Chapter 29 - Seattle to San Francisco
November 12, 1998
11/4/98 Still in Seattle - still playing tourist and concert-goer. It's easy to lose track of time. We're enjoying the opportunity to tool around in our small, maneuverable, rented car while the truck is being repaired. Over the past week, we've seen the following:
Center for Wooden Boats: This is a hands-on floating museum on Lake Union, with dozens of restored wooden boats of all kinds, ranging from a six-foot boat made of woven bamboo covered with oiled fabric through a whole variety of small fishing boats from around the world, a selection of classic sailing dinghys, and larger sailing yachts and fishing boats. Most are in good working order and can be rented (although it wasn't clear to me whether rentals are available to the public, or only to members of the museum). A 60' sailing yacht is being restored This boat has been around the world several times, under several different owners, since it was built. The musuem/clubhouse and a well-equipped workshop, are on floating docks. The workshop was busy, and we enjoyed watching chips fly and listening to the distinctive sound of a well-sharpened wood plane slicing paper-thin ribbons from a piece of straight-grained spruce. The museum offers occasional workshops, in which students build beautiful and functional small boats, learning by doing. In the Maritime Heritage Center, at the adjacent dock, the 1897 lumber schooner Wawona floats forlornly, partly covered with plastic, open at the front where the stem and some of the starboard planking is being replaced. Rotten planks are visible everywhere - it's a wonder that it floats. One of the three huge masts is laying on the lawn. The other two are supported by temporary rigging. This project, and the museum as a whole, seems to have fallen on hard times. There appears to have been little or no restoration work done for a long time, and some displays on shore are falling apart.
Seattle Asian Art Museum: The large collection is in a beautifully restored Art Deco Building
Chittenden Locks: These locks connect saltwater Puget Sound with the large freshwater harbor comprising Salmon Bay, Lake Union and Lake Washington. The locks are among the busiest in the Americas, and we enjoyed watching boats of all kinds locking through, changing elevation anywhere from 8 ft. to 30 ft., depending on season and tide. There are two parallel locks one for small boats (still big enough to swallow half a dozen miscellaneous yachts and fishing boats) and one for large ships. We watched a seagoing tug and a gigantic barge , which barely fit into the huge lock, come through this big lock. An adjacent 7 acres of botanical gardens is a pleasant place for a walk or a picnic. Alongside the locks, a fish ladder has been fitted with underwater lights and viewing windows. We spent a few minutes watching a few salmon working their way leisurely upstream. They didn't appear to be in a hurry to get anythwere.
Volunteer Park Conservatory: A nice, well-maintained collection of cactuses, orchids and subtropical plants.
Washington Park Arboretum: A network of pleasant paths, through 200 acres, a mixture of plants from throughout the world and slightly tamed local forest. Within the arboretum, we enjoyed a 3.5 acre Japanese Garden which "represents a compressed world of mountains, forests, lakes, rivers, and tableland". It was designed in Japan and built under the direction of Japanese landscape architects.
Mt. Rainier National Park: The park is a two-hour drive Southeast from Seattle. We did this as a day trip, and thus got a rather superficial introduction to the park. We've been getting glimpses of the glacier-topped volcano as we've driven through the Puget Sound area. It's so high relative to the surrounding terrain that it is easily visible for up to 100 miles on clear days. (it is claimed to be taller, measured from the base plateau to the top, than any other mountain in the lower 48 states). Helen has labeled Rainier as the prettiest mountain she's ever seen. (But there's still a few she hasn't seen <g>).
We were fortunate to be able to make the drive on one of the few sunny days. In the days before we arrived, new snow had fallen at the higher altitudes, hiding the summer's grime so that the glaciers were intensely, sparklingly white. In the banks of plowed snow around the parking lots, delighted lowlander children were playing in the snow.
