#79 – April 2021 – On the Road Again - Eastbound

 #79 – April 2021 – Eastbound

Welcome to Las Cruces

On the 7^th of April we pulled out of Benson and pointed Ripley into the rising sun. Ok, enough shabby poetry: we’re back on the road after sitting in one place for longer than we have in almost 7 years.  We love Benson, but we are always ready to leave, especially this time.

With our usual flare for planning we made no reservations, hoping that we can make it up as we go. That turns out to be a little stressful, because we quickly discovered that most state parks are already booked for most every weekend between now and snow-fall and after schools close, the mid-week days will fill up, too. Blame Covid and the record RV sales, I guess. We will have to rely on more commercial RV parks this time. The state parks have also figured out that they can charge a lot more than they used to, and all of them have raised prices to match or exceed the prevailing commercial park rates. One state park in Massachusetts now charges $70 a night for out-of-state visitors. We stayed at that park in 2018 for just under $30.

A casual glance at a US map will show that it is pretty difficult to head east from Benson without crossing Texas. Again. We found a unique inexpensive overnight parking spot at the Sunland Park Casino in New Mexico about a mile north of the Texas border. They offered power hookups and a security patrol for $10, which sounded like a good deal. Aside from the locals drag-racing their monster trucks all night, it was fine.

We pulled out early the next morning headed for Lamesa, Texas. In 2018 we
discovered that Lamesa has a few free campsites in the city park on a first-come basis. I also needed to visit a state DMV office to renew my driver’s license and Lamesa had Covid- mandated reservations available. Everything was fine until a passing truck waved me over about 10 miles shy of town. I pulled right over and first thought that one of the dolly wheels had come off. Closer inspection showed that the wheel hub was still attached to the dolly, but the tire, the wheel rim, and the fender, fender brackets and the light were gone. Apparently I’d been dragging the frame of the dolly down the road for some time. 

Luckily the road had a wide shoulder and the traffic was light, so we unloaded the car. Having no way to move a one-wheeled 400# dolly, we left it there, went to the park, claimed a space and made martinis. My first inclination was to leave it right where it lay and look for a used one to replace it. That dolly has been an expensive, unreliable piece of crap. After more wine and further reflection I decided to go back and see if I could resurrect it. The following day we managed to jack it up and remove the remains of the wheel hub and the disk brake, mount the spare tire and tow it back to the campsite in the park. I spent the rest of the day making sure it was safe to tow and looking for parts to replace the damage. By wine time that evening it was back in service. It still needed a new fender and brackets, but both lights now worked and it was safe to use.

The next day we added a new state*: Oklahoma. The roads in Oklahoma are as bad as any I can recall, and then they have the temerity to charge tolls! We got beat up for over a hundred miles and paid $1 a mile for the service. Pecan Grove RV Park in Chickasha was a real gem. Family owned and operated, the spaces are very large, the facilities are spotless and the price was a bargain. I can’t think of any reason to go back to Oklahoma, but we’ll willingly stay there, again. The Walmart in Marshfield, Oklahoma was fine, too. The lot was level, quiet and there was lots of room to walk Schroeder.

Dr. Edmund Babler State Park

We went through OK because it is the most direct route to St. Louis. Kayeanne hadn’t seen her  cousin Tom and his wife Emily in many years, so we decided to make visiting them one of our goals this year. We were able to get a site at Dr. Edmund Babler State Park, a huge, lovely, quiet gem of a park just west of the city. It was a pleasure to meet Tom and Emily, and to hear the stories about Kayeanne's family’s past.

We didn’t get to see much of St. Louis. The city seemed to be under construction everywhere, and the signage was uniformly lousy. Even the Google Maps lady was befuddled. We finally gave up touristing and fled back to the suburbs and went to Trader Joe’s.

Best part of Loretta's place

Kayeanne wanted to visit Loretta Lynn’s Ranch in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee. The ranch combines an RV park, museum, performance venue, motocross track and her former and current homes. The museum was truly boring, and the RV park was poorly laid out, indifferently maintained and littered. The house tour was mildly interesting and the grounds were scenic, but for me, the best part of the visit was the Amish country store a few miles down the road. In fairness, Kayeanne did enjoy the museum.

