California Road Trip - Day 1

Today we set off in our little red VW Beetle on a 7-day adventure to tour the Northern California coast. Our first stop was in Ashland, OR for lunch. The smoke was thick from uncontained wildfires in the region. Despite the recommendation to stay inside, we ate lunch by Ashland Creek at Thai Pepper.

We continued on to the Marin Headlands, across the bay from San Francisco. Imagine: The
car GPS is leading us to our first ever hostel. Darkness is falling. And we come upon this:




OMG what is this? A one way tunnel in and out of the headlands. The 5-minute stoplight allows traffic from the other direction to safely pass and then turns green to let you go after everyone has passed. This has all the makings of a horror movie. Remote location, one very limited way in and out, no cell service. But wait there's more.

We passed a family of deer before arriving at our accommodations for the next couple of nights:

As we left the car we saw several raccoons scurrying around the grounds, followed by signs about the aggressive raccoons and warning to not leave food sitting out. Charming for sure.

We entered the hostel and decided to read the flyer about the history of the building. We couldn't quite figure out why a hostel would be allowed on a federal reserve - then we found out why. The building was a hospital during WWII. That isn't creepy at all. So we checked in. We were issued a towel and a set of sheets and then instructed to head upstairs to the female dorm and claim a bunk.

In the dorm room we met our roommates, who were Girl Scouts (at this point we were pretty certain that we were actually in a horror movie and prepared to die). There weren't any bottom bunks available, but one of the sweet Girl Scouts exclaimed, "I didn't know real adult people stayed in these places! One of you should have my bottom bunk." Amy decided to forgo pride and took the bunk. Climbing a ladder in the middle of the night is hard.

By this time we were starving. We decided to venture back through the tunnel and head to Sausalito for some grub. We happened upon a delicious place with Spanish tapas. If you ever find yourself hungry in Sausalito, check out Copita. With full bellies and tired bodies, we went back through the tunnel (presumably to our death) and passed out on our bunks.