Hello, readers!

Hello, readers!

I am not currently on the road. Please check back periodically later this year as I have no idea when I'll be traveling! August? September? October? Who knows!

Cheers,
Kelly

Saturday, August 30, 2014

The never-ending cruise

8/23 – 8/24:

This morning I packed up camp pretty quickly and headed north along Hwy 1 to Pescadero State Beach, where I was supposed to meet the VMFers for the Mustang Cruise at 11AM. The weather was initially pretty foggy and meh, but it cleared up as soon as I got there which was awesome. 

Really nice beach!
And an even nicer car!
Spent a couple of minutes cleaning Jane up before the first car arrived! It was a gorgeous custom red '66 convertible, driven by Rich and his wife Amy (Aimee?). We chatted while waiting for the others to arrive (they had gotten stuck behind a bottomed-out crane that blocked traffic for a long time). Eventually the whole cruise crew was there – in addition to Rich and Amy, I was joined by Jeff (burgundy '67 fastback and organizer of the cruise), Armon (riding along as his car is in pieces), Brandon (white '68 coupe), Mike and Joanne (dark blue '67 fastback), Craig and his wife ('68 Bullitt replica), and Dan (black convertible). Quite a crowd for me to meet!

Unfortunately I don't have the full group shot for some reason, but I borrowed Rich's shot for the blog:

After the requisite chatting about cars and my trip so far, we headed off to lunch. It was seriously cool to have so many Mustangs cruising together. Last time I saw that many in one place was the Charlotte 50th Anniversary celebration – ever since then it's just been the odd classic here or there. Couldn't believe that Jeff found so many people to come cruise (and that they actually wanted to meet me! How odd! Haha).

Lunch was extraordinarily filling (cream of avocado soup, green chili soup, french dip sandwich, and ollalaberry pie, whatever that is) so I was glad that we walked around town a bit afterwards to stave off post-lunchtime nap attacks (which I am very much prone to being victim to). Then various people led the cruise around the area, hitting some excellent twisty roads, a winery, and eventually Saratoga. I wish I could have taken more pictures of the cruise itself as I was bringing up the rear, but it's rather hard to drive and take pictures at the same time so I didn't risk it. Last thing I needed was to go plowing into someone or skating off the road while trying to make an event “Facebook official” or whatever.

A kind of meh shot of some really excellent cars!
The group (minus 2) at the winery!


By then it was late afternoon and the other cruisers had split off, leaving Jeff, Armon, and myself. But we decided we weren't done yet... so we jumped on another local Saturday night cruise! Let me just say that the car culture in California (at least this region) is amazing. Alive and thriving, definitely! Never have I gotten to hang out with so many car people in one day, aside from the 50th Anniversary Celebration. It was a blast! No pictures from that as it was getting dark, but I'm sure you all know that I had far too much fun. We finished up the cruise with a California classic, In-N-Out.

At this point it was much later than I had thought we would end up finishing. Rich and his wife had offered me hospitality in Mountain View but after seeing how late it was I ended up staying down in San Jose with Armon and his folks to avoid inconveniencing them (thank you SO much for the offer though, if you're reading this!!!). And then, of course, because I no longer had a curfew... it turned into one of those nights that never ends. You know, the ones where the weather is perfect and the city is alive and the car is rumbling a sweet little tune and you are completely and totally incapable of tearing yourself away from it. Driving solo in the back country of America, those nights are few and far between – there's always a campsite to set up, or a risk of hitting deer, or a sense of imminent danger from a weird place you're near. Or you just don't want to cruise because you're alone. But it was a Saturday night in the city and I had a friend to show me around, so I fully took the opportunity as it presented itself and kept on cruising. 

And so it was that at 3:20AM there was a 6.0 earthquake (the biggest California's seen since the 80's), and I didn't even know. Why? Well, because apparently the shaking and rumbling of a vintage pony car far surpasses the mere shaking and quaking of the earth itself. I've yet to decide if that's a good thing or not, but it was certainly entertaining to arrive at Armon's place to be greeted with the news of an earthquake that we hadn't even noticed. I was actually pretty bummed out that I didn't get to “experience” it! One of the California classics and I missed it because I was out cruising in my sweet old car. You win some, you lose some I guess.

