Out of Humboldt County, Into Wine Country, Pirate Camping, and a Day in San Francisco...

After my blitz drive across the country with our van load of possessions, I was ready to continue the good times with a leisurely drive down the California coast. When my flight landed back in California, Justine was ready and had packed our little Honda full of camping equipment, wetsuits, and duffle bags full of gear. Justine and I each chose a board to strap to the roof of our little car for the shredding of any tasty waves we happened across. After one last bagel at our favorite Humboldt County bagel shop and a quick trip through our CO-OP for our favorite jams and granola, we left our home of 2 1/2 years for points South and eventually the East coast.

There is something incredibly exhilarating about cutting ties, packing up, and moving on to new places and experiences. People have guffawed the idea and basically told us it's silly to cut ties and move on without jobs or apartments lined up, but isn't it sillier to be tied down to jobs and comforts without questioning what is around the next bend. There are believers and there are doubters, Justine and I don't let the naysayers keep us down. They tend to get in the way of a good time.

After leaving Humboldt County, our first stop was the wine country around the Russian River Valley and some prime beach camping at Wright Beach, near Jenner. We stopped at a couple of wineries for tastings, the highlight being the Copolla Winery. The Copolla Winery offers tons of great varietals of wine (Pinot Nior, Cabernet Sauvingnons , and Syrahs). They also have some prime wine tasting digs at their huge vineyard which overlooks the huge Russian River Valley. They usually cook up a pretty mean wood-fire pizza, but they are currently building bigger and better facilities, so their wood-fire oven is out of commission. We fed our inner hunger for classic California wood-fire pizza by heading into the town of Geyserville and eating at Diavola Pizzeria. The best part of Diavola is that they make their own sausage and cure their own meats. We ordered a big salad and a pizza loaded with sausages, peppers, and other sundry delights. After our wine tasting session I was hoping to order a bottle of wine with dinner, but the wine at Diavola is pricey. I opted for the delicious, cold, and FREE pitcher of ice water to go with dinner. Justine and I saved our money for a six-pack to go with our campfire on the beach and some stargazing at the edge of the Pacific Ocean...Caution though...Don't stare at the stars for too long or else your feet will get wet with the incoming tide. Everybody knows how hard it is to dry a pair of boat shoes crammed in the back of a Honda while on a camping trip.

Wright Beach is one of the best campgrounds on the beach close to wine country, it's also one of the priciest. It costs $35 a night for a beach-front campsite. It's definitely worth it, if you're made of money.  I, personally, don't think that a fellow should have to pay that much money to pitch a tent on the ground at a state owned campground. I have no problem paying $15 to sleep on the ground in paradise, but I could almost get a motel room with cable TV and running water for $35. Expensive camping is something Justine and I have learned to deal with and find ways around, I have come to call it 'Pirate Camping'. There are times, while on the road, when you really just need a place to pitch a tent, light a fire, and catch some ZZZ's. 'Pirate Camping' is not for the weak of heart, or those who are afraid of schmoozing the occasional Park Ranger, it involves a blatant callousness for the rules and regulations. 

Camping usually involves a certain level of self policing, the camper fills out a self-registration and drops it into a box...and then he goes on his merry way, camping and enjoying the great, monitered out-of-doors. 'Pirate Camping' involves much of the same, but instead of dropping that self-registration envelope filled with $35 of your hard-earned dollars into the nameless box, you hold onto it until the nice Park Ranger comes and confronts you about not paying for your beach front camp-site. The savvy 'Pirate Camper' always has his envelope ready to hand in, but has a good reason for not turning it in. I usually rely on the classic 'incorrect change' excuse, but sometimes if you encounter a particularly asshole-ish Park Ranger, then there becomes the need for the ability to improvise. We didn't need to use any of the classic tricks at Wright Beach, we arrived late and woke up early...Thus avoiding anyone asking us for money. We had a sweet campfire, a  nice stroll on the nighttime beach, and some great sleep...

Sunrise comes early to a tent on the beach after a full day of leaving behind your home and tasting wine all day. We packed up the tent and headed South on HWY 1. After coffee and bagels with blackberry jam in Bodega Bay, we headed towards some tasty waves at Dillon Beach. The drive down to Dillon Beach is absolutely beautiful. It's a windy country road, flanked on each side by beautiful, green pasturelands filled with sheep and cows. Morning drives along the California coast are so beautiful that I lack the words to convey it all, I could have a thesaurus in one hand and my journal in the other and still be at a loss for adjectives to tell you how wonderful the West coast is in the morning. A morning drive along the North coast is nothing but the dankest green pastures, rocky headlands, and glassy waves. I must have mind-surfed a hundred waves on the drive to Dillon Beach, but I'm happy I waited to pull on my wetsuit until we got to Dillon Beach proper to do it. 

