There are fish in the river!

Guess I'm getting pretty excited about fishing this summer! This morning I drove over to Hood Canal to scope out the Skok, The Skokomish River, that is. Fishing for Chinooks starts August 1st and I wanted to see if there are any fish. As luck would have it I arrived at low tide and no fish were visible from the SR-106 bridge due to the shallow water and the lack of any deep holes at that particular spot so I went into Shelton to see what activity they were having at the hatchery, the destination of these beautiful fish as this is a hatchery supplemented fishery. The holding pond easily had two hundred big, bright salmon and a few trout swimming about so I am optimistic that I'm going to have an excellent couple of months on the river! This is combat fishing at it's best, or worst, depending on your point of view. The banks of the river will be crowded with eager nimrods hoping to take home a nice King Salmon (Chinook). I will be there as well! I think I'd better go tie some leaders now! Hope to see you on the river.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig!

After a leisurely week on the road we have arrived in Bremerton, Washington, just a few short miles from our last home in Washington. We are camped in the Elks RV lot and we can look out and see part of Puget Sound. If we awaken early in the morning we will expect to see deer out on the lawn, It is a peaceful site. The weather is nice, cool and pleasant. Some complain that this is not really summer but it just may be summer at it's finest! There is a pleasant breeze and we may go out and throw a Frisbee back and forth once the picnickers leave the grounds. Right now rest and relaxation is the name of the game! We hope that whatever your summer is so far that you are enjoying it!

What Is That Odor?

Today we had a pleasant experience as we left Corning, California and proceeded north on I-5. The road was more or less decent and the smoke detector stayed on the ceiling and the remainder of our fillings stayed in our teeth! Skies were overcast and we had an easy day until we got into the Siskiyou Mountains. Northern California and Southern Oregon have some mountains that have several mile climbs and descents of up to 6%. That doesn't sound like much but our gas burner doesn't do well going downhill. The coach wants to run and the engine and transmission don't do a good job of holding her back like a diesel would. As we descended into Ashland, Oregon we encountered a couple of runaway truck ramps, exits filled with gravel to stop vehicles with burned out brakes. We passed one sign that advised that the runaway ramp was 2 miles ahead and we discussed how it must feel to be in a vehicle that you could not stop and know you had to negotiate the s-turn downhill road and avoid the other traffic as well for another two minutes!. Then a few minutes later we came around a turn and there was an eighteen wheeler in the runaway ramp! We were really surprised, especially as we noted that the driver was still in the rig and looked like he was in a state of shock. The incident must have occurred just seconds before we arrived! The furrows in the gravel indicated that the truck had stopped in about 20 feet! It must have been like a cable arrest in a carrier landing. That truck must have reeked with the smell of burned brakes and fear! What do you think? Remember to test your brakes and shift into a lower gear! Be safe.

Central Valley

We got up with the sun again and were 'merrily' on our way by 6:30 AM. It appeared to get down to about 60 F last night so we were pleased. After about 10 minutes we turned onto US-99 in Bakersfield and headed north. Central Valley here we come! Almost immediately there were green fields on both sides of us, the result of irrigation. As they say, 'food grows where water flows!. Nowhere is that more evident than in this part of California. The sun was behind us and the road was in front of us,..no, the road was under us, we could feel it! California evidently does not have an active road maintenance department. Where the road was patched it was as bad as where it was not patched. Our coach rattled and jumped from bump to bump and we were lucky that the smoke detector only fell from the ceiling once. Every once in a while we found a stretch that had been paved sometime in the past 10 years and we thought we were in heaven. Then, in a short while we were back to the bumps again, evidently we're not heaven rated! The beautiful day and the clear sky helped to make the day a little more pleasant and we took in all the various crops, the fields and orchards and tried to guess what was being grown. US-99 is mostly a divided highway and the median has been planted with thousands of oleander bushes is reds, corals, pinks, and white. There were millions of blooms and it made the drive very beautiful and enjoyable. I had the windshield fan on in the coach but we did not have the AC or vent on all morning, the most comfortable temperature we have had on the trip. We were lucky, Anne chose our departure date well! We will be out of California tomorrow and expect cooler weather in Oregon and Washington.

At Stockton we left US-99 and moved onto Inastate-5 (In a state of disrepair!). Oh, did I mention the crappy roads? Since we had such an easy day we ended up heading for Corning and Rolling Hills Casino for our days end.

We had lunch in Woodland at our favorite burger joint, IN-N-OUT! There was a new mall there and we were sure we could park the coach in those large parking lots somewhere. Sure enough, we found a spot where we took up almost an entire row but we had an easy in and an easy out and there was no one parked even close to us. OMG, walking across the lot to the restaurant I saw my first car! There it was, a white 1965 Mustang, I couldn't believe it. I still remember buying that car, it was about $1969 in 1965. Dad gave me $250 for a down payment and I got a coupon book with 36 payments of $69 and change. The license plate was a Michigan plate, SD-7084! Heck, I can't remember what any other car cost or the license plates either. How does that trivia stick with you? I had a blue interior with a bench seat and a column three speed with a six cylinder engine. I could have had four on the floor with bucket seats and a V-8 but since Dad was having to pony-up up front I went for the economy version. I still loved that car!

BTW, we made 54 cents on the slots between us. Winners!

How is your summer going? If you pass us on the road, be sure to honk!

A Trail in Two Deserts

"London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down. London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady." Did you ever wonder what happened after London Bridge fell down? This particular bridge was built in 1831 and probably is not the most famous of London's Bridges but it came from London and spanned The Thames River. By 1962 it was no longer strong enough for modern traffic and was dismantled by 1967. A US land developer thought that London Bridge was just what his project needed so the pieces were catalogued and some of it was shipped to Arizona where it was rebuilt in Lake Havasu City. Lake Havasu is created by impounding water from the Colorado River and makes a beautiful oasis in Aridzona. London Bridge makes a great tourist attraction. We visited this lovely place last winter for a balloon festival, a great setting for such an activity and we hope to come again for this year's festivities.

