Last stop: Napa Valley

Nancy and I met in Berkeley, California back in 1968, when I was stationed at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, and our first date was in Napa Valley.  At that time the area was a culinary wasteland, with few good restaurants, and it wasn't yet known as one of the great wine regions of the world.  Times have changed.

In 1976 there was a blind tasting of wines in Paris, Napa vs France, and Napa won.  Since that time the reputation of Napa wines has soared, as have their prices, and Napa Valley has also become a foodie destination.  We like going there. 

Our campground was a state park at the fairgrounds in the city of Napa, with nice big level well-maintained sites.  In most of the campgrounds we visit our rig is in the upper echelon, but here we had enormous diesel coaches on either side of us, each a million dollar unit, give or take $500,000.

Napa itself is a great little city, with lots of good restaurants.  Back in 2001 COPIA: The American Center for Wine, Food, and the Arts was established as a non-profit, with Robert Mondavi and Julia Child among the principals.  Alas, attendence didn't support the enterprise, and COPIA went bankrupt in 2008.  The buildings are still there, and it's now a site for high-priced dinners and cooking demonstrations by well-know chefs. 

We drove alongside the pretty vineyards, and explored the towns of Yountville, St. Helena, and Calistoga.  We did a wine tasting at St. Clement Vineyards, one of our favorites, and visited the architectural marval called Castello di Amorosa, built between 1995 and 2006 by Dario Sattui, the owner of V.Sattui Winery, using medieval techniques where possible, running out of money as the end was near.  One hundred seven rooms and 121,000 square feet.  As a modest fellow castle builder, I am in awe of his accomplishments and even more so at the size of his ego.  V. Sattui wines are, I believe, very good, and those produced under the Castello di Amorosa label are even better.  The photo below doesn't do the castle justice.  It's quite incredible, really.

For our last night on the trip, we had dinner at one of the great Napa Valley Restaurants, Mustard's Grill.  The fantastic grilled quail appetizer will live in our memories as long as we have any.  Highly recommended.

The next morning, back to the real world and its problems.  We arrived back in Ben Lomond to find that our tenants' hot water heater wasn't working, our own hot water heater was leaking and needing replacement, our water supply well pump was dying, our driveway gate was broken, and the pickup truck was making funny steering noises.  Welcome home!

Mendocino

One of our favorite places in the world is Mendocino, California.  The drive there in a motorhome, however, is not for the faint of heart.  We turned off Highway 101 onto the beginning of Highway 1, which rose and fell and veered left and right and rose and fell again on a long narrow road to the California coast - a video game of a drive, which we survived.

Once we reached the coast, the views, of course, were spectacular.  We pulled into a campground directly overlooking the ocean just north of Mendocino.  It had a certain seediness related to the quality of the RVs overnighting there, and that didn't meet Nancy's high campground standards .

Mendocino, a mile away, overlooking a beautiful bay, has a certain magic and is a great town to walk around in.  It has a lot of high end restaurants, high end shops, and high end lodging.  The area is also a center for high end marijuana growing, and there's a medical marijuana clinic in Mendocino, but unfortunately it doesn't accept Medicare.  We've visited Mendocino a number of times over the years and have fond memories of staying and dining in some of the charming B&Bs there, such as the MacCallum House.

We were approaching the end of our trip, and we decided to end it on a high note - which is known as the "Nancy principle" of pleasure travel - by spending a few days in Napa Valley.  The nicest way to get to Napa from Mendocino is by turning off the coastal highway onto Highway 128 and following its sometimes hair-raising twists and turns through a redwood forest and beside the rolling hills and vineyards of the lovely Anderson Valley. 

I turned our coach into the parking lot of the Navarro Winery, overlooking beautiful vine fields of red and gold, for a wine tasting.  Nancy was concerned that there was no exit strategy for a big motorhome such as ours - that we were trapped, perhaps permanently.  After a delightful tasting experience, we bought several bottles, and drove on a gravel road to the top of the hill, where the winery's trucks go, and made a U-turn, which allowed us to escape and continue making our way toward the Napa Valley. 

The Oregon Coast

The central coast of Oregon is one of the most beautiful drives anywhere in the world - rivaling or even besting Big Sur. 

