Day 1 -- Carson City, Nevada to Pacifica, California -- 330 Miles

After weeks of getting ready, we fired up the Fleetwood and rolled out of Carson City at 9:00 o'clock sharp under leaden skies that promised rain and possibly snow flurries on the passes. It remained overcast all day but we got lucky and didn't experience any snow or heavy rain most of the day. We did experience some light sprinkles in the late afternoon, but we counted ourselves lucky for missing the promised weather over Carson Pass and the Sierra Nevada.

When we first started RVing in a Class C motorhome we ordered a full-sized GPS that was designed for lengthy vehicles. That meant it wouldn't put us in the possition of having to navigate extremely narrow roads or light-duty bridges. In the last few years, however, my navigator (Concetta) switched us to relying exclusively on her IPhone which, since it doesn't care what sized vehicle we're driving, can sometimes make a bothersome navigational error.

Friday, when we left Carson City, our intention was to go south on Route 88, which courses over Carson Pass at 8,574 feet, and down into the Gold Country around Jackson, California. There we'd jump on California Route 99 for a couple of miles, transition over to California Interstate 5 for a bit, then head west on route 580 over Altamont Pass. All went as expected.

At that point it was our intention to head west on Route 580 until it was convenient to segway over to the San Mateo Bridge which would drop us on the California west coast very near our son's home in Pacifica. Unfortunatly, our IPhone GPS had an entirely different plan.

Now enroute around five hours (which included our hour for lunch), I guess we were getting a bit punchy and we just kept changed routes as the GPS dictated. Finally, when we had not encountered the exit to the San Mateo bridge we began to suspect something was very wrong. But there was just too much hustle and bustle on a rush hour Friday afternoon to do anything but keep up with the traffic around us and have faith that the device would ultimately deliver us to our destination.

Finally, when it was approaching four o'clock in the afternoon, we made an exit that seemed to make sense and Pacifica seemed to be just down the road a bit. Trouble was, we had a five o'clock dinner reservation and we still had a few miles to go and a rig to set up in the park when we arrived.

And that's just about the time that we learned on the IPhone that there was a traffic accident and tie up just ahead. Naturally, traffic immediately started slowing. Before long we were going two or three miles an hour while, unbeknownst to us, no less than four fire trucks or ambulances had squeezed six lanes of traffic down to two lanes about 3 miles ahead.

It turned out that we rolled into the RV camp exactly at 5:00 o'clock, hurriedly parked the rig facing the wrong direction, and then dashed to our son's car to be wisked away to the restaurant where our reservation was being held. Fortuntely, the restaurant was good natured out our few minutes of lateness and all was well. Still, our GPS had sent us entirely out of our way adding at least two extra hours to our journey. Who ever heard of it taking eight hours to drive from Carson City to Pacifica, California?

The rest of the afternoon was spent with son Jason, his wife Caroline, and our grandson Nico. We had a great dinner, lots of great visiting, and we still got back to the RV park before it actually got dark so we were able to reverse the direction of the rig so the utilities were on the right side, get everything set up, and hit the hay early. It had been a super tiring day and we were asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow.