The Holidays

What's happening next for Rick and Cathy? We left Joshua Tree on 11/20 and rolled westward to the ocean. We pulled into San Clemente State Beach; this is one of our most favorite places to stay. Not only is it only a few miles from Jill, Joe and the kids, but it is also a beautiful campground on a bluff above the Pacific. We've stayed here numerous times over the years.

We spent ten days in San Clemente and then headed south to a county park that we discovered in Oceanside. For the non-Californians reading this, San Clemente is the southernmost city in the Los Angeles megapolis; it sets just north of the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base. Oceanside is the northernmost city in San Diego county and abuts Camp Pendleton on its southern boundary. The two cities are only about 20 miles apart.

We lucked out here; this is a large scenic park with a very nice campground. Our site is quite private and is close to numerous walking trails, a lake, etc. On top of everything else, this place is pretty cheap, at $29 a night. We're here until 12/20 and headed back to San Clemente, where we'll stay through Christmas.

Why leave San Clemente, only to return in three weeks? California state parks have limitations on how many days you can stay in a certain period. We wanted to be around family for Thanksgiving and Christmas; in between, it isn't quite as important. Not surprisingly, our children all have busy lives. We've discovered, in past visits to the area, that we really don't see them all that much except for special occasions and get-togethers.

After Christmas, we spend a few days back at Golden Shores RV Park in Long Beach and then hit the road - on January 1, no less! - for Tucson. We'll be there a month, then head further east to the Brownsville, Texas area for a month.

We'll probably post an update or two before we leave town. We've got LOTS of pictures of the grandkids, and will undoubtedly have a lot more as we gather for Christmas.

Our very best wishes to you this holiday season!

Joshua Tree

We left Death Valley and, after a beautiful scenic drive through the Mojave, rolled into a little RV park in Twentynine Palms. We were about five miles from one of the entrances to Joshua Tree National Park. Our time here offered a real change for us: Heather, Dan and Parker joined us. Dan could only spend two days with us, but Heather and Parker were with us for three nights. It was a welcome change for us; it is REALLY nice to have someone else to interact with. 

This was Parker’s first visit to a National Park, so the first order of business was to hit one of the visitor center’s to gather the appropriate amount of swag. The rest of the day was filled with sightseeing, short walks and a picnic lunch - for the adults: Parker eats on a much more frequent schedule.

Joshua Tree is a big sprawling place. It encompasses the transition zone between the higher altitude Mojave Desert and the lower Coloradan Desert. Of the two, we found the Mojave to be more picturesque. Not suprisingly, Joshua trees in the Mojave are as prevalent as saguaro cacti are in Saguaro National Park. Seeing Joshua trees should be old hat for Cathy and I; where we grew up in Lancaster, CA, Joshua trees are just about everywhere. Still, seeing a forest of them rolling through the desert was a reminder of spectacularness. 

Early settlers thought these guys looked like Joshua leading the Israelites to the Promised Land.

Joshua Tree is a mecca for rock climbers. There are two climbers on the rocks in the photo below.

There's supposed to be a small spring buried amongst these date palms, but the area was fenced off.

We wandered around this beautiful cholla cactus forest.

Besides being a gateway to the National Park, the city of Twentynine Palms is just two miles from the entrance to the Marine Corp Air Ground Combat Center, commonly also called Twentynine Palms. It is the largest USMC base in the nation and serves as their primary training area. As you might suspect, the town is full of bars, pawn shops, tattoo parlors and barber shops advertising “Military Haircuts”. It was an interesting and different place. 

Death Valley

We kind of screwed up here. We didn’t allot enough time to see this magnificent sprawling space. That’s really OK, though: the place isn’t going away. Also, one of the major attractions - Scotty’s Castle - isn’t open for viewing right now. So, we’ll be back!

We left Tehachapi and followed the route that Google Maps had laid out for us. Being no stranger to the Mojave Desert, we were somewhat familiar with where we were headed. We bypassed the city of Mojave and headed out through the desert. We passed along Searles Dry Lake, where huge quantities of minerals and salts are mined and processed; brother-in-law Steve worked in the area until his retirement. We went through the dying-on-the-vine little town of Trona. You can tell that a town is dying when even the Dollar General store is boarded up!

