Greetings, Patient Friends,

I know it's been a long time since the last posting.  While I've been busy, most of what I've been doing with Manny would have been of little interest to non-GMCers, so I didn't bore you with it.

We did have an interesting (???) trip last Monday:  A couple of our GMC friends, enroute from Orlando to their home in Oregon with a newly-acquired GMC called Manny, from 200 miles south, on Sunday to report that their transmission was making a terrible noise.  Manny agreed to bring them a replacement transmission and install it.  Since my planned departure on Monday wasn't urgent, I "volunteered" to go with him.  By the time I found out he was leaving at 4:00 AM it was too late to back out.  So we did it.

By noon, we'd replaced the transmission and discovered that we hadn't cured the problem.  Well, actually, the replacement transmission had the same problem as the one we removed. :-(  With no good alternative, the owners spent another night in the disabled coach and then had it towed, on Tuesday, to Mannys.  On Wednesday we removed, and Manny repaired, the transmission, which we then re-installed.  That time it worked!

With that final chore completed, and my 3-day welcome having degenerated into 3 weeks, I left San Jose yesterday morning headed North -- immediate destination unknown.  My tentative plan was to reach Fort Bragg, about 200 miles up the coast, via US-101.  As it worked out, I made it as far as Cloverdale on 101, then turned onto CA-128 toward the coast.  That turned out to be a beautiful drive, though VERY crooked & hilly.  It passed through a redwood forest which had apparently been logged MANY years ago.  While the standing trees are huge by GA standards, the old stumps are humongous:

That size comparison is only slightly distorted by perspective -- the stump really is about 8' in diameter!  The standing trees are something to see, too:

CA-128 took me to US-1 just south of Mendocino, which is south of my Ft. Bragg destination.  No question, this is one of the most beautiful parts of the US.  Here's a typical scene:

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Since it was still early in the afternoon and I wasn't impressed with what I saw of the RV parks around Ft. Bragg, I continued north, hoping to find a more attractive park.  Here's one of the scenes I passed:

Immediately past there, I spotted a 40' Country Coach motorhome with 3 slides out on a large flat gravel pullout from the highway.  There was also a small RoadTrek class B motorhome there.  I pulled in between them and asked each of the occupants if overnight parking was allowed.  They didn't know, but saw no signs and intended to try it.  Looking at the scenery, I decided to do the same; here's the view of that area above after the fog rolled in at dusk:

And here's what I saw when I woke up this morning:

That was followed within a couple of hours by:

And here I've stayed all day!  I had a few computer chores to complete, including learning how to wirelessly transfer photos from my new camera to Elaine's Nexus 10 computer, which I'm mostly using on this trip.  Plus, I was just in the mood to relax and enjoy the scenery.  While the sun was hot, and I enjoyed a lot of sunbathing, the temperature was a pleasant 75*F or so -- cooler in the shade, with a constant ocean breeze blowing.

Since no one ran us off last night, and it was VERY quiet -- probably only half a dozen cars passed on US-1, 50' away, all night (see the photos above for a good reason), I'm staying another night.  The Roadtrek's still here with me, but the big rig moved out this morning.  Surprisingly, none of the numerous rigs which passed today pulled in here.  Tomorrow I'll move further north, into the BIG redwood forests, hopefully finding places I'll want to spend a couple of days.  I expect to reach Bert & Faye Curtis' place in Kneeland, CA by Monday afternoon.

I'm going to create a mailing list of those whom I think may want to look at the blog, so you should be notified when I post in the future -- no need to check if I don't post. :-)

Ken