Category Archives: Past Travel

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Road Trip: San Francisco to Coupeville, Wa

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On the Ferry to Clinton, Wa

We left the Bay Area on 8/11 en-route to Seattle.  I had planned to take five to seven days for the trip up, but we over stayed at home and buzzed up in three days.  We gave up a Shakespeare evening in Ashland, a visit to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum near Portland, a hike in the Columbia River Gorge, a hike at Mt St Helens, and a visit to Crater Lake. That’s OK, we can visit them on the return trip.  Unfortunately hikes to the top of Mt St Helens are by permit only and permits are limited.  This year’s permits are sold out.

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Sunset on Penn Cove

 

 

Wildlife Safari, Winston Oregon

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We did stop at the Wildlife Safari in Oregon which was fun.  It is a self drive through a number of fenced in animal parks.  The park is large with enough room for the animals to roam freely.  The cats and elephants do not roam free.  It’s sad to see them confined as they were though I’m sure they are well cared for.  Food to feed the animals is available along the drive.  This is big fun for families.  The ostriches are not shy at all and will poke their heads into a vehicle in search of a bite.  If you purchase food, save some for later along the drive.

Ellen got to test her new camera and it brought back a flavor of Africa.  We did shoot a lion, with our cameras of course.  This is a wonderful place for families.

San Francisco to Coupeville, Wa

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Coupeville at dusk

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Ebbey’s landing

We stayed the first night near the Rogue River.  We did not want to drive very far from Rt 5 even though staying on the Rogue River could have been relaxing.  We opted to stay at an RV campground right off Hw 5 at Cypress Grove, Gold Hill Oregon.  This was a wonderful place to camp, if you look past being right off highway 5.  No doubt there are other fine campgrounds inland along 62 or 264.  Cypress Grove was great for dropping off the highway and getting back on the next day.  Ron and Vera do a wonderful job maintaining their campground.  They are fine, friendly people.

The second day we pushed through to Mt St Helens.  Again we wanted to stay close to Hw 5 to put our time and miles into driving north.  We chose Longview North Mt St Helens KOA.  This campground was very pleasant.  It is off the highway a bit and had no road noise.  It’s perched on a hillside with a good view of sunset over the ridges.  There is no view of Mt St Helens, which is unfortunate.  There were plenty of campsites here, probably because there was no view of the mountain.

Joergen, Mercedes, and Winnebago View

We noticed another Winnebago View as we pulled into Longview.  It was not long after we hooked up that we met Joergen, who had just hiked the mountain with a group of friends.  He does this every August.  Joergen worked for Mercedes and had traveled all over South America in sprinter vans.  He said he researched all the campers built on the sprinter chassis looking at accommodations, build quality, and how the coaches age and he felt the View 24J was best overall.  It’s always great to get corroboration, even if it is a bit biased.  Joergen visited us for an hour later in the evening.  He is well traveled and suggested a number of places we could visit in South America and on our trip north.  We both would like to go to Burning Man.  Strangely he will be headed to New England this fall and we will try to hook up with him then.

On the third day we blasted past Seattle, headed to Whidbey Island.  We took the ferry from Mukilteo to Clinton.  We arrived at 12:45 and queued up in the line going down the road to the ferry.  The ticket line went quickly and we boarded the 1PM ferry to Clinton with no delay.

From Clinton the drive to Coupeville wound inland up the spine of the island then turned east to the town.  We found Jerry and Michelle’s home easily with our Rand McNally  GPS.

Penn Cove, Crabs, Clams, and Poachers

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Dungeness Crabs in a bucket                                     Jerry cleaning a crab