We approached the park from the northwest, and drove narrow state highways in a big clockwise circle around the mountain, ranging from 6 to 21 miles from the peak. Most of the roads leading to the campgrounds, trailheads, and viewpoints up on the shoulders of the mountain were already closed for the season. The Paradise area was still open, although the Visitor's Center was closed. This area on the south side of the mountain, about 5 miles from the summit, provides one of the best views, and perhaps the closest views available from an automobile. Several trails lead from this point to various routes up the mountain. We walked one of the trails about half a mile (mostly up) to a saddle with a spectacular view of the summit and some of the lower icefields, but didn't have time to go further.
Bellevue Botanical Garden: A pleasant mixture of natural woodland and formal plantings, including a Japanese garden. On top of a hill in Bellevue, with a clear view to the west. It would be a nice place to sit and watch a sunset.
Bamboo Gardens: A grower and retailer of exotic varieties of bamboo. We found it very interesting to walk through their extensive collection of bamboo, ranging from tiny ornamentals a few inches high, to giant Japanese Timber Bamboo, which can be 70 feet high and 5 inches or more in diameter.
Opus 7, Loren Ponten, director: Another Seattle-based professional choir of "up to 24" singers. A polished performance of an interestingly varied program, only a little of it familiar to me. This performance was one of the first to be held in the brand-new Nordstrom Recital Hall - built as part of Benaroya Hall - the new home of the Seattle Symphony. It's nice to see a new recital hall- good ones are very scarce. It appears to seat about 500, and has wonderful acoustics.
Mikado, by the Northwest Savoyards: As old savoyards ourselves (performers in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas), it's hard to resist a new production, even of one so over-done as Mikado. We've seen this show many times, and performed in it twice, but each time, we find new bits of humor and are struck anew at the genius of both Gilbert and Sullivan. This time, Ko-Ko, the chief executioner, was quite successfully played as an aging hippie. Nanki-poo was a superb tenor who carried the aplomb of someone born to rank and privilege, but who could laugh at it. This production was better than average for community theater - quite a good orchestra, most of the leads were both good actors and good singers, excellent set design, well-trained chorus. Delightful evening for us.
On Halloween evening, we had 4 children (and four parents) trick-or-treating, all residents of the park.
It's been interesting to observe the wildlife around our little urban pond here in the campground - about two acres of water. It's stocked with trout, and there always seem to be a few optimistic fisherpeople casting from shore. A large and noisy flock of mallards are usually in residence. A dozen or so Canada geese show up sporadically, stay for an hour or a day, and disappear. After dark, a great blue heron is a regular visitor. If I go for a late-night walk along the shore, I'm almost certain to be startled by a big silent shadow lifting from shore and flapping slowly to the other side of the pond. There are numerous feral cats around the lake, and slinking through the campground. On one late evening walk around the lake, I was accompanied all the way by a pair of playful half-grown black kittens. They made a great game of seeing how close they could get to me without actually being touched, nearly invisible as they dashed past me in the dark.
The truck came back from the body shop on Nov. 4. Helen and I spent that day running errands separately, celebrating having two vehicles for the first time in 17 months. I put the truck through its paces, and it seems ok. It actually looks better than is has for two years, since a number of minor dings and scratches got fixed along with the more major damage. On the 5th, I moved everything from the storage locker back into the bed of the truck, using the occasion to re-organize our "junk". The canoes are back on the roof, and if all goes well, we'll actually hit the road on the 6th.
The long-term weather statistics show that Seattle has 19 cloudy days in November and 22 in December, both months with about 6 inches of precipitation. We're beating the statistics - we've been here a month, and I only remember a couple of sunny days. San Diego is sounding better all the time - it averages four cloudy days in both November and December.
11/6 On the road again! A somewhat late start, but at least we're moving, and everything seems to work. We drove straight down I-5, through the centers of Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia, before finally getting out of the megopolis and into rural country. As we came through Portland, we remembered that someone on RV-Talk had mentioned an RV Park south of Portand which had telephone service at each site for overnighters. Helen quickly pawed through the campground directories, and found Roamer's Rest, in Tualatin, OR. They had space available, late Saturday afternoon, and we were soon settled into a pull-through site that was almost long enough, with our phone line plugged in. Better yet, although we're 12 miles or so from Portland, it's local call to the Sprynet number in Portland. I spend the afternoon and evening on the Internet, downloading and installing updates to several software packages, catching up on Email, and doing a little surfing.
