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.