Heath Utah Trip 2009

Home again

Wayne — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 05:38:53 +0000

Thursday July 9 – Be it ever so humble there is no place like home. We made it home around 3:00 this afternoon. After 28 days living in a metal box, the house appears so big.
Yesterday we stayed at Maryhill State Park which is right on the Columbia River. This area of the Columbia River Gorge is famous for gusty winds which brings wind surfers out in droves. A wind surfer rides on a what looks like a surf board with a sail. Well the wind was gusting but since it was the middle of the week the wind surfers were not exactly droving. There were a few zipping back and forth across the river and there was also a kite border. A kite boarder is attached to a kite that is probably 15 feet across and he stands on what looks like a skate board without the skates. I’m really not sure what the board is for because the kite boarder spends more time flying above the river than he does on the water.
We had to stop in Centralia to see the granddaughter. It has been hard on Grandma to go so long without getting a Tessa fix.
We found geocaches in two more counties on the way home. We have a goal of finding a geocache in every county in Washington and now have 21 of the 39 counties. Any excuse to make a few more trips.
By the time we got home we had put 3117 miles on the motorhome and 1735 miles on the truck. It has been three weeks since we saw any rain. After three weeks of dry hot weather I don’t think I’ll ever complain about the northwest weather again. Well maybe just until the next time it rains.
I think we mentioned we had our kitty, Missy, on the trip with us. We have taken her with us in the motorhome for almost 10 years now but this is the longest trip so far and she was a good little traveler. She is an indoor kitty only and doesn’t try to get out when the motorhome door is open. She hides while we are traveling, no matter how many stops we make for gas, lunch, etc. but as soon as we turn into our driveway she is on the steps meowing at the door. We wondered what would happen after such a long trip but even after 28 days on the road she knew when we were home.

Bend Oregon – Day 2

Wayne — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 03:14:36 +0000

Tuesday July 7 – Today one of us got up 7:00 and the other got up around 9:00. We won’t mention names but her initials are DH. I would have gotten her up earlier but you know what they say about sleeping dogs. After a leisurely breakfast we headed to the “Lava Cast Forest”. The lava casts, or tree molds, were formed about 6000 years ago when hot lava flowed through the forest. As the lava came in contact with the trees, it solidified around the trunks of the larger ones and then cooled encasing the trees in stone. The lava originated from one of several side vents on the Newberry Volcano. The walk we took was only about a mile long but we could see several of the places where the trees were surrounded. To get to the Forest we had to go up 9 miles of a very dusty gravel road. There was so much dust on the truck I had to wash the truck before the State of Oregon started charging us property tax.
We then went to the Lava Lands Visitor Center. This is an amazing area. Acres and acres of a’a’ (ah ah) lava rock created by lava that exuded from the side of Lava Butte, a cinder cone containing a crater 150 feet deep, less than 6000 years ago. Lava Butte rises 500 feet from the surrounding area and is one of over 400 cinder cones in the Newberry Crater area. There isn’t much parking room at the top so we were assigned a time when it was our turn to drive to the top. Beautiful view of the Cascade Mountains including Mt. Bachelor and the Three Sisters-Faith, Hope and Charity. There were lots of very friendly squirrels there but not friendly enough to have to do the squirrel dance.
From there we went into Bend and found some lunch and looked around town. Visited the Old Mill District on the Deschutes River which is a restoration of, can you guess??, an old mill. It is now an upscale (too far up the scale for us) shopping area, condos, and nice trails along the river.
Tomorrow is another travel day all the way to Maryhill State Park near Goldendale Washington. It is only around 150 miles away but it is at least in our home state. No internet connection at the Park so we will do our final posting after we get home on Thursday July 9th.
Take care and see ya soon.

