|
Cincinnati - Missouri Estes Park, CO Provo, UT Lake Tahoe, NV Monterey Bay, CA Yosemite NP, CA Las Vegas, NV Grand Canyon, AZ Mancos, CO |
WE HATE CALIFORNIA!!!! First off, as soon as we leave Lake Tahoe, we cross into California and encounter an inspection officer at the border. He checks under our RV for moths...why, I don't know. He also confiscated our oranges (Marina was quite upset)! California must spend way too much money on government employees, because we have seen multiple times as many police cars in California than we have seen the entire trip.
Once we get close to San Francisco, we are excited to see the Golden Gate Bridge. But just before we reach the bridge, we blow out one of our inside rear tires. We limp across the bridge (which was covered with fog and we could barely see) and try to find a place to pull off. We missed the turn off for the bridge overlook and there is no turning around in the RV. No great pics of the bridge...boo.
We drove what seemed like forever before we finally found someplace to pull in and check out our tire. Every lane and parking lot in San Francisco is soooo narrow and crowded it's ridiculous. This place is definitely not RV friendly. Once we finally got into the mall parking lot, we called AAA to come out and help us fix the flat. As soon as the tow guy got there, he jumps out of the car and says, "Sorry, buddy, can't help you with that. Ain't got a jack big enough." Are you serious? AAA couldn't find any other company that would come out and help us either. When Christian said, "What am I paying extra for an RV for if you can't help me?", they replied that we can send them a bill when we find someone to help us. AAA left us high and dry with absolutely NO help at all. If it hadn't been for the fact that we had a tow car to get us somewhere, we would have been screwed. So, we got in the car and headed to Home Depot to see if we could get a jack. Christian got the biggest jack they had, a 3-ton SUV jack, and we hoped that it would work. Again, traffic out the ying yang made it take 20 minutes to go a mile and a half. We finally get back to the RV, Christian realized that he couldn't break the bolts with the wrench that he had, so he had to run to an auto parts place to get a tire iron. We finally got the old on off and the spare on. All-in-all, the whole ordeal probably took about 2.5 hours. Christian did what the tow companies said they couldn't do with a $50 jack from Home Depot. How can they not have a jack big enough to lift anything bigger than Civic, I don't know...must be because of all of those tiny electric cars they have out here. The salt in the wound for today was when we ran into a low pine tree branch in the parking lot and it broke the cover over the kitchen ceiling vent. As if we had needed anything else to happen! Since it took so long to get the tire thing straightened out, we had to deal with rush hour traffic on a Friday of a holiday weekend - fun! We didn't get to the campground until about 7:30, when our GPS said when we left Tahoe that we should arrive at 2:45. What a long and exhausting day - and we didn't even get to see the Golden Gate Bridge...aargh! Denny's for dinner really hit the spot and we came back to the campground and crashed immediately. Campground: Carmel By The River Today's Starting Mileage: 77,258
Just a follow up on our middle of the night visitor (the bear): The night after our encounter, Marina said she heard a loud boom and we had just wrote it off. We talked to others in the campground before we left Lake Tahoe, and they said that our friend had been shot. Apparently, Lake Tahoe has had a record high year for bear encounters and the overpopulation is being taken care of. Close to 20 bears have been shot already this year. |
