San Fransisco to Zion
The next day was the day we pick up Barry, so we woke up and packed up the RV and got on the road. We headed for San Francisco to get to our camp so we could see where it was, get to our site and have a look around before we got Barry as his flight was scheduled to arrive at 10:30pm. This means that when we leave to get Barry we wouldn't be back until midnight to 1am so we thought we'd get our bearings of the campsite before picking Barry up.
We drove for most of the day, only stopping for short rest breaks and that was about it really and drove into the city of San Francisco. As San Francisco was an industrial city it has a lot of houses which we saw as we drove in, in fact all you could see was houses, they sure made use of all their available land. We drove in and crossed a few bridges and whilst crossing one bridge we could see the golden gate bridge in the distance as well as Alcatraz Island. We also got to go through a really long and kind of scary tunnel, I always feel a bit tense when we drive through a tunnel as they are usually narrower lanes and there's always the height of the tunnel too, kind of gives off a claustrophobic feeling when you think that the roof might magically lower and wedge the RV in.
Once we got through the city and were on the outskirts on the other side of town everything was going to plan. Until we got to a certain point where traffic just seemed to stop for 15 to 20 minutes, then we drove for a bit so we all thought that it was an accident and it had been cleared off and everybody was now just having a look as they drove past. But then again after only a few minutes of slow driving we came to another stop for another few minutes, at this stage we were all getting annoyed with whatever was going on but after we started moving again we found the cause of the problem... turns out they have a freight train crossing going across a major highway of San Francisco... go figure.
Once we got past the train crossing we eventually got to the campgrounds we were to stay at and checked in. It was a very big campground and as it was the weekend it was almost totally full, but we found our spot pulled up and checked the grounds out. They had a jumping pillow, swimming pool, petting zoo and numerous other things to do and see. We headed back to the RV and made our dinner had early showers and then started the rv up to head in to pick up Barry.
Ok so the plan was, to head into San Francisco and park up at a burger joint that was 3 miles away from the airport, and Barry would hop into a taxi and get driven the 3 miles out to where we were at the burger joint (which is called In 'n' Out Burger in case I happen to say the name instead of burger joint). But as we all know the best laid plans...... So here's what happened.
We had a nice drive into San Francisco and even went over the Golden Gate Bridge and it was blanketed with fog and looked very surreal, but when we got into the streets of San Francisco it was a different story. As we were driving along we hit a bit of traffic which we thought was normal as it had a few sets of traffic lights to go through, but as we continued we saw a sign saying that the road was being check pointed for lack of a better word for a sobriety and license check. Once we found that out we cursed our bad luck but got all our paperwork ready and prepared to be pulled over. Now these checks are a little different to the RBT's in Australia, they condensed four lanes of busy traffic into one and pulled over three vehicles at a time. While they had three vehicles pulled over the other traffic was allowed to pass through until they had finished with the pulled over vehicle's and needed more. So everybody was trying to get over into the one flowing lane which was hard enough in a car, let alone a 34 foot RV. But at the end of it we got through without being pulled over but it cost us 45 minutes in time during which Barry had called and said that he was all ready to be picked up, but we told him to wait until after we had passed the checkpoint before he did anything.
Once we had gotten passed the checkpoint we gave Barry a call and got the address of where to go to meet us, but by that time he told us that they were no taxi's and we were finding it difficult to communicate for some reason (we found out later that the ear volume was on the lowest setting and Barry could not hear us very well). At that time we made a split second decision to throw all RV height restrictions to the wind and took the Airport exit, abandoning all prior plans of waiting at the burger joint and getting Barry to get a taxi there.
Once we had decided to pick Barry up from the terminal we then tried ringing him to let him know what was happening, this involved Kate yelling into the phone for him not to get into a taxi and to look for a bloody great big RV in the airport pickup area. Once Barry heard what Kate was saying and spotted the RV at the same time he made a beeline for us, by then we had figured out that the RV was good for height despite being a bit sketchy for a couple of minutes as we went into tunnel type thing but we made it.