I headed to bed and woke up bright and early a few hours later to get Jane ready for the next leg of our trip. She needed a bit of a heater core investigation / repair after some high-RPM shenanigans the night before had caused her to pee on Armon's shoes. The amount of coolant that she lost indicated that there wasn't a leak in the heater core itself (that would have caused gallons of 200-degree water to go everywhere inside the car), so we took apart the whole heater box to see what the problem was. Apparently I had just built up enough pressure in the system that coolant pushed past a loose hose clamp attaching the heater hose to the heater core, and then that leaked down through the box. Easy fix though a bit of a pain to get to the whole thing. A little blood, sweat, and probably some tears and it was all patched up.

Armon also noticed that the rear of the passenger valve cover was leaking oil onto the headers... and thus was the source of my excessive oil consumption discovered. Funny the things that I am too blind to see. Very glad to have an extra pair of eyes around to point them out though!! So that was fixed as well just by cranking down the valve covers a little tighter. I later found out that sealing up the valve cover gasket now causes oil to come out of the dipstick tube at high RPMs, but hey, at least that's more entertaining. I imagine that when I'm driving on the highway there's a mini geyser – or perhaps a small lawn sprinkler-type spray – coming out of the tube and spraying about the immediate vicinity. Seems... marginally unsafe, but hey, it's not something I can fix so I might as well be amused instead.

Anyways, with the minor repairs completed I loaded Jane back up, had a delicious Persian lunch courtesy of Armon's folks (thank you!!!), and headed on my way. I am once again totally amazed at the hospitality that I've seen on this trip. I've met some truly great people and it is so great to get offers of places to stay when I'm on the road. I had a really, really awesome time in San Jose and it changed my views about what a Californian city is like (before I was definitely very dubious about the prospect of putting my vintage car anywhere near a city in California, having had many experiences with insane Californian drivers). It was so cool to be a part of the local car culture for a day and there was a ton of stuff to do. I'll definitely have to come back sometime! But it was time for me to head on - east this time, amazingly enough.


Evening saw me pulling into my campsite at Hodgdon Meadow at Yosemite National Park. Once again I was back to my solo nomad lifestyle, which was a little sad to be honest after all of the people I got to hang out with in the city. But a nice book and a comfortable sleeping bag fixed me right up and I was soon ready to tackle my next adventure – exploring Yosemite! Kelly signing out.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

A bridge over the sea and the inhabitants beneath

8/22:

I woke up this morning to the braying of a donkey as a car alarm went off. And of course once the donkeys were braying, the goats had to bleat and the horses had to neigh and children had to scream. I quickly decided that the campground was just a little too rowdy for me and packed up my stuff to book it down to San Francisco. But first I had to find a campground for the next two nights, because somehow I forgot to book any. Oops. Found one for tonight – Saddle Mountain – but had no luck finding one for the next night. Guess I'll figure that one out when I get to it!

Anyways, I hopped on the freeway and headed south to the Golden Gate. I had expected some kind of visitor center or welcome or pulloff or something on the northern side, but apparently there isn't one (or I missed it if there was) because I very suddenly found myself crossing the USA's most famous bridge! It was fairly uneventful and kind of unexciting, to be honest. A bridge is a bridge, I guess.

Cloudy as usual
Nice reflection though on my nice clean car!
On the other side I parked in the touristy madness and walked around for a bit. I wanted to find my souvenirs for the bridge – because I had indeed crossed it, whether or not it was exciting – but unfortunately had no luck at all. Really disappointed about that as our family has a tradition of getting a Christmas ornament at every destination we travel to, and I have been keeping up with that and getting an ornament at every major place that I stop. San Francisco is the first place for which I've failed to acquire an ornament (so if anyone has a spare laying around and wants to send it to me, I will gladly pay for it!). There were a couple of souvenir shops downtown on the east side, but I avoided that entire area of madness entirely and no amount of ornaments could have made me go down there. It was an absolute zoo! I cruised around the western side of the city though, stopping at their version of NYC's City Park. Eventually I got really tired of the traffic (mostly the people causing it, and their assumption of your car's braking ability, and their apparent need to be somewhere 3 seconds faster if at all possible) and booked it out of the city. I was definitely very glad to have my cargo net there though as there were a lot of times when I had to brake hard and all of my stuff was held down pretty well instead of flying about the interior destructively.

Very nice view
Alcatraz off in the distance.
Inconvenienced a bunch of tourists to get this pretty terrible picture! Ha
Jane ate a dragonfly for lunch.
From San Francisco I took Hwy 280 down to Monterey to see the aquarium. That was much more my speed – Monterey is a beautiful town and there's a lot of cool stuff to see and do there. Unfortunately I didn't have a lot of time to explore as I wanted to spend most of my time at their famous aquarium, which I last visited a little more than a decade ago as a child. It was just as awesome as I remembered it being, though the entrance price was quite a bit higher than I recalled (ha). I took a zillion pictures of the coolest things I saw – especially the jellyfish and cuttlefish – which of course I will share with you all. I apologize for the overwhelming amount of pictures but marine life is really my thing! So here they are:

Very cool entrance to the Open Sea exhibit.

A buncha seals looking fat out in the bay

Upside-down jellyfish! Saw these when snorkeling in Belize once.
They had all different kinds of colors of jellyfish, very cool
Reef squid chilling out
Nautili!! Never seen these in person before and they are so interesting! I wanted to see one really swim but no luck unfortunately.
Cuttlefish - one of my favorite animals!
Defensive pose

Giant kelp forest exhibit
This shrimp was cleaning the eel
What sand dollars actually look like when they're alive!
This fish was living in a shoe hahaha
Otter naptime
Awesome sunfish!
After I had wandered around the whole aquarium a few times, I left to go to Carmel Valley, where my campsite was for the night. A VMFer friend Jeff had recommended this place Baja Cantina to me for dinner, so I did that instead of resupplying my cooler. It was a super cool Mexican-American restaurant just chock full of vintage auto memorabilia – signs, posters, ads, business cards, plates, you name it it was in there! Lots of brands I had never even heard of, which I of course looked up on my phone while I ate. Great food and I'd highly recommend it to any vintage car enthusiast in Carmel Valley looking for a place to eat.


Tomorrow will be an extra special day, as Jeff has arranged a Mustang cruise for Jane and I to join! Super excited to meet some more VMFers in person and get to hang out with car people for the day. I cleaned Jane up a bit more to make sure we wouldn't be embarrassed in the presence of cars that would undoubtedly be clean and show-ready. But she's going to be a little dirty because hey, we're on a trip across America and I spend a lot of time on dirt roads. Oh well! Can't wait anyways. Kelly signing out.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Drive-thru tourism

8/21:

I've gotten worse and worse at breaking down camp the longer this trip goes on, it seems. Now part of that is because I really like to make bacon in the morning and it has to be extra crispy... and the other part is that in the morning people gather to talk to me, and the longer I'm on this trip, the longer my story becomes. So, this morning I succeeded in leaving by 10AM, which was absolutely absurd considering that I woke up at 7. But I did spend a good hour and a half talking to various people about Jane.

Anyways, the first destination of the day was the Drive Thru Tree of Leggett, CA! At this place you pay 5 bucks and get to take your car THROUGH a redwood tree. Now, a lot of Americans favor a kind of tourism I call "drive-by tourism" - you know, where you drive around and take pictures out the window, or get out and walk less than 15 feet to take a marginally better picture. But this tree takes that to a whole new level and escalates it to drive-THRU tourism. And what more American thing is there to do than to turn a tree into a drive-thru? Ha!

As I reached the front of the line though something became readily apparent to me: while you could drive through the tree, it would be 100% impossible to get out of the car while inside the tree so you could take a picture of it. Fortunately, the person in front of me in line agreed to take my picture for me and Jane and I scooted right in. Few inches to spare on either side (definitely more for me than for the SUVs that followed) and it was a lot of fun!




After that minor diversion we headed west (ha! bet you thought I was done going west!) along Highway 1 to Fort Bragg. And MAN was that a great but exhausting drive! I knew I was in for a treat (or potentially trouble) when I passed a sign that said "Tight Curves Next 22 Miles". And it wasn't lying. I used the opportunity to hone my corner-carving skills and by the time I had gotten about 15 miles in, I could keep up and even occasionally surpass the locals who clearly knew the road. I'm not saying I was flying around recklessly whipping around blind corners, but I kept up a pretty good clip! Once again I was super impressed with Jane. And never have I loved that rack and pinion steering I put in more than I did today. Regardless, even with the good steering my arms were pretty sore as I pulled into Fort Bragg!