From there, we ended up in the beautiful and nearly deserted Panamint Valley, through

Stovepipe Wells and into the Furnace Creek area. Furnace Creek is kind of Death

Valley central. There’s a really nice RV park here; with our Senior Pass discount, we

were paying only $25 a night for a spacious spot with full hookups. Furnace Creek has several other campgrounds, a couple of lodges, a general store and even a golf course. It's fed by a year-round stream and there's plenty of water for all of this.

Sunset at the Furnace Creek campground.

Here’s where we screwed up. We only budgeted one full day in the park. Stupid. Death

Valley is the largest National Park in the lower 48 states; there's no way to come close to seeing it all in one day. It’s also the lowest, hottest and driest place in the US - it’s actually the hottest place in the world! 

Death Valley - indeed, deserts in general - have a different kind of spectacularness from, say, the redwoods or the ocean. They all offer endless vistas of blue skies and multicolored rocks, hills and mountains and, usually, unusual plant and animal life. 

The view from our campsite. 

In our limited time here, we decided to hit the biggest sights that were closest to us. The biggest attraction in the park is Badwater, the lowest point in the US at some 280 feet below sea level. A good portion of the southern portion of the park is below sea level; in fact, our campsite at Furnace Creek was about 20 feet below sea level.

Badwater is the attraction in Death Valley. It was the only place in the park, on a weekday in mid-November, that is remotely crowded. There's a small pool at the low point, right off the road. additionally, one is encouraged to wander out onto the salt flats; obviously, there's no way to hurt them, since winter rains refresh them every year.

Badwater from out on the salt flats. The small white sign in the blue circle is at sea level. 

On the way to Badwater there are a number of other attractions and hikes. We made a day of hiking and driving through this picturesque and spectacular landscape.

One of the 20-mule team wagons that hauled borax from Death Valley to Mojave, 165 miles away.

Mid-November is a nice time to hit the place. As I mentioned, it's not at all crowded. Additionally, the weather was superb: clear blue skies with the daytime highs in the 80's and nighttime lows in the 60's. 

Before we left we topped off the Beast at what has to be the most expensive gas station in the US. Of course, they've got a monopoly on the stuff; the next nearest fuel stations are probably 50 miles away. The Beast was thirsty; it cost us $131 to satisfy its thirst!

Leaving the park, we plotted a different route that would take us out of the park and south to

Twentynine Palms, the little town that sits right outside of Joshua Tree National Park. The route took us through the heart of the Mojave National Preserve, which looks like a place that we'd like to spend some time visiting.

Like driving through the Panamint Valley, we found ourselves mostly alone all day long. Except for when crossing I-15 at Baker and passing through the little town of Amboy, which sits astride historic Route 66, we hardly saw a soul on the roads. If you want some solitude, the middle of the Mojave will certainly provide it.

The Loop

On our way from Sequoia to Death Valley we stopped and spent a couple of nights in
the little mountain city of Tehachapi. Tehachapi splits the nearly 400-mile drive 
between the National Parks almost exactly in half. Additionally, we’ve got a little 
history with the place.

Tehachapi sits some 45 miles from Lancaster, our home town. Additionally, Cathy’s 
mom lived here a number of years before she moved to Ohio following the death of 
her husband Bob (Cathy’s stepdad).

Most importantly, Tehachapi is home to the Tehachapi Loop. While probably only railroad 
buffs and civil engineers have any real interest in the Loop, the descendants of Fred 
Shook have certainly heard of it. There’s a little bit of a Fred Shook story here, which 
I’ll get to in a second. 

What is the Tehachapi Loop? As the Southern Pacific Railroad was looking for a route
up and out of the Central Valley of California, the chief engineer, a guy named Hood, 
decided the only way to make the grade was to loop the trackage over itself, in a giant
loop that is nearly a mile long. As a consequence, long trains can be seen to pass over (or under) themselves when moving along the grade. The Loop is a world-famous engineering marvel, and known to train watchers everywhere. 

Trains going downhill travel from right to left on the track in the foreground, travel behind the small conical peak and cut under the higher track. 

My dad was a lifelong aficionado of trains and railroading. He and I built a model 
railroad when I was a kid, and he later built a different one with my younger brother, 
and yet another one when all the kids were gone. Operating that last one, especially 
with my nephews who lived in town, earned him the nickname “Choo-Choo Papa”. 

After mom died Dad, who was therefore living alone, had a lot of time on his hands. 
He would drive up to the Loop a couple of times a week just to see the trains roll 
through. I had many enjoyable trips up to the Loop with dad.

Anyhow, when we were planning on going from Sequoia to Death Valley and we 
discovered that Tehachapi is the halfway point, Cathy suggested spending a couple 
of nights here and going to see the Loop. 

The Loop is very much a local attraction. There is a local road that passes close by, 
above the Loop. There is a historical marker explaining a little about the Loop. We 
stopped there and took a few pics.

Unfortunately, that’s about all we did. The Union Pacific was working on the trackage 
in the Loop and, apparently, had all the trains stopped. In an hour or so of futzing 
around the area we didn’t see a single train. In fact, we neither saw nor heard one 
all day long. 

Also, when I was last there, 15+ years ago, one could drive onto private property 
right up to the trackage. That is no longer the case. All of the access points near the 
Loop are fenced and gated. 

Further, once access to the Loop was obtained, one could slip through a barbed wire 
fence and capture shots like the one below…

That is all the same train!

This photo has a lot of significance to me. It was taken in 1989, during my son Scott’s 
first trip to the Loop. We slipped through the fence at the top of the slope in the photo
and ran down alongside the trackage just before the train arrived. I managed to get 
there just in time to snap this shot. This was in the days of film, and I had no idea 
what I had until I had the film developed. 

Despite our disappointments about seeing the Loop, we enjoyed our time in 
Tehachapi. It’s really a nice little place; it sets at some 4000 feet in elevation, which 
gives it relatively cool summers. There would be worse places to live. We were 
staying next to a small private airport that has a business that offers sailplane rides; 
all day long we enjoyed our own private air show watching them pull sailplanes into 
the air. All in all, a nice little visit. 

This was shot out the back window of our home. 

Sequoia

When we bid farewell to Crescent City and the coast redwoods, we wandered south down the coast and eventually turned east to Sequoia National Park. We ended up spending a few days in Lemon Cove, which is just a few miles from the south entrance to the park.

Although we've visited Sequoia before, and had of course just spent a number of days seeing the coastal redwoods, we were both surprised at our reactions to seeing the forest giants that populate Sequoia National Park. I've spent a little time thinking about why this was so, and have several reasons.

First, of course, is that we've probably become more sensitive to the uniqueness of these forest giants. Seeing the coast redwoods the second time, in our recent visit, was every bit as awe-inspiring as our first visit a couple of months back.

Second, the sequoias are actually easier to see. The groves of sequoias are, for the most part, less dense than the coast redwood groves. They are brighter and more open, and it is easier for the eye to focus on individual specimens.

Also, sequoias are if anything more picturesque than their coastal cousins. They are clothed in a bright rusty-red bark, significantly more colorful than the uniform gray of coast redwoods. Also, we typically saw the sequoias silhouetted against a bright blue sky, emphasizing the contrast between the red bark and green foliage.

Most importantly, though, is that sequoias are simply MASSIVE! Although not nearly as tall as coast redwoods, they are much bigger in terms of mass or volume. If coast redwoods might be thought of as the tree equivalent of pro basketball players - tall and lean and graceful - sequoias are the equivalent of offensive lineman in the NFL. Every part of them screams mass and solidity. The biggest of these guys are some 100 feet in circumference. Their biggest branches are themselves some 8-10 feet in diameter.

The first photo is of the General Sherman tree, the most massive (largest in terms of volume) living thing on the planet. The ones below are simply other shots of these forest giants.

Not for the first time, words fail me to adequately describe what we saw here. John Muir expressed things far better than I can:

“When I entered this sublime wilderness the day was nearly done, the trees with rosy, glowing countenances seemed to be hushed and thoughtful, as if waiting in conscious religious

 dependence on the sun, and one naturally walked softly and awestricken among them.” 

