Sacramento and Petaluma

While we waited for 4:00 pm, the appointed time for Claudia’s haircut, I refreshed my sourdough starter. For those of you who aren’t familiar with cooking with live sourdough, you start with a “starter” that is essentially a live yeast culture. This culture is kept in the refrigerator between use and must be “refreshed” every two weeks or so by adding a small amount of the existing culture to a flour-water mixture. The active culture “feeds” on the flour-water mix and ferments into a new larger culture. When it’s ready, the culture is very bubbly and throws off a pungent sourdough odor.


The starter at work!

The motorhome is filled with a really great sour odor right now. Maybe I’ll do some cooking. Maybe some nice fresh sourdough bread? I am drooling! Too bad this can’t be a smell-o-blog!

Claudia came back with food, some new clothes and a great looking bob. Not “Bob”, but “bob”, as in haircut. Claudia romped Gizmo who, again, went totally nuts on the grass. She was still laughing when she finally got him back into the rig. We started out to go to dinner at a local fish & chips place but didn’t like the looks of it when we arrived so we just went to a Denny’s Diner around the corner. Returning to the rig after dinner, we relaxed and studied up on the Petaluma area. We’ll move tomorrow.

Today was the usual morning…wake up, bring the mutt into bed with us, get out of bed, put on shorts, romp the mutt, feed the fish and, finally, sit down with two cups of coffee and decide what we are going to do today. We confirmed that we will be heading for Petaluma and made preparations for leaving. We pulled out at 9:15 and arrived at 10:45. Not bad at all! We first stopped at the Petaluma KOA, met the manager, confirmed our stay and got all kinds of great information about the area and our proposed route of travel. We went to the Elks lodge, got set up and called Ron and Juanita, the owners of Adventure Caravans who were in Florence, Oregon mapping out the trip as they headed south. We passed on all the info we had gleaned so far and finished setting up. As I set up, I heard a bunch of honking. Not “honking” as in a car horn, but “honking” as in a V-shaped flight of Canadian geese flying right over my head…well within shotgun range. I leered! I then returned to the rig.

Around 6:30, we went into the lodge for a great hamburger dinner. After dinner, we headed out for a drive to show Gizmo the area. Spotting a McDonalds, we pulled in for a couple of ice cream sundaes. Claudia had a hot fudge, I had a caramel and Gizmo licked the cups. We then returned home to clean up loose ends, romp the mutt and get a good night’s sleep.

Thursday morning, August 13th – We paid for another day here at the lodge and loaded the car to go sightseeing. We drove west on E. Washington Street in Old Petaluma, headed for Bodega Bay. Now…let’s play Jeopardy! ANSWER – “Petaluma” What’s the question? “Where does the founder of the World Wrist Wrestling Championship live?”

Monument to the founder of wrist wrestling

Isn’t that interesting? It just might come in handy some day. You never know! Anyway, we continued toward Bodega Bay and passed a restaurant with a unique play-on-words name…Rocker Oysterfeller’s.

We arrived at Bodega Bay

Bodega Bay from across the main channel

and stopped at the Visitor Center. The lady at the center gave up a bunch of great information. First and foremost, you can’t walk around Bodega Bay. It’s almost all right on Highway 1 and there are no sidewalks or shoulders to walk on. You drive…period! As I looked out in Bodega Bay, I saw a great picture of a sailboat.

The blowboat "Happy" hard aground!

I later found out the owner had been evicted from the marina, anchored in the harbor and wound up on the mud flats courtesy of a major storm. It was then abandoned and sits there so tourists can ask the ladies at the Visitor Center all about it. Another interesting fact about Bodega Bay is that the Alfred Hitchcock movie “The Birds” was filmed here in 1961-63. Tippi Hedren, the star of the movie returns to Bodega Bay each year to sign autographs during “The Birds” festival. We just missed her. She was here last week.

We stopped at a hole-in-the-wall fish & chips place that had six tables. The fish was excellent but the clam chowder was only mediocre. Next door was a tourist trap souvenir shop. We walked in and I spied a huge table with many buckets of salt water taffy. I grabbed a plastic bag and started putting handfuls of different flavors of taffy in the bag. I was quickly stopped and reminded that it will probably be VERY expensive. I thought it over and then continued stuffing the bag…this time with only half-handfuls. The bag came to just under $5.00. As we drove away, we started sampling the various flavors. They were all good to excellent…until I got to the cinnamon flavor. All the other flavors were nice and soft and chewy, but not the cinnamon. I bit down on the piece and found my jaws stuck together. It was like a piece of flexible epoxy…a HOT piece of flexible epoxy! I didn’t dare force my jaws apart. I have some VERY expensive crowns in my mouth and didn’t want to spend tomorrow trying to find a dentist. I had to grin and bear it as the taffy S-L-O-W-L-Y melted in my mouth. Did I mention it was HOT? If you ever see some cinnamon taffy, and think you might want to buy it, you might just want to re-think that purchase!

We drove north along the coastline

and hooked a right on Highway 116 and headed northeast along the Russian River.

Russian River

The river was full of swimmers, kayakers, waders, floaters and the like. We also ran across a great-looking golf course caller Northwood. The fairways run right through the redwoods. It is beautiful!

Northwood Golf Course

We passed through Gueneville and back to 101 and home. Gizmo was VERY happy to see us. He ran right out and took two very long pee’s. I don’t know whether the smile on his face was happiness or relief. Claudia fixed two very refreshing chai teas and we started kickin’ back. Giz got an ice cube and he kicked it as well.

Tomorrow, we head for Ukiah.