Bullhead City Arizona

The weather in California was warm in the daytime but very cold at night.  We wanted some heat!  We left Pismo and headed to Arizona.  Most of our days when we would move from one place to the other, we would drive up to a maximum of 4 hours.  Those of you who know Ray Riggins, know that he usually likes to drive for 8 to 10 hours on these long trips.  But not this trip!  Staying that,,,leaving Pismo we had a very long day, driving for 7 hours and arrived in Bullhead City Arizona.  It was dark when we pulled in and the air was hot and dry.  We were thrilled to be in the heat and sat outside for a couple of hours.  There were a lot of other campers but none were outside.  We later found out that the retirement community wake up early, eat dinner early and go to bed earlier then we expect to at home.  Because we had arrived after the regular office hours, the instructions were to pick an empty spot for the night and come to the office in the morning to pay.  By the time the office opened in the morning, the guys had selected a better camp site that would sit us on the edge of the bank overlooking the town of Bullhead and over to Laughlin Nevada  (which was beautiful at night with the lights of the casinos).  In early October we had gone to the Snowbird RV show in Abbotsford and met with the owner of this particular campground.  He gave us a coupon to spend up to two weeks for $98 a week,,,,,which was a great deal.  We booked in for one week. 

Laughlin in the background

On our 2nd night we had a huge wind storm with lots of lightening.  It was quite pretty to watch, but the wind really got very tiring.  We only had the one night of stormy weather and the following week was great.  

The young lady in the office had suggested that we visit the small town of Oatman.  She directed us to take the back route in, which took us right off the highway and into the Mohave desert.  She also told us to take a bag of carrots for the "wild" donkeys roaming the main street of Oatman.

Oatman is a small town in the Black Mountains of the Mohave desert.  After the opening of the Tom Reed gold mine and another rich ore mine found in one of the  United Eastern Mining Company's mines in 1915, the population grew to 3800 within one year.  Today it has a population of approximately 130 people. The small town boomed from 1915-1917 and for about 10 years the mines were among the largest gold producers in the American West.  In 1921 a fire burned down most of Oatman sparing the Oatman Hotel which is still standing today and remains the oldest two story adobe structure in the Mohave County.  Apparently Clark Gable and Carole Lombard stayed in the Oatman Hotel on their honeymoon in 1939.  Their suite is one of the major attractions for the Hotel.

I am really not sure what kind of animal this had been

One of the locals

Today there are daily gunfights on the main street (almost the only street!) between a bank robber and a sheriff to entertain you.   But for us, the most entertaining really are the donkeys roaming the main street.  They love to be fed carrots, but you have to be careful that the donkeys don't fight in front of you as they try to take ownership of a big orange carrot!  You also must take care not to fee the baby donkeys, who have little stickers on their foreheads that say "Do not feed me"

Ray feeding the donkeys

You all come back now!! Hee Hawww

Another day we took a river cruise down the Columbia River from Laughlin to Lake Havasu on October 26th.  The ride was about an hour and a half down and back.  We spent two hours in Havasu wandering around and having lunch.  Saw the London Bridge too, which is the main attraction.

The London Bridge was built by John Rennie in the 1830’s and originally spanned the River Thames in London England.  It was deemed unsafe to support the increased load of traffic and in 1962 it was subsequently sold by the City of London to Robert P McCulloch who had it dismantled and shipped to the Lake Havasu City.  The reconstruction of the bridge was completed in 1971 and has been a tourist attraction since.

London Bridge

Vonz on the Boat tour to London Bridge

On October 27th, we drove over to Las Vegas.  We had booked a helicopter ride with Maverick Helicopters, to take a flight over the Grand Canyon.  The ride was absolutely amazing. The pilot took us over Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam, where the new bridge can be seen high above the dam.  My favourite part of the flight was when we came over the crest of the Grand Canyon.  In 2004 we had been at the Grand Canyon and I was overwhelmed when we walked up to the edge.  I felt insignificant.... A “speck” in the sceme of things.  As far as you could see, there was that red canyon.  And this time as we flew over the canyon, just below the surface of the canyon walls that same feeling briefly came over me.  We flew past the “sky walk”, but not close enough to see any of the people on it.  The flight was excellent, but I still think that to get the real feeling of the canyon, you really need to stand on the edge of it.

Waiting patiently

Are we ready!!

Lake Mead

Hoover Dam

Grand Canyon

We had wanted heat and that is what we got.  It was hot and very dry.  It was almost unbearable for me.  I just do not do well in the heat.  Thank goodness there was a pool!!!  Vonnie was thankful for that and so was I once I went and bought a bathing suit.  Russ was in his glory with the heat.  He kept trying to convince Vonz that they should stay there for 4 months or so.  He did say she could fly home and then fly back whenever she wanted to.  Vonnie and I shopped a bit at the little outlet mall in Laughlin.  We even went to a casino one night, where Ray and I promptly “donated” our money to the cause!!

