San Jose, CA
We finally made it to San Jose, staying with Brandon and Stephen on Brandon’s floor. Gonna try to get the car fixed in the morning, then maybe explore San Francisco.
Yes, it is three thirty a.m.
Orcas Island
Orcas Island, WA — Southern Oregon
Yesterday we explored Orcas Island, the most populous of the San Juan Islands between Seattle and Victoria, British Columbia. We drove up to Anacortes to take the ferry over. Berck spent the whole ferry ride with his face in the wind; it was a little too chilly for me.
We drove around to Moran State Park and drove to the top of Mt. Constitution, an impressive rise 2400 feet above Puget Sound. They say on a clear day you can see all the way to Mt. Rainier. It was clear where we are…the San Juan Islands get sun most of the year in contrast to dreary Seattle, but there were clouds covering the mainland’s coast.
Next we visited some waterfalls and then hiked around one of the lakes, pretty big lakes for an island. We drove back to the ferry dock and the only restaurant we’d seen all day. It was a packed dining room of the Orcas Hotel, full we discovered because Thursday was two-for-one night. They were full of reservations, but fortunately for us the bar was empty, though not for long. We enjoyed some delicious salmon and lamb and some local brews. Then we left and pulled the car around to take the next ferry back.
Except no one else was waiting. I’d read the ferry schedule wrong, looking at the Sat./Sun. section instead of Mon.-Fri. The next ferry scheduled was for 10:50 p.m., but that was only on Fridays. The last ferry had left 10 minutes earlier. We were stuck for the night. And our tent was set up in Jenifer’s backyard drying out, our sleeping bags in her guest room.
Fortunately, Jenifer had loaned us her info book on the islands, in which was listed every hotel and bed-n-breakfast on the island. I called the cheapest one ($70, yikes!) and got directions. The owner met us in the office (I’d talked to his son on the phone). He had just bought the place and was still giddy about it. There was only one other room taken, so he said, “Tell you what, just for fun I’ll give you one of the ocean view rooms for the price of the cheaper ones.” He even gave us a king bed. Ahhh… a bed.
The ocean view didn’t do us a whole lot of good because it was well past dark when we arrived, and we had to rise at 5:30 a.m. to make the 7 a.m. ferry. It was raining. We’ve been very lucky; it didn’t rain on us at all exploring Seattle or Orcas, just when we were driving.
After stopping by Jenifer’s house to pack up our stuff, we got back on the road. We’re racing the clock now, trying to get to San Jose tonight so that a guy in San Francisco can see if he can weld our cracked header pipe back together tomorrow. Otherwise, he’s not open until Tuesday.
So we’re on the way back now. We gave up on Vancouver. We’ll have to stop there when we move to Alaska, I guess.
We ran into nutso traffic at 2 p.m. around Portland that put us back some. It was raining, which may have had something to do with it. I’d hate to see the city at rush hour!
There’s something about Washington and Oregon drivers. They spread out over four lanes all going about five miles an hour over the speed limit. It drives Berck batty because he’s got to weave crazily around them to go faster than they are. “It’s not that they’re bad drivers; they just don’t care!” Maybe they need to drink more coffee.
It’s true about Seattle…every street corner has a Starbucks. And if there’s not one, there’s a Tully’s or a Seattle’s Best. I guess you’ve got to drink coffee to keep warm in the constant drizzle. We passed a Starbucks by the fishmarket that had a line going out the door and down the block, and as we walked down the street, we passed several people heading toward it saying things like, “Aw, man, look at the line! That’ll take all day!” I don’t know why they were so keen on that particular Starbucks…there were plenty a block away nearly empty. Maybe it was the historic first Starbucks or something?’d
Tacoma
Portland, OR — Tacoma, WA
On Tuesday we continued up the coast, cutting over to Portland, OR. There we parked near Powell’s Books and walked till we found a pub for some local brew and a burger (for Berck) and fish and chips (for me, but which even Berck admitted was tasty). Then it was on to explore the biggest bookstore in the world, both used and new books. We managed to escape with only two books latched onto us, primarily because we can’t afford to buy or carry anything, but mostly because our 90 min parking meter was up.