11/7 As we got underway, rain was still falling lightly, and the forecast was for it to continue for several days. We had intended to continue down Interstate 5, rushing south to find some sun. As we turned out of the campground driveway, we made a spur-of-the-moment decision to turn right instead of left, and took Highway 99 southwest toward the coast, joining SR 18 and hitting the coast just north of Lincoln City, OR. The drive through Oregon countryside was pleasant, in spite of intermittent rain - alternating between forests and farmland. At the coast, we continued down US 101. As we passed through DePoe Bay, we noticed Pirate's Cove RV Resort, and remembered good comments about it on RV-Talk. We pulled in and got a site fairly close to the cliffs overlooking the ocean. There's no access to the water - nothing but waves crashing against steep slippery rock But it's a nice view and it's good to hear the surf again.
11/8 Still raining! We'll keep moving down 101. The views from the highway are occasionally spectacular, where the roaed clings to the side of a cliff over the Pacific. Other times, the road moves a few miles inland, through dense forests and occasional small towns. The coastline alternates between steep rocky headlands with clusters of rocky islets just offshore, inlets with rivers and tidal flats, clusters of vacation homes, and miles of pristine sand beaches. We had heard some people say that US 101 is not suitable for big RV's, but so far it's been fine - adequately wide driving lane, occasional passing lanes, no particularly sharp turns (although a few are marked "25 mph"), and generally a paved bike lane outside the traffic lane. This time of year, traffic is pleasantly light. There are lots of big pullouts at scenic points - no problem getting in and out with our long trailer.
After seeing several tourist shops advertising "myrtlewood" Oregon souvenirs, we pulled into one to check it out. Indeed, the myrtle trees, Umbellularia Californica, are unique, growing only in southern Oregon and northern California, along the coast. It's a stocky umbrella-shaped tree, a broadleaf evergreen related to the laurels. The wood is variable in color, most often a warm brown, with grain somewhat like mahogany and no distinct growth rings - very attractive. Local craftspeople make a variety of interesting art objects from myrtlewood.
At 3:15 as we drove along the coast south of Port Orford, we caught a glimpse through the trees of what appeared to be a cluster of campsites along the beach. Noting that the clouds were breaking up, and that we had been in sunlight for a while, we suddenly decided it was time to stop for the day. A mile or two down the road, we found a wide pull-out where we made a U-turn and headed back to find the entrance to what turned out to be Arizona Beach R.V. Campground. We're parked a few feet from a wide sandy beach in a lovely little cove. We've got a great view of a long expanse of ocean, with rocky headlands and islets to the north and south. Serendipity wins again! I'm writing this with the muted roar of surf as background noise.
The scrub pines behind the campsites across from us are occupied by a noisy flock of cute Oregon Juncos.
11/9 A slow day of driving through the rain, poking along the coast on US 101. Not a lot of miles covered. We stopped for the night near Klamath, in the middle of Redwoods State and National Parks. The state parks have been here a long time - and the old campgrounds won't accommodate big RV's The National Park, a recent (1968) addition surrounding and connecting the state lands, is relatively undeveloped. There is a long-term plan for all of these contiguous parks to merge into a single national park. We crossed back in California this afternoon, but it's still raining. We stopped for the night near Klamath at Chinook RV Resort, on the bank of the Klamath River. It's modem-friendly, although we had to stand at the checkout counter in the small campground store and office.