I stopped at MacKerricher State Park to eat some lunch, as I keep forgetting to eat while driving. They had some neat tide pools to explore and a point to observe harbor seals and sea lions on. Nice little place to hang out for a bit! Best of all, there was no armwork required.

Drove next to this fog bank for a while which was very eerie
New favorite lunchtime habit is taking pictures of people taking pictures of my car
Tons of hermit crabs in a tide pool!
The lovely rocky coast with tons of tide pools to explore.
A bunch of harbor seals looking pretty dead (but they totally weren't)
From Fort Bragg I headed back across to Highway 101 via some road that was just as twisty as Highway 1 had been coming in. Tons of fun to drive but it was a bit of a relief to get back on the freeway where I could just drive straight for a while. When I hit evening work traffic I pulled off the highway and sought out a self-service car wash, which was an adventure in itself. I had 6 minutes to wash 4,000+ miles of grime off of Jane. Surprisingly, it went fairly well, but I'm sure it must have been hilarious to watch me running around the car scrubbing vigorously and cursing every time that the hose hooked on the radio antenna. The result was a much cleaner car with brush marks everywhere from places where I had missed the dirt - some parts were totally clean, but most were only halfway clean or not clean at all. Didn't get a chance to clean the wheels either. But for a 6 minute wash she came out looking a TON better (which goes to show you how disgusting she was when she went in).

I made it to Petaluma where I stopped for the night at a crazy KOA that had a petting zoo, rock climbing wall, gem mining sluice, and bounce pillow, among other things. Felt like I was putting my tent up in an amusement park by accident! They played the Land Before Time (the first movie) after dark though so that was pretty cool. I finished cleaning Jane up with my Chadwick's product while dinner was cooking and for the first time in forever she was totally clean and back to being show-shiny.

Tomorrow I'm headed to San Francisco! It'll be an experience for sure, and hopefully a good one. Kelly signing out.

Saturday, August 23, 2014

A Drive for Giants

8/20:

Today I did something totally unprecedented... instead of heading west I headed south!  Of course,  this was only because I had run out of land to my west. Nevvertheless,  south was the name of the game.

I left Bandon sometime mid-morning and headed down Hwy 101 - the coastline highway!  After some winding around I reached Port Orford,  which is apparently the most west that you can go in the continental US (according to a local). The view there was absolutely incredible:

Finally, a good shot of Jane and the Pacific!

It was at this point that I realized that Jane is painted exactly the color of the Pacific on a sunny day - all shimmering blues and grens and purples.  Of course, right now she doesn't shine as brightly as the sea because of the thick layer of thousands of miles of grime,  but the sentiment remains.  I vowed to clean her up sometime soon so that I could do a better color comparison, but I'm positive that that's exactly it. Sunny Pacific Blue.

I continued on south until I hit Crescent City,  where I stopped to have Jane's oil changed.  I hate having other people do it - especially when I bring my own oil and everything anyways - but I have no oil pan or place to work so I had no choice.  The guys I picked to do it were very careful with her though and soon enough I was back on my way!

Another boring state sign. Boo.
 Next stop was the famous redwoods of California.  They're spread out all over the state but I made sure to go through Redwoods National/State Park,  the site of Big Tree. Unsurprisingly,  the tree is rather big. One might even say that that's a bit of an understatement.

Either the tree is large or I temporarily shrank quite a lot.

One of my favorite pictures of Jane in the redwoods

I wound my way even further south and soon found myself on the Avenue of the Giants,  a delightfully twisty scenic drive through the great redwood forests.  The majority of the drive is spent almost in twilight as the trees are so huge that they block out the sun. I stopped a few places to wander around under the giants,  but mostly I just drove. I think it's one of the best drives - if not the best - that I've done on this trip. Nothing but the beauty of the forest and the roar of a muscle car as you whip around turns, over crests, and down dips. The only limitation to my speed was my driving skill, and for once there weren't a ton of people on the road with me. Just me and Jane and the giants. It was wonderful. I actually enjoyed the drive so much that I went past my campsite and then doubled back when it started to get late in the evening.

I actually really like how this picture came out!

Giant redwood tree with pony car for scale
When I set up camp for the night, two bikers from the site next to me came over and we talked cars and road trips for a long time. Super nice guys - Steve and Glenn - and it was great to have someone to talk to after a day of nothing but driving. We spent a while going over all of Jane's modifications, then moved on to where the road has taken me and where it will take me in the future. And that made me realize that oops, I hadn't reserved a single campsite for the rest of my trip. So I'll do that in the morning so I at least don't have to worry about the next couple of days.