We were on the road at 6:30 AM, awoke to a morning temperature of about 78 F. We haven't it that cool in quite some time. We had a nice drive along the river to Lake Havasu and shortly thereafter we crossed the border into California. We paid $3.40 per gallon for gas just before crossing the border and dread buying gas in CA because we expect prices much closer to $4.00.

Most of the day today and yesterday was spent crossing endless miles of desert without much inhabitation. We started in the Sonoran Desert and today we were in the Mojave Desert. Two deserts and yet each is unique.

"A desert is a landscape or region that receives an extremely low amount of precipitation, less than enough to support growth of most plants. Deserts are defined as areas with an average annual precipitation of less than 10 in per year, or as areas where more water is lost by evapotranspiration than falls as precipitation."

Some information on the Sonoran Desert can be found at http://www.art-design.umich.edu/ecoexplorers/sonorandesert/home.aboutsonoran.html. If you happen to see a tall, multi-armed cactus called a Saguaro, you are in the Sonoran Desert!

Here are some facts about the Mojave Desert: http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Mojave_Desert.aspxe . If someone says look at the Joshua Tree, you are in the Mojave, the only place they exist. The Mojave is also noted for Edwards Air Force Base where many of our Astronauts got their early training. Mojave Airport is famed for being the storage ground for many, idle commercial transport aircraft. Many of them are referred to as "white tails", they came off the line without a buyer and were placed into storage until they could be sold. What better place than a dry desert area where they can be parked outside with a minimum of maintenance!

Before we reached Mojave we passed Boron, CA, the site of the world's largest open pit borax mine. This mine produces about half of the world's supply of borates. Borax originally was found in Death Valley and some of us can remember 20 mule team wagon trains used to haul the ore. Later, larger and richer deposits were found here in Boron.

We turned north from Mojave and headed up the Tehachapi Valley. Route 58 winds through a beautiful canyon and climbs up and out of the Mojave. Tehachapi is renowned for the winds that blow constantly and this area has five thousand wind turbines located on the ridges above the road. Most were spinning briskly as we climbed our way out of the desert and down into The Central Valley of California . There are approximately 15000 wind turbines in California and together they generate just 1% of the State's electrical power needs! While on the subject of wind, we encountered a rogue gust that caused our coach to veer sharply in spite of a firm hand on the wheel and a fast reaction to the wind. It was the worst we have ever encountered. Fortunately we were all alone on the road at the time. We were tempted to get off the highway if we had any further evidence of such activity! One gust was enough!

The pictures I found on the net.

It's Time to Flog This Blog!

Wow, it has been some time since our last post! Well, we are back on the road again so it is time.

We spent several months this past winter trying to buy a winter home in The Valley of The Sun, the area east of Phoenix, AZ. We have been spending some part of winter in AZ for about 10 years. It has been almost 4 years since we sold our house in WA so we decided we needed to have more space, either in summer or in winter. After about six months of trying to buy a house, we finally succeeded and now have a place in Mesa, AZ. Between trying to get the house functional and having to endure a myriad of medical tests, we finally got back on the road early this afternoon. We have wondered if we could endure AZ in summer. The longest we have been here previously was June 2 but this year we lasted to almost mid July. We had one day at 118 F and almost every day now is over 100 F. Heck, we consider 103 to be almost pleasant!

At about noon we had everything packed and the house ready to be closed for the remainder of summer so we hit the road. It was hot, 104 or thereabouts, but traffic was manageable and the AC kept the rig livable. We headed west and turned north at the Colorado River. We are in a very nice County Park on the Colorado just out of Parker, AZ. We have a good view of the river, the park is not crowded, our site is shaded and the AC is working hard. The back of the coach was 96 F when we arrived. We will have a cool, restful sleep and be on the road early to avoid the hottest weather. It will be a beautiful day! We are headed for Union, WA where we will spend a restful couple of months in a beautiful location on Hood Canal. If you are in the vicinity, give us a call.

Texas is messing with us!

We have installed a 'black box' in our electrical circuit that continually tests the electrical voltage coming into our motor home. We did this because we previously had problems with a defective umbilical cord and thought we were going to have a fire. Well, the other night our power would not stay on and it surprised us as we had a 50 amp circuit available and we weren't using that much electricity. Of course, it was raining and every time the power would go out and I would go outside to check for a blown breaker, the rain would pelt down in earnest. Picture holding a test meter in one hand, a flashlight in another and trying to keep the box lid up and putting the probe wires into the outlet to test and read the voltage all at the same time AND in the rain! It was a losing proposition. The Surge Guard would sample the power for a few seconds and shut off. We spent the night using mostly battery power as the AC would not stay connected for any length of time even though it continually kept trying to connect throughout the night. We figured our expensive meter had conked out but now, two days later, it has performed flawlessly for two days at a different park and the power has not cycled off one time. We now think the Surge Guard was just doing its job and that we were getting high and low voltage fluctuations, power surges and problems with the neutral line. It wasn't fun without electrical power but no power is much better than BAD power. Fortunately it wasn't one of the hotter evenings and we didn't need the air conditioner, just fans.

Yesterday we drove about half way across Texas and are now in Wichita Falls. We had wind and rain for almost 300 miles. Somewhere out there the front brakes suddenly developed a grinding noise that we had looked into and discovered that a front brake pad had come apart and was now metal to metal on one side. Fortunately we found a shop willing to take us this morning and had our front brakes replaced and it only cost us a one day delay. We're ready to park the motor home for a few months! We'll try and get across the rest of Texas tomorrow.