DAY 8

Guess what?? We had MORE laundry pile up on us so we worked on that for a while this morning. While we were tackling that mountain we also got the house cleaned and everyone showered…all before 11am. Just like a production line. We packed up the house and pulled out of Travis FamCamp. We had to stop at the BX to get our traditional shot glass and souvenir. It was probably the largest BX I have seen to date. Even the food court was full of different dining options. Brad had been joking with the kids about wanting to eat in a Taco Bell in California so we ate at the Taco Bell on base. It was as good as a Taco Bell can be. Then we headed to the commissary. WOW! I have not been in a commissary that busy in quite some time. Not even near payday or a case lot sale. It had a great produce section and even a Sushi deli (Ashley) next to the meat deli. And let me warn you, everyone here on base has a BMW, a Lexus, or a Mercedes. I mean everyone.

We drove through Napa Valley today. The land is gorgeous. We stopped and got a flat of strawberries. (OMG!!) that had to be the best I have ever tasted. They were red through to the center and were dripping down your arm juicy. Highway 101 is very scenic and very curvy. Trees canopy the entire road and everywhere you look there is lush under growth as land covering. Flowers are just beginning to bloom so they are very florescent in color. Shocking yellow, sweet orange and tart green burst in our eyes.

We stopped at a Big K for the night in Eureka. Fired up the generator and camped out. We got a little rain, but not very much. Just enough to make a soothing rhythm to cast us asleep after a long day of driving.

DAY 7

Well today we were prepared to head to San Francisco…again. After yesterday we felt we better knew what to expect. First lesson in a big city, expect the unexpected. I grew up in Tucson, a big city I thought so I had hopes not to stick out like a sore thumb, HAHAHA I hear ya’ll laughing, I really believe it too!

When we arrived to the BART departing depo, there was a woman reading aloud from the bible and singing “Jesus loves me and, you” repeatedly. When we returned almost 8 hours later she was in the same spot, singing the same verse. The only other time I had met some one like this was in TX at the Alamo. That depot needs some good cleansing energy so if that’s what it is to some; I hope her message sinks through.

We were again asked to donate money for people to ride on BART, I think the same couple as the day before. I find it hard to teach the kids to help whenever possible in a situation like this. What would really be helpful and make difference in their day to help them self or would we just be another sucker paying for their ride. Not sure, I am always torn in these situations. I want to teach caring but also that you help those who help them self.

We rode into the city and hopped onto an old streetcar. Those bad boys get packed. We were in there like sardines and they kept picking up more and more people. We got to the Pier 39 to travel to Alcatraz. Kenzie was not to keen on the boat idea. I think see has listened to me talk alittle to much cuz she’s not to fond of boats like her mama. Kaela was relieved to see the boat was not as big as the Titanic as she has watched the movie and is scared to ride on a big boat. We rode on top of the boat. What a great ride. The weather was fabulous and the scenery could not be beat. We arrived on “The Rock” and got a pair of headphones for an audio tour of the prison told by actual prison guards and prisoners that resided at “The Rock”. All of us thoroughly enjoyed the tour. Afterwards we hiked around the island and got some fun souvenirs. The best purchase so far has been the kid’s harmonicas that have Alcatraz engraved along with a saying that, “Music is a privilege,” a story told about the prison during the tour. All 3 kids picked it and have not put them down since. They actually sound pretty good and it’s easy to know where they are. Now Brad and I need to get a washboard and a Moonshine Jug and we’ll have a real hillbilly band.

We ate at another diner, not as good as Johnny’s, I think it was Lori’s diner. I would not recommend it for the food but it did have kewl decorations of old cars and stuff.

We walked around before catching the BART to head home. This is the most diverse city I have ever been in. It was great! We have traveled to some really one dimensional towns so it’s nice to see a place that anything goes, not just about sexual orientation either. That is what everyone automatically thinks of but the food, culture, races, music, clothing styles, and art all expressed many different influences. I think we saw every nationality represented in harmony. And within each nationality was diversity. Guess what we represented, remember the kids had their harmonicas by now:)??

San Francisco is beautiful and we would love to come back. We were disappointed with the litter and graffiti everywhere but I guess it’s to be expected with such a large population in a small city. I think next time we visit we will come without the kids and stay in San Francisco rather than commute in. It is just too stressful trying to keep track of the kids in the large crowds, even with ALL of us holding hands like the freaks we are, yes I still make everyone hold hands. Easier to make sure they are not picking up things on the ground, really! Also, being a HUGE germ-a-phobe I was constantly trying to tell the kids not to touch the handrails, doorknobs, seats or anything else hundreds of people had touched that day.

We will be packing up the house and heading North through Napa Valley next. We are in route to the Redwood Forrest. We’ll see how I handle highway 101. Mel’s Bloody Mary mix might have to be a companion this leg of the trip.

Side note: if you are planning on any kind of road trip, XM is a must. We got the unit cheap at Car Toys for $39.99 with a $20 mail-in-rebate (6 month subscription is the key), Brad installed with an FM frequencier thingy, another $20 and service is $12.95. I know, I know, paying for radio is stupid but almost 4 years of driving through TX-AZ w/o radio and CO-AZ w/o radio for 3 years no less than 3 times a year, plus all the other traveling done = willing to pay $13 per month to have completely NO breaks in service where we have traveled so far.