Tomorrow I head on further south (it's replaced "west" as my new favorite word for now) through even more redwoods. Can't wait for another beautiful day of driving! So far California is alright by me, despite my original trepidations. Kelly signing out.

Friday, August 22, 2014

Dreams of the dazzling blue Pacific

8/18:

Today was the day! I was going to finally make it to my destination: the Pacific! 

As always, Jane and I headed west. But first we looped back through Crater Lake one more time because the day was clearer:

Positioning the car in the sun this way obscures the amount of dirt currently clinging to her.

As we headed west the scrubby plains eventually gave way to Oregon's famed forests. There aren't many forests like them back east - here, the forests are ancient and the trees are massive. Gazing upon them reminds you of your humanity and of how small you are in this great big world. Roaring through them in a very small, angry little pony car is even more humbling - especially when you get out to snap a picture, I found. Back home, if a tree falls on your car it's inconvenient and probably totaled but you're probably okay. Here, if a tree fell on your car, there would be nothing left of you to feel inconvenienced! Couldn't help thinking about that as I drove underneath the towering trunks and arching branches. Nothing like a little morbidity to accompany your pleasant drive through the forest!

Cruising through Umpqua National Forest
Tiny.
We pressed on, succeeding in not getting smashed by any wayward trees. The further west we got the more twisty the roads got. Tons of fun to haul through trying to keep up with the locals. Without the rear sway bar Jane doesn't handle quite so well, but she is still very solid and it is no problem at all to go flying through the turns.

My favorite moment of the drive was at some random overpass,  where I suddenly thought about the fact that Jane's horn hadn't gone off arbitrarily since April (sometimes it just goes off for no apparent reason,  usually when inconvenient or embarassing).  Not more than a minute later.... BEEEEEEPPPPPPP.  Yep,  there goes the horn.  I think sometimes Jane just likes to remind me that she's the one in charge. Fortunately pressing the horn button turned it off... this time. 

Eventually we made it to Bandon, Oregon, my first stop on the Pacific. I had booked the Bandon Beach Motel, which is right on the top of a cliff overlooking the ocean. And here's my first view of the majesty of the Pacific!

It's there somewhere... I swear


Yep, my dazzling blue Pacific dreams had to give way to realism: the Pacific generates fog and mist like Jane generates piles of broken parts.  So I hung out for a while and waited for the fog to recede.   When it did I was rewarded with an awe-inspiring sight: the famous seastacks of the Pacific.

Tons of birds chilling on this rock




 I went for a nice walk on the beach and saw some cool stuff!  The beaches in oregon seem more wild than those I'm used to - instead of being clean and pristine they are left to their own devices which means lots of interesting stuff gets washed up onshore and left.



A giant redwood stump!  Dates on it carved back as far as 1909
Part of a fish jaw
Well,  I walked on the beach for so long that I forgot to get dinner.  Fortunately there was a pizza place open late so I had a delicious calzone.  My plan was to hang out in Bandon for another day to relax - a kind of reward for Jane and I for reaching the other side of the country. I feel like we deserved it!

------------------------------------

8/19:

It was very odd to wake up and not have to pack up and leave today!  So I confess: I laid in bed and read a book until noon just because I could. And it was foggy out anyways.

After lunch the sun came out so I had no more excuse to be lazy so I headed back out to the beach. Much nicer view this time!
Wooo creepy
Some anemones I found in a tide pool



Later in the afternoon I decided that a sunset horseback ride would be wonderful.  I rode horses competitively for 10 years or so and still really enjoy riding when I get the chance. Of course, as soon as sunset rolled around,  so did the fog.  Still had a great time though regardless of the weather.



I wound up back at the pizza place for dinner (not by choice this time,  but because it was the only place left open after my ride)  and concluded my day with more book-reading.  It was really nice to relax for a day but truth be told,  I've been on the road for so long now that I'm used to moving and I was ready to be back at it.  Plus,  Jane was growing a veritable coat of salt sitting on that cliff,  which I was viewing with more and more alarm each passing hour.  Rust is the bane of all classic cars and I'm sure it did quite a bit of growing while I was there in the mists.

Anyways,  the next post will be from a different direction than usual... south!  Amazing!  Kelly signing out.