Jerry's Stardates

South Padre Island

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry's Stardates) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 22:38:00 +0000

Stardate 111709

Please note that there’s no “RV” in the Stardate date-time stamp. The RV is at home, in storage, and is moping, sniveling and whining because it’s not with us. We even farmed out Gizmo and Valentino to the Lakeside grandkidlets. Claudia and I packed our bags, locked the condo and trudged across the street to the Coaster, our local commuter train, and headed for the airport…destination, Houston.

After a short(?) flight, we arrived at Houston’s Hobby Airport where we were greeted by the Texas grandkidlets and their mother. After a short commute, we arrived at their home in League City and were warmly greeted by Marley, their not-too-purebred dog.

Two very aloof cats just looked on and allowed us into their castle without comment. As it was late, and tomorrow is a school day, we cut the reunion short and hit the sack.

The next morning, Claudia and I got up to an empty house, everyone else having already gone to school and work. We fixed breakfast and packed the car. Now, “the car” is a Ford Explorer that was recently bestowed on Rachael who just turned 16 and now has a learner’s permit. God help us all! She graciously allowed us to use it while we were here. We plugged “Karen”, our GPS with an Australian accent, into the power socket, and headed for Corpus Christi. We chose a not too direct route somewhat following the Intracoastal Waterway and arrived at the Marriott Courtyard late in the day.

We had great plans to visit Rockport, Port Aransas, Mustang Island, the Texas State Aquarium and the U.S.S. Lexington. Well, three out of five isn’t bad, especially since we got out of bed about 10:00 am and then went to the Cracker Barrel for breakfast. We left for our tour as the restaurant started getting slammed for lunch. Hey, we’re retired! Get off my case! The weather was threatening and we got a few sprinkles during the day. After our tour of Rockport, Port Aransas and Mustang Island, we returned to the Marriott to get ready or dinner. We again chose the Cracker Barrel for two reasons. One, the food is great and inexpensive and Two, it was now raining like hell. They say that everything is bigger in Texas and rainstorms and raindrops are no exceptions. It was coming down big time! We waited a half an hour and then sprinted to the car during a short lull. Dinner was some good comfort food. I had roast beef, pot roast style, with carrots, mashed potatoes and fried apples. Claudia had a shrimp plate. We then returned to the Marriott and prepared for our tour of the Lexington early tomorrow morning.

We woke up at 9:58 am! So much for “early”. We decided that we will do the Lexington and then see how our time shakes out. At this time, I suspect we will shine on the aquarium as we just did the Monterey Aquarium. But now, off for breakfast and the Lexington.

We found out the turn signals were not working on Rachael’s car. There was nothing in the service book for a fuse for the turn signals so we headed for the local Ford agency for a fix. They were less than helpful so we went next door to a NAPA store. I went inside while Claudia called Jeff for inspiration. I found out the turn signal/4-way flasher device is inside the steering column. Wonderful! Jacque then called and asked if I had adjusted the height of the steering wheel. “Yes”, I replied. “Put it back where it was and the turn signals will work”. “OK” I trudged back to the car, lowered the wheel to its original position…and they now worked! Must be a loose wire in the steering column. OK, fine! Drive it like it is and live with it. OK, I will! We continued on, stopping at an I-Hop for breakfast. We each had the Senior Special (which was on super-special today), two eggs, two pancakes and two pieces of bacon or sausage for four bucks and some loose change each. Yummy!

After a delicious breakfast, we headed for the Lex. The promised morning clearing hadn’t materialized as yet so we parked and ran for the ship in the rain. They had a shuttle van working so we hopped in and were driven right to the starboard (right) hanger elevator which now served as the entrance to the ship. We went straight to the Imax movie “Fighter Pilot”, the story of a pilot going through the Red Flag pilot training. (Red Flag is the Air Force version of the Navy’s Top Gun fighter school at Miramar) After the movie, we browsed around. I went inside a flight simulator of a jet fighter during a war patrol. It was cool but not as good as the real simulator I “flew” a few years ago. We continued our meandering, visited the Ship’s Store to buy a pin and headed back to the hotel.

Arriving at the Marriott, we shed out wet clothes, jumped into sweats and waited for the dinner hour. Tonight, we ate at a Chinese buffet. $11 each. I ate about $17.37 worth of food…and paid for it as soon as we got home. It was not pretty! We packed up for an early departure. This time, the alarm is set…for 6:00 am. We will be headed for the King Ranch for a cowboy breakfast.

Guess what…the alarm didn’t go off! I woke up a few minutes before 7:00 am. We jumped out of bed, turned on the coffee, got with the program, left the hotel before 8:00 and arrived at the King Ranch about 8:30. WHEW!!!! They parked us on muddy grass and we walked to the ticket tent. There were mega-persons there.

Must have been the $6.00 breakfast they were serving.

We watched some roping demonstrations, cowboy cooking demonstrations

and Texas Longhorns

being watched by a bunch of kids.

We then signed up for a nature tour at 2:30 and went into town to kill some time. The first place we hit was the King Ranch Saddle Shop where they make high-end leather goods. I saw a really nice engraved and embossed leather briefcase. Take a guess! Higher…MUCH higher! Would you believe $1,115.00? I put my hands in my pockets so I wouldn’t accidentally break something. We left without purchasing anything. Sorry kids. No presents from here. We moseyed down to the King Ranch Museum and saw an 11’ 2” alligator that was taken from a pond on the ranch a few years ago. That eliminated any thought of a swim call! OK, back to the ranch for the tour.

We split our group of 12-15 into two groups, jumped into a pair of nine-passenger vans and took off. Our guide was a young lady (mid to late-20’s I’d guess) who had a masters degree in wildlife management. Her specialty was birds. Two passengers in the van knew just as much, if not more, than she did. Great! We wanted a nature tour, not a freakin’ feather frolic. We went on and our guide and the two know-it-all’s pointed out one redbrested yellow-beak knatcatcher after another. They then went ga-ga over some “raptor”.

I thought a “raptor” was a small prehistoric dinosaur that I saw in the Jurassic Park movie. Wrong! How silly of me! A “raptor” is another bird, a hawk, or something like a hawk, some bird that rips apart small animals or other birds into little bitty pieces and eats them. We then went by a pond and I spotted an alligator.

WOW…a real animal! That lasted a whole 20 seconds until Mrs. K-I-A spotted a yellow crested feather duster sitting on a limb and drew everyone’s attention to it. We moved on. I spotted another alligator. They spotted some more birds. I spotted some javalinas.

They spotted some more birds. We spotted some whitetail deer. They spotted some more birds. And so it went.

All in all, we did finally wind up spotting a bunch of critters (animals) and varmints (birds). I had some whitetails within 50 feet. One was missing its right antler

and another was a really good 10-point buck, a real trophy animal.

We spotted a 200# feral hog,

well within muzzleloader range and probably saw over 50 javelinas. I was less than 10 feet from one of them.

The biggest ‘gator we saw was about a six-footer. It was a good trip.

After returning to the ranch Visitor Center, Claudia and I took off for South Padre Island. I don’t like driving at night in Texas because of all the deer but we didn’t have a choice. We made it without incident, checked in and got all unpacked and settled by about 10:00. Claudia did a load of laundry, made two cups of hot chocolate with mini-marshmallows and we went to bed. The kids arrive tomorrow and the party begins! An odd thing just occurred. Everyone here is coughing and we are no exception. We found out why the next day. At the Visitor Center, the lady there told us there was a pretty significant red tide right now. A red tide is a plankton bloom and the rough surf throws a lot of bacteria in the air which causes everyone to cough constantly. All we can do is to drink a lot of water. Does beer count? It is mostly water. No? Rats! The red tide also kills fish, eels, and Portuguese Man-o-War jellyfish.

The beach was littered with rotting carcasses. You really had to watch where you walked to avoid getting spined. One fish, an estimated 35# jack crevalle, had a nice munch mark in its belly from a (probably) Bull shark.

After sleeping in late (you expected otherwise? Silly you!), we headed for WalMart to stock up with food and beverages. We succeeded in almost filling the back of Rachael’s car and should now be set for the week. We then drove the island to get an idea of where things are. We saw the sea turtle rescue center, a few very dilapidated buildings, several sunk and rotting shrimp boats

(probably victims of a previous hurricane), a tropical furniture store and a Bealls for a pair of good-looking flip-flops. I couldn’t find a gun store anywhere so I amused myself by listening to football games. Right now, the Chargers are up 7-0 over Denver.

The kids are here! We got the car unloaded but had to use two luggage carts due to all the pillows, games, food, suitcases, kites and other “necessary for a great vacation” stuff they brought with them. The weather looks like it will be good tomorrow but rain is forecast for Monday night and Tuesday so…tomorrow will be a beach day. The not-too-set-in-stone itinerary includes kite flying, walking, beach combing, shelling and other such non-strenuous sports.

After a great breakfast and lathering our moon-tanned bodies with SPF-30 suntan lotion, we all trudged to the beach and set up the blankets, chairs and accompanying accouterments. The first order of business was to check out the temperature of the ocean. Hmmm…not bad…about 70 degrees or so. However, with the red tide in progress, a jellyfish infusion and nasty aggressive bull sharks in the area, I decide to stay in the shallows. We don’t have bull sharks in California, but they have been described as “a nasty attitude with big teeth, fins and a tail”. We scored on a fairly nice selection of seashells

and a garden eel,

which was soon the center attraction in a sort of sand castle.

We then headed for the pool and soaked in the jaccousi for a while before returning to the room for lunch and showers. Boy, did that shower feel good! We are now awaiting sunset for an anticipated outstanding sunset picture looking back over the island causeway. With the approaching weather system, the sky should be spectacular. We shall see. It wasn’t! Now we have to wait for the rain tonight and tomorrow.

It didn’t! The morning dawned bright, sunny, beautiful and humid. Maybe this will be an outdoor day after all. The girls made reservations for horseback riding on the beach at 2:30 and we took off to visit the Sea Turtle Hospital and some shopping. At the hospital, there were numerous tanks with turtles of all sizes,

some whole and some with partial or full fin amputations. Four of the five local species were in residence. We got a great presentation of the life of a sea turtle and what they are doing to preserve them. About half-way through the presentation, we heard thunder. Shortly thereafter, the wind went from calm to “hang on” in about 0.3 seconds. It got pretty snotty real quick! We bailed out and headed for some inside shopping. All the stores had nothing but tourist crap or way overpriced decent items so we returned home for some clam chowder. Claudia then announced that “WE ALL are going to the movies” and that if I stayed home I would be labeled forever as a “show pooper”. The emphasis was definitely on the “we all” part. I decided to go to the movie.

We saw “Blind Side”, starring Sandra Bullock. Good movie! It was the true story of Michael Oher, an offensive tackle for the Baltimore Ravens. We then tiptoed through the raindrops that were falling on the tulips and the grains of sand that were stinging all the exposed parts of our bodies, ran for the car and returned to the condo. No sunset tonight. Totally socked in. The ocean is not only “angry”, it is furious!

The wind is still blowing heavy today (Wednesday) and the ocean is still furious. Jacque and Jeff took off to see the lighthouse over in Port Isabel and have breakfast at Pier 19, a local bar, restaurant, fish market and fishing charter location. The girls are still scheduled for another try at horseback riding on the beach at 2:30. We shall see how things work out. I would guess that to be about 50-50 right now. Whoops…they just called Jacque. It’s going! Yahoo and yippie-ki-yay!

We moseyed down the island toward the stables but, as we were early, we stopped at a couple of tourist-trap souvenir joints on the way. Jacque and the girls checked in for the ride. They picked up some horse food and fed the horses and llamas. All was fine until the llama got pissed off about not getting enough food and started spitting at Jacque. She saw it coming but was not quite fast enough to get totally out of the way and caught a wad on her cheek. YUK! Anyway, the ride started. As soon as the wrangler unhooked Kyndi’s horse, it took off fast to catch up with the rest of the horses. I’m not sure what happened, but her horse made a turn at and up against a fence and Kyndi hit the ground. The wranglers checked her out, brushed her off and got her back on a new horse. She had a bump on her chin and scrapes on her arm and knee but was OK. She wanted to come back after the ride and punch out the horse, but we talked her out of that. We then headed for Port Isabel to see the lighthouse, a few stores and have dinner. After coming home, the girls made a salad for tomorrow and we killed the night in front of the TV set. Tomorrow, T-Day!

Happy Thanksgiving to all! The sun is out (somewhat) and the birds are chirping. The day is starting out great! J,J,K & R headed for the beach for a while and will return for some sightseeing later in the day. C & I are staying here while the kids are beaching it. We did some cleaning (yeah, I helped…a little) and some “research” on the Internet (mostly about hunting, Texas hunting laws and dreaming about “needed” supplies to be picked up this weekend at Academy Sports and Bass Pro Shops).

Dinner time soon arrived. We all gave thanks for everything good in our lives and proceeded to inhale a great dinner consisting of the usual suspects. We then proceeded to play a dumb game called “Life”. I lost! Claudia won! Like I said, it was a dumb game. Tomorrow is “Return Home Day” so we called it a night and started to get organized and pre-packed to split for League City in the a.m.

Revile was early (for us)…about 8:00 am. Breakfast, a shower and packing and we were out shortly after the 10:00 am deadline. We fueled both cars and went to a gift store just over the causeway into Port Isabel. Jacque and Jeff bought a couple of things for their house and another item that I cannot mention, describe or infer anything about at this time. We then went to Bobz World at Seven Seas where Kyndi bought two hermit crabs, “Eeyore” and “Squiggles”. “Eeyore”, as in Winnie the Pooh fame, had a donkey decal on its shell, hence the name “Eeyore”. “Squiggles”…who knows? It later snuggled up too closely to Rachael and pinched her pretty good. An unconfirmed rumor has it that she was harassing the animal and it retaliated. We then headed for home.

Around 3:00 pm or so, the girls car, which was in front of Jeff and me, suddenly braked hard and shot left into a left turn pocket. My phone soon rang. It was Rachael with the news that they were hungry and that Grandma (Claudia) had just programmed “Karen”, our GPS, into taking us to a Cracker Barrel restaurant. We twisted and turned through several minor streets. Jeff and I were becoming skeptical. We soon turned a corner and pulled into a convenience store with gas pumps out front, sort of like a 7-11 store. The sign above the door proudly proclaimed we were at the “Cracker Barrel Gas and Liquor”, not quite what we expected. We soon found a rundown restaurant that proclaimed it served good home-cooked food and pulled in. It wasn’t much to look at but the food was great! After dinner, we continued on and arrive at the kids house somewhere around 8:30. The first order of business was to unload two cars and settle in for the duration (two days).

The “duration” consisted of shopping, shopping and more shopping. I even managed to squeeze in a visit with some old friends and past customers from the 2004 Alaska trip, Pete and Betty Finley, who were in Galveston awaiting their time to board a cruise ship to Cozumel. Jeff and I scoured Academy Sports and the local Bass Pro Shops outlet while the girls did girly things. We have had a ball and are not looking forward to it ending. However, it must end and we must return to Encinitas on Monday.

Yosemite, Monterey and Buellton

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry's Stardates) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:03:00 +0000

Stardate RV102209
Today we headed for Midpines, just past Mariposa, for our long anticipated trip to Yosemite. We meandered through some beautiful cattle country with really interesting rocks. I haven’t gotten an explanation about them yet. They all poke up through the dirt with flat knife edges. They look like a whole bunch of long, thin sheets of rock, all standing on edge. I couldn’t get a photo on the way in. I’ll try for one on the way out. Once they arrived at the KOA, most guests scattered in all directions. We had a semi-impromptu social and had a “guest” swing by for a look-see…a mule deer doe…broadside at less than 50 yards. Wouldn’t even need a scope on that one. Iron sights would do just fine! One guest reminded me it was not deer season. I always thought that deer season was dictated by the state of one’s freezer.

Stardate RV102309
We carpooled into Mariposa for a GREAT buffet breakfast at Miner’s Inn. Following breakfast, we headed for Yosemite and met at the Yosemite Lodge at 1:00 pm for a great two-hour guided tour of the valley floor. We saw all the major sights of the valley floor and had a nice fat coyote cross right in front of the bus. Even though it was just trotting slowly through the trees, none of my pictures came out. Here are some random shots to mull over.

Yosemite Valley

El Capitan

Climbers (right side of picture)

Bridal Veil Falls

Stardate RV102409
Today was not a good day. We left the Midpines KOA about 9:00 and headed west. Our first scheduled stop was the Casa de Fruta for fuel and shopping. We picked up fuel but passed on the shopping. We then headed west for the Mission San Juan Batista. Big mistake! BIG, BIG mistake!!!!! First of all, it’s very small town. The streets are narrow and the intersections are NOT made for big-rigs. Couple that with today being Saturday. What happens on Saturdays in towns with huge Hispanic populations? Soccer games…MANY soccer games…MANY soccer parents and their cars…and a Quinceanera party (Sort of a coming-out party for Hispanic 15-year-olds). There was NO parking anywhere. We all got through the town…barely.

When we got to the Monterey Fairgrounds, the next chapter started…parking the rigs. To say it was a difficult parking job is like saying the Spruce Goose is a big plane…a total understatement. All rigs got parked and all fenders remained intact. Then, to add insult to injury, two flocks of geese buzzed me, one right after another, about 40 feet above my head. If I had a long stick, I could have knocked them from the sky…right into the oven! We then all brought out our chairs and some very stiff drinks and had a social and a travel briefing. During the travel briefing, I had some quizzical looks. It turns out that the last three sets of driving instructions were just preliminary instructions and not the finished product. Back to the drawing board. I pulled the correct instructions from our book and printed out 18 copies of each day which will be distributed tomorrow. We have never worked so hard in all our lives to get this trip right, at least as right as we can. Both of us are beat!

Stardate RV102509
Today we took a bus ride to the Monterey Bay Aquarium…always a favorite of anyone who visits it. They had a Great White Shark on display.

No, this isn’t it. The one they have is a 5’ female. I couldn’t get a picture. It was too dark for my camera and all the pictures came out blurry. They also had a few bluefin tuna. One was 350 pounds! I leered! We watched two feedings, one in the big fish and shark tank and one hand feeding by a diver.

One of my favorite exhibits was the seahorse exhibit. This one is a Leafy Sea Dragon from Australia.

There were also several tanks with jellyfish

and, of course, otters.

We also saw some later in the wild.

After the aquarium visit, we boarded the bus and toured Monterey itself, going by Cannery Row, Fisherman’s Wharf and Lover’s Point.

We saw the Colton House where the California Constitution was written in 1849

and the “Moon Tree” on its grounds.

The Moon Tree is a California Sequoia, a giant coastal redwood. It was taken to the moon on Apollo 14 as a seed and then returned to a Forest Service Genetics Nursery in Placerville where it was sprouted and raised into a small sapling. It was then planted on the grounds of the Colton House. Neat, huh? I thought you’d agree. We then went on the 17-Mile Drive and saw the Lone Cypress tree

and the Pebble Beach Golf Course where a round of golf is $495. I don’t know if that includes the cart or not. Tomorrow is a free day. I didn’t bring my golf clubs so I can’t go to Pebble Beach. What, oh what will we do? Probably work…again…still!

Stardate RV102609
We did!

Stardate RV102709
We took off just after 9:00 am and headed south on the infamous and dreaded Highway 1. The curves, the hills, the rockfalls, the landslides, the bicyclists. Oh worry, worry, worry! Hell, it was a beautiful drive…actually more of a dawdling crawl, but what the heck, we’re retired! What’s time to us? We “D-C’d” (see above) along and admired the scenery. Actually, Claudia and Gizmo admired. I drove. There was a bit of a storm approaching so the sea was kicking up and pounding the rocks and cliffs pretty good. It made for good watching as we D-C’d down the road. The only part of the road that was exceptionally bendy was a couple mile stretch near Ragged Point. Other than that, piece of cake! When we got to Hearst Castle, we even saw a herd of zebras. Now I must admit I didn’t sleep much last night, but the zebras were there. They were in amongst the standing beef and ground beef. (Ground beef is standing beef that’s lying down) We arrived at the Morro Dunes RV Resort exactly at our predicted arrival time of 12:30 pm, checked in, parked and set up. The park office was doing all the assignments so it was pretty easy for me today. Everyone got here by 2:00 pm and we are done for the day. Hooray and yahoo.

Claudia went around and passed out trip evaluation forms where all the guests get to tell the company what a great and spectacular job we (Larry, Linda, Claudia and me) did. The only semi-bad thing we have going is that the now-approaching storm is bringing WIND. It’s a little blowy today. We called my sister and made arrangements to meet her and Joe about 5:00 to see their new digs and go stuff ourselves with some great pizza.

We picked up MK about 5:15, saw their apartment and went to their pizza joint, the Village Host Pizza on Broad Street in San Luis Obispo. We had a ½ Combo (or Ultimate – I can’t remember the exact name) and ½ Hawaiian. It was SUPERB!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Brian, MK & Joe’s son, and Kealoha just returned from their honeymoon and showed up to see us, along with Andrew’s fiancée, Sara. After a great reunion, we returned to the RV park and more paperwork. Will this ever end? I romped the mutt and went to bed early. Claudia stayed up doing paperwork.

