Go ArnoldsThis week we went to Morro Bay State Park. We saw all kinds of sea birds, like cormorants, pelicans, loons and my favorite grebes. There was a helpful volunteer at the park and helped us identify the birds. After that, we went to see the sea otters. They were so cute! We also saw sea lions.
Although we camped in Santa Rosa all week (it was cheaper), we made several trips to San Francisco. I had been to San Francisco a few times before on business, but this was the first time I really got to see the city. Or even the Golden Gate Bridge for that matter:
We had some time to kill on Monday before trick-or-treating, so we stopped at Lucas Film:
There wasn’t really anything to do there, but they had a nice lobby with all kinds of Star Wars artifacts, and their campus was a nice park open to the public.
But enough Star Wars; we came for some candy. Here are my girls in their Halloween get-ups: Emily, left, is Sackboy from the Little Big Planet PS3 game, Natalie is a little devil (and dressed like one too!), and Carrie is a diva (and dressed like one too!):
We found a neighborhood that was…nice: (Seacliff)
Whole candy bars, folks. We got WHOLE CANDY BARS.
This walled compound is the abode of Robin Williams (or at least it was at one point, according to multiple internet sources). At the front gate they were handing out glow sticks. Boo.
Heading home after the candy bags were full:
Natalie and Emily reviewing their bounty back at the RV:
On Tuesday we went back to San Francisco. Amy and the girls hit some museums while I did my work in a downtown coffee shop (I felt quite cool):
Thursday was my birthday, so I took the afternoon off for some wine tasting at a nearby winery in Sonoma County:
Freddie here served us up some spectacular wines. We left with a bottle of our favorite.
We went down the road to another winery that actually gave tours — I wanted to see how they make this stuff. We learned how the sunlight, the hills, the soil depths, — all that stuff contributes to the different tasting grapes and wines.
Amy and me on the tour: (Amy looks lovely; I look like the Unibomber.)
Natalie was a bit nervous at first, but we all enjoyed a few wine grapes right off the vine:
A large vat of fermenting grapes. Wow it smelled good:
Not sure what this guy was doing, but that steam was putting more good smells in the air:
Inside the storage cave:
…and more wine tasting at the end!
Mid-week, our new neighbor Fran captured my girls’ attention with her cats that traveled with her. She joined us for dinner, taught my girls some new card games, and gave us some very useful local travel tips:
Ever since our trick-or-treating on Monday, we had been talking about the movie “E.T.”, since that took place in California during Halloween. My girls wanted to see it, so we rented it and had a movie night.
Now, those that know me know that I’m a bit of a home theater snob, and my movie room is one of the few amenities from traditional living that I actually miss. I had stowed an old projector from my office in the RV just in case I got a hankering for a big screen, so I dug it out and set it up:
An office projector and a bedsheet are hardly the makings of a good home theater, but it was still fun. Won’t be the last time I set this up. 😉
We made our third trip to San Francisco on Saturday to ride their notorious cable cars. I had no idea how those even worked: they actually grab on to cables that move underneath the streets! Here is the station that makes it all happen. Impressive:
We did a lot of walking. Here’s Chinatown:
I kept trying to capture the intense hills of this city. I would hate to take the RV through here:
Occupy San Francisco, hard at work:
And finally, a trip on a cable car:
We went back to Chinatown to find “Sam Wo,” a restaurant that our neighbor Fran recommended to us:
This was seriously the entrance:
…and our table was on the next floor above the kitchen/entrance. Excellent food, though.
Saying goodbye to our awesome neighbor Fran outside her sweet RV this morning:
We made it to San Luis Obispo where we’ll spend most of this week. Amy has a mini-marathon in Santa Barbara this weekend, so we’ll head that way on Thursday.
…unless we need to break camp earlier — we are desperately low on propane (i.e. furnace, hot water heater) and I’m not sure we can make it until Thursday without getting that replenished.
But so do the shores of southern Oregon, so let’s start with that.
That’s where we spent all last week. Other than a temporary internet and cell blackout (someone clipped some fiber optic lines mid week), it was a great location.