Once we had spotted Barry, I pulled up to let Kate out to help him with his suitcases and everything else, but the traffic cop had other idea's and flashed his ultra bright flashlight in the window and told us to move on, we told him that we were picking up somebody but he didn't seem to care and told us we were blocking traffic, this was not true as I had pulled into the pickup lane and people could get around the rv just fine, not to mention there was a whole other lane there for them to use. But the traffic cop wouldn't have it, so I just slowly moved to the end of the pickup section and pulled up there same spot, just further up and got Barry on board with no troubles.... stupid traffic cop guy.
Once Barry was on board we were on our way again, back to our campsite and Barry told us of his travels and what had happened between here and Australia and updated us on other things from life at home, we headed back the way we had came, showed Barry the checkpoint we had to go through which made us late, crossed the Golden Gate Bridge again which was still blanketed in fog and looking surreal back to our campsite hooked up and went to bed.
We woke up the next day, packed up and hit the road once again, now with Barry as a passenger. But it was Barry's birthday so we decided to go somewhere where he might enjoy, which was a miniature train theme park which had a model steam train you could ride around the park which we did and saw lots of things along the way and got some good pictures of the miniature steam train in action. It also had rides and other little things but didn't take that long to have a look around and get back on the road. We drove for most of the day stopping for breaks and leg stretches along the way, and we decided to stop at a steak house to have Barry's birthday dinner. We went to the Outback Steak house something Kate and I may have mentioned that we've eaten at before, but it was quite funny as it was Barry's first day in America and it seemed that he flew 17000 odd kilometer's just to eat at an Australian themed restaurant, funny hey?
But that aside it is a very good restaurant and we all had good food and really enjoyed dining there for Barry's birthday. Once we had finished we drove the remaining few miles to our campsite at Grants Pass and set up camp, it was a very nice campground with nice owners and a dog called Shadow who showed us to our campsite, which was just along the river which was really nice and cool. We had a look around the place, showered and went to bed.
We got up the next morning a did our usual routine of breaking camp and hit the road bound for Seattle. We drove most of the day watching the landscape change from rolling country side to mountainous country with a winding river crossing through it and we even saw a mountain still covered with snow, which was a hotly debated topic for an hour or two on what it could be until we got closer and determined that it was in fact snow. We arrived at our Seattle campgrounds and as we were running low on LPG (other passengers like cups of tea :) we filled up then drove around to our campsite and set up. We then got dinner ready and did some other chore type things and planned to go to the Boeing Factory and the Woodlands Zoo the next day. So we showered and all went to bed once we had made those plans, and woke up the next morning ready to go. We got to Boeing and got our tickets and then had a look around as our tour would start in about 30 minutes so we had a look in the gift shops and made plans for what we might buy after the tour.
Our tour started with a video on Boeing and how it started and where its heading and all that sort of stuff, showed a little evolution of airplanes throughout the years before wrapping up and we headed for the doors to get on the bus that would take us to the actual building where the planes are built. On the bus ride the tour guide gave more history on Boeing as well as pointing out things along the way, but as we made our way along the road a plane was coming in for a touch and go landing on the runway and we had a magnificent view of a 747 as it flew over the top of the bus (my guess would be between 15 to 20 meters) and right to the runway which was again about 20 to 30 meters to our left as it did its touch and go landing. Quite a sight to see, unfortunately due to security measures and the like we were not allowed any electronic equipment whatsoever so weren't able to get a picture of that, but oh well.
Once we got to the Boeing Factory we got to see where they build those big aircraft's that we see today. So we got to see the production lines of the 737 747 777 787 series of jumbo jet planes, which was very interesting the tour guide also told us about the 30'000 people that Boeing employs to build these aircraft's and how the actual building where those planes are built is big enough for Disneyland to fit as well as 12 acres of car park, pretty big huh?
Once the tour was over we took the bus back to where we began and headed for the future of flight exhibit (we did take a quick break back at the RV for lunch as food at the cafeteria was expensive). The future of flight exhibit was also interesting showing the evolution of aircraft from ticketing to the planes themselves. It had cross sections of certain planes and cockpits which you could sit in and all sorts of hands on things to keep up amused for the rest of the day, so much so that we decided to fore-go going to the zoo that day as we were having so much fun at the Boeing factory. Once we had made our way through the future of flight exhibit we made our way to the gift shop, got the things we had our eye on and boarded the rv bound for our campsite back at Seattle. On the way back we made a small detour to see the zoo we would've gone too and saw that it was alright but we decided that Boeing was the right choice to make on the day. Once we did a flyby of the zoo we took the scenic route back to our campgrounds through the city and seeing the city skyline before getting back and setting up at our campgrounds again. We chatted about the day, got dinner ready, ate, showered and went to bed.
