Sue and Rob

After the festivities and seeing all of the family members off, we made sure all was clean on the condo’s and took off the next day. Our drive to was over 800 miles and planned on arriving by Friday. We wanted to go through Bend OR so as to avoid sales tax and stock up on supplies before going into WA. We went up 395 on the CA side and needing to stop for the night, we found a campground just off 395.  I use the term campground loosely since I would say this is a primitive and Hunting Campground. We had to take Ramhorn road about 3 miles off the highway. Judge for yourself.

It was dark and we had no signal so it was a quite and early night. Our next stop was near or in Bend OR.

We saw some interesting landscape and there was a storm over a lake that was really awesome looking.

Then we went through a forest area that looks like it had seen some fire.

We stopped at Costco in Bend, but didn’t stock up as much as we thought we would. We went just a little north of there and parked with some trucks in a gravel lot next to Best Western. It was a peaceful night.

The next day we motored on and got to cross the Columbia River

into WA

near an area we went by back in June.

The bridge we had only looked at we were now going over.

There was another river and bridge to cross. We were entering into Grant County!

We actually arrived on Thursday since we were so close. 

Weddings were for a niece in Sedona AZ in April, a friend in La Jolla CA in July, a friend in West Covina CA in Sept, and now… someplace I enjoy the weather!!!  Lake Tahoe on Oct 22nd for another niece! The question is if it is too cold – see the actual wedding ceremony will be on a beach.

Back to how we got here. We left Mesa AZ and decided to go see a few sights.  We stopped in Railroad Pass which is just south of Vegas. Took a ride over and  to see the Hoover Damn.

Rode through the interesting town of Boulder City. Great views, 

interesting old town, and a very very low water level.  

and a few critters…

While in the area we went to one of the Blueberry Hill restaurants for breakfast with some old friends from CA. That was fun.  

We moved on from there to Death Valley. Just when I thought we left the heat behind… it found me again. We did a drive south and around through Parump.   

The altitude was nearly 200 below sea level.

Firsts for me all around.

We parked at Furnace Creek campground.

We wanted to go see the “Racetrack” that has the mysterious moving rocks, but it was a 26 mile off road adventure from the shorter way in. We didn’t feel like doing that in our explorer, so we opted to pass.

We did go to a great golf course – the devil’s!  

Some great views and sunrises.

We went slightly north to Beatty and parked for 2 nights so that we had time to visit with my cousin and her husband, Michele & Larry. They are now full time in their Tiffin RV also. It’s been about 2 years since we have seen each other. Seems our homes on wheels haven’t crossed paths. It was great to spend time together.

We drove out to Ryolite and observed some very interesting statues they call art.

  Look closely at the “rocks” in the ground.

We also saw what was left of the town. Some amazing structures.Glass house made from bottles.

On our way home we had to stop and buy some from the locals – beef jerky and honey – yum.

From there we started our way toward Reno & Tahoe. One thing we saw on the roads was a lot, and I mean a lot of RV’s going south. There must have been one RV for every 3 vehicles. We stopped at Whiskey Flats and found there was some bad weather brewing and it was causing everyone to jump ship. And here we are heading north! Rather than chance the weather in Reno we went to the RV park we had reserved for the week during the wedding.

We saw one point of interest – the Famous Clown Hotel!  

As we drove in we saw that we had to park our trailer separately in not a great lot. We were not happy with the options so I got on the phone and internet to find another option. I was able to secure us a space not far away. So off we went.

I have to say that the storms that hit were not fun. There were bad winds and lots of rain. The winds stirred up some fires just north of us. We stayed put in our RV! There were some nice views. The one day we had 5 rainbows.   

We had told our niece and her new husband back in April that we would be back so that the master carpenter could help complete the kitchen with new cabinets. They knew what they wanted and once we got there we would help them choose the right sizes and empty their wallets!  The grandparents decided to take a weekend trip over from Bullhead City to help out as well as deliver a few things that they were donating to the kids new home.

