Road Trip on the 101

Traveling up the 101 from California to Oregon was beautiful, wet, windy and windy (two words spelled the same but with different meanings is called a heteronym! I learn something new everyday).

Heading north in California we were in awe of the beautiful San Francisco bridge and saw Alcatraz from a distance, we had no real thoughts about the bridge that we were on, until we went through the toll.  To cross the bridge it cost $20 because of our travel trailer. Yikes, be prepared if ever traveling with an RV to pay more for toll booths.

Our days began to mesh together as we traveled from town to town going north as the third day came around and the rain wouldn’t let up.

We did have the opportunity to stay at Harris Beach State Park in Oregon for a night and took the dogs for a walk in the rain. We hope to visit the coast again, no matter what the weather’s like,  it’s gorgeous!

Unfortunately, Walmart isn’t very accommodating when it comes to overnight stays in RV’s along the 101.  One night we ended up finding an empty parking lot off the road and just hoped no one would wake us in the middle of the night telling us to move on.

A highlight of our travels up north was meeting up with our friends, Kelly and Jerry at Depot Bay to have lunch at Mazatlan.  The food was delicious and the view of the ocean was wonderful. We were so excited to stop and visit we forgot to take any pictures but having some hugs from home, refueled our spirits and helped us to keep on driving in the 60 mph winds that was rocking the RV like crazy.

We were going to stay at Beverly Beach State Park but the wind was blowing so bad, it was terribly wet and we were really ready to just get to our destination to Portland and stay at Champoeg State Park.

We recouped for a couple days after all our driving only to have to move again due to space availability and length of stay. Thankfully we got to see Mitch’s sister Cindy, and my friend Alice was kind enough to offer us a place to park, unfortunately we couldn’t fit through her drive because of our height.

We’ve encountered more than our share of no’s since arriving in the Portland/ Vancouver area, when it came to letting us stay at one site with the camper and trailer. Many have said that we would have to pay for two sites, doubling our costs.  It has been challenging to say the least.  Thankfully we found Van Mall RV Park in Vancouver and they were willing to let us squeeze into one site. We would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to all those parks and the people who have allowed us to stay in one site at their park!