Category: Places

14th Jan – 21st Jan 2022

Forty minutes drive from Corpus Christi brought us to Port Aransas, a fishing and vacation town on Mustang Island. The Island is one of the many, long, thin, low-lying barrier islands along the Gulf Coast with an endless white sandy beach on the ocean-side and marshland and shipping channels on the land-side. This whole coast is vunerable to the destructive power of hurricanes. The town took a direct hit from hurricane Harvey in August 2017 and suffered devastating damage due to 130mph winds and 6ft storm surges. Luckily the town’s 3400 residents had been evacuated so there were no deaths reported, but 100% of the town’s businesses and 85% of the homes reported damage. Now, four and a half years later it is mostly rebuilt. Only a few empty lots remain and many new developments have popped up too. All the new homes make the place feel very tidy and kempt and every property has a jolly, colourful, pastel paint job. Most homes are built atop stout stilts, acknowledging that flooding and storm surges are a fact of life here but if they insist on dragging oil out of the ground and burning it willy-nilly, they are going to need taller stilts…

We had booked a whole week on a small beachfront campsite here to include the celebration of Nick’s birthday. There was some good weather forecast and we were looking forward to doing some exploring, eating out, and having some beach time. In this town the beach golf buggy is the preferred method of transport and Nick had chosen a day’s rental of such a machine as his birthday present. The golf carts are permitted on all the roads except the main highway up to the limit of Port Aransas town, and that includes the beach which is also a designated roadway. Although we were staying a couple of miles from town there was an hourly shuttle bus that stopped at the entrance to the park and charged a massive 25c each per journey, and it was also an easy, safe cycle. The camp was quite small and compact but we had a nice end-of-row site with a view of the sea through the dunes. It seemed quite a friendly park with lots of long term snowbirds who all seemed to know each other. I think it would have been a more social for us here but we heard mid-week that Covid was rampaging through the residents, having been imported by some visiting grandchildren and then distributed via some jolly potluck lunches in the following days. We did have one conversation with our neighbour early in the week regarding the shuttle bus. We had sussed it out and taken our first trip within 24 hours of arriving in town. He had spent 6 months living at this camp and didn’t even know that it existed. No radar for public transport at all.

Port Aransas, or Port A as it is known locally, is quite an interesting little place. It has escaped much of the modern, corporate, blanket development that erodes much of the character of tourist destinations, thus removing the attractiveness of them as tourist destinations. There are obviously a large number of holiday homes and condos here, but it has mostly retained the feeling of a small coastal fishing town. It was quite sleepy during our stay here but it was far preferable to experience it in low season rather than during the madness of peak season. Given the number of golf carts parked outside rental outlets it must be absolute mayhem here when they are all rented out and being driven around after multiple marguaritas.

Things to love about Port A:

An epic beach. It is long, flat, wide, hard-packed and clean. Cars and golf carts can use it as a road but it is well demarkated with bollards, protecting huge swathes of it from the traffic. It is perfectly legal to park-up and camp on the beach, in RVs or tents and you can have a fire at any time of year as long as it is less than 3x3ft in diameter. There were beach showers every half mile, port-a-loos every quarter mile, bins everywhere and there were numbered markers every 200 metres to help navigate the locations of roads, homes and business behind the low dunes. We sat on it, walked it, cycled it and golf-carted it.

Seafood. Lots of it and very fresh and delicious. We had a couple of meals out in which shrimp and tuna featured heavily. For Nick’s birthday meal we walked to a nearby restaurant that was about half a mile away. It was located near the local airfield across the main highway and as we walked up to the door the hostess asked us if we had arrived by plane….because she had just seen one land….and that was, to her, a more logical explanation for us arriving at the restaurant on foot rather than just having walked from somewhere else. It will never cease to amaze me that in most of this country walking is considered a form of exercise, not a form transport.

Big ships. Port A sits at the northern tip of Mustang Island, beyond which is the shipping channel for the entrance to the port of Corpus Christi. There is a public park at the point and here one can sit and watch massive tankers and tug-powered barges cruise past. A great way to kill an hour or two. Enhanced entirely by the addition of frolicking dophins riding bow-waves and pelicans cruising around looking cool.

Sunsets at the marina when you arrive at the bar at exactly the right time to get the full benefit of the warm setting sun radiating into the open-sided, waterfront building so you can have a couple of pre-dinner beers in the sea breeze and pretend you might be closer to the tropics than you actually are.

Golf carts. Everywhere. And a great toy for a 51 year old birthday boy. Having picked the warmest day, done half an hour worth of paper work and paid the same money as we would have done to rent an SUV, we were the proud guardians of our own for 24 hours. It was slow but steady with its one whole cyclinder, cammoflaged, had neon down-lights as well as headlights and was bluetooth connectable to our music. We razzed around like hoons-sedately-all day, going here, there and everywhere. We did some food shopping, went to the local wetlands bird sanctuary, went to look at boats again, went to the breakwater at the end of the beach, ‘raced’ up the beach, explored back streets, did some nosing at houses, went out to dinner, drove back down the beach in the dark via a beach bar and got it back safely the next day having used $5 worth of fuel. What a marvellous birthday present!

The weather in January for half of the time. 50% of days here were T-shirt, shorts and flip-flop days. The other 50% were jeans, boots, jumpers and coats days. Can’t complain, most of the rest of the US seems to be dealing with winter storms, blizzards and sub-zero temperatures and the UK can’t reliably deliver T-shirt and shorts days 50% of the time in July.

We really enjoyed our week in Port A and were a bit sad to leave. It was great to have slowed down and not been moving so often. Now we have reached the Gulf we plan to travel more like this and spend longer in each place that we stay. Next stop- Palacios.

12th Jan- 14th Jan 2022

We left Marfa quite early (for us-9.30am) with the prospect of a long-ish drive of about 240 miles (thus breaking one of the Rules of Two). The day’s scenery served up mile upon mile of beautiful but desolate nothingness as we cruised down US-90, a road devoid of much traffic at all. We set off having no pre-planned destination for our stay that night, but the miracle of modern technology meant that I could book us a roost en route.

We were headed to Del Rio, another town kissing the Mexican border. Here the levels of illegal crossings has become so high that the National Guard had been draughted in to aid the control of the border. The town hit international news last year when 14,000 Haitians crossed here en masse and sheltered for days in blistering heat under a highway overpass in a makeshift camp with no access to adequate food and water. This would have been overwhelming even in a less conservative area of the country and now there has been a huge injection of manpower and machinery into Del Rio to stop it happening again. We saw whole RV parks commandeered to house National Guard troops in bunk house trailers and on the South-West side of town, nearest the Rio Grande and border there was a Humvee stationed with a couple of soldiers every mile or so along the roadside. Consequently this is one of the fastest growing cities in the country: Lots of people coming to live in Del Rio to stop the other people wanting to come to Del Rio. A difficult problem with a very expensive partial solution.