We took Tuesday afternoon to do some hiking. Here’s a particularly perilous overlook (we turned back):
A little while later we found an equally impressive, slightly safer overlook. For scale, that red spot to the right is Amy:
The aptly named “secret beach” (it was tucked away and a little hard to find) was the favorite spot for the afternoon:
At this point, the discarding of footwear and racing toward the ocean is second nature:
I knocked out a little work back at the car and then joined Amy and the girls in time for sunset.
The next day we took another sunset walk:
An unusually friendly passerby insisted on taking our photo. It’s one of the few family photos with all of us, so sure, ok:
On Friday we reached California. Here we are above the clouds. We were actually not that high up, it’s just the clouds were very low. The clouds seem weird in northern California:
Now, ’bout them redwoods: They are simply magnificent.
Some of these things are over 2000 years old. I just can’t comprehend that.
Even though several of these are hollow — you can walk inside — they are still alive and kicking:
We were boondocking it all weekend (that’s RV-speak for no water, electric or sewer connections) which allows for some nice quiet family time. And going to bed early. It’s awesome.
We polished off the last Washington apple. So good:
We did some more hiking the next morning:
This place felt like just a few Ewoks and a speederbike away from being Endor:
This morning we took one last walk before hitting the road. Saw some cool banana slugs:
…and a salamander:
…and of course more big trees and stumps:
And to think: these giants start out as this:
Here’s our camping spot from last night (one of my favorite I think):
We broke camp and headed farther south along Highway 101 until we got to Santa Rosa in Sonoma County California. They say some of the best wine comes from around here, but I’ll be the judge of that.
We stopped short of reaching San Fransisco (we’re about an hour away) because the RV parks are pretty pricy at ~$75/night. It’s not much to look at, but we found a fine spot at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds with full hookups for $22.50/night. Now we’re talking:
Emily and Natalie promptly got to work in the gravel:
So Halloween is tomorrow, and some internet research revealed that San Fransisco is one of the best places for trick-or-treating; a documented trifecta of affluence, festiveness, and relative safety.
So get your candy ready San Fransisco, the Arnolds are coming…
We started our school year with a virtual Indiana charter school while we were still back in Indy.
However, the virtual school program didn’t work well for us, primarily due to the amount of time we were spending to get our prescribed lessons done. There was no efficiency to our learning, so we were often working until dinner, sometimes after dinner too. Also, it didn’t make sense to have the girls memorizing facts about the ancient Mayan empire when I knew we would be exploring the Olympic Peninsula in a matter of weeks. We quickly returned our 150 pounds of books and materials and set off on our own adventure of homeschooling.
Now that we have been back on the road for a few weeks, we are working on a good routine. We have math and language arts lessons in the mornings and then we head out in the afternoons for the closest National or State Park or museum that accepts our IN State Museum Pass. This is what the girls have to say, so far:
Carrie loves the field trips. One of her recent favorites was the Marine Life Center in Port Angeles, WA. We saw a Giant Pacific Octopus and watched her gracefully eat live crabs. It was amazing! The girls fed the anemones, eels, flounders and other fish. It was great to have the naturalist all to ourselves to answer questions. He was even able to help us solve the mystery of the “devilfish” we had just read about in “The Island of the Blue Dolphins”.
Emily likes reading together and playing math card games. We are trying to read books set in the areas where we are traveling. If you have any good suggestions, please pass them along! She is also our resident Jr. Ranger.
Natalie likes the hikes, knitting and journaling. All three girls journal about the things that we are doing.
I’m rather excited to have a lil’ story about my company and our RV trip in this week’s Indianapolis Business Journal. It’s always a little nerve racking having a story written about you, because a good reporter doesn’t exactly let you proof it before it goes to press. This could have just as easily been “Local Fool Runs Business Into Ground” but it turned out much more flattering than that. On Indy newstands this week, or online (subscribers only) at http://t.co/EsVVlaE4.
Today was one of my favorite drives. But more on that in a second.
We spent Friday at Mt. Rainier National Park. Unfortunately the clouds were low and thick and completely covered the actual mountain. (Apparently, Mt. Rainier is only visible 20% of the year.) We saw it from a distance a few other times since we’ve been in Washington, but it would have been nice to see it up close and personal.
