I head North looking for adventure. The first stop is Four Wheel Campers in Woodland. They greet me like family. I have some notoriety since my camper fell off the back of the truck in the high mountain desert. https://thequietripple.com/2018/12/05/thank-you-jesus/ They immediately fix some small niggles on the camper and charge me not a penny. Good people.

I then drive up to Colusa. There is a great wildlife reserve just outside town that I will wallow in. https://www.fws.gov/refuge/colusa/ I spend the night in a riverside park in Colusa.

Colusa has known better days. The main transport route from San Francisco to the goldfields was the Sacramento River. Colusa marked the end of the usual navigable stretch. Sometimes you could get as far up as Red Bluff but Colusa was the deal. Big fortunes were made in transport. A Mr Lee from China did so. He was a great supporter of Sun Yet-sen, the Father of the Nation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Yat-sen. Sun Yet-sen visited Lee in Colusa and his daughter lived there for many years. So there you go.

The weather is dreich at best and maybe even gruamach. Difficult for photography.

I then move to the nearby Sacramento National Wildlife Reserve https://www.fws.gov/refuge/sacramento/ . Tens of thousands of Snow Geese, Ross’s Geese and White Fronted Geese spend the winter here. By the time I get there it is getting dark and after a quick tour around, I head off to Black Butte lake to spend the night.

Back to Sacramento Reserve but still very gloomy.

I then head over to the coast, stopping at the Sacramento Valley Museum in Williams https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g33272-d2108437-Reviews-Sacramento_Valley_Museum-Williams_California.html. It is closed for the Winter but the ebullient Dixie is just leaving as I arrive. She volunteers to give me a tour anyway. It is such fun. She is super enthusiastic and very knowledgeable. She is the one who told me about Sun Yet-sen. One of the best things about being in a truck in obscure parts of the State is that, more often than not, there is no phone signal and accordingly no internet. I had completely forgotten about the UK election until Dixie demands an in depth analysis of the Tory landslide. I do not know what to say. Things ain’t what they used to be.

I drive on for hours through huge Sequoia forests in the pouring rain until I finally hit the coast and spend a cosy night in the parking lot of the general store in Elk. Off very early and what do I see just outside the tiny town? Elk.

It is a beautiful day and I slowly make my way down the magnificent Pacific coastline.

Point Reyes always delivers and this time it was coming onto a beach littered with Elephant Seals.

California is amazing! So much country, so much wildlife.

I drive back to San Francisco and enter over the Golden Gate Bridge.

I never tire of the road.