Gold Beach RV Park, Oregon

I left Ventura Beach Saturday morning . I’d hoped to find a place at Santa Cruz but the RV park was full so I carried on.  Santa Cruz was inviting and I could have checked around for other RV parks but I confess I had a desire to get home. Horse to barn.  I also saw getting though San Francisco as  the last  challenge. Cities with 10 plus wide freeways were intense.  

I travelled through Oakland missing downtown and the Golden Gate Bridge somehow. I never left freeways but  passed over a lot of bridges until recognised  San Rafael where I once lived. I thought fondly of my buddy there , a brilliant guy who I’d discussed gravity and life with in kitchens and garages fixing his motorcycle.  One of the good guys. 

  I have depended on the electronic map plotter on the Ford F350.  What a life saver.  The trip has been as pilots say, “flying by instruments’ all the way.  I can’t imagine how I did this decades back with hand held maps.  

I continued north having put Bodego in my plotter,  I saw some great sunsets near there then got back on the 101.  I eventually pulled off the road a ways and crashed. I love having my own camper.  We woke before dawn and Madigan got a chance to pee before we were heading towards Eureka.  I stopped at the MacDonalds for egg sausage McMuffins, coffee and hash browns.  Unfortunately they don’t make the burgers Madigan loves till after 11 am.  We did find his favourite wet Food,  Tiki Greece and Tiki France. I cleared that out while he visited with a Maltese poodle.  

We passed through the winding dark Redwood Highway, a motorcyclists dream. I loved doing it in little cars but was not so excited in a truck with  top heavy camper.  I passed a herd of Elk in Elk Valley. Madigan was really interested.

I never tire of the Northern California Beaches with the wild crashing waves and surreal coast.  We passed on to the Oregon Beaches I love this whole stretch since my previous cockapoo Gilbert having had eye surgery became blind and anxious till I brought him. Here .  Sailing we’d played on beaches. So here he was in known territory and finally safe to run after banging into everything.  He ran free doing circles around us. Laura and I cried to see his joy.  

Madigan likes the beaches but he’s happy to run free everywhere.  

I was glad to pass out of California. Every time I visit I find it less appealing, more chaos.  ‘Are you going to San Francisco.  If you are you’d better wear flowers in your hair’ had been the siren call the summer of the hippy. I hitchhiked there from the Colorado Peace and Love Festival with my first wife, Baiba, the most beautiful girl in the world.  She was my Bobby McGee then and we’d arrived in the streets of San Francisco and danced in the streets to Gracie Slick’s psychedelic rock.  Baiba had painted love on my forehead with red lipstick.  It was the boomer generation and as far as the eye could see there were young people. We’d travel north to Vancouver then fly to London England and bicycle across Europe.  Those were heady days and the fondest memories.  

Now I’d been back to San Francisco with two separate wives and lived in Marin with a girlfriend and come back some more with my present girlfriend Laura of 24 years of grateful love and care.  I’d sailed the coast of California in the SV Giri and returned later alone to San Francisco Bay to outfit before sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge on the Christmas Passage to Hawaii through northern Pacific winter hurricanes.  I love California and loved my time in Oceanside but was glad to get to Oregon. It’s the beginning of the pristine north for me.  I miss Canada and love the coast highway.  10 hours to go and I’ll be back home,

Gol Beach RV Park was a find. The manager was welcoming and it’s truly a bit of heaven on earth with the greatest view of Oregon beaches and crashing waves, seagulls and sea air,