Jerry and Michelle welcomed us with open arms.  We’ve parked “Li’l Beast” on their farm and stayed with them in Coupeville, on Penn Cove. The first day we dropped crab pots and pulled three massive Dungeness crabs from one pot.  They were sweet and very succulent.   We left the pots overnight thinking we’d pick them up the next day.  However, the next day we spent the morning at the local farmer’s market and went clamming  that afternoon.  The steamed clams were as good as any I’ve ever eaten.  With the crab pots still in the water, on Monday Jerry and Michelle went to see a tractor dealer and dropped Ellen and I off in Bellingham to visit with Cindy.  We had a short visit with Cindy over lunch then the four of us went back home.  Michelle, Ellen, and I headed out to recover the crab pots and with luck some crabs.  Sunset was glorious as we motored out on a glassy calm sea.  We found the first float quickly, but could not hook the line.  We tried a number of times before it occurred to us that 1. this was not the crab float, but the yellow float Jerry had attached to the down line and 2. there was no down line to hook!  The float had been cut from the line and the crab pot, float and all, was gone.  We found the second yellow float where the second crab pot should have been and that pot was also gone.  That sucks.  It might be understandable that someone would take a few crab from a pot if they didn’t catch any themselves, but to take the entire pot crabs and all is awful.

We were out during slack high tide.  We must have just missed the poachers because the floats would have drifted far from the site if they were cut  during the flood or ebb tide.   Search the web for crab poachers and you’ll be startled at how endemic this is across the US and Australia.

It’s Tuesday today.  Crabbing is illegal here on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.  I hope to coax Jerry into dropping some fake crab pots on Thursday to mess with the poachers.  To do this we will drop a dozen cinder blocks with down line and a crab float with some rather nasty messages attached to the line.  Let the poachers deal with that subterfuge.  Later we might be able to drop crab pots without being poached or worst case we’ll drop crab pots-line-cinder block-line-floats down.  The poachers would be dissuaded by the cinder block and not continue pulling the line to find the crab pot.   I wonder how much work bringing up a cinder block covered with sea weed will be.

So we’re here for a few days longer.  We’ll probably visit Cindy for a while in Bellingham and visit Langley on Whidbey to check that town out.  Cindy said its the town she likes best on the island.

There are many places to visit and things to do on the way back.  We’ll have time, though I overheard Ellen mumbling about a woman’s get-together next Thursday.  This will be interesting.

 

 

Whale Watching Video and PowerDirector

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PowerDirector

I’ve switched over to PowerDirector for my video editing and I’m quite pleased with the software. So far the software has had every feature I’ve wanted while editing video and it is easy to use. It’s crashed on me a few times. PowerDirector is not happy loading 60 AVI files. It may load them, but it will crash trying to do much of anything. It looks like the software loads features as they are needed and does not have sufficient memory when a number of large files are loaded. The solution is not to do that! Just work on a smaller set of files and it runs just fine.

Whale Watching Video, Loreto Mexico

While working on an entirely related issue (getting Amazon Prime to run on my smart TV), I would up connecting my wifi enabled devices to the TV. While testing the connection, up popped some video from our March whale watching trip. That was just the nudge I needed; editing those videos is a perfect way to test PowerDirector. The process went smoothly and without a crash. I’ve uploaded the mp4 output to the Loreto video album.

The video was shot with a Canon IXUS 800 point and shoot in a waterproof housing. This was our first whale watching trip and we were concerned that better equipment could be irreparably damaged. The quality of the video is what you’d expect from an older point and shoot camera, though the IXUS 800 is a fine camera within limits.

As for the video, it’s a sequence of our best clips of our days at Magdelena Bay, edited, spliced together, and with a sound track. I’ve kept the audio track in place, we get pretty excited.

Ron

Whale Watching Video, Loreto Mexico

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Finally! I’ve posted the first video of our trip to Loreto and Magdelena Bay of March this year. This was our first whale watching trip. I had my whale watching preconceptions blown away. This trip was very well organized (thank you Cynthia) and the boat operators were excellent. The food and accommodations were both quite good.

Here’s a photo of “the crew” and the owner of the restaurant and villas at Magdelena bay. The owner is a kick, he had us all dancing with the kitchen crew after serving us all a shot of tequila.

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I’m only now posting the video after “rediscovering” them while testing wifi connectivity between home devices and a smart TV. One of my PCs connected to the TV and started showing videos from Magdelena Bay. Ellen and I were transfixed and transported right back to Mexico.

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Heading out, the first day

In March the gray whales calf. The males are long gone, but the females stay in protected bays to teach their calves how to be a whale. Almost every time we spotted a gray whale, she was with a calf. There was one solitary whale that we came upon multiple times. We called her “white stripe” because she had a distinctive white marking on her back.