Stardate RV102809
We traveled north to Piedras Blancas for a great two-hour lighthouse tour.

The volunteers have done a great job in restoring and preserving the old light. There were a few elephant seals in a “seal sauna”, a small protected area in the rocks.

Some were sparring and practicing their fighting skills in preparation for the day they have to take on the big boys in order to mate.

The seas were a little rough at the point and some of the offshore rocks were getting pounded pretty good.

This one's better!

After the tour, we headed south to the elephant seal scenic overlook.

There were heaps and gobs of sleeping blubber lying on the beach that occasionally moved slightly to flip sand over their non-svelte torsos for sun protection. I had to borrow four batteries to take this picture. Mine died, so there will be no pics from Hearst Castle unless I can bum some from one of the guests. We saw three more zebras on the way home in amongst the standing beef, none among the ground beef. The evening meal was taken at the Taco Temple, Mexican style food with an Asian twist. Interesting! I had a carnitas burrito that was probably 4” in diameter and 6” long. It was huge!...and, NO, I didn’t finish it. When I felt full, there was no amount of power-eating that would complete the job, so I just stopped and brought half home.

Stardate RV102909
Today was a slow, scenic drive to the Flying Flags RV Resort in Buellton. The park is one of the nicer ones with all the amenities know to mankind. Unfortunately, our cable TV was not very good and the only tree around was right in our satellite window. I wiggled and jiggled and wriggled the rig to no avail. Hell, we’re always too busy to watch TV anyway. I finished setting up while Claudia put in a load of laundry. I printed up some pictures and the girls went out somewhere to do what girls do when they go out. I heard something about visiting the restaurant where we are having the Farewell Dinner tomorrow night and the Mexican restaurant to order the breakfast burritos for the Hitch-up Breakfast on Saturday morning. I ordered chorizo! Claudia said she would order one. ONE? Only one? Who doesn’t love chorizo? According to her, not many! OK, OK…the rest of you don’t know what you’re missing. Tough!

Tonight is the Adventure Caravans World Series of Beanbag Baseball. Both teams are tied at one win each. The ACWSBB will decide who is the better (or luckier) team.

We all met on the grassy area in front of our motorhome. Tensions were high. This was the real thing…the final game. Everything was on the line…honor, bragging rights, catcalls and snide comments…the whole enchilada. The ladies won the coin toss and led off…with a home run. Crap! They got on a hot streak and were soon ahead by a score of 8 to 1 in the third inning. Things were lookin’ bad! Then the guys got hot and closed the score to 11 to 9. The girls ripped off two more for a big 13! Not to be outdone, the guys scored four big ones and it was 13 to 13 in the bottom of the seventh, the final inning. The first batter threw a single. The second struck out. The third batter ripped a double. The tension was at a fever pitch. One out, bottom of the seventh and two on. “Big Bill” Wethington stepped to the plate. The first pitch…strike one. He took his stance, eyed the board and threw the bag. TRIPLE!!! Two runs in and the men won! What a game! What a series!

After the game, Claudia passed out Halloween gliders and we had a soaring contest for the longest flight. Ed “Water bottle” Davis won with a circuitous flight of about 20 feet. Connie “Single lady” Buckley came in second and Bob “Tall boy” Reagan squeaked by in third place. Fabulous Adventure Caravan prizes were passed out to the winners. The winning pilots were ecstatic over their winnings!

Since it was late, Larry and I treated Claudia and Linda to dinner at Pea Soup Anderson’s. Claudia had soup and salad, Linda had a quesadilla and a milk shake, Larry had split pea soup and a milk shake and I had three Danish sausages in brown onion gravy, red cabbage and buttered red potatoes. OK, OK…and a dish of ice cream for dessert! Beat me!

Tomorrow will be spent exploring and eating our way through Solvang, the Danish town a few miles east of us. Their main claim to fame is the plethora of bakeries and other eateries within their city limits. I have eaten in a few over the years but I must limit my indulgence tomorrow due to the Farewell Dinner later that night. Both Claudia and I ordered calamari.

Saturday morning will be the Hitch-up Breakfast with Hugs & Goodbyes. As I said earlier, we are having breakfast burritos, several juices and coffee. That is the final event. The caravan is over at that point and we can get back to work…again…still…and finish up the paperwork to close out the tour. I doubt it will get done here. For the first time ever, we will probably have to take it all home for a final review before shipping everything off to Texas.

Our plan is to be home on Monday but we have to finish up the trip paperwork, clear out the motorhome, wash it and park it away in the storage yard. Then we get to straighten out the condo. While we were away, it got tented for termites and everything had to be double-bagged and stored away. Now we get to un-bag it and put everything back where it belongs. We should be ready for visitors by next week…LATE next week…VERY late next week!

That’s it! Y’all are caught up, and I’m putting this blog to bed. See y’all whenever!

Sacramento and Columbia

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry's Stardates) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:55:00 +0000

Stardate RV101609
Today we travelled from the Sonoma County Fairgrounds to the KOA in West Sacramento via the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield. That’s it! Nothing else. I am trembling from all the excitement! I would say it was from a sugar high but Claudia and I didn’t go there. Over Gizmo’s most vocal objections, we bypassed the factory and came straight to the RV park. Everyone got parked quickly and we started kickin’ it and getting ready for tomorrow’s tour of Sacramento. Dinner was interrupted by a flock of very noisy geese that flew over the rig…well within shotgun range. I leered and went back to my dinner. I would much prefer roast goose but settled for the half-eaten fried egg sandwich. Stardate RV 101709 We were picked up by the bus and headed for the capitol to pick up our guide. We did a tour of the capitol,

the California Vietnam Veterans Memorial

and the Rose Garden

before driving around the downtown area

Sutter's Fort

Old Town

Sacramento River

We did a tour of the Railroad and History Museums

and returned to the park. As I was walking the Giz, the honkers came back and did another fly-by, again well within shotgun range. Several guests commented about what I was thinking. Claudia made chicken enchiladas for dinner and then promptly fell asleep. I washed the dishes quietly and then…here I am at the computer. Tomorrow is a Free Day. We will be tied up with paperwork, phone calls and laundry. One of these days, I will find out what “free” means.

Stardate RV 101809

Today was another “Free Day”. I guess that means we work for free today! “Work”…that’s what “free” means! Eureka! I FINALLY figured it out! We vacuumed, washed, scrubbed, wiped and cleaned the motorhome while we did the laundry. The laundry hamper was well past the “overflowing” mark so it REALLY needed to be done. Even Giz got sprayed for fleas. The only thing/person/item that was spared was Valentino. He got his water changed a few days ago so he skated today. The weather has turned snotty and cold so my afternoon session of sunbathing in a speedo has been cancelled. I just got a phone call from some of our group that went to Lake Tahoe. It seems they went out on the sightseeing boat and it hit a sandbar and was stuck. Oops! There was a lot of laughter in the background and they said they were getting either free or two-for-one drinks.

Stardate RV101909

We travelled to the Marble Quarry RV Park in Columbia today. Columbia is in the “Gold Country”, right off Highway 49 (which was named after the 49ers, in case you didn’t know). It’s a tight, rustic park with all back-in parking spaces. It took all my talents to get everyone in without any problems. If I were a cat, I would have used several lives yesterday. After parking everyone, we (the staff) started setting up the Community Room for tonight’s dinner, which was donated and prepared by Linda and Larry.

We had pork tenderloins, ranch beans, salad and ice cream.

The dinner was delicious and greatly appreciated by the guests. THANKS LINDA AND LARRY!

Stardate RV102009

Today we carpool into Jamestown to see the Railroad Museum and do a hysterical, make that “historical” tour of Jamestown itself. The railroad tour was phenomenal!!!!! We started off at the old Jamestown Station

and then moved to the roundhouse. We saw several cars and engines but the #3 engine, the “Movie Train”, was at the shop getting a re-build. Although the engine was in the shop, they did have the bell.

Another engine on display was a 1922 Shay, which is a geared engine, capable of pulling a log train up a 10% grade

(The maximum grade for a “normal” steam engine is 4%.) The reason for this is that the Shay is geared very low. It’s maximum speed is 15 mph, but it usually runs at about 10. The docent then showed us the turn-of-the-century First Class car, complete with upholstered seats, a stove AND a toilet.

(No holding tanks in those days! It was a plain gravity device.) We also saw the blacksmith shop

where all the tools used to repair the engines were made on-site and several examples of specialized vehicles. The first was the Supervisor’s vehicle,

complete with a steering wheel. The wheel, however, was used to set the front brakes. Turn to the right…brakes on. Turn to the left…release brakes. The foot brake operated only the rear brakes. Then there was a smaller utility vehicle made from three year’s of Ford car parts, 1920-23, I believe.

They also had two hand cars, one a “jawbreaker”,

named so because it would break your jaw if you weren’t paying attention, and a 3-wheeled “skeeter”.

We then went outside to see the “Armstrong Turntable”,

so named because it took 40 strong arms to turn it. It was later retrofitted with an air-powered gearing system that is still powered today using the original riveted air tank.

How that thing holds air, I’ll never know! There was even a portable air tank for jobs away from the main tank or air lines. These old tanks still hold up to 120 pounds of air (which is just enough to air up the tires on the RV). We then went through the movie museum where several old props were on display. One was the front of an “engine” where the front light was a garbage can lid and a camera prop was made of wood.

There was also a display of some of the many signs used to establish the location of the film.

If you know what to look for, the front of the Jamestown Station could be New York, Los Angeles, or whatever place sign was attached to the building as the scene was shot. There were also a few fake smokestacks on display.

These fake stacks were used to turn a more modern oil-burning train into an older-looking steam engine. They even had the remains of the train stack that was blown up in “Back to the Future”. After purchasing a railroad hat pin for my collection, we returned to the park to lead a guest back so they wouldn’t get lost. After returning to the park, we re-returned to Jamestown for a Chinese lunch and some shopping. Most of the stores were closed on Mondays, but also on Tuesdays and even Wednesdays because the tourist season is just about over. We did find an old store with all kinds of “stuff”. I found a really nice six-inch cast-iron frying pan for $7.95…perfect for frying up one extra-large Grade AA egg for a fried egg sandwich. Yum! After my purchase-of-the-day, we re-re-returned to the RV park where Claudia promptly fell asleep while watching some damn medical show about cholesterol. Hell, that would make anyone fall asleep! When she woke up, we got back to work correcting the trip logs, working on the budget and future trip logs.

Stardate RV102109

Today we did a walking tour of Columbia and got things ready for tomorrow's jaunt to Midpines, the gateway to Yosemite. We just heard the waterfall is flowing. Yahoo, Hot Damn and Whoopee!

Fort Bragg and San Francisco

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry's Stardates) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 03:33:00 +0000

Stardate RV100909

We sauntered down to the Skunk Train

in the morning for the 10:00 am trip through the redwoods to Northspur and back. As a bit of trivia, the Skunk Train got its name because one of the mail trains that used to run on the line was powered by a gasoline engine and had a coal heater. It was said you could smell it before you could hear it…hence, the name. As an interesting side note, while we were waiting for the train to depart, a Fish & Game pickup parked nearby with some “evidence” of recent “forest farmers” work.

Anyway, we boarded the train and took off at a heart wrenching 5 mph through Fort Bragg and then slowly increased our speed to 15 mph for the rest of the trip.

We passed several old homesteads

and camps, a thousand year old tree, actually 1,009 years old (it was 1,000 in ’95) and one with a “springboard” in it.

When logging a tree, the loggers cut a notch into the tree about 15-20 feet up from the ground. In this notch, they inserted a 4” x 12” x 6’ redwood board to stand on while they cut the tree down with a cross-cut saw. The reason they did this was that the trunks of the trees were too big for the oxen to pull. By cutting the tree at 15-20 feet, they eliminated the large bases and the trees could then be pulled to the mills.

Our destination was Northspur

where we had a 45-minute stopover for lunch

and the obligatory gift shop. I bought a pin for my collection but passed on the carved bear with the “Welcome” sign hanging from its neck. We brought some sandwiches but the hamburgers smelled great! The barbecue sat next to a great-looking smoker in the shape of a train.

The return trip was almost uneventful. The “event” was seeing a deer! We had not seen any on the way up, so this was something different.

Upon our return to the park, Claudia, Gizmo and I checked out the meeting room for tonight’s travel meeting and game session. Following that, we did our laundry…not Gizmo’s…just Claudia’s and mine. This was a very necessary thing, as I was going to wear my cleanest dirty socks tomorrow. My underwear supply is sufficient for a few more days, but the socks needed a resupply. We battled other laundry patrons and finally got the job done. Somewhere between my socks and Claudia’s panties, we gave a travel briefing in the meeting room next door. This is going to be an “interesting” leg as we didn’t do it and didn’t go to the RV park. We were north of Santa Rosa when the change was made. Ron and Juanita have been doing a masterful job on the log so I suspect all will be fine. I twinge with apprehension though.

My twinging didn’t affect my sleep and I awoke around 7:15. Gizmo flew in to greet me. He has a new trick when it’s time for a romp. As I’m putting my socks on, he alternately pulls on my socks and bites my toes. After finally getting dressed, we headed for the nearest large rock. Giz gave it a “High five” with his right rear leg. (Sorry, no photo. I forgot the camera) We continued on, stopping at almost every rock, patch of grass and tree. So many good spots, so little pee! I then brought him home and finished getting ready to leave. We were scheduled to leave at 9:00 am but several rigs fired up early and took off. The standing rule is that NO ONE is parked prior to my arrival. So, when we arrived, there were about six or so rigs parked alongside a fence with the guests outside kicking pebbles. We met with the camp host who showed me the park layout. We developed a parking plan and I started bringing them into their spots. Again, it went very smoothly.

Claudia did a briefing on the area, on tomorrow’s bus tour and the menu at the Cattlemen’s Club for tomorrow’s dinner. Claudia and I are both having a “western cut” of prime rib. I am assuming that means a BIG piece of meat! The other choices were grilled Atlantic salmon, chicken kabob, ribeye steak and a half rack of ribs. All dinners include a baked potato, seasonal veggies an all-you-can-eat salad bar and coffee or tea. We won’t starve! My one worry at this point in time is a storm that is heading right for us. It seems that a big front from a typhoon over near Japan has us in its sights. This is predicted to join with another storm coming down from the Gulf of Alaska. Does anyone see a movie script in the making? It is supposed to hit Monday night and last all day Tuesday. Right now, winds are predicted to be in the 40-60 mph range with eight to ten inches of rain. Sounds like a frog-strangler to me! If it arrives as predicted, we will be doing a bus tour of the wineries of Napa, a walking tour of Yountville (This was not on my “bucket list”, but does sound semi-interesting) and having dinner on the Napa Valley Wine Train. There is some concern now, as I just heard that jackets are required on the train. Guess what folks…I don’t own one! I don’t think anyone on the trip brought one. Maybe our Adventure Caravans jackets (which are windbreakers) will suffice. The lovely Claudia will call and work things out. I don’t do suave!

Sunday was the first trip into San Francisco. We had a great bus driver, Joel, and a great tour guide, Mike. Both were top notch! Many roads were being closed because it was Fleet Week and a huge computer company was in town for a convention. Mike re-arranged the tour schedule so we got to certain places before they closed the roads on us. We got a fabulous tour of the city, had lunch at “Lefty” O’Doul’s, rode a cable car,

saw the “Painted Ladies”

and drove through Haight-Ashbury.

It couldn’t have gone better. We even saw the Blue Angles. I heard they fly in formation under the Golden Gate Bridge

but we didn’t see that…DAMN! Here’s a nice shot of a mural.

After we dropped Mike off, Joel drove us to Sausalito to see the floating homes, which are true houseboats…homes built on barges, like where Tom Hanks lived in “Sleepless in Seattle”. These weren’t as nice though. Most were almost derelicts.

We returned to the park to freshen up before heading out for dinner at the Cattlemen’s Club.

The next day was our turn to shine. The catalog showed that we were going to Bodega Bay, the Armstrong Redwoods and the Korbel Champagne Cellars but we had no information about it. I worked up a loop trip from the RV park to Bodega Bay and an hour-long stop to explore, or buy, or??? Claudia bought! Following the Bodega Bay stop, we headed north on Hwy. 1 to Arched Rock for photos

and then east on CA-116 to the Korbel Cellars.

We got there right at noon for the noon tour. (When else would you expect a noon tour but at noon?) The timing was perfect! We toured

and tasted

for about an hour and a half and then returned to the RV park. The trip was perfect. I updated the tour log for posterity and posted it in the Wagonmaster’s Log for the trip next year. The rest of the day was paperwork, work, and more paperwork. We are now waiting not too patiently for the storm that’s due tonight.

It started raining in the early evening and rained all night long…not the toad-choker we were expecting, but a good, steady rain nevertheless. We all slogged to the bus where, in honor of our wine tour, Claudia read a wine joke she got from Vicky Parmley, a friend and past guest. It referred to the amount of “poop” in water and made note that there is none in wine or beer, so we should drink wine and talk funny instead of drinking water and be full of poop. After a long, loud laugh, we headed for Mrs. Grossman’s Sticker Factory. Now, a sticker factory didn’t register too high on my “Whoopie-O-Meter” but it was a fun and interesting stop. I had no idea it took so much machinery to make stickers. After a tour of the plant, including a room to do “Sticker Art”,

we headed for Napa to pick up our guide. Since the rain ruined our walking tour of Yountville, we just headed for a restaurant for lunch. The guide knew of a “moderately priced” restaurant that the locals go to and she took us there. Well, “moderately priced” up here is a lot different than “moderately priced” back at home. Claudia and I each had a hamburger, about the cheapest thing on the menu…at $12 (each). They were good, but didn’t compare to a Monsterburger at Angelo’s in Encinitas! After lunch, we headed for the Mumm Napa Champagne Cellars for a tour followed by a tour of the Black Stallion Winery,

a relatively new and very pricey winery. It was now time for the Wine Train!

We pulled into the station, unloaded the bus, and headed for the waiting lounge. Lo and behold, they had a gift shop there too! I bought another pin. We boarded the train

and were ushered to a beautifully restored dining coach. WHOA! It was something to see!

Dinner was served in short order. First was an Hors d’Oeuvre of shrimp, smoked salmon, chicken, several varieties of olives and some green leafy stuff in the center. Next came a baby lettuce salad with candied walnuts and smoked goat cheese in a honey cider vinaigrette. The goat cheese somehow made it to Claudia’s plate…rapidly, before it could spoil the flavor of my salad. We chose a roasted beef tenderloin, accompanied by rosemary potatoes and grilled squash for our main entrée. It was delicious.

After dinner, we retired to another car for dessert.

Two were offered…a crème brulee and a chocolate covered tiramisu. We had one of each and split them. They were extra-good and double-yummy!

The other end of the coach car must have all had extra wine as they were all howling with laughter the whole way back. It was a fun, but very long day.

Today is Wednesday, a Free Day, a Day of Rest, a Quiet Day…yeah, RIGHT! We have several hours of paperwork to do, many phone calls and a couple of outbound emails thrown in for good measure. If there’s no rest for the wicked, we must have been very, very bad this year! Tomorrow is another San Francisco tour with Pier 39 and Alcatraz scheduled as highlights.

Thursday, another rainy day…not real rain, but sort of a light dribble of a drizzle. We were on a tight schedule and the rain didn’t help. We first headed for the Shulz Museum. That’s Shulz, as in Charles Shulz, as in Charley Brown,

Lucy and Snoopy and the Red Baron.

I really enjoyed the tour and the great wit in most of the comic strips he did. After the museum tour, we headed for the Canine Companions for Independence,

a non-profit organization dedicated to providing service animals for the disabled. All the dogs are labs, golden retrievers or a mix of the two. CCI has its own breeding program, training program and support network. A fully-trained dog is worth about $50,000.

We then headed for San Francisco and Pier 39 for a quick look-around and lunch. At 2:00 pm, we lined up for the trip half way across the bay to Alcatraz. We walked all over The Rock”, taking in the cellblocks,

tiny little cells

and supporting buildings. I was surprised to learn that some civilian families of the guards and staff lived there, kids too. After the tour, we came back to the dock, loaded the bus and came home. The fog had rolled in and gave us some spectacular views of the city we are to leave tomorrow.

Crescent City and the Avenue of the Giants

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry's Stardates) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:42:00 +0000

October 4th – We are now in California. I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. We stopped at Brookings and put 115 gallons in the tank. OUCH!...but we’re having fun. While I was parking the group, Neil and Terry Zitrin from our Allegro group in San Diego showed up and we had a great reunion for a couple of hours. Since Neil and Terry were going to Bandon, I gave them my crab ring, gauge, gloves and three turkey legs so they could catch some crabs from the Bandon dock. Good luck! The limit is 12 a day Neil.

It’s now Monday and we got ready for a tour of Ocean World. I wasn’t expecting too much but was pleasantly surprised, especially about a certain pirate maiden.