At then end of our week, Russ said that they had decided to spend another week.  Ray and I had had our fill and were heading to Palm Desert.  We left them behind with the plan to hook up again in Malibu in a weeks time.

Ray and I went off to Palm Desert for two nights.  We stayed at Emerald Desert RV Park which after the brown dry desert in Bullhead, was amazingly green and fresh!  The sites were large and clean.  There were two pools and lots of shopping close by.  Our first night there, we went and met up with a former high school friend of mine, Jill Weiss (Brand).  We had appies and drinks at their beautiful home, and then it was back to the campground.  The next day we shopped at Palm Desert’s version of Rodeo Drive and had a glass of wine at the local Starbucks!  I would go back to this campground in a heartbeat.  It was time to move on to Malibu!!

Sunset on one of our final nights in Oatman.

  

Monterey to Pismo and the Hearst Castle

After leaving San Fransisco, our next stop was Marina Dunes which is just north of Monterey. Ray and I had stayed in this particular campground on another trip and really liked it.  It is a beautiful clean site within walking distance to the dunes of Monterey.  We spent two nights at this spot. On our 1st day Russ went for a very "short" bike ride, which turned out to be about 45 kms.  While he went for his ride Ray took Vonnie and I for a ride down towards the wharf in Monterey.  We saw some amazing scenery along the way.

The Vonz posing on a very uncomfortable rock!

Down on the wharf, there are so many different shops and galleries to browse through.  All the restaurants brag that they make the best clam chowder, handing out free samples which Ray and Vonnie tried.  One restaurant said they made the best deep fried artichoke, which I wanted to try, but alas there were no samples. 

We had "thought" that we were going to hook up with Russ in a particular spot near the lighthouse after about 2 hours.  About 3 or 4 hours later, we did finally hook up!!!  I think there was some sort of miscommunication!!  Lol, it all worked out anyway.   When we finally found Russ, we ate at a restaurant whose menu showed deep friend artichokes.  Everyone put in their order and I asked for the artichokes.  Of course they were out of them!!!  I settled for a salad.  Food was great, but I was somewhat disappointed!

The 2nd day we were in Marina Dunes, we decided to drive down to Carmel.  We took the “17 Mile Drive”.  This is one of the most scenic drives in the area taking you through the Del Monte Forest and the magnificent Pacific Coast.  The highway twists and turns past a number of golf courses and beautiful homes.  We finally came out to the Pacific Coast Highway and found our way into Carmel. 

Carmel By The Sea is its official name, but is known as "Carmel".  This tiny beach town situated in the Monterey Peninsula on the Pacific coast is about 330 miles north of Los Angeles.  In 2013 the population was 3842.  It is a very artsy town with many galleries in the quaint downtown section.  After the 1906 earthquake in San Fransisco many artists, musicians, writers and painters moved to here.  They were offered "home lots, for $10 down, little or no interest".  Today the average price per square foot is about $1200.

I love this tiny town.  It is quaint and very clean.  We did not see any homeless people in the shopping area.  It has great shopping, most of which is quite high end.  We did hit the Coach store for a couple of bargains.  We ate dinner at the Hogs Breath Inn which used to be owned by Clint Eastwood.

We said our goodbyes to the lovely Carmel by the Sea and continued down the coast towards Pismo Beach.

We had decided that we would drive down towards the Hearst Castle which is in San Simeon.  The drive down was absolutely beautiful.  We had decided to stay on the coast which meant lots of winding twisting roads.  My stomach was okay as long as we were able to take a lot of breaks!!  We drove through Big Sur which is not quite what I thought it was.  Mind you had we stopped and walked from the little town towards the beach it may have been different.  It was still very beautiful.

Just before you get into San Simeon, there is a spot to pull over to view the elephant sea lions.  There were literally hundreds of them lying all over the beach!

I had picked a campground in Pismo Beach (south of San Simeon by about an hour)  as everyone we have spoken too said that Pismo is a must.  As it turned out the campground was not in Pismo but in Oceana, it was an “okay” campground.  The worst part really was that the sewer ran uphill in our particular spot.  Not great when you are trying to dump the sewer!  I will leave that to your imaginations!!!  The campground was very clean though.  We drove back into Pismo and had dinner at the “world famous “ Splashes.   Apparently people come from all over to have their clam chowder.  I didn’t have it because I hate clam chowder, but the others did and said it was very good.  Splashes is a funny little diner that you line up for, sometimes, blocks to get inside.  It only took us about 15 minutes to make it in the door.  It is busy, noisy and has very little seating.  We did manage to get a very small table.  The food is very good  

Hearst Castle

We took a day trip from Pismo beach, back north to San Simeon to tour the Hearst Castle.

