December 18, 2005 at 5:35 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
This has to be the worst weather we have encountered since we left Jackson Center, OH in early October. Gusty strong winds, frequent rain, 50s — a real blustery damp day, not the sort of weather one associates with coastal southern California.
But they do get weather here, and there wasn’t much to do about it but go ahead and investigate Hearst Castle as planned. The conditions made a challenging photographic subject even more difficult. They don’t allow any sort of flash photography inside the buildings, and all the rooms are dimly lit to preserve the art inside. I had to crank the camera’s ISO up to 1600 to get anything at all, and most of the photos were hopeless. I even got a reprimand from the tour guide for the Nikon’s “AF assist” light, which briefly illuminates the subject to help the autofocus system, so that feature got shut off, too.
Outside, the same prohibition on flashes seems to apply (although you would think the marble statues wouldn’t care if they can take the direct sunlight), and the whipping wind, rain, and fog pretty much wiped out all photo opportunities. The photo above is of the heated outdoor “Neptune pool” which was rebuilt twice as Hearst enlarged it. Believe it or not, this is the best shot I got all day.
Emma survived the 1 hr, 45 minute house tour fairly well, but with that length (and at $20 per adult) we decided one was enough for our family. We had an expensive set of hamburgers made from former 4-legged residents of the Hearst ranch ($25 with drinks and fries), saw the movie, toured the exhibits, and fled. I suspect it’s a nicer trip on a sunny day, but today the lack of central heating in much of the Visitor’s Center and the house itself was painfully apparent. It felt like visiting the dungeons of some European castle.
The sea is stormy, exciting, and worth watching today, but now that dark has fallen we are thinking about where we will head next. Forecasts claim we will have better weather tomorrow.
December 18, 2005 at 7:45 am · Filed under FAQs
I’m glad we did take a night at a downtown hotel in San Francisco, but I doubt we’ll do it too much on this trip. The rate looked OK when we booked it: $109 per night. By comparison, the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero down the street was $265. So I thought, “Hey, that’s a good deal for downtown!”
But let’s see how that added up:
base rate $109.00
parking $36.0 (yikes!)
tax on parking $5.04 (they tax parking here?)
tax on hotel $15.26
TOTAL $165.30
Plus the optional extras, which I avoided:
— T-Mobile Hotspot Internet access for one day $9.99 (I picked up a signal from the Holiday Inn across the street, which gives guests free access for a day)
— Calistoga spring water in room $4.50 (Eleanor, put down that bottle!)
— And heaven help you if you make a long-distance call on the room phone.
At that rate, our 9 weeks of travel so far (not counting our week in Vermont) would have cost $10,413.90. Even at the national average or $85 per night, it would have been $5,355. We haven’t spent anywhere near that on lodging, with the Airstream, even counting the gas to haul it around.
People ask us about budgeting, but nobody wants to come right out and ask us what this trip is costing. To tell the truth, I don’t really know yet. I haven’t tallied it up, but I do know that it is less than it cost us to stay home. Our increased expenses (campsites, extra fuel, cell phones, etc) are more than compensated by the decreased expenses (no mortgage, real estate taxes, winter heating bill, utilities, ec). But we’ll have to watch it on the hotel splurges, that’s for certain!
December 17, 2005 at 6:23 pm · Filed under Places to go
We’ve been driving coastal Route 1 south from Santa Cruz and it just keeps getting better. I have tons of pictures but for now I’ll just post a few and try to get a new photo album up in the next few days.
Our progress has been deliberately slow. Route 1 is a road to be savored. There are pullouts every mile or so, and nearly every one offers spectacular views to the Pacific Ocean on one side, and the hills rising on the other.
Somewhere south of Big Sur we pulled over and spotted a flock of six condors hovering in the breeze. These enormous birds were nearly extinct at one time, but they are recovering. What an impressive sight to see a condor, with a wingspan bigger than you are, swooping right over your head!
Last night we camped at the Kirk Creek National Forest Service campground, which is part of the Los Padres National Forest. (No hookups, questionable water, $20 per night.) This spectacular campground sits atop a bluff overlooking the ocean, and there are wonderful trails down to the sea. From our campsite we could hear the thudding of huge waves breaking on the rocks. I wish it had been warm enough to sleep with the windows open.
Hunting for interesting rocks near our campsite, Eleanor and Emma discovered opal. Yes, opal. We are not sure yet if it occurs naturally in this area or if someone simply left bits of a larger one there, but we found about 1/4 lb of it in small fragments, ranging in color from nearly white to black-blue. We have saved the bits and plan to mail a few to Emma’s grandparents for polishing.
This morning, the day became overcast (but still 60 degrees), and the wind picked up. We made fewer stops along the coast but when we spotted elephant seals on the beach, we had to take a look.
It turns out that there’s a stretch of coastline just north of San Simeon where another endangered creature, the elephant seal, has been visiting annually for the past 12 years. They come to mate and give birth, all the way from their summer home in the Aleutian Islands. “Friends of the Elephant Seal”, a local group, act as docents and were standing nearby in blue jackets to help educate us about these fascinating animals.