The men made quick work of the removal, finding some treasures the previous owner’s dogs had hidden so good no one found them until now.  There was also some evidence of other critters having had an entry point into the house. Once all cleaned up they began setting the top cabinets as well as how to mount the new microwave with it’s vent, imagine this novelty, actually going outside. The final setting actually worked out really great. Then it was time for the bottom cabinets. The stove was put back in place with a little modification so that it was back against the wall as much as possible because there was a little challenge. But even with that and opening the oven door, they still have a drawer that is not useable. Uh-oh.

Before…

After…

While everyone was busy working, Sadie had her work cut out for her also. There was a new addition to the family, Ruger. She was a puppy of 3 months old – shepherd husky lab mix. We let them meet outside the house in the fenced yard and Ruger did the normal puppy thing, wanting to lick Sadie and play yet Sadie was not happy with Ruger in her face. Some boundaries were set and they got to playing. Over the next few days they found a few holes to encourage in depth as well as doing some churning up of the ground on the slope.  They certainly wore each other out and learned to respect each other’s crate. I just hope Sadie didn’t teach Ruger too many bad habits or to play to roughly with other puppies in her upcoming classes.

Around and around they went

And Sadie chased around some flies teaching Ruger what to do.   

Until they passed out… 

We returned to So Cal to attend a wedding of a very good friend. It was a beautiful ceremony and a beautiful day. So glad we were invited and able to attend. 

With nothing to do especially until the next wedding in mid September, we opted to visit, of all places, Bullhead City AZ. Why you might ask? Well me too! The answer – money of course and well, to visit the parental units and maybe even help. If you thought perhaps to enjoy the weather, you should know better than that. This was the temp when in the car parked in a car port. 

There were a few mornings that were only low 80’s so we would sit outside with our coffee. Views weren’t too bad.

Sadie enjoyed our visits to the dog park in the morning and then walking down into the river!  

There were a few thunderstorms later in the month.

And sunsets of course.

We parked our RV in a newly erected garage that could store our RV and another RV of the same size while allowing us to both open up all the slides and plug in power. We set the a/c at 85 figuring it would keep things somewhat cool and those things we did worry about were placed into the frig or taken with us. We did go and do some work inside the rv too – had to turn the a/c down to 70’s of course! But we insulated behind everything that had a wall with outside exposure – protecting from heat and cold.     

We stayed with Bud & Kay at the house. I organized and helped Kay while Rob did what he could to aid his dad with the rental repairs.

There was a lot going on with the Property Mgmt getting changed and issues with the repairs so it was good for us to be there.

Mid September it was back to the previous parking area in CA. First there was a team meeting for Ape Eater Racing. Members came in from Napa and UT! 

The young couple’s wedding was a fun ceremony and reception. Another fun day.  Soon after it was a drive back to AZ to pick up the rest of our belongings to move on. We were headed to Mesa AZ and surprise some people back at Good Life while meeting some other friends. We also threw in a great dinner with our daughter’s In-laws up in Phoenix. The 2 cooks hard at work… 

Dinner is served!  

Our friends from TN had a son that was going to attend a school in that area, Tempe to be exact. So the 5 of them packed up into a van and have been driving across the country, visiting and exploring while making their way west.

It was truly a blessing to spend time with them all while helping find a vehicle and supplies for an apartment. Our time was over too quickly but that just means we may have to go back to see them in TN of course!

We next met up with some other fellow workampers from Mesa at their current job on the coast of OR – at Umpqua Lighthouse Park. The weather was much more to my liking, parked in the shade it was a high of a crisp 64! 

There were more berries here but these were huckleberries. Red and purple as well as some other berries that our hosts knew a bunch about.

We took a walk around a pond that was a mile loop that had a side path that went to the lighthouse. The most interesting thing about the area was the white sand dunes and the recreation available. I thought for about a minute that it might be nice to be here for the summer and then a thought occurred. I bet there are quite a few mosquito’s here and we all know how I get along with those little buggers. This fact was confirmed by our friends so while it is a nice play to visit, I don’t want to workamp here.

We stopped to see our niece and saw some wildlife in her front yard. 

From there we decided to make a full days journey and go straight on through all of CA to our resting spot. We passed an active fire.  