We had one night here. It was warm enough to sit outside out for sundowners in the evening sun,which was a real treat, and we had a good chat and mutual RV tours with our neighbours. They were here from California to visit their daughter and new grandchild. Their son-in-law’s job had brought the family to Del Rio. His profession? Border Patrol, of course! On our way along the road out of Del Rio we were stopped at one of the many immigration check points in the border areas. These are located away from the physical borders but along key roads that carries traffic that may have crossed into the USA illeagally or carrying contraband. Normally we are waved through these checkpoints but this time we were given the third degree. Unfortunately our passports were locked away in Tin Can and the Border Patrol officer wasn’t entirely reassured by our UK driving licences. Retrieval of our passports would have taken a good ten minutes and there was a queue building up behind us. He considered his options, obviously decided we were low risk for being illegal interlopers with a camper-full of bricks of cocaine, and waived us through with a brief lecture on how our passports should be close at hand when were are travelling close to the border. Suitably chastised we agreed wholeheartedly and continued on our way, completely forgetting his advice and never moving the passports as suggested.

Next stop along the way was a town called Cotulla. This is seemingly a scrap of a town in the middle of the desert flatlands of Southern Texas, but there is a disproportionate bustle about the place for its size. The town was founded in the late 1800s by a Prussian immigrant called Joseph Cotulla who started a ranching outfit here. On hearing that the railroad was planned to come through the area he rather brilliantly donated 120 acres of land to the railroad on which they established a depot, thus cementing the future of the town that bears his name. This town of only about 4,000 permenant residents thrives in current times as it is sits atop the Eagle Ford shale deposit and houses the largest sand fracking facility in North America, the area being the second largest producer of oil in the USA. The town has 16 hotels with a further 7 planned, all to accomodate workers and contractors. Everyone drives a massive truck, every second business is a petrol station. In this part of the world there are no concessions to climate change, no will to compromise Big Company wealth for a macro reduction in emissions, no infrastructure planning to change things in the future. Texas is oil.

Having thrashed down a very poor quality back road to get here, we finaly arrived, shaken-not-stirred in Cotulla. We had passed countless fracking sites, and (contaminated) water disposal sites along the way and those were just the ones visible from the road. Our camp here was large and mostly empty save for a few resident workers. It was visible from the main road but not easy to get to due to a side-road closure. We did several trips up and down the short stretch of highway that passed it, arguing with two forms of sat-nav and each other about how to get there. Eventually we worked it out and calm was restored. It was a beautiful afternoon and the camp had beautiful pool area. Swimwear was broken out again and suncream applied. This time, however, the pool was unheated so we just looked at it from our sun loungers. ‘Cold water swimming’ is very low down on my list of fun things to do.

The next morning we hit the road again and made our final push for what we felt was the true destination for this trip, the Gulf Coast. It was another lovely warm day and we were excited to be heading to the beach. We cruised on through the largish city of Corpus Christi, which was seeming one long strip mall, and crossed a bridge out to Mustang Island. This is one of many long thin barrier islands that run along this coast and home to our next stop: Port Aransas.

9th Jan – 12th Jan 2022

There are many small towns in the rural hinterlands of the USA that are long past their glory days and are being slowly but surely abandoned by the communities that once thrived in them. Industries fail, businesses close and unemployment drives people away. Farms become unproductive. Buildings and homes are abandoned, ancient shop fronts and gas stations are boarded up and the fabric of a place slowly disintergrates until there is nothing left to qualify it as civilisation.

Marfa is a place that could have been a victim of this inextricable decline but it has been saved by an unlikely medium. Modern art.

Marfa has been in existence since the 1880s because it became a ‘water stop town ‘ for the new railroad. This is a place where the steam engines could take on essential water but not important enough to warrant having a station. These towns were known as ‘jerk-towns’, a colloquialism coined by virtue of the fact that the flow of water from the swinging arms that connected to the water bowsers was started by the ‘jerk’ on a chain. The town quickly grew in the 1920s, hosted several thousand trainee pilots at the nearby Marfa Army Airfield during WW2 but started a gradual decline after this. It has provided gritty back drops for several movies, including the 1956 James Dean film Giant, and 2006’s No Country For Old Men.

The town’s rennaissance via art started in the 1970s when a New York minimalist artist, Donald Judd, relocated to the town and created some large art installations here. Art has attracted visitors and artists which has created a positive feedback loop of a slow snowballing of investment, renovation and reclamation of the town’s buildings and spaces. There are art events, theatre productions and an annual music festival every year. The people that come here are attacted to its retro vibe, adobe architecture and all the improvements seem to strive to preserve its authentic patina. To cater to the influx of visitor money there are some nice restaurants and shops (all seemingly selling the same sort of artisanal and achingly cool stock) and the town is littered with small galleries as well as there being the ongoing installations of the Chinati Foundation, the organisation that manages Judd’s legacy and works.

All these factors were why we had opted to come to Marfa for three nights. We had had a day trip here from the nearby Fort Davis in late 2018 and had agreed that it was a place in which we would love to spend some more time.

The road into Marfa throws some clues as to its arty credentials when about 30 miles from town one comes across ‘The Prada Shop’. This is a mock Prada store front that is a pop art exhibit. It is in the middle of nowhere and quite surreal. Further down the road we passed the Tethered Aerostat Radar System, a tethered blimp that gets raised to watch for border crosser activity. It was deployed as we drove by so my photo is less impressive than this stock photo that I found online.

Our park in Marfa was called the Tumble In and had the requisite levels of windswept dustiness. It was a bit of a self-serve affair with a tiny orange caravan as the unmanned office at the entrance and a camp host that spent most of his time at the local hostelry. It did however have one of the town’s art intallations on site which looked like nothing until darkness fell.

The Tumble In was an easy 1/4 mile stroll from Marfa’s centre, and as usual, we were the only ones walking the route. We spent our days wandering around the town, searching out the interesting buildings, old signage and street art. Unfortunately, this being the start-of-the-week, post-holiday-season, mid-winter almost nothing was open. All the galleries, a lot of the eateries and the Chinati Foundation sites were all closed. This was a bit depressing initially but we persevered and found a few little gems to keep us happy:

Marfa Burritos. The clue is in the name. Anthony Bourdain ate here on his travels whilst filming Parts Unknown and it seemed as good a reason as any to do the same. The building was very unprepossessing and covered with handwritten graffitti inside and outside. There were only 7 choices of burrito, all the size of a small forearm, and the two that we shared were muy delicioso! Nick added his words of appretiation and wisdom to the wall above our table in green marker pen. We could have made this a daily visit but wisdom prevailed.

A coffee shop called Sentinel with half decent coffee and a lovely sunny sheltered outside area populated by a few loud, youthful looking, ‘zooming’, work-from-anywherers, mostly sporting beards and plaid shirts. This earned itself a few visits and one day we passively learnt a quite a bit about the expansion of an icecream shop business.

A fantastic little independant food store called The Get Go Grocery in which we found some very acceptable French cheese and wine. In the Texas desert. Impressive.