The seals get up to 5,000 lbs. The beach was mostly filled with young males, who arrive a few weeks before the big guys arrive. When the big males show up, they battle for bits of the beach (mostly by bellowing) and then gather a harem of 30-40 already-pregnant females. The females give live birth on the beach, nurse the pup for 28 days, and then they are free to mate with the male. If the pup has gained enough weight (200 lbs!) it will teach itself how to swim and fish. Otherwise, tough luck.
An elephant seal can swim to 5,000 feet below the sea! It has super-oxygenated blood (and a lot of it) and some other tricks to allow it to avoid breathing for hours. We learned all this and more in a 30 minute visit, while the elephant seals snoozed and bellowed on the sand just a few feet away.
The rest of the day was spent running errands in the cute little town of Cambria, CA, just a couple of miles south of Hearst Castle. We needed everything: post office, ATM, propane, gas, water, dump station, and groceries. By the time we finished all that, the sun was setting and it was time to get back to our campsite at San Simeon State Park. We’ll spend tomorrow at Hearst Castle and then head further south on Monday.
December 16, 2005 at 7:58 am · Filed under Uncategorized
What a great town for street hiking, eating, and photography — three of my favorite things. I couldn’t wait to get everyone out of the hotel and on the street. I was up early, the rest of the gang was not …
When we finally did get out, Emma was interested in the “F” line historic streetcars, so we hopped on one of the 1940s green-and-white PCC cars (originally from Philadelphia) and rode down The Embarcadero.
The F line swings around the waterfront on The Embarcadero and then down Market Street into the heart of the SF business district. We got off at Powell Street, where the cable cars terminate, and walked north (uphill) a dozen blocks, taking in the sights.
A stop at the Westin St Francis hotel’s elaborate gingerbread house was a hit with Emma, but it made us all hungry for breakfast.
So, a few blocks later, on the downside of the hill we stopped at a small Chinese restaurant and bought 3 large pieces of dim sum for breakfast. Emma liked the deep-fried bun with ham in it (not sure of the proper name), Eleanor liked the sesame lotus bun with sweet bean paste (sort of like a filled doughnut), and I liked the translucent potsticker with cabbage and pork. We munched and walked down to our hotel, 24 blocks in all.
After checking out of the hotel, we headed the to streetcars again, this time to catch one of the orange “Peter Witt” cars from Milan Italy. These feature gorgeous wood interiors and signs in Italian. (“Vietato sputare” was one.) Emma was hoping they’d be more rickety than the PCC cars, but the ride was just as smooth.
We got off the streetcar a bit earlier this time, so that we could hike the famed stairs to Coit Tower, on the bay side. Toward the top of the stairs there is a spot where two hundred wild parakeets live in the trees. I got some good shots of them eating berries, and a local commented that I had been lucky enough to get closer to the birds than anyone he had ever seen.
The views from Coit Tower were, as always, spectacular. I can’t imagine a bad view, unless the visibility was zero in fog. (This time of year there’s less fog than in the summer.) And the entire Telegraph Hill residential area that surrounds the tower is interesting to browse.
After hiking down the west side from Coit Tower, we turned south and headed for Chinatown. I wanted to revisit a place I’d had lunch with my friend Captain Mikey a few years ago: Yee’s. It’s one of those places where the cooked chickens hang in the window, the clientele is almost entirely Chinese, and a row of old men stand behind the counter with cleavers, whacking pieces of poultry for the 3 o’clock buffet. Perfect.
The lunches were marvelous and enormous (enough for leftovers), the atmosphere was friendly, and lunch was just $15 for all three of us. We saved a little room in our stomachs so we could walk one block up hill to an Italian gelato shop. Lemon for me, green tea flavor for Eleanor, and a lemon cone for Emma.
Browsing San Francisco by foot is the best way to see the bulk of town. The hills offer remarkable views that continually surprise. Later, you can drive or bicycle over the Golden Gate bridge, Golden Gate Park, and other great spots. But from the hills, you can see it all and really get a sense of what San Francisco is all about.
We wrapped up our afternoon with a walk over to the Fisherman’s Wharf piers. This part of town is very touristy, but the sea lions and waterfront scenery are still worth a look. Plus, Pier 39 offers some of the best views of San Francisco in the late afternoon.
Once the sun set, it was time to start heading back home to the Airstream. We stopped in Cupertino to visit some friends for a couple of hours, and then returned to our storage spot in Santa Cruz to find our Airstream glowing in the light of the full moon on a crisp California night.
December 15, 2005 at 7:20 am · Filed under Uncategorized
We awoke in our Ontario CA airport hotel yesterday morning knowing that we had a full day of driving ahead, but feeling good about our prospects. After all, the sun was shining, it was warming up to a nice mid-60s day, and the hotel had a nice complementary waffle breakfast — the kind where you pour the batter in yourself and they come out nice and crispy.