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Ellen’s “Nat Geo” Shot

 

Unfortunately, on the way back to Loreto from Magdelena Bay I got terribly sick. Some others in our group came down with something similar and to a greater or lesser extent. We have no idea which food or drink might have caused the problem. It seemed entirely random. Everyone shared everything pretty much and no one item seemed to be the culprit. Was I very careful with food and drink? Not really. Would I do it all over again? Oh YEAH!

Larry and Barb went fishing a few times and brought back a ton of fish that the staff at the Giggling Dolphin cooked up for us. It was gooood. I was “sick as a dog” (wonder what that actually derives from) on the day I planned to go with Larry.

We had fun, met a bunch of great people, and have some fond memories of “it all”.

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Yogie

Yogie stood amidships the entire day for days on end. Yogie’s a nickname Larry gave Steve some time ago.

 

We will enjoy returning to Loreto and Magdelena bay over the next few years and rekindling some memories.

 

Ron

Cross Country Video is available

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I’ve moved time compressed video of day 2 through 7 and day 9 of our cross country road trip from Connecticut to California to our website. Day 8, 10, and 11 are still in process.

Somewhere in my video processing stream, the sharpness of the H.264 stream has been compromised and the video is just OK. In some instances a rough road creates camera jitter that’s apparent in the video. The problem is quite obvious in the trees along the highways. Keeping the windshield clean was not a priority, and that shows in some of the clips as does dashboard reflection if/when we put paper or maps on the dash.

Quality aside, this is a quick video summary of a cross country trip from Bristol Ct to the S.F. Bay area. Weather forced us to drop all the way down to interstate 10 to avoid snow, sleet, freezing rain, and a cold front that dropped to 8 degrees.

 

Ron

Dash Cam Video, try try again

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Well that didn’t work!  Simply speeding up a video to compress time is terrible.  It might work for a humorous video of people working, but not for dash cam video.

Enter PowerDirector and the ability to compress time to fit a sound track.  I’m not trying to boost PowerDirector sales, but this is one of the fastest editing and rendering programs I’ve used.  It has some extreme limitations in its editing features.  I suppose that’s the trade-off, speed and ease of use for functionality.  The software is also quite inexpensive for what you get.  It does crash if overwhelmed; loading too many AVI files at once challenges its memory/cache for example.  Loading the same set of files converted to MP4, works.

I will remove the dash cam videos at 16x and I’ll be uploading our entire trip from Connecticut to California.  Well almost the entire trip, Day 1 starts at night south of Baltimore, Md, I’ll skip that and start with Day 2 which should be available in a few hours.  These videos are much smoother and more fun to watch.

I’ll be experimenting with these videos to make them more fun; adding still shots, inserting google map shots, changing up the music.

Ron

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San Diego

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San Diego

We drove “Li’l Beast” to San Diego to visit family a few weeks ago. Unusual for San Diego, we caught the tail end of a tropical storm that came up the Baja Peninsula and dropped a ton of rain with lightning and thunder for a full day. Now it is sunny and cool in the evenings, just what you would expect in Southern California.

We consider moving to San Diego from time to time. Even now I’m hoping that Hercules can “get its act together” and implement a well designed walk-able plan for its bay front property. Work has re-started on the “Tyvek Palace”, a high-end condo project that went bust about six years ago. It will have shops on the ground floor and about 150 market rate apartments in the floors above. The high-end condo concept was abandoned. Strangely, no additional parking has been planned for the 200+ cars that will be parking in the Bay Neighborhood. This is a significant problem that the city of Hercules failed to address when the project was approved. If Hercules does a better job of planning/implementing development of its bay shoreline, that could change everything. I doubt the city has the foresight though.

 

Hercules, Ca

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     Sycamore North today                   Sycamore North last year

If I had to guess, we will stay in Hercules for the next four to six years, then move to San Diego. San Diego housing prices are still low compared to the Bay Area which makes moving there quite possible. Another little known fact, San Diego county allows the tax basis of your current house to be transferred to San Diego County if you buy there. If your home is worth $150 K, you can transfer your ridiculously low housing tax basis if you buy in San Diego! I am not sure that this tax transfer works for out-of-state property, something I have not had to research as we live in California. This might make the purchase of a house along the coast or with a view feasible for us!