 

 

We drove south from Cannon Beach and stopped in the town of Tillamook, Oregon, which is famous for its cheese factory.  There is a self-guided tour in which I was able to observe the first assembly line I've see since those I Love Lucy episodes from my youth.  This one was real.

  

We were given a view site at a great campground in Newport, Oregon, right on a beautiful marina and next door to a wonderful aquarium.  We watched the feeding of a giant octopus, who turns red with excitement when offered a fish dinner.  The aquarium is almost as impressive as the Monterey Aquarium; its display tanks aren't quite as dramatic, but it has some outdoor exhibits of aquatic animals - otters, puffins, and so on - that Monterey doesn't.

Across the city's innovatively designed arch and suspension bridge is the Nye Beach upscale tourist area, which we loved.  Appealing shops and restaurants and great views of the Pacific Ocean.

 

Further down the coast, just before we reached California, we pulled into a campground in Brookings, Oregon, right on an ocean beach.  There was a lady in the office checking her motorhome in for the night.  She told the manager that her children didn't like having RVs on either side of theirs.  The manager asked her what color her kids were.  That seemed insensitive to me, and I expressed my outrage.  Turned out that the "children" were her dogs.  Imagine my embarrassment.

Election night in Oregon

Our motorhome has a satellite dish on its roof which when a button is pushed will elevate, rotate, and tilt until it locates its satellites in the sky, so that we can receive DirecTV programming.  When we pull into a campground, we push that button and prepare to watch some quality programming.

Tuesday was election day in America.  We wanted to stay in a beautiful little Oregon beach town called Cannon City that we had passed through some years back.  There was one very nice campground there, but when Nancy called on Monday to make sure they had room for us, she asked, fortunately, about satellite TV reception and was informed that all their sites had trees overhead and couldn't access DirecTV signals.

So we stayed in a nearby town called Seaside, which had a campground that was overpriced but provided clear sightlines to the sky, and we hunkered down to watch our nation select her leader.  For us, more gripping than the Super Bowl, and arguably more important.

Nancy and I spent most of the day glued to the TV set in our RV living room, too nervous to eat.  (I wish.)  I won't reveal toward which candidate we leaned, but we slept well Tuesday night, and awoke to a beautiful Wednesday morning. 

The sun came out and we drove to Cannon City, which has an upscale beach town feel.  There are no chain stores, the sandy beach itself is spectacular, and all the shops and homes are pretty.  Nancy, Tammy Faye, Sophia, and I dropped into a shop named Puppy Love and looked for cold-weather attire.  We found haute couture raincoats for Tammy Faye and Sophia in the San Francisco Giants colors - black and orange - and were parent-proud to follow them down the streets of Cannon City.

The owner of Puppy Love said that after seven years she was ready to jump ship and leave the area, because the weather was getting her down. This year good weather didn't come to Cannon City until August, and she couldn't take it any more. For Nancy and me, it was a charming and appealing and dog-friendly place. Sophia and Tammy Faye didn't express an opinion, but I suspect they liked it, too.

The Olympic Peninsula

Even in the rain, Washington's Olympic Peninsula was incredibly beautiful, with fall colors that made you think of New England, except for fewer reds. 

Our campground was in the town of Sequim (pronounced "squim") on the northern edge of the peninsula, between the larger towns of Port Townsend and Port Angeles.  Our hosts were extremely friendly, and one of them jump started the pickup truck that we tow when we couldn't get it to turn over.  We took it to the Les Schwab store just a block away, and they changed the corroded terminals and pronounced the battery healthy.  Turned out that they didn't have a battery for our truck in stock, which may have played a part.

Nancy and I drove down to Port Townsend, which we had looked at in the past as a potential future home but at that time concluded that it was just too far from civilization and the bright lights to picture ourselves living there.  This time we thought it was absolutely charming, with lots of great shops - book stores in particular - and a number of restored older buildings.  There is a campground right in town, overlooking the water, not fancy but within easy walking distance of downtown.