There are two Escapees parks that we haven’t visited and Raccoon Valley in Heiskill, TN, was one of them. It is located about ten miles north of Knoxville, a city that several people suggested we see, so we decided to take a week off the road and really look around the area. Raccoon Valley is different from any other Escapees park that we have seen. It is not structured as a Co-op or as a Rainbow park, it is a commercial RV park that is owned and operated by the Escapees organization. The sites were ok, nothing special, and a little close together. The showers were adequate, the laundry was good, and there were a couple of short trails thru the woods to walk Schroeder. It is good value for the area, but we were ready to leave at the end of the week.

Knoxville's Riverfront Walk

We liked Knoxville. It ticked all of our boxes: a large college, good food, pretty easy to navigate, a Trader Joe’s and interesting stuff to see. It is also located in really beautiful country. We had fun touring the city, exploring the river front and eating the first sushi in quite awhile at Fin-Two in Old Town.

Unfortunately, the museums about the history of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Manhattan Project were closed due to Covid, but we had no trouble finding other  interesting places to visit. The Coal Creek Mining Museum in Rocky Top is small, but worth a visit, especially when combined with lunch at the Coal Creek Smokehouse BBQ located directly behind the museum. Some folks we spoke to call it the best ‘Q in Tennessee. I don’t know about that, but it sure was good. Kayeanne and I split a platter and had leftovers for Schroeder.

On another trip we drove through Norris Dam State Park, a lovely area of steep
hills, sweeping vistas and, of course, a dam. While the park itself was interesting, the highlight of the visit was discovering the W G Lenoir Museum. This is a small museum displaying part of the private collection of Will and Helen Lenoir. For over 60 years the Lenoirs collected everything they saw about Appalachian life in the 18^th, 19^th and early 20^th centuries, filling several barns with stuff. The ranger on duty said that

they keep rotating material and changing exhibits because of the sheer volume of items that the Lenoirs acquired. The grist mill and additional farm related buildings on the site were closed due to Covid.

The next day we visited the Museum of Appalachia in Clinton. It’s a living history museum displaying a combination of preserved and recreated buildings depicting rural farm life in the area in

the 1800’s. While interesting, it certainly made me glad I wasn’t born a hundred years earlier. People had to constantly work really hard just to survive. The farm is home to a few head of various period livestock including sheep, cows, horses, etc., but I strongly doubt that the resident peacocks and musk oxen were natives. The small restaurant in the gift shop is really, really good.

Charlie and Mollie Kendrick sung the praises of the Kentucky Horse Park Campground, so we made that our next stop. It’s located on vast acreage in the heart of the bluegrass region just north of Lexington. The campground is one of the most attractive places we’ve ever stayed. It’s impeccably maintained and the sites are spacious and shaded but it has one major flaw: mud. The sites have narrow gravel or paved pads barely big enough for the RV, but the rest of the site, including the vehicle parking, is beautiful, lush grass. Any rain turns the grass areas into mud as soon as you touch them. We arrived just after a couple of rainy days and constantly worked to keep the mud outside the coach.

A very big, friendly lady

The Horse Park is worth the price of admission. The grounds are simply beautiful. Acres and acres of grass and shade trees surround buildings that look like they truly belong where they are sited. Clearly, a lot of thought and skill went into the design of the place. The lower level one of the two museums had been flooded in a violent winter storm and they lost hundreds of items. The upper level might be interesting to thoroughbred fanciers, but it just looked like lots of pictures of the same horse with different jockeys to me. That notwithstanding, the rest of the park was really worth seeing. There was another museum and several barns to tour. Most of the thoroughbreds hadn’t yet arrived for the season, but a number of draft horses are in permanent residence. One of those weighed over 2,000 pounds, a really imposing animal. Several of them seemed to welcome company and attention.

Probably not period-correct...

