Thursday, February 4, 2010

Today was our day to depart Port Orford RV Village and start our trip to Yuma so, it was with sadness but see you again, that we said goodbye to all our new friends, we really do hope to be back this way next spring.

Yesterday was a totally miserable day, we woke up in the morning to torrential rain and it stayed like that until mid afternoon so we were really thankful that John wasn’t out in it hooking us up. I did laundry and walked around the park when the rain stopped but all in all it was a pretty quiet day.

This morning we woke up to quiet – hey, it wasn’t raining!! John actually got up early enough to go over for the morning coffee session that happens from around 7 to 8 a.m. – usually too early for us!! I even made a late appearance about 8 a.m. – I am sure they all thought that I had had an accident to be up so early – LOL! We were on the road by about 9:15 a.m. – just as it started to rain.

We had rain pretty well all the way to Brookings, that was disappointing as I couldn’t get any final pictures of the Oregon Coast. We stopped at Gold Beach and picked up a Dungeness crab for dinner – our last of these wonderful, tasty crabs. Right after Brookings the rain stopped so we had high hopes that this would be the end of it – how silly can we be!!

As navigator and co-pilot I had planned on stopping at Fortuna but when we got there the pilot thought it was too early to stop so wanted to carry on. Okay, I found another park around Legget that sounded not too bad so we headed for there. Well, never having driven in northern California before we were in for quite a surprise – Highway 101 south of Fortuna was very hilly, narrow at times and slow going – especially in the rain and with very few towns along the way. And rain it did, it came down in torrents and we had a few good gusts of wind – not what I would call a nice travel day. There was also lots of fog just to add to the fun.

By late afternoon we were getting low on fuel with no gas stations in sight. I might add that once in California the price of diesel was anywhere from $3.099 to $3.199/gallon so that wasn’t really making us happy. Now, to make matters worse, Alice - our GPS, had the wrong spot for the park we were going to check out and all of a sudden we were passing it and Alice was telling us it was still 10 km down the road – not pretty as there was no place to turn around!! At this point the pilot and co-pilot weren’t saying too much to each other as recriminations don’t do anybody any good so we were just silent!! Finally we came into Laytonville and there was a Chevron that a) sold diesel, b) we could get into and c) (best of all) the price was $2.999/gallon.

At this point we were on plan C – staying at the Willet KOA, and for anybody who knows us you know how much we dislike KOA’s, but at this point it seemed like the only choice. But wait, while I was in the gas station I was talking to a local lady who said there were a couple of RV parks about 15 miles south, okay we’ll check these out. Well, again, the first one was by us before we knew it was there but the second one was better marked so we pulled in.

It didn’t look really great when we pulled in but the owner said we could probably get in site 9 and not to have to unhook. Meanwhile, we are parked in front of the office and people are yelling at us as they can’t get by – what are we supposed to do as the road is narrow and there is no place to pull over and check in at the office. The owner told us to go ahead and park and either come back and pay or pay in the morning on the way out – at this point I noticed on the counter their price was $42/night but he did say they were a Passport America park. Well, we headed into the park to find site #9 and went into shock, we have never seen a worse looking park in our lives and we knew we wouldn’t feel particularly safe there, plus our bedroom window would be backing right onto Highway 101 – we don’t think so! Now, how do we get out of this mess? There was a fellow outside across from site #9 who told John there was a turnaround at the end of the park so we cautiously went on and did manage, just, to get turned around and get the heck out of there.

On to the Willett KOA and here we are – at a cost of $37/night which is a total rip but what can we do – it was pretty well dark when we got here so there was no way we were going any further.

We have now had a wonderful dinner of Dungeness crab and have managed to unwind after our long, stressful day on the road and the rain has even let up to just a few drops but we don’t expect that to last as the forecast for the next three days is for rain, rain and more rain.

And so ends a couple more great gifts of days and we look forward to another interesting day tomorrow, no matter what the weather is like.