The Marfa Wine Company. We discovered this ‘wine shop and patio’ during a mid-afternoon, directionless meander down a back street. It occupied a perfect sunny spot with a table and chairs on a deck and we felt it would be rude not to have a glass of rosé. Unfortunately the girl managing the shop informed us that she only sold wine by the glass at the weekends, but we were welcome to buy a bottle…need I say more?

Marfa is a very photogenic place and now I will bore you with some of our snaps.

Here are some less arty photos of me waiting for the train to pass through town and me with some actual tumbleweed that blew into me. Oh, and another sunset shot.

6th Jan – 9th Jan 2022

Some sections of our journey are about seeing a place. Some are about stopping and resting. Some are about just getting from A to B. This next bit for us, after leaving the ranch, was about putting some miles in. Hampson-style. A leisurely fashion it is then.

A wise RV’ing veteran once told us to stick to the “Rule of 2” for touring:

• Don’t travel more than 200 miles in a day
• Arrive at your destination by 2pm
• Stay at least 2 days.

We generally do stick to this mantra, but the next few days were an exception with a run of one-nighters. This isn’t really compatible with doing much sightseeing at our destinations but we get to see an awful lot of the world go by from the truck windows, which after all is what a roadtrip is all about.

Our drive after leaving the ranch involved a 45 mile back-track up the road away from the border, a brief stop to refuel at the petrol station/hardware store/grocery store/bottle shop at the junction, then hanging a right to continue our easterly journey. Tuscon was the nearest civilisation but, having spent time there in the past, we breezed on through and joined the main southerly East-West interstate highway, the I-10. Our next destination was a stop-off at a nice park in a town called Wilcox alongside this road. This stop was to restock (the food supplies), rest (the bodies and livers), refresh (everything that needed laundering) and rehydrate (our dry, desert, lizard-like skin in the pool). Yes! Finally the temperature had pushed into the mid-late 20s deg C and we, whilst waiting for our four loads of laundry, broke out the bikinis and lounged in & around the park’s very lovely heated swimming pool. Desert winters. Hot days, freezing nights. Just weird, man.

The evening delivered a magnificent sunset which coincided with a completely unexpected spectacle. There were thousands and thousands of large birds flying across the sky in V-formation after V-formation, as far as the eye could see. A quick internet search informed us that they were Sandhill Cranes and between 20,000 and 40, 000 of them migrate here each winter to the wildlife area at Wilcox. Each evening at sunset they return from their daytime feeding grounds ready to roost for the night. The town’s wildlife association even has an annual birding and nature festival centred around the cranes called Wings Over Wilcox. It was magical, but entirely impossible to capture on camera, so you’ll just have to use your imaginations!

Our I-10 journey continued the next day and we crossed into our next state, New Mexico. It bills itself as the Land of Enchantment and it does feel a bit different here. The terrain is much the same as Arizona: huge flat wide valleys covered in scrubland with distant mountain ranges, and this continues into West Texas. I don’t know why New Mexico feels a bit different, but remember, Roswell and Area 51 are here….cue Twilight Zone music… We also spent quite a lot of time here in 2018 so we were just passing through again. It was another lovely warm sunny day and we cruised through vast tracts of desert, empty except for the 4-lane highway. There were lots of signs warning that this area was subject to regular and heavy dust storms that could make driving very dangerous. Not today, thankfully. Our only stop in New Mexico was a night in Las Cruces at an RV park that we had stayed in last time. This is only the third RV park re-visit that we have made on our travels, the others being at the marina park in Duluth, Minnesota, close to the lift bridge that rang bells and sounded its hooter every time one of the many enormous cargo ships came into port, and a place under the flight path of the runway approach of Nellis Airforce base in Vegas. Both were considerably noisier.

At the gateway to the town stands a big sculpture of a roadrunner bird, made entirely of recycled materials. His underbelly is mainly white trainer tops and his plumage mostly cellphones. He was quite magnificent. Here our enthusiasm for a walk into town and dinner were low. We were still detoxing from the excesses of the Rancho and Nick was coming down with something…. A cold, or Omicron?? A rapid test was negative, but we were happy staying in and being lazy.

Our New Mexico passage was only a two day affair and the next day our travels took us into Texas which was going to be an altogether longer tarmac/tyre rubber relationship. The I-10 just continued on, and on, and on, through a flat dusty landscape, the road full of trucks and RVs. Everyone going somewhere, for some reason. Texas really is an enormous state. To put this into context: Texas is about 270,000 miles squared in area. The UK and NZ are about 95,000 and 105,000 miles squared respectively. Massive. We crossed the border from New Mexico and pretty quickly found ourselves charging along the urban hell highway through El Paso. This is a border town which is very ‘up close and personal’ with its close Mexican neighbour, Ciudad Juárez, which is just across the Rio Grande. The historically open and friendly relationship between the two cities has soured in recent times as gang and drug-related violence in Juárez has made it so dangerous that now there is very little traffic between the two cities.

Driving through on I-10 it was easy to see the border wall and the disparity of living standards. El Paso, although is in Texas, is in the Mountain Time Zone along with New Mexico and Arizona, and Central Time Zone didn’t begin until we were through the city and well out the other side. We stopped for fuel and sandwiches at a dubious and dusty petrol station with only one functioning pump and then pushed on.

This next section of road was quite remarkable in the story of this journey so far because…wait for it….I was allowed to drive! Nick does all the driving generally because a) he loves it, b) he is very good at it, c) he is a terrible passenger, d) we rarely travel far enough in one day to warrant me driving too. But I am very conscious that I need to be able to confidently drive Big D, especially if the situation might arise in times of stress, so every now and then I wrestle the driving seat away from his highness and refresh my skills. I am brilliant too.

Our first Texas stop was the third of three single-nighters in a place called Van Horn. It is a modest sized place named for a Lt. James Judson Van Horn who commanded a garrison here in 1859 (which was taken only two years later by Confederate forces.) Its future was cemented by the arrival of the railroad in 1881. It is now probably best known as the site of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space tourism company, which is located on a 290,000 tract of land only 25 miles north of the city. Van Horn also provided the inspiration for the 2019 titular song by alternative rock band Saint Motel.

The next morning we parted company with the I-10 and headed off South-West on US 90 into the even more remote desert yonder towards a very unusual town called Marfa.

2nd – 6th Jan 2022

A long, long time ago, back in the time when dragons were still common, a glorious, flaxen-haired girl-child was first born unto her parents, Jacqueline and Stuart. Fifty years later, by now significantly more glorious but also a bit more silver than flaxen in the hair department, the girl-woman was asked by her loyal consort what she might like as a gift to celebrate the milestone. She decided that she would like to go to a lovely guest ranch for four days and pretend that she was a cowgirl. Her wish was granted and thus the duo (for this was really quite a nice treat for the loyal consort too) found themselves driving to the very, very edge of the great slab of the land that is known as Amurca to a special, magical place called Rancho De La Osa.