Lava Cast

Lava Butte

Mt Bachelor and the Three Sisters

Fourth of July, Klamath Falls, Bend

Wayne — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:25:05 +0000

Monday July 6 – Happy belated Fourth of July. For the last couple of days we have been transported back into the dark ages. That is we have been without internet access and lived to tell about it.
We were invited to Nancy and Bob Anderson’s house for the Fourth. Dianne and Nancy enjoyed themselves tripping down memory lane and we met Nancy and Bob’s only daughter, Lisa, her husband and their two children. Cute little kids who had lots of fun and were totally worn out by the end of the day. They have a lovely back yard and we dined on a great barbequed dinner on their patio. The dinner was fabulous. Nancy even put her finest Irish linen table cloths on the tables. I never realized that Irish linen looks just like the red paper. While we ate dinner some kind of bug dined on the back of one of Dianne’s legs and a wrist (we suspect some kind of small spider). Next day these 6 bites were swollen to the size of a quarter with a yellow filled blister on top. They didn’t hurt, or even itch much-which is good because they are still there. Rumor has it that there were 6 dead spiders on the Anderson’s patio the following morning. Do you think that there is a connection between the two?
Sunday morning we left Sacramento and headed north to Redding where we turned off I-5 and headed to Klamath Falls. We passed Mt. Shasta and got some really nice pictures but due to the warm weather it only had patches of snow on it. Global Warming??? The postcards we found with the mountain covered with snow made a much prettier picture. We arrived at the fairgrounds in Klamath Falls and made our way between several hundred horse trailers to a full hookup 50 amp site – $15. There was some kind of horse event going on but by early evening we were the only ones left in the camping area. The weather had cooled down nicely but the aroma outside rivaled the cattle odor we experienced at Lind to the point that we used our air conditioner and kept the windows and door shut. The next morning a young man was out with a pooper scooper shovel and wheel barrow but as hard as he worked, it didn’t seem to make any difference. Slept in, showered, put gas (lots of gas) in the motorhome and left about 10 AM for just south of Sunriver in the Bend area. The huge Thousand Trails Park we are in here is wonderful. At one point Thousand Trails bought all of the NACO parks and we have found that the original Thousand Trails parks are so much nicer than the NACO parks they bought. The former NACO park we stayed in at Lake Minden has seen better days. We still have to go to the lodge for WiFi but the sites here are big and flat with a nice buffer between them and there are two pools and hot tub.
Once we set up and had some lunch we headed north toward Bend. Came to the High Desert Museum and spent 2 ½ hours there. Could have used a little more time but they close at 5:00 and kick everyone out. Very interesting place. Old cabin and lumber mill, otter, reptile and birds of prey displays and lots of other things to look at. Very interesting corral made of willow trees.
Tomorrow we will explore in this area some more before heading further north. Only 3 more nights in the motorhome – on this trip that is. Once we get home we are off to our county fair with the motorhome.
We miss you all and will be home soon.

Mount Shasta

Willow Corral at the High Desert Museum

Sacramento – Day 3

Wayne — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 21:25:37 +0000

Friday July 3 – Today was a catch up day from yesterday. We went to visit Arnold at the State Capitol Building. But unfortunately, or fortunately whichever the case may be, he wasn’t at home. Apparently he was too busy passing out IOU’s to the bill collectors (California doesn’t have enough money to pay its vendors) and raising the number of state employee’s furlough days to 3 each month (California doesn’t have enough money to pay its employees). It sounds a little like Washington State, doesn’t it? I wonder what is next? Letting all of the state prisoners out of jail one day a week? With all of the prisons that we saw (see previous post) they must have a bazillion prisoners. They could save a bunch by giving them a day off. Okay everyone in cell block 3 you get Monday off. Have a good time and we will see you back here 8:00 Tuesday morning. Just think, with all that savings Arnold and the State Legislature would not have to cancel any of their junkets to Europe this year. After all, politicians need these vacations on the taxpayers’ expense. (Enough of the soapbox, this was an unpaid political announcement, and I approve this message).
Anyway we did get our Capitol picture. The California Capitol Building and grounds is one of the prettiest we have seen so far. Lots of palm trees, flowers and public space. There were also a lot of squirrels on the grounds also but thankfully they were not as friendly as the ones at Zion. There was no need to do the “Squirrel Dance” to keep them from crawling up the pants leg.
We also visited the 28 acre “Old Town” of Sacramento, a registered historic landmark and state park. This is a great little area down by the Sacramento River that has some of the beautiful old buildings dating from the late 1800’s complete with boardwalks and horse drawn carriages. They even had some old Hotels that had the arched windows. We learned last year in Pendleton Oregon that arched windows indicated this was a place where lonely cowboys could find some female companionship on an hourly basis. If you know what I mean.
Saw old Fort Sutter which is now a state park and right across the street from the hospital where Dianne’s friend Nancy works. We decided to park, check out the Fort and have some lunch. Instead we discovered another way California is trying to make ends meet. We put our money in the PAY HERE machine to get a sticker for our window. It authorized our payment – but it wouldn’t print a sticker. Finally we put the sticker that another machine had so kindly printed when we paid to park at the Capitol back in our window. We managed to run across the street, take a couple of pictures of the Fort and leave without supporting the economy even more by getting a ticket. Maybe we can go stand in Arnold’s IOU line? After being bold enough to go off the edge of the map we had and getting lost a few dozen times we finally made it back to the motor home. By getting lost we at least we got to see the town. Some portions of the town multiple times since we went in circles a lot. Only 92 degrees here the last two days and cooled down enough at night to not need the air conditioner.
Tomorrow we are invited to the Anderson’s for a Fourth of July BBQ. (AKA the Nancy and Dianne trip through memory lane and Giggle Fest, oops I mean Chortle Fest. They don’t giggle, remember? Actually, when they were visiting the other night there were a few tears. Women, Go figure..).
This may be the last post until we get to Bend, Oregon on Monday. I don’t think there will be time for any posting on the Fourth of July (I may not even remember what happened on the Fourth of July) and there will probably not be any internet connection at the Klamath Falls Fairgrounds where we will be on the 5th.
Have a safe and sane Fourth and keep all your fingers safely attached to your hands.

