Six Days in Calistoga, CA

31Oct2014

Happy Halloween!!

It’s been a great week in Calistoga and the weather has been in the high 70s and low 80s.  The rain arrived today but we’re good with that.  Tomorrow we will be pulling out to head further south to Chowchilla, CA for just a couple of days.  Our aim is to only do two, 2-day stay-overs a couple of times in a row, then find a place to spend a week.  We did three of these two-day stints to start out and it can get pretty exhausting.

I  was a bit doubtful of Calistoga when we got here. Eating out here is pretty expensive.  However, we found that there are 3-4 restaurants that have really good happy hour deals.  So instead of eating out, we snacked out!  It’s worked our pretty good since our favorite place so far has been Bosko’s Trattoria.  Napa wines can be extraordinarily good but also extraordinarily expensive.  During Bosko’s happy hour from 4:30 – 6:30 pm you can get any of their select wines for $6 per glass.  The average prices during non-happy hour are between $10 and $18 per glass.  Plus they have some pretty good appetizers for reasonable prices. (Boskos)

Huge petrified Sequoia - See the tree growing out of it?

We did some of the "touristy" things in the area.  I found the petrified redwood forest particularly fascinating!  (http://petrifiedforest.org/)





This was actually the tallest petrified tree

Side view of tree growing out of petrified wood

We  also visited the local geyser.  Those of you have seen the geyser in Yellowstone would probably have laughed.  It sprays about 60 feet in the air about every 30 minutes.  I found it entertaining because it would bubble and burp every few minutes to keep you on your toes for the real eruption that lasted about 3-4 minutes.  I feel it was worth the money spent.   (http://oldfaithfulgeyser.com/ )




For those of you who've seen the movie "Bottle Shock" (which we own and watch at least every other month), below is a picture of  where the movie was filmed.  It's based on a true story, although we found from the person serving tastes that it was embellished a bit.  It's much more beautiful in person than it was on the movie.


Chateau Montelena

We had our real first challenge getting our mail shipped to somewhere close to us. The place we are staying in Calistoga is actually part of the Napa County Fairgrounds and the manning of the office is very sporadic (i.e. weren’t sure if we would actually get our mail here), so we felt we should find a UPS store. 

 

On Monday we realized that we should stock up on some groceries and needed to look for a UPS store (see previous blog).  Calistoga only has a small boutique grocery store that’s pretty expensive. So, we used Garmin to find the closest Safeway which is in Santa Rosa about 10 miles away.  While at Safeway, we noted a UPS store in the shopping center.  Great, we thought, we’ll just get our mail sent there.  When we got back to the motor home, we got on the internet to find the address for the UPS store.  We made a note and Mike call the Bend UPS store where we are receiving our mail and gave them the address we found for Santa Rosa.  We were told that our mail would arrive Wednesday afternoon.  According to the timing we went back to Santa Rosa and followed the directions to the UPS store.  Alas, no mail.  I used Garmin to double check the UPS store address in Santa Rosa and alas!  There were three locations!  Hmm what to do now.  We called the UPS store in Bend and asked them for the address where the mail was supposed to go.  The young lady replied, “it was the address you gave to us”.  I tried to suppress my angst and asked her to confirm the address she had on file since we found there are actually 3 locations in Santa Rosa.  As she verified it, we realized it was not the one next to the Safeway we had gone to.  Here’s where I have to say again, “Thank you for the Garmin!!”  We found the UPS store where the mail had gone and it was there.  Whew and yea!!  Success!!

We also had our first test to see how our set up with Wal-Mart for prescriptions would work.  We went to the nearest store in Santa Rosa (again).  Mike went to the counter and spoke to the person there.  They were able to find him in their system and said they could certainly have his prescription filled and it would be ready by Friday.  (They were true to their word.)  However, while we were in the store, we looked at Garmin for vehicles and found a reasonably priced one.  We’ve been so happy with the RV one that we "just had to" get one for the Jeep (where we don’t have to take the safe routes that the RV Garmin provides us). 

So tomorrow we’ll be on our way further south.  We’ll keep you posted on our progress.

Katherine and Mike Rossman

P.S.  I appreciate any input from you on whether the blog is getting too wordy or boring.  After all, I want to keep you interested and entertained!!

Surviving the Coastal Winds

Wow!  We've had quite a ride (literally) the last few days. 

After we left Florence last Wednesday, we wound our way down to Crescent City and ran into some pretty serious winds!  The Hiouchi RV resort was okay.  Gravel pull-throughs with grassy areas between for Bear to roll in (he love his grass fix).  We stayed there a couple of nights.  Our first portion of our trip is to make headway south in search of warmer weather!

Friday, we headed down to the Redwoods to stay at the Giant Redwoods RV and Camp.  It rained torrential downpours the whole time we were there.  At times during the late afternoon and early evening you could hear high winds approaching through the trees, then there would be a sudden push of the motor home.  It was a bit nerve racking watching limbs, leaves and pine needles blowing sideways.

