Trod Bogs Sadly – Oddstray's Blog

Another long drive yesterday from Bishop to San Diego. It didn’t help that most of Cajon Pass was at a standstill, and the usual Adelanto start/stop/start/stop was made worse than usual by road works. Just the presence of big amounts of other vehicles on the highway was strange!

Got back by 4:30 pm. Both of us tired as all heck. Stopped for a few minutes to survey the wasteland that was the newly fumigated condo.

Back into harness. Connect the cooler to power, unload all the stuff from the trailer, shove it where it won’t matter for a day or so. Go get the refrigerator/freezer stuff and put it in the cooler/freezer.. Take the trailer back to storage. What’s for dinner? We decide on a shared take-out Shrimp dinner from Sombrero. Get that. Bring it home.

That’s it. We’re bushed. Nothing else gets done.

Stats:

Tow vehicle mileage: 7022

Trailer mileage: 4260

Gallons of fuel used: 421.4

Cost of that fuel: $1260.73

Average mpg: 16.7

Where to next?

Yesterday was fun with the Lance folks, with Serge and Kelly teaching us d.o. (dutch ovens), and then the eats and festivities later. The weather was amazingly good.

Sadly, we had to untether this morning (and miss the d.o. grand breakfast).

We decided to take hwy 395 down the East side of the Sierra Nevada range, rather than the more logical Interstate 5, but we just hate that through Los Angeles, even though it’s quicker and shorter.

Tonight we find ourselves in the ‘Tri-County Fairgrounds’ in Bishop, CA. A parking lot, but that’s OK.

Home tomorrow, if nothing breaks.

Pictures:

Upside down pineapple cake before the dutch oven

After….

Meat Loaf before Dutch Oven

After….

Party time

Friday morning, at Rocky Point RV Park, it was wet and cold. Decamping, I had to hose down all our hoses and electrical connections, as they were smothered in pine needles and mud. Shivering stuff.

But then we set off, turned the heater up, and all was well. Dry shoes are luxurious.

Turned left on SR-140 toward Klamath Falls,then on SR-39 for a while, and to County Route 91. This kind of driving is what it’s about, especially as the rain had cleared and the sun was beginning to break through. Nice even country 2 lane blacktop, no hurries, no worries (Sorry, Ranger Paul, we had to  borrow that). Eventually we hit SR-299 West (I had to write this – after we went through the little town, I said that we were just in Beiber….. Oh well, let’s move on).

West on 299, it was more of the same rolling countryside, pines, farms, rural California, lovely.

The alternative would have been to head for I-5. I think that we won that debate.

After a brief stop in Fall River Mills for gas and a sandwich we continued to hwy 89 south, which runs North of Lassen, to our destination – the KOA Kampground at Lassen/Shingletown, where there is to be a rally of Lance owners, this weekend.

By now it was sunny and warm (relatively). Our campsite is good and the natives welcoming.

This morning, we were welcomed to Gary’s space where he cooked Portuguese sausage for us with Hawaiian Danish (Hawaii is an interesting place, it has a Union Jack as part of its state flag). Despite this, Gary is a fantastic fella.

After that we went to Redding for supplies. Then we set off for the volcano, Lassen. Recent snow made it stand out. So pretty.

Later, we joined the Lance peeps for a bit of a barbecue and socializing . Fun 🙂

Pictures:

It rained. It was/is cold. What shall we do? Slightly forlornly, we set out to do a circuit of Lake Klamath (allegedly, the biggest freshwater lake west of the Rockies).

Well, it soon turned into a different mission, as the “Check Engine’ light came on.

As an aside, we’d had a couple of times when we got a message about the fuel cap not being on tight (darn OR rules about not being able to self-service fuel!), but that was a plain text message, which was easy to clear.

We have an OBD-II reader at home, which is not much help here, of course.

So we decided to go to Klamath Falls, see if we could find a dealer that would tell us what the magic code was. (I suspected a clogged air filter, as we’d been through a lot of dust).

At Klamath Falls, we discovered that there wasn’t a Nissan dealer, so we tried the next best, a Toyota dealer – Lithia. We asked about hooking up their reader to get the diagnostic code, and the quote was $89.95, and could we leave the car with them, they might be able to fit it in today. I thought the title of this post, went across the street to Napa, and bought an OBD-II reader for $82.39, plugged it in, read the code, looked that up on the internet, and hey, guess what, loose gas cap! We hit the red button to clear the error, made sure the gas gap was tight. No more ‘Check Engine’ light.

