IncorpoRatedX
Explorer
Fall of 2016
After a summer of being baked in the Phoenix sun, I took off fo a 3 week stay in Berkeley, living on a sail boat. Then spent another two weeks in phoenix living on the surface of the sun, but I quickly followed that up by two weeks on the road from Arizona to Michigan, up around Lake Michigan to see fall colors, then back across the country to the southwest in my old turbo diesel van. Here's how it went:
The trip started as a run up to Berkeley, originally there was no intention to take the van cross country at this point. I loaded my 95 E350 Powerstroke we called Ron Burgundry with everything I needed for the CA trip...
Red Mountain.
Starting on the east side of the phoenix valley, the summer had been hot and dry, I was ready for a break from the heat, forest fires near the Mongollon Rim and up the coast through Big Sur had me worried the route might be full of disaster. It turned out to be quite nice.
Within a short drive the first day I made camp near a Forest Road north of Payson. The air was already cool and refreshing.
Coconino National Forest
The beginning of the trip went by fast, I had loaded up on a bunch of episode of Everything is Stories podcast, lots of interesting characters and stories from the last 50+ years, oddly enough a number of them from Arizona.
After breaking camp the first morning very early in the high pines, I rolled straight through across 40 to the coast. I found some dispersed camping for a comfortable nights sleep and morning brought cool heavy fog over Cambria CA and into the hills where I was resting. I could smell smoke from the fires north once I got up to the coast.
I stopped for a while and walked down to the beach, wandered alone in the early morning fog. Some joggers made their way down the boardwalk and a few lonely cars passed by.
Cambria California
By mid day I was half way from Cambria to Berkeley, so I stopped and had lunch on the coast, just off of the PCH in my folding rocking chair. At this time, due to closures of Big Sur and many other parks being closed in the area from the coastal forest fires traffic was very minimal, there wasnt much for tourists, aside from myself and some other brave, stupid or ill planned people.
PCH
By sun down I was parked in the Berkeley MarinaI got settled into my life in the bay pretty quick...
Part two will cover my time in the bay...
After a summer of being baked in the Phoenix sun, I took off fo a 3 week stay in Berkeley, living on a sail boat. Then spent another two weeks in phoenix living on the surface of the sun, but I quickly followed that up by two weeks on the road from Arizona to Michigan, up around Lake Michigan to see fall colors, then back across the country to the southwest in my old turbo diesel van. Here's how it went:
The trip started as a run up to Berkeley, originally there was no intention to take the van cross country at this point. I loaded my 95 E350 Powerstroke we called Ron Burgundry with everything I needed for the CA trip...
Red Mountain.
Starting on the east side of the phoenix valley, the summer had been hot and dry, I was ready for a break from the heat, forest fires near the Mongollon Rim and up the coast through Big Sur had me worried the route might be full of disaster. It turned out to be quite nice.
Within a short drive the first day I made camp near a Forest Road north of Payson. The air was already cool and refreshing.
Coconino National Forest
The beginning of the trip went by fast, I had loaded up on a bunch of episode of Everything is Stories podcast, lots of interesting characters and stories from the last 50+ years, oddly enough a number of them from Arizona.
After breaking camp the first morning very early in the high pines, I rolled straight through across 40 to the coast. I found some dispersed camping for a comfortable nights sleep and morning brought cool heavy fog over Cambria CA and into the hills where I was resting. I could smell smoke from the fires north once I got up to the coast.
I stopped for a while and walked down to the beach, wandered alone in the early morning fog. Some joggers made their way down the boardwalk and a few lonely cars passed by.
Cambria California
By mid day I was half way from Cambria to Berkeley, so I stopped and had lunch on the coast, just off of the PCH in my folding rocking chair. At this time, due to closures of Big Sur and many other parks being closed in the area from the coastal forest fires traffic was very minimal, there wasnt much for tourists, aside from myself and some other brave, stupid or ill planned people.
PCH
By sun down I was parked in the Berkeley MarinaI got settled into my life in the bay pretty quick...
Part two will cover my time in the bay...
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