Saturday, when we woke up and the power was out so we decided to drive through the redwoods.  There were a lot of downed branches and we were warned by the camp host to be careful if we decided to hike, noting that we could get "conked" on the head by a dropping limb.  We chose not to hike anyway because the rains were so heavy (I know... I'm a whimp!).  The drive was certainly worth it because the views were awesome!!

We also took a drive up to Eureka and found a brewery there!!  You'll all be happy to know that we tested their brews against Bend's.  A pretty tough standard! It was called Lost Coast Brewery http://www.lostcoast.com/main.php.  I had their "Great White" beer and Mike had their IPA.  Gotta say, they weren't Bend beer and were a little more on the mellow side.


When we woke up on Sunday we still had no electricity, so we called Calistoga RV Park to see if we could get in a day early.  They said yes, so we headed down.  The Garmin way suggested to get to Calistoga after exiting highway 101 is though the hills on Hwy 128.  We questioned Garmin's abilities because it was really tight curves and my time of driving.  We made it unscathed but I needed a large glass of wine that evening to calm down.

If it weren't for the convenient walking distance to town, I probably wouldn't recommend this RV park.  It's basically a large parking lot with gravel pad sites and we are pretty close to our neighbors.  The first night we were here there was a large RV group meeting in the campground.  We started to question our stay at that time, but they all pulled out the next day.  Now there are quite a few less RVs in the park and the nights are really quiet.

Calistoga is noted as "Spa Town USA" and it's no joke.  I really want to get a massage, but it's going to take some shopping around because Lincoln Avenue Spa, the only one investigated so far, costs$180 for a 50 minute deep tissue spa... yikes!

Yesterday we drove to Santa Rosa to locate a UPS store where we will have our mail delivered on Wednesday.  This is when we found out that Garmin must be right.  The steepest incline we covered in about 8 miles to get there was 16% up/down grade.  On the way back to Calistoga, I used my IPhone to track the altitude gain.  Both Calistoga and Santa Rosa were right around 380 feet above sea level.  The highest altitude over the hills was over 1,000 feet.  That's a lot of climb and down hill.  Whew!  I could almost watch the gas gage drop as we climbed.

Now we are in for relaxing for a few days, and I'm looking forward to more!!

I have to keep reminding myself  that this is an adventure so you take what you get and always have a positive attitude.  That's what makes this so fun!!

Hoping all my friends at Bend Research continue to prosper.  I look forward to hearing from you.

So the Journey Begins

23Oct2014

So the journey begins.  We spent our first two days in Florence.  The trip from Bend was relatively uneventful except that I had my first emergency slow down experience.  We headed out in the morning BS the shadows along the Willamette Pass were long and dark.  As pilot at the time, I was focusing strictly on the traffic and staying in my lane.  Mike, as co-pilot is supposed to watch for any hazards.  At one point he began saying “deer” (not as in the affectionate “dear”.)  The louder he said it the more I tried to focus on where they might be.  Regardless, I began t slow down.  When I finally saw the female herd of about 6-7, they were still trying to figure out whether to cross the road or not.  My mind had resigned that if I had to hit one that would just be the way it was.  I actually was able to slow down enough to NOT hit any of the deer, but it was pretty close. I was thoroughly on alert from there on out. 

The Florence RV park, Pacific Pines was a full service RV park but strictly on concrete.  Not much fun for Bear who loves to roll in the grass.   We had a good time at the casino there.  I used 4-$1 dollar bills in the penny slot machines and came out with $6 so I considered it quite a success.

We had some time for Bear at the beach the beginning of the second day but the clouds moved in and it began to drizzle.  It was a good challenge getting hooked up on Wednesday morning in the pouring rain.  Always something new to learn.   Mike started as pilot and by the time we were on the road the rain had really set in.  Little did I know how lucky HE was because by the time it was my turn to drive, gusting winds had set in.  If you’ve never driven a 39-foot motor home with a dingy on the back, let me tell you from personal experience that it was a knuckle-buster… two hours of knuckle-busting...hang on to your hat tension.  I was really happy to get off the main highway.

We finally got to our next destination in Crescent City.  Hiouchi RV resort is about 7 miles off the main highway of 101.  Oh, and by the way, I would like to thank all of you who contributed to the RV Garmin.  We should have listed to its directions rather than the printed map we had.  It was a short-cut, you see, what we had on that paper map.  And now we know why.  There were some testy curves on the road we took and in between some really gorgeous, Redwood  trees growing VERY close to the road.  We made it to the RV park unscathed.  However, next time, we’ll take Garmin’s route even though it might be a little longer!!

Tomorrow will be a new adventure as we head to a park within the redwoods for a 3 day stay.  We were told to be sure to bring our own food since the nearest town is quite a ways away.  So we’ll see what tomorrow brings. 

Until later, best wishes to all my friends at Bend Research.