Here is the local parking lot we stopped at. Didn’t leave much spare room does it!

Kennewick WA – Our friends Rick & Beth, fellow workampers from Mesa AZ who have the same RV as us are working here for another summer. We told them we would wander our travel through here so we could visit. This was a very nice campground – lots of space and grass. Since it was only a few years old, it was lacking some shade – trees were planted but small. Had a nice pool, event center and clean spacious bathrooms. Beth was working the day we arrived and Rick had gone to pick up his 3 grandkids.  Later we all enjoyed a simple dinner and relaxing evening catching up.

Rob and Rick took the boys miniature golfing while Beth and I took the granddaughter clothes shopping a little. Hit the grocery store for stuff for dinner etc and the guys showed up at the same store getting the ingredients for S’mores! LOL. We let the boys play with Sadie and the ball on the field, wore her out nicely. Then the kids went to play in the pool while Rick supervised and Beth worked again. That night we had a nice pasta dinner with salad and garlic bread! Made S’mores for desert of course! The next day we all piled into our car and drove the 3 grandkids to meet part way to hand them off to the other grandparents. Where we met was part way to Yakima in the canyon at a place called Red’s. It’s a guide fishing local that the son-in-law works. Very nice place if you need or want to go fishing and want a guide or gear.  We stopped and got Mexican meal on the way home.

The next morning Rick took Rob to a real golf excursion. While Rick golfs weekly, Rob hasn’t hit the ball around in a while. But a bad day at golf is still better than a good day at work!

The only other thing we did was to go to Costco the next morning to stock up – both of us, grabbing some steaks to bbq of course! Throughout our visit there was no lack of wind off and on.

Friday we left the windy Kennewick WA and headed eastward along the Columbia River that separated WA and OR, hoping the wind would die down – no such luck. It was pretty strong all day and night. We headed to some BLM land by the John Day Dam in Rufus, in the gorge. Turns out that this was a popular place when the wind was blowing. The kite and wind sail surfers were out in a pretty good crowd, especially for a week day! We watched in amazement as they kept going till near dusk even though it was cooling off quite a bit.

   There was a barge that honked his way between them all at one point as well as a handful of fishermen. As we lay in bed we had to laugh at the noise – wind as well as train tracks on both sides of the river. Saturday we awoke to a calm cool morning. Since we weren’t going anywhere just yet, we hung out playing cards and going for some walks. Even let Sadie wander into the water to get wet when the day had warmed. We had to run the generator to cook up dinner and run the a/c to cool off the inside.

Sunday we drove over to Portland and found a small city park – right on another river! This time it was the Clackamette River. When I say it was small, we only had 30 amp option and had to disconnect the trailer. It was quite warm that day and the one a/c couldn’t quite keep up of course. After thought was how we should have run the generator and both a/c’s while driving down the road – it might not have gotten as hot inside. We had an RV Inspection to do in Portland Monday at 11am and so as to keep Sadie cool enough – opted to keep the a/c on in the bedroom (smaller area) and the fan blowing up front. Lots of water in her bowl and asked a neighbor to advise us if any power issues occurred. Simple dinner with lots of computer work to be done! Hit the road next morning to a hopefully slightly cooler place.

Tillamook OR was our next stop. Now those on the east coast are not familiar with this brand of foods. The town of Tillamook is not that big, is a dairy farming area. The people of that area began a co-op and founded the company that makes Cheese mostly. They have a small factory where you can do a self-guided tour. They have a line you can go thru and try 6 cheeses they make. Of course this line ended in their store! The company is now making yogurts and very delicious seasonal ice creams! We made a reservation for the RV park that was just a few hundred yards down the road – walking distance to save us from unloading and reloading the car in the trailer for one day. As we arrived later in the day, and while it was a little cooler, there was a dairy farm right behind the campground. So depending on the breeze that was blowing we didn’t always have the windows all the way open. The park was small again and we parked the trailer separately but we did have 50 amp service again – YAY. While I finished up some more computer work, Rob walked the couple hundred feet down the road to the Tillamook factory and scope it out. He also wanted to go through their “store” to  see what they had. He came home with a nice carton of Oregon Wild Blueberry Ice Cream – YUM!  This ice cream is so good and made of real foods that it doesn’t ever get solid hard in the freezer. When we walked around the park we kept seeing walls of black berries again so it must be the season. Once while in CA we found it in a store and tried their White Chocolate Raspberry Yum – delicious.