We had an excellent talk about tidepool critters,

especially about sea stars and sea anemones, their defenses and how they work. One of the guests used his tongue to touch an anemone for 20 seconds and allowed it to be stung.

It produced a slight numbing sensation. We then went to the shark tank and some touchy-feely with a leopard and horned shark.

Following the shark encounter, we did the rockfish tank and then went outside for a “show”, more of a behavioral exhibition, with a sea lion and two harbor seals.

All in all, a very good stop.

We then carpooled to the Marine Mammal Rehabilitation Center where they rehab sick and injured varmints for release back into the wild, if possible.

It’s a good thing they do. I have been noticing that there are a few too many skinny sharks off our coast lately. It’s nice to add a few more sea lions to the food chain. A good healthy shark population is a good thing!

We then went to Battery Point Lighthouse. Today is beautifully clear with bright blue skies. When Claudia and I were here a few weeks ago, it was foggy and dismal. Today, I got a great photo. After Battery Point, it was off to lunch at the Chart Room by the harbor for some excellent fish & chips. Claudia had a calamari sandwich, also excellent. We then picked up some firewood for tonight’s briefing and social and returned to the park to catch up on paperwork, emails and phone calls. Included in one email was the news that Neil and Terry caught two legal crabs in Bandon and were having them for dinner tonight. There is nothing like fresh crab!

Today was a fabulous day! We all got out of the park between 9:00 and 9:30 and headed for the Trees of Mystery at Klamath.

With my usual spectacular finesse, I maneuvered all the rigs into the south end of the parking lot like a beautiful symphony. Once parked, everyone went for the gondola ride

and then walked through the redwoods, stopping at the carved panels along the paths.

The only problem was that Paul Bunyan’s voice was inoperative and he couldn’t talk to the guests as they arrived. After the visit, we all trickled out for the hour-long drive to the Samoa Cookhouse in Eureka via the Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway, and scenic it was…a beautiful, winding shortcut through more redwoods. Can we ever get enough great scenery…nope! We even saw a few elk, all within an easy rifle shot from the road…not that I would even think of shooting such a beautiful animal with such beautiful brown eyes, delicious backstraps and tasty roasts.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, the Samoa Cookhouse. The Samoa Cookhouse is an old cookhouse from the lumber heydays. They fed all the lumberjacks for the company in a family-style setting. It is operated that way today…family style and all you can eat. Today we had a vegetable-beef soup, fresh green salad, fresh green beans, barbecued beans, chicken parmesan and a side of pasta, all cooked perfectly. Dessert was strawberry cake. Did I say it was all you could eat? Well it was!

After getting much, much more than our money’s worth, we again headed south toward the Ancient Redwoods RV Park inside the Avenue of the Giants. This was a park that Claudia and I found on our way up the coast. We were exploring and were visiting the adjacent Burl ‘n’ Drift Café and Gift Shop when we were contacted by the Assistant Manager of the park. Even though the park we were scheduled to stay at in Benbow was a very nice park, this one really tripped our triggers, so we told Ron and Juanita about it when we saw them in Eureka. They stopped by, liked it, and made the change. It was the easiest parking job so far. Most sites were pull-thru’s so it was just a matter of bringing the rigs in and directing them into their sites on either side of the road…one left, one right, one left, and so on.

Piece of cake! I have never seen guests so happy with a park as they are with this one. Everyone has a smile on their face!

After parking and settling in, we started setting up for our combination anniversary/birthday party where everyone with a birthday or anniversary during the trip was honored. Claudia and Linda baked a pineapple upside-down cake, a Funfetti cake and cupcakes, all accompanied with ice cream, several jams, syrups and nuts.

We also had balloons and confetti poppers. The party went well into the evening around a Maytag firepit until the cold chased us all back into the warmth of our rigs. Tomorrow is a free day for the guests to explore the Avenue in their cars. Tonight, we will sleep well amongst the giants!

Claudia and I stayed in the rig all day with paperwork and putting out fires…forest fires. We had some big problems which will HOPEFULLY be resolved tomorrow. If they aren’t, we are in deep poop! Later in the afternoon, we quit and got ready for tonight’s festivities which will include a beanbag baseball game where the men will attempt to regain their honor by (hopefully) beating the women who trounced us in the first game last week.

We got started at 5:30 and the men prevailed.

The score was 8 to 2. We then had a travel briefing and I did the presentation on catching and preparing slugs. I started with a dissertation on how to properly skin a slug and then prepare that skin for eating by soaking it in a mixture of yeast (to enlarge it) and cornstarch (to thicken it). Claudia then held up a triangle of crescent roll dough which I referred to as the processed slug skin. I then had three cans of pie filling that had labels of “Bloody, Chunky Guts” (Cherry pie filling), Chunky Banana Slug Guts (apple pie filling) and Blue Guts (blueberry pie filling).

I took a “volunteer” who had previously bet me a dollar she wouldn’t eat one of my slugs and brought her into the middle of the group. I handed her a “skin” and showed her how to wrap it on the slug stick. She then baked the skin over the campfire

and chose to fill it with Blue Guts. I then put a head of whipped cream on it. She handed me a dollar and ate the slug! (She came back later and ate another). I found out that one guest actually believed my story until I brought out the whipped cream. I had told them that I had cut off the heads of the slugs prior to skinning and later put the heads, after pulling off the tentacles, of course (too tough and stringy), into Claudia’s blender to puree the heads before putting them into a pressurized can. I guess that was a little too farfetched for her and she then realized it was all a tall tale…a VERY tall tale. We had a great time. The guests loved it. After everyone had eaten their fill, we packed up, cleaned up, put stuff away, walked the Giz and took a long, hot shower. Tomorrow, Fort Bragg.

Florence, Coos Bay and Gold Beach

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry's Stardates) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 01:19:00 +0000

Sunday, September 27th

We had a short 47-mile drive today through beautiful winding coastline covered with wind-blown trees. Everything green was bent or sloped to the east. The winds here must be tremendous. Got set up at the park and got everyone parked in short order. The manager here at the park was amazed how easy it went. I told her it was because she was working with the best wagonmaster team Adventure Caravans has. Almost everyone scattered for some sightseeing before going out to the Waterfront Depot for a LEO. This time I had the lamb shank with an outstanding dark brown sauce. Again, delicious. Claudia had the same crab encrusted halibut and it was even better than last week. Back at the rig, we had to eat some of the ice cream stored in the freezer to make room for more food. The top layer of ice cream in any container must be removed regularly to prevent “freezer burn”. One must not waste!

Monday brought the threat of ominous weather. We are facing the possibility of rain for the next few days. Unfortunately, Tuesday looks worse…about an 80% chance of rain. That is the day we are doing a sand dune tour in an open sand buggy. We can only wait and see. We carpooled to the Sea Lion Caves

and the Heceta Head Lighthouse

in the morning. The lighthouse looks MUCH better from a distance. After the tour, we returned home for work. We really need to work ahead on this trip to make sure everything is set up correctly. We had a 5:00 pm social and I brought out the beanbag baseball game. It didn’t take long before everyone was into it big-time! Unfortunately, through the biggest pile of beginner’s luck I have ever seen, the women beat the men 13-3. I went to bed early but was awakened twice by heavy rain.

After the rain, the sky cleared and it looks like we will be going on the sand dunes tour after all. Even Gizmo has extra bounce in his prance this morning! We carpooled down to the dunes at 9:30 and got all set up for the trip. The weather looked a little like rain so, as an afterthought, I put on my caravan windbreaker over my fuzzy caravan jacket. We all loaded the sand buggies and headed out through the trees. When we cleared the trees, there were the dunes!

They were huge and rolling and steep and rolling and very steep and rolling. We started off but shortly stopped at a huge drop-off for some pictures. The sky was getting darker. From where we started the tour, you couldn’t see the sky because of the trees. Now, at the dunes, we saw the sky…and it didn’t look good.

There was one nice, big, beautiful patch of blue up there but, unfortunately, it wasn’t over us. We got hammered! It wasn’t a frog-strangler, not even a gully-washer, but it did soak us pretty good. There was even a little hail mixed in. After the tour, we returned to the rig for a long, hot shower and a change of clothes.

Five of us took off just after noon. What for? Food, of course! This time we went to ICM, the International C-food Market. I had a bowl of chowder and a veggie salad. Claudia had fish & chips and we split the dinners. The chowder was good, better than Mo’s, but not as good as the Chowder Hut. After lunch, we walked around that part of the town. I picked up a leather Western-style hat for $20 and we returned to the park via Dairy Queen for a couple of chocolate dipped ice cream comes.

We met with the group at five o‘clock for a travel briefing with explicit and comprehensive directions on driving the 48.4 miles to the Mill Casino RV Park in Coos Bay. The directions are: “TURN LEFT out of the Pacific Pines RV Park, drive 48.4 miles and TURN LEFT into the Mill Casino RV Park”. I will probably embellish on those directions slightly, just to earn my pay and further establish myself as the amazingly knowledgeable and charismatic leader of this group. After the briefing, we returned to the rig to get some stuff put away in preparation for tomorrow’s journey. I have three geocache locations that are very close to the RV park entered into a GPS unit. I’ll probably search them out tomorrow afternoon after all the chickens have come to roost.

We are now back at the Mill Casino for two nights. We have been here two hours and Claudia hasn’t made it to the casino…yet! She and Linda are out shopping so I’m holding down the fort. We all have beautiful sites, right on the river where tugboats run up and down with barges loaded with whatever. The weather is still 50-50 and we’re hoping it holds. Tomorrow, we lead a carpool to the Myrtlewood Factory and out to Cape Arago via a couple of scenic overlooks. After the tour, I will pick up some oysters for an oyster barbecue.

Thursday, November 1st – The weather couldn’t be better! We carpooled to the Myrtlewood Factory at 10

Turning a bowl

Myrtlewood chest

and then headed for Cape Arago at 11, stopping at the lighthouse overlook, the sea lion overlook (there were about 2500 of the varmints there today-the guests loved it-I was doing a shark dance to get some Great White’s in to play with them) and finally Cape Arago. The weather was great, but no whales. We had lunch and then headed back to the rig. I picked up the bag of oysters at the store (60 oysters for $27.00) and we got ready for tonight’s festivities. On the way home, Larry and Linda had a damn deer jump out in front of them and they drilled it. They weren’t hurt but the car has a screwed up bumper and the hood was tweaked backwards and to one side. What a bummer!

We had a Travel Briefing at 5:00 followed by the oyster barbecue. We had three barbecues going.

Larry and I did the honors. We were magnificent! We got kudo’s from everyone.

For those few non-imbibers, Claudia made her world famous meat balls. Tomorrow, we continue to eat our way down the coast, headed for Gold Beach and an authentic German Octoberfest dinner.

Claudia and I left at 8:30 and semi-boogied (45 mph is a semi-boogie) straight to the park. The drive was beautiful, probably the prettiest so far. It was heavy on the trees and ferns and moss-covered rocks and rocks out in the ocean and beaches and, and, and. We pulled in, got set up and the rigs started arriving. This was a “circle the wagons” type of park in that all our sites were in a circle around a central bunch of sites. Luckily, they dribbled in, as opposed to all showing up at once, and again, due to my masterful ability to direct traffic, all rigs got parked quickly and efficiently without any problems whatsoever. Gizmo got romped several times as Claudia had to do a bunch of walking outside to check things out and he went with her to show her the correct bushes for future walks. After all rigs were in, we got in a little work on the books. We are not caught up, but are getting close.

At 5:00 o’clock, we headed for the Octoberfest room. I grabbed a German beer and listened to the music…a drum and an accordion playing polkas. They started serving at 6:00. We each has some red cabbage, two potato pancakes with plum sauce, a stuffed cabbage roll and a sausage. The cabbage and potato pancakes were outstanding. The rest…so-so. After dinner and some chit-chat, we returned to the rig for more paperwork.

Saturday, October 3rd – We got up about 7:00 and carpooled to Jerry’s Rogue Jets on the Rogue River at 7:45. At 8:00 we loaded the boat.

The Captain was Tim, a Lutheran minister and one of the funniest guys I’ve ever heard. The people at Jerry’s say his congregation is FULL! Anyway, we took off and headed up the river, passing many salmon fishing boats. One lucky guy got a 45# fish.

It was cold, but we all had heavy jackets on so it wasn’t THAT bad. The weather forcasters must have come from San Diego because they forecast rain and it was almost clear blue sky…but still cold. (It was 41.something when we got up this morning) Our first stop was a bald eagle followed by some herons and Canadian geese. We had tall tale after tall tale on the way up that kept us all in stitches. About 11:00ish, we stopped for a fabulous lunch. There was a full buffet for $14.00. They had the most delicious, moist chicken I’ve ever had (I had four pieces), roast pork, green beans, baked beans with sweet onions (delicious!), garlic potatoes with brown gravy, buttermilk biscuits, a full salad bar and several desserts. We waddled out, totally stuffed!

The boat sat much lower in the water on the way back down river. As we started down, the sky got darker and the rain started. It wasn’t too heavy but I was glad to be sitting behind Larry. He’s about 6’ 4” and provided some wonderful protection. About halfway down, we spotted a flock of wild turkeys. Claudia made some snide comment about me probably wanting to blast one with a shotgun. I replied that there was no “probably” at all! They looked delicious. We pulled into the dock at Jerry’s and walked across the parking lot to the gift shop. After the obligatory purchase of a Jerry’s Rogue River Boat Tour hat pin and a couple of not-as-necessary purchases, we came home and prepared for a travel briefing for tomorrow’s jaunt to California and Crescent City. Before we cross the border, we have to fill the fuel tank with Oregon diesel which should be far cheaper than California diesel. We are down under ¼ tank, so, let’s see…1/4 of 150 gallons is about … I’ll probably put about 120 gallons in Godzilla’s tank. Hey kids…there go your Christmas presents!

Tomorrow…back in California.

Here we go!

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry's Stardates) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:41:00 +0000

Sunday, September 20th

It is now almost 10:00 pm and I am between trying to finish paperwork and exhaustion. The days are running from 6:00 to 7:00 am to at least 11:00 pm, sometimes midnight. We have 15 rigs in the park as of tonight with three more coming in tomorrow for sure. The last will be in tomorrow or Tuesday morning. That’s pushing it close.

We spent the first two days running around Tillamook, pre-running tours, checking out prospective spots for future caravans and tours, and hitting the various stores to buy for the caravan lunch and parties. We hit the Tillamook Cheese Factory to get “Squeeky Cheese” and a bowl of ice cream. Their new flavor, “Sticky Bun” is to die for! I would show you a picture of the bowl but it didn’t last long enough for a picture. We then went to the Blue Heron for brie. I’m not a brie fan but this was GOOD, especially the smoked brie. We then went to Debbie D’s Sausage Factory and got four or five different sausages. After that, it was Fred Myers for two shopping carts and $190 worth of “stuff”. Get the picture?

After collecting most of the stuff we need to get started, we started greeting the guests that were here, inspecting their rigs and getting their paperwork started and in order. The trip is coming together but there are still a lot of “holes” that need to be plugged. Right now, I’m waiting on a phone call from a restaurant to confirm a reservation. I hope they call soon. I want to go to bed. Tick, tock…tick, tock…(time is passing). They didn’t call back. I went to bed!

Monday, Monday! It’s coming together! We booked the boat in Newport for the crabbing trip on Friday and got the reservations at the Waterfront Depot for the LEO (Let’s Eat Out!) on Sunday. The crab encrusted halibut was just outstanding when we ate there on the way up. I’m debating whether to stay with it or get something else. It will probably be a last-second decision.

Tomorrow is “Start Day” and we are doing a continental breakfast for the group. Claudia has been baking lots of mini-muffins this morning. Unfortunately, there were almost no ugly muffins for me to eat. She is also defrosting several large bags of ham and turkey we cooked and de-boned back at home. This will be for the sandwiches we are serving for the orientation meeting at noon. All rigs are scheduled to be in today. Things are lookin’ good!

Tuesday, September 22nd – The day went great…coffee in the morning, orientation and welcome around noon. They all ate so much in the morning that we postponed lunch until dinner. Everyone was waddling when they left!

Wednesday we went to the Air Museum, the Tillamook Cheese Factory where we did a self-guided tour followed by a double ice cream…Sticky Bun and Tillamook Mudslide. Sticky Bun won again! We then went north to Bay City to the Pacific Oyster Company to watch the oyster shuckers in action. They get paid by the bucket so they really move. However, for unknown reasons, they were given the day off today and weren’t working. Shucks! We had lunch…grilled oysters and a cup of clam chowder. Delicious! We then returned for a travel briefing and to get the rig ready to roll in the morning.

We rolled at 8:30 in the morning and headed for McMinnville, the home of Evergreen Aviation and the “Spruce Goose”.

Amazingly, the Spruce Goose is neither a goose nor is it made of spruce. It is about 90% yellow birch. We had a tour of the museum where there were bunches of other planes, actually several bunches, about half of which were warbirds, my favorite type of plane. One of the docents was a World War II vet who actually flew P-38’s in combat.

When he returned from the war, he had flown six different types of combat aircraft but couldn’t drive a car. He didn’t have a driver’s license because he left for the war before he was old enough to drive. Interesting guy!

After the Evergreen Museum, we headed back to the coast and down to Newport. The weather was pretty blowy and the ocean was really kicking up, as in huge waves and lots of wind-driven spray. After getting everyone settled into their assigned spaces, Claudia and the Camp Host led an area briefing about Newport. We then adjourned to “Fishtails”, a highly recommended restaurant around the corner from the park. I had Slumgullion, a bowl of clam chowder baked with shrimp and white cheeses and served with garlic bread. I was hungry and had a second piece of bread and a salad. Claudia had fish and chips which she split with Linda, who had the shrimp basket. Larry made a comment that this trip should be called “Eating Your Way Down the West Coast”. Claudia and I have physicals lined up as soon as we return. We may want to re-think that. Tomorrow is a tour of the Yaquina Head Lighthouse and Visitor Center followed by a three-hour crabbing trip and a dinner at the Rogue Brewery.

The Yaquina Head Lighthouse is a really beautiful light.

It is sort of unusual in that the light doesn’t turn. It’s a static flashing light with a “signature” of 2 seconds on, two off, two on and fourteen off. Every lighthouse has a different signature so, if mariners were lost and saw a light, they would know where they are by the signature of the light. The only thing “bad” about the light is the flies. This time of the year must be the breeding season for the kelp flies. They are everywhere! Some of them won’t be breeding anymore. I removed several from the gene pool. After the tour, we returned to the park to get ready for the crabbing trip.

Eleven of us headed to the boat

and went out into the main channel of Yaquina Harbor on the crab trip. We started the trip by getting our hands dirty by baiting all the traps.

When we got to the harbor entrance, we started dropping the pots. After waiting about 30 minutes, we started picking up the traps. The boat moved slowly toward a buoy and the “hooker” grabbed the buoy floats with a long hook.

The floats were then brought on board and the line was fed through a pulley on a short boom.

The “puller” then hauled on the line and brought the trap to the surface and up to the pulley.

The trap was then grabbed by the “grabber” (me)

who swung the trap, loaded with crabs, to a large tub on the boat.

The grabber lowered the sides of the trap and shook the crabs into the tub. The trap was then passed to the stern of the boat where the buoys were then thrown overboard and, when the buoy line was all the way out, the now-empty trap was returned to the water.

It was a really quick and efficient system. The crabs in the tub were then

checked for size and sex. The legal crabs were put in a fish box and the undersized and female crabs were put in another bin to be returned to the bay later on. It was constant work, but fun. We ended the day with 71 crabs to be split between 11 crabbers. Not a bad day! When we got to the dock, we turned the crabs over to the cookers where they were cooked and cleaned for a buck apiece. I will pick them up in the morning and distribute them to the crabbers.

After the crab trip and a quick shower, we went to the Rogue Brewery for a wonderful tour and dinner. I settled on the Dead Guy Ale as a liquid refreshment. They first served an absolutely delicious garlic-cheesy bread. The entrees were your choice of rockfish (delicious) or a chicken with a delicious whiskey barbecue sauce. The chicken was good but slightly overcooked. The experience overall was very good and everyone seemed to enjoy it royally. On the way back to the rig, I took a slight side trip and did a little geocaching, finding two caches. This makes a total of three for the trip. Tomorrow, the aquarium.

The first thing we did was to watch the otters being fed.

After that it was the Passages of the Deep,

a tank with me inside it,

seahorses,

sea nettles,

Japanese Spider Crabs

and Lionfish.

Beautiful aquarium!

I snuck in an hour or so to find three more geocaches and then slimed back to help Claudia. The rest of the day was spent on paperwork, a travel briefing, doing laundry and getting ready to head for Florence. There are many great things about this trip, but the best is that we are heading south…toward home.