I am working on adding photos so check back soon.

DAY 6

So the consensus is we are not city people. The traffic, crowds, lack of parking for big trucks and rudeness is too much for us. Have you ever read “Country Mouse, City Mouse?” If you have it explains it all. The smallest truck we have out of 7 is a ’73 Jeep Wagoneer and we were driving Rocky…the biggest truck. When we arrived to park to travel into San Francisco via the BART we were informed that they do not have the “problem” of duallies to park in the city so we were on our own. Mind you we were not in San Francisco but in the BART parking lot in Richmond trying to catch the public transportation because traffic and parking in San Francisco is bad! Trying to keep track of 3 kids when you’re out numbered is stressful enough without worrying about parking a land yacht.

Riding the BART was an experience all in its own. It stands for the Bay Area Rapid Transit. It is the closest we have ever been to riding a subway. We started in Richmond, CA and ½ hour later we were on Market St in San Francisco. This was much easier than trying to drive a crew cab dually through the city and finding parking.

We then caught a cable car to the Cable Car museum. Brad and Zac got to stand on the edge and hold on just like in the movies. The girls sat with me on the bench. Once at the museum we saw how the cars are powered and how big the cables are. We even got to learn the history of cable cars, the first models and different tools needed to build them.

From the museum we headed to the Palace of Fine Arts. The architecture was beautiful; there were columns that stretched to the sky. The dome was larger than one could imagine. We then headed to the Exploratorium http://www.exploratorium.edu/ to let the kids check out the hands on science experiments. When we got to the door, we learned they were closing early for a special event. If you are ever in San Francisco this is a must. We got to enter for about 15 minutes, just long enough to see what we were missing out on. Note: 1st Wed of the month is free, a savings of $55 for a military family of 5.

We saw the Golden Gate Bridge. Very cool and amazing to think how it was built. The kids got to play in the Pacific Ocean water for the first time today. The kids loved the sand as it was very soft. Kaela was even prompted to lay in the sand like of making a sand angel and rubbing the sand on her face. Zac, of course, began to dig into it making different tunnels and forts. Kenzie found some glass that had been tumbled in the water for while. She is convinced it is a rock. She headed back out to look for more “rocks” when she got drenched from a wave that snuck up behind her.

We ate at Johnny Rockets for lunch. It’s a 50’s style dinner that was small but very cute. The grill is in the middle of the restaurant so you can watch your burger being cooked.

The Becker Bunch even braved Lombard Street; “America’s most crooked” street in San Francisco. Not with the truck and RV but on foot. It seems incomprehensible but cars were driving on it while we hiked down and then back up.

There were 2 young guys in a little yellow 2 seater scooter that we kept seeing all day that were having too much fun, dancing and singing while driving the scooter thingy. While driving down Lombard St, they jumped out, dancing and switched places. They even did the Night at the Roxbury thing. The kids cracked up and waved each time we saw them.

We had a long first day in San Francisco with some crazy events, like being sworn at by a homeless man for not giving him money and punk kids trying to scare us after getting off the BART to head home. Not like we looked like tourist, with our proud Air Force hats, Keens and Camelpacks! We are heading back tomorrow to explore Alcatraz; we’ll see how many kids we leave there.

DAY 5

We made it out of NV without gambling, well at least not with money. We took the gamble of heading through Lake Tahoe instead of driving on I-80. We gambled and won. The drive to and through Lake Tahoe was beautiful. The trees were huge compared to those we saw at the USAFA. They had bright green moss that grew over the trunk and down each branch. The green was very vibrant. It was very congested around the lake and gas prices were way over the $3 mark. It was also the first true test for Rocky (our truck). There were 3 passes that we had to pull and the last one seemed to go on for about 3 miles. The grades didn’t seem to be a problem for anything or anyone but me. Driving that close to the side of a mountain was a bit stressful. There will be more therapy in the near future.

We saw first signs of spring here in CA. Big bugs… yuck! With the bad there is good. Things have been very green and lush since we crossed the border. I can see why people love this area. It is just sad that so many decided to build as much of the natural landscape is gone.

Traffic was intense as we approached Sacramento. We pulled through there at about 8:30pm and it seemed like 8:30am. Good thing we weren’t pulling a big trailer or something. Good thing for us diesel is about $.20 cheaper than gas here in California. Fingers crossed it stays that way.

We are now at Travis A.F.B. FamCamp. This park is much smaller than what we are use to but it is very beautiful.

We have lot of fun stuff planned in San Francisco so we will see what all we have time to check out. We are planning our trip to San Francisco using a book buy DK. I LOVE it, makes it very easy for me to plan our trip to the bay. www.dk.com

DAY 4

We pulled out of FamCamp on Hill AFB about 1:30pm. Did you know even on vacation you still have to do a crap load of laundry?? Our friends surprised us while we were fueling up on the way out of town. They posed so we could get a couple of pictures together. Then they crossed the line… they snuck money into the truck to try and pay for dinner the night before. We didn’t find it until we got to NV. We’ll get them back…it’s on Scott and Katrina!