Justine and I got down to the beach and scoped out the break. It was the perfect set-up for some mellow wave riding. Waist high and glassy waves were the name of the game. There were perfect sets just peeling into the bay. I could hardly contain my excitement as I pulled on my wetsuit and waxed up the boards. From the car I could watch the waves peel by unridden. It was all I could do not to skip around the parking lot in jubilation. Justine and I paddled out and surfed all morning alone, in perfect waist high peeling waves. The water was crystal clear and in between sets we stared inland, towards those dank green pastures and hundreds of happy California cows. As we were peeling off our wetsuits, a couple of surf dudes pulled into the parking lot and asked us how it was out in the water. We chatted with them for a bit, gathering local knowledge about the spot we surfed. They chuckled when I asked how sharky it was out there. Locals called the spot we were surfing 'The Shark Pit'.

After our morning of surfing, we threw on some clean clothes and headed south on HWY 1, towards San Francisco and an afternoon of revelry. From Dillon Beach it's about 2 hours into the heart of the city. By mid-afternoon we were digesting some tasty In-And-Out Burgers and climbing onto a Cable Car for a cheap ride around the city. For $11 you can buy an all day pass on the Cable Cars and ride around the city to your heart's content. Justine and I usually buy the pass each trip, they're good for free rides on the buses and trolleys too. A good strategy for saving cash in the city is to find cheap all day parking outside the heart of the city and then take public transportation into the middle of everything. All day parking at Fisherman's Wharf costs around $10, while parking garages downtown start at about $25. 

San Francisco is made up of districts, all of them have their own flavor and attractions. We usually like hitting up the Market, Financial, Haight-Ashbury, and Waterfront Districts. Union Square is definitely a fun place to walk around. It's a huge amalgamation of people...business people hustling towards meetings, Japanese tourists snapping pictures, shoppers walking with bags of designer clothes, bums begging change and offering directions, and every other type of person imaginable from every walk of life. Justine wanted to pop into a couple of shops that she regularly frequents on trips. She shops better without me looking over her shoulder, so we set a time to meet back up and I moseyed along the streets...taking in the sights and sounds. There's an Irish pub called 'Time For A Pint' that I like popping into while Justine is shopping in Union Square, so I walked that way and grabbed a frosty pint of Anchor Steam while my lady shopped.

After meeting back up, we grabbed a Cable Car and rode around towards Chinatown, past many great memories we had made during 2 1/2 years of visiting San Francisco. It will be weird not to visit this town every month or so, I'm sure we'll be back within a few years for another visit...but it'll never be the same again. With the sun setting over the Pacific and lighting up the city with a golden glow, we headed out of the city and towards Santa Cruz.

An Adventure Begins, Escape from Reno, Across the West, and A Political Ramble...

The Entertaining  Portion of the Story

About a month ago Justine and I loaded most of our belongings into our Chevy G20 Van and I drove it across the country in four days. It was a long, strange drive and I have no desire to do it again during the winter. At the outset of the drive I had intended to sleep in Wal Mart parking lots along the way. I had read about this club of RV'ers who do it all the time and I figured it sounded like a cheap way to go, plus I was hoping to get an article or something out of the experience. 

If you've never driven straight across the country alone, I highly recommend it. The scenery along the drive plays out like a long mix tape of songs from American icons like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and Neil Young. There is something purely American about the open road, it's the rumble of a V8, combined with classic rock, and a bag of Oberto's jerky. Redwood forests thinning into California's fertile central valley, Steinbeck's agrarian valley erupting into Muir's snow-covered Sierra Nevadas, the Sierra's melt into Johnny Cash's Nevada desert (Remember the 'dusty Winnemucca road'?), and from the desert comes the mighty Rocky Mountains in the distance. The Rocky Mountains are an experience onto themselves to drive through during the winter. I got lucky and started my drive in between winter storms. The roads were clear, but the surrounding hills were packed with snow-All the scenery, but none of white-knuckle 'Chains Required Beyond Point' driving. After dropping down from the Rockies and the beauty of the West, the senses are assaulted by the 'Great Plains'. Aside from their size and the incredible amount of time it takes to drive through them, there is nothing 'great' about them. 

Planning for the trip consisted of watching the Weather Channel and little else, I figured as long as it was an Eastbound highway, then I was fine. As I said earlier, I figured that I could catch a bit of sleep in random Wal-Mart parking lots. I figured I could spot one from the highway, pull into an outside parking space, crash out for a few hours and then be on my merry way. The first hitch in my plan came in Reno, I had pulled into a Wal-Mart and was dozing off when a fat-gray haired security guard with an attitude came and decided to confirm my suspicions that Nevada has no shortage of assholes. He pounded on my window with the butt end of a big Mag-Lite and demanded I get out of my van and show him some ID. I took one look at the security patch on his little blue Wal-Mart vest and politely told him sit on his flashlight and leave me the f@$k alone! After a brief, yet entertaining quarrel with him, I gathered that he had called the cops and they were probably just as eager to harass a long-haired, unshaven, and bleary eyed 'hippy' with California plates as the rest of the town...I ended up cranking up some Led Zeppelin and making tracks down the road to a Motel 6 and a legal nap. The Motel 6 ended up being more of a mind trip than any confrontation in a Wal-Mart parking lot could be. 