Lexington is more city-like than Knoxville, but it was manageable. Kayeanne dragged me (complaining all the way) to visit Ashland, the Henry Clay Estate, but I ended up having a good time. The house tour was interesting. Clay was a real factor in pre-Civil War politics at the state and federal levels. He was also an ardent innovator, especially in agriculture and animal husbandry. Among many other things, he introduced Hereford and Durham cattle to the US, both significant improvements to the extant colonial livestock breeds. Clay died in 1852 and the house passed to his son and then eventually to his granddaughter who both updated and conserved the house, and continued his flare for innovation.

I hope we can return to Appalachia. The countryside is a pleasure to explore and there is much, much more to see and do; we barely scratched the surface. But, it was time to head east, and then north, so more about that next time.

This month I enjoyed John Sanford’s Neon Prey, one of his Davenport series.

The backlog of good, inexpensive wines that we have tried recently has grown beyond the two or three that I have listed each month, so to catch up a little, here are a few more than usual:

Coppola Claret (Cab)– Diamond Collection 2018 - Napa
Kirkland Pinot Grigio - Fruili 2019 - Italy
Bottega Vinaia Pinot Grigio 2019 – Italy - Good
La Enfermera Toro - Tempranillo 2017 - Spain
Columbia Winery Red Blend 2016 - WA – Really Good
Elevation 1250 Red Wine - Paso 2018 – Trader Joe’s

More soon,

Bob

* We count a new state when we stay overnight for the first time

Loretta's place

Life sized horse made out of farrier files --->

Cause....

....Effect

#78 – March 2021 – Benson AZ (again!)

 

March 2021 – Benson AZ (again!)

Moonrise from the back yard

March 18 was the highlight of the month, if not the last year: we got our second shots! Now (April 21) that 4 million people are getting shots every day it doesn’t seem like such a big deal, but it sure felt like it that day. We can get together with friends, again! It was great to actually be able to sit down with Jackie and Kaz, and Ellen and Cosmo.

One noteworthy event was that I got selected for a follow-on study for a medical device called the Watchman. It is a filter that is implanted in the heart to substantially reduce blood clots attributed to AFib. Intellectually I understand that doctors can guide tools and devices through veins and insert them in place in your heart, but I found that I had to suspend reality for awhile to actually let them do it to mine. It is remarkable how little there was to show for it. One stitch under a bandaid and a little soreness were all there was when I woke up. The sore throat from the camera that they send down was worse. The payoff is that the Watchman reduces the risk of stroke by over 80%, and I won’t have to take any more blood thinners.

Schroeder's new fave

The rest of the month passed quickly, but looking back we kinda hung out at home. We are finally able to enjoy the casita. Kayeanne’s sewing/clay/beading area in front of the big window to the back yard is giving her hours of enjoyment. Schroeder has a new bed in the sunny spot near the couch that has become one of his favorite places. The couch works well for naps, too.

Seemingly countless trips to Tucson for medical appointments took the place of the usual co-op social whirl that is still on Covid-induced hiatus. I am suffering from no-Bingo withdrawal. Little jobs on the coach and the casita that we had been procrastinating about finally had to be dealt with. Route planning seemed to take forever, but we eventually set a departure date that looks pretty firm: April 7. Take it away, Willie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBN86y30Ufc

Bird watching has become my latest passion

Matt Goldman’s second Nils Shapiro novel, Broken Ice, was as good as the first one. Steven Brust’s latest Vlad Taltos book, Vallista, was also worthwhile. I also reread Ted Kooser’s lovely short story anthology, Local Wonders:
Stories in the Bohemian Alps. I think it was even better the third (or fourth) time.

A couple of red wines I liked recently are Confidential Tinto Reserva 2016 and Goru Gold Red Blend, both from Costco. The Goru went up a few bucks but I think it is still worth it.

More soon,

Bob

#77 – February 2021 – Benson AZ

February 2021 – Benson AZ

Sunset from the coach

February 15^th marked a turning point for us: we got our first shots! I had been trying to get appointments for several weeks, but the best I could do was mid- March, over a month away. I was tired of following the rules, so that morning I decided to call every vaccination site in the county. The third call was to a pharmacy in Wilcox, about 35 miles away. The guy that answered the phone made my day. He said, “How soon can you get here? We just had a cancellation.” Forty-five minutes later we were rolling up our sleeves.