We took a chance that overnight the smell in the air wouldn’t be too bad as it hadn’t the last couple hours. In the morning we walked Sadie then walked ourselves over to the factory for our “self-guided tour” of the cheese making process. I always wonder if they take turns at places like this to see who works in the glass bubble today! We read about the farmers and the weather – how it came to be such a dairy farming area – hence great cheese and ice cream! We had a relaxing rest of our day and cooked up some food on their nice outdoor bbq grills. In the morning we’d be off again. The one down side was that the items in their store were more expensive than you could buy them at the local grocery store or Wal-Mart! But they had cheese flavors / combinations that you can’t get elsewhere. We found no other specialty items that we must have and try, they certainly weren’t getting rich off us!

On an odd note – one of my favorite movies since a girl was called Brigadoon. While driving we came across this sign.  

Our travels took us to Eugene OR to hide out for the 4^th of July weekend. We chose here to visit a friend of Rob’s that used to work at Pendarvis Manufacturing. He also liked to fish and Rob hasn’t gone fishing in a long time. River fishing is definitely a long ago activity, so Rob was looking forward to it. The first night there we went to a local small Pizza place that was worth the trip. So much so we went back again for a 2^nd visit before we left the area! They boys put in up river and floated down while Sadie and I stayed home and even played in the river, imagine that!   

We cooked some steaks on the volcano and they turned out great! Was a good weekend for staying out of the crowd.

Ronan MT – We drove through some beautiful country between Custer SD to Ronan MT.  We decided that we had the time and took our route through Yellowstone, stop and see Ol’ Faithful. While the drive was nice and interesting, it made for a looooong day. While wandering around FB we saw our friends were driving eastward toward Yellowstone. We made contact and decided to meet up for dinner around West Yellowstone. It was a nice visit, but dark by the time we finished and we still weren’t sure where we were parking for the night. We wandered up the road about 5 miles and decided to call it a night.

All these people…

For a little of this …

In the morning we continued on our way. We went through a beautiful canyon past Lewis & Clark Caverns State Park. It was a little windy as evident by the choppy water.  

We wondered if we should pull over or carry on… We made it to our next destination to visit friends in Ronan MT.  The one son worked at the KOA camp in Lake Poulson. We offered to drive him to work one day so that we could make some stops between the 2 towns – including Walmart. We had been seeing many signs along our drive north of Missoula to a store called “Three Dog Down”. Our curiosity was to stop there of course, we do need a new down comforter anyway! The store was named as such because they choose to rate the thickness of the comforters in dog warmth – one dog to three dog. This store was quite the mix of 4 sections. First, of course, being the down comforter and pillow area. Next was a sort of local knick knack area – collectibles, jams, books etc along with this “lip shit”

& “hand shit”..

Next came the clothing area that had rain gear, cold weather items (of course some down jackets), and t-shirts etc. Last section was the Candy area – with about 50 flavors of taffy along with some other interesting items. While we decided on a comforter that was a dog and a pup in warmth, we looked at and discussed getting a duvet. Since we own a dog, the white won’t stay that way very long! When we asked how long it would take to get one, maybe made to order, the owner suggested we go downstairs to the “factory”! It was a large room just smaller than the stores with 2 sewers in the busy season – which started in another week or so. The seamstress showed us some materials and said she could have it for us the next day. WOW – ok, sold! Rob was a little shocked to see that the duvets cost as much as the comforters (especially since the one we got was on sale)! Later that day, they called to say it was done and that they had loaded the comforter in the duvet for us, which also came with 2 pillow cases. YAY.

Our visit included dinner around the campfire both nights,

sharing life stories and enjoying ourselves – a lot.