Lincoln City and Tillamook

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry's Stardates) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 02:29:00 +0000

Today is a travel day to the Lincoln City Elks RV Park. It’s going to take us about a whole 45 minutes, and that’s if we dawdle around a bit. We decided not to dawdle and went straight to the park, opting to dawdle in our car later today or tomorrow. After getting the jacks lowered, slides out, and the water and power hooked up, I turned on the satellite antenna and found out I had “bullseyed” the very end of a very leafy tree limb. Rats…no TV signal. All I could do was to unhook the water and power, start the engine, retract the jacks and move the rig back about four feet. I then lowered the jacks, re-leveled the rig and hooked up the water and power cord again. Perfect! The cell phone rang. It turned out that all dawdling will be done tomorrow, as the phone call was from Tina (our boss) and it changed a bunch of our tentative, possible, thought-we-had-it-nailed-down and optional plans. We are now going into the starting park in Tillamook on the 18th instead of the 20th because there’s just too much last-minute stuff to do. Even with us being in the park for four days prior to the actual start of the trip, we will have our roller skates on. There is still so much stuff that hasn’t been nailed down that needs to be…and soon!

Between rain showers, I went back and forth to and from the office and we finally settled on a four-day stay until Friday when we’ll head to Tillamook. When I got our housing for the week all settled, it was time to take Gizmo for a romp and for us to eat lunch. Almost all of the park is mowed grass

so Giz took off with ears flying. All of a sudden, he stopped and buried his head in the grass. This usually means he found a bug to eat, but in this case, as I soon found out, it was a pile of elk poop.

I was too late in jerking on the leash. He was already eating something, and I never did find out if it was a bug or a piece of poop. I really don’t think I want to know anyway! He was on a very short leash for the remainder of his romp.

We returned to the rig and I popped the cap on the second test beer, “Brutal Bitter”. It also was very good but had a little too much bitterness for my palate. The rest of the day was spent kickin’ it until the Monday Night Football games. The first game had an unbelievable comeback with about four minutes left in the game. The second game was the Raiders and the Chargers at Oakland. Now, for those of you who are not familiar with my allegiances, I hold Card #1 of the Raider-Hater Club. I am a charter member. The game was not pretty. The Raiders played better, but the Chargers won the game at the last minute. I am still too uptight to go to bed. I have to get to sleep though. I don’t want to sleep through “Predator Quest” tomorrow morning. I’m sure Gizmo will get me up in time. It’s his favorite show.

We got up early, full of anticipation. Gizmo got a romp and I got a shower. We both felt better! After the show, Claudia and I left to see Lincoln City, wash the car and do laundry. We then turned around and headed south to the “World’s Smallest Harbor”, Depoe Bay.

Boats going in and out of the harbor do so one at a time, in a narrow, twisting channel that is probably about 25’ wide.

Outer entrance

Just inside the outer entrance

Going under the bridge

After going under the bridge, the channel opens to the harbor.

The inner harbor

I don’t know how many boats the harbor holds, but it’s not very many. We then had lunch and returned to the park to sit in the shade and relax. After relaxing, we went inside and watched a movie about the Crusades. Good flick, very bloody, but good!

The next morning was another lazy morning. Claudia got up, got the mutt out of his cage and brought him to bed to keep me company. He slowly crawled under the covers, curled up next to my leg and promptly went back to sleep. After a while, I got up, making sure I didn’t disturb the still-sleeping furball. As I poured my first cup of coffee, the pitter-patter of light rain started. Great...right after washing the car! The pitter-patter increased to a small crescendo and we now had a moderate to heavy rain going. (I used San Diego area rain standards to describe “moderate to heavy”. Up here, they would probably classify this as a “drizzle”. The “normal” rainfall here is 40 to 60 inches a year!) Gizmo’s morning romp is going to have to wait. After a while, the rain slacked off a bit and I donned my official Alaska rain parka and put on a Stetson with its own rain cover and prepared Gizmo for an abbreviated romp. I first tried the protected grass area under the awning. Nope! The smells weren’t right. OK dog, we are going to get wet. We walked out to another grass area under a nice full tree. He liked that spot and soon finished his potty duties. We returned to the safety of the rig, dried off and had breakfast.

After breakfast, we got ready to drive about ten miles to a Starbuck’s to get our email. Gizmo whined and sniveled and pouted until we agreed to take him along. When we got there, I went inside, ordered my usual “Penguin Mocha”, a half dark chocolate, half white chocolate, extra-hot , and sat down to log into the Internet. I checked the status of the boxes being shipped to our starting park in Tillamook, retrieved several company emails and budgets and a couple of correspondence letters and then shut down. Since the boxes wouldn’t be delivered until much later today, we decided to return to the park in Lincoln City and kick it for the day. Now, “kicking it” included revisions, re-revisions and a couple of re-re-revisions as dictated by the letters, budgets and emails I received today. I can’t wait until the schedule is done, set in stone and finished so we can finish our calendar. Every time we have to go back to change things, there are chances for errors…and errors we don’t need!

Thursday is our last full day here in Lincoln City and we are scheduled for visitors…Larry & Linda and Jim & Marty. The sun is out but it’s still cool. The official Adventure Caravans weather gauge reads 66.7 degrees. I just switched from shorts to levis. About noonish, they both showed up and we had a great reunion. Jim made some of his famous salsa and Claudia did the margaritas. We all toasted the return of “Los Flojos”, the name of our small group.

Los Flojos (minus Claudia who took the picture)

It means “The Lazy Ones” or “The one who kick back”. We each had a couple of margaritas and then Cladia brot out another picture of drinks. We had a cuple mor and were starting too have fun. After abowt fore of her mergeritas, I started two cuk tha carney asaada.

It was gud! We had lots of fun and slep purty gud!

Friday morning! Today we move to Pleasant Valley RV Park in Tillamook and officially start the caravan. We have four “pre-days” before the caravan actually starts on the 22nd to get everything prepared, confirmed and set up. Needless to say, we will be busy. Before we took off from the Elks RV Park, we headed into town for breakfast with Jim and Marty before they headed home. The drive to Tillamook was a short hour at an average speed of about 40 mph along a winding, scenic Highway 101.

The Pleasant Valley park is about seven miles south of Tillamook itself and is a beautiful grass, gravel and dirt park set in among many beautiful trees.

We got our rigs all set up and met one of the two guests that are already here. We then picked up mail and Claudia, Linda and Larry headed into Tillamook to cash checks, visit stores and do “stuff” while Gizmo and I stayed behind to finish setting up the rig, set up the computers and check the email. We didn’t have email in Lincoln City so there was a bunch of essential and non-essential stuff waiting for me. Due to a slow connection, the essential stuff with downloads and attachments took almost an hour to go through, absorb, forward to Claudia’s computer and print. The non-essential stuff took an additional 15 seconds to go through.

The motorhome has taken on a new look. There are boxes everywhere. There is paperwork everywhere. Now the real work begins. There is no more play time. I need to go. There is work to be done. Bye!

Newport, OR

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry's Stardates) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:44:00 +0000

Today is Thursday, September 10th, our 27th wedding anniversary! We were headed for Newport and, since there were only eight RV spaces at the lodge, we got moving early. We left Florence about 9:15 and got to Newport about an hour later. We grabbed a spot, got ourselves all set up and headed for the caravan RV park, a distillery and a beer brewery where we have a tour and a dinner. We then headed for Nye Beach

to sample some clam chowder at the Chowder Bowl. It was excellent! Now I have to have some at the Whale’s Tale to see which is better. We putzed and puttered the rest of the day away and then came home for a steak, chicken and salad dinner.

Friday was a crabbing day. Let me re-phrase that. Friday was a crab net throwing day. I got lots of exercise at two different locations in Yaquina Bay

but still got zilched! I did, however, get some great info for crabbing when the caravan gets here in two weeks. There is a boat that will take 12 people out in the ocean at the head of the bay for three to three and one-half hours for crab. They provide all the traps and bait. We provide a license and the muscle to pull the traps. The norm has been that everyone comes back with limits (12) or near-limits(10+). The cost is $42. Sounds good to me!

After our non-catching attempt, we came home, got cleaned up and went to lunch at another highly recommended restaurant, the “Local Ocean”. It also was excellent. I had a bowl of clam, mussel and chorizo soup and Claudia had a bacon-wrapped albacore fillet on a bed of stir-fried vegetables and crispy onions. For those of you who might want to imbibe in the soup, fashion a large napkin to cover the front of your shirt. I tell you this from first-hand experience. My brand new, never worn before, Carhartt shirt is now emblazoned with two circular spots of chorizo soup that will, hopefully, come out after being soaked with a pre-wash spot remover before the next wash. Notwithstanding the aforementioned “whoops”, this was another 5-star dining experience. The bathroom scales have been banished to one of the cargo bays for the remainder of the trip. We then headed north to the Yaquina Head Lighthouse

to pre-run it for the caravan and then returned home for paperwork…LOTS of paperwork.

Today, Saturday, is a dribbly day! It is clousy and overcast and everything is wet and dribbling. I had a lot of stuff to do on the Internet and the Elks Lodge is closed. RATS! The wi-fi here is marginal, at best. I had to stand outside the office and one-hand the computer while trying to get through all the garbage mail to the important stuff so I could get some work done. It was NOT fun! Anyway, by typing letters and messages off-line in Word (in the motorhome) and then doing a one-handed cut & paste (at the lodge front door, holding the laptop in one hand and typing with the other), I got them off. This was the epitome of multi-tasking!

Since the day was poopy, Claudia and I stayed inside and worked on the calendar and the schedule to get the events on the calendar, on the proper day and at the proper time, as best we can. I think we have it about 90% done at this point. When Ron and Juanita finish running the trip in a few days, we’ll be able to do all the finalizing and correcting. We are now on our second pot of coffee! Even Gizmo went back and licked his bowl clean for the second time. Tonight is Octoberfest at the lodge so we ate a very light lunch in preparation for tonight’s belt stretching event. The menu was Pork Wiener Schnitzel, Bratwurst, German Potato Salad, Sweet & Sour Red Cabbage with streusel for dessert. Yum!

We even had a German band.

Well, since the day began poopy, it might as well end poopy. It is now raining!

I just made reservations for us to go to the Lincoln City Elks RV Park on Monday. The park is just under 40 miles south of Tillamook so we will drive up to pick up our caravan supplies when they arrive from Texas, supposedly on Tuesday or Wednesday or whenever. From what the lady at the park told me, we will not have Internet at the park, which will be a big PITA! According to our highly flexible tentative schedule, my next good Internet access should be Friday, possibly Saturday, but for sure on Sunday…maybe!

Sunday the 13th, our last day full in Newport. The first stop of the day was the Undersea Gardens, which looks like a large modern barge floating on the water.

There are lots of ports to look out, in, and down into the water. The underwater ports show critters that are normally found within Yaquina Bay. Across from the gardens is a long rock sea wall that is totally covered with the nastiest and most obnoxious varmints known to seafarers…California sea lions , aka shark food…Orca bait…fish thieves…etc.! We can hear them from the Elks Lodge several blocks away. They even scared Gizmo last night when he was out for a walk. Why they are protected is beyond me. They eat a BUNCH of salmon and they eat 24/7, 365 days a year. I think we need more sharks up here!

After our quick tour of the Undersea Gardens, we headed for the Oregon State University aquarium, which is a modern, beautiful facility and a great stop. We then went almost next door to the Hatfield Marine Center, more of a scientific marine facility with a lot of hands-on exhibits. Next on the work schedule was a stop at the brewery to talk with the manager and set up the menu for our dinner. I also borrowed on his expertise as to which was their best beer. He recommended two; ”Brutal Bitter” and “Dead Guy”.

For the purpose of a semi-scientific study, I bought a bottle of each to be consumed prior to our dinner so I can give a first-hand opinion as to the worth of the brewery. It’s the least I can do for our guests!

After finishing up with our work, we headed for the Whale’s Tale to do a comparison test of chowder. The only way to give a legitimate comparison is to sample both within a short period of time. So, I will again sacrifice my waistline for the good of the caravan and consume another bowl of chowder in the interest of fair and balanced reporting. After consuming chowders at both the Chowder Bowl and the Whale’s Tale, and after much thought, pondering, calculating and deliberation, I have determined the best chowder is found at the Chowder Bowl. It was double-superb!

We are winding down here in Newport and will head for Lincoln City tomorrow. Again, our Internet is supposed to be non-existent, as in “none”, so be aware and have patience. I am sure y’all can hardly wait for the next installment of the Stardate blog, but let not your hearts be troubled, one will be forthcoming as soon as I have reconnected with the electronic world. Stay safe! Stay warm! Stay dry!

Florence, OR

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry's Stardates) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 01:47:00 +0000

We got up leisurely as promised. Packing up and rearranging things took until almost 11:00 am. I was all done with the Engineering Dept. and Claudia was almost done with the Domestic Dept. She was sitting on the floor and stuffing the last of the local brochures in the goodie bags for the guests. When she finished, I pulled in the slides and retracted the jacks. The rig lurched slightly as the pressure released from the jacks. “Where the (fill in the blank) do you think you are going?” she asked. “I’ve been waiting for three days to go back to the casino”. There was no getting out of it. We locked up and walked (she walked, I trudged) to the casino. She hit the penny machines and was about staying even and maybe even a little ahead. She changed machines and when I walked around the corner to find her, her machine was chirping like crazy. She had hit a $20 jackpot. Amazingly, she then called it quits and we left the casino about $22 ahead, not including her original $5 buy-in. I think that put us (her) at about a positive Alexander Hamilton (that’s ten bucks to save you looking it up or pulling out your wallets) for the stay. We returned to the rig, fired it up, pulled out and headed north for Florence.

We travelled mostly through the sand dunes area of Oregon but there were many beautiful lakes and trees as well. There are sixty miles of dunes in this area of Oregon. It was a knockout of a drive. Fifty some-odd miles later, we entered Florence. Florence seemed to be about two miles in length along Highway 101. It’s a cool little town. We passed the Elks Lodge and headed out the north end of the town to Mercer Lake Rd. and turned right. We shortly turned left into the Elks RV Park. This was NOT what we were expecting folks! This place is BEAUTIFUL!!!!! It is set in amongst lots of trees and has beautiful gravel roads, immaculate landscaping, large grassy areas and wide, secluded RV spaces…all for $18 a night.

Amenities include 50 amp power, water, two dump stations and free wi-fi throughout the park. The park is about a quarter-mile off Highway 101 so it is very quiet and secluded. There is even a bear warning sign among the postings on the park’s information board. Is this heaven or is this heaven? Now…how close is it to good crabbing? We are about to find out.

The answer is about five miles! We headed down to the Pacific Pines RV Park, introduced ourselves and got all of the necessary information for the trip. We then headed down to Old Town for a look-see. It hadn’t changed much in four years. We went into Mo’s for a quick dinner and then returned home via the local Indian casino. No, we didn’t go in but Claudia has it logged into her “Things to do later” data bank.

When we got home, the motorhome looked like a big weed in a rose garden. It was filthy. All the other motorhomes were spotless and spiffy. Claudia decided that we should wash the coach. Now, how do you wash the coach when the rules say you can’t wash the coach? Well, you get my crab bucket out of the car, fill it half-way with hot water, add a good cup of vinegar and scrub it with towels attached to a scrub brush. After it’s “washed”, you dry it with a clean dry towel. It looks fabulous! Well, it looks a lot better than it did. I’ll wait until tomorrow when the sun is really out and take a look at it then before I make a final determination of how it looks. We then took Gizmo for a romp around the park, made a pot of coffee, turned on the “telly” and kicked back. When I’m thoroughly kicked, I’ll take a shower. That may even be tomorrow morning.

Speaking of tomorrow, we shall arise at a reasonable hour, say around 9:00 or 10:00, shower if we didn’t shower tonight, and then take off to the north to see the Sea Lion Caves and the Heceta Head Lighthouse. After that, we’ll head south of town to check out the sand dune tour. Coincidentally, the town has erected a fishing and crabbing pier off South Jetty Road in the area of the sand dunes. Since we will be through with business at that time, we just might take an hour or two to see if we can capture some denizens of the shallows.

It was a little cool last night so Claudia got up about 4:00 to turn on the furnace and bring Gizmo into bed with us. After a short session of happiness licks, we all returned to sleep mode. Around 8:45 or so, we all started stirring and got up to face the day. Claudia was first and I followed shortly thereafter. Gizmo lagged! After a great breakfast of sausage and eggs on mini-English muffins, orange juice and coffee, we took off on our appointed rounds. The weather cooperated fully with totally blue skies and beautiful bright sunshine. Oh yeah, the rig looks beautiful in the sunlight…a 1,000% improvement!

We hit the Sea Lion Caves first.

According to people coming out of the gift shop, there were no sea lions in the caves. We went inside and introduced ourselves to “Boomer”, a retired teacher and the PR guy at the caves. We had some pre-conceived notions about the place that frankly weren’t good. We had heard that it was smelly, dark and not worth the entrance fee. Boomer generously gave us passes so we could go down to the cave and see it. We went outside, down the trail to the elevator and then down 120’ to the cave itself. It WAS dark, but subtle indirect lighting was all around the cave and you soon became acclimated to the darkness. First of all, it was NOT smelly. The recent storm may have cleaned it out a bit but there was no disagreeable odor at all. Second of all, it was huge, much larger that we had expected…and it was beautiful!

There was only one sea lion in the cave, but that didn’t diminish the beauty of it. There were several exhibits, a TV documentary and a view of the Heceta Head Lighthouse. It was well worth the time and the entrance fee.

After the Sea Lion Cave, we headed to the Heceta Head Lighthouse to check out the parking lot and the facilities.

After doing so, we returned to the RV park to romp Giz and pick up a turkey neck for crab bait. We then headed to the sand dunes to check out the tour.

We are all set for the sand buggy tour. We are going on the big sand buggies,

not the rails.

For us old farts, this is more the Chevy station wagon tour, not the Ferrari ride! Some of the dunes are hundreds of feet high. I think this is going to be fun.

After checking out the sand machines, we headed for the South Jetty fishing and crabbing pier. When we got there, the tide was still ripping and the wind was blowing hard and cold, but we had high hopes. We walked out to the far corner of the pier, baited the trap, tied off the pull rope to the rail (VERY important), and I heaved it into the water. Fifteen minutes later, I pulled the trap. It was loaded with over a dozen Dungeness crabs, all shorts or female…no keepers. We kept pulling and throwing every 10 minutes for the next two hours but no keepers emerged. I only saw four keepers landed during the time we were there. One old-timer told us it was a little early yet and to give it a few more weeks. Maybe on the trip down.

We left the pier earlier than we planned , mostly due to the cold wind, and headed off to mail some letters. We had been eyeballing a good-looking Chinese restaurant and decided to give it a try. We ordered a couple of specials at $9 each. I had Kung Pao Chicken, Sweet & Sour Pork with pork fried rice. Claudia had Almond Chicken, Fried Shrimp, Sweet & Sour Pork and pork fried rice. The plates were HUGE! I got three-quarters through my plate before switching to the “power-eating” mode. Claudia kept her senses and asked for a “to go” box. It was delicious!
We returned to the rig, romped Giz, brewed a pot of coffee and kicked back for the evening. Great day!

Wednesday, our last day here in Florence, was not spent they way we had planned. Our plans were to get up somewhat early to get to the crabbing pier by 9:00 am. The first low tide is set for just past 10:00. You want to fish the hour before and after the low or high tide. Otherwise, the current in the rivers is so fast the traps won’t stay on the bottom. Well…after a fitful night of semi-bad dreams, we woke up at 8:45. Scratch crabbing! I got up and let Giz out. After two stretches and a quick foot lick, he made a beeline for the bed. Then, one jump up and three hops later, he landed right on Claudia’s face. She woke up! We then finished getting up. I threw on some sweats, romped Gizmo and returned for a shower and a blueberry pancake breakfast, complete with bacon and sausage. Yum!

Our new and revised plan for the day now includes walking Old Town and ????? That’s as “planned” as the plan for the day was planned. OK, OK, maybe a trip to DQ later on. Before we started out, Claudia got me all fired up and I wrote one of my famous “nastygrams” to Freightliner about the work they did and asked to be reimbursed for my out-of-pocket expenses. We then took off on our new and re-revised plan of the day about 2:00 pm, drove straight to Old Town, parked, and started walking.

The first store we walked into was a leather store. Claudia walked out with a beautiful brown leather backpack purse. This was a bad start! Actually, to be truthful, I bought it for her for our anniversary, which is tomorrow. We went to several other shops and dropped some more money in them. Finally, we walked by the Waterfront Depot, a small but highly recommended restaurant right on the river.

Waterfront Depot menu

We each had the crab encrusted halibut, served with a Caesar salad, the dish that the manager of the Pines RV Park raved about. She was right! It was fabulous! Even though I was glared at, I had two glasses of Clos du Bois Chardonnay, which also was excellent. We topped off the dinner with a stop at the local Dairy Queen. Claudia had a hot fudge sundae and I had a plain cone. Another great day! Tomorrow, we head for Newport.

