April 23, 2023
After spending over a week moochdocking at family member’s homes it was time to leave and head off for more adventures to places we had been before. Time to relive some old memories.
Before we jump to our next adventures we want to share how grateful we are to my Niece Marie and Frank’s sister Kathy who put up with us parking next to their homes borrowing electricity from them for multiple days. It was wonderful visiting and spending time with loved ones. We’re especially grateful for Kathy putting us up in her house while our RV was getting some work done in French Camp, CA. We had expected the work to be done in a day but when it was delayed she was gracious enough to allow us to come back after we had already left, to stay with her one more time.
4/17- Hung out at our Campground in French Camp this morning while Frank worked. This afternoon we decided to head to Manteca to see our old house there. We were surprised to see it looks almost exactly the same as when we bought it. Even the paint looks like the original paint, 35 years later. Unfortunately they didn’t appreciate our fruit trees. We had to laugh because the people who bought it from us still live there today. Seems we move a lot but other people seem to stay put. Both it and our next house in Georgia are owned by the people who bought them from us. We were both surprised to see that although the price gone up quite a bit it is not as much as we thought it would have gone up.
4/18- Got up this morning and took our RV over to the Delta Truck Center in French Camp. Since it’s almost 4 years old we weren’t sure when the last time the oil was changed so we wanted to make sure we got that done. We also wanted to get our brakes and power steering checked. They promised the RV done by the end of the day. We had originally thought we would leave Teddi in the bedroom of the RV and go up to Old Town Sacramento for the day, but we quickly realized that was not going to work and we would need to take Teddi with us. So we called Frank’s sister and she said we were welcome to come spend the day at her house. We went out with her for ice cream at Loard’s Ice Cream Parlor which has been in Livermore for more than 50 years and is a family favorite. https://loards.com/loards_history.html
We waited most of the day to hear from Delta Truck Center and when we finally reached them they told us they would need the RV another day so we drove up to French Camp to pick up items we needed and back to Kathy’s house to spend the night.
4/19- Another day of waiting on Delta Truck Center. Finally we called them in the afternoon and told them we were coming to get the RV whether it was done or not. By the time we got there they said they were finished with it and our charges were $1,000+. This was for an oil change and they were not able to figure out why our brakes smelled and our power steering squeaked. We were pretty upset! All this wore us out and we didn’t feel up to a long drive so we drove up the road a half hour to Jellystone Campground in Lodi on the edge of the Delta. We settled in and did some exploring and relaxed and unwound from a stressful day. They are few and far between most of the time, but still unpleasant. It was a pretty quiet while we were there but we were told it is pretty busy in the summer and we could see why. Lots to do for families. https://towerparkresort.com/things-to-do
4/20- When our older boys were young, Frank’s parents used to camp at the Olema campground in the summer time. We would sometimes come up and join them for a weekend and have lots of fun adventures. The campground had flooded pretty badly during California’s recent storms but they were getting cleaned up and just starting to open once again. We were glad we were able to book a few days there. https://www.olemacampground.net/
Our drive up to Olema was only supposed to take about 2 hours but just as we reached the Sacramento River we got stuck in a long line of traffic. The drawbridge was up and we had to wait for a large ship to go through before they lowered the bridge and allowed everyone to proceed through.
Due to the back-up, a 2 hour trip ended up taking almost 4 hours so we didn’t get in early enough to do as many of the things we hoped to do today. Instead once we got settled in our campsite we drove to Point Reyes Lighthouse. We were rushing to get there as we had seen on a blog that the lighthouse closed at 4 pm and we were hoping to tour it. But once we arrived at 3:45 we found out that the lighthouse is currently only open on the weekends, so all we could do was see it from a distance. It was quite a hike up to where the lighthouse was and then we saw 313 steps we would have had to take down and up and we were almost glad it wasn’t open. https://www.nps.gov/pore/planyourvisit/lighthouse.htm
We then headed over to Drake’s Bay to explore. It is named for Sir Francis Drake who is believed to have sailed into that bay in the late 1500’s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drakes_Bay
4/21- Today was a very full day where we spent visiting different places from our past and reliving old memories. But first we went on a little hike near our campsite and enjoyed the views there.
Our first stop was not planned as we drove along the road headed to Occidental, CA we saw an old Crane-Drag Line like Frank’s dad use to drive at the gravel pit. We had to stop and takes some pictures before heading on to our destination.