This cross section was from a tree that started growing in the late 1200’s. Crazy:
Check out some of these dates! Sorry, I just think this is amazing:
Vandals: Beavers:
This isn’t necessarily an interesting photo, but it represents a fascinating aspect of these forests. All around us, we see fallen trees in various states of their return back to dirt, and all the different types of life they support along the way. (Cue Elton John “Circle of Life” song…)
Taking a final walk through a Washington forest at Mt. Rainier:
I find this interesting how just a trickle of water runs down all the rivers around here, but you can tell the raging river that was once here (and will be again come Spring):
We made a couple stops along the road, trying to soak up as much of Washington as we could before reaching Oregon:
We stopped in Portland to check out the local Saturday Market:
One of the more interesting street performers. This guy stood completely motionless until money was deposited in his bucket. Emily and Natalie are running away after dropping in a dollar:
A gasoline transfer technician at work. I would love to know the history behind this Oregon-wide custom of not being able to pump one’s own gas:
This trip is truly a full sensory experience. Beyond just sights and sounds are the smells. I love that just yesterday I was sniffing the pine-filled air of Washington, and today I filled my lungs with the salty sea air of the Oregon coast:
The trees near the shore are all shaped like this. Think they’ve seen a little wind?
We pulled off to let some traffic pass and it turned out to be rather picturesque:
…AND we heard sea lions barking down below. Very cool:
Just some other pics from today as we drove along Highway 101:
We’ve stopped in Brookings, Oregon at Harris Beach State Park. The internet seems decent and the beach is within walking distance, so it seems like a great place to spend the week.
I’m going to do a mid-week update so everything doesn’t pile up and I forget something again. (On the last update, I forgot to include watching salmon swimming up stream which was pretty great.)
So, here is the public RV park we crashed at on Sunday evening in Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island. It was a beautiful cloudless morning on Monday and the first day since we got back to Washington that I didn’t have to wear a jacket.
The next night we stopped at a random RV park in Everett Washington. I wonder what the folks in the $500k rig next to us thought of my $6-scrap-wood leveling system.
On Tuesday we took the Boeing plant tour and saw where all the 747s (and a few others) are made.
I couldn’t take my camera or phone on the tour, but here’s a photo from the wikipedia article about it. They said it’s the biggest building in the world by volume:
Here’s a Google image of the goings-on inside. I thought it was fascinating. Boeing is awesome.
Microsoft headquarters in Redmond WA, however, was not awesome.
We wanted to see their visitors center (they have a bunch of old tech artifacts and showcases of their newest stuff) but it was closed due to some other event taking place there. Bummer, but oh well.
They did give me a brochure, however. It’s homemade from a color laser printer on standard paper, and then sloppily folded into thirds. I especially like the stretched logo. Nice effort, largest and richest software company on the planet.
They did have a store though. It’s like the Apple store, right? (Answer: No…no it is not.)
I’m glad we stopped, just to say we were there. It’s a nice campus.
We tried to fit a lot in yesterday since it was my mom’s last day with us. That night we had dinner out — a rarity for us.
Let me just say this about my mom and the last 10 days she spent with us on the road: I thoroughly enjoyed having her with us. It was great. Maybe even a little surprisingly so.
Let me explain: Going on vacations as a kid, I learned to brace myself for what would be a brutal sight-seeing schedule. Vacations were exhausting. My mom has mellowed a bit over the years, but I figured at least some of those old tendencies would surface while traveling with us, but they never did. My mom was as easy going as I’ve ever seen her, and we look forward to having her aboard the Arnold RV again soon.
We are back in Bellevue WA now staying at the same parking lot RV park we stayed at a couple weeks ago. No scenery here, but I LOVE the 4G connection and my girls are enjoying the pool.
It’s $42 a night though, so we’ll be moving right along in the morning…
I expected a great week, and Washington did not disappoint. We settled in Sequim Bay National Park for most of the week. Great place; the internet was strong and the views were scenic:
We took a couple walks out on this dock where we could see starfish, jellyfish, and crabs. Seeing my girls get excited about nature like that was a great reminder of why we’re doing this.
I had all my work done by Thursday, so we broke camp and headed West. While my mom is traveling with us, we’re trying a cover a little more ground than normal and make the most of her time with us. Here’s our spot at a little park West of Port Angeles. Across the water is the foreign enemy territory of Canada:
Wandering deer:
This was an old WWII bunker near our campsite. Judging from the conditions inside, it’s now a place where teenagers gather to examine the ethical and moral dilemmas of military theory over cheap beer.
