Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Vintage View Vednesday The California Coast 2005

There is a whole lot shaking in Ohio this week and we will bring you up to date on that later. All the busyness has me thinking about our accidental vacation back in 2005 that I have been telling you of lately. In this edition, I will tell you about the two week accidental vacation getting extended another two weeks! What in the world?

 Vintage View Vednesday Accidental Vacation 2005
We left Jedediah Smith Redwoods State and National Park with intentions of making a beeline to Handford, California to begin our next revival. You may remember from my first post about this accidental vacation, that we were supposed to be in revival in Idaho for 10 days to two weeks. 

 We would have closed revival there on Friday or Sunday and then drove to central Hanford in Central California to begin revival on their midweek service. That first revival of the trip in California was scheduled to be at Victory in Hanford for 10 nights too.

We had spent those two unexpectedly free weeks at Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Glacier, Sun Valley Church, Seattle, the Oregon coast and now northern California. At this point, we had reserved two days to quickly drive to Hanford, California.

We did have one stop we wanted to make. In 1992 we were in northern California with Bro. Rickey Searcy and his family. He took us to one of the drive-through Redwood trees. There are three of them on private land and you pay a small fee to drive through it.

I had a plan for a great photo opportunity and one of those trees was directly on our route south. It is the Chandelier tree and in 2005 it cost $5 to drive through it. I asked at the gate if we could turn the truck and trailer around down by the tree and he told me there was a huge bus parking lot. Cool.

I pulled the truck and trailer into the line to drive through the tree like I had good sense. Kelly Jo was outside taking pictures. At one point there were a bunch of tourists trying to get Kelly Jo to realize the trailer was not going to fit. She tried to explain it was for a picture and that I was not really going to try to fit.

I do not think they understood a word she said. It was hilarious! Let's just say there are probably a few hundred pictures of our truck and trailer headed into the side of the tree floating around Asia.









After the photo shoot, I pulled over to the parking lot and we visited the gift shop and ate lunch. While I was sitting in the truck Pastor Garmin from Hanford called. The doctors had found a tumor in him and surgery was scheduled the day we were due to begin the revival at his church. He wanted us to continue revival without him, but there was no way I was going to go for that. 

It was absolutely unavoidable, but another 10 day revival was canceled. I am happy to say that Bro. Garman came through his surgery and recovered well. He is still alive and kicking today!

Our accidental vacation had just been extended two more weeks. There are other churches to preach for in California, but we were already scheduled to preach at all the ones that had opened their doors to us. There was nothing to do, but see a few more sights along the way. We always try to save our fuel money ahead of time on a big trip like that, so all of that expense was covered and was not going to put us in a bind.

We had shifted into "hurry up and get there mode" but with the cancelation, it was time to slow down and slip back into vacation mode. We looked at our handy dandy Rand McNally full size atlas and decided our route. Rather than cut over to the interstate and rush south to Handford, we would stay on 101 all the to San Francisco and beyond.











We thoroughly enjoyed the drive down the coast and soon we were on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge. We spent quite a bit of time in the park on the north side and then started across the bridge.







Let me try to set this scene for you. We have been meandering for hours down the 101 enjoying the sights and taking our time. We had gone down by the water, walked around, breathed in the ocean air and it was finally time to head south.

We drove our truck and trailer across the iconic and historic Golden Gate Bridge. It was a beautiful, memorable moment for our family and then we came to a toll gate. We paid the toll and we were absolutely shocked to find ourselves in the city of San Francisco!

It looked like on the map that 101 would split to the east and 1 would continue south as a limited access highway and become interstate. Nah, baby, nah! It was not that way at all and we had no GPS or Google Maps to guide us through.

We followed Hwy 1 south smack dab into city traffic, those famous San Francisco hills up and down and expecting a bridge with 10' clearance at any moment. Thankfully there was no low bridge, but there were a lot of locals staring and pointing and honking horns and laughing at these juvenile country bumkins pulling a huge fifth wheel monstrosity into a mess!

We stayed with it until we joined I-280 south and started looking for a way to cut back over to the west and find somewhere to get off the road. In a few miles Hwy 1 split back off to the southwest toward the coast and in hindsight we should have taken it, but we were scared to get back into what we had left behind a few miles north.

We finally spotted 92 that would carry us west to the coast and Half Moon Bay and it seemed like a good idea. It was not a good idea, but we found that out too late. As we began climbing a mountain pass the signs were saying our trailer was too long. Oops! 

The trailer was too long and it took us a while to navigate the twists and turns and elevation changes, but we made it. We had a very long line of horn honking cars behind us to remind us of our mistake.

We found an RV Park on the coast at Half Moon Bay and we were pleasantly surprised when the lady rented us a spot for four nights at half price. I think she saw how frazzled I was and felt sorry for us. Half price was more than we had ever paid for a campground, but honestly, I would have paid full price to get off the road and out of trouble!

There are no pictures of our innercity RV driving adventure or our harrowing drive over the mountain pass on two lane 92. We honestly did not even think about taking pictures and sometimes it is best not to leave any evidence behind!

Half Moon Bay was a tremendously gorgeous place and well worth the excitement! We would like to go back again someday, but we will find another way in, I can promise that!

































































Half Moon Bay took care of one of the extended weeks of our accidental vacation. I drove over to Hanford on the day of Bro. Garman's surgery, but other than that we rested and tried to get prepared for the revivals and camp meetings ahead.

The second week we left the coast and moved to the mountains and a great visit with friends. I will have pictures of that next week and our accidental vacation will come to an end.

Thank you for going along with us today.

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