I was feeling particularly good despite the fact during our midnight airline approach to Ontario it was my turn to have equalization problems, and I went to bed about 1 a.m. (4 a.m. Eastern Time!) with my left ear basically sounding and feeling like someone had stuffed wet cotton in it. I woke with the same sensation, but by the time we had driven up and down the hills between Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley, things had cleared up.
What to do on a long car ride? Having done I-5 just last week, it was a bit less interesting. We practiced animal sounds (Emma has a good rattlesnake and parrot, I’m the best at coyotes baying, and Eleanor does a fine chicken and bullfrog); we pretended to be Charlotte and Vendetta of the cartoon Making Fiends (a surreal online series which is somewhat addictive and entirely G-rated); Emma colored and worked puzzles, and we talked about the growing things we passed (almonds, oranges, grapes, unknown green vegetables).
The ride was longer because at the last minute we decided to bypass the turnoff toward Santa Cruz and head a bit further north to San Francisco. The reasoning was this: We wanted to go to San Francisco but had skipped it because it is not RV-friendly, we were already packed for an overnight without the trailer, and it would be easy to grab a hotel for one night to enjoy the city for a day before getting the Airstream out of storage.
Also, before we started this trip, we pledged to each other that once in a while we would get a nice hotel or B&B just for the experience. We hadn’t done it yet. With a couple of phone calls I found a fine room in the Hyatt Fisherman’s Wharf. We plugged it into the GPS and pulled in around 5 pm.
San Francisco is one of our favorite places. Eleanor and I have been here several times, and we’ve always had a memorable visit. Bridges, bay, city of hills, fog, and the unique SF culture. It was time to give Emma a taste of this great town.
Last night we took a short walk around Fisherman’s Wharf to hunt up some dinner. Most of the restaurants in the wharf area are complete tourist traps, and others are just not the sort of place we’d take a 5-year-old, so we opted for seafood from the street vendors: crab sandwich, calamari salad, clam chowder in a bread bowl, etc. We piled it all in an open cardboard box we borrowed from the vendors and marched through the elaborate lobby of the Hyatt with our take-out dinner. The staff just smiled.
It was an early night because we’re still on Eastern Time, but the plan is to walk our feet off today, showing Emma some of the highlights of S.F. that she’ll enjoy. I’ll take a lot of pictures and there should be a good blog entry for tonight or tomorrow. Then we’ll head down the coast and resume our Airstream trip.
December 13, 2005 at 3:55 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Here we are again … JFK International Airport, NY, NY.
I am reminded of the joke they used to tell in the south. “It doesn’t matter if you are going to heaven or hell … you’ll still have to connect in Atlanta.” These days, it’s JFK for us, because that’s where JetBlue goes, and that’s the airline of choice out of Burlington VT.
Weather along the southern coast of California is pretty much like we left: peaking around 60, mostly sunny. Our big plan is to roam southward along Rt 1 to Big Sur, Hearst Castle, San Luis Obispo, and other coastal areas. Timeline? Haven’t got one. Reservations? Nope.
Everyone tells me that towing down Route 1 should be a challenge. I’ve driven it before, so I have an idea of what to expect. After I-70 in western Colorado, California Rt 20 through the Tahoe National Forest, the entrance roads to Arches NP and Colorado National Monument, and coastal Rt 101 in Oregon, I’m not sweating it. Looks like fun to me!
December 12, 2005 at 6:24 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Well, I braved the snow and drove up about 70 miles to Plattsburgh, NY to see Colin Hyde and the rest of the gang his shop. We got another couple of inches today, and it looked like Plattsburgh got 4-5 inches, because all of the Airstreams were covered in white.
Things are really hustling up there. In addition to my ’68 Caravel and my 63 Serro Scotty, which are currently in the parking lot awaiting their turn, I saw Rob Baker’s Sovereign of the Road (and man, is that in tough shape. Rob’s got a big project there); also Steve Hingtgen of Vintage Trailer Supply has an early 50’s something-or-other that basically needs everything; a 65 Caravel undergoing a very interesting interior modification complete with front leather couch; a unique 50s custom made for Henry Ford that has no windows on the sides (it was used for storing clothing!) owned by our friends the Geschwinders; two 60s trailers owned by our friend Gail Buck; a 34-foot Classic Limited with front body damage; and at least half a dozen others.
Colin was kind enough to give me a tour of several of the trailer projects, and we talked about next year’s magazine restoration project also. We have something very fun cooking! I hope to be able to announce it by February.
Tonight is our last night in Vermont. We took our hosts Guy and Katie out for dinner at a local place, The Black Sheep Bistro (fabulous dinner!) and now we are tying up loose ends of business online so we’ll be ready for tomorrow. It has been a great visit to Vermont. Eleanor saw all her friends, Emma saw her friends and grandparents and played in the snow, and I caught up with a few people too. I’m actually glad we came. Now I’m glad to go back “home” to our Airstream for the rest of the trip. We’ll land late Tuesday night, but I hope to start blogging again on Wednesday.
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