We had thought to head back to the Bay Area this morning, but we’re still here and will be for a few more days. This is one of the joys of retirement. If you want to spend more time somewhere/anywhere, you can do it. We have arranged online payments for all of our bills and have a monthly deposit from our savings dropped into our accounts every month. We can close up our home and go anywhere we want at the drop of a hat and not have to worry about our creditors. Of course, I check our accounts regularly.

If we go for more than a week or two, we do have to have the post office hold our mail. When we were in Europe in July, we had a huge stack of mail to work through. Surprisingly, there were only four or five pieces of mail of any significance. Most of the mail was marketing material that went right into recycling. What a waste of time and material that is.

We’ve had Li’l Beast plugged into the Nema 14-50 socket Chanda had installed for our Tesla here in San Diego. It’s no coincidence that the Tesla and our RV take the same plug. Tesla planned this to increase the number of alternative charging locations for the Tesla. Today, if we were to take the Tesla to Eureka, we may have to charge at an RV campground. We’d most likely take our RV, Li’l Beast.

Balboa Park, the Museum of Man

Yesterday, we visited the Museum of Man, Balboa Park San Diego for the Mayan Exhibit. There were very few original pieces which was a disappointment. There were numerous pots and some jewelry on display; that was great. Interesting were the interactive presentations. Create your name in Mayan glyphs, hear it pronounced, and print it out. Print out your date of birth in Mayan calendar glyphs. There were a number of videos that described the Mayan culture, how the ruins were discovered, games the Mayans played, and population centers growth and demise over time. I’d post photos if I had thought to re-charge my camera’s batteries! Both batteries are charged now, and ready for the Aeronautics Museum and the Vermeer Exhibit at the park. I’ll update this post with photos when we get back.

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Photos from the Mayan Exhibit, Museum of Man

 

San Diego Zoo

If you visit San Diego, do not miss Balboa Park and the San Diego Zoo. Both are a treat. As usual, I recommend going early for quick parking and to get some time in before the crowds. Still the crowds have never been a problem, both the park and the zoo are large. Crowds spread out and you don’t even notice. I have photos of a prior visit to the zoo that I will post a bit later.

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A series of photos from the San Diego Zoo

 

The San Diego Air and Space Museum

We just returned from an afternoon at the Air and Space Museum.  The museum is in San Diego’s Balboa Park.  The Air and Space museum houses a large number of airplanes and space memorabilia, including the Apollo 9 space capsule, a PBY-5a Catalina amphibious airplane, The Gee-Bee R1 aircraft that Jimmy Doolittle flew to win the Thompson Trophy: Doolittle and the R1 ,  a number of WWII aircraft, a Blue Angles Hornet, and any number of other aircraft.  The museum is large, but it could easily be doubled in size to give each plane more space.   The time flew by as we walked the museum.

We were drawn from the entrance to the center courtyard then walked through the far doors and headed left.  If you do this, you’ll miss the exhibit of early flight through WWI on the right side of the museum.  We retraced our steps and discovered the WWI replicas and originals on the right half of the museum.

A word of caution,  Tuesday is a day of free admission to some of the park museums.  On the fourth Tuesday of the month (today), the Air and Space Museum is one of those that is free.  On Tuesdays, the park is full and parking becomes difficult unless you arrive after 3 pm.  The park closes at 5 pm; it is not worth it to go that late.  Go early, you will be glad you did.

 

Photos of San Diego Air and Space Museum

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   Reflecting pool, Balboa Park                  Air and Space Museum

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              Apollo 9 capsule

 

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           PBY-5a Catalina                                             Mig15

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                  F4-Phantom                                  Phaeton Plaque

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                   Phaeton                                    Ford V-8 Deluxe Roadster

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                    Spitfire                                                        ME109

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Vought F4U Corsair

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Ryan STA Trainer and Acrobatic plane

 

Ron

Buena Vista Aquatic Recreation Area

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A number of interesting observations:

Ants

First, watch for ants; right, ants.
Once parked and leveled:
Connect water line to RV, check.
Turn spigot on, check.
Ask Ellen to open a faucet to check water pressure, check.
Connect 110 electrical service, check. Noticed a few ants near the service box
and forgot about it.