Redwoods, Part 2

When we visited Redwoods National Park in early October, we vowed to come back. Neither one of us felt we really got enough time amongst these giants. So, on our way back south we made a point of stopping and spending a few days here.

We left Bend, Oregon and enjoyed an absolutely spectacular drive across the Cascades. Our route took us past the north and west entrances to Crater Lake National Park. It turned out that the visitor center was still open. That wasn't good enough for us, though; the road around the crater rim is closed for the winter. We didn't want to cheat ourselves here, so we reluctantly decided that Crater Lake will wait for us to return.

So we crossed the Cascades and ran up I-5 to Grants Pass, where we picked up US 199 south to US 101 in Crescent City. We lucked out on our choice of RV parks in Crescent City; we picked a KOA situated maybe five miles north of the city... in its own grove of redwoods! The back part of the campground, where they have the tent campsites, is a redwoods grove that looked like it was logged maybe a century ago. It is full of cut-off stumps as well as regrowth. Our site was on the edge of the grove and we actually had a redwood in our site.

This grove of young redwoods started across the street from our campsite.

This bad boy was IN our campsite!

Crescent City sits surrounded by Jedediah Smith State Park, one of the three California State Parks that, along with the National Park, comprise Redwoods National and State Parks. This combined entity protects redwoods and the coastline for some 50 miles south of Crescent City. There are endless trails and vistas to be explored. One could spend a month here and not see it all. We did what we could, in just a few days....

This is the Smith River.

The coast, looking north toward Crescent City in the distance. 

Bend

We'd driven through Bend in August on our mad dash south before Parker's birth. It struck us as a picturesque place, but we had no time to stop. Now, we do have the time and decided to spend a few days here.

We weren't disappointed. Bend sits east of the Cascades, astride the Deschutes River, in a transitional area between the pine forests of the mountains and the sagebrush east of here. We are actually staying in an RV park near Sisters, some 15 miles west of Bend. We are sited in a pine forest, surrounded by National Forest land.

We spent several days hiking through the National Forest. One of the hikes tooks us a few miles east of here, where all of the vegetation reminded us of our childhood on the Mojave desert, being surrounded by sagebrush and juniper trees.

Another hike took us through an area that had burned, probably within the last ten years or so. As you might imagine, it was different, seeing both the twisted carcasses of burnt trees as well as new growth beginning to appear.

At all times we were surrounded by the Cascades, which are dotted with volcanic peaks rising above the landscape. The little town of Sisters is named for a set of peaks named the Sisters.

The double peak on the right is North Sister and Middle Sister; the one on the left is South Sister.

We got to spend a few hours with Charles and Maria Simons and their daughters. Maria and our daughter Jill went to both high school and college together. A few years back, we had a surprise 80th birthday gathering for my mother-in-law; the whole family traveled to Las Vegas to surprise her. Charles and Maria thought that sounded like fun, and showed up, too! By now, of course, they're simply part of the family.

We were really smitten with Bend. Although we arrived here in a real cold spell (-9°F low the first night, 30°F the next day) we are really taken with the beauty of this place. Housing costs, at least out in Sisters where we were, are very reasonable. It's now on our radar as a place we might like to settle down in. We'll be back again, probably for a longer period of time.

So What's Next?

As I've previously stated, we're heading south for the holidays. We've got reservations in SoCal starting on November 20. Before then, we've got a plan of sorts.

We're in Bend, Oregon right now; I'll have more to say about Bend in a separate post. When we arrived here, they got hit with a massive cold spell; this was caused by the same weather pattern that is giving rise to the winds that are causing all of the problems in California right now. The night we arrived here, the low was 9°F! The next day, the high was 30°F.

Although it has warmed significantly since then, this is still way too cold for us. We're headed south!

Tomorrow (11/2) we're breaking camp and heading south to Crescent City, CA. We'll be there for a few days revisiting Redwoods National Park. From there, we'll head further south and inland, eventually arriving in Lemon Cove, CA, which is just outside of Sequoia National Park. We'll be there a couple of days, then continue on south to Death Valley National Park.

I've been to Death Valley, but that was before it was a National Park. Cathy's never been.