11/10 More rainy driving. Early in the day, just south of Klamath, we diverged from US 101 onto the "Avenue of the Giants" - apparently the old US 101. It's slow, narrow, twisty, and has 10-foot-diameter redwoods growing right at the edge of the pavement with the roadway sort of dodging around them. In another 500 years, these trees will have grown to squeeze the road down to a single lane, or less. Will the human race still exist? If so, will they still travel in automobiles? We stopped at the "Big Tree" area, and hiked the Circle Trail. The Big Tree is over 20' in diameter and 310 feet high. It's not the biggest tree in the park, but it is close enough to it to keep us happy. The trail winds through an extensive grove of large trees, so that we were occasionally surrounded by many of these monsters, getting sore necks and wet faces looking up, trying to see the tops through the mist. A tape recorder would have been more useful than a camera in catching the ambience, with rain gently but audibly dripping through the foliage all around us, and a tiny stream tinkling beside the path. For a while, it seemed like a different planet. Everything except the redwoods - ground, tree trunks and branches, rocks, and stumps - is covered with a heavy growth of moss, often with little ferns growing out of the mat of moss. The live redwoods have no moss at all - the chemical repellants in the bark apparently preventing growths of any kind.
The Prairie Creek Visitor's Center is small but interesting - both for the interpretative exhibits and for the building itself. It is in the State Park, but seems to be operated by the National Park. The building is a relic from the CCC era - constructed by hand, from local redwood. The beams and floorboards were hand-hewn and hand planed smooth by a corps of 17-to-23 year old men, under the supervision and discipline of Army officers - sort of a combination of job training and welfare payments during the Great Depression. A large part of the Nation's park system owes its existence to this program - one of the few times that the manpower has been available and affordable to enable massive, durable, high quality construction of public facilities.
We pulled into Benbow Valley RV Resort and Golf Club, near Garberville, just before dusk, sloshing through puddles in the ongoing drizzle. The park is big, beautifully manicured, has 55' pull-through sites with concrete patios, is seriously overpriced, and was mostly empty. It's modem-friendly, with a phone hookup at a comfortable desk in the deserted business office.
11/11 South of Eureka, US 101 leaves the ocean and heads inland (or more properly, the road continues fairly straight, but Cape Mendocino juts far out into the Pacific). Mattole Road, which goes out around the Cape, and then along the coast for 100 miles, eventually joining US 1, was slightly tempting, but without local advice, it seemed too risky to attempt with the trailer. We stayed on US 101 until we reached SR 1, and took this older and smaller road back over to the coast. After descending very steeply from the coastal hills, with numerous tight switchbacks, SR 1 follows the coast quite closely for hundreds of miles, finally disappearing south of Los Angeles, somewhere near San Juan Capistrano.
We poked along SR 1 all day, probably averaging around 25 mph, occasionally down to 15 mph to negotiate the tight, steep switchbacks, where the highway dives down into a canyon, turns inland to cross a river, and then climbs back out toward the ocean. Occasionally, the road is hanging out practically over the ocean. Some of the cliffs are so steep that the outer lane of the highway is supported on a bridge structure.
Near Fort Bragg, we stopped at the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens. Meandering paths lead through formal plantings of perennials and dahlias (pretty much defunct, at this season), extensive plantings of rhododendrons (we'll have to come back in the spring), a fern garden along a meandering stream, and eventually to the cliffs above the ocean, where the formal plantings give way to windswept groves of Monterrey Cypress and Shore Pine.
It's now getting dark depressingly early. With the heavy overcast, we have to stop soon after 4 p.m. in order to be settled into our campsite by dark.
We spent the night at Manchester Beach KOA. It's not on the beach, but is adjacent to a State Park which does provide beach access. As with most KOA's, it was overpriced. The recreation room had an official KOA sign beside the door proclaiming Komputer Konnection. We hope that this indicates a KOA corporate policy to provide computer hookups in all their campgrounds. In a corner, across from the electronic game machines and behind the pool table, a pair of chairs were placed conveniently beside a modular phone jack (no phone - just a jack. Don't plan on any manual dialing unless you bring your own phone). I connected twice, once at 12,000 baud and once at 14,400 - making this one of the slowest phone lines we've ever encountered.