If we had driven any further on our journey to the southern border of Arizona we would have arrived in Mexico. In fact the 600 acres of the’Ranch of the She-Bear’ ran all the way up to the recently intalled border wall which loomed on the near horizon like an oversized art installation. It is an old place, neat but dusty, its gum trees towering above the surrounding scrubland of the desert providing some rare shade. The ranch was originally the site of a village inhabited by the Tohono O’Odham native tribe. In 1722 Jesuit missionaries built a mission outpost as a place of worship, a trading post and an inn for travellers. This building still stands today despite having cannonballs fired at it in 1916 by Pancho Villa and his men when they tried to capture it in an unsuccessful raid. It is the oldest continually inhabited building in Arizona and now functions as the cantina for the ranch, inside which there was an unmanned bar operating a ‘serve-yourself’ honesty policy. The rooms were all decorated in a hacinenda Spanish style with open fireplaces and all meals were served at long communal tables with a big bell to summon us all to each sitting. There was no mask wearing and no social distancing. We crossed our fingers and just went with the flow.

The ranch offered two horse rides a day, 22-rifle target and 12-bore shotgun clay pigeon shooting, archery and ATV tours around the property and beyond. We planned to do it all. There was a heated pool, but it wasn’t quite warm enough to break out the swimsuits.

Big Dave and Tin Can had a perfect spot to park just outside our room and we even found an outside socket to be able to plug Tin Can into the A/C supply and run the fridge. It was also made packing and unpacking quite simple.

We had four nights here, arriving in time for lunch on the first day. Within 1 minute of sitting down at the table we had met Ed and Karee from Florida and a new friendship was born! They became our eating, drinking and activity buddies for the whole stay here and many an hour was whiled away at the cantina together. We were honest at the honesty bar, but supplemented our libations with BYO, which was entirely acceptable to the establishment, who just let us do our own thing.

We rode horses. Nick for the first time ever, and me for the first time in 20+ years. The Western-style saddles were a blessing and Nick was very brave. The ol’leggies didn’t scream with pain too badly after the event.

We shot guns. The Americans presumed that we had no idea which end of a gun was which, but we surprised them all with our skills. Nick was King of the Clay Pigeon Shooting.

We did archery. I was Queen of the Bow with a sublime ‘centre of the gremlin’s forehead’ shot with my very last arrow. It was sweet.

We took an ATV tour up to, and along, the border wall. This section was only completed about a year ago and has a gravel road running along it’s US side. It is not an inpenetrable object, however, with several gaps coinciding with dry riverbeds and because of the change of government-and thus policy wall building policy-at the last election, its build was suspended and the wall just stops. Our tour took us to this point.

This is patrolled at regular interavals by Border Patrol officers in trucks and there are lots of cameras too. We were told by our guide NOT, under any circumstances, to stray to the other side of the wall because to come back would be to illegally enter the USA. We would be seen and arrested, which would really kill the guest ranch experience buzz…..

Apparently the wall is not primarily to control the influx of people, more the trafficking of drugs. It has helped with both, but the patrolling of the border takes an incredible amount of money and manpower. On our last afternoon here a Border Patrol helicopter was flying low just beyond the horse corral on the ranch. It was circling round and around a specific area, so we all went to see what was happening. It played out like a TV documentary drama. The helicopter could obviously see some illegal immigrants in the bush and was trying to direct two Border Patrol officers, one on a quad bike, one on foot, to where they were hiding. More officers arrived in trucks with another quad bike but still they couldn’t find them. The helicopter was still circling. Finally another truck arrived, this one carrying a German Shepherd who got the job done within 5 minutes – four men finally being apprehended and driven away. It was very surreal.

My birthday fell in the middle of our stay here. It was a very low key but perfect day. In the evening at dinner the staff brought out a birthday cake which doubled as dessert for everyone. I ‘blew out’ my candle with a Covid-safe clap as another guest played Happy Birthday on his harmonica. Later that evening, by coincidence rather than design, our host and ranch manager- the Venerable Cowboy, Ross Knox – treated us to a reading of cowboy poetry which was actually very cool. It turns out that Ross is a two times world champion horse packer and had been inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame. Who knew such an esteemed establishment existed?

Our time here was magic and was a worthy place to celebrate a milestone birthday. The ranch was so relaxed. The sun shone. It was dry. We ate well. We did some very fun stuff and we made some great friends. Our good byes to the ranch were hard, but not so our goodbyes to Ed and Karee as we have invited ourselves to stay with them in Florida towards the end of our trip in April. They were powerless to refuse our demands…..

27th Dec 2021 – 2nd Jan 2022

Not far from the country club enclaves of Palm Desert lies the very peculiar Salton Sea. It is a place that time didn’t just forget, it completely disowned it. It is a shallow, landlocked, highly salinated body of water that sits in the Imperial Valley, over part of the San Andreas fault. Millions of years ago this valley was connected to the Gulf of Mexico, into which ran the Colorado River. Eventually sand deposits created a dam between the valley and the ocean, thus a huge inland sea was created. It has been intermittantly fed by the Colorado River, but over the ages the river has changed its course and when it flows beyond this valley the lake begins to dry up. It was last completely dry in 1580, and the last flood of the Colorado to fill it was in 1905 when the modern sea, about 15 x 35 miles in size, was created. It would have dried up again, but local farmers continued to nab water from the Colorado via irrigation canals and in the 1950s and 1960s it became a resort destination. A lake in the desert was an irrestistable recreational oasis and numerous holiday towns with hotels quickly sprouted up, catering to the watersporters and the beach bunnies. The area was also a haven for much birdlife which used the sea and its wetlands it as a stopover on the Pacific Flyover. All sounds brilliant, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately the idyll was not to last. The sea started to dry up and shrink. Salinity levels rose causing a massive fish die-off and the beaches to be littered with their rotting carcasses. Run off from agriculture polluted the water causing the flourishment of toxic algae, there were outbreaks and spread of diseases of the birdlife which also suffered massive die-off of populations. The lake bed was increasingly exposed, dried out out and then blew about as dust clouds into the resorts and communities. Within a decade or so this was no longer a very nice place to paddle about in your bikini or form a waterskiing pyramid of beauties with nine close friends. Tourism drastically declined and then followed the sad but inevitable death of the resorts, thus creating exactly the faded glory and decay that we love to visit.

We camped for two nights in a nearly deserted lakeside state park with a splendid view of the water and the westerly hills on the other side. This place is -236ft below sea level, wrecking our finely tuned endurance athletic training. The lake played host to lots of birds and the sunsets were amazing. There was an obvious demarkation where the original shoreline would have been, then the ground beyond that was a mixture of tiny shells and an oddly thick fine dry mud that became squelchy as we approached the water. A mild, festering briney odour eminated from the wet ooze. We did not need to read the numerous signs warning us not to swim in or drink the water to know that this was nasty. We fell back to camp and lit the fire pit, our first of the trip. It was great to spend some time outside in the evening and cook on a grate, but the temperature plummeted like a stone once darkness fell – banishing us to the warmth of Tin Can to eat dinner – the desert reminding us that it was winter.

