We retraced to the coast and CA 1 north on the 101 to 128 to 1.  As we progressed the noise level from the engine began to rise.  Suddenly we were driving with a very loud opening in the exhaust system.  This is illegal, unpleasant and potentially dangerous as fumes began to leak into the coach.  We opened windows and continued to press on to our campsite in Caspar Beach RV Park just north of Mendocino.  As we drove I got on the phone and made arrangements for a repair requiring us to make a week long stop to wait for an appointment.  There is only one place capable of doing this work along the coast and the drive back to a larger city on 101 is not to be thought of.

Fortunately Mendocino has been in our dreams for 31 years.  That long ago we made a trip to San Francisco for a New England Life meeting and then stayed on for ten days to drive down to Carmel and then up the Central Valley to Napa and on to the coast with a stop at Harbor House in Elk.  The plan was to check in at Elk and then drive to Mendocino and for the day and see the galleries and tour the town.  We never made it because our rental car had a flat tire as we were pulling into Elk and the arrangements to fix it ate up our travel time.  We waited a long time and it is worth the wait.  But we did arrive with yet another vehicular malfunction.

We love the location of the RV park situated just above the beach in a sheltered cove with high headlands to the north and south.  Remember that!  We toured down to Elk and further on the Pt Arena and refreshed our memories, Harbor House has not changed and iota.  The garage now sports a cafe and coffee shop in one wing and the old junkers in the field beyond that Carol lovingly documented 31 years ago are all gone.  There is also a wonderful artists collective gallery that we spent a long time wandering through and congratulating ourselves that we have given up collecting beautiful objects for there certainly were many to choose from.

Friday got off to an early start.  At 4 AM our neighbor was knocking on the door.  He had a NOAH weather alert radio and the first Tsunami alert had been sounded.  We were not real coherent, but got online to see what the ruckus was about.  I do not need to tell you what story greeted us.  By 5 AM the local fire department had two and three trucks in the campground at various times.  They spread the word that we were in the Tsunami Warning area and needed to evacuate by 6 AM.  I got some clothes on and went outside to stow the awning I had just deployed, remove the windshield cover, put the bikes on the car, put away all the outdoor toys like the chairs, grill, and other conveniences we deploy when we are going to stay for awhile.  Carol was busy putting the interior into travel mode, something we usually allow a couple of hours for as we do it slowly over breakfast starting before bed the night before.  By 6 we were hooked up and ready to roll.  We rolled all of 8 miles to a gas station located on the high ground by the 1 where I topped off the tank and got permission to hunker down.  If the exhaust had not needed repair we might have gotten more creative, but level, high and safe seemed to satisfy our needs and so there we stayed for the next ten hours until they reopened the road to the RV Park.  We got a lot of reading done and many phone calls made. We still have our repair appointment for Monday at Jacks Muffler, another early day.