I was surprised at how emotional it was to me. We had been living in fear for a year, doing everything we could to avoid becoming infected. We had made and scrapped multiple plans. We had postponed seeing very close friends, not sure if we would all survive this scourge to finally see each other again. We hadn’t eaten in a restaurant since June, or gotten together with people around a campfire in a year. We were even worried about seeing Liesa and Cory, who were just as scared of giving Covid to us. To begin to see an end to that life was pretty special.

Security guard at Zarpara Vineyard

After staying close to home for a couple of months, we were both getting a little stir-crazy. Our outings had become trips to Tucson for medical appointments and trips to Sierra Vista to shop for flooring. We’d had enough! We decided to see if we could safely visit a couple of local wineries, fully prepared to walk away if we felt uncomfortable. Well, safety wasn’t an issue because we were the only visitors at the two we picked. It must be lean times for wine tasting because the owners of both vineyards served us. Zarpara Vineyard delivered a lovely, deep rich blend called Odisea, and Birds and Barrels Vineyard served a very nice Petite Sirah.

Turns out she really can bleed brakes

Some of my jobs start out, "well, that looks odd..." The disk brake rotors on the dolly will show surface rust after a couple of days off the road, but the pads quickly buff off the rust the first time we apply the brakes. So, it peaked my curiosity when I noticed that the rotors were still rusty when we pulled into Benson in December. That would mean that the brakes weren't working at all. Yup, that was the case. To make a long story short, I had to replace the master cylinder and both caliper assemblies. Kayeanne helped too, she quickly learned how to bleed brakes.

The week of Feb 15^th was notable for another accomplishment, albeit nothing like as momentous as getting shots: I finally finished the casita floors. That job has been hanging over my head like a suspended sword for two years. The breakthrough finally came when we got the quotes for carpet and realized that there was no way that we were going to spend $1,700 on a place we only used 3 or 4 months a year! That epiphany freed us up to revisit laminate flooring for the living room, and I found a solution for the shop/storage in an unlikely place. The money we saved on the shop floor let us spend a little more on the living room area. Excellent!

With help and guidance from one of our neighbors, John Hahn, the vinyl plank flooring went down in a few hours with no errors or drama. If I’d known it was that easy to do, I’d have done it last year. John’s experience certainly paid off; we didn’t ruin a single plank. Trimming it out required adding shoe molding because I was adamant that I wasn’t going to remove the new baseboards I installed last year, but that took a couple of hours, at most.

The shop floor solution was pure serendipity. I was cruising Amazon one night looking for something unrelated to flooring and interlocking foam floor tile popped up. These are commonly used in home gyms, as yoga mats and as playroom padding, but one of the pictures showed a whole room done in tiles printed with a marble pattern. Hmmm… At $1 per square foot, delivered, the price was right, too. Kayeanne gave her approval and I ordered enough to do the shop. Four days later the floor was down, and I have to say it looks great. That stuff was easy to work with and it took me just a few hours to finish the whole room.

We decided to hang a couple of bird feeders on the big tree in front of the casita and have been treated to quite a show every day. Quail, doves, several different kinds of finches, cardinals and just plain birds mow through three cups of seed a day. Even today, with a steady 20 mph wind and frequent gusts over 45 mph, the birds came to the feeders

The platform feeder I knocked together is the most popular. I’ve seen as many as 10 birds at a time scoffing down seed as fast as they can. A lot of the seed gets kicked out and the ground under the feeder sometimes has twenty or thirty birds culling seeds from the gravel. I’ve always liked birds in a somewhat abstract way, but my interest is more personal, now. Great fun.

Kathryn Homel picked up John Sanford’s Bloody Genius after I mentioned it and really liked it.  Jay Homel sent me a copy of Matt Goldman’s first novel Gone to Dust which I really enjoyed; I just got the second volume of the series. I’m always looking for new protagonists, and Goldman’s Nils Shapiro is a good one.

