Exercise can hurt the Alfa too!

Since we cancelled our April trip, on Wednesday  we decided we needed to take a short "exercise" run for the good of the diesel engine.  Craig said that just pulling out and driving around for 30+ miles seemed "silly", so we located an RV park just north of San Francisco that we could drive to, stay over, and return the next day.  Just exercise.


If you followed this blog last fall, you know our home parking location is a bit of a challenge to get in and out of.  Craig drove out of the upper drive, down the road, and into the lower drive with ease.  We refilled our fresh water, loaded a few things and were good to go.


A fellow blogger, Mary, once reminded me to watch out for all eight corners of the rig! 


 As Craig was backing up out of the lower drive, I was watching the side were there is a threatening stone wall, the front corners, the  back, and the lower back corners, but forgot to watch out for the top back corners. 


He was staying further to the left to avoid the wall. 


Back, 
back, 
slowly back,


Then when he had come far enough,  I crossed my arms to signal STOP.  He says the hand gesture didn't register, and he kept coming. 


Just as I yelled STOP, the driver's side upper rear corner crunched into a large tree slanting into the road. We share the blame.  


We knew the tree was there, but neither of us really saw that it leaned over the road at the 12' height.

A big ouch! 

This is the top back corner of our poor Big White Box. 

 :(

The tree is fine.

The drive up to San Francisco was nice.  I guess we are learning to take these things in stride and not waste our time being angry about them.

The night before I had expressed some reluctance to drive the Alfa thru the streets of San Francisco. Several years ago we went thru the city in a rented 26' Cruse America and it was a harrowing experience. The main differences were that it was rush hour, we were new to the rig, the passenger-side mirror kept moving, and we took the wrong route.  

"Trust me" he says. 

So after a good nights sleep, I decide to do just that.  It turned out the drive down 19th avenue and onto the Golden Gate Bridge was smooth as can be.  The traffic was light and the Alfa is really much easier to drive than that Class C was.

I'm not real comfortable going thru curved top tunnels in the Alfa!

We pulled into the Marin RV park just after noon.  It's not fancy, but it is close to a ferry if you wanted to go into San Francisco without having to pay bridge tolls and parking fees, and easy to get to from the highway.  The full hook up spaces were close, gravel-covered pads.   Off season price was $45 per night minus 10% for Good Sam discount, plus 10% tax.  In California, that's mid to low price.  

The biggest negative was the lousy WiFi connection.  It was OK in the morning, but you couldn't do anything in the evening when all of the other people were also using it.

The cable connection was good, so Craig got to watch a baseball game.  (We have only Apple TV at home.)

We took a nice walk along a level path in the salt marsh area next to the park.

We saw these large metal structures that neither of us could guess what they were.  Each was about ten feet tall, evenly spaced, and quite rusted.  Any ideas?

We also saw these birds which we think are egrets.  There were two like the taller one, and three like the shorter one.  They were "together."  Craig thought they were a family, but I'm pretty sure they were two different types.  

Help me Judy. 

What are they?

We had a nice sleep, a leisurely morning drive back, and the Alfa is once again tucked into her forest home.  I'll be looking into RV fiberglass repair places next week.