North Bend and Coos Bay

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry's Stardates) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 01:56:00 +0000

We got to the Casino in short order and got all set up in the dry camping (free) area. We have been depleting our funds by staying in RV parks, fixing broken engines and buying new garage door openers at home. After getting organized, we headed to the Casino hotel to visit Maggie, the Group Sales Manager. She got us all set up for our impending visit at the end of the month and showed us around the casino and hotel. We then went in for lunch. Claudia had a delicious country fried steak with garlic mashed potatoes, all covered in brown gravy. Mmmm, good! I had a “Casino Special” bacon cheeseburger with ½ lb. of Angus beef, grilled onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, pickles, lettuce and thick smoked bacon. It was one of those burgers that, once you started eating, you couldn’t put it down. It was so thick, it would have fallen apart if I did…so I didn’t!

After lunch, Claudia said (VERY sweetly), “Can you give me 15 minutes and $5?” I (VERY sweetly) replied, “I’ll meet you half-way. I’ll give you 15 minutes!” She (VERY sweetly) smiled and replied, “Cute!”. She got both!

We went to the no-smoking slots and she plugged in a $5 bill. Ten minutes later, she was out of credits and plugged in a second $5 bill. When I protested, she just TOLD me that it was “either-or” and her 15 minutes wasn’t up yet. I didn’t remember it that way and protested. I lost! She did too! We then walked back to the rig where Gizmo greeted up with his customary lavish licking. Every time we leave, he acts like he hasn’t seen us in a week. Good dog!

Friday was a drive-around and look day. We headed downtown to visit the Visitor’s Center and then took off on a scenic drive. We headed west to Coos Bay and then turned south. As we were headed to Charleston, I passed a flea market and saw some crab rings out front. LOOK OUT…FULL BRAKES…LEFT TURN and stop. The rings were $20, the cheapest we have found. I bought one and continued south. We checked out a few things in Charleston and then continued south to the Cape Arago Lighthouse viewpoint. After shooting the required photo

we passed the Botanical Gardens and stopped at the marine mammal viewpoint to gaze at approximately 1,800 pieces of what should be shark food, commonly known as Stellar Sea Lions, Elephant Seals, cute little harbor seals and the worst-of-the-worst, the California Sea Lion.

Varmints!

More varmints!

and still more varmints!

After enduring all I could take of these varmints, we headed for the Cape Arago overlook. After a few minutes…”Thar she blows!” We sighted three California Gray whales blowing and cavorting just south of the Cape. Claudia was in heaven. She has had a mega-serious case of withdrawals due to not seeing any whales. Her whale clock has now been re-set. Several people began asking questions about the whales so I reached into my vast knowledge of cetaceans (Claudia swears my knowledge is half-vast) and gave a short primer on the California Grey whale. We then returned to Bend.

I have been hearing a “funny sound” from the car lately. Now, Claudia says that’s impossible because I never hear anything she says. Whatever! Anyway, I spotted an RV and auto repair facility and pulled in. They put the car up on a rack and pulled the rear differential drain plug. The mechanic soon returned and asked if I had been hearing any strange sounds from the car. I ‘fessed up and said I had. He showed me the drain plug. It was covered with metal shavings. Rats! Now we have to get the rear end rebuilt when we get home. We’ll just add that to the motorhome engine and the garage door opener at home. What next? This trip is getting expensive!

Returning home, we started on the paperwork for the area and got quite a bit done. Now…check the weather. We are supposed to be getting some rain Saturday and Sunday. Hmmm…if the rain gets here late, I may be able to sneak off and test out my new crab ring. According to the Weather Underground, the rain should start about 11:00 pm…TONIGHT! Rats! Plan “B”. What’s Plan “B”? I haven’t a clue! More work on the trip plans? Perhaps. More gambling? I sure hope not! We shall see. Stay tuned. News at 11:00…or whenever!

Hey, the weather guessers are better here than at home. The rain started around midnight and really hit at 4:00 am. It’s now off and on light rain and sprinkles. Gizmo and I got in our morning romp between sprinkles (mostly) but he still needed a toweling down after “playing” on the local lawn. Claudia and I got cleaned up and then started working on Plan “B”. Plan “B” started with Valentino getting a bath. Well, actually, you can’t give a fish a bath, but he got his water changed. He can now look out and watch the goings-on clearly. He is much happier!

Plan “B” continued with filling in the calendar with events.

Click on the photo and check out Gizmo!

We just got a call from Ron and Juanita giving us the revised schedule for the San Francisco area (which was no small feat!), so that got installed on the calendar. We are constantly revising the calendar and getting the events in their correct time slots. The trip is coming together!

After a short planning session, we have decided that we will head for Florence on Monday, stay for three days and then move on to Newport. I can’t wait until we get to Newport as that was where I found the best clam chowder on the west coast in 2005. After Newport, we’ll head for Lincoln City which is just south of Tillamook, our final destination. Now you are all caught up.

The weather cleared somewhat in the afternoon so I took the mutt for a L-O-N-G romp while Claudia made 48 mini Almond-Poppyseed muffins. About ¼ of them didn’t make it to the storage container. I follow the “cookie rule” when she bakes. The “cookie rule” clearly states that only the ugly cookies may be consumed before the un-ugly ones are put away for safekeeping. There were quite a few ugly muffins!

We are going for a drive tomorrow and will stop at the store on the way home. Gizmo needs a new rope toy to play with and I need some turkey legs for my crab net. There is a long pier right next to the park here in Bend and I want to give it a shot before we leave. On the even more positive side, there is great crabbing up in Florence, Newport and Tillamook.

It rained again last night and it’s definitely more blowy and stormy this morning. You KNOW a front is making its way through the area. Today is a day to stay inside, in front of a fire and bare on a skin rug. Unfortunately, we don’t have a fireplace or a bearskin rug. I will have to improvise!

After romping Gizmo, Claudia and I took off the see the South Slough National Estuarine Interpretive Center. It looks like it had a lot of good information inside the center but it was closed today. We looked around and then left for the varmint lookout to watch the storm waves. There weren’t as many varmints there today as there were on Friday. The waves were hitting the rocks pretty good. I’d guess the splash (not the spray…the heavy splash water) was probably 25’ high. It was rockin’ and rollin’ out there. We then turned around and headed for WalMart for supplies. Included in the supplies was a package of turkey necks.

We got home, packed up the laundry, the crab ring and supplies and headed for the laundry. I dropped Claudia off and went over to the casino dock. I baited the ring, tied off the retrieving line and heaved it into the water. It started to rain so I waited in the car until it was time to pull. After 15 minutes, I pulled the trap. There was one small male in the ring. Oh well, at least they’re here. I threw it out again and went into the casino for an extra-large, double-huge white chocolate mocha…with whipped cream! As I started back, the sky cut loose big time. I ran for the car and jumped in, totally soaked. The rain drops are much bigger here than at home! After a while, the rain subsided to a manageable level and I made a run for the trap. I pulled it, stuffed the line in a wad, grabbed the bucket and ran for the car. I quit because Claudia was still in the laundry room and I didn’t want her to have to haul the laundry all the way back to the motorhome by herself. I needed to help her! Having the car there also would keep her from getting wet. I thought she would appreciate staying dry so I voluntarily cut my crabbing short to help her.

The clothes weren’t dry so I went home (after sharing a few slurps of my mocha with her) to take a shower and wait for her phone call. When the phone rang, I went back to the laundry room and we brought the laundry home. We put the laundry away, fed the animals and kicked back. The trip tomorrow is only 47 miles so we have a leisurely morning in store for us. The Elks have RV parking at the lodge and at an RV park a little ways away. We opted for the park and made a reservation for three days. Florence, here we come!

Brookings and Bandon

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry's Stardates) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:11:00 +0000

Today we went to Crescent City to run routes and check out the joint. It’s a good thing we did because some of the info we had was bad. Anyway, it’s all sorted out now and we are good to go. We saw Ocean World, the Marine Mammal (Varmint) Center where they nurse rescued sea lions (varmints) back to health, Battery Point Lighthouse in the fog, the Elk Valley Casino (yes, we stopped. With Claudia in the car, how could I get past it? Actually, she won this time…enough to pay for lunch!) and then drove the Howland Hill Road through the Jedediah Smith Redwoods.

Gizmo was in doggie heaven. So may trees, so little pee! He didn’t know which tree to “mark” first. We then returned to Brookings, got a (small) Dairy Queen ice cream cone (dipped in chocolate at Claudia’s insistence) and drove to the harbor to see what was there. We were looking for one particular seafood store but overshot it. We’ll go back later and shoot it again. We then returned to the Elks for a nap to await the pig roast feeding frenzy tonight.

We went over about 6:30 or so and started to get our plates filled when Jim and Joanne Metcalf, friends from the CHP and fellow Elks, walked in and came over to see us. They had already eaten but sat with us and chatted while we ate. After dinner, they took off and we returned to the rig for some “work” and TV. It was a two-blanket night.

The next morning, I got up to romp Giz and there was fog everywhere. We had breakfast, did a few chores and headed north to Gold Beach. The first place we hit was the Honey Bear RV Park where we are staying on the caravan. We then retraced our tire tracks, crossed the Rogue River Bridge

and pulled into the harbor area and talked to the folks at Jerry’s Jet Boats, the company we are dealing with for the white-water boat trip. At their recommendation, we went next door for lunch. We split a tuna melt and a bowl of clam chowder. The tuna melt was a “10” (we had it with Swiss cheese, not cheddar) and the chowder was a strong “9.5”. The river was choked with skiffs, all fishing for salmon.

According to several locals, it has been the best salmon season in eight years.

We again headed south, back to Brookings and the harbor. We visited Dick & Casey’s Seafood Store at the harbor. They were really low on fish, especially salmon. The only salmon they could get at this time of the year comes from Alaska…at $35 a pound. We passed! We then re-returned to the Elks Lodge and settled in for the remainder of the day. I am thinking of putting on some long pants. I haven’t done it yet, but I’m strongly thinking about it. Tonight looks like it might be a two-blanket and a small dog night! Tomorrow is “visit the town and do laundry day”. Tuesday, we will travel to Bandon as soon as Gizmo finishes watching “Predator Quest” on the TV.

After Gizmo’s show, we leisurely packed up and headed north. The road was a little narrow and bendy in spots but absolutely beautiful. We drove the sixty-some-odd miles to Bandon and pulled into the Bandon RV Park. The folks next to us at the Brookings Elks Lodge gave it a glowing recommendation, so here we are.

Wow, are these folks super-nice! We got so much good info we almost couldn’t digest it all. We first went to Old Town Bandon for a look-see. We stopped at the fishing tackle store to check on crabbing. They get $9 for a three-day license, $7.95 a day to rent a crab ring, bucket and crab gauge and $1.50 for a chicken leg for bait. We then took off for the Mill Casino in Coos Bay to check out their RV park and the local sights and stopped at the fresh fish market in Charleston on the way. We need something to do for one evening on our caravan so we are going to have an oyster barbecue. I can get 120 large oysters for $49 which is a great price. I’ll give you the recipe and throw in a few pictures later when we actually do it, but they are yummy!

After finishing up north, we returned to the park in Bandon to romp Gizmo. The folks from the office were sitting outside waiting for one more reservation to arrive. I mentioned I wanted to try crabbing and they said they had four crab rings in the storage locker and would bring two over for me to use. The hospitality here is amazing! So, tomorrow, Claudia, Gizmo and I are going crabbing at the Bandon docks. Stand by for pictures of us crabbing, catching lots of crabs and dining on fresh, succulent Dungeness crab meat tomorrow evening. My job will be to oversee the operation and throw and pull the rings.

Claudia will be in charge of determining the sex of the crab (only males are legal) and sizing them. Gizmo will be in charge of herding the crabs on the dock to keep them from jumping back into the water and chasing away any seagulls that dare come close. OK, OK…how do you sex a crab? Simple…kiss them. If they giggle, they are girls! OK, OK…the girls have wider hips. No kidding! Here is a girl…

and here is a boy.

We had to leave Gizmo home. There was just too much dangerous stuff down on the docks for him to be there. Today was just an outstanding day…sunny, warm and no wind. We went to the local grocery store for turkey legs (bait) and got to the dock about 10:00 or so. Within one hour, we had two keepers, one “almost” and a bunch of females and juveniles. After the first hour, it went dead. We left for home at 2:30 after getting our dinner cooked and cleaned for a buck each. We still have two turkey legs in the refer and the next low tide is at 5:30 so we just might go out again and see if we can add to our dinner supply.

I got a little twitchy sitting at home with two turkey legs in the fridge, two hoops in the car and only two crabs in the refer, so we took off again and headed for the dock.

We tried the end of the dock this time and, on the second pull, hauled in a VERY legal crab. After that, we got lots of small and female crabs, so the big boy in the bucket stayed lonely. After a while, we moved back to where we were this morning but it didn’t change our luck. About 6:30, we decided to leave and pulled in the pots. On the last pull, another huge male. YES! Now we have four for dinner.

The cooking shack was closed so I had to break out my “blaster” and pot and proceeded to cook

and clean

the latest members of tonight’s dinner

We gorged ourselves with the freshest, sweetest crab this side of the International Date Line. It was decadent!

After “The Feast”, we cleaned up the kitchen. I took a full bag of crab shells to the dumpster. Both of us then took some very needed showers and kicked back. I will sleep very well tonight! Tomorrow, (Thursday), we head for the Mill Casino in North Bend (Coos Bay). I’ll have to pay more attention to the weather reports. I believe I heard that we are going to get some rain by the weekend. That’s good…something new! Later!

The saga continues...

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry's Stardates) — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 03:40:00 +0000

Wednesday – What was my comment…”barring any glitches”? Well, we glitched! At the appointed hour of 7:00am, we rolled into the Freightliner shop as requested. The rest of the day was spent visiting the Sundial Bridge,

watching geese on the Sacramento River bob for food,

visiting Shasta Dam

and Whiskeytown Lake

and waiting in the “lounge” at the repair shop. At 2:00 pm, we saw the rig pull out of the shop for a test run. Fifteen minutes later, it returned and backed into the shop. Not a good sign. It was still “bucking”. More tests and head scratching. The consensus now is that when Freightliner San Diego replaced (under warranty) the “lift pump”, the small pump that brings fuel to the main high-pressure fuel injector pump, they did not replace the bracket that goes with it. The problem here is that the bracket contains a “check valve”, a one-way valve that keeps the fuel from draining back into the tank when the engine is shut down. Freightliner Redding now believes the check valve is bad. If the check valve is bad, then the injector pump we just replaced may or may not have been bad and we may or may not have had to lay out $500 for the repair. Freightliner Redding amazingly has the bracket in stock. So…we are now back at the Elks Lodge for the night and will return AGAIN in the morning to install the bracket with the check valve that will HOPEFULLY fix the damn problem. Mark told me he would “work with me” on the $500 deductible. He also mentioned that, if the bracket and check valve turn out to be the culprit, I need to have a “chat” with San Diego Freightliner about their work and the money it cost me. The saga continues! After a cool shower and a couple of peach ice teas, I felt better. Don and Pat are coming over tonight and we are going out for a Chinese dinner.

And what a dinner it was! We stuffed ourselves with sweet and sour chicken, beef and broccoli, egg foo young, chow mein and fried rice. What we didn’t eat went home with Don. I was still a little apprehensive about the motorhome but slept pretty well in spite of being a little up tight.

At 6:00 am, the alarm went off and we got up. Think positive! Today will be the day they find the problem. At 7:00, we were at the shop and I backed it into a shop bay. We checked in with Mark and then took off for breakfast. We went to Lin’s, the same restaurant we went to with Pat and Don last night. Claudia had a Denver omelet and I had sausage, eggs and hash browns. The sausage patty was HUGE, greasy, spicy and delicious…just the way I like it. My cholesterol will probably do a huge spike, but it was worth it! We then went back to the Elks Lodge and sat on the rear grass lawn by the pool to work on the trip schedule and fill in the blank holes with newly acquired information. Gizmo ran around the tables and chairs, got his leash hopelessly entangled several times, ate lots of bugs, grass and sticks and promptly barfed up the contents of his stomach. About noonish, my phone rang. It was Mark. They found the problem! It was not “I THINK we found the problem” but a very positive “WE FOUND THE PROBLEM!” Hallelujah! We jumped into the Explorer and headed for the shop.

Mark took me to the work bench and showed me the check valve bracket. He held the check valve up so I could see inside. I observed a goodly amount of a black unidentified and/or unidentifiable substance inside the valve opening. He had some in a baggie for me but I dumped some more out into the palm of my hand. It was spongy like rubber but that was as far as I could go to identify it. The black “stuff” had plugged the check valve and restricted the flow of fuel to the fuel injector pump. (Ladies…isn’t this interesting?) They had installed the new bracket and it was running perfectly.

After a lengthy discussion on the engineering of a Cummins diesel engine, I found out there was no fuel filter between the fuel tank and the fuel pump. To my thinking, this was a huge violation of basic kindergarten engineering. Any engineer in their right mind would know to put a filter between the fuel tank and the injector pump. I guess the Cummins engineers failed kindergarten! What stupidity!!!!! Anyway, I immediately asked Mark to install an extra fuel filter in the fuel line between the tank and the first pump. That was probably the best $150 I ever spent. After it was all said and done, we drove back to the lodge for the night with a wallet that was about $750 lighter. Thank God for insurance! The total bill was over $5,500. I had a “two-fingered drink”, got the rig partially ready to leave in the morning and went to bed. I slept well…VERY well! Even Gizmo slept well!

We got up leisurely, finished packing, and took off for Crescent City. This time, we headed north on I-5 to Grants Pass and then took Hwy. 199 to Hwy. 101 and down to Crescent City. The motor ran flawlessly! We stopped at the Village Camper Inn where the caravan is staying in October and got all our questions answered. We then drove to the Elks Lodge, took one look at the area, and left. We were afraid someone would swipe our tires if we parked there so we headed for Brookings, just across the border into Oregon.

When we got there, we got the very last RV spot they had. We decided to stay for at least three nights (at $15 a night…with hookups) so we can go back and check out Crescent City and then go up to Gold Beach, our next stop. When we checked in, two guys were preparing a huge pig for a Hawaiian pit roast tomorrow night. It is going to be a fund raiser for the Past Exalted Rulers. The dinner is roast pig, Hawaiian chicken, rice pilaf and fruit salad. The whole nine yards is $10 per person. I grabbed a twenty from my wallet and snatched up two tickets so fast that Claudia didn’t know what happened…almost. Actually, nothing gets by her…NOTHING! We then went into the lodge and split two dinners, one salmon and one prime rib, both with baked potatoes and vegetables. The dinners were the absolute best we’ve ever had. The bill came to $28.50. God I love the Elks!

Redding and a LONG story!

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry's Stardates) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 04:11:00 +0000

Monday morning:

We fired up the motorhome at Oh-Dark-Six-thirty, dumped the tanks and headed for the Freightliner shop. I got to the first light and…chug, chug, hiccup, hiccup, cough, cough and it slowed to 5 mph. It then started going again but did its little tricks three more times within the four-mile trip to Freightliner…but we made it! They ran it inside and ran a diagnostic on the engine. Hmmm…whir, whir, cachunk, click, click and out came the report. Bad fuel pump. Hey, we just replaced that. No, we replaced the “lift pump”, which is a little fuel pump that brings the fuel to the main fuel pump which is the one that is now bad. You following this? Guess what a brand new fuel pump for a Cummins diesel engine costs? $5,000…Five Grand…five BIG ones…more than a set of tires…and that’s PLUS one full day’s worth of labor to remove the old one and install the new one. We (luckily) do have an insurance plan that SHOULD cover it all but a $500 deductible. They only pay for a rebuilt pump, not a new one, but the guy at Freightliner says the rebuilts are just as good. So…we are now back at the Redding Elks Lodge for the night while they get a rebuilt pump shipped from the Bay Area. We will take the rig back to Freightliner tomorrow morning for the new rebuilt pump to be installed. They say it will be done tomorrow. I asked if he was sure. He said, “Trust me!” RIGHT!

Oh me, oh my, what shall we do today? Oh, let’s get the oil changed in the car and do laundry! OK, we’ll get the oil changed and do laundry. What the hell! While we were getting the oil changed, my phone rang. “Hello” “This is Mark at Freightliner. Everything has been approved, but they don’t pay for freight to get the part here”. “OK…how much is freight?” “$487 and change” “WHAT!!!!!!!”. I sat down! “Wait a minute. Let me check that again”. After a few minutes, Mark told me that Freightliner had screwed up and that the shipping would be $50 or less. I told him he owed me big time for a near-fatal heart attack.

After doing the laundry, I went for a swim. Gizmo pouted because he couldn’t go in the pool area. The pool at the lodge is huge and beautiful. It even has a diving board and separate diving area. After cooling off, the board beckoned. I haven’t been on a diving board in a long time, a VERY long time. I walked out on the board and bounced a few times. It was very springy. I tested it with a standard old front dive. Not bad…probably about a “7”. I felt a little shaky, and my back has been acting up, so I didn’t do what used to be my signature dive, a forward 1½ . Probably a very smart thing. I retired to the rig and we kicked back for the night.

We got up at a normal time and got ready to head for Freightliner. Before we left, we had to watch Gizmo’s favorite TV show, “Predator Quest”. This is a show about hunting coyotes and the introduction shows coyotes being called with a wounded rabbit mouth call. The camera is positioned so that most of the coyotes are running right at it. Gizmo just loves this part. I hold him up in front of the screen and he is absolutely memorized by the sight of all the “dogs” running toward him.