We were looking for Starbucks, and saw one in a Haggens Grocery. Haggens Grocery has just gone bust and everything was on sale (and the Starbucks was closed). However, I did use the men’s room, and noticed that someone had written in felt-tip pen, on the toilet paper dispenser: ‘Haggen Business Plans’. I laughed out loud.

The rain eased off later, so we swabbed down the trailer and the Xterra, B did laundry, and I made bolognese to go with some spaghetti that I’m just about to prepare.

So I tells B, when we get onto 199 going North East, that back in 1999 or so (last millennium, anyhow), I rode the motorcycle up from Happy Camp through the Siskiyou Forest onto this road. Holy Heck, I hadn’t realized just how far I had had to ride on 199 to get to Crescent City.

Stopped off in Medford at Harbor Freight to replace a broken, 8 week old air compressor. They wouldn’t. This is the last time we’ll buy anything that’s not really simple from Harbor Freight, and something that you need to rely on. Worse than the mark of the devil.

Arrived at our camping ground – Rocky Point resort, right next to the lake. It’s a bit quirky, but at the same time absolutely charming. A Lance 1985 and another Lance 1575 were already here (and it’s a very small campground). Will give them a the Lance Owners card in the morning.

It was coming up to 4 pm, so we thought, and said, yes, we will visit Crater Lake today. And we did. Awesome doesn’t describe it. Cold does, though.

Pictures:

Klamath Lake from Rocky Point Resort

14th September 2015

On Hwy 101 from Florence to Crescent City

We had previously driven the 101 from Tillamook to Florence, and a PITA it was, resorts every couple of miles, couldn’t make any progress and there wasn’t very much to gawp at.

Some Oregonians insisted that it was different from Florence south.

And so it was. Big rocks in the ocean, like a couple of giants had a rock throwing fight, surf crashing, dramatic and dark cliffs. Not as twisty as in Northern CA, but that’s not such a bad thing.

Crescent City – back in CA for the first time since Big Bear. Grey and misty, with the sound of seals barking and a lonely fog horn on the bay.

Up at 3:45 am. Shuttle call at 4:30 am. Arrive San Diego Airport at 5-ish. Disgusting and expensive ‘Yuppie Wrap’ for breakfast. Inconsequential flight. Good book: ‘This changes everything’ by Naomi Klein, about global warming (sitting in a plane; wait, let me think about this….). Fun texts with B when I arrive in Portland, she’s in the cell phone lot and sees the plane land (reminds me: holy heck, the last time I flew was about ten years ago. Now they want to charge you for each breath. Like, yeah, you can watch a limited range of video, but you have to bring your own tablet/phone/laptop, and then pay to watch content. Are they crazy? Why not bring your own content? How hard is that?)

We head out. South. Traffic begins to calm, we’re out of the city. Now where? Florence? OK, via Eugene. Now we need gas, wait, Costco is right there, can we get in, yeah sure. Wait for B to get hot dogs, some guy and gal come up to check out the Lance. Open the door, let them in. Cool.

Onwards to Dixie Cafe for lunch. OK.

Then  OR route 126 all the way down, following the railroad and the creek, so pretty and so green. To Florence. Is that all? Is Florence so small? South on 101 (like an old friend) to the Jessie Honeyman Memorial Memorial State Park.

Bliss.

And, can you say, exhausted.

September 10th 2015

Sudden change of plans:

Got an email from the guy I (Simon) do some consulting work for from time to time. Turns out he got a new contract, and he needs me *now* to set up a system for it. I asked ‘Can it wait until the 22nd?’. ‘No way, can you do it tomorrow?’. ‘I’m in a rain forest in North Western WA – with at best an Edge connection, and the only way I can even have a dialog with you is by SMS text – so no, you can’t have it tomorrow.’

So we’re in Portland OR, and I’m flying to SD tomorrow, and back again on Sunday. I could have said ‘eff off’, but he’s a nice guy, and we’ve done some great work together since 2011.

Did he know we were ‘not available’? Yes.

Did I warn him that I couldn’t do this work remotely? Yes.

Did we talk about finding a substitute? Yes.

So, bottom line is that we missed a few sight-seeing spots today, which was annoying, but with a the quick out and back to San Diego tomorrow, it doesn’t impact our timeline all that much.

September 9th 2015

We went to the Hoh rain forest. We were short-changed. It didn’t rain.

On the way from Port Angeles, we side-tracked on Hwy 112, which was very pretty, and teed with the strangely named ‘Old Sappho Pysht Road’, which has got to be one for the records.