I was napping peacefully in my cheap room, when around midnight, the most drugged out collection of meth-crazed miscreants checked into the room next to me and began unloading a collection of gas-cans and bottles into their room. They were driving a big, rusted out Explorer that was pulling a ski boat that hadn't seen water in years and now apparently served as their trailer. Now at that point in the day, my nerves were about as frazzled as could be...I had been driving the entire day, I had crossed over Donner Pass in white-out conditions, and in my mind I had avoided a nasty confrontation with the Reno police and the Walton family. At some point while dozing in my roach motel it came to me that these ruffians next door to me were up to something nefarious. I figured they were setting up some sort of meth cooking operation or something equally disturbing. I tried to sleep with one eye open for a few hours, but to no avail. I ended up hitting the road before sunrise, putting Reno behind me and swearing off Wal-Marts and seedy motels for good.

Day two of my drive took me through Nevada, Utah and into Wyoming. Nevada and Utah is pretty much a collection of dumpy old mining towns with mountains looming in all directions. I did stop in Winnemucca to see the town made famous by Johnny Cash's song, 'I've Been Everywhere'. There are some beautiful places in both states, but seeing that I had neither the time nor desire to sight-see I kept the pedal to the metal and kept on driving. I was hoping to make Boulder during this day's drive, but Wyoming proved more than I could handle in one day. I ended up crashing out in the van at a Flying J. Nobody cared. What a novel idea...Letting someone sleep in their car on a road trip. I ended up stopping almost exclusively at Flying J's along the rest of my drive. 

Day three found me driving through Wyoming and half of Colorado. I stopped in Boulder, meaning to say hi to some friends and then continue onto Kansas, but my buddy took me to lunch at a pub. After one sip of the IPA at Sun Mountain Brewery, I knew that my driving was over for the day. My buddy and I ended up having an afternoon pub session and then we went hiking/scrambling in the mountains around Boulder for sunset. After scrambling around the Flatirons, we walked around Boulder searching for beers and wings. We stayed up late into the night waxing poetically about Purdue Boilermakers, climbing, surfing, and the philosophical intricacies of western theology.

It took all of day four to get through Colorado, Kansas, and Missouri. I didn't run into any snow, but I suffered from horrible side winds the entire way through the Plains. I saw a couple semi-trucks that tipped over from 65mph wind gusts. Around St. Louis it started raining and sleeting, so I found a Flying J and caught a nap until the sun came up. I made quick work of Illinois and found myself drinking beers with my old college roommates by early afternoon in Indianapolis. 

I figure that during my drive I drank around 24 cups of gut-rotting truck stop coffee, ate 48 inches of Subway sandwiches, consumed 4 1/2 bags of beef jerky, and ate enough processed snack foods to take months off of my life.

I spent two days in Indiana and then flew back to California where my wife was waiting with our Honda Fit all packed up and ready to go. I left Indiana in 10 degree weather, with an impending blizzard and landed in California with the weather in 70's and sunny. The plan had always been for me to haul ass across the country with our stuff and the van, then we were going to take several weeks to make the trip South along the California coast and then leisurely across the country...visiting friends and having adventures along the way.

It's a funny mind trip to drive that far alone. I think it's healthy to spend time in your own head, thinking your own thoughts, drinking truck stop coffee, and dreaming about the future. 

The Political Rant (Feel Free to Skip Over)

After listening to NPR and conservative talk radio for 4 solid days, I feel like there is a definite difference in the rhetoric each viewpoint spews out. It seems like NPR is so in the tank for Obama that they lose all claim to objectivity, while most of talk radio is so in the tank for republican evangelicals that they lose their credibility on many issues. Both sides are constantly shouting about how bad things are and how they can only get worse...it seems like the one thing everybody can agree on. I'm no expert, but maybe things were a little out of hand economically. I mean, is it really that bad if people don't spend as much money at strip malls and movie theaters? On one hand people bemoan the decline of the environment and global warming, but on the other hand they bite their nails over the decline of the consumer based economy...Isn't an economy based on people spending and spending and spending a little bit irresponsible anyway? Maybe things are starting to correct and get back to a more 'sustainable' level of spending. Call me crazy...but maybe buying loads of worthless crap on a credit card which is mass produced in China by 9 year old peasants, shipped across the Pacific in huge container ships, driven across the U.S. of A in semi-trucks which get 4mpg's, and then sold to consumers at huge multi-national chain stores with just enough mark-up to make a couple hundred share-holders a %7 profit is a tad bit irresponsible.

Apologies for the rambling. I had a lot of time to think. Check back later for some stories about our trip down the California coast, the drive East, adventures in Colorado, and our brief return to the great state of Indiana.