From Death Valley, we'll continue south (notice a trend here?) to Joshua Tree National Park. After a few days here, we'll turn west to our holiday home.

More of Washington

After we left Orcas we headed south to Seattle. We found a very nice RV park about 15 miles from where Scott and Sara just moved to. We hadn't seen Sara on Orcas; she was out of town visiting friends and didn’t come to Orcas with Scott. Also, we hadn’t seen their new place in Seattle.

They live in Fremont, which is an eclectic neighborhood north of downtown. We spent a couple of evenings visiting them and getting to know the area.

Lake Union

We left Seattle and headed east, to Yakima. We’d driven through the Yakima Valley before, when we left Ellensburg in August. It seemed like a nice area and a good place to hang out for a few days.

We weren’t disappointed. First of all, it was warm and sunny. We hadn’t seen the sun since we arrived in Orcas, probably ten days ago. Secondly, Yakima is a beautiful area. We found some great hiking trails in a wilderness area and really got to stretch our legs. Also, the Yakima Valley is home to some 3/4 of the nation's hop production. Our RV park was maybe a quarter-mile from a hop processing plant; in the evenings, the ambrosiacal aroma of hops permeated the atmosphere. Heavenly!

Yakima, WA

Leaving Yakima, we headed south to White Salmon, WA. White Salmon is in the Columbia Gorge, directly across the river from Hood River, OR. The gorge is a National Scenic Area; it runs for some 50-60 miles, starting some 30 miles or so east of Portland. It is dominated, of course, by the Columbia River, but includes numerous waterfalls, including Multnomah Falls, the second-highest waterfall in the US. Multnomah is actually visible from I-84, but of course is much more visible from a stop and a short hike.

Fall in the Cascades, at our RV park.

Multnomah Falls.

Mt. Hood in the distance. There's a name for those funny clouds surrounding it, but I don't know what it is.

Back to Orcas

I've previously mentioned that we were headed back to Orcas Island to help out Scott and Sara. When we were here in July, we spent a week or so putting in a deck on their cabin. Actually, we put in part of a deck. We built the structure - the posts, beams and ledgers - and some of the decking. Scott wanted to pay cash for the entire thing and he didn't have enough available to complete the job then.

So, we offered to come back up and help him move forward. Since we first proposed coming back up, he hurt his left arm in a bad fall, necessitating elbow surgery. He can now use his left arm, but is months away from putting any weight on it. For construction purposes, he's largely out of action.

That was OK with us. We (Cathy and I) had put the first part of the decking on by ourselves and pretty much knew what we were doing.

On Monday (10/14) we drove the trailer from Hoquiam to Anacortes. It costs a fortune to move an RV, or any other large vehicle, on the ferry. It was significantly cheaper for us to simply leave the trailer behind in an RV park and move into the cabin for a few days.

On Tuesday we took the ferry over to Orcas and met Scott, who had come over a couple of days earlier; Sara was out of town for the week visiting friends. We were really worried about the weather; rain was forecast every day, starting on Tuesday.

We lucked out. Wednesday, we managed to buy the decking lumber and get all of it screwed down except for the last piece, before the rain started. We wanted to keep the decking dry so we could (hopefully) brush sealer on it, so as soon as the sky started tinkling we stopped work and tarped everything up.

Thursday morning we finished up the last of the decking. While I was cutting the edges flush, Cathy got a coat of sealer on the deck. This allowed us to complete phase one of the project, which was to get all of the decking done on the east side of the house; this is a space roughly 10' by 30'.

Just getting started; Cathy is getting read to screw down the first piece of decking, which is under the far window against the house.

The edge of the decking. You can also see where the porch wall was knocked out, at the bottom of the photo.

Here's the whole east deck.

The happy campers, with the job well done!

Phase two wraps the decking around the south side of the house and continues onto the existing covered porch. The first part of this work, and all that we intended to do, was to knock out a small stone-and-mortar wall on the edge of the porch. As Scott and I had expected, the mortar was brittle enough to come flying apart with a few good whacks with a sledge hammer - a most satisfying exercise!