Gizmo watching "Predator Quest"...his favorite show

We finished the show and headed for the shop.

Don met us at the shop and, after checking that all was on schedule, we left for the mountains to see his cabin. Don and Pat have a great little “cabin” in a small town called Old Station.

Don and Pat's cabin

Lunch with Don

View from the kitchen

They had a fire there a few weeks ago that got really close to the cabins on their road. The firefighters threw a bunch of stacked wood away from the house to reduce the fire danger to the house itself and we spent some time moving the wood from a neighbor’s property back to Don and Pats and putting some sheetrock back on the porch. Both Gizmo and Don’s dog, Kimberly, went crazy running around the area, chasing lizards and each other.

Kimberly and Gizmo

We wound up spending most of the day there and then returned to the Freightliner yard. The dogs slept on Claudia's lap for the whole trip home.

Two very tired dogs!

Due to a miscommunication between two service writers, no work had been done to the rig. We had been working with one service writer (Mark) but a new one (Rick) talked to me this morning. I was told by Mark that the new fuel pump should be in about 10:30 and that they could start working on it then. If Larry, the mechanic, couldn’t finish it by 5:00 pm, the night shift could finish the job. OK, fine! I did tell them that if there was any possibility they couldn’t finish the job today, don’t start it and we would bring the rig in tomorrow (Wednesday) at 7:00 and they could have it all day and get it done. Well, Rick called me twice about 11:00 to tell me the part had gotten there but they didn’t have enough time to finish the job. We had no cell phone service at Old Station so I didn’t get the message. About 11:30, I called Mark from a landline phone at the cabin and he told me the rig would be done by 5:00 or 6:00. Mark and Rick weren’t communicating so nothing got done, which probably is good thing in the long run. At least we have a place to sleep tonight! Now, tomorrow, it goes in at 7:00 am and they promised it would get done.

Our schedule is still tentative at this time but it looks like we will be taking off from here on Thursday, Friday at the very latest, barring any major glitches. The plan for now is to head north on I-5 to Grants Pass and then over to Crescent City. We may stay in Crescent City or go on to Brookings, OR. That’s the plan right now but, as y’all know, our schedule is, shall we say, flexible?

Eureka and Redding

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry's Stardates) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 16:59:00 +0000

The trip to Eureka was uneventful with the exception of a pair of young deer standing by the side of the road and one slightly used coonskin cap lying in the road. We pulled into the Elks Lodge, picked out a spot and got all set up. They have about 25 RV spaces here and all but a couple were taken. The amenities include 50 amp power, water, sewer and free wi-fi at your site. These Elks do it right! I called Ron and Juanita and their schedule now allows them to be here tonight. Things are lookin’ up!

I got a haircut, Gizmo got a bath and brushing, Valentino got his water changed and fishbowl scrubbed and we headed out for a little reconnoitering. The first stop was the Samoa Cookhouse. It is a family-style restaurant from the lumber days and carries its name from the town of Samoa where it is located. On the way back to town, while crossing the Samoa Bridge, Claudia looked to the right on a spit of land about 100 yards from the bridge. There, standing right next to the water, in plain view, in the wide open spaces, was a huge four-point mule deer buck. I absolutely did leer…and in a big way! I later went into Bucksport Sporting Goods on the main drag and found out that the buck was in a reserve. Oh well! They don’t get big by being dumb. We bought Gizmo some poop bags at PetCo and returned home to await the arrival of Ron and Juanita.

The Kohn’s arrived about 6:00 and we all did a “group hug”. There was so much to do (and we had a late lunch) that we just exchanged a few major information items, went into our own rigs, had dinner and did paperwork until 10:00 and went to bed. Not very exciting, but productive.

The weather has changed! We have been running the air conditioners constantly but we sure don’t need them here. In fact, I broke out the second blanket last night. The temperature was down into the 40’s! When I got up this morning to romp Gizmo, it was downright cool! My left knee (the bad one that I had the surgery on) was past barking. It was howling! It hasn’t bothered me in a long time. Oh yeah, it hasn’t been this cold in a long time. Duh! After morning chores, we got ready for a long work day. Let’s see how it goes.

We were at it all day and it’s still not done. We took a lunch break and decided to go to the Samoa Cookhouse because we needed the driving directions for the Trip Log…at least that was the excuse we used.

Samoa Cookhouse

The lunch was wonderful. It is served family style and is all you can eat. We had soup, salad, fresh homemade bread, coffee, pot roast, carrots and roasted potatoes. After lunch, we drove back to the Elks Lodge and got back to work. It is 8:50 pm right now and Ron and Juanita just left. We’ll work again until 10 or 11 to finalize what we did tonight. We have decided to stay another day so we don’t have to rush finishing up. Besides, the Samoa Cookhouse is having barbecued ribs for lunch tomorrow. Need I say more? We will head for Redding on Friday.

Thursday was our final(?) work day here at Eureka…maybe. Anyway, it looks like it. Claudia and I got a bunch done this morning and have a pretty good handle on the trip from Tillamook to Crescent City. We have given Ron and Juanita a whole bunch of good info on the rest of the trip. It should be much easier for them from now on. One thing I have not mentioned so far is the large number of “social outcasts” and other strange individuals up here. We have seen lots of hitchhikers by the side of the road, many with dogs.

They are mostly all so filthy that I wouldn’t even give them a ride in the back of a pickup! How they can live like that, I’ll never know. There are also about double the number of dumpster divers that we have in the San Diego area. There are also quite a large number of “Forest Farmers” that use the National Forest land to cultivate a slightly illegal, but highly lucrative cash crop.

We took a lunch break for the aforementioned barbecued ribs at the Samoa Cookhouse. As usual, we overate! Luckily, I am wearing a wide, strong belt so the front snap on my levis won’t break. We are meeting in an hour or so…maybe two hours, maybe three…whatever...and will finish the trip to this point (Crescent City). Tomorrow we leave for Redding. Things are lookin’ up!

Things are lookin’ down! A couple of weeks ago when we were heading to Columbia, I was accelerating from a stopped or slow speed when the rig lurched a couple of times. At the time, I thought it was just a hard shift or maybe a bit of bad fuel. After two “misses”, it stopped and we had no more problems…until today. We were almost to Redding and I was coming down a hill. At the bottom, I started to accelerate and the motor started bucking badly for 20 to 30 seconds and then ran normally. When we pulled into the Elks Lodge, I got us set up and then went inside to pay. After the necessities were done, I called the local Freightliner dealer and talked with the service writer. He said it could be several things so we made an appointment for Monday morning to get the rig checked out. We are now officially out of warranty so I hope it’s something simple and cheap. We shall see. Don Baker, my old partner and Alisa’s godfather, came over at 5:30 and we reminisced for about three hours. Tomorrow, we are heading for Red Bluff to see Don, Pat and their kids and have a barbecue. I’m going to bed early tonight. It’s hot and I’m tired. ‘Night!

We got up slowly, had breakfast slowly, got ready slowly and left slowly. It was too hot to move fast. Pat and Don have been telling us we are having a “cool-down” right now. I’m glad we weren’t here during the “heat-up”. Last week, it was well into the hundred’s. Claudia and I have reaffirmed the fact that we don’t do heat well. The first order of business was to find out where the Freightliner dealer was. After that, we got the car washed, mailed some letters and headed for Red Bluff. We pulled in front of Pat’s house right at 3:30 and the reunion started. In short order, there were (I think) eight adults, two almost-adults and about two ankle-biters that represented three generations. We had a great dinner and celebrated Pat’s LXVIIIth birthday. (She doesn’t want to broadcast her age!) After dinner, we said our goodbye’s and headed home. We are getting together again tonight do dispose of some Chula Vista carne asada we have in our freezer. After that, I have to get the motorhome ready for an early departure tomorrow morning to go see the “motorhome doctor”. What happens tomorrow morning will determine what happens the next day, few days or whatever. More later after it’s over. Wish us luck.

Garberville and the redwoods

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry's Stardates) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 03:12:00 +0000

Sunday, August 16th – Today will be an easy kick-back day. It unfolded slowly with a late sleep-in, slow romp for Gizmo, two cups of coffee and a relaxing shower. Sometime around 10-ish, we took off for Garberville. This portion of 101 is a mostly two-lane, curving and winding (“winding” is different than “curving”…lots of “curving” equals “winding”) road. We drove about 40 mph most of the way. We were about 20 minutes into the trip when a white Cal Fire pickup went by me with its red lights on. I kept watching behind me as we travelled and, during the next 30 minutes or so, about six more fire rigs went by. We passed the turnoff to Highway 1 at Leggett and soon started smelling smoke. It got slightly hazy and we soon saw actual smoke in the distance. We didn’t exactly know what to expect with a good portion of California now in flames and were hoping we could get through before they had to shut down the road. As it turned out, the fire was on the east side of the road and looked to be pretty much under control. We saw at least two water-dropping helicopters and four to five hand crews working the fire. We continued on.

We got to Benbow and pulled into the Richardson Grove Campground and RV Park. This was a Passport America park and we got a two-night full hookup stay for $28! We pulled into our assigned site and got set up. Shortly after setting up, a beat-up old bus(?) pulled in to our left. It had the faded markings of the “Oaktown Department of Korrections” emblazoned on its sides. It had a car battery sitting on the roof by a vent, probably to power a ventilation fan and another bigger house fan positioned in the door. The occupants emerged from the bus and started setting up their space. They put what I would describe as three “tiki-heads” on the table for decorations and two spare tires against the front of the bus. Now…how do I describe them? Probably as punk hippies. The male had long shorts, socks that went up to his knees and a shaved head except for a spiked Mohawk haircut. The female portion of the team was dressed in a semi-long, hippie-style skirt and dreadlocks that were almost to her knees. Interesting! They did have a good-looking dog though. I think it might have been a Jack Russell. What the hell…to each his own.

After a quick lunch, we took off to visit the RV park in Benbow where we will be staying on the caravan. What a great park! They have nice paved interior roads and easy pull-throughs. Every site looks like it will handle a 40-footer. This will be a piece of cake. It has its own golf course for those who wish to imbibe. After checking out the park, we drove into the thriving metropolis of Garberville. Both Claudia and I were expecting a bigger town. Nope! All we got was about a five-block main drag. Maybe there’s more to it but we sure didn’t see it. We got lots of good info from several sources and headed back home for a refreshing drink. I settled on a gin and tonic, Claudia had water and Gismo slurped up an ice cube. What a life!

The next day was “See the Giant Redwoods Day!” and we wanted to get started early. I jumped out of bed, let Gizmo out of his cage and romped him quickly. He ran back into the house and jumped in bed with Claudia. All he wanted to do was play. Anyway, we got up, fed Giz and Valentino, took showers, had breakfast and were finally ready to go. We left the house and headed north around 11:00, which is “early” for us on this part of the trip.

We first drove over to the Benbow Inn for a look-see.

Benbow Inn

Rear lawn view

This is a very beautiful old inn that has been around for many years. It is first class and well worth a visit. After visiting the Inn, we headed north, straight to Scotia to check out the sawmill and look around. We found a great-looking museum with a train, steam engine

and a really cute donkey!

Steam donkey

After petting the donkey, I crossed the street to look at the local movie theater

Scotia movie theater

before jumping back on 101 and heading south to do the Avenue of the Giants. The 32-mile trip was magnificent! It was hard to pick out the “best” picture but here are a couple.

About halfway down the Avenue, we came to Myers Flat and the drive-thru tree. As we were on a scouting trip for the caravan, they let us go in and look. I would NOT recommend that anyone pay the $6.00 entrance fee to drive through the tree but would give the nod for a $3.00 walk-in charge to see it and the tree houses.

Drive-thru tree

Tree houses

I was glad I had deer whistles mounted on the grille the car. The only problem was that they start working at 35 mph and we were driving about 30 for most of the trip. I really can’t say that deer whistles DO work, but you sure know when they DON’T! On the way back to the RV park, we stopped at one of the many tourist traps to look around.

Bigfoot

We really had to hold back, but we left without buying anything. Maybe next time!

When we got home, we started categorizing all the stuff we have picked up the past few days. We then called Ron and Juanita with the latest information. They were in Crescent City so we quickly re-arranged our very tentative and flexible schedule and arranged to meet them in Eureka on Wednesday. We are actually going there tomorrow but they won’t be in until Wednesday. We will get to compare notes face-to-face and get the trip logs and Wagonmaster Log for the first half of the trip. Finally, something concrete to work with. We will then move on to Redding on Thursday…maybe!

Ukiah and Fort Bragg

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry's Stardates) — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 02:36:00 +0000

Friday, August 14th – Today, we drove to the Elks Lodge in Ukiah. As soon as we got there, I just leveled the rig, plugged in to power, romped Gizmo and took off in the car to do company business. We headed north to Willits and then west on Highway 20 to Fort Bragg. The road was curvy but beautiful. When we hit the coast, we headed for the RV park just south of town. It was another rustic park and the sites were all set in amongst the trees. Pretty!

After checking out the park, we headed for town to check out the Skunk Train and the town. The harbor was a real “working harbor” and is the only harbor between San Francisco and the Arcata/Eureka area. Ten percent of the entire commercial salmon catch is landed at Fort Bragg.

Fort Bragg Harbor

After checking out the town, we drove south on Highway 1 to Highway 128 which heads back to Highway 101. This portion of 1 is an easy, very beautiful drive. We crossed several beautiful bridges, all of which had great looking beaches as they met the Pacific Ocean. There were lots of “beachers” that were walking, tidepooling, sunbathing and “etc.erring”. The drive back to 101 was especially beautiful as we went through the Navarro Redwoods State Park. The redwoods were so dense in a couple of spots that there was no sunlight on the road. There were several camping areas full of tent campers. If I ever got back into tent camping…very doubtful…this is one spot I would hit…absolutely!

When we got to Boonville, we saw an interesting barn. I had to turn around and go back to take a picture.

A Peace Barn! (click on photo to enlarge it)

We then headed back to Ukiah to update our paperwork and plan out the next few days. We have decided that, subject to change, we will stay here another day to visit WalMart and do laundry and go to Garberville on Sunday. Our tentative plan is to spend two days in Garberville and then head east to Red Bluff and Redding to visit Don (my old CHP partner) and Pat Baker and probably kill a week or so reminiscing over old times. Don is already planning some fishing trips and a trip up to their cabin in Old Station, east of Redding and north of Mount Lassen.

Oops…breakfast break! WOW! Claudia just fixed some hot flour tortilla breakfast burritos with scrambled eggs, pepper jack cheese, green peppers, onion, bacon, salsa and sour cream with a really sweet cantaloupe on the side. Boy are they good! Gizmo is going crazy with the aroma. Me too! Giz just got a bite of cantaloupe. He loved it and wanted more. Go figure.

We got the laundry done and got a few things at WalMart. Claudia had some running around to do so I stayed home to get into trouble. Since we are “camping”, I decided to make a pineapple upside-down cake. So here I sit as the cake bakes, typing on my computer and drinking a cool beverage I got from the refrigerator while two air conditioning units keep the “camper” cool and the television keeps me occupied with my favorite hunting shows courtesy of the satellite TV antenna. After the cake was done, I did the dishes to impress Claudia when she returned. I had to do them by hand as we don’t have a dishwasher here in the rig. Maybe someday. Ah, camping is difficult, but one must make do with what one has!

Claudia came back all pumped up. She found a foot and nail place…whatever you gals call them…and got a manicure and pedicure with a hot rock massage and some other foo-foo stuff and then got a complimentary five-minute neck and back massage that was “wonderful”. She was happy so I was happy! She also went to Lucky’s for some food. Outside was a charcoal firepit and a guy barbecuing tri-tips. One called her name so she brought it home too. We just finished barbecue tri-tip sandwiches covered with Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce and pineapple upside-down cake for dessert. As I said, camping is difficult, but one must make do with what one has! I think it’s time for a nap!

Sacramento and Petaluma

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry's Stardates) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 03:47:00 +0000

While we waited for 4:00 pm, the appointed time for Claudia’s haircut, I refreshed my sourdough starter. For those of you who aren’t familiar with cooking with live sourdough, you start with a “starter” that is essentially a live yeast culture. This culture is kept in the refrigerator between use and must be “refreshed” every two weeks or so by adding a small amount of the existing culture to a flour-water mixture. The active culture “feeds” on the flour-water mix and ferments into a new larger culture. When it’s ready, the culture is very bubbly and throws off a pungent sourdough odor.

The starter at work!

The motorhome is filled with a really great sour odor right now. Maybe I’ll do some cooking. Maybe some nice fresh sourdough bread? I am drooling! Too bad this can’t be a smell-o-blog!

Claudia came back with food, some new clothes and a great looking bob. Not “Bob”, but “bob”, as in haircut. Claudia romped Gizmo who, again, went totally nuts on the grass. She was still laughing when she finally got him back into the rig. We started out to go to dinner at a local fish & chips place but didn’t like the looks of it when we arrived so we just went to a Denny’s Diner around the corner. Returning to the rig after dinner, we relaxed and studied up on the Petaluma area. We’ll move tomorrow.

Today was the usual morning…wake up, bring the mutt into bed with us, get out of bed, put on shorts, romp the mutt, feed the fish and, finally, sit down with two cups of coffee and decide what we are going to do today. We confirmed that we will be heading for Petaluma and made preparations for leaving. We pulled out at 9:15 and arrived at 10:45. Not bad at all! We first stopped at the Petaluma KOA, met the manager, confirmed our stay and got all kinds of great information about the area and our proposed route of travel. We went to the Elks lodge, got set up and called Ron and Juanita, the owners of Adventure Caravans who were in Florence, Oregon mapping out the trip as they headed south. We passed on all the info we had gleaned so far and finished setting up. As I set up, I heard a bunch of honking. Not “honking” as in a car horn, but “honking” as in a V-shaped flight of Canadian geese flying right over my head…well within shotgun range. I leered! I then returned to the rig.

Around 6:30, we went into the lodge for a great hamburger dinner. After dinner, we headed out for a drive to show Gizmo the area. Spotting a McDonalds, we pulled in for a couple of ice cream sundaes. Claudia had a hot fudge, I had a caramel and Gizmo licked the cups. We then returned home to clean up loose ends, romp the mutt and get a good night’s sleep.

Thursday morning, August 13th – We paid for another day here at the lodge and loaded the car to go sightseeing. We drove west on E. Washington Street in Old Petaluma, headed for Bodega Bay. Now…let’s play Jeopardy! ANSWER – “Petaluma” What’s the question? “Where does the founder of the World Wrist Wrestling Championship live?”

Monument to the founder of wrist wrestling

Isn’t that interesting? It just might come in handy some day. You never know! Anyway, we continued toward Bodega Bay and passed a restaurant with a unique play-on-words name…Rocker Oysterfeller’s.

We arrived at Bodega Bay

Bodega Bay from across the main channel

and stopped at the Visitor Center. The lady at the center gave up a bunch of great information. First and foremost, you can’t walk around Bodega Bay. It’s almost all right on Highway 1 and there are no sidewalks or shoulders to walk on. You drive…period! As I looked out in Bodega Bay, I saw a great picture of a sailboat.

The blowboat "Happy" hard aground!

I later found out the owner had been evicted from the marina, anchored in the harbor and wound up on the mud flats courtesy of a major storm. It was then abandoned and sits there so tourists can ask the ladies at the Visitor Center all about it. Another interesting fact about Bodega Bay is that the Alfred Hitchcock movie “The Birds” was filmed here in 1961-63. Tippi Hedren, the star of the movie returns to Bodega Bay each year to sign autographs during “The Birds” festival. We just missed her. She was here last week.

We stopped at a hole-in-the-wall fish & chips place that had six tables. The fish was excellent but the clam chowder was only mediocre. Next door was a tourist trap souvenir shop. We walked in and I spied a huge table with many buckets of salt water taffy. I grabbed a plastic bag and started putting handfuls of different flavors of taffy in the bag. I was quickly stopped and reminded that it will probably be VERY expensive. I thought it over and then continued stuffing the bag…this time with only half-handfuls. The bag came to just under $5.00. As we drove away, we started sampling the various flavors. They were all good to excellent…until I got to the cinnamon flavor. All the other flavors were nice and soft and chewy, but not the cinnamon. I bit down on the piece and found my jaws stuck together. It was like a piece of flexible epoxy…a HOT piece of flexible epoxy! I didn’t dare force my jaws apart. I have some VERY expensive crowns in my mouth and didn’t want to spend tomorrow trying to find a dentist. I had to grin and bear it as the taffy S-L-O-W-L-Y melted in my mouth. Did I mention it was HOT? If you ever see some cinnamon taffy, and think you might want to buy it, you might just want to re-think that purchase!

We drove north along the coastline

and hooked a right on Highway 116 and headed northeast along the Russian River.

Russian River

The river was full of swimmers, kayakers, waders, floaters and the like. We also ran across a great-looking golf course caller Northwood. The fairways run right through the redwoods. It is beautiful!

