Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Sept - Oct 2013 California Road Trip (Fall)


All photos for this trip can be found in our
2013 Fall Northern California Photo Album
Some are also shown in our weekly blogs.


This trip was basically the same as our previous spring California trip earlier in the year. This time we didn't quite go as far south, staying in Petaluma while we did day trips into San Francisco and Berkeley. The focal point of the trip was to spend almost a week in Fort Bragg where the weather was just about perfect the entire time we were there.

Our trip south followed pretty much the same path as last time in the spring. We stayed in a couple of new, to us, RV parks and finally managed to see a Seattle Mariner's baseball game. That makes 19 current Major League ball parks we have been to... only 11 more to go with all of those being in the north and north east USA...Minnesota, Milwaukee, Detroit, Chicago (*2), Cleveland, Pittsburg, Boston, New York (*2) and Phillie... and those are in the plans for a 2015 road trip. Looking forward to that!

Our general travel route south for this trip...


For the return trip north , see the map for Week 4, it is pretty much the opposite.

The trip started with rain as we arrived on the Olympic Peninsula and in Kent (Seattle) just before a record rainfall hit the area. However after that front cleared up the forecast was for sunny skies for the next 10 plus days.... yeah!

In Portland, we stopped in the Apple Store so that Kris could buy a new cell phone. She decided on an iPhone 5 even though the new 5S was expected to be announced any day. Not a biggie as she was told that she could upgrade for no charge if the new one was announced while we were traveling... i.e. stop back in Portland for an exchange on our way home. We bought the phone and a transmitter to enable us to listen to our iTunes collection on our car FM radio. This was needed since somebody swiped our ipods a few months ago back home.

With the music back in action we headed out to the coast and followed highway 101 south to Leggit, California then veered off to the northern California coast on highway 1 to arrive in Fort Bragg, one of our main stopping points on the trip. Our southernmost camping spot was Petaluma.

Heading north towards home we again tried a few different RV parks but basically it was just a drive home with a smidgeon of tourism included. The weather was excellent until we drove over the border into Oregon. From that point on it was rain, rain and some more rain until we got off the ferry in Victoria. We did a brief stop in Portland to see about exchanging the iPhone but they had none in stock so settled for a $100 rebate on the one we had. Fair enough.

Total distance traveled on this trip was just shy of 5,000 kms.

Each weekly blog is linked to the one before and/or after it so start at week 1 then step through each week or jump to a specific week in this list...

Week 1: Courtenay to Seattle Washington
Week 2: Seattle to Fort Bragg California
Week 3: Fort Bragg to Petaluma California
Week 4+: Petaluma to Courtenay BC

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