From Vineyards to Redwoods

We were on the road around 9:00am this morning and once again headed north on Hwy 101.

The first part of our drive took us through numerous vineyards on either side of the highway.

Last night Ken started researching for a diesel stop along our route and we finally decided to stop at the Safeway grocery store in Willits.  With a large enough purchase of groceries, we would get a $.10 a gallon discount rather than the usual $.03 off per gallon.  In addition to the groceries, we picked up sandwiches at their deli for our lunch at a rest area another 20 miles up the road.

After our lunch stop at the rest area, we continued north through the Humboldt State Redwoods area.

Most of the Hwy 101 is narrow and twisting up and down hills but is very scenic.

We arrived at the Eureka Elks lodge before 3pm and that will be our home for the next 4 nights.

Santa Clara, CA to Santa Rosa, CA

The Santa Clara Elks lodge office was scheduled to be open at 9:00am this morning, so we planned our departure to fit with that as we had keys to the dump station and water to turn in to the office so that we could get our deposit back.  We dumped the holding tanks, hooked up the pickup, turned in the keys, and headed north on Hwy 101.

We noticed this unusual looking hangar at an airport as we drove by.

As we were getting nearer to the Golden Gate Bridge, I noticed these flags on the lampposts.  Obviously, it must be the 75th anniversary of the bridge.

My photos today aren’t the greatest, but here’s our approach to the bridge.  As opposed to our last trip over the bridge a few years ago when everything was fogged over, there were some beautiful views today.  Unfortunately, looking through my side window produced a bad reflection on any photos taken from that angle.

In this photo, we’re about halfway across the bridge.

Continuing our journey north to Santa Rosa, Ken spotted this Citoen in the right lane, so I took a couple of photos of it.

We pulled into the Sonoma County Fairgrounds RV Park around 12:30pm and got set up.  We had originally planned to be here for at least 2 nights to do a little bit of research on my grandfather who was from this area.  However, the camp host got confused in signing us in and he only charged us for one night instead of two.  He came by a few minutes later to let us know what had happened.  After the long day yesterday going over Ken’s family history with his cousins, I wasn’t too interested in doing any more research and we were both getting tired of the big city atmosphere, so we will continue on north tomorrow.