A choppier, colder shoreline:
Check out this leveling job; my most ambitious to date:
Ugh, I’m reluctant to even include this part, but it’s such a strange anomaly that I have to record it: we watch Project Runway. When we were in Indy after my dad died, my oldest daughter Carrie got hooked on that show, and then my sister bought her a DVD set of one of the seasons. And now we all watch it.
Amy, the girls, and my mom did some more exploring the next day along the shore:
After lunch, we hit the road and headed toward Olympic National Park, stopping at a few spots along the way.
I am trying hard to capture the awesomeness of these rain forests, but it just isn’t happening. There’s moss everywhere, and it’s beautiful. Mile after mile.
This is one of dozens of photos I’ve taken just looking up at the trees. I know we’ll see bigger trees when we get to northern California, but these trees are pretty huge. And I can’t stop looking up at them.
One of our stops was at Lake Crescent. Crystal clear water. I wanted to drink it.
My mom traveled a lot as a kid, so she has fit right in:
From one of our walks in the rain forest:
We were well off the grid at this point, and our camp site at Sol Duc in Olympic National Park had no electricity or hookups of any kind.
It was simultaneously uncomfortable and liberating not having internet or cell service. Due to the season, it gets dark so early (and even darker deep in the forest). Once all the iDevices died, there was really nothing else to do except go to sleep. It was great.
It had been mostly overcast up until this point, but the next morning there was a cloudless blue sky and a morning sun that sent sun rays piercing through the morning mist.
This tree is 550 years old!
During a walk, we encountered a well-hung elk with a multi-point rack. It’s mating season, so we had seen warning signs advising people to stay far away from the elk (elk charge). I know you can’t really see much of the elk here, but this photo is more about us being ready to run.
That night, we stayed at Bogachiel State Park in Forks Washington. We don’t have many campfires (too much trouble), so when we do it’s sort of a big deal.
I was slightly apprehensive about returning to this park; this is where we were on August 1st when we got the call that my dad had died. But it felt good to be back, if only to balance a sad memory with a happier one.
It may not seem so, but efficiently stacking 5 bikes on a bike rack is more complicated than solving a rubik’s cube. I took this photo so I could both document and replicate my achievement today:
An alternative application of moss:
Today we took a ferry from Port Townsend to Whidbey Island. Here we are waiting in line to drive onto the ferry. (Amy was with the car in another line. They keep us big rigs together 😉
On the ferry:
Off the ferry, just in time for sunset:
We’re stopped for the night in Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island at some city RV park. The first place we stopped was at a beautiful park, but it was also an internet black hole. Here we have full hookups for only $20!
I’m looking forward to Tuesday: a trip to Microsoft headquarters [insert evil music]…
This is a longish post, but I’m playing catch-up here.
Our RV trip officially resumed on Tuesday morning when we said goodbye to my mom and headed off to the airport at 4:45am.
Southwest has a 50 pound limit on checked bags. Two of ours were at 51 pounds. Our 3rd bag, however, was at 48 pounds, so some clever on-the-spot reshuffling of contents got all 3 bags past the gatekeeper.
After that, it was a pretty smooth trip. I’m not at all afraid to fly, but whenever I safely land somewhere I feel like I’ve cheated death once again.
Had a layover in Las Vegas. Slot machines evvvverywhere.
Once in Tacoma Washington, Debbie (read all about Bruce and Debbie here) picked us up from the airport and drove us to the storage facility where our RV and car were parked.
Going back to the RV was…heavy. It brought back so many memories of August 1st (the day my dad died). The scene inside the RV felt like a family had abandoned it in haste. It was pretty trashed.
Later that afternoon we returned the luggage that we had borrowed from Bruce and Debbie.
Bruce had alerted us earlier via email that one of our tires was low and that he had it filled. It turned out, however, that 3 of our rear tires were completely trashed. The tread had always been fine, but the sides had these huge bulges in them that I could not see until they were off the RV. I can’t believe we had been rolling around on those. They were awful. I guess you can’t judge a tire by tread alone.
Unfortunately, the guy who was going to put on new tires didn’t have the right tires (something he didn’t tell me until he had already taken the old tires off) and his “new” tires were actually almost 3 years old.
Let me do a little public service announcement on tire replacement. When you get new tires, you can make sure they are actually new. Every tire manufactured since 2000 has a coded date like this:
We had the guy put the old tires back on and I paid him for his time (he was, after all, the one that discovered our tire problem in the first place, so I feel he still did my family a service). We rolled down the road to Camping World and had the right tires put on the next morning. It cost a lot more ($1600!!!) but, as I said, they are the right tires, they are actually NEW, and they smell amazing.
This is us at a nearby Starbucks waiting for our RV tire job to be completed. The kids are doing school and I’m doing work. It had the feeling of a family running from the law, which was sort of fun.
Once we had our wheels back, we drove to an RV park in Bellevue Washington, which is just outside of Seattle. It was as nice as a parking lot next to a noisy freeway could possibly be. We spent 4 nights there.
I’m not going to lie: up until this weekend, we weren’t really having much fun. Coming back to the RV was hard, the RV was a mess, everyone was grumpy, the weather had been mostly rainy, and my fix-it list was as long as ever. Clearly, it’s going to take us some time get our RV groove back.
But the metaphorical and actual clouds lifted on Saturday when we spent the day in downtown Seattle. What a town!
We hit the public market:
These guys sold us the best fresh fruit I’ve ever had in my entire life:
Seattle, as viewed from the Space Needle:
One of the many, many street musicians and groups around Seattle. Most of the ones I heard were quite good:
Behold, the original Starbucks:
It was a fun day (finally).
Today my mom flew into Seattle to join us for 10 days on the road. While Amy, Carrie, and Natalie went to pick her up, Emily and I went to the Museum of Flight (Amy and the girls went earlier in the week but I had to work). Glad I got to go; it was very cool.
Since Emily had been there earlier in the week, it was like having my own little tour guide. She took me straight to the good stuff like the Concord and the first Air Force One:
We spent the rest of the day traveling and landed in Sequim Bay State Park, just outside of Olympic National Park. We are surrounded by pine trees.
We got here sort of late and the light was fading, so no good photos yet. But when we got out of the RV and took in a deep breath of crisp pine-filled air, Amy and I commented to each other that this finally felt right. Hopefully we’re one breath closer now to getting our groove back.
It’s good to have my mom here with us. I’m looking forward to a great week.
I’ve got a general RV/Arnold family update on the way, but I wanted to take a minute and document a story of unusual kindness.
It was the morning of August 1st when we got a call that my dad had died unexpectedly, and we needed to get back to Indy as soon as humanly possible. Not yet knowing exactly what we were going to do with the RV or how we were going to get our stuff back to Indy (we brought no luggage on this trip), we started the 3 hour trip towards Seattle/Tacoma, the closest major airport city.
Amy made some calls along the way and got connected with a storage place in Tacoma that could store our RV and car, and she confirmed with the airline that we could simply load up some cardboard boxes with our clothes, etc, and check them like any other baggage. We were told that someone would meet us at the storage location to unlock the gate and take our payment info.
When we arrived at the storage place, we were met by the owner, Bruce. He asked us a few questions to make sure he understood our situation correctly, including our lack of luggage. He called his wife Debbie and before long we had more than enough luggage and a ride to the airport. We never signed any papers and Bruce never took any payment info; we just exchanged email addresses so we could let him know when we would be coming back to Washington.
Fast-forward two months, the Arnold family returns to Tacoma Washington.
Debbie picked us up from the airport and took us back to the RV. She told us that we could return their luggage to their main office a couple miles away whenever we were unpacked. I asked Bruce earlier what we owe him for the two months of RV and car storage (or the use of his luggage and the chauffeur service, for that matter), but he would not take anything for any of it. In lieu of payment, he just asked that we keep an eye out for someone else in need as we travel the country, and be ready to help them out.
Oh yeah, before we arrived, Bruce noticed a tire on the RV was getting low and had it filled up, and had both our RV and car washed.
As I said, this was a story of unusual kindness, and it came at a time when I needed it most. Consequently, Bruce and Debbie are a permanent part of Arnold family lore. We can’t thank them enough for their compassion and generosity.
There are still some good people in this world, folks. Hopefully this story will inspire you to be one of them.
P.S. If you ever need storage space in or around the Tacoma Washington area, contact Bruce and Debbie at Maxi-Space.