We’ve enjoyed several new wines this month, in particular Denada Cellars 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon from Chile that we discovered at Trader Joe’s, and Zarpara Vineyards 2017 Graciano that we bought at the vineyard in Wilcox, AZ. Zarpara will ship, and I think Total Wines carries it, too.

We plan to leave Benson early next month and wind our way to New England where we’ll spend much of the summer.

More soon,

Bob

 

Done!

Desperate for fun

#76 - January 2021 - Benson AZ

 #76 - January 2021 - Benson AZ

I think life during Covid finally caught up with us. The Co-op is very quiet, especially compared to "normal" times. No bingo, dances, concerts, bake sales, polar bear parties, fund raisers, happy hours or dinners, and that's just January's typical schedule. We have lost three members, and 16 more have tested positive. Luckily they have recovered from varying degrees of illness. Most people, including us, are being very cautious about getting together. No one wants to catch it, especially now that vaccines are beginning to arrive. Folks have figured out how to have conversations across the street, and the Co-op's business meetings are done on Zoom. There must be a hundred dogs here, so we walkers get to see each other several times a week from a discrete distance.

Yup, it's snowing

Covid notwithstanding, this is still a beautiful place. When the wind stops we can get out and enjoy it! I have started hiking in the desert again, and working on the landscaping crew twice a week pulling weeds, trimming trees and digging up cactus. Kayeanne has worked hard on the yard, clearing the last of the leaves, bringing in more rocks and planting some flowers. 

We (finally!) have a plan for the floors in the casita and are about to order materials. Carpet turned out to be way too expensive because the floor plan might have been intentionally designed to maximize waste. More on the results next month.

In Albuquerque, I noticed that the dolly brake master cylinder was leaking and the pads looked pretty worn. I refilled the fluid reservoir and added it to the list of jobs in Benson. When I really dug into it I discovered that not only was the master cylinder shot, but one of the calipers had actually lost a pad. I wouldn't have believed that could happen if I hadn't actually seen it. A simple cylinder rebuild got much more complicated and expensive. A long story short, I had to replace the master cylinder and both calipers. It wasn't hard once I got the right parts, but it sure was messy. Kayeanne turned out to have a knack for brake bleeding, making that final step much easier.

Schroeder watches
the bird channel

What with shopping for flooring, getting caught up on our annual medical visits and, of course Covid, we only made one fun drive. Last year we discovered the Gathering Grounds cafe in Patagonia and liked it a lot. Patagonia, Sonoita and Elgin are home to several vineyards and in normal times are popular destinations, especially on weekends. Mid-week in January 2021, not so much. Gathering Grounds, though, was busy and the food was just as good as last year. The park across the street has lots of picnic tables and paths to walk which we and Schroeder appreciated. Some tasting rooms were open but we weren't comfortable being inside, and it was too windy to sit outside. We'll come back after we get our shots. 

Aside from the medical visits, we look forward to coming to Tucson for ready access to wine. Three Trader Joe's, Costco and Total Wines makes shopping for wine a pleasure. Trader Joe's released another of their Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, this one from the  Alexander Valley (Sonoma) 2017 that we really enjoyed. Kayeanne liked another TJ's wine, this one from France: Les Portes de Bordeau 2019 Sauvignon Blanc. 

I  stashed a number of books in the casita and have been rereading several of those, so nothing new this month. 

More soon,

Bob

#75 Coveys Great Adventure - December 2020 - Albuquerque and Las Cruses NM, and Benson AZ

 

#75 - December 2020 - Albuquerque and Las Cruses NM, and Benson AZ

Ripley, the Xmas shrub and the family elf

We aren’t ready to park Ripley yet, but we have been thinking about where we might eventually settle down. Life on the road requires physical stamina and the strength and coordination to deal with the issues that come up. Age is catching up with us in different ways, so it is time to start looking at options. After some research, we felt that New Mexico might offer an acceptable combination of cost, climate and ambiance. We decided to take a longish route to Benson via Albuquerque and Las Cruses and look around.