11/12 Continuing along SR 1, finally in the sunlight! We drifted along leisurely, enjoying the new vistas of ocean and cliffs around each turn (don't try this road unless you have the time to do it leisurely) The foliage has changed, and the predominate coastline tree is now Monterrey Cypress, often sculpted into fantastic shapes by the wind. Where the road heads inland to cross a canyon, we've started seeing live oak and eucalyptus trees.
We're finally on a schedule, having made reservations at Pacific Park RV Resort, to ensure proximity to weekend concerts in central San Francisco. As we approached Point Reyes, we checked the time, spent a while estimating driving speeds, and decided to detour. We headed out the point on a terrible road - uneven, narrow, bumpy, with a few cows grazing on the shoulder to make it more exciting. Fortunately, there was almost no traffic and we could move as slowly as we liked. The view from the end of the point is fabulous. The upper trail and viewing areas are 600 feet above the ocean, and we could see the surf pounding on sand beaches for 20 miles or more to the north. Several hundred feet below, the old lighthouse and foghorn still function - placed "only" 200 feet above the water since that often allows the light to pass under the fog layer which tends to hang a little higher above the water.
We also took the short drive around to the south side of the point, and spent a few minutes on the beach at Drake's Bay. This huge semi-circular bay is one of the nicer places to watch the waves. In several previous visits, we've noticed each time that the waves were neatly organized, and we would often see what seemed like half a mile of wave, all the same size, perfectly straight, breaking simultaneously. Today, however, the waves weren't cooperating - still pretty, but not quite that uniform.
South of Point Reyes, SR 1 becomes narrower, twistier, and less well maintained. As we crept around one steep switchback, barely moving, the road changed angle so abruptly that the skids under the back of the trailer hit bottom and screeched agonizingly as they dug long furrows in the road. This was the only place we had a problem. Our 35' trailer is quite low to the road, and has what is probably the world's longest rear overhang, so most RV's would have no problem at all.
Acrophobes (or agoraphobes, for that matter) probably shouldn't drive this stretch of road. It's not really that much more exposed than the sections further north. But the decrepit and uneven nature of the pavement, with patches on top of patches, the lack of guard rails, and the visible evidence of the landslides which topple pieces of the road into the ocean just about every year, make it seem more dangerous. Even after the highway leaves the ocean and angles back through Marin County, it remains very narrow and twisty, with occasional steep grades. Here, we started to encounter urban traffic, with no pullout spots for miles on end. When we were finally able to pull over, there were often a dozen cars piled up behind us.
We joined the urban ratrace on US 101, a few miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Unfortunately, this was at 5:15 p.m., just at dusk and right at the peak of rush hour traffic. Four solid lanes of traffic had to funnel down to two lanes as we approached the bridge, fairly exciting with our 55' rig. We successfully negotiated the exit, just past the bridge, and drove south across the city on SR 1, which then briefly merged into a zillion busy lanes of Interstate 280, then exited again after just a few miles, diving down a steep grade to the beach in Pacifica. We heaved a big sigh of relief as we turned into the entrance to Pacific Park RV Resort. We stayed here for a week last spring, so it felt almost like coming home.
We've heard much discussion about the suitability of US 101 and SR 1 along the Oregon and northern California coast. Having now done the entire length of this route, we can say that it is really no problem at all for a big RV, providing that the trip is approached in a leisurely frame of mind. Trying to meet a schedule while driving this route could be agonizing. The entire length of the coast, through Oregon and California, offers spectacular views and frequent beach access. The last 20 miles of SR-1, from Marin City to Pacifica through rush hour traffic, was by far the most difficult and tense driving of the entire trip.
Anyway, we're settled here for a week, in an oceanside site with the back of the trailer about 20 feet from a fragile crumbly cliff. At high tide, the waves are beating directly against the cliff below us, and the cliff edge appears to have advanced noticeably into the campground since we were here in May. Next year, the campground may have fewer sites. The view of the waves out the windows, and the constant background roar of surf, is a soothing antidote to the mad urban rush that we dive into each time we drive out of the park.