Sunday, November 22, 2009

Oct-Nov WA to CA

Hi! Everyone, It’s been a while. Hope you are all doing well. We are just highlighting the things we did since our last update and trying to keep it short without a lot of detail.

Our last adventure in WA. was a ferry boat ride from Port Angeles to the beautiful city of Victoria BC. Everything was fairly close to the docks.. Some of the things we toured are The Parliament Building, The Fairmont Empress Hotel and Chinatown. In the basement of the hotel is The Miniature World (The Greatest Little Show on Earth) and that it was. Check it out www.miniatureworld.com . While in Port Angeles we did see advertising about “Twilight” but never paid any attention to it. We didn’t realize how big “Twilight “ is.

Heading to Oregon along the coast sure was beautiful, a lot different from the Jersey shore. We visited Lincoln City where there was a kite festival going on, some of the kites were huge. We also visited Yaquima Bay State Park and Yuguima Head’s Lighthouse. We stayed at Southerland OR. , in the Escapees Park called Timber Valley, and due to bad weather we did not see Crater Lake.

Our next stop was Klamath River RV Park and visited the Redwood National Forest. We thought we saw big trees in WA, but nothing as impressive as these trees. We visited The Trees of Mystery and rode a gondola thru the Redwoods. We drove to a drive thru tree which is about 735 yrs old, the opening is 7’4” wide, 9’6” high and 15’ in diameter at eye level, and guess what! We didn’t fit. We also visited Crescent City, which was named as one of America’s top 20 Prettiest small towns by the Forbes Travel Magazine. It was cute, they have over 32 murals through out the town (we didn’t find them all) and in the harbor they had the many sea lions and boy were they noisy.

WE ARE LOOKING FOR THE HAPPY CALIFORNIA COWS.

Next stop was Cloverdale CA. at the Russian River RV Park. There were 130 Wineries within a 30 mile radius of the park and with many, many vineyards along the roads. We toured the Charles Schultz Museum in Santa Rosa, and Snoopy’s Home Ice Arena.

In Isleton CA. we stayed at the Lighthouse RV Park on the CA. Delta. We toured the Jelly Belly Bean Co. (left with a sugar high), the Budweiser Plant(more samples) and Olive Oil tasting at Sepay Olive Oil Co. (interesting). Our last tour here was the Western Train Museum, mostly electric trains and trolley’s including one from the Lehigh Valley Transit Co. which is our hometown and we do remember the trolley running on Broad St. to Allentown, Pa.

A week later we were in Pleasanton CA. at the Alameda County Park (a great park). We spent 4 days touring San Francisco from here. We did not drive into San Francisco, we took the BART System in every day, it was a great way to see San Francisco. The Cable cars were fun and the best way to do all the hills. We used the Hop on Hop off double decker tour bus, it was a 2 day pass and on and off as much as you wanted. We rode the first day several times to check out what we really wanted to see. There were 21 stops in all. We stopped at Chinatown, Lombard St., Fisherman’s Wharf, The Botanical Gardens and the church that Marilyn Monroe and Joe Dimagio had there wedding photo taken. They could not get married in the church due to rules of the church. Plus we did a few other stops. Sure is a busy place, we were glad we didn’t have to drive. We took a cruise out to Alcatraz. Small world, a young lady had a Lehigh University sweatshirt on, we asked if she was a student, no but her brother is. The University’s property runs along our oldest sons property. This was a very interesting tour , it was a self guided audio tour.Almost forgot the Wells Fargo Museum, it was very interesting. Check it out www.wellsfargohistory.com.

Yosemite National Park was next, we stayed in Yosemite Lakes, which is about 5 miles from the entrance. What a great visitor center, beautiful scenery, waterfalls and mountains .This is one of the most spectacular National Parks we visited. We had a few tunnels to go thru with the RV when we left, and because of the low height, we had to go down the middle.

Next stop was Manifee CA. about 50 miles from Los Angeles. We stayed in Wilderness Lakes Resort. This was a nice chill out stop although we did go to the Mission in San Juan Capistrano, which was another self guided audio tour. The gardens were beautiful. Of course we had to visit Disneyland. It sure is different from Walt Disney World but it was fun, and our passes got us in for free.

We are now in Aguanga CA. at the Escapees Jojoba Hills SKP Resort. What a beautiful park We might have found our nitch, who knows. We will be spending Thanksgiving here. This park is really something to see, the nicest RV Park we ever stayed in, in over 40 years of rving. We did upate our map so you can follow along our journey.

Blazer says hi! He is still very busy. Lilly has more bad days than good days but she is hanging in. Keep in touch. We are getting anxious about the Rose Parade.

HAVE A HAPPY THANKSGIVING.