Back from San Fran

Well, we are back. Did you miss us? We had a great trip, so I thought I would write a brief report.
We left Friday and drove to Redding for our first stop at the Lil Bear Teardrop Trailer office. We met with the owner, Grant, to get more info about buying a trailer. We were able to see a complete trailer and get a better idea of what kind of options are available. Grant was very graicious and stayed late to talk with us for about an hour. From there we drove on to Willows and stayed the night.

Saturday morning we surprised ourselves by getting on the road by 10 AM. We got into SF about 1 and drove down to Fisherman's Warf to "check in" at the Trendwest office. (They paid for our hotel for 2 nights.) We had free parking there, and weren't supposed to check in to the hotel till 4, so we wandered around the warf for a while, ate the classic clam chowder in a bread bowl, then took the F line to the Ferry Building and checked out the market. Then we picked up the car and drove to the hotel. In the evening we did some window shopping in the Union Square stores and ate in China Town. Our hotel was straight across the street from the Chinatown gate.

Sunday, I beat Denis out of bed, so I walked to a coffee shop and bought us some caffeine and pastries to get the day started. (Denis was very appreciative.) We took the F line again down to the warf for our presentation. Our "presenter" started out by assuring us that they do not "pressure sell", but at the end we wondered what her definition of pressure sales would be. The program really did sound attractive, but we just don't have it in our budget right now. And the humorous thing is that we are looking at buying a trailer that would head us in the complete opposite vacation direction! (semi-roughing it in a teardrop, vs. luxry condos in exotic locations) With that out of the way, we lunched at the warf again and headed back to Union Square. This time I made it into the Lush store where I got to try some of the products that I had only read about online before. I first saw a Lush store in Victoria, BC and was sad to find out that they were nowhere to be found in the US. Now they are finally here and there is a store even in Portland. We had dinner in the restaurant next door to our hotel called Cafe de la Presse. It is french, the food was great and we shared an interesting dessert called Creme Anglaise.

Monday, we headed north across the Golden Gate Bridge (no toll going north) and aimed for the redwoods. We didn't make it as far as we hoped but stopped in Garberville, CA for the night. It had rained quite a bit on Friday and Saturday, so the Eel river, which HWY 101 follows was quite swollen. It was quite startling to see the water rushing by in the river and all the tributaries. And when we later stopped at a museum which had info about the great flood of December, 1964, it was all the more amazing to imagine.

Tuesday we drove along the Avenue of the Giants through towering redwoods. Really fabulous. The visitors center there was very informative. The road was closed at one section due to a fallen tree. But fortunately, there are entrances and exits onto the Avenue from the new HWY 101 all along the way. We only had to go about 2 miles out of the way before we were able to join up with it again. Once we reached Humbolt Bay, we found a wildlife refuge with a very friendly and helpful manager who showed us the birds that were there. We had lunch in the "hippie town" of Arcata at a wonderful cafe. Finally, we drove the long way home via HWY 96 which winds along the Klamath river through the Siskiyou mountains. It really was breathtaking for as long as we could see the scenery.

So it was a great trip and we can't believe how much we saw in the 5 days we were gone.