Next we drove straight to Tacoma, WA to stay with Spirit and Jenifer Meller (except Spirit is gone this week). They live on an Air Force base, so getting on is a little tricky these days. First you have to drive through an obstacle course of cement barriers to get to the front gate. Then we had to park in the visitor center parking lot and wait for Jenifer to arrive (she got off at 5 pm, and we arrived about then, so that worked out well). Then we had to go in and all show the soldier inside our ID’s and proof of insurance for the car. He gave us little printed-out vouchers to get us in the base on our own for the next three days. Every time we enter we have to hand our vouchers and driver’s licenses to the guy with the M-16 guarding the gate.
We went out to dinner with Jenifer that night at a great pizza place…chicken cashew pizza, mmmm. The next morning Berck did some research online to figure out what to do with the car, and we got some laundry done. Then we headed out to explore Seattle, but Berck said he would write about that.
Tacoma
Tacoma, WA
We’re in Tacoma, WA just south of Seattle staying with Spirit and Jenifer Meller, although Spirit is TDY this week, so we missed him. They are moving to Las Vegas in about a month, so we got here at the right time. They’ve sold their guest bed, but they have a lovely dry guest room in which we can roll out our sleeping pads.
We got lucky yesterday and drove into the area with a shining sun and a clear day…clear enough to see Mt. Rainer! Today it’s raining, and it’s supposed to keep doing that all week.
We haven’t done a whole lot since leaving Lake Arrowhead except driving the coast, first on California 1 and then US 101, and looking for campgrounds. We hope to do some exploring of Seattle today, but first we’ve got to wait for our clothes to dry. Pants tend to get filthy when you’re camping in mud.
The trek north
Lake Arrowhead, CA — Oregon Coast
Today is March 2nd, as opposed to March 3 (as I mistakenly wrote in the gas log) or February 31, as Berck’s watch thinks.
I haven’t journaled much because we’ve been heading up the left coast, generally a windy way. I can’t type very well when it’s curvy because the laptop flies out of my lap. But now we’re heading inland into Oregon, and the road is a much straighter.
We just stopped at a McDonald’s to use the bathroom. My policy is usually that I’ve eaten a bunch of McDonald’s hamburgers without having used their toilets, so I’m justified in using their toilets without buying their hamburgers. Except that I think we’re probably about even now. I still might have felt fine about ducking in and back out, but there was NO ONE at the counter, and the cashier greeted me when I walked in. It’s now a little past noon, and there’s a line. Ah well. But I felt like some french fries, so I ordered a small fry, despite the fact that there was none listed on the menu, only a “MEDIUM” for $1.69. “One dollar,” said the cashier. When my order came up, someone yelled, “One Value Fry!” I figured that was me. It wasn’t very small. Berck fussed at me for spending money at “that place.” “We could have stopped at Dairy Queen and gotten a Blizzard!” Berck likes the idea of public restrooms you pay for, like they have in Europe. I guess paying 25 cents is better than a dollar or two. But that’s the way we do it in this country.
We left Lake Arrowhead and had lunch with Berck’s dad where he works in Apple Valley. Then we headed north across the high desert, then west over a ridge of thousands of windmills, through mountains that looked like pictures of New Zealand, into a flat valley full of almond trees in bloom, and over a windy road into some high, dry hills.
By then it was time to find a place to pitch our tent, so we headed for the nearest National Forest. We turned off the highway onto a paved road with grass growing in the cracks. That became a dirt road with a notice, “NOT ADVISABLE IN WET WEATHER.” Fortunately, the road was good and eventually brought us to a campground. We couldn’t figure out how much to pay or where to get a “Forest Adventure Pass” that we weren’t supposed to park without. So we camped for free. Everything was soaked from the storms that week, but somehow we got a fire going hot enough to heat up a can of chili we found in the trunk.