In 1919 William Randolph Hearst hired an architect to build a house on top of the hill at his ranch in San Simeon. The building of this house took from 1919 to 1947 to “complete”.  The architect was a woman named Julia Morgan and she designed this as a Mediterranean revival estate.  It was filled with Mr Hearst’s arts and antiques that he had been collecting over the years from all over the world.  Some of which are Egyptian artifacts and are more then 3000 years old.  The estate was named La Cuesta Encantada (The Enchanted Hill).  Hearst died in 1951 and in 1954 it became a California State park.  In 1958 it opened to visitors.  Today it is known as Casa Grande and the Hearst Castle. 

There are three different tours to choose from.  We took the “grand” tour which was a tour of the grounds and the main floor of the Castle.  Not only the grounds were spectacular, but so was the castle and the artifacts inside.  This tour is well worth going to if you are ever in the area.

Egyptian, about 3000 years old

Russ took way more photo's with his camera, but I forgot to have him email them to me so I could put them into the blog.

We spent two nights in the Pismo area.  The weather was warm in the daytime, but very cold in the evenings.  We all were in agreement that we wanted to head to a hot dry climate. So we said our good-bye to the coast and headed inland towards Arizona.

San Fransisco

Trying to find a campground in the Napa and area proved to be very unsuccessful!  Everything was booked solid.  Ray and I have never prebooked more then a day or two ahead.  This has served us well on both of our trips across the country and have had to stay in a Walmart parking lot only once, and that was only because by the time we had stopped Ray was too tired to drive the 5 miles off the main roadway to get to a campground.  That was four years ago in northern Montana.  So after trying to call every campground from Napa down to San Fransisco, I did manage to find us a spot right in San Fransisco just south of the Golden Gate bridge,,,,,,supposedly.  We left Napa with Ray and I in the lead.  We had the address to the campsite punched into our GPS as did Vonnie and Russ.  As it would of course happen, we were in the wrong lane coming off the bridge and without slamming Ray’s foot on the brakes, he could not get over into the proper lane.  This has happened to us on another trip, so you would think that we would have been prepared and pay closer attention.  But crossing the bridge and looking at the scenery was too overwhelming for me, the navigator.  So away we go into downtown San Fransisco with Vonnie and Russ following.  We zig zagged our way block after block, a couple of times leaving Russ behind due to red lights.  At one point he did catch up to us just as we were signalling to turn left.  Russ called on the walkie talkie and said “shouldn’t we be turning right, onto the 101”?  My come back to that was “GPS is saying to turn left, so we are going to turn left”.  Russ’s GPS (same year of Dodge trucks) was telling him to turn right onto the 101.  So, because we are in the lead,,,, we all turn left and then have to make an immediate hard right hand turn.  Remember we are each towing 28 foot plus trailers and trying to maneuver through narrow downtown traffic lanes.  Ray was cursing so I can only imagine what was going on in Vonnie and Russ’s truck!!  After a few more turns the GPS puts us onto the 101…….ARG!!!!  Had we gone with what Russ was saying, we would have been on the 101 about five minutes earlier and saved our sanity! We finally find our campsite, which is basically a parking lot with plug-ins.  But they did have laundry facilities and also the real bonus was they had a free shuttle bus down to Fisherman’s Wharf.  Our site was so close to Vonnie and Russ’s, that when our slides were open, we could pass butter back and forth between us!!!

 We took the shuttle downtown and were dropped off near the shopping district.  The driver directed us to a shop where we could purchase a bus pass, that is similar to a “hop on, hop off” system.  This pass included the famous cable cars.  We walked for blocks peering into different shops.  I think the Vonz was drooling at the shopping prospects, but she did contain herself!  We did of course have a Starbucks while we decided our course of action for the day.  We were in agreement that we all wanted to visit Fisherman’s Wharf and ride the Cable Cars.  Russ found out which bus would take us down to the Wharf, so after about an hour of being in the shopping district, we caught a very old “trolley” bus.  It was unique in itself, but some of the characters we saw on the bus where pretty comical.  There was the big fellow who was wearing a huge red crown and sitting beside him was the cutest pug dog dressed for the occasion!

Vonz on the street car

We got off the streetcar at the entrance of Fishermans Wharf.  It was amazing!!  The smells and sights of the wharf!!!!  Not only the smell of the ocean but also the smell of the foods from different restaurants was almost too much for us to bear!! It was nearing lunch, and we didn’t want to eat at the first restaurant we came to, so decided to tour the wharf first and make a decision later.  There were all kinds of shops to poke through.  From jewllery stores, to “made in china” gift shops.  There were kiosks selling cold drinks, fish and chips, or ice cream.  High end restaurants and cheaper restaurants.  We finally settle on a restaurant that served fish and chips and cold beer.  Vonnie and I had some fancy looking margaritas.  The colder the better as it was very hot!

