Month: October 2016

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.