When we went to Williams Hill, we intended to stay until the Monday after Easter, when we had reservations at an RV park in Larkspur, near the ferry to San Francisco. However, we realized we were just killing time, so we decided to go back to the San Benito Fairgrounds on Sunday, and spend the $40 for water and sewer so we could catch up on laundry, and be about 2 hours closer to San Francisco on Monday. That plan worked perfectly, and we got the laundry all caught up and were on the road north before 9AM Monday morning. We made a stop in Gilroy, the garlic capital of the world, and stocked up on all things garlic, as well as a replacement bottle of Marie Sharp’s Smokin’ Marie hot sauce.
I would have happily purchased one of everything in the store, but contented myself with just one box of garlic bits, pickled garlic, garlic chips, garlic popcorn, and the hot sauce.
From Gilroy, we drove through Oakland and into Richmond, where we visited the Rosie the Riveter National Historical Park. The park office is located where the World War II shipyards were located, and the National Historical Park is dedicated to all of the laborers who kept things going stateside when most of the men were shipped off to war. We didn’t plan to spend much time there, but it was more interesting than we expected, and is right next to the Bay Trail which we walked with the dogs to a sculpture park associated with the National Monument.
The sculpture park’s main sculpture represents one of the ships built when the area was a shipyard during WWII.
We left the Historical Park later than expected, and rather than do any more sightseeing, we drove directly to the Marin RV Park. It was only about 8 miles away, but due to our lack of understanding of metropolitan traffic, it took us a couple of loops until we managed to get in the right lane to get off at the right exit while going the right way to get into the park. When Tom finally checked in, the woman in the office laughed because she said she had seen us driving by and wondered how long it was going to take us to figure it out. It wasn’t the best start to something we weren’t sure we wanted to do anyway, but we ended up liking the RV park far more than we expected, and were very glad we made the decision we did to stay there.
We couldn’t find any free to cheap camp grounds near the city, so we had looked at some of the state and county parks, but most of them weren’t super cheap and were an hour or more out of San Francisco. We had booked tickets for the ferry to Alcatraz, so we knew we had to get into the city and leave the dogs in the parked camper. We read horrible reviews about parking in the city where people had their windows broken and cars robbed, so in addition to being basically shit at driving in city traffic, we had a lot of anxiety about leaving the dogs in the camper while we were out touring, not to mention even finding a parking space for our oversized vehicle. So, we’d booked two nights at $100/night at Marin RV Park, with the justification that we’d probably pay at least half that for parking, plus the fuel and anxiety of driving in and out of the city and finding parking. Marin RV Park is just a 10 minute pleasant walk to the Larkspur ferry, which is only $8.50 each way per person, and the dogs could stay in the camper in the relatively secure RV park. And, the best part was that we didn’t hate it as much as we thought we would. The people were all pleasant and friendly, it was far quieter than we expected (despite two men yelling loudly at each other at 2am the second night because one had taken himself to the hospital and not woken the other), and it even had a nice area to walk the dogs on some abandoned railroad tracks right behind the park. It was perfect for the nights before and after our big day in San Francisco and Alcatraz.
We couldn’t find any free to cheap camp grounds near the city, so we had looked at some of the state and county parks, but most of them weren’t super cheap and were an hour or more out of San Francisco. We had booked tickets for the ferry to Alcatraz, so we knew we had to get into the city and leave the dogs in the parked camper. We read horrible reviews about parking in the city where people had their windows broken and cars robbed, so in addition to being basically shit at driving in city traffic, we had a lot of anxiety about leaving the dogs in the camper while we were out touring, not to mention even finding a parking space for our oversized vehicle. So, we’d booked two nights at $100/night at Marin RV Park, with the justification that we’d probably pay at least half that for parking, plus the fuel and anxiety of driving in and out of the city and finding parking. Marin RV Park is just a 10 minute pleasant walk to the Larkspur ferry, which is only $8.50 each way per person, and the dogs could stay in the camper in the relatively secure RV park. And, the best part was that we didn’t hate it as much as we thought we would. The people were all pleasant and friendly, it was far quieter than we expected (despite two men yelling loudly at each other at 2am the second night because one had taken himself to the hospital and not woken the other), and it even had a nice area to walk the dogs on some abandoned railroad tracks right behind the park. It was perfect for the nights before and after our big day in San Francisco and Alcatraz.
I took the photo of the campground, where we were packed in like sardines, from the abandoned railway that led to some green space where we could have walked the dogs for miles if we wanted.