October 1, 2014 Wednesday   From Coos Bay, Oregon to Eureka, California

We left Sunset State Park on a beautiful crisp Oregon morning and took off on Hwy 101 South down the coast line of Oregon.  We stopped along the way and got a few last memories of the rock filled Oregon coast line along the Pacific. 

Oregon Coast

We drove between coast line and lush Oregon Greenery

 An interesting thing about Oregon is the change in temperature along the coast line north of the California border.  Jeff Douglas had told us about this and, as we best recall, no one is certain as to why it is but its about 10 degrees warmer.  We began to feel the warming as we traveled south.

We crossed over the border and soon were in Crescent City, CA.  You can see from this photo why it was named.  The coast line forms a crescent.  This reminds us of New Orleans, where the Mississippi River forms a crescent shape and hence, NO is often called “The Crescent City.” 

 Crescent City, California

Now while we are talking about city names, our destination is Eureka, CA.  Now why on earth would someone name their town after a vacuum cleaner?  Go figure! But, I guess it’s the “in” thing to do.  Why else would they have named that big dam, Hoover Dam? 

Well, on the way to the vacuum cleaner city, we next entered another National Park; The Redwood National and State Park.  If you read about it, you learn that it is a joint venture between the Federal Government and the State Government.  We stopped just before entering the park at a pullout and had lunch.  

Then we entered the park.  The trees are ginormous as you would expect.

Interesting that none of the trees around the sign are Redwoods!

But, Redwoods were aplenty! And, they are BIG.  Lib got this shot of an RV we were following through the forest and it shows the size of the trees.  The RV is 8.5 feet wide so you can see how large this tree is and it was not nearly the largest one.

You drive among trees like this for miles

Soon we were in Eureka.  We got there early in the day, about 2 PM and I enjoyed watching my    news-talking head shows on satellite during the evening.   Maggie liked this RV park and wanted to  sit outside Cream Puff dutifully watching for those RVers who walk their dogs around the park late in the afternoon.  

October 2, 2014  Thursday From Eureka, CA to Cloverdale, CA (Mendocino County…Wine Country!)

Early this am we got in a short talk with our buds, Todd and Joy Greer.  We learned they have three grandkids that are really getting serious with their girlfriends.  The whole family is going to the Texas A&M  v Bama  game which should be very exciting.  Also, we learned Bubba is doing great and went for a boat ride with them yesterday. 

We heard from Amelia Brown in Enterprise.  Amel is getting ready to leave for France and we hope she has safe and fun travels!

We also chat with Lib’s cousin Lucy regularly..either on the phone or through text messaging.  She and Ronny are dong fine.  Lucy is concerned that our butts are flat.  Actually, we guard against driving fatigue.  On days that we travel we try not to go over 200 miles.  Sometimes we have to go more but its rare.  We also limit day-after-day driving sometimes staying a week at the same place but more often three or four days.  Right now we have a goal of being in the San Francisco area to be with our niece, nephew, his wife and two children for the weekend.  So, after lolly-gagging down the Oregon coast for a week, we are driving three days in a row to get to San Fran.  But tomorrow, we only have a little over 100 miles and we are there.  Besides, we are in wine tasting country so we are happy campers.

We are in Mendocino County near Alexander Valley where you see the vineyards on the hills...

...and up close along the roadside

We’ve been on trips to the wine country north of San Fran a couple of times before.  One year we went with some real wine connoisseurs, Bob Brobst, a Texan who now has a home in Sonoma, and Paul Solomon from Tampa.  Both of them know more about wine than we will ever know.  But that is fine.  We’ll just have another glass of that “so and so very dry wine with the moderate tannin aftertaste” and “Would you pass that French bread, please?” We may not be connoisseurs but we can drink wine very well.  I would say professionally.  Joe and Dale Hair went with us as well.  They are professionals like us.  Well, let me say that Dale is pretty good at downing a half glass of Zinfandel but Joe and I make up for that in keeping the wine stocks up.

We checked in at the RV Park along the Russian River, took Maggie for a walk and turned on the AC.  Yes, we have now reached the south again.  It was 90 degrees here today.  Considering that we have been in sweater weather for weeks, we had to get the AC working.  Within minutes, Cream Puff cooled down enough for us to leave Maggie and we left for some wine tasting.

We weren't all that interested in doing the wine tasting thing when we left Eureka this am but, by about 4:00pm, a glass of wine sounded good to us.  We went to Silver Oak Vineyards and looked for the important signage...

Eureka!!!

Inside the tasting room George gave us waaayy more information about the wine than we could absorb; and much less wine than we could absorb.  So, we listened to the story "choicest grapes nurtured in stainless steel and then removed to oak barrels for the proper aging and...a moderate tannin aftertaste..."  But, George was a great guy who has a brother who lives in Florida so we had some things to talk about once he realized we weren't really asking too many questions about the aging temperature and the effects of the drought on the grape skins.  We drank our wine and drove around gufawing some of the other wineries.  They are almost lined up on the streets here.  

 Lib pretending like she's listening to George

The Asti Winery

Back to Cream Puff to relax and low and behold, I get a call from a childhood friend, David Kahn. We were both friends with David during our youth and haven't seen him in years until our 50th Lanier reunion.  David and his wife are down at the beach and called to invite us to dinner.  We must renew our friendship when we return to Pensacola.  David had a very successful career in real estate in Montgomery.

Tomorrow we leave for Redwood City in the bay area.  We will link up with Mary Elizabeth, French, J.J., Daniel and Elizabeth!  We plan on watching the Bama  v Ole Miss game together on Saturday.  French graduated from Bama and Mary Elizabeth and J. J. are good at tolerating us on football weekends.  We can't wait to see those kids, ALL of them!