Adventure in Gualala - June 22 - 30

On Tuesday the 22nd we headed over to the coast for a short stay (we thought) at Gualala  Redwood RV camp, a lovely spot by the Gualala river.  The campground is deep in the redwood forest near the coast, right on the banks of the river.  Every campsite has redwood trees as part of the site, and they're pretty impressive, so the campground is great.  My sister joined us with her two dogs and spent the night in our RV, our first overnight guest.  We did a lot of hiking and visited the Park Facing South beach, one of brother Chris' favorite spots.  There must have been a lot of fish running, because there were swarms of osprey and pelicans all over the area.  There was one lone fisherman, who was chagrined to find that he didn't do nearly as well as all those birds. 

After two nights of very pleasant stay, we started off back to Healdsburg.  We made it about two hundred yards, and then the engine died on the RV and we couldn't get it started again.  Uh-oh.  There we were, stuck and blocking the RV park exit road so that no-one else could get by.  We were able to get the RV started again and move it a short distance so that it was out of the way, but it wouldn't run for more than a minute or two at a time.  A fairly major crisis.  Gualala is not exactly a hub of services and we were quite concerned that we wouldn't be able to get it fixed.  We had roadside towing service as part of our insurance plan, but where to tow it?

After about an hour and a half on the phone with the insurance carrier, we had still not been able to find a garage that would take it within the next two weeks, even in cities a couple of hours away like Ukiah and Fort Bragg.   Then one of the local RV park staff stopped by on their go-cart and suggested that we contact "Junior", the local mechanical wizard.  A call to Junior and he agreed to look at it the next day in his garage, but he had limited room and we couldn't tow it in until the next morning.  So we spent the night in a vacant campsite at the RV park and the next day I took a bus back to Healdsburg to pick up our little car, while Ivy waited for the tow truck to come from Ukiah. 

To make a long story short, we were able to get the RV repaired after about a week.  Junior turned out to be a skilled diesel mechanic with a lot of experience, and after two separate repairs, the RV was back on the road and running fine.  We made it back to Healdsburg the next Wednesday, after a week in Gualala.  But the setback, besides costing a princely sum, consumed a week that we had hoped to use finishing up some work at Chris' house.  But we are sticking to our schedule, and after the fireworks on July 4th, we'll be heading out on the next stage of our adventure.  We are really looking forward to being on the road again, even though we're a bit more nervous about the potential for mechanical disasters.  We hope to be in Yosemite by the end of next week.