Golden Gate to Middle-of-nowhere California

Some slow downs, technical difficulties and just a large expanse of California made for perhaps our longest and hardest day of the trip.

 We left Grandma JoAnn's a bit later than we would have liked and took the long way through San Francisco. The lovely GPS on the ipad known to Dan as "Surly" — they developed a rocky relationship last year in Maine — took us through city streets from one bridge to the Golden Gate. No matter how we had gone I'm sure we'd have incurred traffic. We hit what felt like some rush hour traffic and also some firetrucks and EMT at a cross street we were supposed to turn on. Lots of slow downs. We tried to take in the view from the windows of the van and enjoy the city.

We had to make a potty stop in the middle of town and tried to take advantage of it by finding parking and stopping for lunch, but we were informed by a scruffy looking man at the street that we were parked in a loading only zone even though we had a parking meter. This sent our frustration levels through the roof and back in the van we piled.

We stopped at the visitor center for the Golden Gate bridge (I guess technically a national park because we got a stamp in our passport book, but not counted on my tally). Dan and I had visited before so we knew a few of the highlights to show Lea like the cable cross section. This fascinated me, showing how large the cables are and how they are made up of tens of thousands of wires. There was a new exhibit for kids to show the correlation between the tall towers and the tension on the cables. We walked a bit onto the bridge. We had another misty day so we couldn't even see all the way across the bridge. Also it was chilly and windy and very crowded so even Lea was happy to take only a few steps on the bridge and turn back to the gift shop, if not the van.

We finally climbed back in the van, hungry and already tired. We got across the bridge. The Golden Gate Bridge and the Space Needle were Lea's two requests that Dan took as must stops on our trip. She seemed pretty pleased to be driving over the bridge, even though our visibility was limited.

Thanks to Yelp we found a spot to eat off the beaten path in Sausalito, The Lighthouse Cafe. Lea was cheered and warmed by some cocoa. I ordered poorly going for their ethnic Danish menu — heavy on the mustard and beets (not to my liking) but those who stuck to recognizable fare were pleased with lunch. Off again.

Beautiful scenery. We took the 101 to enjoy the scenic route. This surely made the trip a bit longer, the views were breathtaking. We came around a curve late in the day to the sun setting on the pacific coast and I gasped. It literally took my breath away.

Redwoods, walls of trees, coastal views, seaside towns. Just amazing scenery... just a lot of it.

We were also on the great pine cone hunt of 2014. We had visited the Dallas Zoo before leaving and our trip came up in conversation at the Nature Exchange (a cool spot in the zoo where if you bring in nature items you get a lesson on the items and points to turn in to buy other things people have brought like rocks, fossils, sand from Hawaii, beaver chewed wood, etc. — these are things we now have in our home from the exchange). When the head of the nature exchange heard about our trip he gave us a list of pine cones to watch out for because they were rare at his exchange. So we hunted for Sugar Pines. We never fond Sugar Pines, but did come back with a bag of pine cones for him. Grandma JoAnn even risked her life in the middle of an intersection to come back with 1000 point Coulter Pine cones which are really large. So every potty stop we would search for different pine cones.

We were headed toward a camp site at the Redwood forest — Jedediah Smith State Park. We had reservations so we pushed on as the sun started to set. We had Surly ready to guide us to Jedediah Smith State Park. She had no problem locating the park. There was no reason to doubt her. She'd gotten us to pretty much everywhere we needed to be. Why use an old paper map. Well as Lea tells the story "Surly got us to the middle of the park and then just shut up!" Not quite, but she lead us to the geographic center of the park, not the camp ground. Now that I look at the pictures I posted I see there is a no camping symbol on the sign we passed. We were tired, we were on auto pilot untill we entered Jedediah Smith State Park.

There are no pictures of Jedediah Smith State Park because I was too busy squeezing finger prints into the arm rest of the van. Surly took us on a road marked on a paper map as "not for heavy traffic, no RVs or other large vehicles." I don't know what the road was for because there were no scenic pull offs or hiking trails. It was just a single lane dirt road in a thick forest (it was beautiful, don't get me wrong) that looked like Jurassic Park was shot there. Full of huge redwoods, ferns, mist, growing dense darkness, light rain and steep cliffs at the edge of this one lane, wet dirt road. Did I mention I was terrified. One car passed us early on without incident (thank goodness no others because there was no room for two cars) so we knew there was another entrance at the other end. We just kept going.

We finally made it safely to the highway, gave up the idea of camping and headed to Crescent City California —Tsunami Capital of the U.S., by the way.  The hotel desk clerk said we should look up their last Tsunami a week ago because the seagulls are funny in the video.  Ha!  Reassuring. I couldn't find that video, but here is a bike video of what the road in Jedediah Smith State Park looked like, only imagine 6 foot drop offs on the side of the dirt road and the road lasting for 12 miles!

We ended our day at the Seaside in in Crescent City. Dan got us a "sea view" — of course it was too dark to see at night and when we woke it was misty and far away. We could see water, but I don't know if I'd brag about their sea view. It was warm, dry and indoors — with breakfast even! Much better than the middle of the pre-historic Jedediah Smith State Park.

Golden Gate Bridge ahead!

Pretty spot on the walk up to the bridge for a portrait.

Wind and mist makes for poor photo. We're on the bridge though.

You can barely see the Golden Gate bridge poking out behind us. It was very misty.

This is one cable made of tens of thousands of wires to suspend the bridge.

Driving across the Golden Gate Bridge. 8 year old to do list - check one

 

On the Golden Gate bridge

Headed to the Lighthouse Cafe in Sausalito just past the Golden Gate Bridge. Cute bayside town.

Hot Cocoa makes everything better.

Menu

Delusional driver: We're headed from here to hear — Redwoods and coast line the whole way, now let's search for pine cones.

Jay trying to capture the grandeur of the huge pines

Drive among the redwoods, including Redwood Drive. We passed the exit for the "drive through a tree" place, but we did not take the detour. It was agreed our day was long enough.

A one lane bridge. This was not the only bridge like this we encountered. Though it was the only one with Golden Bear statues. Tiny one lane bridge with a stop light on either end so only one direction at a time gets to cross the bridge.

Hyw 101

It is ridiculous how long it took me to get this photo. I must have taken bad/missed/blurry pictures of about fifteen 101 signs. Dan started slowing down so I could take the photo. I never got a shot of the "Tsunami Warning" or escape route signs. These were blue signs with icons of a wave and a guy. I swear the guy was in a different place in every sign, like if you put them together you'd get a flip book of a guy surviving the wave. He was under the wave at one point and on the wave at another. Maybe it had to do with how far from the coast you were to how safe you were or maybe the sign maker had a sense of humor.

Photos do not do the view justice. Beauty

Lea only watched two movies on our 28 day road trip and this was one of them. She was a trooper, but she was very much over the car ride on this day.

Again beauty and majesty of the coastal highway

Dinner in the car. Ham sandwiches with the crust cut off. I saved them for two days thinking we'd feed seagulls, but it never happened.

Beauty and majesty early in the day

Breathtaking sunset late in the day

Misty beauty near the end of the day — this is the mist we had to deal with on the dirt road, but no pavement, shoulder or security.

Now entering the Middle-of-nowhere California. Do not use your GPS to find a campground!

Lea slept through much of the horrifying drive through Jedediah Smith State Park and then to the hotel. We all slept like babies once we were settled safely in a hotel.