As we travelled south from here along the shores of the sea we called into a old resort town called Bombay Beach which was barely clinging to its existance. The decay was pervasive and it was hard to believe that anyone still lived here. Amazingly there were a shop and a bar still functioning. The sign outside the shop was advertising lithium for sale, maybe providing some commentary on the mental health of the remaining locals, and the bar- The Ski- Inn used to ply a roaring trade to the watersport enthusiasts. Now I think more tourists like us come to take photos than actually buy a drink. Perhaps we shouldn’t do the former without doing the latter. We drove on.

Just beyond the end of the Sea is another very odd place called Slab City, an area of Wild West off-grid camping in the desert. Inhabited by an ever fluctuating population of societal margin dwellers, squatters and artists, it is an area of desert dotted with rotting, tarp-covered RVs, surrounded by various piles of detritus. With no power, running water or sewage facilities, the people living out here are carving out a different sort of existance, one that is often facilitated by illegal substances, I think. One chap, Leonard Knight (1931-2014) who lived here found that God also helped and created his own unique way of showing this, creating a ‘hillside visionary environment’ called Salvation Mountain. He painted the side of a rocky outcrop and this has also become a tourist attraction and we called in on our journey.

Our onward road took us into Arizona. Just over the border was our next stop: Yuma. We were now into our next time zone and finally out of the ‘stupidly high price for petrol’ zone that is California. On our way here we passed close enough to the Mexiacan border to see The Wall. A thing much reported and discussed during the previous US government. It was a bit surreal to se it in the flesh. Yuma itself was just a place to stop for a couple of nights. It is the site of the historic ‘Yuma Crossing’, a section of the Colorado river that was relatively easy to cross on foot and on horse, making it an important place during the European settlement of this area. Yuma is a centre for agriculture, providing 90% of all the leafy vegetables consumed in the USA. Apparently it is also the hottest, least humid and least rainy of any place in the ‘lower 48’ states. Also it has an old prison on a rocky outcrop overlooking the river with some fabulous views (probably not appretiated by by the inmates of yore) and a ‘historic downtown’ (a bit overhyped) connected to our park by a nice cycle trail along the river. We snuck into our ‘over 55s’ park by being British and hoping they wouldn’t ask. If we had been Canadian they would have charged us $10 more per night. I have no idea why. Here we bobbed about a bit. Did some touristy things, had lunch out and were slightly bemused why, other than the weather, Yuma is the winter destination for 90,000 Snowbirds.

After Yuma we continued our Sou’Eastern trajectory through Arizona. Destination Why. Why? Because it was on the way and it was called Why. Why else? Why it is called Why is apparently because two roads meet here, making the shape of the letter Y, and the chap that founded the settlement that sprung up here (in the somewhere of nowhere) wanted to call it Y. But he was refused this request, because all places that are to be recognised by the United States Postal Service need to have at least 3 letters in their names. Hence Why.

We travelled here on the 31st of Jan down a desolate road in our 4th atmosheric river of our trip. It rained and rained and rained. In the desert rain doesn’t go anywhere, it just sits in big puddles on the ground in a bemused way as if to say ‘now what do I do?’ We passed sign after sign warning us of flash flooding in the dry washes that crossed the undulating road and hoped that we arrived at our destination before that happened. We did. Why was no more than a petrol station, a cafe, 20-30 homes, a small community centre, a fire station and two RV parks.

There seemed little reason to be here but the twenty-something young man with terrible teeth that was managing our RV park was ‘Why born and bred’ and had only spent one month of his life living anywhere else. I guess not everyone needs to check out greener grasses of other pastures. We arrived in the continued hosing rain and hurriedly set up bedecked in our waterproofs. By 2pm we were installed, in dry clothes and contemplating a mild New Years Eve celebration. This hadn’t been our first choice for our New Year party. We had originally booked an RV park at a casino hotel just south of Tuscon, but the rapidly increasing numbers of Omicron made us very wary of hanging out indoors with a bunch of partying strangers. We needed to stay Covid-free for our next imminant adventure that was happening on the 2nd Jan.

The rain did stop. We did get in a short sunset stroll and we did have a lovely NYE-for-two with plenty of nice food and drinkies. We even had some party lights a’flashing. AND we even managed to stay awake until midnight. Hello 2022! More of the same old chaos?? My mantra for the next 12 months will be:

High Hopes And Low Expectations.

We chilled out on the 1st Jan and went for a longer walk in the cold sunshine. Our route took us through the other RV park in town, an off grid, spread out affair with lots of interesting rigs with big solar set-ups. This is another place folk come ‘to winter’. Lordy knows why. Good to have a ‘sticky beak’ though, as the Australians would say.

23rd Dec – 27th Dec 2021

From an outsiders point of view Palm Desert is an odd place. It is situated in the Cochealla Valley about 14 miles from its better known, older, more established, more cultural neighbour, Palm Springs. This whole area is a mecca for the ‘Snowbird’ population- mostly retired people who live in the northern USA and Canada who are fed up with frozen bones and shovelling snow off driveways in the colder months so escape to the warm, sunny, dry, desert for at least a few months each winter. This valley is surrounded by mountains that create a ‘thermal belt’ protecting it from the potential colder night-time temperatures that the desert can deliver. Having experienced a couple of UK winters over the past two years I completely understand the pilgramage and, this Tin Can journey being a winter trip, our presence in this part of the country is no random event.

Palm Desert has grown rapidly and caters nearly exclusively to the over 55s. The housing is almost entirely arranged in beautiful walled communitites with gated entrances and despite the desert environment there are palm trees, lush plantings and green lawns, all supported by widespread irrigation. The communities mostly all have social clubs, pools, golf courses and other sporting facilities and the whole place functions like a big ‘summer-camp-in-the-winter-for-the-mature-person-with-an-inner-child’. Friendships are forged, legs are tanned, bodies are exercised, aching joints are eased, parties abound and life is completely geared to benefit a segment of society that can often be marginalised by the modern world’s obsession with youth. In fact what makes it odd is that there are almost no children here. Visiting minors are occasionally spotted hanging around the sports facilities watching their grandparents play Pickle Ball, or they may be the kids of the golf pros. I guess they are allowed to breed.

So we arrived here a couple of days before Christmas and it was the end of the first phase of this trip. We had covered 1600 miles in 3 and a half weeks and we had come to spend the festive period with Lori and her family from Wenatchee. They all decamped here in November and we were really looking forward to catching up with Lori and her partner, Paul, who we hadn’t yet met. (Approval since granted!) Our digs were to be the spare room of Lori and Paul’s very comfortable Air BnB house which was on, you guessed it, a manicured, gated community, complete with palm trees and pool. (Also approved!) Unfortunately there was no parking for BD & TC here, but Lori’s parents, Rocky & Casey were happy for them to be abandoned on their driveway, about 10 minutes away. We packed an unfeasible amount of possessions and alcohol into reuseable shopping bags (all class) and Lori and Paul scooped us up before another very ‘un-desert-y’ 12 hour downpour commenced.