The next morning we drove through what looked like Wales to me, the Lake District to Berck, though we both agreed the grassy hills needed more stone walls. California has some beautiful countryside.
We finally made it to the coast and started up California 1. We should have timed our drive up the coast in the middle of the week…it was pretty full of weekend riders.
The noise Berck worried about until the folks in Grand Junction told him it was probably “valve noise” suddenly got worse. In fact, it got REALLY loud. We were worried we weren’t going to make it to San Jose. Berck pulled off at one of the few gas stations along the route and opened the hood. “The only thing it could possibly be besides a valve blowing is exhaust noise,” he said. Sure enough, one of the header pipes was cracked. We were quite relieved to have such a minor thing go wrong, but our relief turned to headaches from the noise and exhaust coming straight into the cabin when we had the vent on. Berck put some epoxy on the crack yesterday. I think it helped a lot, but he has his doubts.
We called up Brandon Downey in San Jose as we approached, but he called us back to tell us he was in Seattle for the weekend. Oops. We’ll visit him when we head back down.
So we drove California 35, which is an amazing one-lane road that follows the ridge separating the Bay Area from the Pacific. Then we headed for the nearest campground, a beach site in Half Moon Bay. It was closed. ARGH! We stopped at a taqueria for some super quesadillas and Mexican Coke for the first food we’d consumed since the Ultimate Cheeseburgers at the Jack-in-the-Box we’d visited for breakfast. Then we headed through the twilight, San Francisco, and the Golden Gate Bridge to the next nearest campground. This was in a labyrinth of a park on the north end of the bridge where it took us a good half hour to just find the closed visitor center. There was also a campground alright, but it was quite a walk away from the parking lot, which warned us not to park overnight without a permit. Well, how the heck do you get such a permit?? We gave up and headed further north to China Camp State Park. The weather was lovely, it was pitch black, and we were exhausted, so we didn’t even bother pitching the tent and simply slept out beneath the waxing moon.
In the morning we cut our way through the rolling hills separating us from the coast, then drove 1 until its end joining US 101, found a state park to camp, and then headed up the road a few miles to the first town we’d hit in hours. Berck screeched to a stop in front of a trattoria and tried to order gnocchi, but they were out, so he settled for raveoli. I had a burger, and we split a pitcher of Fat Tire. Then we headed back to the state park only to find that the campground was “CLOSED FOR SEASON.” Now what?? So we drove north until we got to the next state park campground which was fortunately open. By now it was completely dark and raining, but with the help of the headlights, we managed to get the tent up without getting too wet. The bathrooms had coin operated showers, which almost made up for the $13 a night fee, but the power went out in the night, so no showers in the morning (which Berck discovered AFTER taking all his clothes off). We also discovered that we were camped in a redwood forest. Pretty cool.
It started raining again right before we got up, so a rather wet rain tarp went into the tent bag. Fortunately, the weather cleared up for a beautiful day of driving up the Oregon coast. We camped at a state park within sound of the surf and surrounded by moss covered conifers. Berck wanted to spring the four bucks it would take to get a bundle of dry firewood, but I told him I could gather enough for a couple hot cans of chili. A couple hours, an empty lighter fluid can, every bit of scrap paper in the car, and a lot of lungwork later, we finally got my pile of soggy (not wet, soggy) pine branches to ignite. And hot chili we did have.
It’s weird to be so far north but not cold. In the desert on the Mexico border, our drinking water would freeze at night. But up here in the Northwest, near the border with Canada, it gets chilly but not very cold. Just rainy.
On Tuesday morning we had showers with unlimited HOT water, which made the $13 fee worth it. Well, it was for me anyway; Berck says he had lukewarm squirts (I guess I used it all up).