Fort Ord National Monument

On Saturday we went to Coffee Mia Brew Bar & Café for brunch and had the egg volcano with Italian sausage. The weather was finally gorgeous so we really enjoyed the meal sitting outside.

For the afternoon, Vince found a nice hike in the Fort Ord National Monument, which is just a short ride from the RV park. The trail was sandy and beautiful. The wild flowers are blooming in the season so the scenery was painted in all kinds of different colors. It was also surprisingly empty on a weekend--in the beginning we did encounter lots of mountain bikers, but soon we were alone for the majority of the hike. The only caveat was that, like many other trails in this area, this trail was full of poison oak in the shady areas! 😖 Fortunately we've packed Tecnu for the trip, so we avoided the poison oak as much as we could but we weren't too stressed out. The whole loop is about 14 miles, but I wasn't feeling very ambitious, so we ended up doing a shorter loop that was just shy of 9 miles. Still got a pretty nice workout and felt well spent at the end. Definitely a trail we'd recommend!

Cannery Row (Monterey)

Based on TripAdvisor's reviews, we booked a tour of Cannery Row with Tim Thomas, a fourth generation Monterey local who has a trove of knowledge of local history. We learned about the original Natives Rumsen Ohlone, who thrived in the area by its rich natural resources but eventually moved away to the Spanish mission villages. The thriving fishing industry at the turn of the century then brought about the fish canning business. During WWI, since the Europeans could no longer fish safely in the Atlantic, the sardines cannery business exploded for export. The cannery workers would wait for their cannery's whistle call in the middle of the night when the fishing boats arrived, when they would immediately report to the cannery and start the canning. They couldn't stop the work until all the fish was canned, because back then there wasn't any good refrigeration technology. What I didn't know and found intriguing, though, is the fact that other than sardines and rock fish, Monterey also yielded lots of squid, salmon, and abalone production. These seafoods weren't interesting to the Westerners at the time, but attracted lots of immigrants from China and Japan. The abalone shell that Tim showed to us was the largest I've ever seen, yet he said that's not even considered very big from the typical abalone one could find in the Monterey Bay. Unfortunately, due to over-fishing and changing water temperatures, the Monterey Bay's fishing industry eventually collapsed and brought the cannery business to an end.

We've been to Cannery Row a couple of times before but never learned all the rich history. There are many stories I won't elaborate on (including the famous ones of Ed Ricketts and John Steinbeck), but if you ever visit the Cannery Row and have the time, look up Tim and he'll fill your ears with plenty of stories. :)

Ed Ricketts' Pacific Biological Laboratories as seen from the back.

McAbee's beach.

An oil tank holding oil to run the machinery in the cannery, unearthed by the city of Monterey on display for the tourists. Many oil tanks are still buried under Cannery Row and still holding oil.

Souvenir from Tim: an original sardines can label.

Marina

We have officially taken off on our real trip. The current plan is to head south, hit LA by Mother's Day so we can spend it with my mom, and then be in San Diego by the end of May so I can meet up with my friend Xin Ru, who will be visiting from Taiwan.

The cats are adjusting quicker to the RV this time than on the test trip. They still didn't like the car trip from home, but as soon as we released them in the RV, they seemed at ease with the surrounding, seeming to say, "Oh, I know this place!". I just hope they don't resent us for moving them into a much smaller living space for an extended period of time this time around.

Our first stop is Marina, CA, at the Marina Dunes RV Resort. The resort has nice, private RV spaces separated by vegetation so you get a secluded feel which is rare in RV parks (at least that we've seen so far). The area is surrounded by beautiful sand dunes, which is already quite a change of scenery from home. When we visited the Marina State Beach the first afternoon, the wind was howling insanely. We looked around and realized many of the other visitors were just sitting in their cars looking out, not daring to venture out in the strong wind. Since Vince and I both had windbreaker jackets, we tightened up the straps and ran onto the beach. It was quite an experience moving against the gale hurling sands at our jackets, making little tic tic tic noises. Vince then noticed a few birds holding themselves steady in the wind, occasionally descending onto the beach to take a bite of a watermelon lying on the beach. The fine control they had was mesmerizing, and it made me daydream about what it's like to fly...is flying in strong winds similar to swimming in strong currents?

When we finally decided that we've had enough wind, we went for a bowl of hot pho to chase the cold away. Then it was time to go back to the RV to cuddle with the kitties. 😺 

Tinkering with the RV

As I mentioned in the first post, Vince has been doing many small repairs on the RV, but the one thing that he's also done that's quite ambitious is to install the whole towing system on the RV and the jeep on his own, so I thought the project deserved its own post.