Northwood Golf Course

We passed through Gueneville and back to 101 and home. Gizmo was VERY happy to see us. He ran right out and took two very long pee’s. I don’t know whether the smile on his face was happiness or relief. Claudia fixed two very refreshing chai teas and we started kickin’ back. Giz got an ice cube and he kicked it as well.

Tomorrow, we head for Ukiah.

The Gold Country!

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry's Stardates) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:00:00 +0000

We slept in late and even brought Gizmo into bed with us. At 9:00, I made a call to Marble Quarry RV Park in Columbia, off Highway 49 in the gold country, the park we are staying at on the caravan. They had a space for us so we firmed up plans and started to get ready. After showers and breakfast, we pulled out about 11:00 am and headed for Columbia. “Karen”, the Australian voice on our GPS, decided to take us on a slightly circuitous route through the agricultural fields instead of a more direct route. The trip was enjoyable. We saw lots of vegetables, fruit trees, cattle, and even a big flock of wild turkeys. I leered! We arrived about 3:45 and settled into a very nice site just above the office. Since it’s too late to drive around the area, we will now kick back, relax and “work” tomorrow.

We started down the hill toward Sonora and Jamestown, stopping at the Visitor Center in Sonora. It was a wealth of information and we (I) walked away with a heavy box of brochures and pamphlets. We continued on to Groveland and the Yosemite Pines RV Park. The park is on the “primitive” side but should be OK. Personally, I like the primitive parks. They get me back to nature.

After exploring the park to see the best way to bring the caravan in, we headed for town to the Groveland Hotel to check it out for our scheduled breakfast. We then went across the street to a GREAT Mexican café for lunch. I had two pork enchiladas with rice and beans and Claudia had two chili rellenos, also with beans and rice. We split the dinners, which were absolutely delicious. I WILL go back there again in October. We then returned home to update all our paperwork and do laundry.

The next day was Sunday. We (including Gizmo) slept in. (I’m not sure about Valentino. Does a fish sleep?) Over coffee, we planned our next destination. South Lake Tahoe, Placerville, Carmichael and Sacramento were all in the running. Carmichael won and we plugged the address for the Elks Lodge into the GPS and took off.

We meandered through the rolling hills of the gold country on Highway 49, passing through the old historical towns of Angels Camp, Drytown, Sloughtown and a few others that you need a magnifying glass to see on a map. We pulled into the Elks Lodge shortly after noon, paid for a two-day visit and got the rig set up. This is a beautiful lodge with 50 amp hookups, free Wi-fi and a pool. Depending on several factors, I just might get wet later today. Now, several phone calls are in order and will determine what we actually wind up doing today, tomorrow and ??????????????

Well, I did get wet…in the shower! We are heading to Ellie’s house (Claudia’s step-mother in law) for a reunion and dinner. Both Claudia and I thought it would be nice to shower before we go see her. With the rather warm days now, showers are coming more frequently. As I type, the digital thermometer is reading exactly 100-degrees outside air temperature (in the shade). That’s warm! I gave Gizmo an ice cube to chew on. For some reason, he loves ice cubes. Every time we get ice, he runs to the refrigerator and looks longingly at us, begging for a cube. He does have personality!

We drove to Ellie’s and then went out for Italian food. Good dinner and a good visit. We returned to Ellie’s to continue the visit. After the visit, we drove to Claudia’s old house about two miles down the road. It was in disrepair and was pretty sad. Claudia’s dad had always taken pride in the house. Today, it looks like a rental. We returned to the rig for TV, phone calls and computer work. Tomorrow will be a meet with a buddy that used to work with DMV as a fraud investigator. He and I once hammered an RV rental company for a couple of million in fines for fraudulent registration violations. Ah, memories!

OK…today is Monday and we are off to explore…right after romping the mutt. He went bonkers for two reasons. One, he was on grass and he always goes crazy running on grass. Secondly, he must have felt much better after pooping because I found out he had been chewing on my cellular antenna wire and probably ingested some of the wire. Now that it’s out of his system, he probably feels much better. Luckily, the main wire doesn’t appear to be broken so I just taped up the cable with electrical tape to cover the exposed shield wires. I will have to be sure no cables hang down in the future. First on the agenda today is to visit the caravan park in West Sacramento and then on to Old Sacramento. After that, who knows? Right now the temperature is 103.5 and going up…but it’s a dry heat! The A/C is working double-overtime! Tonight we meet John and Sharon for sushi.

“Karen” took us on a circuitous back door route but, what the hell, we are retired and don’t keep a schedule anymore. We pulled into the parking lot at Mikuni Sushi in Fair Oaks a few minutes before six. John and Sharon soon showed up and we all wound up in big bear hugs. Sharon has to be the most kind and wonderful person in the world. She absolutely has to be to put up with John. I can’t describe John for you because this is a family blog and you probably wouldn’t believe me anyway. Let’s just say he’s one of a kind and has a heart of gold. All the years I have known him have been wonderful, but VERY stressful. Working cases with him was always like walking a fine line… a VERY fine line! He was a master at making a case and giving some scumbag a “dirt nap”. Let’s just say we had a lot of fun working together and leave it at that. The meal and the company were fabulous…and long overdue.

We decided to stay another day here in Carmichael, mainly so Claudia could get a haircut. We also need to make a decision on our next stopping place. Right now, it’s looking like it will be the Elks Lodge in Petaluma but that’s not set in stone. This might be a three cup of coffee decision.

We had another vote. Everyone voted to stay another day so Claudia could get a haircut at 4:00 pm. I forked over another $16 for the night and came back to the rig to putter around with miscellaneous jobs. Today is pretty overcast and really quite comfortable. It’s almost 10:30 and is only 81-degrees. After careful consideration, we have decided to go to the Elks Lodge at Petaluma. There’s a lot to do over there so I suspect we will be there for two or three days as well.

Since I have good Internet here, I think I will shut up and get these musings off and into cyberspace.

On the way to Monterey!

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry's Stardates) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 01:12:00 +0000

Our first day on the road found us settling in at the Elk’s Lodge in Santa Barbara, which is actually in Goleta in case you were curious. They have about 20 full hookup sites and the lodge is absolutely beautiful and extra-large, double-huge. Getting to Santa Barbara, however, was a bitch! We had to go through Los Angeles traffic. We started to hit traffic around the 405. People were cutting in and out without signaling, following too closely and were just totally rude drivers. I hate driving through L.A. When we got to LAX, the traffic slowed from “creep and crawl” to “stop, stay stopped and then inch ahead”. People were cutting in and out without signaling, following too closely and were just totally rude drivers. I hate driving through L.A. At the cutoff to Hwy. 101, we just stayed in our lane and gritted our teeth. People were still cutting in and out without signaling, following too closely and were just totally rude drivers. I hate driving through L.A. It wasn’t until we got somewhere around Thousand Oaks that the traffic start lightening up and I could start driving somewhat normally again. Even Gizmo barked at a couple of cars. Good dog! I hate driving through L.A.

Once we got to the Elk’s Lodge in Santa Barbara, we got set up, romped Gizmo and took off for Buellton to check out the RV park where we will be staying in October. We also checked out some restaurants and got some local info at the Visitor’s Center. After a quick stop at Albertson’s for some needed supplies, we headed home for a refreshing cup of coffee, a more refreshing shower, dinner and an early dive into bed. Tomorrow…San Luis Obispo to see my sister.

Tuesday morning, October 4th – We got off about 9:30 (after I rousted Gizmo from the driver’s seat)

and arrived at the Elk’s Lodge in San Luis Obispo about an hour later. It was a beautiful drive on a four-lane divided road that meandered through cattle and wine country and right along the coast. We saw some otters swimming around the kelp beds and some deer mixed in amongst the cattle. Again, I leered at them! After checking in and setting up, I put in a call to my sister and then made lunch while we waited for her to arrive. She showed up right at noon. After all the hugs and “Howdy’s” , we took off to pre-run some of the trip.

We headed north and stopped at Hearst Castle to check out the RV parking situation. All fine…no problems here. We again headed north and stopped at the Vista Point lookout and the Elephant seal rookery just south of the Piedras Blancas lighthouse.

There were about 75 critters lying on the beach in all modes of sunbathing, covering up with sand, playful sparring and posing for photographs. The males get to 16’ in length and can weigh more than 5,000 pounds. They typically dive between 1000-2000 feet to feed but can dive to over 5,000 feet. WOW!

We then turned south and stopped at the world famous town of Harmony, California.

The town of Harmony

Harmony, population 18, is famous for being the town that was put up for sale on Ebay. Remember that? The town has about eight buildings and one 100-yard long main street. After visiting Harmony, we stopped at Cambria to buy some pies for dinner and then did a drive-through of Cayucos before returning to our rig to get ready for dinner. Gizmo started doing back flips when he saw us. He wanted OUT! He got a nice long romp. We then cleaned up and headed for my sister’s house for dinner. Tonight we are having Seafood Pie with a pound (each) of shrimp, scallops and crab and a Caesar salad. Tomorrow I will diet (Dive into everything tasty!).

OH NO!!!! TRAGEDY HAS STRUCK!!! Gizmo has fleas!!! I kept telling him to watch where he walked and who he struck up a friendship with. I think this RV lot behind the Elk’s Lodge is like a flea factory. It’s all dirt and weeds and backs up to heavy brush and trees. We are going out today to sightsee and meander. One of our stops now will be to pick us some flea shampoo and/or anti-flea medicine for the Giz. Another stop will (hopefully) be the See Canyon Winery just down the road. I picked up a case of an absolutely outstanding Chardonnay a few years back. Maybe I’ll luck out again.

The stop at PetCo was successful! We left with a good flea spray that kills fleas and their eggs for up to a month. Good! The only good flea is a dead flea! After several mini-stops for various and sundry items, we wound up at a Mexican restaurant where we shared a red snapper burrito. Delicious!

Returning home, we de-fleaed Gizmo. He wasn’t thrilled with the whole thing. I tried to convince him it was for his own good but he was more interested in getting a treat than listening to me. I then made a suggestion that we go to the winery. Claudia said no! I called for a vote. Gizmo voted to go. Valentino voted to go. I voted to go. Claudia voted NOT to go. The vote was three to one to go. We didn’t go!

Since we were outvoted, I prepped the rig to leave tomorrow morning. I filled the fresh water tank and got the key to the dump station. Since five o’clock was approaching and our chores were done, we took off to the lodge for a toddy and some power relaxing. Our stay here in San Luis has been fun. Tomorrow…Monterey!

Today is tomorrow and we are here in Monterey at the Elk’s Lodge. We drove Highway 1 and survived. Actually, the only BAD part of the road was a 10 to 15-mile section around Ragged Point. There were a couple of 5 MPH curves where we were over the centerline and you had to do it when there was no oncoming traffic. Luckily, traffic was light and, with my extraordinary driving skills, we had no problems. The route from Morro Bay to Monterey was about 123 miles and took us three hours and forty minutes without stopping, except to let traffic pass.

After settling in, we visited the Visitor’s Center, loaded up on brochures and maps, did a little sightseeing, returned to the rig and poured a nice cool adult beverage. Life is good! We have decided to stay here for just one night. Tomorrow we head for the area of Yosemite. Where we stay will be decided later tonight over (probably) several glasses of wine.

And away we go!

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry's Stardates) — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 18:48:00 +0000

As the end of July approached, we spent most of our time trying to think of everything that needed to be done before we had to leave on the trip. As the days progressed, we did our chores in no specific order but the list was dwindling and that was good. We took a day off on Thursday to take the kids to see “Wicked”, the untold story of the witches of Oz. Actually, Claudia took a day off on Thursday to take the kids and me to see “Wicked”. I am not a musical kind of guy, as in “Let’s all go and see a musical” (said loudly with mirth and glee). I would much rather go see a good movie like “Quigley Down Under”, “Clear and Present Danger” or “The Hunt for Red October”. However, the six of us jumped on the Coaster and rode down to the Santa Fe station in San Diego. The highlight of the trip was when I spotted a deer just south of Sorrento Valley. Rachael saw me leering at it and mentioned that I would go to jail for shooting a deer within city limits. Hmmm…what a decision! Venison and a few days in jail or a musical. Had to think about that one for a second or two! Anyway, when we arrived at the downtown Santa Fe station, we walked the eight blocks to the Civic Theater, stopping midway to split three sub sandwiches before the show.

The show was good and, admittedly, enjoyable. The two female stars of the show portrayed a “good witch” and a “bad witch”. The bad witch was actually damn good and had a great set of pipes. Her singing had “zip”! When she hit and held her last note, it was like a crescendo that set you back in your seat.

After the “zipping”, we hustled back to the Coaster and headed back north to meet Alisa at Leucadia Pizzaria. After stuffing our pie holes with pizza, linguini, tortellini and a couple of other “…ini’s”, we came home. The kids packed up their gear and headed home with Alisa. Claudia and I started to tackle the cleaning of the downstairs half of the condo until sheer exhaustion took over and we slammed into bed.

Friday came very early for Claudia and slightly early for me and Gizmo. We were even up and working before the trash truck came…a feat of almost unknown historical happenstance. The trash bins were at 110% capacity but the cleaning was all but done…just a quick vacuum, floor wash and top dust to go. After Claudia proclaimed “done”, we loaded the refrigerated and frozen food into the motorhome and hooked up the car. It always amazes me how most of the food in the BIG home freezer fits into the tiny freezer on the motorhome. I would have bet against it…and given good odds…but I got it all in. We left nothing behind.

We pulled out at 1:00 pm, heading for a three-day transitional stop at Santee Lakes until the grandkids leave for home on Sunday. After topping off the propane tanks, we got set up and awaited the arrival of Alisa and the kids. The kids requested grandpa’s almost world famous hamburgers a-la motorhome barbecue. After dinner, the kids and I went for a swim. I hadn’t had a shower since yesterday and had been working hard for two days. I did feel much better. What the hell! Tomorrow starts the weekend and they always give pools an extra shot of chlorine just before weekends. I think it’s the law. If it isn’t, it should be! The kids left, we took showers, I climbed into my new hot weather motorhome pajamas…a matching pair of boxer shorts and tee shirt in a modern camouflage pattern …and went to bed. We’d had it! Enough for one day! Whew!

Today is Saturday, the first day of August. Alisa and the kids are coming over today. They will be “pooling” at some point in time and we are going to inaugurate our brand new beautifully-built Beanbag Baseball game at some other point in time. The game consists of a slant board with holes cut in it’s face. The holes are designates as hits, outs and fouls. The only difference between this and a real baseball game is that you don’t swing a bat. You just pitch a beanbag and, depending which hole the bag (hopefully) goes through, you either strike out or run the bases.

Beanbag Baseball in progress!

The kids arrived and Gizmo was soon in doggie heaven, as in the center of their attention. He went from "Oh good, I'm going on a walk" to "Not another walk" to "No way, Dudette! I ain't budging this time!". It was time for Beanbag Baseball anyway. We set out the game, positioned the bases and I explained the rules. We had two four-person teams...the Chargers and the Raiders. After nine full innings of play, and with only a few disputed rulings made by the Official Umpire (me), the Raiders beat the Chargers by a score of 7 to 5. Thank God this in no way bears any resemblance to the REAL world where the actual scumbags from Oakland would never come close to beating a much finer, and certainly more gentlemanly group than San Diego's representatives to the NFL. After the baseball game, we all packed up and headed for Alisa's where Grandma Claudia performed her magic on Brooke's hair, followed by a great Farewell Dinner for the Texas grandkids who leave us tomorrow. We will soon be returning to reality!

Morning arrived at the ungodly hour of six o’clock. After romping Gizmo, Claudia and I headed to Alisa's to pick up Rachael and Kyndallyn for breakfast at Denny’s and the ride to the airport. After the kids were safely on the plane and on their way home, we returned to Santee Lakes to ready the motorhome for the start of a new adventure. Tomorrow, we head north with a very firm itinerary of stopping first at Ventura, or maybe Santa Barbara, or maybe Oceano or possibly Avila Beach. Stay tuned. I'll let you know.

West Coast America

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry's Stardates) — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 04:13:00 +0000

Here we go…another Stardate series for (hopefully) your enjoyment. I’m going to start this one a little early, like around the middle of July. Claudia, “Gizmo” and I have been slowly transitioning from total kickback, to “maybe we’d better start thinking about the trip” to actually starting to put things together. I must digress a minute and introduce you to Gizmo.

As most of you know, we had to put Rusty down last year. At the tender young age of six, he blew his back out, a common thing for Daschunds, and was paralyzed. It was a mega bummer but it had to be done. After a year and some change, we started visiting the local shelters and found our latest little furry friend. Gizmo is a long-hair Chihuahua and is a total clown…a real kick in the butt! We couldn’t have found a better puppy. His name comes from the movie, “Gremlins” because he looks just like the mogwai that starred in the movie. He’s about one year old now and has succeeded in training us (and every female in our condo complex) into doing everything he so desires. His favorite pastimes are getting his ears “scritched” and getting someone to throw a rope or ball for him to fetch and retrieve. He’s a real “chick magnet” and a great buddy.

The trip we are getting ready for is called “West Coast America” and is a brand new trip. It starts in Tillamook, Oregon on September 22nd and follows Highway 101 south along the Oregon and California coastlines to Leggett, CA where we slide over to the infamous Highway 1 and continue south to Bodega Bay. At that point, we start heading east through Petaluma, Napa and on to Sacramento. After Sacramento, we are off to Yosemite National Park. After our stay at Yosemite, we turn west toward Monterey and Carmel and then south, again on Highway 1, to Buellton and Solvang where the trip ends on October 31st. Our tailgunners are, again, our best friends Larry and Linda Slycord. As of this writing, we have 19 total rigs on the trip. Of the 17 guest rigs, five are past customers of ours.

I am going to the rifle range tomorrow to sight in my 70th birthday present. Since this last one was a significant milestone, all the kids chipped in and bought me a rifle…a 50 caliber in-line (modern) muzzleloader. My major hobby, other than fishing, is shooting black powder rifles. After I get through polluting the atmosphere with dense white smoke, I will slide by the storage space, pick up the motorhome and bring it home to start cleaning and packing for the trip. We recently put new tires on the rig. It now sports a set of Michelin XZA3 tires that inflate to 120# and are rated at over 13,000 pounds carrying capacity. Now I can put more “stuff” in the bays and not worry about overloading the tires…bending the frame maybe, but not blowing the tires.

Jacque, Jeff and the grandkidlets will be arriving from Texas on the 20th and staying until we take off for the trip. Rachael and Kyndi, the grandkidlets, have expressed their desires to go surfing, fishing, to the Wild Animal Park and basically have us tend to their every whim and desire while they are here. We shall do our best, as all grandparents do. Kyndi and Claudia are celebrating birthdays with a Funfetti cake and three-flavor sherbet while they are here.

You are now all caught up with the latest information, gossip and conjecture. My next musings should get published sometime around the first week in August. Until then, safe travels and good health to all!

Gizmo, Calico and Las Vegas

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry's Stardates) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 02:11:00 +0000

It’s time to shake “Godzilla” out of its new digs and roll on another adventure! We recently found a new home for the rig while it’s between trips. We are now parking it at Santee Lakes under a huge carport-like structure that is topped with solar panels. These panels provide most of the power to the facility. Claudia and I drove down Saturday, pulled it out of its parking spot and headed for home to get packed. The clothes, food, fish, and new addition to the family, “Gizmo”, were all ready to go by 2:00 pm so, rather than wait until morning as we had planned, we just took off and headed north on I-15, heading for the Calico Ghost Town at Yermo, just north of Barstow.

“Gizmo” is a nine-month old long-hair Chihuahua that we adopted from the local humane society a week ago. He’s only sort of potty trained at this time so we have concerns about him and the motorhome. As long as we take him out every few hours, he doesn’t potty inside, which is a good thing. Gizmo got his name from the movie “Gremlins”. The lead animal in the movie, a Mogwai, was named “Gizmo”. Now, for those of you who saw the movie, don’t you see a striking resemblance between Gizmo and Gizmo? I do!

Anyway, we are now on the road again. I am driving, Claudia is navigating and Gizmo is lying on an imitation leopard pooch pad on her lap…fast asleep! So much for worrying about how he would take to motorhoming. We took the I-15 to Yermo, turned off on Ghost Town Road and headed north for about three miles to Calico and the RV park. The ranger told us to just grab any open site and he would be around to check us in. We picked a power-only site and settled in for the night. It was about 80 to 85-degrees but cooling off fast as the sun set behind the hills. We slept GREAT!

Gizmo’s whimpering got me up at the ungodly hour of 7:00 am. Dressing quickly, obviously not quickly enough for Gizmo who now whined louder “encouragement”. I opened his cage and we stepped out to face the dawn. He was soon finished with his “duties” and we returned to the rig. He ran inside and slid to a stop in front of the refrigerator, anticipating his usual after-duty treat, a small chunk of a mystery meat product from our favorite dog food company. Does he have me trained, or what?