The next morning we were inundated with small red ants. Thousands of the little buggers had crept up the power cable, through the electrical wiring, and were investigating their new home. Our first clue that we had trouble was ants in bed with us! Ellen handled this with aplomb.

We were squishing ants between sips of morning coffee and it went on forever once we knew what was what. Ellen used a lavender cleaner here and there. I remembered that ants leave a scent trail to navigate home and sure enough, the ants congregated at the lavender “clean spots” in confusion. These guyz were dead meat. I’m sure we have another 200+ confused ants looking for water in “the Beast”.
Beware of site 56. I just have to find a general solution for ant colonies near the water or electric hookup.

Ant Update

World Wide web to the rescue, if a bit late. According to numerous posts, Comet sprinkled around areas that you do not want ants to explore works wonders. Yes, Comet, the household cleaner! We’ll be sure to pack some on our return trip to the Bay Area.

Wind

Second the prevailing wind.
In late after noon the wind blew west to east, toward the lake. The wind was hot but cooled a bit at night. AC is a definite must in the summer.
In the morning the wind shifts blowing east to west, coming across the lake. This sounds idyllic, right? It isn’t. The wind stinks of BO. It’s the only way I can describe it. It stank. I’ve enjoyed hiking to mountain streams and lakes with water so clear it is as if the water was air. I could see ten or twenty feet to the bottom. This lake sure looks inviting, but that morning breeze was a put-off.
Though the lake was like glass and very beautiful, you will not find me in that water. It reminded me of Mission Beach, San Diego and the stench on me after a few hours SUP with a few falls. That was nasty.

The lake was quite pretty otherwise.

We have arrived San Diego. I considered an excursion into Mexico (not entering at Tijuana), but my passport is with State being renewed. We do not have the required docs.

Mercedes Sprinter / Winnebago View

The Beast is a beast. She performed excellently. We did have one issue with the Mercedes Sprinter though. In moderate wind with the cruise control set, the OBC went crazy just after we hit a bumpy patch going over a culvert. We had three warnings pop up at the same time: ESP visit workshop; an image of a tire with the message visit workshop, cruise control visit workshop. I can be stubborn but three messages saying visit workshop got through: visit workshop!

I asked Ellen to look up the codes (I was driving). She did and the error messages indicated that ABS and cruise control were disabled. Stopping distance was compromised.

We turned in at the next stop. I checked tire pressure: good; restarted the engine and the error codes cleared. We were good to go. I can only guess this is a safeguard against ABS doing the wrong thing as it.can do in the rain.

Road Trip

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Headed down rt 5 to San Diego. It’s far from a beautiful drive. Today the goal is to get there fast. We’re leaving late and will overnight past Bakersfield, hopefully at the top of the grapevine and not in the valley.

Happy Pluto Fly By Day!

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A NASA photo of Pluto received today.

Our Photos, Did You Notice?

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Did You?

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Michelangelo’s David is NOT in Corfu!

Some of the shots in Istanbul were out of order. The Blue Mosque appears in two sequences, though we only visited once. That’s not egregious. Worse I had neglicted to remove photos from the root directory, Europe2015, when the subdirectories were created. That too is not egregious. However, there were a significant number of photos attributed to Corfu which clearly should be placed in Florence.

I have also included hi-res images and links to them from the thumbnails. The hi-res images can be downloaded.

All is right with the world now, or at least all is right with one vastly small part.

Ron

Getting Specific #2, Venice

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Our apartment in Venice:

http://www.homeaway.com/vacation-rental/p6356759 We met both Nina and Tony briefly, they are wonderful people.

I asked Tony to recommend local restaurants that he would frequent. We had time to sample only one of those he mentioned: Ai Gondoleri just a few blocks away. It is more pricey than your typical pizza trattoria, but it was worth it. The risotto for two is a huge amount of risotto. It is quite good, but becomes monotonous about half way through. The zucchini flowers are good and the potato mousse is great. Their wine selection is amazing, we opted for wine by the glass which is a limited selection, but very very good. I’ve probably stated this earlier: the Tuscan wines are the equal of Napa and Sonoma wines.

out favorite restaurant in Venice:

http://www.aigondolieri.it/

We sampled a very limited number of restaurants, I am sure you can find your own favorite as well.

Ron