Stops, Side Trips, and Unexpected Things from San Francisco to Las Vegas

In addition to the large metropolitan areas and their known highlights and attractions, there are lots of unexpected and unplanned things to see around and between those large cities. Here are a few from San Francisco to Las Vegas (current stop).

We spent a day with Kit and Pam Kersch and had a nice trip out to Bodega Bay.  Recognize this church?  Think Alfred Hitchcock movies.

It's the historic 150-year old St. Teresa's Church from the thriller "The Birds" movie of 1963, located along the coast at Bodega Bay.  Hitchcock was looking for a remote coastal area free from trees and mountains so he would have clear views of the sky to show all of those birds. Bodega Bay fit the bill. The original schoolhouse where Tippi Hedren and the kids took refuge from the gulls and ravens is still standing and is now a private home. Rhonda had recorded movies from a Hitchcock marathon before we left on this trip, but did not get to watch "The Birds" before we left, so I know what we will be watching when we get home.

Bodega Bay is a beautiful coastal town with the rugged coastline so familiar to CA.  So rugged is this coastline that some of the homes have already fallen off of the cliffs with more on the verge (look closely in the center of the picture below).  These residents cannot get insurance and at some point the authorities condemn the property as unsafe to live in and the owners have no choice but to evacuate.

Kit and Pam treated us to a very nice lunch at the Tides Wharf restaurant overlooking the Pacific coast.  Thanks Kit and Pam, so good to see y'all again!

Our KOA campground while in the SF area was in the town of Petaluma.

 Petaluma is a very pretty town with lots to offer.  It actually has some dockable waterfront with shorepower on a small river that runs right to the middle of town.

Rhonda was interested in the Seed Bank store which has over 1,800 varieties of heirloom seeds. She says she is going to take up gardening when we get home. Not sure how that will work on our condo balcony.

As we first drove through town, Rhonda took a picture of this little piggie on the sidewalk with a green "something" beside it. Since so many small towns have interesting statues scattered around as a symbol of their town (like guitars for music in Memphis and Muskogee), she was wondering what Petaluma might be known for with the cute little pigs. Sadly, as we started walking that area, she saw that the green thing is a butcher's apron and the little piggie is advertising the "whole animal" butchery at 160 Petaluma Boulevard!

I was more interested in the ice cream shop down the street and found my happy place - hard to beat a nice cold chocolate milkshake on a hot CA day.

We left Petaluma for the town of Greenfield (south of Soledad) and the closest thing to a luxury campground resort we have stayed at - "Yanks."  It's an interesting story. The owner is an aviation buff and owns an aviation museum in Chino, CA.  He is bringing 200 rare and legendary aircraft to Greenfield soon and opening a one million dollar museum next door to the campground.  Restaurants, a 4000-foot runway, and an expansion to the RV park are also planned.  The campground really is first class but the price was still very reasonable.  Paved roads and concrete pads (as opposed to gravel in most campgrounds), wifi that works, cable TV, nice pool/laundry/clubhouse, 70-foot long sites, (they had some 100-footers available also), etc. make for a very nice experience.  

I mentioned previously that I found NAPA Valley and the huge food production operation there very interesting.  And up in the Santa Rosa area, you are in the heart of wine country with vineyards all over the place.  Well, when you enter Salinas Valley (south of San Jose) you are in territory referred to as "The Salad Bowl Capitol of the World."  Wow, nothing but farms and crops everywhere growing lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, strawberries, onions - you know, salad stuff.  Onions were the predominant crop next door to Yanks.

This was unusual also - huge lifelike signs were common for advertising in the area.  We thought these cabbages could have been better strategically placed elsewhere but hey, maybe it was intentional.  After all, this area produces around 80% of the nation's salad!

We attended First Baptist Church of Monterey on Sunday morning.  This church had a much higher attendance than most in the west we have visited on this trip but interestingly enough, it was almost 100% young and middle-age families.  That's usually a good sign but the complete absence of older members was unusual?

It was crazy in Monterey during Labor Day weekend so we headed to Pebble Beach after church to take the 17-mile scenic drive that is offered there.  They charge $10.25 to drive through the up-scale beachside and golf community, but it is a beautiful ride and gives you access to all of the beaches, country clubs, and food.  We ate at Spyglass CC, and if you have a food tab of $35.00 or more, they deduct the $10.25 scenic ride fee. We had heard that food prices were outrageous, but our huge, excellent, club sandwich did not come close to getting our ride fee reimbursed.

There are lots of harbor seals and sea lions on some of the rocky shoreline stops.

And par for the course in CA, there's always something unusual that crops up.  No idea what they were thinking on this roof. Not sure how it made it through the HOA regulations for this expensive area either.