Old Sacramento

California Capitol Building

Sacramento – Day 2

Wayne — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:20:05 +0000

Thursday July 2 – Well this morning I lied to you. I know it was not the first time. Anyway we were supposed to go to the State capitol Building and then to the Jelly Belly factory. Well we got the priorities correct and went straight to the Jelly Belly factory. The capitol will be tomorrow. Once we got to the Candy factory we discovered that half the population of California had the same idea. The line for the tour was wrapped around the lobby 6 or 8 times and out the door. The people keeping the line orderly said that it was it was somewhere between a 45 minute to and hour and a half wait. Now that really narrowed it down. The good thing was that they handled out samples while we waited and waited- for about an hour for our turn to take the tour. The one big drawback was that in the line with us were 385,916 screaming kids on a sugar high. How do I know that there were exactly 385,916 kids? Well I counted each one of the little darlings as they stepped on my foot. Can’t even imagine what a weekend day would be like. The tour itself was very interesting. Did you know that from start to finish a single jelly bean can take up to 20 days to make? This factory employs about 700 people and makes up to 100,000 pounds of beans a day. I still have a hard time believing that “Vomit” is not one of the biggest selling flavors. In the store at the end of the tour we bought somewhere around 30,000 pounds to bring home. Well by the time we get home there may be 3 pounds left.
After the Jelly Belly experience we headed toward Napa to see the famous vineyards. Lots and lots of grapes and just as many Wineries. With not many signs advertising wine tasting and tons of traffic making it difficult to turn into or get back out of places, we ended up just driving around looking at everything and not stopping to taste and/or buy anything. The shops we saw looked liked the kind where the help would have snickered behind their well manicured fingers if we had walked in anyway. Got back home about 7:30 and had dinner. Relaxed a bit and worked on this blog before heading to bed.