The next day as we headed out of Seattle we visited the other zoo in Seattle which was really cool as it is 450 acres of natural land where they have a number of animals (all herbivores) to be seen on the tour train that takes you on an hours ride across those lands and we got to see; caribou, deer, mountain goats and sheep, bison, swans, ducks, moose and all sorts of other animals while the tour guide told us all about the animals and the park. Once we got back from that we went and visited all the other animal enclosures and saw beavers, otters, wolverines, cougars, lynx', wolves, coyotes, bears and a few others that I've forgotten, but we got a picture of most of them and it was a very enjoyable visit. As we were making our way our of the park we got some lunch at the cafeteria to eat in the rv as we traveled. All food that we got, was top notch everything was made fresh on fresh bread with quality ingredients and everybody thoroughly enjoyed their lunches.
As I said above we ate lunch on the road and drove the rest of the day only stopping for leg stretches and whatnot, but we made it into our campgrounds and set up with a minimum of fuss and went to bed. The next morning we went to a museum dedicated to something called the Oregon Trial, which was the trail made by people crossing the country to go to live in Oregon. The museum showed us the life that these people had on the trial and the hardships that they faced on a day to day basis, it was all very interesting and we were all very glad that we had our RV and paved highways to travel on. Once we finished there we traveled again for most of the day and into the evening before stopping at our campgrounds and doing our usual routine.
Which brings us to today, where we visited the Union Station which is a historical landmark for the trains of America and it showed the history of all trains in America and the train track system that it uses. We saw lots of cool stuff including some "retired" trains out front for photo opportunities as well as a really cool train set that probably took up about 5 rooms with about 5 or more different trains running on the tracks. Once we finished up in there along with a visit to the gift shop we were once again on our way and drove watching the countryside turn from flat plain lands with salt bushes to lush green fields with babbling creeks running through them, to red canyon walls as we get closer and closer to the Grand Canyon which is our destination for tomorrow.
Well this brings us up to date and as always leave a message or question and we will update again soon. Thanks :)
We drove for most of the day, only stopping for short rest breaks and that was about it really and drove into the city of San Francisco. As San Francisco was an industrial city it has a lot of houses which we saw as we drove in, in fact all you could see was houses, they sure made use of all their available land. We drove in and crossed a few bridges and whilst crossing one bridge we could see the golden gate bridge in the distance as well as Alcatraz Island. We also got to go through a really long and kind of scary tunnel, I always feel a bit tense when we drive through a tunnel as they are usually narrower lanes and there's always the height of the tunnel too, kind of gives off a claustrophobic feeling when you think that the roof might magically lower and wedge the RV in.
Once we got through the city and were on the outskirts on the other side of town everything was going to plan. Until we got to a certain point where traffic just seemed to stop for 15 to 20 minutes, then we drove for a bit so we all thought that it was an accident and it had been cleared off and everybody was now just having a look as they drove past. But then again after only a few minutes of slow driving we came to another stop for another few minutes, at this stage we were all getting annoyed with whatever was going on but after we started moving again we found the cause of the problem... turns out they have a freight train crossing going across a major highway of San Francisco... go figure.
Once we got past the train crossing we eventually got to the campgrounds we were to stay at and checked in. It was a very big campground and as it was the weekend it was almost totally full, but we found our spot pulled up and checked the grounds out. They had a jumping pillow, swimming pool, petting zoo and numerous other things to do and see. We headed back to the RV and made our dinner had early showers and then started the rv up to head in to pick up Barry.
Ok so the plan was, to head into San Francisco and park up at a burger joint that was 3 miles away from the airport, and Barry would hop into a taxi and get driven the 3 miles out to where we were at the burger joint (which is called In 'n' Out Burger in case I happen to say the name instead of burger joint). But as we all know the best laid plans...... So here's what happened.