Moab to Albuquerque is a two day drive. We had finally escaped the worst of the cold weather, so we spent the first night at a nice Walmart in Farmington, NM, and pulled into a KOA camp ground in Albuquerque the following afternoon. The RV park was immaculate and the staff was very attentive, but it was quite expensive and the I40 freeway along one side of the park made it very noisy.

We spent three days driving all over greater Albuquerque looking for houses listed on Realtor.com and trying to get a feeling for the different neighborhoods. Albuquerque and the surrounding towns like Rio Rancho, Placitas, Bernalillo and Los Lunas have seen a tremendous building boom. Literally thousands of homes and the associated infrastructure have been built in the past ten years or so, and that level of construction continues today. New developments are springing up everywhere.

By the evening of the second day we decided that Albuquerque was just too much city. It reminded both of us of SoCal, with a frantic pace of traffic, hustle and bustle and too many people. Even having a Trader Joe’s wasn’t enough to sway us to consider it.

On a much smaller scale, Las Cruces is going through the same growth. Because it is much smaller, LC is much easier to get around. The park we chose, Hacienda RV Resort, was ideally situated for our purposes, but it was also expensive, and being right beside the I25 freeway it was really noisy, too.

LC has a lot of appeal. I think we visited every area in and around the city. We didn’t tour any houses, but judging from the outsides and the listings, there are many homes within our budget to chose from. I think we may stop again on our way east next spring.

We pulled into our winter digs at the SKP Saguaro Co-op on Dec 11. Lot 19 was covered in dead leaves and all the pretty flowering weeds in the planting beds were also dead. The Co-op sprays herbicide on the common areas every summer and I guess it was windy that day, so our "flowers" all died. Aside from that it was just like we left it nine months ago. After getting rid of the worst of the leaves I picked up work on the casita right where I left it in April: painting the interior. I think I have four coats on now, but it might only be three. We finally have furniture, too, a couch and a lamp that we got from the park’s recycling center. Carpet is next, then some more trim and I’m done for this year, I hope.

The park is really, really quiet. The Covid restrictions are even tighter than when we left in April, and with good reason: two of our members had died and fifteen were in isolation when we arrived. Now even most outdoor gatherings are banned. Masks are mandatory. Unfortunately many of the local businesses post signs requiring masks but don’t enforce it. It is quite scary to go shopping when 25% of the people aren’t taking even minimal precautions.

I am very sorry to say that Lucy passed away peacefully on the 22nd, just over 10 years from the day she joined our family. It was coming for some time, but it was/is still really hard. We miss her so much. Only after she left did we realize how much she was involved in our lives. Schroeder truly misses her, too. They were together all day, every day for almost 60 dog years. He’s never been an only-dog, so we’ll see how he takes to that.

Xmas with just the two of us was a little low key, especially without Lucy, but Kayeanne decorated the coach and it looked good. She insisted on a tree but we were too late to buy a small one, so I chopped the top off of a five footer and turned it into an Xmas shrub. Disregarding the cost, it worked out fine and looked great. We splurged on Moet Chandon Imperial Champagne (and caviar!) for Xmas eve, and the wine was just as good as we remembered it from our wedding in 1985 (good grief); some of you were there! We’d drink it every day if we won the lottery.

Like everyone else, we really looked forward to 2021! More Moet, and Kayeanne outdid herself with delicious seared salmon for dinner on New Years eve. We actually made it to midnight this year, but the champagne gave out much earlier, so a good Cab sufficed to toast the new year.

Speaking of wine, we liked these:

    Canoe Ridge “The Expedition” Pinot Gris – Horse Head Hills 2018
    Kirkland Napa Red Blend 2018

I got several books for Xmas and immediately read John Sanford’s latest Virgil Flowers novel, Bloody Genius. His books are always a treat. I also read Ted Kooser’s short but so, so good memoir Lights on a Ground of Darkness, twice. It’s only 60 pages long, and every page is a delight. 

Our current plans (ha!) call for leaving here in early April to meander our way to Casa Kendrick in New Hampshire by late May. That is, of course, somewhat predicated on getting our shots, but we are optimistic. Or trusting fools; we’ll see which, soon.

