Northbound !

 As you saw on the previous post we had a great time at  ATHS National show. When the ATHS show ended Sunday we went along with about 40 other trucks on a bridge tour. They had a route set up that took us on 5 bridges in the San Francisco Bay area... The Oakland Bay .. Golden Gate..Richmond-SanRaFael..Carquinez and Benicia/Martinez bridges. We stopped for a mini truck show and a delicious box lunch at a park along Hwy-1 on the Pacific Ocean.We drove the ltlgrntruck through parts of downtown San Francisco.... Wow What Fun... sure glad we were playing follow the leader... Just  like everywhere we go people standing on the sidewalks point and wave and give us thumb's up. It still amazes us the reactions of people to the ltlgrntruck.  When the tour group turned south we left them and turned north on the beginning of our journey through the Pacific Northwest.  Our first stop was on the Russian River at Duncan Mills. We realy do not make too many plans on our travels. This area was a surprise. We were just headed to Hwy-1 on the coast but found this area a favorite getaway for S.F. people. It has a redwood grove nearby and the  river is a favorite for canoeing and kayaking.  A neat area, so we stayed a couple of days.  When we left, we went on the coastal highway. WOW again. The coast is amazing. Sometimes when looking I forgot to look where the truck was going much to Jan's dismay.  So we didn't travel very far and made many stops just to look at the new world we had entered. We saw lots of sea lions and seals and stopped at a couple of lighthouse and landed at Caspar Beach between Mendecino and Fort Bragg where we stayed for 2 days enjoying the rain !!! not. We met several interesting people in town.  One stopped us on the street by standing directly in front of us to take our picture where he was joined by another person who had just grabbed his camera out of his car.  One of the locals( transplants from New York who used to sell clothes to the Meijer stores that we retired from... Small,small world ) told us that times were so bad that most people had to wear "2-3 hats, like flippin' burgers and growin' weed in the garage" just to keep their heads above water.  We can attest to the hardships a lot of people are going thru.  We see so many "for sale", "closed" and just plain empty buildings.  God help this country.