Claudia and I finished dressing and set off for the ghost town. The first building we came to was the Calico House Restaurant. We went to the rear outside patio and were met by a young waitress in a yellow hoop skirt which was covered with large yellow and black bees, a vintage outfit from the late 1800’s. She took our order and soon returned with two huge plates of chicken fried steak, two eggs to order, a side of home fries and another side of biscuits and gravy…EACH! We immediately decided to skip lunch today! The breakfast was $9.25!

After about an hour, we waddled out of the restaurant and started to walk the town. We walked to the train station for a short train ride through the mine area and then continued our walk through the rest of the town, stopping at every gift shop to look for “bargains”. Luckily, we found none. Returning to the motorhome, I walked Gizmo and we settled back to wait for our previously assigned site to open up.

About forty-five minutes after the checkout deadline, the slugs in our assigned site finally decided to leave and we slid in right behind them and got all set up to meet several of our Allegro Club members. We are all headed for the Oasis RV Resort in Las Vegas and a rally being put on by Tiffin Motorhomes. The rigs started arriving and we got everyone parked without incident. Since the temperature was now a toasty 105-degrees, we decided to abandon the “Five O’Clock Rule” and headed for the bar for a few cool ones.

Calico Ghost Town

After a couple of beers, iced teas, and assorted other refreshing liquids, the gang headed down the hill and back to the rigs. Everyone had a lot of “extra” food so we set up an impromptu pot-luck at the meeting area in front of the rigs. Suffice to say, we ate well…again! After-dinner showers were well-appreciated by both us and those whom we came in close proximity to. We cleaned the rig as much as we could for a planned early departure for Sin City.

We woke up about 6:00 am. I took Giz for a morning “prance” while Claudia finished cleaning up. We took off right at 7:00 and got to the RV park at 9:30. After checking in, Claudia took off in the car to meet Jacque and Gizmo and I got the rig all set up. Claudia returned sometime around 1:00 to find the motorhome perfectly set up, cooled down and ready to party. We tinkered for a while and then headed for the pool. Boy did it feel great. The temperature was perfect! Walking back to the rig after swimming, we looked toward the motorhome and went “YEAH, BABY!” Just on the other side of the freeway was a Bass Pro Shops (for me) and the Silverton Casino (for Claudia). Guess what we are doing tomorrow after we do the rally check-in thing.

Tuesday started off bright and early. Gizmo greeted us with his usual glee and whining. The only thing wrong(?) with this park is that there is no dog grass. There is people grass, like the little chipping golf course, but there are 1, 219 signs stating “NO DOGS ON THE GRASS”. There is also a $50 fine for letting your dog use the grass and a $25 “bounty” to anyone turning you in. Naturally, we are as far as possible from the closest dog run. Oh well, we get our exercise walking to and from the dog run…LOTS of exercise!

Since it was early, we jumped in the car, crossed the freeway and went into the Bass Pro Shops store. I found a killer deal on a long-sleeve camo shirt for my soon to occur predator hunting trips. I just about have my black powder muzzleloader sighted in. When I get that done, look out varmints! We then went next door to the casino where Claudia joined 99% of all slot machine players as she lost again. One of these days, she’ll hit the big one. At least, that’s what she keeps telling me. We then returned to the park, ate lunch and met up with the rest of our group to register for the rally. We won a $20 gift certificate to Walmart as a door prize and an oil change for the generator. That’s cool! After checking in, we perused all the new motorhomes on display here in the park but decided to keep Godzilla. We then attended a hosted social and dinner featuring a baron of beef. They do feed us good at the rallies. The only meal not covered is breakfast on Thursday.

Wednesday started early again as we both needed showers. Breakfast was scrambled eggs, perfectly cooked bacon or under-cooked sausage, home fries and fruit. Not spectacular, but adequate. After breakfast was a seminar on the electronics installed in our RV’s. The questions centered mostly around satellite and radio systems…interesting and helpful. The next seminar was on convection microwave cooking. Since my Dutch ovens don’t fit or work in the microwave, I decided to pass on this seminar. Claudia and some of the other ladies decided to check out the local outlet mall.

The weather turned weird this afternoon. We got a bunch of dark Cumulus Nasty clouds in that kicked up the winds in the afternoon. The awnings on the motorhome started flapping so wildly they woke me up from my afternoon nap. I had to get up retract them. Luckily, it has electric switches to bring them in. I didn’t even have to go outside. I love this motorhome! Since I was now up and awake, I fixed a toddy and turned on the news. Tonight is a dinner and entertainment with a western theme so I get to dust off my boots and show off my new belt that I bought in Quartzsite back in January. It even has my name embossed on it! WOW!

The dinner was good, the show was great and we went down to Fremont Street afterwards. The light show was all about rock music…”We will, we will ROCK YOU!” etc., etc. We stopped for a few minutes at one of the casinos along Fremont Street so Claudia could lose some more money and then returned home for some very welcome sleep.

Thursday started with a shower and a romp. In case you were wondering, I took the shower and Gizmo romped. (just to set the record straight) After breakfast, we headed out to the demonstration rigs for a one-on-one with the Tiffin reps. We then went in for a show-and-tell with craft makers from the group. One member of our club makes wooden toys for disadvantaged kids and displayed his toy trains, planes, tools and push toys. He’s really good!

Gerry and his toys

Next was lunch and Bingo. Claudia stayed for Bingo but I had to talk with the repair guys and coordinate with them about a venting problem. I have now filled the gray tank as requested and am awaiting their arrival. They got here at 4:15 and got everything fixed that could be fixed. The venting problem was diagnosed as a vent pipe inserted too far into the tank. I will have to do a quick examination of the vent tube to see if it can be fixed. If it can, it will be easy. If it can’t be fixed, I’ll live with it. I have a couple of little follow-ups, but they are within my technical expertise and I shall prevail! Now…I heard there was an unadvertised wine party in the ballroom. Better check that out!

Unfortunately, after putting stuff away and taking a much needed shower, (the second one today), we barely made it to dinner on time. After dinner, the entertainment started. It was WAY loud and not to our liking so we, and a few others, drove next door to the Silverton Casino. Claudia went left (toward the slots) and I went right (toward Bass Pro Shops). I did have to stop for a few minutes at the huge salt water tank to admire all the fish. There were lots of sharks, bat rays and other salt water fish. There was also a scantily clad mermaid cavorting in the tank waving at all the children. She was a big hit…with the kids! I was admiring the fish. I then went into BPS and killed some time looking at the new in-line muzzleloader rifles. Now, if I could only win a modest jackpot…well, maybe a little more than a modest jackpot as Claudia would probably (yeah, RIGHT!) request her share. After drooling and dreaming, we returned to the rig, romped the mutt and watched TV. Tomorrow, we return home.

Friday started with the usual romp followed by a box breakfast of a muffin, fruit, yogurt and coffee. We then returned to the rig and made preparations to get underway. Once it was cleaned up, stuff put away, tanks dumped and Gizmo walked, we said our goodbye’s to our club members and headed south on the old interstate. It was pretty windy so the trip was a “both hands on the wheel and pay attention” trip. We hit “creep & crawl” a few miles from home but still made the trip in six hours and twenty minutes…not bad at all. We unloaded all the stuff, parked the rig on the street for the night and called it a great trip.

Indio FMCA and Quartzsite

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry's Stardates) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 06:29:00 +0000

The trip to Quartzsite was almost an afterthought. We were going, then we weren’t, then we were, then we weren’t. Finally, we decided we were going and started planning in earnest. After the Rose Parade Rally, we needed a break. We made plans to go to the FMCA rally in Indio, stay at the Elk’s Lodge and just be daily walk-in's for the rally. We arrived on the 7th and parked right next to another member of our RV club. A third joined us later that night.

Bright and early on the 8th, we all drove the three miles to the RV show. Claudia and I walked the vendor area first to see what was for sale and find what we could not do without. We shopped until noonish, took our new treasures back to the car and then met the rest of the group for lunch. Jim and Joan McCracken, past guests of ours who were working the rally also joined us. Following lunch and catch-up conversation and gossip, we headed out to look at the coaches being offered for sale. There were very few and they were almost all used coaches. We returned to the Elk’s Lodge vowing not to go back. It was a very poor show.

The 9th was “Explore the Area Day”. We headed east and then south on Highway 111 and arrived in Niland about an hour later. After a bit of searching and a stop at the Niland Fire Department, we soon arrived at the thriving metropolis of Slab City and its world famous monument, Salvation Mountain.

Entrance sign

Salvation Mountain

Entrance to the Temple

Salvation Mountain is the result of the efforts of a single man, Leonard Knight. Leonard is in his mid-seventies and has worked on Salvation Mountain for about 24 years. Many years ago, he turned to God and eventually wound up in Niland. He started building a monument to his faith and never stopped. The entire site is built of old tires, trees, automobile parts, adobe clay and a whole bunch of dedication. Some of the trees are pretty big and there are a few telephone poles mixed in. He puts them all in place with three come-alongs…simple block-and-tackle devices.

Leonard giving a tour

Trees inside the Temple

He lives with his cat, Jack, in the back of an old flatbed truck that has been somewhat converted into a camper.

Leonard's home

The site is listed in Ripley’s Believe it or Not and has been the subject of several documentaries. Leonard gave us a tour of the place and presented us with a DVD of his life and the story of Salvation Mountain.

Claudia and me with Leonard

You may think he is a few French fries short of a Happy Meal but you can’t question his faith in God or his dedication. Not being able to do something is not in his vocabulary.

After Salvation Mountain, we drove through Slab City. The “town” got its name by the fact that it once was a military camp, now decommissioned and leveled with only the slab foundations remaining. It is now a haven for snowbirds and a core of very definitely “odd” characters. Every known and mysterious object that has ever fallen off vehicles on the local highways now adorns the front yards of the permanent residents of Slab City.

Homes at Slab City - Note the salvaged decorations!

I was listening for banjo music as we drove through the area but we made it out safely and headed back for home. We finalized the day by going to the new Clint Eastwood movie, “Grand Torino” followed by dinner at Mimi’s. I highly recommend the sautéed scallops with butternut squash ravioli. It was prepared in a sort of Cajun sauce and was to die for! Pass on the bread pudding though. Mine’s a lot better!

Saturday the 10th was a sleep-in morning. It felt good! When we finally got up and dressed, we took off with Neil and Terry Zitrin to go to the College of the Desert flea market. They assured us it was worth it and they were sure right! It was extra-large, double-huge…the biggest flea market I’ve ever seen! We looked all around and found some great stuff. We chugged down some bratwurst hot dogs with grilled onions and sauerkraut and then left about noon-thirty to go to “The Follies”, a musical vaudeville-type show with performers whose ages run from the high 50’s to the holder of the Guinness Book of World Records, the “Worlds Oldest Showgirl” at eighty-five years! Those gals looked outstanding! The men had nice hair! The show featured a dog act, a ventriloquist and lots of singing and dancing. The guest headliner was Susan Anton. It was a good show. Dinner that night was a much-too-large serving of chicken enchiladas and fried ice cream.

When we got up on Sunday, I went to the office and extended our stay by two days until the 13th. We all then went in for breakfast in the lodge. After breakfast, the Zitrin’s and Miller’s both left for home. Claudia and I went back to the CoD flea market to scrape up a few more “deals” before returning to the rig for the Charger game. We should have stayed at the flea market! What a miserable game. Oh well…next year!

Larry and Linda showed up on Monday and we all headed for Quartzsite on Tuesday after making sure our water was full to the brim and both waste tanks completely empty. We also made a quick stop at the Ehrenburg Flying “J” for fuel and propane. We were now ready for a week to ten days of dry camping. We headed for Quartzsite, took Exit 19, turned south to the “T” and east to Scandan Wash. After turning off the main road, we jiggled and joggled along the tire-track “road” toward the power lines. After passing the third wash, we turned right and found two members of our group all settled in and kicking back. Larry and I circled around and picked our spots. After an hour or so, we were all settled in and I was drinking a “Colorado Kool Aid”. Nice! That night we had a campfire. Hell, every night we had a campfire. That is a tradition in the desert and we upheld it in the finest tradition.

Our camp at Quartzsite

The next day, I broke out my glider for a scary short flight. I think the balance was off…WAY OFF! I got it up around 100 feet and, when I throttled the motor down, all it wanted to do was porpoise badly. It was like 99.9% out of control. After an unintentional loop, I gained enough control to land it in one piece several hundred yards away. That was enough fun for the morning! I put it away until my flight instructor checks it out. Around 10:00 or so, we did a quick reconnoiter of the early sellers booths and found a few items worth “oohing” and “ahhing” over. Over the next few days, we hit new areas and made several “finds”. I scored on a great new straw cowboy hat for $20.00 and a 9-inch only slightly rusty cast iron frying pan for $5.00. Claudia found some clothes and jewelry, notably a whimsical glass fish pendant. We kept biding our time until Saturday when the big tent show opened.

We decided to wait until Saturday afternoon to let the main horde get in and out of the tent show. About 2:00 in the afternoon, we made the trek and did a quick familiarization tour of the vendors and their wares. I made an appointment for a windshield repair and made a couple of semi-necessary purchases. We then returned for dinner and a campfire. Tonight’s fire brought a new twist. A kangaroo rat had moved into our wood pile and amused us by running around our feet as we sat in our chairs. One of the ladies “accidentally” dropped a few pieces of dog food near the wood pile before she retired for the night.

All in all, we had much fun over the next few days and met several friends staying in other locations around the area. Verle and Curtis Lambert, former Wagonmasters from the company, came over from Yuma and stayed for a pot-luck diner of ham, barbecued ribs, lasagna, salad, and, and, and… I stopped at thirds, not including dessert. We were planning to leave on Tuesday but extended a day for more shopping and came home on Wednesday. For those of you who have never been to Quartzsite, it is a “happening” you shouldn’t miss.

Rose Parade Rally

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry's Stardates) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 03:37:00 +0000

Claudia and I were off in the Explorer on December 13th and we headed north to Ventura for a whole week of doing nothing but kickin’ back in an “efficiency” room. We were expecting a postage stamp sized room with maybe a couch bed and a small stall shower. We were pleasantly surprised when we got there and quickly settled into a very nice and comfortable room. The first thing we did was to call Claude LeMond, one of our favorite sergeants when we worked at the San Diego CHP office. He and his wife, Marcia, one of our favorite radio dispatchers, live in Ventura. We quickly made plans to meet the following night for dinner and a long overdue eyeball meeting. Things were going swimmingly when we got “The Call”.

Our plan for the rest of the month was to prepare for the Rose Parade. We were scheduled to be the Assistant Rallymasters for the Rose Parade Rally in Pomona that started on the 24th. Now “preparation” for Assistant Rallymaster is synonymous with “just show up” and we were prepared to do just that…show up and do what we were told. At some point in time that night, we got a call from the Rallymasters, the couple who were running the rally. We were informed that their son was scheduled for an emergency quadruple bypass Monday morning and they had to pull out of the rally. I quickly surmised that, since he was calling me, Claudia and I had just been promoted (?) to full-blooded Rallymasters. Wow! How wonderful! Let’s see…today’s the 13th and we have to start a rally on the 24th and, oh, by the way, throw in Christmas while you plan the festivities…FROM SCRATCH! Somehow, “thrilled with the news” was a little off the mark. I poured one of my famous “two-fingered” Scotch drinks, sat down and we talked. After a while, we had a short “To Do” list. Actually, it was a short “Here is a list of the major things that better get done…and damn fast!” Sleep that night did not come easy.

The next morning, we started planning as soon as we got up, had breakfast and headed into Ventura to sightsee as we planned. Equipped with a large notepad and pen, we headed into town. We parked on the main drag and started walking. Within one block, we came across a party store called “Bonnie’s” that was soon going out of business. New Year’s stuff was priced at 30% off. We spent about an hour going through the store and making notes. This was a good start! Another call from the previous Rallymasters informed us that there were four boxes of “stuff” for the rally just 30 minutes down the road at his sister’s house. We took off and retrieved said boxes which filled our poor overly-stuffed little car. We were moving forward! Now, back to vacationing. We met Claude and Marsha, got caught up on old times and went out for dinner.

The rest of the week included two more meetings, a trip to the Ronald Regan Library (where we actually walked through Air Force One) and a dinner meeting with Steve and Sally Bascom who we worked with at Catalina Island a few years back. After dinner, we all froze while watching the Ventura Harbor Boat Parade of Lights. The next day, we packed up and headed home via a slightly circuitous route. We first went to Pomona to look at the RV park and meeting room where we were going to stay. We also went to Miss Donuts and the La Paloma Restaurant to make arrangements for our morning coffee supplies and the Orientation Dinner on the 28th. Things were progressing! We headed home and emptied the rig into the garage. Half the garage was now totally unusable for parking. We then put all the paperwork boxes, binders, brochures and other miscellaneous supplies on the dining room table. It was not pretty. Dinner for the next five nights would be either eat out or stand up style. “Busy” does not adequately describe the next few days.

We got as much done as we could, packed the motorhome, had Christmas Eve dinner at Alisa’s on the 24th (DUH!) and breakfast at Scott and Tye’s on the 25th. Alisa brought the third member of the Barber Rally Team, our granddaughter, Brooke, to our house later that night. The next morning, we headed for Pomona, vowing to give it our all. We pulled in, got set up at our site, had a meeting with our other two staff couples and went out to dinner at the Chino Buffet in Chino Hills. The Chino Buffet is ALWAYS on our schedule when we are in this area. We returned to the park and spend the rest of the night working on a shopping list until we crashed.

The 27th was spent checking in guests,

visiting WalMart, Costco, Sam’s and other local stores to help stimulate the local economy. We made a good dent in the shopping list but didn’t have time to put it to bed.

The 28th was the first day of the rally. We started out with coffee, donuts, sweet rolls and bagels in the morning and an orientation in the late afternoon followed by a Mexican dinner. It was a wowzer!

Orientation Dinner

The next day was full…almost too much. We started out at 7:30 with a trip to the Huntington Library, more shopping in the middle of the day and an evening trip to the Crystal Cathedral (Google it!) for the “Glory of Christmas” show. This followed the story of the birth of Christ and was complete with lots of animals, including sheep, goats, a jackass, several horses and three camels. We got home somewhere around 11:30 and then put 71 lunches together for our guests for the next day.

The 30th started early…too early…like about 7:00 am. We jumped into our busses and headed west to the float barns to watch several floats in the last stages of completion.

The Natural Balance float under construction

The next stop was “Bandfest”, a very popular demonstration by eight bands that will be performing in the parade.

The U.S. Marine Corps Band

After the Bandfest, we crawled through traffic as we headed back to the park. Claudia and I went shopping while our two assistants decorated the Carnation Room across the street at the Pomona Fairplex for the New Year’s celebration. They did a fabulous job! The room looked great.

The last day of 2008 started out with an early morning tour of "Hollywierd" and the La Brea Tar Pits. We again crawled back through traffic and hurriedly got ready for the evening’s festivities. New Year’s Eve dinner was barbecued tri-tip, complete with all the trimmings. It was delicious.

We broke out the champagne and some assorted non-alcoholic beverages for the non-imbibers

Brooke...one of the non-imbibers

and awaited the stroke of midnight. By popular demand and the fact that we needed to board the bus in the morning at 5:15, we celebrated a “Newfie” (Newfoundland) New Year at 8:30 and went to bed.

At the ungodly hour of 5:15 in the morning, we very reluctantly trudged to our busses and crawled inside for the trip to the Rose Parade. We arrived shortly after 6:00 and napped on the bus until 7:15 when we braved the crowds and headed for our assigned seats in the bleachers on Colorado Blvd. After most of the throngs got settled in, the parade started with a police motorcycle demonstration team that was totally overshadowed by a flyover by a B-2 bomber.

The U.S. Air Force B-2 bomber flyover

The parade continued with bands, bands and more bands,

floats, floats and more floats.

The parade ended just after 10:00 and was followed by the usual slightly misguided (my opinion) individuals carrying placards claiming that “Jesus caused 9-11”, “Jesus is the way to Salvation”, etc.

We braved the crowds once again and returned to our buses. After about 45 minutes, we were able to pull out of the parking lot and return once again to our rigs. That evening, we (the staff) prepared a lasagna, salad and garlic bread dinner which was followed by a raffle with company give-aways as prizes. Much fun! Good day!

On the 2nd, we boarded the busses for the last time and headed for the post-parade viewing area where we spend about four hours up close and personal with the floats.

Post-parade viewing

This is probably the most popular activity of the rally, short of the parade itself. Only when you get right up to the floats can you see the detail that went into building them. It is truly amazing! We headed back at 1:00 and, amazingly, there was nothing else planned for the day. We held a staff meeting and went out to dinner. We are winding down and it feels great!

Our FINAL DAY, January 3rd started with a breakfast for the guests in the KOA game room. It consisted of breakfast burritos, juice and coffee…nothing fancy, but good! After cleaning up, we threw everything into the rig, packed up and headed south for home. Finally at home, we unloaded, straightened up, cleaned up and put the rig away for the next trip…which will begin in four days. We head for the FMCA rally in Indio on the 7th, followed by a 10-day or so stay at Quartzsie, AZ…but that’s another story.