After lunch we made our way to Pebble Beach Golf Course. We could not believe you can just get out and walk along the course.

There was a college tournament finishing up at the 18th green.  Here's the leaderboard if you want to check and see if your team is competing in the sport of golf these days.  Note the new course record of 61!  Maybe Hurly Long is an up and coming star to watch for.  I expected to see my alma mater here but not the case.  Wake Forest has a long history of great golfers - Arnold Palmer, Lanny Wadkins, Curtis Strange, Jay Haas to name a few.

And the famous Pebble Beach 18th fairway and green.

Here's the "Lone Cypress" which has been standing in this spot for 250 years and is the symbol of the Pebble Beach Company,.

 We rode some more of PCH 1 but it was closed 29 miles south of there because of landslides.  Carmel was nuts with traffic and crowds also, so we headed back to Yanks for our last west CA sunset.

Los Angeles and San Diego were our next possibilities in California but we still have lots to see in southern Nevada, southern Utah, Arizona, and Colorado before heading back to Alabama.  You just can't see it all in one trip, so we headed to Mojave for one night and then to Boulder City, NV and the Las Vegas area for several days.  We passed by Death Valley with temperatures still 110 to 120 degrees every day and a  heat advisory up to possibly 134.  We decided to heed their advisory - "If you get off the road and break down you can die.  Don't go anywhere in Death Valley without at least 5 gallons of water!" OK, we get it. Moving on.

The route to Mojave was interesting as it took us right back into the world of grapes, pistachios, almond trees, and finally CA orange trees.  These areas went on and on and on and on forever - mind-boggling to me.  We really believe there is a plan for wineries to take over the world, but now we hear cannabis might actually be the one to do it. Along the "Salad Bowl" area, we had seen lots of greenhouses in the fields with all of the salad greens and checked them out. Originally, the "Salad Bowl" had been the "Flower Bowl" producing most of the nation's cut flowers in those greenhouses. Now that marijuana is legal in CA, the trend is to produce a new flower. Farmers are trading petunia and lettuce production for pot production and old-timers can sell their land for millions to new "farmers." I guess the price for a salad will be going up.

It takes an awful lot of water for all of this crop production, so here's your thought-provoking question for the day.

Surprisingly enough, there are quite a few oil wells in some areas and they are jam packed in those spots.

Joshua Trees are very common crossing the desert areas.

Wind turbines were everywhere as we approached Mojave.

The landscape in Mojave is beautiful and has some areas in the mountains that are an aqua color.

Mojave is the home of the Mojave Air And Space Port - there is some serious aviation research, development, test pilot training, and other activities here.  They have a free driving tour to 9 points of interest.

There is a boneyard here of airplanes that have served their useful existence.

The "Stargazer," the only remaining L-1011 that still flies is based here, hauling Pegasus rockets which are used to propel satellites into space.

Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic has a facility here, developing the first commercial spaceline which will be capable of sending the general public into sub-orbital flight.  Tickets are already being purchased by space tourists.  I guess that's our next venture, and we'll be starting a "go-fund-us" account soon for that purpose.

And for those of you aviation buffs out there familiar with Burt Rutan, he also has a significant presence here.  The Voyager was built, launched, and returned here for landing of the solar-powered around-the-world non-stop flight in December of 1986.  This is hard to see inside the glass-building but it's a scale model of the Voyager.

There was not much detail on this but the Stratolaunch company is building the largest aircraft ever in this hangar, designed to take manned and unmanned vehicles to space.  There are signs on all of the fences here that say we could not take photos so I'm not sure how we got these????? (Security did come after us at one point, but instead of confiscating our camera, she told us we could get better pictures near the restaurant!)

And they have some vintage aircraft on display such as as one of only 65 Convair 880s that were built.  Elvis owned one of these.  The F4 in the photo is a modified target drone for military radar and missile testing.

So, you get the idea.  Fun stop for anyone interested in aviation.  The trip from Mojave to Boulder City was more desert landscape and some more desert landscape.  One interesting thing though - they are serious about solar power just before Las Vegas, and the entire solar panel field here is not in the picture!

We had a surprise visit from friends of ours when a Bulkley Trucking Company truck passed us on I-15.  Clint and Linda Bulkley are dear friends of ours from our marina days at Muskogee, OK and later Galveston, TX. They have traveled extensively with us on their boat, "Opus One," and own Bulkley Trucking Company. What were the odds of meeting up with one of their vehicles on I-15 in the middle of nowhere? Rhonda texted Linda to let her know we just thought about them.  Linda wanted to know if the driver made a good pass (boating phrase)!

And here we are all settled in at Lake Mead RV Park in Boulder City, checking out Hoover Dam and Las Vegas.  We'll report on all of that later.  See you then.