mohaus

Sunday, April 04, 2021

Moores Go West: Day 17 (Easter in San Francisco)

Easter in the camper. We are grateful for a risen Savior and a safe place to land to be with friends after a couple of hard days. Thankfully I remembered to snag some goodies for the boys before we headed out on our big trip west.

Spending Easter Sunday in San Francisco with friends. First stop was the Golden Gate Bridge (we also stopped at Facebook Headquarters for a photo). This is our Easter pic for this year.

After the visiting the Golden Gate Bridge, we grabbed dim sum from Chinatown for lunch. We took it down to eat at the wharf with a better view of Alcatraz. After eating we walked around the pier and experienced street performers before finding a local spot for ice cream. We ended our tour of SF by driving up Hyde Street, which felt shockingly vertical. It was a very culturally diverse day — a great way to experience the melting pot that is San Francisco. A great reminder on this Easter Sunday that Jesus died for all of us, no matter how different we are.

Leaving SF, we stopped at Half Moon Bay State Park to play in the waves on this chilly afternoon. It was so beautiful. Sharing this afternoon with friends, was the best.

We ended this Easter Sunday with our friends by celebrating with a Passover Seder meal together. When we first found out that our friends would be in Palo Alto (for work) at the same time as us, we had no idea it would work out for us to 1) crash on their street in Palo Alto with a camper, 2) spend an entire day sight seeing with them in the Bay Area, or 3) get to spend a holiday with them. God was in the details during our time here and we feel very blessed to have had this time to catch our breaths and be with friends.

Saturday, April 03, 2021

Moores Go West: Day 16 (Northern California)

The Good: our check engine light went off and truck seems to be ok again. We plan to drive south to more populated areas to get it checked out. The Bad: We had an incident with another dog in the campground. A muzzled dog with no owner came out of nowhere and started attacking Sophie. The kids got out of the way, Daniel came out of the camper and was able to get ahold of the muzzled dog. Another man came over and said this same muzzled dog had been attacking his dogs and kids. Daniel and the other guy (also named Daniel) got the crazy dog under control and leashed with two leashes to our truck. Then Daniel found the owner (the manager of the campground as it turned out 🤯). It was crazy. Thankfully no one got really hurt, but we are all shaken up. The other Daniel brought us fresh cooked rock crab and told us that not all Californians were bad. We are headed to the beach for a bit then will hit the road again. Lord willing we will have no more problems with the truck.

We went and walked the bluffs at Noyo Headlands State Park before moving on for the day.

Heading south we stopped at Van Damme State Park so the kids could wade in the ocean. It was chilly. It’s nice to travel with a camper and have fresh changes of clothes, towels, and an outdoor shower to hose dirty feet off with.

Today was mostly a Travel Day. After we did our two beach stops we started the drive through another really winding section of road next to the coast and then over to wine country (Navarro and Sonoma). We stopped to grab In-N-Out in Santa Rosa.... When in California. The boys were not big fans, but I enjoyed my cheeseburger and shake.

Our beach hike made our 27th hike of 2021 (27/52) and we walked 2.5 miles. This brings us to 76.5 miles hiked this year.

Friday, April 02, 2021

Moores Go West: Day 15 (Redwoods in California)

It has been a day. Yesterday we learned that Hwy 101 — the only real road heading south — was intermittently closed all day every day only allowing 90 cars pass every two hours due to a recent landslide. We also heard that if you got there before 9am, cars were released through every 30 minutes. We tried so hard to get there before 9am. But we didn’t. We arrived at 9:06. We were the 8th car in line and had to sit for almost two hours. At least we had the camper with lots of snacks, books, and a bathroom. I took Sophie on a one mile walk. Daniel tried to work, but internet was spotty. It was a rough spot to our day. We have also had a rough ending, but I’ll share that later. For now, this is what the start of our 15th day on the road looked like.

After clearing the landslide, we stopped at the tourist spot, Trees of Mystery. We don’t often do these touristy things, but this was a fun spot. The kids especially enjoyed the swinging bridges in the tree canopy (this might have made my knees a little wobbly) and the gondola up to the top of the mountain. The end was full of lots of enormous tree sculptures and audio of many tall tales related to Paul Bunyan and others. It was a fun mid morning activity. After this side adventure, we continued south with the plan of camping just north of San Francisco tonight.

After the Trees of Mystery, we made lunch and then headed further south on Hwy 101. We decided we wanted to drive on Hwy 1 down the coast for a bit, so we drove over a pretty dicey mountain pass with plans to park at a beach somewhere near Mendocino. I would grill and we would enjoy some time by the water before heading on down to be closer to San Francisco. All was going well, until it wasn’t. We were almost to Fort Bragg when Daniel noticed that his exhaust brake was no longer working. Then he noticed that he only had two gears: first and fourth. Suddenly all of our up-hill climbs were all at 5mph. We chugged slowly up hills and coasted mostly down. Whenever we had cell service I started googling and calling possible campgrounds. Where would we land on a Friday night? Thankfully a marina had a spot. We parked on a hope and a prayer. I cooked dinner (not by the beach like we had idyllically imagined) and Daniel started trying to figure out what could be wrong. We aren’t out of the woods yet, but it is currently looking like it is an electrical problem and not the transmission (or something like that). Hopefully we can head out tomorrow without any major setbacks. Say a little prayer for us though!

The Trees of Mystery made our 26th hike of 2021 (26/52) and we walked 4 miles. This brings us to 74 miles hiked this year.

Thursday, April 01, 2021

Moores Go West: Day 14 (Redwoods in California)

We spent the morning working on Jr. Ranger books, climbing giant stumps in our campsite and exploring our campground. Now we are off to see more giant trees.

The boys picked up their third Jr. Ranger badges of the trip today. We hiked through the Stout Grove today. It was awe-inspiring to walk among these giant trees. We sat on some downed trees and ate our lunch in the quiet of the forest. It was an amazing experience.

After hiking to Stout Grove, we drove down Howland Hill Road — a historic stage coach road. All dirt. Lots of potholes. Mostly one lane. It was a fun, but bumpy ride.

We couldn’t finish the day without going to the beach! First up was the Crescent Beach Overlook then down to the ocean. Seeing the Pacific Ocean was a first for our boys.

This was our 25th hike in 2021 (25/52). Technically this was three different hikes making up five miles but I'm only counting this as one official hike (one in our campground, one in Stout Grove next to a river and through an amazing forest of gigantic redwood trees, and one next to the Pacific Ocean). This brings us to 75 miles hiked this year.