Monday - October 24, 2011

Who is that good looking guy




Another great day - sunshine and temps around 22. Drove down Highway 101 for a while until we hit the cutoff for the Avenue of the Giants which is a 31 mile drive along old Highway 101 through the giant trees. Unfortunately we had to go off the road for about 3 miles as a tree had fallen across the roadway. There are a number of towns along the way, but the road goes through the largest remaining stand of redwoods in the world.

Once we got back on highway 101 we followed it until Leggat and California highway 1 which runs along the coast. If you look on a map, CA 1 looks relatively straight forward. Not so! It runs for about 30 miles as a switchback over two mountain ranges which each rise to about 2200 feet. When I say switchback, the straight road sometimes is only about 150 feet or less before you switch direction again. Brenda was feeling a little nauseous when we arrived at the coast. The drive along the coast was also interesting. Many years ago Brenda and I made the trip going north which is not as bad as going south. Going south you have the ocean right beside you but sometimes about 500 feet or more down. The road is narrow and there is little room for error as there is about 3 or 4 feet between the road and oblivion. It was an exciting ride, needless to say.

We decided to head to Santa Rosa in wine country for the night. Unfortunately we had to recross the two ranges of mountains again, only this time we used a road which was not a highway. It was worse than CA 1 in terms of switchbacks. In fact, I had to stop the truck for a while because the breaks were overheating and we could smell them in the cab. They needed to cool down before we could go any further. Anyways we finally got going and arrived in Santa Rosa which is a town right in the Russian River Valley middle of wine country. Plan to stay here for two nights and visit some of the vineyards tomorrow for tastings.