Now although we were ostensibly here for Christmas, it was not the main focus of our stay. That was pickle ball. Now for those not in the know, pickle ball is a cross betweeen tennis and table tennis, played with a paddle and a plastic wiffleball on a court about 1/3-1/4 the size of a normal tennis court. It is mostly played in doubles, very social, easily accomodates all ages and mobilities and in these parts has the participation levels and passionate following of a religious cult. We really had no choice but to give it a go. We were pretty good. This was unsurprising for Nick who was a tennis whizz in his youth, but even I, with my pathological inability to clear a tennis net with a tennis ball, was suprisingly competant for a newbie. We played every day including Christmas Day and with plenty of expert coaching from Paul, Lori and Marla, Lori’s sister, we were able to put up a reasonable game, although we had some aching muscles from our unfamiliar exertions. We came away from Palm Desert with some loaner paddles and balls from Marla and a plan to play when we find some courts on our travels. Apparently the ettiquette is just to turn up to a court complex and await opponents.

Otherwise Christmas was a low-key family affair with Lori & Paul, Marla and her husband Marty, Rocky & Casey and us. We all got together on Christmas eve for dinner and ‘secret santa’ present giving and again on Christmas morning for Rocky’s traditional Swedish pancakes with bacon and sausages. The catering was excessive enough to feed us all for days with leftovers and we had a thoroughly lovely time. Thank you everyone!

19th Dec – 23rd Dec 2021

From Morro Bay we continued south down the coast to our next stop, Ventura. It was getting noticably busier on the roads and the wild idyll of the northern coast was giving way to large conurbations that melded together. The presence of the not-so-distant monster that is Los Angeles was starting to be palpable. The drive was easy, just cruising along US-101 and our park was easy to find in Ventura because it was about 5 metres away from the busy highway. A lot of parks we stay at are close to a road or a railway line, but this one took the biscuit. It was so noisy. Despite it’s proximity to the relentless traffic this park billed itself as a ‘resort’ and was a bit swanky, or at least half the park was. We were in the other half, of course. It was a short walk to the beach, had a heated pool and we had to wear wrist bands to prove that we were guests to the full time security at the gate. All this seemed a bit overkill at this time of year, as was their nightly rate, which was ridiculous. This, however, was the only RV park anywhere near the the town, and we had to pay for the pleasure.

Our motivation for being here was that this is the jump-off point for access to the Channel Islands. No relation to the tax haven rocks in the English Channel, these eight islands sit in the Southern Californian Bight, between 25 and 100km off shore. The earliest paleontological evidence of human existence in North America was found on these islands at least 13,000 years ago. Now five of the Islands form a National Park and boat trips facilitate short day trips or longer camping adventures. We had booked a day trip to Santa Cruz Island on our second full day here.

Ventura boasts a typical SoCal sandy beach with the obligatory surfing vibe and a long paved promenade that was busy with surf watchers, bikers, dog-walkers, skateboarders, meanderers and sitters. On our first full day here we saddled up the bikes and cruised up the prom and through a nice residential area (some of it a canal development with the homes having their own docks) to the marina at the other end of town. This was to scope out the route for the next day, which had an early start. It was a very manageable 40 minute cycle. The marina was large, full of enviable boats, and also home to the local fishing fleet of purse seiners. We had a coffee in the sun, perused a few shops and headed back to base where we showered and headed back to town on foot late afternoon for a mooch around and dinner. Ventura, like many towns, created a pedestrian-only zone on a section of its main street to aid social distancing and outdoor dining for Covid. This is still in place here and gave the town centre a great vibe. We wandered around to select a dinner venue with a good outdoor area and then, as it was still early, headed to the beach and the old pier to kill some time. The original pier was built in 1872, negating the precarious task of offloading cargo and passengers from ships using smaller boats. It has had several incarnations over the years as it has been victim to nature’s fury and fire multiple times. Now it benefits from historical preservation efforts and provides a very satisfactory location for a sunset stroll. During our time-killing perambulations we came across a building at the start of the pier which was a brewery called MadeWest upstairs and a fish restaurant downstairs. It looked like a complete mediocre tourist trap at first glance, but further investigation showed it to be quite the opposite. We sat on the outdoor balcony upstairs, screened from the breeze with perspex windbreaks, under electric heaters, drinking fine beer, being served a great dinner by the downstairs restaurant, with the best view of the sunset in town. There was a small group of locals doing the same we felt a bit like we had stumbled into a private club. Sometimes you get lucky.

We were on the bikes again by 7.15am the next morning, prepared for our day out on the island. Camera, binocculars, packed lunch packed, and most importantly – seasickness pill taken by me. I love the ocean, but it doesn’t love me. We arrived back at the marina in good time and joined our fellow boat passengers in a very civilised, socially distanced queue. It was a lovely morning, but cool and as most people felt compelled to rush for the outside upper deck seats, we opted for inside. All were wearing masks so we gambled on staying warm over better ventilation. The sea was kind on the one hour trip to Santa Cruz Island. Not only was it reasonably calm but it also delivered us a spectacular superpod of 700-1000 dolphins that stayed with us for a good 15 mins. It was amazing. One of life’s ‘bliss moments’ that need to be permenantly stored in an easily accessible part of one’s memory to be recalled often, especially in times of funk. Consider it done.

The island was a delight. The facilities were all very basic with a network of trails, a old ranch homestead which is now a simple interpretive site, a (fairly deserted) sprawling tent campsite, a few composting toilets and plenty of killer views. The boat disgorged us, with about 50 others who all set off en masse in the same direction on the shortest trail, so we went the other way and saw almost no-one all day. We had about 5 hours before our return boat left the island, so plenty of time to bimble about, take in the scenery and loaf about eating sandwiches.

The Island has some very cute native foxes. These are descended from the larger grey foxes of the mainland, and probably floated over on debris about 18,000 years ago. They are small, about the size of a little cat and have an omniverous diet including berries and deer mice. They were nearly wiped out by the arrival of Bald Eagles in the 1990s as they had no concept of aerial predators but their population has now recovered after ‘relocation of the eagles back to the mainland’ and a captive breeding program. They are very sweet and also have no fear of humans. In fact, one park ranger that we spoke to said it seemed that the foxes had actually missed the presence of people during the year when the island was vacated due to Covid, running down to the dock en masse when the first boat arrived.

The trip home was even calmer and the dolphins put in another appearance. I wonder how many times one would have to see this spectacle before getting blassé about it. On our arrival back at the mainland it was already dusk and we quickly cycled home trying to get back before it got too dark. It was cold so we didn’t stop to admire some of the very impressive Christmas house decorations. It’s not just about strings and strings of fairy lights here. No. It’s all about the inflateable lawn/balcony/roof ornaments. Some people looked like they needed an intervention!