I did manage to find a local scrapbooking store to visit. I did really well too. Brad was happy I only came out with a little bag. The mission was to find something about UT. I found a cute little sticker. The other stuff was just too cute to pass up.

We drove about 400 miles today and ended up at Winnemucca, NV in the Wal- mart parking lot.

I-15 takes you around Salt Lake and it was absolutely gorgeous. Huge mountains, water never ending and even some sail boats taking advantage of the beautiful day. “That is a lot of water,” Mikaela said “You could get lost in all that water”. You have to love a child’s logic sometimes. Zac wanted to drive over to the Morton salt mine we passed to dare some one to lick the mountain of salt. See previous statement about child logic.

We drove past the Bonneville Salt Flats. We thought about opening up the truck and see if we could top the world’s fastest land record but we thought Thor would probably freak in the trailer. Nevada is what we had expected so far. We plan on stopping in Reno for lunch then we should make it to Travis AFB before dinner time.

One side note:
If you are driving through WY and you find a Forrest River spare tire cover it’s ours. It seems the 55 mph winds swiped it off the back of our 5th wheel. We just figured it out this morning.

DAY 3

So today we planned on spending the day with our friends here in Hooper, UT. We got ready and began to pull out of FamCamp. At this point we are not hooked up to the RV. Two men flag us down to inform us that we were in their reserved spot. They we extremely nice and apologetic even though they did nothing wrong. Turns out, the guy that helped us park and told us to grab any open site forgot to inform us that the building across the way has a reservation sign up for the camp sites. So needless to say we had to move to an open site. Luckily Brad and I have become really fast when is comes to hooking up the RV so in no time we had the RV moved and re-hooked up. The people that we moved for were really nice and if we were not leaving tomorrow, we could have stayed where we were but the sites here are nose in. We informed them that we were glad they caught us when they did because we were on our way out and would not be back until late.

We drove through Hooper, pronounced Huper (I think) by the locals, to get to our friends. They invited us to their son’s birthday party so the kids got to run around and eat chocolate cake. I think this has been the highlight of their trip so far. We then headed to the Hill Aero Space museum. We ran out of time to walk through the different exhibits inside but we were able to walk the static display. We saw some really cool planes to include a B-52, B-1, and a C-123. As we were heading back to the trucks, an elder volunteer for the museum invited us into the chapel. He explained the history of the chapel and spoke of some of his flights and time served. When I say elder, I mean touching into the 80’s easily. He was a very spunky and kind man. Just a great little bit of information to appreciate those who served many years ago for our freedoms.

We headed over to Scott and Katrina’s for dinner. The manly men fired up the grill (keeping their eyebrows) and began the BBQ. We had great food and great company. We have been fortunate along the way to meet really great people. The kids all got along and had a great time playing on their 1 acre yard just east of the Salt Lake. The area is lush and trees are blooming already. They have a smorgasbord of animals ranging from miniature goats, a miniature horse, two dogs and two cats. Zac had a great time just digging in their huge dirt pile and with Nathan (their 4 year old son) as his side kick. Nathan followed Zac around as though Zac was his hero. The girls played with Lauren (their 6 year old little girl) while us adults relaxed and enjoyed the company. They have promised to visit us in AK and you better believe we will hold them to their word. They have a great set up and we totally enjoyed our stay here in Huper (Hooper) UT.

So we now say goodbye to some really great friends that we will miss until we meet again. Goodbye surprisingly beautiful Utah and on towards California.

DAY 2

Well we got up this morning and packed up the house. We needed showers so we drove to the Fitness Center on base. We were warned about the wind in WY but NOTHING could prepare us for what we experienced today. Trying to walk into the wind was a work out before entering into the building. We stopped at the BX for some souvenirs and asked if it was always this windy here and they laughed at us. The lady said “this is nothing”. We were amazed at the base housing. It was some of the nicest I have ever seen. It reminded me of the housing on Ft. Sam in San Antonio. We got a picture of one of the more amazing houses we say. Turns out it was a 2 star general’s house. It was hard to believe that it was one house.

We hit the road about 11am and started towards UT. The wind was constant and strong. The warnings reported 55 mile an hour winds. Pulling an RV up hills with 55 MPH head winds are not the best making for a fun road trip. Brad backed it down to about 55 and it kept the truck from pulling over 2500 RPM. It kept downshifting out of overdrive so in some areas we got low double digit gas mileage. I guess it could have been worse…like Kansas we had passed through a few weeks before.

The scenery was getting better; it was just the wind that made it slower than what we would have liked it to be. As we approached UT the mountains began to change and we saw really cool rock formations. I was expecting UT to be flat and desert like Moab cuz that’s how I remember it. It is gorgeous. The hills are turning green and look like velvet. The mountains are very close and still snow capped. Once we got to Hill AFB, our friends Scott and Katrina came over to help set up the house. It is great to see them. We are all twins separated at birth. We are spending Sunday with them then we will head out towards CA on Monday.