We could have easily stayed here much longer with our friends as well as in the area, but life calls for now.

Custer SD – Bud & Kay had told us about a cousin that they had visited in Custer SD who owned an RV park. As I was raised on the east coast, think I finally went west of the Mississippi River when I joined the Air Force, I had never seen many sights out west. So we planned our next stop around seeing Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse (still in progress) Monuments. We had plenty of time to relax as we were here for 10 days. We tend to stay off the roads on weekends whenever we can.

We opted to visit the presidents in the evening, went before dark and saw the park interpreter do a small talk then show a little film which had music that was choreographed to turn on the spotlights at the height of the music, a little bit of dramatic effect. It was really good though. They had also told everyone before the program started that at the end, anyone who was any kind of veteran or whoever wanted to represent a veteran in their family, was to come down to the stage to help him retire the colors.  That was a really great thing for them to do.

Our visit to see Crazy horse was on another day, pretty uneventful except that the cousin Paul showed us the campground from there. The next day we rode the quad to the back of the camp property, went on a little walk, and wow – in the distance we could see Crazy Horse pointing at us. Imagine that! (if you zoom in on this pic and it is the tip you see in the middle).

We also did a drive around Custer State Park – to say we did. We weren’t expecting to see any “wildlife” as it was really the wrong time of the day.

We took Sadie with us and she got a little “freaked” out at one point and tried to climb under the back seats and even laid down at my feet in the passenger seat. It was a little warm

that day for the area so we kept the a/c on. We also went through some interesting scenery.

On Saturday mornings, both of them, we went into town to the Farmers Market, or at least the start of the season of it, and got some farm eggs and fresh honey. We also walked the main street the one day – went into one of the stores and asked about “sheds” (antlers) for dogs. We bought 2 broken and irregular ones for $5 bucks each. Gee – the parts that we buy in the pet stores are so very very much more. All the pretty sheds are used in lamps and furniture etc. We asked about the 2 locations further down the road and all the ones in the pickup truck and the wagon. They told us that those guys charge a lot more for them and therefore don’t sell nearly as many as these guys did – said the locals come to him. Well looks like Sadie has something to chew on for a few years, hopefully!

Paul has moved on from running the camp full time, he is 82 or so even though you couldn’t tell talking or walking with him. His one daughter Nancy and her husband are the caretakers now, along with another daughter Becky coming a few times a week to help out in the office. So Paul spends a lot of his time over in Fort Pierre (not to be confused with Pierre which is on the other side of the river) where he used to live, has a home he calls the bunkhouse along with some other properties. He and his son are fixing up a house and grazing some animals on the lands. Paul had invited us over and we decided to take him up on his offer and take the 60ish mile ride (in the car). Of course along the way we made a few stops – one at a Minuteman II Missile Silo that was now inactive but you could look at from the outside.  Next was at the Missile Museum – which is where you could sign up for a guided tour of a different one of the silo’s but was sold out. And the 3^rd stop we made was to the world famous “Wald Drugstore”.  It was as good as any place for a potty break and excuse to say “been there, done that”! It was an extremely hot day – for South Dakota – in the upper 90’s. It even said 104 in Pierre when we went to go have lunch – what the devil is going on! We had a great day – saw his 3rd daughter Kari, her husband, as well as his son Eric and family. We drove back to Custer that eve around dusk / dark as it started to cool off. Part of the drive is along a small 2 lane county road back to the highway. By the time we got onto the highway we could barely see out the windshield as the bugs were so thick on the windshield. At the first exit that had a gas station – we got off and cleaned off the front of the car! Whew – to be able to see again and know you couldn’t use your wipers to get them off. So glad the rest of the drive was clear in comparison. On a side note – even if we could, our wiper blades on the car are in need of replacement that they wouldn’t have done us much good!

Once we finished relaxing and it was time to move on, we had told Kari that we would stop in Deadwood to say hi. She took us to lunch to visit a little more and then on up to see Moriah Cemetery where they had world famous buried – Wild Bill Hickok along with Calamity Jane and a few others. Our walk was cut short as it started to rain so we headed back for her car and then back to our home.