Having left Ventura the next morning we finally headed away from the coast and thrashed our way East across the north of the LA area. It was busy, the highways full of impatient drivers and was a moderately unpleasant experience. None of these things were unexpected though. We had a one night stop in San Bernadino, north-east of LA , only hearing gunshots once in the night, and then headed off to our Christmas rendez-vous in Palm Desert, a neighbour to Palm Springs. As was becoming a bit of a common theme of this trip to date, we made this short-ish journey in the rain. This was the precursor to our 3rd ‘atmospheric river’ in just over 3 weeks. Oh, the irony of arriving in a desert in a 24 hour downpour.

14th Dec – 19th Dec 2021

Bodega Bay was granted some forgiveness as we awoke to a dry morning. After a shower we packed up and only to have our improved spirits mildly deflated again by discovering that one of Big Dave’s front indicators was not working. It seemed an easy fix of a replacement bulb, so we factored in a small detour to an autoparts store for our onward journey. This was in the delightfully named Petaluma. Unfortunately a new bulb did not remedy the problem and the fuse was fine. Then we noticed that his rear indicator was not working either. Luckily Tin Can, which plugs into Big Dave like a caravan or boat trailer does, did have a functioning rear indicator so we pushed on. Bizzarely, a day or so later it suddenly started working again. Huzzah! Then stopped again. Hmmff. An auto electrician was going to need consulting. We just woudn’t turn left until then. Simples!

Our onward journey took us through San Fransisco and beyond. We weren’t stopping here as we had visited before, but we opted to cross the Bay on the Golden Gate Bridge rather than the less scenic Oakland Bridge. This gave us the great view of the harbour, the city waterfront and Alcatraz Island, although, a bit like the worst view of Paris being from the Eiffel Tower – because you can’t see the Eiffel Tower – we did miss out on that iconic view of the bridge. It also happens quickly at 60 miles/hr! Over the bridge the road quickly ceases to be a highway and becomes an urban access road, so progress was slow as we wound our way through the south west city districts before re-joining the highway and onward to our next stop – Moss Landing.

Our road there took us through San José, as immortalised by the Dionne Warwick ditty ‘Do you know the way to San José’. I had no feelings about this city prior to our transit through it, but unfortunately our experience was pretty stressful. Firstly, the highway surface was awful. Tin Can shook so much that I was sure that every item of crockery and glassware would be shattered. That, and I was worried we might lose some teeth. Secondly, our Sat Nav, and Google Maps route was intent on routing us via a lovely new expressway ringroad that banned all vehicles over 4 tons. As you all know, we are 7 tons. We had a stressful half hour where we kept having to dive off the through-road into the belly of the city to find alternative routes. Surely this is counterproductive to urban congestion and pollution, having all the medium and large trucks using the normal city streets.

As Dionne warbled:

‘Do you know the way to San Jose? (Yes)
I’ve been away so long (and we’re not coming back, sorry)
I may go wrong and lose my way…’ (AND WHOSE FAULT IS THAT??)

Moss Landing is a seemingly small scrap of a coastal settlement in the mid coast of Monteray Bay dominated by a few big things.

1. A gas fueled power station with two massive stacks that dominate the skyline. Here they are developing a battery storage facility that will be the biggest in the world when finished.
2. The Elkhorn Slough, a massive salt water wetland area and wildlife habitat that is purported to be one of the top 10 bird spotting areas in the world.
3. The Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, a multi-campus research facility of California State University. Study of up to 4000 metre deep ocean depths is facilitated by the proximity of Monterey Canyon to this area. It is the largest undersea canyon on the west coast of the Americas and only an hour or 2 boat journey from the marina here.
4. The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. Here for the same reason as above. Both these facilities were made possible in large part by huge philanthropic support from the Hewlett and Packard family estates.
5. A lovely long state park beach.
6. Bizzarely it is home to the Shakespeare Society of America. A building stuffed full of more than 15,000 items of Bard memoribilia, relocated after the closure of the LA replica Globe Theatre. The chap manning the shop was very chatty and keen to show off all his treasures/junk. I don’t think he has many visitors at this time of year.
7. A tremendous fish market/restaurant called Phil’s which was voted by BBC Travel as one of the best beach fish restaurants in the world (not sure when this was, but the fading rossette is still proudly displayed at the entrance, and to be fair, it was very good.
8. The land south of here is the globe artichoke growing centre of the world. Weird.

We had a good two nights here.

Our route from Moss Landing to our next stop Morro Bay was planned to take us along the aforementioned iconic road, The Big Sur. Unfortunately all the recent heavy rain had caused more slips and it was shut again, a regular occurance over the past few years. Luckily we had checked this before heading that way and avoided having to do a turn-around. To be honest we were’t too disappointed to have to take the easier inland route. We had already seen a lot of beautiful but heavy going coastal roads. We passed through thousands of acres of artichoke growing land (mostly empty and ploughed at this time of year) and the crops changed abruptly to vineyards as we approached Monterey. One single family company owned all the vines along a 70 mile stretch of valley. Big business.

Our Morro Bay experience was delightful and many pieces of the puzzle finally fell into place for this to feel much more like our trips of years past.

Firstly, topography. The town is named for the big rock that sits at the entrance to the harbour. This is actually a volcanic plug that has resisted erosion more than the surrounding rock, thus standing proud. It is actually one of seven morros, but definitely the most splendid. It is reminiscent of the Rock of Gibralter, but instead of Barbary apes, it is a seasonal breeding home to a large population of Peregrine falcons. (Not here now, of course). It also has a fine sandy surf beach to the north of the morro, and a large sandbar to the south. The sandbar is a wildlife refuge and acts to shelter the town from the ocean, creating a large calm estuary.

Secondly, it has a resident population of rare sea otters. These used to be abundant until humans hunted them to near exinction in the 18th century. They were valued for their pelts which has fur so thick that, in life, their skin stays dry when they are swimming. The fur also traps a lot of air and they look imensely cute just floating around on their backs in the calm waters of the harbour. Mother otters will fluff-up the fur of their babies by blow-drying them, so that they can float too. The otters use rocks to break open shellfish, and will carry around their pet rocks in pouches of loose skin in their armpits. Genius. There are also the usual sea lions and seals hanging out.

Thirdly, our camp was right on the beach which delivered an amazing sunset each of the three nights we were here. Late afternoon we joined the zombie-like crowds who could not resist the lure of the setting sun, all standing in our little groups taking a million photos of the same thing. Our third night here there was a full moon and the gorgeous sunset was matched by the simultaneous moonrise.

Fourthly, the town had a fantastic paved cycle trail that connected our park with the town, about a mile away. This made getting about a pleasure, and meant that so many other people were also walking and cycling, scooting and skateboarding and generally transporting themselves without the aid of a combustion engine. Town planning like this definately gets people out of their cars and we love to see it.