Our first official stop of the day was in Occidental, CA. Frank had taken me there on a date when we were in high school and then we went back a few times after we were first married. The Union Hotel became a special place to enjoy a good Italian meal in a small town hotel that had been around since 1879. Meals back then were served family style and you got to sit at a table with a group of people and passed bowls around. https://unionhoteloccidental.com/
The Union Hotel was not open for lunch but we found Howard’s Station Café close by and enjoyed an amazing lunch there. They had gluten free options and vegetarians options so I enjoyed an amazing vegetarian sandwich. Frank had a hamburger. https://www.howardstationcafe.com/ourstory
Our next stop was Guerneville, CA. When I was a child, my mom and I used to go up camping there along the Russian River. My sister Dorothy would come along at times and one time my Nieces Anna and Janet, who were the same age as I was, came along. I remember the grown-ups visiting Korbel to taste Champagne while we three girls hung out. I have memories of floating in the river in the summer and playing miniature golf and going down a Super slide at Pee Wee’s Golf and Arcades. They had a lot of flooding in the area this winter and the beach needed some work to get it ready for summer but it was still fun to drive around and remember my time there. https://www.sonomacounty.com/articles/48-hours-guerneville
Just a few minutes up the road from Guerneville is Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve. Although we plan to visit the Redwood Natural Forest later on we still enjoyed stopping there to marvel all the trees. We saw the Parson Jones tree which 310 feet high, 138 feet around and around 1300 years old. https://www.sonomacounty.com/articles/guide-to-armstrong-redwoods-state-natural-reserve
Then it was over to Bodega Bay for a stop at Patrick’s Salt Water Taffy. They have been around since the 1960’s in the same white and pink striped building. Our family always stopped there for a treat when we were in the area. https://www.patricksofbodegabay.com/
Before heading back to the campground we wanted to stop in Petaluma at Marin French Cheese Company. Many years ago they use to have tours and our older boys got to watch how cheese was made. They no longer do tours but we were able to pick up some cheese to take back to the RV. https://marinfrenchcheese.com/
4/22- We have been wanting to do some boondocking and try out our new solar system to see how long the batteries would last. We found a Harvest Host Place in Corning, CA and so that is where we headed. We eventually plan to visit Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park but while in California we wanted to see it’s version of Old Faithful. We took a little detour and stopped for lunch in Calistoga, CA. We waited impatiently for 45 minutes but it was well worth it to watch it erupt from just a little spurt to a full blow geyser and then back to just steam during a 10 minute period.
https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/12648
When we got to the Harvest Host location it was very organized and there was space for 5 RV’s to stay. We were one of only two RV’s there. Our neighbor’s arrived shortly after us in their Tiffin RV pulling a Jeep. We felt like we had met our twins. We had a great time visiting with them and sharing experiences. We had dinner at the place we had stopped. They had Beyond Burgers and gluten free buns so I enjoyed a Swiss Mushroom burger and garlic fries. Frank had a French Dip. We both enjoyed our meal. Then it was back to the RV where found that we had only used about 2% of our battery since we had arrived.
4/23- We awoke this morning to find we had used about 25% of the batteries during the night. Our system was still predicting that we had about another day and a half before we would have to charge the batteries. Once the sun came up the solar immediately starting recharging the batteries and by mid-day we had full batteries once again. We left the Harvest Host spot early as we had tickets for Shasta Caverns at noon. It was nice to see the Shasta Lake so full as we crossed over the bridge toward our destination. We had not checked out the road to the Caverns via goggle to make sure it was fine for RV’s. We generally do this when we are going places that are off the beaten route. We had only gotten down the road a couple miles when we realized that this was going to be a tough drive with the RV. We found a place where people left their boat trailers so we pulled in and unhooked the Jeep and did a 14 point u-turn with the RV. We took the RV back down the road to a nearby rest stop and left it there and then took our Jeep up to the Caverns. A much easier trip in the Jeep.
In the late 1970’s we had come to Lake Shasta with Frank’s sister Kathy’s family. We spent the weekend water skiing and had taken a tour of the Caverns at that time. Our boys were about 2 and 3 years old and we ended up lugging them up and down the stairs in the cavern. We were glad this time it was just the two of us that we had to get up and down the stairs. https://www.lakeshastacaverns.com/history
After our tour we were assured by one of the worker’s that the road to Shasta dam was RV friendly so we hooked our Jeep to the RV and went to see the dam. We were not able to tour the dam facilities but we were able to walk across the dam and back so we had quite the workout for the day. https://www.usbr.gov/projects/index.php?id=241
Then it was time to head to our campground in Shingletown, CA near Mt Lassen Volcanic National Park. https://koa.com/campgrounds/mt-lassen/. We had originally only planned to spend two days here but when we saw how nice the park was we decided to extend our stay a couple extra days.
We look forward to our time here seeing the sights.
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