We checked out the RV Park app, and there were two, apparently located near where the Hoh rain forest NP was. But we stopped off in Forks for some lunch and to check out the museum. Very good, by the way.

It turned out that the ‘Hard Rain Cafe, Mercantile and RV Park’ was the only one of the two that was open, and it was OK, except for no dump facilities. We used. ahem, stealth disposal methods.

It was amazingly warm here and at the rain forest.

Pictures of moss:

Since we have been deserted by the internet for the last few days, we’re going to roll those days up in a single post.

In typical blog manner it’ll be earliest ‘last’

8th September 2015

Quiet morning, B did laundry for us and I swabbed down the trailer.

Then we headed out for Hurricane Ridge, fearing that fog or clouds may get in the way. For the most part, magically, they didn’t.

Olympic National Park is awesome.

Pictures:

Glacier

Deer

View from Hurricane Ridge

7th September 2015

There was no dump station at our campground so we had to drive to the mother-ship cg to get rid of our waste fluids. I must have been a bit enthusiastic in opening the valves, as I broke a plastic end of the black tank handle. It works just fine, but needs replacing. <Muse whether one can get metal ones, or even fabricate one?>

We didn’t have far to drive. We were headed for the Olympic National Forest, in particular, Port Angeles, so it was pretty relaxing, rolling down the hills, and up and alongside Hood Canal. Wow, this is just so beautiful. The sun had come out, temps had warmed up, what could go wrong? Surprisingly, nothing did 🙂

We pottered around Port Angeles, trying to find a campground that we thought was OK, and ended up at the unlikely named ‘Big Al’s RV Park’. Mostly long-timers, but it just felt better than the other places we looked at. And there was a Safeway just right there, too.

We headed down to the harbor to have a look around, and, holy smokes, that’s Canuckistan, right there! Victoria, B.C. 17 miles away by ferry. And CBC Radio (sounding a lot more intelligent than most US offerings). This is so cool.

I video skyped my pal in San Diego to show him Canada, and his reply was, ‘I’ve been there,’

<shrug>

Then we went up the Elwha valley to discover that they had taken out an hydroelectric dam to let the salmon get back to their spawning roots. I guess this is good for the salmon, but not so much for green energy. Fish ladder, anyone?

That’s Canada, over there.

Busted dam: Salmon 1, everyone else 0

6th September 2015

This is getting a bit predictable. Guess what, we drove all the way along the winding road to get to Mt St. Helens, and what we saw was fog.

Mt St Helens in the fog

What shall we do? We went back to Elbe, and took Hwy 7 North West, and saw some dams, and hiked a few trails.

Le Grande Dam

Alder Dam

And we had baked potato stuffed with ham and cheese and butter, cooked on the camp fire.
5th September 2015

We set off early East along Hwy 706 towards Mt Rainier. We can definitely state this, – there are a lot of trees around here. I’ve never seen trees standing so densely close together anywhere else. Anyhow, we continued increasing in elevation, but couldn’t see much because of all the trees!

Made it up to Paradise, where there was fresh snow on the ground, and very chilly temps, and were engaged by a very cheery Forest Service (or maybe Parks Service) volunteer, who enquired whether we were going hiking. ‘Where’s the coffee?’ was the reply. Actually, she was really helpful, with all sorts of ideas about things to do and see in Washington State.

Mt Rainier was socked in with with fog and clouds.

We continued on to the White Pass entrance, stopping occasionally for meagre photo opps.

Back we went to Elbe, hoping, hoping for the sky to clear, which it never did. Hot dogs for lunch, which was a minor compensation.

B had signed up for the ‘Mt Rainier Scenic Railroad’, which was neither terribly scenic nor anywhere near Mt Rainier. But it was fun, and the logging/railway museum at Mineral was well worth it.

For dinner we had burgers from ‘Scale Burgers’ in Elbe. Greasy and huge. What’s not to like?

The camp fire ban had been in effect since June, and today, TaDa, it ended. The campground sold huge bundles of firewood for $5, and the fire was good and warmed against the dampness. That, together with an evening of eclectic blues from KPSU radio in Seattle made for a splendid evening.

Pictures:

This would have been a photo of Mt Rainier, if….

We stopped by the side of the road to admire the fog, and a deer and a fawn just ambled by, right next to where B was standing.

4th September 2015
Off we set from Plymouth Park on I-82 heading North West. We were a little surprised by the rolling brown hills – what we had expected was pine trees and a craggy landscape.