Alcatraz

We rode the Cable Car from the Wharf up to Chinatown.  We only had to wait in line for about 20 minutes to catch it.  The Cable car begins (or maybe ends???) near the Wharf.  The “car” is driven onto a “roundabout” where it is manually turned directions by two men.

They cram quite a few people onto each car, some have to sit inside were it was very hot, others are lucky to sit outside (as we were) and some just stand on the edge and hang on!  It is quite interesting to see.  One young man had been standing inside where he said it was “too hot” so he came and stood on the step in front of me and hung on to the hand bar.  He did know of ruin my view!  Prior to him being in front of me, I could see all the traffic stopping for us and the pedestrians on the sidewalks.  After he came in front of me, my view became his belly!!!  It was very interesting watching the “conductor” (not sure if that is what they are called) operate the cable car.  He was pulling and pushing on a long handle that jutted up from the bottom of  the car.

A little history on the cable cars “borrowed” from Wikipedia.  San Fransisco’s Cable Cars are the last manually operated system and is an icon of the city.  Between 1873 - 1890 there were 23 cable car lines in operation.  Today, only three lines remain.  In 1979 the system had become unsafe and was closed for 7 months for repairs and again in 1982 for a complete rebuilding to the cost of $60 million.  This rebuild included complete replacement of 69 city blocks of tracks and cable channels, the car “barn” and powerhouse, new propulsion equipment and repair or rebuild of 37 cable cars.  The cable cars are operated by a cable running below which is held by a grip that extends from the car through a slit in the street surface between the rails.  Each cable is 3.2 cm in diameter, running at a constant speed of 15.3 km/h and driven by a 510 horsepower electric motor located in the central power house via a set of self-adjusting sheaves.  Each cable has 6 steel strands and each strand contains 19 wires wrapped around a sisal rope core.  To stop and start the movement of the car, the gripeman closes and opens the grip around the cable.    (Had to use wikipedia, because I could not explain all of this,,,,,,because I don’t even understand it!!! LOL)  How does this thing stop itself when going down all those steep hills, you ask?  I wondered the same thing on the first hill we went down which almost gave me a heart attack looking at it!  Rest assured….again using good old Wikipedia……

There are three sets of brakes (thank goodness for that!!!!)  Metal brake shoes on the front and back wheels, which the gripman can operate via a pedal located next to the grip.  Wooden brake blocks between the wheels that are pressed against the track when the gripman pulls a lever bringing the car to a halt.  The four blocks are made from Douglas Fir and can produce a smell of burning wood when in operation (oh,,THAT was what I could smell!!!).  The are replaced every few days!   Lastly, an emergency brake consisting of a piece of steel, which hangs under the car and is pushed into the track slot when the gripman pulls a lever.  it wedges tightly into the slot and often has to be removed with a welding torch.

A “gripman”.  And I called him a conductor!!

We got off the cable car in Chinatown to tour around there.  Everyone said that we should eat in Chinatown.  Well we were all thankful that we had eaten on the wharf, as the smells in Chinatown were like an assault on our noses, never mind our bellies.  Every “restaurant” was tiny and dirty looking.  It would have been great to purchase something as a moment, but nothing intrigued us to buy.  We did pass a great looking tea house.

Ray wanted to buy himself a hat

We stopped in at a Hilton for a drink.  Ray ordered a “Michael Lobe” beer and I had the worst glass of wine I have ever tasted.  Vonnie and Russ were fine with their drinks.  We then asked one of the hotel workers where we might find a nice little “bar”.  We were directed to a small corner bar called Cafe Zoetrope, which was right near we needed to meet the shuttle back to the camp ground.  Turns out this “cafe” is owned by Francis Ford Coppola, who just happened to be dining outside.  Being the cool kat Canadians that we are, we didn’t even know who he was until it was pointed out to us by a loud mouth tourist from some southern state.  Anyway this very nice little place had the coolest bar, which is where we plunked our sorry tired butts.  We all ordered a drink and the bar appeared to have every kind of alcohol you could ask for.  Vonnie casually asks the young bartender if they had any Fireball.  The cute little snotty bartender replied  to her “no we do not,,,,this is an adult bar”.  Poor Vonz was so insulted.  So insulted in fact that a couple of hours later after knocking over her 2nd glass of wine, she got us “Washed Out”.  Ha ha,,, it was funny as heck really because Vonnie was not drunk, but talks with her hands an awful lot!!!