Besides getting this work done, we had a wonderful time visiting with Scott. There's not much else going on in the cabin, and we spent the first two nights having some nice conversations until bedtime. Our last night we walked over to the local sports bar - one of the few places open in the wintertime - and watched UCLA thrash Stanford in football. That was about all we did on Orcas, which is just as beautiful in the autumn as it is in the summer.

Orcas in the fall; this is the road in front of Scott & Sara's place.

What's next for us? We're spending a couple of days in the Seattle area and then heading south. We haven't quite determined exactly what "south" looks like. We're leaving Seattle on 10/22 and have reservations in SoCal starting on 11/20, so we've got four weeks or so to wander southward. Stay tuned!

Olympic National Park

After leaving Oregon, we spent a few days in Hoquiam, WA, which is on the coast at the southern end of the Olympic peninsula. The RV park we stayed in was a quiet, beautiful place; our space was just steps from the bank of the Hoquiam river.

The Hoquiam River, from our campsite.

The Olympic peninsula juts northward, blocking the entire Seattle-Tacoma area from direct access to the Pacific Ocean. This geography ensures that the entire region gets huge amounts of rainfall annually. We visited the Hoh rainforest in the central part of Olympic National Park. It gets vast amounts of rain, nearly 11 feet per year! Thankfully for us, the day we visited was rain-free.

A temperate rainforest like Hoh is dominated by verdant growth everywhere. We enjoyed walking amongst giant Sitka spruce, which are nearly as tall and impressive as coastal redwoods. Also present are western hemlock, Douglas fir, bigleaf maple and several other species of trees. Additionally, and not surprisingly, there are ferns, mosses, lichens, etc. growing on just about every available surface. Seeing a temperate rainforest is a must-see, and rates very highly on the spectacularness scale.

We took dozens of photos; I won't bore you with too many of them...

A fair-sized Sitka spruce

Guess what kind of maple leaf this is?

Additionally, Olympic National Park protects a goodly stretch of the coastline along the entire peninsula. The beaches and headlands here are wild and beautiful. There are numerous access points, trails and campgrounds as one winds along US 101 on the western edge of the peninsula.

Oregon Coast

We spent ten days or so on a slow meander up the Oregon coast. We drove the whole length of US 101, aka the Oregon Coast Highway, except for a small section between Reedsport and Florence.

We spent three days in Coos Bay. The RV park we stayed in was right on the beach, a beautiful, wide, unspoiled beach. Almost every time we wandered out there it was so untraveled that we could let the dogs run free.

One added bonus about Coos Bay: we discovered that our friends Russ and Mary Jo Caveness were in town for a weeklong family reunion. They were staying in a campground literally next door to us; they walked over and we spent a pleasant afternoon catching up. Cathy and Mary Jo taught together for years; she just retired in the spring of this year.

From there, we drove up the coast to Reedsport, turned inland and spent a couple of nights visiting with our friends Sunday and Jim. We met them last winter in Tucson; Sunday drove down by herself from Oregon to get out of the cold, dreary weather. She spent a month as our next-door neighbor; Jim joined her for the last week or so and they drove home together. They live in Drain, OR, a small logging town in the hills a few miles east of I-5 and an hour or so south of Eugene. They have an absolutely gorgeous place on 10+ acres. They’ve got beautiful gardens, a greenhouse, a large blueberry patch... it is truly heavenly. They’ve got a large shop and a couple of sheds to store all of their tractors and equipment; Jim’s even got a standalone wood shop.

From Drain, we headed up I-5 to Eugene, turned west and hit the coast again in Florence. We turned north and headed up to Lincoln City, a picturesque small town on 101.

Driving up 101 perfectly suited our mood at the time. It’s a fairly slow drive, especially if you’re towing. The speed limit is only 55, there’s quite a few curvy sections, and of course there are numerous small towns to drive through. I suspect our average speed along the coast is only 40 or 45. However, we didn’t care. We rather enjoyed the slow speeds, since it allowed us to savor the magnificent views along the coastline.

Here's a few pics of our journey...

On the beach in Coos Bay

It's tough to see, but the little sandy area is covered in elephant seals; there are a few sea lions present as well.

The Umpqua River, on the way to Drain, OR

The beach in Lincoln City, OR