And lastly, but not leastly, the weather. Finally it stopped raining and the sun shone almost continually. This pleases me.

Other points of interest of Morro Bay: It too is dominated by the stacks of a power station, although the one here was decomissioned in 2014 and they are still deciding whether to demolish the chimneys. I think they look good, although I imagine they will fall down one day if not dealt with. It also has lots of nice harbourside eateries, at one of which we had a marvellous lunch. The sunny outside terrace was unexpectedly deserted, but looked a perfect spot for a few beers with seafood. The hostess said that because she only had two servers, they were only serving meals inside which was packed. We could however order take-out, and eat it on the terrace. The bar was separate, and happy for us to buy beers at the bar and take them out. Perfect. The hostess then proceded to bring us napkins and condiments and our ‘take-out’ meal was served to us at our table on plates. She also served us more beers to our table. I think that we scored a private dining experience without having to pay a tip! The enjoyment of our meal was slightly tempered as we watched a seagull drown a pigeon.

9th Dec – 14th Dec 2021

Crescent City was our first Californian destination. We had spent the night here in the past during a car road-trip and had strangely nostalgic memories of it. Not entirely sure why as it is not a beautiful place. It is a utilitarian coastal town town with a big fishing harbour that is often shrouded in thick fog. Having experienced 33 tsunamis since 1923, the harbour and town were devastated by a huge tsunami in March 1964, killing 11 people and destroying 29 city blocks. Our pitch was in an unappealing tarmac RV park within the harbour and our neighbours all looked like longtermers in mostly tired old rigs. The not inconsiderable charge for this pleasure did not include access to the shower block (closed), laundry (also closed) or wifi (just generally rubbish and not fit for purpose). Hey ho. Its saving grace was was its location, a stone’s throw from the water. After a quick set up we wrapped up warm and headed down the breakwater to catch the end of the day and meet the fat, lazy locals- a pile of sea lions.

These were very smelly, very noisy and had annexed various pontoons and wharfs for their important ‘lying around whilst grunting at each other’ activities. The day gave us a last gift of a pretty spectacular rainbow without the rain before we headed back to the Tin Can where we sat around for a bit before heading out to dinner at the ‘Mom’n’Pop’* restaurant we had eaten at during our last visit

*non-chain historically family run restaurant usually serving hearty classic dishes with epic proportions.

The next day dawned with a cloudless sky and the sun shone for every single moment until dusk. What a treat and how good for my soul! Our onward drive took in some more amazing coastal views and inland forest vistas along the Redwood Highway. Our lunch stop was at a wildlife refuge area in Humboldt and it had a lovely 1.5 mile walk through a wetland area to stretch our legs and do some impromtu bird spotting. Our next stop was another quick overnighter in a town called Fortuna. It was nice enough to spend some time outside sorting a few things out with Big Dave. Of great importance and much ongoing annoyance – a sticker needed removing from the inside of his windscreen. This has been there since we bought him and had resisted all efforts to scrape it off. Now I had the correct highly combustible and toxic solvent in my possession. I won the battle. We sorted out our sat nav which could now attach to the newly cleaned spot on the screen, and we cleaned the outside so that all important forward visibility in sunny conditions would be vastly improved. Little did we know that we weren’t going to see the sun again for a while.

Our journey onwards took us further down US 101, continuing through the Redwoods area. We opted not to take the scenic bypass along ‘ The Avenue Of The Giants’ which takes in some of the groves of massive trees. We had seen this on our previous trip and were happy to just cruise on the bigger road due south. Happy, that was, until we made the decision to cut back to the coast on California-1. Big Dave and Tin Can weigh in at about 7 tons together, a significant heft indeed. We do try and take into account the topography of the land when we are planning our routes but sometimes we either just can’t avoid steep climbs and descents, or we just completely misjudge them. This next section of road was a big slice of both. It was horrendous! 22 miles of a narrow, winding, steep road that was unsurprisingly quite quiet. Poor Big Dave worked hard, as did Nick who was fairly vocal with his thoughts on how he wasn’t enjoying the driving experience. The forest was pretty, but that didn’t help much. We finally arrived back at the coast and stopped in a waterfront picnic spot for lunch. Big D’s brakes were stinking and we were glad that he had new rear ones as part of his recent ‘works’. Even I was exhausted.

Next stop was Fort Bragg, a small ex lumber/port town of about 7000 people, not to be confused with the enormous military town in North Carolina. There is not alot going on here since the efficient tree felling industry felled all the trees and left the mills with nothing to do. The port also suffered from the arrival of the railway to this area, negating the need for its important all-weather port for the ships transporting goods and travellers up and down this coast. There is, however, a rather marvellous walking/biking trail along the cliff tops that has fantastic views and was a great way for us to get into town whilst avoiding the footpath alongside the main highway. Our camp backed onto this path, and although was rather rustic, the setting could not be faulted. We managed a quick pre-dusk stroll until the evening saw the arrival of the second ‘atmospheric river’ of our trip. It rained all night and blew a gale. A good view rarely comes without some exposure to the weather.

Happily by morning the rain eased and we had a whole day of dry weather to wander into town. Our destination was Cafe One, a hostlery at the other end of the main drag that had been frequented in the past by friends The Jeromes, and purportedly served mighty fine bacon which was perfectly flat like it had be ironed. Unfortunately, after a 3 mile walk, it was closed. Them’s the breaks. Our homeward journey was broken up by a trip down to the old Noyo harbour and a couple of delicious mid-afternoon beers sat out at a delightful waterside bar, and we even managed to make it home via the supermarket just before the heavens open again for the rest of the night, again.

The morning gave us a brief window of oportunity between downpours to pack up and get going without getting soaked and we were on the road by 9.15 am, quite an achievement for us. It was a drive of two halves, with the first segment offering gently undulating roads and great distant views – very enjoyable – and the second segment being quite different. This next section of coastal road is like a smaller, angrier, less predicatable, stimulant addicted small brother to the well known tourist scenic drive, the Big Sur. It has the same spectacular views from a winding road carved into the coastal headlands, but the route is steeper, narrower and much more terrifying. There was a paucity of guard rails and plunging to a watery grave was a constant, overbearing thought, somewhat detracting from the enjoyment of the views. Coupled with intermittant heavy rain, even Nick had lost his nerve after navigating the 147th hairpin. By the time we arrived in our next port of call, Bodega Bay, we were both frazzled.

Bodega Bay was disappointing. All looked good on paper, and maybe in the summer, when the harbour is bustling and you can get out onto the water, it would be a grand place, but ’twas not to be for us. Our park was only about half a mile from the waterfront and ‘town centre’, but a) it was all bleak and shut down and b) there was no safe way of walking there. This country is such a slave to the automobile that they often completely forget that sometimes, somebody might want to actually walk somewhere, and that that somebody might wish to do that without the high chance of being squished. Oh, and c) it started raining heavily again and we had no desire to go anywhere. As much as we know that this state is very short of water, we are tired of this weather now and are much looking forward to getting to the desert.