Friday, August 11, 2006

Great Britain Visitors

Last night I watched as another Rexhall motorhome pulled into the site next to us. I couldn’t help but notice the woman that was guiding the gentleman in has a British accent. Curious, I looked at the license plate. This motorhome had GB plates on it. I couldn’t resist so when they got settled in I went over and inquired. Sure enough they are from Great Britain. They had the motorhome shipped over in December to spend a year touring the USA. Since Rexhall also makes our motorhome I was interested in the differences. They run on 240 volts in GB as opposed to 120 volts in the USA so their dealer had added a converter to step down their 240 volts to run all the 120 volt appliances and such in the motorhome. He said this made it easy to run in the USA because he simply had to bypass the converter in the USA. Also they had the engine modified to run on either gasoline or propane since propane is ½ the cost of gasoline in GB. It is a simple matter to switch back and forth so they can run on what ever is cheap and available. He also had to get a special license to drive a large vehicle in GB. He said his motorhome is suppose to be different than the ones sold in the USA because they do not allow vehicles over 100 inches wide, although he suspects Rexhall simply stated it was 100 inches when in fact it is 102 as they are in the USA. I asked him about the left hand drive whereas they drive on the left hand side of the road in GB. He says you get used to it, however his wife has more trouble with that then he because she is on the traffic side and not in control. She calls it the suicide seat.

Today we spent the day in the Avenue of the Giants. This is a 31 mile drive through an old section of US-101 that runs right through the redwood forest. Very nice drive. I am glad we did this in the car and not the motorhome because it is narrow and the giant redwoods are right on the roads edge. You can actually see scars in some of them where they have been hit. We did all the touristy things like drive through a tree, walk inside a couple of trees that, even though they are still alive and doing well, their trunk is hollowed out by fire and you can walk inside. We saw a tree that is over 300 feet tall. Although it is not the widest tree in the forest it is really really tall. It’s hard to get a perspective because you can’t see the whole length through the branches even though the first branch doesn’t start until the 190 foot mark. We did all the tourist things on the northward drive then turned around and did it all again, except on the way back we just took our time and enjoyed the drive. On the way back we stopped in Garberville where we actually had Verizon cell service and Susan made all her daily phone calls. It’s like in the old days when you had to go look for a pay phone.

Sorry, Can’t upload photos again.

No comments:

Post a Comment