San Fran to Northern California

 
Well, we did leave Truckee as planned, but when arriving in Sacramento, we had the transmission checked out on the van and bad news, needs a rebuild. Yes, we are getting quite used to that word by now.
So, back to Truckee we went with Sarah, leaving the van in Sacramento. We were pretty bummed but managed to get some nice hiking and snowshoeing in as there had been a big storm. Their place is so beautiful, it's a wonderful place to be stuck,
Wednesday, in a rental, we headed back into town, only to find the van not quite ready, so we stayed in a wonderful hotel with a heated outdoor pool and made the best of our situation.
Thursday afternoon, we were off with a new transmission, headed to San Fran. Crossing the bridge, we headed directly to the beach and found a dog friendly one with views of the Golden Gate. San Fran is one of the most dog friendly places we've ever been. Tons of beaches and dog parks, but hard to camp for free. We were parked that night in a parking lot after watching a beautiful sunset, and police came by and said we had to leave. After driving around looking for other places, we finally found a street to park on and spent the night.
We spent the next day driving all around San Fran and loving it. It's a beautiful city with many hills, lots of charm and lots of diversity. Somewhere definately to return without a vehicle and a dog. Back to the beach for a couple of hours and then over to Oakland to visit a friend from Montreal now living there. We had an amazing supper and visit to a bar which boasts being a place where Jack London used to do his homework, and has survived the earthquake and is quite crooked. Finishing the night with some pool playing, it was a great time.
We headed up the coast, drove through Napa, St. Helens and Calistoga, cool towns though somewhat touristy. Drove through a scenic forest and up to Cobb where our wonderful free camping book indicated a cool place. We found Boggs Mountain forest, where a bike race was just finishing and tons of people were camping. We found a quiet place and enjoyed being in the forest again.
Next we drove to Sonoma, a bit more low-key and found a winery where we could taste outside, with beautiful views and Whipper could be with us. Perfect.
Drove up towards Mendocino and through some more beautiful redwood forest where we went for a hike, then, accidentally found a pull off that did not have a "no overnight camping" sign, very rare in Cali, and we watched a beautiful sunset and Jake saw his first sea-lion.
The next morning, we went back down to the water abd saw a pack of sea-lions playing in the water and interacting with us. It was so cool.
Drove North to Arcata and Eureka and did not find the free beach camping we were hoping to find, so another beach sunset and we were off to a rest area, with plans to move on to Oregon the next day.

Photos: http://picasaweb.google.ca/tjkuenzli