The Millers Go RVing - Day 14

I was woke by a text that came in at 5:45am; people back home seemed to forget that we were several time zones away and would text us quite early in the morning.
The free breakfast with this hotel was only pre-packaged pastries, cold cereal and oj, but then again we weren't paying $400/night for the room (we saw as high as $770). Considering the cereal snobs in this family [ahem], we simply exercised our right to visit McDonalds for a hot breakfast.
We drove across the Golden Gate bridge to leave San Francisco...

A & I would've liked to drive by the "Painted Ladies" [houses] yet, but not everyone in our party was agreeable. Saving that for next trip.

 Day 14 was Redwoods Day, on our way north along the CA coast. We did detour a few miles for the privilege of driving through a redwood tree. Another thing we could not have done in the RV. On the way through the forest to the Chandelier Tree, we saw where they were working on carving old tree stumps into wildlife...

 

I have always wanted to drive through a redwood. However, I did not actually drive through it then because I got out to take the pictures; the lucky young people who actually got to do this activity were not near as impressed/appreciative as I was.

 

We made it to the Pacific Ocean!

 

 

We didn't make it this far in Big Bertha like we wanted, but Jane got us safely to the west coast.

One of my kids gave me 1/2 a sand dollar he found, and another picked up a whole Dungeness crab claw for me. Which I added to my beach collection in my laundry room.

We stopped at the Lady Bird Johnson Grove of the Redwood National Forest. The road up to it was steep- again something we could not have reached with the RV. It was chilly so no one wanted to hike the entire loop through the grove. At 58*, it was 50* cooler than Nevada 3 days prior.What a switch!     

Besides massive trees, there were the most gorgeous ferns.

 

 

 The coast is just so pretty we had to stop again

When we arrived at our hotel, this was our room's ocean view...

 We had a family suite, which worked out pretty well for our size of family. Would you say we hit the jackpot with a red tub?

There was no a/c or fan -in fact the windows were open and we had "natural air conditioning". Fortunately for us we were no longer in 100* weather and it was quite comfortable. There was good Wi-Fi and the owners were very accommodating.

R took A & I down the street to Battery Park lighthouse. We were a little late- the tide was too high to get over to the island.

 

We walked out on the jetty to get sunset pictures.

The garage back in NV called mid-morning to confirm that Big Bertha did need a new transmission, and to secure a down payment on the bill. Yikes! The price tag on this trip just took a sudden hike. But what choice do we have? One good thing- they will fix the parking brake while they have her apart anyway. They assured us they are doing everything they can to have her fixed by the end of the day Friday because Monday is a holiday. This is not the greatest news though, because we had planned to be in Seattle on Friday. The farthest possible point  we could be from NV- a whopping 1200 miles. It would actually work better for us if it wouldn't be finished till we are a little farther around the loop. R & I started going over our schedule and trying to figure out how to make it work. Because it does a lot of good, I start dreading the long drive awhile, too.

to be continued...