular there was one bridge we went over that didn’t have a bottom underneath it. We survived only to be thrust into the traffic of Santa Barbara. The price of gas around here is astronomical but it really doesn’t seem to phase anybody. We just paid $7 / gal for diesel and at many of the stations diesel is cheaper than gas.     We arrived at the Channel Islands Maritime Museum in Oxnard where we met up with our old dear friend the Mystic Whaler. This is the new home port of the Whaler and we met and chatted with her new captain Christine. They have done a lot of work to the boat getting it ready to do some educational sailing. It was great to get back on board on walk the deck again.      We left there for our campground ...

 12/14- Morro Bay CA    We woke up to rain and howling wind. I’m thinking what’s the deal here. This is supposed to be sunny Southern California. Apparently it does occasionally rain here though by noon the sun was out and the skies clear.     We had planned a lay day here just to take a break from moving. This is a nice place to do it. We went for several walks on the beach, one at high tide and one at low. The beach is huge. Once you get out of the dunes it’s probably 150 yards to the water at low tide and I suspect it is not very deep just off the beach. It’s wide and flat and very few rocks or shells. The tide is only 6 feet but at high tide it’s probably only 10 yards to the water.     We watched some sea otters playing around as well as some noisy sea lions. We were kind of surprised to see pelicans. We did see a group of white pelicans as they were fishing in the weeds just off the shore.     This has been a good place t...

 12/13- Morro Bay CA    We dawdled this morning because we really didn’t have far to go. The road was another of these California roads that wind up and over a mountain range. As per usual this one was winding steep and narrow. The speed limit on these roads is a joke at 55mph. I struggle to do 40 in most places as the rv is a little top heavy and around some of these corners with no guard rails and steep drop offs it can be scary.      It just seemed that these mountain ranges would never end. We would get to the top of one and expect to see the ocean but all we would see is another mountain range. It just seemed endless. In fact we didn’t see the ocean until we parked the rv. There was the Pacific Ocean.    We are in Morro Bay which is famous for this monstrous rock that sits in the middle of the bay. It used to be 1/3 larger but they kept quarrying it to build stuff. It is several hundred feet high and is now protected. It is also moving north ...

 12/12- Coalinga CA   Isn’t that a cool name? Coalinga, it just rolls off the tongue. It’s a relatively small town in the center of California. Almond trees prevail here as one of the big crops. Coming up I5 we are passing through the breadbasket of America. There are almond trees and avocados and not to mention grapes. It’s just fields and fields of crops.     We stopped this morning on the way out at the Mesquite Dunes site. You can walk out onto this extensive area of sand dunes. The sand is very fine but this morning it was also quite cold.     So now we headed back out of the hole we found ourselves in. From 200 ft below sea level we had to get to 4500 ft in under 20 miles. The old rv chugged along and made it to the top. Now we had to go down again. This was an interesting ride as it was steep winding with tight turns no guard rails and very steep drop offs. We must have taken a 1/2” off our brakes. We continued to go over a series of mounta...

 12/11- Death Valley CA    Whoops I’ve been getting my dates mixed up again. It’s hard to remember what day of the week it is especially when we keep hopping across time zones. I think I’ve got it figured. Today is Saturday right?     I’m thinking I might know where my Needles recollection came from. I think it’s from Hunter Thompson’s book, Fear and Loathing.  It feels like we followed his path on one of his trips to Las Vegas. I think we may have been considerably more sober. The road we took went from LA to Vegas. Fortunately we turned off before we were tempted to gamble away the family fortune.     We started out today at 500 feet then went up to around 4000 feet above sea level only to end up at 280 feet below sea level. That’s quite a ride. We went from 4000 ft to 200 below in the space of 20 miles. Again quite the ride.      The scenery was positively breathtaking. There aren’t enough adequate words to describe this. We...

 12/10- Needles CA    We slept in this morning because the rv was a ball of ice. I felt bad for some of our neighbors. It seems that quite a few people were camping in their cars or vans. I heard plenty of idling motors this morning. We weren’t too bad but I did have to scrape ice off the windshield. As a spoiler alert it appears at least for now that nothing was damaged in our water system. The temps were in the teens when we got up.    We have managed in the last couple of days to see more wildlife than the whole rest of the trip. We saw some wild burros a couple of days ago and some elk yesterday. Most of the wildlife we’ve seen previously has been the mangled carcasses spread all over the highway.    The rv park we were headed for didn’t want us there too much before 2pm. Again we forgot that the time changed on the CA border and we are now on Pacific time. We stopped in Kingman and went out for lunch to kill some time.      We have ...

 12/9- Grand Canyon National Park     We departed this morning while the sun was just breaching the horizon. We wanted to get an early jump to spend more time in the park. As this was my first time here the anticipation was building as we approached. After parking and checking in etc etc we finally walked over to the rim. If you have ever been here then you know just how spectacular it is. Words are inadequate to describe the wonder.      The thing that got me though is the steepness and how close to edge you are. I am nervous around heights. I can usually force myself to handle it but it makes me uncomfortable. Just watching people clamber over railings and lean over precipices makes me cringe. It amazing to me that there aren’t all kinds of guard rails and stuff to keep people back from the edge.    Anyway we hiked around a bit on the trail around the rim and then had lunch. After lunch we went to hike down the trail that leads to the botto...

 12/8- Winslow AZ   We left this morning before the sun made its daily appearance. For an early Sunday morning the traffic was pretty heavy as we cruised down I40. We drove through some spectacular rock formations as the road squiggled through a bunch of canyons and mesa.  I forgot to mention yesterday we passed another time change. We are now in mountain time. At least this time we were prepared and figured that in to our plans. Arizona doesn’t do daylight savings but it didn’t make any difference as we were already on standard time.     As we came over the crest of one of the many ravines I looked out and you could see a line of semis going off in the distance. I imagined that it was like an old fashioned wagon train with the Conestoga wagons heading west. You could almost see the horses pulling the wagons along.     We crossed over the continental divide today. It’s all downhill to the Pacific now.     We decided to take a d...