Cheers,

Bob

 

 

#74 – Covey Great Adventure – November 2020 – Oregon and Utah

 

#74 – November 2020 – Oregon and Utah

Arches National Park

We had two weeks between leaving Nehalem and arriving in Salt Lake City, so we decided to dally in Eugene and Ashland for a bit.  

We’ve stayed at Armitage Park Campground just north of Eugene a few times and have always enjoyed it. The rabid Oregon State football fans usually make it impossible to book space in the Fall, but due to Covid the campground was less than half full. Our site was a spacious pull through with no one behind us. Armitage is only a few miles from Trader Joe’s, Costco, WinCo and the best carwash we have ever found. We took immediate advantage of all four to replenish our larder and wine cellar, and to restore the car to a semblance of respectability.

The impact that Covid has had in Eugene was easy to see in large and small ways. Shops were closed, inside dining was restricted, which is certainly hard on the people who own and work at those places. But, on the flip side traffic was always light and parking was readily available, two issues to deal with in normal times in Eugene. The maintenance at Armitage was clearly suffering from reduced budgets. The lawns were heavily weed-choked and gopher infested. Windrows of leaves were everywhere. Camp host sites were vacant, and had been for quite awhile. Laundry and shower facilities were closed, too. I’m sure Lane County is having to make painful decisions in the face of stark revenue reductions.

I think both of us needed a break. We just wanted to unwind a bit. Unlike years past, we didn’t schedule a visit to Kaiser for work on Ripley. AFAIK, nothing needed attention, so I decided to wait for Spring to do the annual service. Eugene is one of our favorite cities and despite Covid closures and restrictions we got to visit a few places. New Zone Gallery hadn’t officially opened when we wandered in, but the folks working on the place were happy to let us see what was already set up. An artist’s cooperative, New Zone offers an eclectic collection of works in traditional and contemporary mediums by local artists. We will certainly return the next time we are in Eugene to see the full range of exhibitions.

No water in the lake, but still great views

Freshly resupplied and rested up we headed south to Emigrant Lake County Park in Ashland for a few nights. We thought the lake water level was low when we were here a couple of years ago, but this year it was just pond sized. The picture on the park website was taken several years ago. I would guess the lake is 100’ lower now. That notwithstanding, the campground is great and the views are still beautiful. It sure was cold, though. While we didn’t have the park to ourselves, one night there were just three campers.

Ashland has a neat downtown area that is fun to walk around. Most of the shops were open and we did some browsing and Xmas shopping. We have become quite leery of inside dining, so reluctantly passed up several promising-looking sushi bars.

For years we have been passing thru Medford on our way to and from the coast, but aside from a brief visit a couple of years ago hadn’t really looked around. It is close to Ashland, so we decided to drive around and do takeout lunch. Medford isn’t a dump, but it didn’t have much appeal for us. Significantly, it doesn’t have a college or university of any note, and we’ve consistently found that those institutions make a very positive impact to the cities and towns where they are located. Absent Covid we would have visited a local winery or two, so we may have missed something important, but nothing we saw in town inspired us to return.

The fires in September swept through several small towns to the east and south of Medford. One of the hardest hit was Talent, where over 1,000 homes were lost in one day, leaving more than 25% of the town homeless and wiping out many, many small businesses. I don’t know how people recover from that. It was appalling and heartbreaking to drive by, much less have to live through it. I couldn't bring myself to take any pictures.

Then, it was time to head to Salt Lake City to see Liesa and spend Thanksgiving with her and Cory. We have made the trip from the Oregon coast to Utah for several years. The weather this year was colder than any I can recall, and the forecast for central and eastern Oregon was not encouraging, with night time temps dipping into the low teens. That prompted me to take the longer “southern” route down I5 to Reno and then east on I80 across Nevada to Salt Lake seeking warmer temps. We spent the first night at a Walmart in Fernley, NV. The site was fine, but the temperature fell below 20 degrees. The Aquahot system has to run nonstop to keep up with that, so we ran the generator all night to also use the electric space heaters. That worked great but used about eight gallons of fuel, which prompted me to find an RV park with electric hookups for the next night. Valley View RV Park in Elko, NV was a real bargain at just $15 for a 50 amp connection allowing us to run both electric heaters for less than the cost of the fuel we would have used.