We asked the locals about their favorite restaurants for lunch, and the one that came up was Sea J's Seafood Cafe, which also had the highest ratings in Trip Advisor on the internet.  It was tricky to find, a little funky, with family style tables.  Its reputation was for the best fish and chips in town, so we both ordered that, and we shared a praline milkshake, I regret to admit.  Probably the best fish and chips ever, and the milk shake was wonderful.  It was a working class cafe, and most of the customers appeared to be commercial fishermen.  Everybody was friendly.  Great local color experience.

We'd been considering spending a month at one location next year, and our visit convinced us that Port Townsend would be a perfect place to hunker down next April and get to really know the place.

Back in Sequim, we visited the Dungeness River Audobon Center, which had an extensive exhibit of stuffed flora and fauna from the area.  They also offer wild mushroom identification walks, which would have been fun if our timing had been better.  We took the dogs with us on our favorite walk of this trip - over a magnificently restored railroad bridge and on a long trail through the trees.  On the bridge we were at treeleaf level; there were very few evergreens along the way and the colors were spectacular.  Quite a beautiful scene, and the weather was relatively nice that day.

Leaving Sequim, we headed west, along the northern coast of the peninsula, then took the Olympic Highway, which led to perhaps the most beautiful mountain lake I've ever seen - Lake Crescent.  It's big and isolated, and very few houses were visible.  The water was like glass and we could see the reflections of the yellow and orange trees at water's edge on the far shore, with green-covered mountains rising on all sides.  I highly recommend it and we hope to visit it again next spring.

Visiting friends in Lakewood, Washington

Friends from medical school invited us to park our motorhome at their house at Lakewood, not far from Seattle, and stay a while.  I managed to maneuver that big boy onto their semicircular driveway, out of the way enough for them to get their cars out of the garage.  They even ran an electrical cord out to our coach.

They live in a very pretty community of nice homes on a golf course, with great landscaping in the neighborhood, with lots of maple trees, spectacular this time of year because of the leafy color changes.  It was a lovely place to walk our dogs, even though there was rain every day.  They say that they like the weather and don't mind the overcast that is almost constant for eight months of the year.  They appreciate the cool weather, coming as they do from the uncomfortable heat of Louisiana.

One night we were served fried oysters, the other night deep-fried soft shell crabs, crawfish etouffee, and apple pie with ice cream.  Louisiana-flavored southern dining at its finest.  Not exactly diet food but much appreciated.  Alcoholic beverages were served.

Our hosts showed us the towns, parks, and scenic wonders of the area.  We could almost see ourselves living in that part of the country but wondered if the weather would get us down as winter crept along.

Our host, a retired OBG, and his wife moved here a few years ago from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  We enjoyed reminiscing about the trouble he and I used to get into back at LSU Medical School.  Not all our conversation was politically correct, but no one was seriously offended by the frank expression of ideas.  It helped that we stayed away from politics and religion.

Nancy and I greatly appreciated their hospitality and kindness.

Anacortes, Washington

Our well-thought-out plan was to take our RV over to the San Juan Islands on the ferry from Anacortes, Washington and spend some time there. Several hundred dollars to transport a 37-foot motorhome and our pickup, but we'd heard great things about how beautiful it was.

But after several months without precipitation along the Washington coast, we arrived in the middle of an extended rain storm. Constant and often heavy, it was going to make it difficult to enjoy the San Juans, so we decided to stay this time on the mainland and return another day to see those islands in their full glory.

We pulled into a campground in Anacortes right on the waterfront. Across the bay we saw a marina, hills covered with trees, and a couple of industrial plants that were kind of ugly during the day but magical at night all lit up. It was a great campground, but part of the reason we stayed four nights was that the Giants were playing in the World Series on the weekend, and the 49ers had a Monday night against the Cardinals. All had positive outcomes.

 

Anacortes is an attractive, interesting town that is half ferry terminal, half tourist destination. It has great bookstores, interesting restaurants, a nice library, and a friendly vibe. One night we put on clean clothes and went to Adrift, a seafood restaurant, for great fried oysters and cioppino.

The third day we were there, the clouds parted and the sun shone through. How beautiful! We took the dogs on extended walks on the hiking/bicycling trail that went through the compground – almost to town in one direction, onto a bridge in the other. We also drove through a beautiful rain-forest-style park outside Anacortes.  We enjoyed ourselves in spite of the rain.