Which we got later. Turning onto Hwy 12 at Yakima, we got the pines and the craggy, in spades, and it continued all the way over White Pass, where we got snowed on.

Arriving at Alder Lake Park, we were redirected to ‘Rocky Point’ campground, an few miles back down the road, near the sleepy town of Elbe.

We settled in at the camp site, and it was raining. And there was a camp fire ban. I doubt seriously if you could get a campfire started without some potent petrochemicals.

We were musing that we weren’t doing our usual ‘stuff’ when we got to a campground – putting up lights, pinwheels, lanterns, etc. We decided that it was because, this time, we are ‘camping to travel’, rather than what we mostly do, ‘traveling to camp’.

Beans test: We’ve established our standard for baked beans, it’s the UK version of Heinz baked beans. They can be obtained from Fresh and Easy, Major Markets, Cost Plus and others.

However, we only brought one can on this trip. Reluctant to use it, we’ve been trying others. First was some generic brand of chili flavored baked beans. Horrible!, thin and weak sauce and the beans were not simply ‘al dente’, they were kind of hard. Next up Trader Joe’s baked beans. After adding a little tomato puree, some Worcestershire sauce and black pepper, they were most certainly edible. Next up, Van Camp’s Pork & Beans.

Pictures:

We went to Eatonville for some supplies, and, believe it or no, this was the best picture of Mt Rainier we got in the whole time here.

The live-in volunteer had weed-whacked a trail down to the ‘beach’ at Alder Lake (which was very low). The tree stumps are Alders which were cut down when they created the lake in 1945 or so. Apparently, when it’s very low, the old buildings that were engulfed by the dam can be seen.

B achieved a most amazing result today. She self-assigned the task of finding somewhere to stay, not too far from Mt Rainier, this (Labor Day) weekend.

I thought to myself, ‘You’ve got to be kidding, all the Seattle peeps will be out bbqing and partying before the cold weather arrives!’

But she did it, she found a place on Alder Lake, that’s pretty good for Mt St Helens and Rainier. So, we’re set for the next few days.

Today. we left Homedale and stopped at the local lumber yard, where reputedly, they fill propane tanks. Except, they’d lost the keys. There are two words for the guy who tried to recover the situation – incompetent bumbler. The contrast at the Flying J in Caldwell was remarkable. Took about 2 minutes and we were done.

Then we spent most of the day driving north west on I-84, through wind and rain (darn, now we’re going to have to wash the trailer again!) to the delightful Corps of Engineers Plymouth Park campground at Plymouth, WA. Because we have a ‘Geezer Pass’ TM (National Parks senior pass), it’s half price $12 – woohoo!

We decided that we needed some real food, so we hopped back over the bridge over the Columbia river to the little community of Umatilla, and bought some stew ingredients, and I made beef stew. Yum, that hit the spot.

Anyway, tomorrow is another day on the road, but we, at least, have somewhere to stay for the next three nights.

Oh, and welcome to Beth, my boss at San Diego County Parks. Hi Beth <fx: waves>

Pictures follow:

Yesterday, Tuesday, we started the drive towards Washington State. B. had phoned to get a prescription fulfilled at Costco, Boise, and I had an urgent need for English Breakfast tea from Trader Joe’s.

We had used the RV Parks app to determine that there were not very many places to stay near Boise, but there was a place in Homedale that was highly thought of, so we reserved a spot.

Off we set up I-84, diverting to Trader Joe’s on the way. Ooops, parking monitor doesn’t like trailers, even though it’s 2 pm on a Tuesday afternoon and there’s plenty of space. Well, then, no point in going to Costco, which might have the same rules, may as well go to Homedale and come back to Boise. The turn from Idaho 95 was on to ‘Industrial Drive’. B and I look at each other in dread. We persist, and it turns out that the park, Snake River RV Park, is right on the river (bug alert!), and really well kept, and with big spaces between RV’s. Good prices, too.

But we had to go back to Boise, via Camping World. On the way, we saw a huge tail of traffic westbound on I-84, the way we would expect to return. By the time we got our bits of shopping done, it was 5 pm, and whilst we took an alternate route back to Homedale, it still took an hour and a half to cover 45 miles. Time for a beer!

Pictures follow: (all courtesy of B)

The first campsite we’ve been to that is all lush green grass, no gravel, no dirt, no pad. And they use a lot of (river) water to irrigate it. This is not some place in California.

Snake River from the campground

More Snake River