He spent some time installing the tow loops on the jeep, carefully cutting the steel around the bumper to make sure the tow loops look like they belong there in the first place. Next comes replacing the cable for the signal lights (*) so they're the neat coiled kind rather than the default straight one that sags. This involved reconnecting some cut wires to some new connectors--I confess I'm not all that certain what exactly he was doing. 😝

The last step, though, is to cut into the RV's break line so he can connect the air to the jeep as well to signal the jeep to break simultaneously (**). When I first heard that he was going to tinker with the break line, I thought it might be a bit crazy. However, Vince explained to me that in an air break system, the default is to break, so the worst he can do is that the RV won't move anymore, instead of being in my nightmare scenario of driving down a hill with no breaks! 😫

To access the break line, Vince needed to get under the RV. At first he tried just taking the jacks to their highest position, but it was still too low, so now he needed a way to lift the RV. At first he went to O'Reilly Auto Parts and bought some ramps since the ramps said they could hold 16000 lbs and 4x in the back would mean 64000 lbs, which should be enough. However, once we got back to the RV and Vince re-read the small prints, the ramps could only hold 4000 lbs each, so total of 4 can hold 16000 lbs--that's way not enough! So the next day after lunch we went to a lumberyard in Healdsburg after lunch, and Vince picked up lots of wood planks and went to work!

Since he was working in some of the mornings or afternoons on our test trip, he didn't have all the tools he needed, so working with the wood took significantly longer, but lo and behold, we got our new RV ramps! 

Here's Vince tinkering with the break line after the back of the RV is lifted. Note he was staying comfy with his "shop towel pillow". 😛

Et voilà ! The break line is cut. What can go wrong, right? 😬

Well, I'm happy to report that things look so far so good! Whew! Look at us blocking off all the lanes of this poor little gas station with our 40' RV and our tow vehicle. 😅

(*) Note by Vince: this is about making sure we wire the Jeep lights so that they work in tandem with the coach's. For that I had to install a tow wiring harness in the Jeep that lets the coach control the Jeep's lights. The wiring harness also came with a coach-to-jeep cable that was lame and hard to connect/disconnect from the Jeep side so I had to fabricate an adapter that let me use a spiffy coiled coach-to-jeep cable. All good now!

(**) Note by Vince: this is about installing a supplemental braking system for the Jeep, required in most states when you tow a car "wheels down". I chose the SMI Air Force One, a permanently installed system that provides proportional braking on the Jeep side when the coach's brakes are applied. The Jeep side took me a while to install and involved tapping into the brake assist system's vacuum lines. The coach side Jessica mentioned is about tapping into the coach's air brake system and inserting an auxiliary air pressure tank that gets fed by the coach, and can then provide the necessary air pressure to the Jeep without compromising the coach air brake pressure. As Jessica mentioned, the good thing about air brakes is that if the air pressure for the service brakes becomes too low, the emergency brakes (held open by the same pressure) will kick in and stop the coach. So worse thing that can happen is we get stranded on the side of the road :)

Test trip complete!

The test trip to the Napa/Sonoma Valley region has successfully completed last week. We've discovered 4 leaks so far, 3 of which were within the coach and Vince has already repaired, but the 4th one was a leaky windshield, which will have to be fixed back at the factory. For now Vince has worked around it by using gorilla tape around the seal, and it's almost invisible too! :D When we finally make it to Indiana we'll have to make a trip to the Thor factory to have the windshield reset. Good thing people have warned us that new RVs are full of problems so we know what to expect--even better that Vince is super handy, so he could take care of most repairs himself. :)

The kitties have also survived the test trip. Whew! They were super stressed out in the beginning, but they calmed down after a while as long as we were stationary. We met a couple in Calistoga who have been on the road for 2 1/2 years now and who also have a cat and a dog traveling with them. They said that it took about a month for their pets to relax, so we're still hopeful that eventually our kitties would also relax even when the coach is moving.

Another week at home to wrap things up and then we're ready to hit the road for real!

Here are some pictures we've taken on our test trip:

Our RV:

expanded:

packed in:

Our kitties in their new home for the year:

Laguna Wetlands Reserve

Spud Pointe Crab Company

Bodega Head

Fort Ross

Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve

Met with Vince's friend Patrick

Indian Springs Calistoga

Bale Grist Mill State Historical Park

Petrified Forest in Calistoga

Castello di Amorosa

The castle even has its own torture chamber!

A real antique Iron Maiden!

À la prochaine !