Spending Time With Charlie Brown and Another Day on the Road

We love to visit old and new friends as we travel across the country. Since we were staying in Santa Rosa, California, it seemed natural to stop by to see some of our childhood friends that live there.

We found that Charles M. Schulz, the creator of the Peanuts cartoon, lived in Santa Rosa. In celebration of Mr. Schulz, there are statues of our old Peanuts cartoon friends scattered across town.

It was raining as we visited the Peanuts Plaza surrounding the Charles M. Schulz Museum. We found that Mr. Schulz loved to play ice hockey, so he built an ice skating rink in town. That's why Charlie Brown is decked out in his hockey uniform in the picture below.

As children, we watched all of the Charlie Brown specials on television, and read the Peanuts comic strip in the newspaper. Denisa even did a Peanuts musical act for a 4-H "Share the Fun" competition when she was in high school. She wore a red version of this Lucy dress as she sang one of the songs from the Peanuts musical. So she was reliving sweet memories while hanging out with Lucy today.

We opted for the Charles M. Schulz visitor center instead of the museum on this rainy day. They had some interesting displays, and we want to report that we can recognize all the Peanuts characters from our childhood memories. If you can remember names like Schroeder, Peppermint Patti, Sally, and Ace, you would enjoy this stop in Santa Rosa as well

We are in the middle of wine country, and we enjoyed driving through the miles of grape vineyards. We wish we were wine connoisseurs, as it looks like a great place to taste your way across the valley.

We see more and more of these hillsides that have eroded from the heavy rains. We watched as heavy equipment was used to cover the slope with black plastic that was held in place with large boulders to stabilize the hillside.

There are efforts to try to stabilize hillsides along the highway, where mud slides are closing roads all over the state.

With hillsides at such steep angles to the highways, we can see why this wet winter has caused so many problems with road closures. Denisa snapped this picture of a steep area that was open to only one-lane traffic while we passed. A few days later we found that this hill had slid again, completely closing this section of the 101 highway for up to two weeks. We were lucky to get through, because the news reported that the truck detour was a five-hour route around this area.

As we neared our next campsite at Richardson Grove near Garberville, California, the roads got narrower and more winding. The trees also got bigger and closer to the road.

We should have counted the "sharp curve" alerts on the GPS, as it pictured our path along the Eel River. This is not an easy road to drive in a 35-foot motor home towing a car.

But we are officially into Redwood country, and looking forward to some good days among these giants.