We had a nice drive into San Francisco and even went over the Golden Gate Bridge and it was blanketed with fog and looked very surreal, but when we got into the streets of San Francisco it was a different story. As we were driving along we hit a bit of traffic which we thought was normal as it had a few sets of traffic lights to go through, but as we continued we saw a sign saying that the road was being check pointed for lack of a better word for a sobriety and license check. Once we found that out we cursed our bad luck but got all our paperwork ready and prepared to be pulled over. Now these checks are a little different to the RBT's in Australia, they condensed four lanes of busy traffic into one and pulled over three vehicles at a time. While they had three vehicles pulled over the other traffic was allowed to pass through until they had finished with the pulled over vehicle's and needed more. So everybody was trying to get over into the one flowing lane which was hard enough in a car, let alone a 34 foot RV. But at the end of it we got through without being pulled over but it cost us 45 minutes in time during which Barry had called and said that he was all ready to be picked up, but we told him to wait until after we had passed the checkpoint before he did anything.
Once we had gotten passed the checkpoint we gave Barry a call and got the address of where to go to meet us, but by that time he told us that they were no taxi's and we were finding it difficult to communicate for some reason (we found out later that the ear volume was on the lowest setting and Barry could not hear us very well). At that time we made a split second decision to throw all RV height restrictions to the wind and took the Airport exit, abandoning all prior plans of waiting at the burger joint and getting Barry to get a taxi there.
Once we had decided to pick Barry up from the terminal we then tried ringing him to let him know what was happening, this involved Kate yelling into the phone for him not to get into a taxi and to look for a bloody great big RV in the airport pickup area. Once Barry heard what Kate was saying and spotted the RV at the same time he made a beeline for us, by then we had figured out that the RV was good for height despite being a bit sketchy for a couple of minutes as we went into tunnel type thing but we made it.
Once we had spotted Barry, I pulled up to let Kate out to help him with his suitcases and everything else, but the traffic cop had other idea's and flashed his ultra bright flashlight in the window and told us to move on, we told him that we were picking up somebody but he didn't seem to care and told us we were blocking traffic, this was not true as I had pulled into the pickup lane and people could get around the rv just fine, not to mention there was a whole other lane there for them to use. But the traffic cop wouldn't have it, so I just slowly moved to the end of the pickup section and pulled up there same spot, just further up and got Barry on board with no troubles.... stupid traffic cop guy.
Once Barry was on board we were on our way again, back to our campsite and Barry told us of his travels and what had happened between here and Australia and updated us on other things from life at home, we headed back the way we had came, showed Barry the checkpoint we had to go through which made us late, crossed the Golden Gate Bridge again which was still blanketed in fog and looking surreal back to our campsite hooked up and went to bed.
We woke up the next day, packed up and hit the road once again, now with Barry as a passenger. But it was Barry's birthday so we decided to go somewhere where he might enjoy, which was a miniature train theme park which had a model steam train you could ride around the park which we did and saw lots of things along the way and got some good pictures of the miniature steam train in action. It also had rides and other little things but didn't take that long to have a look around and get back on the road. We drove for most of the day stopping for breaks and leg stretches along the way, and we decided to stop at a steak house to have Barry's birthday dinner. We went to the Outback Steak house something Kate and I may have mentioned that we've eaten at before, but it was quite funny as it was Barry's first day in America and it seemed that he flew 17000 odd kilometer's just to eat at an Australian themed restaurant, funny hey?
But that aside it is a very good restaurant and we all had good food and really enjoyed dining there for Barry's birthday. Once we had finished we drove the remaining few miles to our campsite at Grants Pass and set up camp, it was a very nice campground with nice owners and a dog called Shadow who showed us to our campsite, which was just along the river which was really nice and cool. We had a look around the place, showered and went to bed.
We got up the next morning a did our usual routine of breaking camp and hit the road bound for Seattle. We drove most of the day watching the landscape change from rolling country side to mountainous country with a winding river crossing through it and we even saw a mountain still covered with snow, which was a hotly debated topic for an hour or two on what it could be until we got closer and determined that it was in fact snow. We arrived at our Seattle campgrounds and as we were running low on LPG (other passengers like cups of tea :) we filled up then drove around to our campsite and set up. We then got dinner ready and did some other chore type things and planned to go to the Boeing Factory and the Woodlands Zoo the next day. So we showered and all went to bed once we had made those plans, and woke up the next morning ready to go. We got to Boeing and got our tickets and then had a look around as our tour would start in about 30 minutes so we had a look in the gift shops and made plans for what we might buy after the tour.
