California - Day 18 - SFO and redwoods

Cotillion Gardens RV Park, Felton

Friday, 18 March 2022

today's route

a closer view of the route through the Bay area

The first hour or so of driving today took me through agricultural areas, which you may not have realized existed so close to such a large metropolitan area as the San Francisco Bay area.  I passed farms for cherries and strawberries and garlic.  I saw a large flock of sheep feeding in a very overgrown grassy field and wondered if the sheep owner rented out his crew to trim people's lawns.

I heard 2 Asian language radio stations, which told me that there must be an enormous population of speakers of Asian languages (sorry but I didn't recognize which languages were spoken) if they could support 2 stations.

I skirted the edge of San Jose, which with 1.01 million residents is now the largest city in northern CA.  San Francisco, by comparison, has a mere 874,000.  I understand that San Jose is the hub of Silicon Valley, which was nice to know because I'd already figured that Silicon Valley wasn't an actual valley I'd find on a map.

I passed something called the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and I had to look that up.  I'm not sure I still understand it, but I can report that it was originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and that this accelerator can speed up electrons.  At that point, it all looked so technical I got lost.  But I know the name has changed for various odd reasons, and the mission has changed for ditto, and you might want to take a look at the Wikipedia page for more information.   https://en.wikipedia.org/SLAC-National-Accelerator-Lab

I passed Menlo Park, famous for being the site of Thomas Edison's research; there's a museum there now.

Despite these signs of human habitation, I was still passing a lot of rural scenery, with green hills and trees and watch-for-deer signs.

Then I was coming into the city, trying hard to follow Google's directions when I was simultaneously dealing with traffic and a lack of street signs and seeing that the names on the ones I could find weren't always what Google said they'd be.  In other words, I got lost.  I turned on John Daly Blvd. because I was desperate to get off CA-1 so I could look at my computer, and stopped at a Target for regrouping.

I walked the dogs briefly and tackled the streets again.  Only once more to run up against the sign problem, so this time I pulled onto a side road serving some houses and once again pulled out my laptop and my hotspot.  I know those of you with smart phones (i.e. everybody) won't understand why I'm willing to put up with such a clunky system, but the main reason can be expressed in the size of my phone bill - or the relative lack of size compared to what other folks tell me about theirs.  Anyway, I'm willing to put up with some inconvenience for what I see as a small price.

This second time I wasn't able to figure out where I'd been going wrong, but it didn't matter because I'd blundered close enough that I knew this 3rd time would be the charm.  And it was.

I got to Gail's at 10:30 almost exactly, which was when I'd estimated I'd be there - showing my estimates now build in fairly accurately a chance I'll get lost.  I met Gail while she was out walking around the neighborhood with friends, and she was kind enough to go with me for another walk for the dogs' benefit.

She lives in an area called Ingleside Terraces, which consists of homes she said had mostly been built before and after WWI.  One of the unusual features of the neighborhood was a sundial not far from her house.

It's not every neighborhood that has its own sundial.
And it obviously works.

Gail said the area used to be a racetrack, but the roads there now are so winding and convoluted I'd think setting a residential speed limit would be redundant.

She took us (me and the dogs) to her back yard, which was so gorgeous the dogs didn't know what to do.  I still can't believe I didn't take a photo of it and told Gail she should send a photo to Better Homes and Gardens to illustrate gardening on a hillside.  It's a blooming sight, a hill rising steeply from behind their house, full of beautiful flowers.  Really, the dogs weren't used to climbing steps, which they'd have to do, and weren't used to so many flowers, not just the bushes and things in a campground.  I thought they looked uncomfortable so decided to take them back to the RV and give them and Lily lunch.

Gail told me she and her husband David had been lucky enough to buy their house at a time when schoolteachers (which they both were) could still afford to buy in San Francisco.  They raised both their daughters there and seem to be very comfortable.  Gail fixed us lunch and I got to meet their younger daughter Elizabeth, which was nice.  You might think age 72 is a little old to be meeting a cousin for the first time, but I'm glad to have had the chance to meet at all.  It's not like San Francisco is on my way to much of anywhere I've been in a while.

Gail had warned me that Elizabeth had just this week tested positive for the virus.  She's been careful to wear a mask in the house, not only because it's the right thing to do but also because David's health has been a little precarious.  I was plenty comfortable with wearing a mask inside myself - in fact, we all did - and I guess Elizabeth's symptoms had been mild.  But with these evolving strains of the virus getting more and more communicable, I worried a bit.  Though not enough to cancel the visit.

I got to look at photos both of the girls and their families and also of our New England relatives.  Gail had some I hadn't seen and I was sorry my momma couldn't have seen them.  And that she hadn't been able to meet Elizabeth and her sister Elaine.

We had a nice, too-brief visit and I got back on the road, acutely aware that I was driving in Friday afternoon traffic heading out of a major metropolitan area.

This time I managed to make it out of town without problems and eventually headed south from Los Gatos on CA-17.  What I didn't know was that this highway, though picturesque and not a driving problem for an ordinary passenger vehicle, wasn't really suited for an RV.  It was downhill, winding, very narrow lanes, with lots of traffic and I had the sun in my eyes.  There was also a lot of construction so I had trouble figuring out just where my lane was, to the irritation of other drivers.  That was an 18-mile drive I wouldn't want to do again.  Except I had to do it again to get back north.  So I hoped it'd be easier going in a different direction.

Tonight's campground was where Google said it'd be, but that didn't make it easy to find because of - yet again- a dearth of helpful signs to tell me if I was really going the right way.  From the town of Felton, I was again heading downhill on a narrow winding road, this time with large trees growing right at the edge of the road.  And when I turned off the main road, I found myself on an even steeper and even narrower downhill road, going down and down into what turned out to be a large grove of redwoods.

In fact, this campground is immediately next to the Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park.  That meant nothing to me but is apparently well known in this state as being a wonderful area of huge old redwood trees.  And this campground was benefitting from that atmosphere.