Sacramento – Day 1

Wayne — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:11:02 +0000

Wednesday July 1 – Well kind of. Actually I am writing this on Thursday morning. You see last night we were visiting with Nancy and Bob Anderson here at our place to the wee hours of the morning and I didn’t have time to fulfill my blogging obligations. Well I lied a little about that also. You know us old retired people, the wee hours of the morning is around 10PM. We need our beauty sleep. And believe me I need a lot of beauty sleep. Ya, Ya -I know- too little too late. Anyway back to Nancy and Bob. Nancy is Dianne’s school chum from wayyyyy back in the 6th grade. I mentioned back in the first posting. You remember the giggle fest. Now I was properly chastised by Nancy and was told that grown women don’t giggle. Well I must admit that I stand corrected. After listening to those two, grown women do not giggle. They snigger, chuckle, chortle, laugh and guffaw.
Anyway yesterday was a travel day up I-5 from Bakersfield to Sacramento. For the first time since we left home we did not have to climb any big hills. I-5 from Bakersfield to Sacramento is Flat Flat Flat. Did I mention that that it was flat?
The word for day was Trucks. There were trucks everywhere on I-5. There must have been the same number of trucks as autos. You get by one truck and there were another 50 or 100 ahead of you. They must really enforce the 55 MPH truck speed limit here as we didn’t find many that were exceeding it by much. We were wishing the orchards and fields had signs saying what was growing there. Saw trucks full of carrots, onions and watermelons. Nancy said many of the fields around where we are camped are growing rice. Will have to look more closely today.
We figured there are three basic professions in this part of California. One is truck driving (see above), the other is farming and the last is being a prisoner. During the 300 mile trip we must have passed 7 or 8 state prisons. That is roughly 1 prison every 40 miles. For some odd reason Dianne didn’t want me to pick up a hitchhiker standing alongside the road-after all he had on a nice red jumpsuit.
Today we will be going into Sacramento to get a picture of the Capitol building and then heading to the Jelly Belly factory. Who knows, once they a look at my jelly belly I may even get a job as their spokesperson.
Since the Thousand Trails park we are staying in has WIFI only at the clubhouse and not at the individual sites, posting to the blog may be a little spotty the next couple of days so bear with us. If this is not acceptable please call 1 800 WHO CARES, talk to our customer service representative who has little to no command of the English language, and you will receive a 100 page complaint form to complete and return. Once the form is processed you will receive a total refund of your blog subscription price. Please allow 2 to 3 lifetimes for processing.

Overnight at Bakersfield

Wayne — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:19:33 +0000

June 30 – A hot drive from Las Vegas to Bakersfield today. California is the seventh state we have been in on our trip. Stopped in Baker and took a picture of “The World’s Tallest Thermometer” – it read 102 degrees at 11:30 AM. Since the thermometer is a virtual geocache we got to add another state to that list. Ate some leftovers for our lunch and continued on our way. Good thing we ate some of our recently purchased cherries for lunch since not too far down the road a very nice employee of the State of California took the rest of them away from us at an Agricultural Inspection Station since there was nothing on the bag to indicate where they were grown. She said they were going to mash them up and put them in hot water to see if they contained any fruit fly larvae but wouldn’t be surprised if they just ate them for lunch. It’s too bad we forgot to tell her about the watermelon that was on the bed, She would have enjoyed it for lunch also. We were polite and cooperative – she was just doing her job. Coming across by Edwards Air Force Base the thermometer was hitting 114. When we crossed the Tehachapi Mountains summit at a little over 4,000 ft. it seemed like a piece of cake after some of the passes we have gone through on this trip. Our Orange Grove RV Park is really an orange grove with orange trees, currently covered with hard little green fruit that look like limes, dividing the parking spots. They aren’t tall enough to provide shade for the RV but we have the air conditioners going. Not only did we get our camping spot for half price (thanks for the coupon Ken and Alice!) but this park has a place where you can wash your RV. And did ours ever need it! Found another geocache, looked around a bit in town and fixed us some dinner. Showers and bed next on the agenda. Tomorrow we head for Sacramento.

World's Tallest Thermometer at Baker California

Sin City Day 4

Wayne — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:55:59 +0000

Monday June 29 – Needless to say we are Las Vegas’d out. Four days down here in 3 digit heat is more than enough. This morning we went to Arizona Charlie’s Casino for a $3.29 breakfast. Huge piece of real ham, two eggs, toast and jelly. Yum Yum. Only went to two casinos and Wayne came out $92 ahead today which really helped our overall win–loss record. His largest single win was a $76 jackpot on a JAWS penny machine with a 20 cent bet. We didn’t keep track to the dollar because that spoils the fun but know we didn’t do too bad in the end. Officially it got up to 108 degrees today, however, we did see some thermometers that were in the 3 digits and none of those digits were a zero (ie 111) Needless to say we spent most of the day inside in air conditioning. Didn’t take pictures today either.
Tomorrow is a travel day to Bakersfield. Let’s hope it is a little cooler there.

Sin City Day 3

Wayne — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:54:54 +0000

Sunday June 28 – I hope I can get this posted before we get back home. The heat down here must have melted the internet connection. Sometime during the weekend the speed of the internet connection that we have here went from usable to snail mail speed. I couldn’t even post Saturday’s pictures until Sunday morning.
Anyway, we mostly went geocaching on The Strip today between 10 AM and 4 PM. We found 5 of them so now we can add another state to our list. Of course as we walked from cache to cache we had to stop in the casinos to cool down. The temperature hit 107 today. Even the locals were complaining because the normal temperature for this date is only 102. To us it doesn’t matter if it is 102 or 107-hot is hot.
The heat must also affect the drivers down here. They are crazy. I think they have a little game here since when a local driver sees our truck with the turn signal on to change lanes, all of the cars in the lane that we want to move into close up ranks so that there is only 6 inches between them so no one can merge into their lane. The taxi drivers have another game. They aim for you, especially if you are walking on the sidewalk. If you see a taxi cab within a block of you, you had better take cover behind a tree or duck into a casino to avoid being used as a hood ornament. Hmmm, do you think they are hired by the casinos to drum up business????
Came back to the motor home for dinner and a cool-down dip in the pool before heading out again. We just came back from doing the “Freemont Experience”. Freemont is the “Old Strip” from back in the time when a casino was just a casino. Needless to say with all the glitz and glitter of the new strip, the old strip started to fade away and loose favor among the gamblers. So the casinos got together, closed the street to car traffic, made a domed ceiling over the street and turned the Fremont Area into a street party experience with live music, light shows on the ceiling and a general party experience up and down the street. Almost like a continuous Marti Gras. Saw a guy creating incredible pictures using spray paint. We saw him do two of them in less than 10 minutes before we continued our wandering. Being the party animals that we are we were back at the motor home and in bed by 11:00. Been in over 20 casinos so far. Didn’t gamble in all of them and didn’t come out ahead gambling but didn’t do too bad either.
Don’t have much planned for tomorrow. It is supposed to be 108 degrees. Need to get the motorhome ready for leaving Tuesday morning.
Will write more later if the internet cooperates.

Caesars Palace

The Fremont Experience

Sin City – Day 2

Wayne — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 15:56:20 +0000

Saturday June 27- Today we got up at the crack of 8:30 had a leisurely breakfast and headed to Hoover Dam. The dam itself is quite impressive. Definitely not as wide as Grand Coulee but it is sure tall. It is interesting with all the homeland security that they still let you drive and walk across the dam. That may all change next year since they are building a bridge just a little downstream that will cross the Colorado River so all of the traffic will probably be directed to cross there. We bypassed the $7 parking lots, drove across the dam to free parking on the AZ side and then walked across and back again. It is a good thing that they built the dam so that the area around her could have some usable water. Lake Mead behind the dam is a beautiful expanse of water but it is a little funny that even with all that water there is very little green vegetation around the lake. In fact it is so arid a here that even the cactus refuse to grow.
On the way back from Hoover dam we took a side trip through the Lake Mead National Recreational Area. Dianne’s Little Old Lady Pass (LOLP) saved us another $5. With the economy the way it is that means five more dollars that can be reappropriated to help the poor struggling Casinos. After all we wouldn’t want them to ask for bailout money like AIG and GM now would we? On the way through the recreational area we saw people running a marathon along side of the road. At least it was supposed to be along side of the road. Some of the runners must have figured that if they ran out in the lane of traffic they may be able to hitch a ride on the front bumper of a passing car. By this time of the day the temperature was pushing pass the three digit mark. We figured that anyone that would run a marathon in 3 digit temperature could not possibly have a three digit IQ.
We stopped at a liquor store today just to see how the Nevada and Washington prices compare. Wow big difference. Things are less than half the price than back home. The more interesting thing was that as we entered the store there were two mighty fine looking young ladies giving out free samples. Now, now, I know this is called “Sin City” but get your mind out of the gutter. They were handing out free samples of rum and tequila. When was the last time you went to the liquor store just to graze? We were worried it might now be legal to leave without buying anything but no one chased us down as we drove out of the parking lot.
It was really hot today, at least for us anyway. At 2:30 the thermometer hit 103 degrees. I know everyone says that it is a dry heat. I don’t care what you say 103 degrees dry or not is HOT. The oven in the kitchen produces dry heat also but you would not want to sit in it.
Spent late afternoon until 10:30 on the Strip using the casinos’ air conditioning and had dinner at a nice Mexican restaurant in New York New York. Yesterday the casinos taketh-today they giveth. Well kind of. We did get back $25 of Dianne’s Social Security Check. But tomorrow is another day…
More to come.
Stay cool.

Hoover Dam

Excalibur Casino

The Las Vegas Strip