Sunday, Oct. 7th

We had a very relaxing five nights at the Russian River Thousand Trails preserve. We didn’t visit any of the hundreds of wineries, but instead we just wound down and treasured the peace and quiet of the preserve. Russian River is an old NACO park that doesn’t have a lot to do for the youngsters. There’s no swimming pool, no game rooms, no big fields for any kind of sports - it does have some beautiful sites with plenty of very clean restrooms and a chance to simply jell out. I did manage to drive in to Windsor for a Rotary breakfast meeting and we drove down to Healdsburg to visit the Bear Republic Microbrewery and Brewpub. We had an outstanding late lunch and sampled some of their micro-brews.

On Thursday morning, the 4th, we drove down to Walnut Creek and my sister’s house. Instead of traveling on US-101, we took off on CA-128 and drove through the winery country. The highway is NOT an RV friendly road, but the sights of all the vineyards and accompanying wineries were worth the hassle of the road. We’ve heard all about the Wine Country, but it really hits you on the drive through Geyserville, Calistoga, St. Helens, Napa, and Vallejo. The wineries are mostly beautiful buildings that are either architectural wonders or ancient, rebuilt homes with tasting rooms. We passed all the tasting opportunities and pressed on the Walnut Creek.

Friday morning was all planned out for us by Skip and Ellen. Once we were up and had breakfast, we headed for San Francisco and Pier 39. We took the ferry across the Bay to Sausalito and had lunch at a quiet little café. We had the chance to do some window shopping before we got back on the ferry to return via Tiburon. This weekend is the beginning of Fleet Week in San Francisco so we had perfect seats to see one of the Blue Angels do some flying over the San Francisco Bay. It was quite an impressive sight to see these jets screaming across the bow of the ferry and doing the numerous aerobatic maneuvers from such a close viewpoint. Then when we got in the car to go back home we had the chance to see the Airbus super liner, the largest commercial aircraft ever built, take off from SFO and fly by us with a tiny Lear Jet flying alongside getting aerial photos of the behemoth.

Friday night was the perfect end to a very busy day with the spaghetti dinner attended by my other sister, Peg (who came down from Santa Rosa with her white Lab, Angus), Skips’ two kids, and his Mother. We had a crowd around the dinner table and a great time.

We left Walnut Creek on Saturday morning and drove south to San Benito Thousand Trails preserve. Along the way we stopped in Gilroy at the Super Wal-Mart, probably the last one we’ll see for a while. In the parking lot we ran in ot an old acquaintance, Tom and Judy Stown. They are Monaco owners that I know from our Monaco email group. We must have spent about an hour with them talking about various aspects of motor homing before we were back on the road again. We arrived at San Benito about 3PM, found a site, and started to settle in. I had a problem with the electrical box indicating an open ground, so I had to deal with that. It turned out to be a problem in our coach, and not the electrical box. It’s one of those electrical gremlins that gives you fits and then disappears so everything works correctly. It required a tap with a hammer on our power transfer switch and the need for us to use our Autoformer. Everything is working correctly now, but it sure gave me reason to get upset at the time.

Our stay here will be another quiet time and a chance to do some cleaning and organizing. We’re watching deer and bobcats wander through the park. It’s a heavily wooded preserve and the lack of rain is terribly obvious. The Kia is loaded with a pile of items that Mother wants us to deliver to her in San Diego. I’ll have a chance to do one more quick wax job before we leave here. I plan to cancel our reservation at Rancho Oso and just head for San Diego via Bakersfield, Tehachapi, and I-15. We’ll probably stop in Tehachapi for the night on Tuesday and then pull in to San Diego on Wednesday midday.