 12/7- Albuquerque NM   We cast off this morning around 7:30 and sailed down the river of I40. We were close hauled as the wind was southwest at 10-15. The scenery was pretty as it was big open vistas of grassy farmland. Then the fog rolled in. I was amazed that there could be fog in New Mexico as you need water for fog. Apparently not I found out as this was a nice thick blanket that enshrouded the land as far as we could see. This turned out to not be very far. Visibility was about a quarter mile and at 70mph that was a bit scary. It turns out it was a huge cloud that just descended on the land. Probably something to do with our elevation which was now 4000 ft.      We eventually sailed clear and the sky turned a bluebird shade of blue. The vistas were amazing as we traveled through these arroyos. Vast views of mesquite and cacti to the horizon. Up and down and twisting through these mesas it was just gorgeous.     We shot through Albuquerque an...

 12/6- Amarillo Texas    The route we took today was some nice easy driving. The road was straight and there were very few cars or trucks out. It was divided highway most of the way but it still went through towns. One thing though there are occasional stop signs on this road. Not traffic lights but stop signs. This is interesting when you come over a hill at 70 mph to find a stop sign just ahead.     The other thing we noticed about Oklahoma roads is the amount of trash along side them. It’s almost as if people were dumping their trash bags while driving down the road. It was quite disturbing. It wasn’t just a single spot but all the roads we drove had trash lining them.    This is cow country now. We saw all kinds of big ranches with cows spread all over. One sign we saw said this is cow country you SOB eat beef!    It’s also oil country. We began to spot the familiar pecking birds of oil wells. Diesel here is pretty cheap for that rea...

 12/5- Ardmore, Oklahoma     On the way out of town we found all of the town we were looking for on the way in. This was a day of non highway driving. Well sort of , we hoped onto US 70 and it took forever to get out of Hot Springs. Who would have thought it was such a spread out place.      The road switched between divided highway to three lanes to a two lane road. The speed limit was 65 to 70 on most of it. As we had a bit of cross breeze so doing 65 was pretty much out of the question.     In Western Arkansas we drove through miles of scrub pine forests. It was quite beautiful to crown the top of a hill and see pine trees forever. We slowly, if you ask the people behind me, made are way down out of the Quachita Mountains. These are rolling hills that made me feel like I was riding a roller coaster. They gradually flattened out as we made our way across southern Oklahoma. We began to see larger and larger ranches and fewer trees. This...

 12/4- Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas     Today was our first non driving day. We lazed around in the morning and I let Alayne sleep until 8am. There is a series of hiking trails that we wanted to check out. The trail started out nice but quickly became very steep. Fortunately it was not very long and we ended up at the bottom of this tall tower. It did have an elevator and even that was a little scary as there were all kinds of warnings posted inside about what to do when the elevator failed. Also it was on the outside of the tower with a window which was nerve wracking for me. The view was impressive as you can imagine it being 200 feet in the air on the top of a mountain. I was glad we went up but I was also damn glad to get down.     We learned a lot about the history of this area that I never knew. It was a huge resort area that attracted all kinds of famous people. Apparently Bill Clinton grew up here. Baseball teams trained here and the maf...

 12/3- Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas     It was considerably lighter out this morning when we left. I think it is because we are at the far eastern edge of the time zone. Also the further south we go the days get naturally longer. Anyway we were on the road early again. It was just us and the truckers on the highway this morning. It’s amazing to see all of the freight moving by truck. We saw tons of Amazon trucks carrying your Christmas presents. There are all kinds of interesting things being shipped by truck. We saw a helicopter, several houses, windmill blades and a variety manufacturing equipment.     As we rolled along we came down out of the hills of Tennessee and onto the flat prairie like plain of western Tennessee. The road went straight and flat for about a hundred miles. After navigating around Memphis we crossed the Mississippi River. Arkansas turned out to be flat as some folks think the earth is. It did not impress a great deal. The...

 12/2- Waverly TN    Well this morning we crossed into Central time. We weren’t expecting it to be this close and it screwed us up all day. It’s kind of like going on daylight savings time your internal clock gets a little unwound.     The main problem we realized right away was we were going to get to our destination before 10am. We left the Cracker Barrel at 7 not recognizing the fact that 10 miles down the road it became 6am. We still traveled 250 miles but it was all before noon.     At one point I decided that driving I-40 was getting tedious so we pulled off at a random exit and just found a nice back road that pretty much paralleled the interstate. Google was sent into a tizzy as she kept trying to get us back on I40 but we ignored her suggestions. I think she was losing her patience with us as she sounded more and more irritable as our rebellion prolonged.    We pulled into a nice little campground just off the highway. It i...

 12/1- Harriman TN    We took our time leaving this morning mostly because the windshield didn’t need to be scraped. It was a balmy 29 so almost a heat wave. I shouldn’t complain you people on boats are probably freezing like I was last year. Now I have a furnace!!    Anyway we headed down Rt 81 again. We were tempted to detour to the Blue Ridge Parkway but they had ice warnings out and some sections were to be closed. We decided on discretion.     The highway was still a very pretty ride. The road wound through steep mountain sides and deep dark valleys. We definitely saw some cold dark hollers in them hills. It’s still a little depressing with the trees all bare. It would be great to see this place when it was all green and full of life. At least now you can see a little more. I always liked the spring and fall at home because you can see the lay of the land through the trees.      Back on the road traffic was not quite as bad as ...