Our tour started with a video on Boeing and how it started and where its heading and all that sort of stuff, showed a little evolution of airplanes throughout the years before wrapping up and we headed for the doors to get on the bus that would take us to the actual building where the planes are built. On the bus ride the tour guide gave more history on Boeing as well as pointing out things along the way, but as we made our way along the road a plane was coming in for a touch and go landing on the runway and we had a magnificent view of a 747 as it flew over the top of the bus (my guess would be between 15 to 20 meters) and right to the runway which was again about 20 to 30 meters to our left as it did its touch and go landing. Quite a sight to see, unfortunately due to security measures and the like we were not allowed any electronic equipment whatsoever so weren't able to get a picture of that, but oh well.
Once we got to the Boeing Factory we got to see where they build those big aircraft's that we see today. So we got to see the production lines of the 737 747 777 787 series of jumbo jet planes, which was very interesting the tour guide also told us about the 30'000 people that Boeing employs to build these aircraft's and how the actual building where those planes are built is big enough for Disneyland to fit as well as 12 acres of car park, pretty big huh?
Once the tour was over we took the bus back to where we began and headed for the future of flight exhibit (we did take a quick break back at the RV for lunch as food at the cafeteria was expensive). The future of flight exhibit was also interesting showing the evolution of aircraft from ticketing to the planes themselves. It had cross sections of certain planes and cockpits which you could sit in and all sorts of hands on things to keep up amused for the rest of the day, so much so that we decided to fore-go going to the zoo that day as we were having so much fun at the Boeing factory. Once we had made our way through the future of flight exhibit we made our way to the gift shop, got the things we had our eye on and boarded the rv bound for our campsite back at Seattle. On the way back we made a small detour to see the zoo we would've gone too and saw that it was alright but we decided that Boeing was the right choice to make on the day. Once we did a flyby of the zoo we took the scenic route back to our campgrounds through the city and seeing the city skyline before getting back and setting up at our campgrounds again. We chatted about the day, got dinner ready, ate, showered and went to bed.
The next day as we headed out of Seattle we visited the other zoo in Seattle which was really cool as it is 450 acres of natural land where they have a number of animals (all herbivores) to be seen on the tour train that takes you on an hours ride across those lands and we got to see; caribou, deer, mountain goats and sheep, bison, swans, ducks, moose and all sorts of other animals while the tour guide told us all about the animals and the park. Once we got back from that we went and visited all the other animal enclosures and saw beavers, otters, wolverines, cougars, lynx', wolves, coyotes, bears and a few others that I've forgotten, but we got a picture of most of them and it was a very enjoyable visit. As we were making our way our of the park we got some lunch at the cafeteria to eat in the rv as we traveled. All food that we got, was top notch everything was made fresh on fresh bread with quality ingredients and everybody thoroughly enjoyed their lunches.
As I said above we ate lunch on the road and drove the rest of the day only stopping for leg stretches and whatnot, but we made it into our campgrounds and set up with a minimum of fuss and went to bed. The next morning we went to a museum dedicated to something called the Oregon Trial, which was the trail made by people crossing the country to go to live in Oregon. The museum showed us the life that these people had on the trial and the hardships that they faced on a day to day basis, it was all very interesting and we were all very glad that we had our RV and paved highways to travel on. Once we finished there we traveled again for most of the day and into the evening before stopping at our campgrounds and doing our usual routine.
Which brings us to today, where we visited the Union Station which is a historical landmark for the trains of America and it showed the history of all trains in America and the train track system that it uses. We saw lots of cool stuff including some "retired" trains out front for photo opportunities as well as a really cool train set that probably took up about 5 rooms with about 5 or more different trains running on the tracks. Once we finished up in there along with a visit to the gift shop we were once again on our way and drove watching the countryside turn from flat plain lands with salt bushes to lush green fields with babbling creeks running through them, to red canyon walls as we get closer and closer to the Grand Canyon which is our destination for tomorrow.
Well this brings us up to date and as always leave a message or question and we will update again soon. Thanks :)
Quick question. Is it the Oregan Trail or Trial? You wrote both...
Anyways, it's good to see that you're having fun!
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