We planned to leave early (for us) the next morning, but had to wait for the sun to warm the slide covers to melt the ice that formed overnight. The slides won’t come in right and may break something expensive if you don’t wait for them to thaw. We know that by painful experience. Then, when I started the engine most of the dash gauges, cruise control and several other things were dead. I’ve seen that before and was smart enough to carry a spare solenoid after the last failure. Replacing it took over an hour in a cold mist. I’m chilly again just thinking about it, but when I restarted everything worked. I immediately ordered another spare solenoid. 

It was great to see Liesa. She manages a local market and we worry constantly that she will catch Covid despite being meticulous about taking all precautions, including tossing non-maskers out of the store. So far so good. Cory works from home and is equally cautious, so we were reassured. We got together several times, including a visit to the University of Utah Natural History Museum that Kayeanne and I both enjoyed. 

We discovered catered Thanksgiving dinners last year and it was so good and so easy that we opted for it again. The local WinCo market provided a whole cooked turkey with all the sides for $49! Everything was good and the price was certainly right. Lots of leftovers, too.

Covid certainly tore up our plans this spring and the rapidly worsening situation in California did it again. For six years we have returned to Simi Valley, Perris and Hemet in December to visit friends and spend Xmas with Kayeanne’s family. As we followed the news it became clear that keeping that same routine would be subjecting us and everyone we contacted to increased risk. In early November Salt Lake was reporting worse numbers than southern California, but CA was ramping up quickly. As many of you know, we ultimately decided to cancel all of our plans and head to our site at the co-op in Benson AZ to ride it out.

Kayeanne and I had decided to begin looking for an area to settle in when this odyssey winds down. Rather than make a beeline from Salt Lake to Benson we decided to take a somewhat circuitous route through Albuquerque and Las Cruces, NM, just to look around. Those areas seemed to offer an appealing combination of climate, services and affordability. The clincher was that Moab lay right on the best route south. And, there were camp sites available in Dead Horse Point State Park, one of the top 5 places we have ever seen. Clearly we were fated to go, or so we rationalized.

Almost 2,000 feet down to the Colorado River

Dead Horse Point was just as  spectacular as we  remembered.  We also  revisited Arches National Park  to be sure that the rocks hadn’t  fallen down. If you haven’t been to this area, put it right at the top of your bucket list. Pictures simply can’t do it justice, the scale is just too great. And, we didn’t even try to go to Canyon Land National Park!

We like Moab, this was our third visit. Unfortunately, many of the shops we visited  previously had closed for the winter, or had closed permanently due to the pandemic. A number of restaurants had also closed, so we were glad to see that Giliberto’s Mexican restaurant was still open and we had good tacos for lunch.

As we were packing up to leave Dead Horse on December 1st, a ranger stopped by to tell us that we were the last campers on the last day of the season. They would close the park until April when we left. I thought the place was quiet. A few minutes later we pulled out, headed south.

Costco and Trader Joe’s in Eugene yielded several good wines. From Costco we got Pundit Columbia Valley Syrah and Chronic’s Purple Paradise Paso Robles Red Blend. Trader Joe’s delivered Emma Reichart Dry Riesling from Germany and Trader Joe’s Reserve Pinot Noir from Anderson Valley.

As I write this we are in Benson and plan to stay into April.

Best wishes to you and yours for the Holidays.

Please stay safe. More soon,

Bob

More pics:

Liesa's mask says Vote

 

#73 Coveys Great Adventure – October 2020 – Nehalem OR

October 2020 – Nehalem OR

Haystack Rock, Cannon Beach 

If Benson AZ is our home base, Nehalem Bay State Park is a close second. This
was our sixth year camp hosting at our favorite campground. On October 1, we shoehorned our way into site A2 and had our first camper interaction before we got completely set up. The whole Park was open for camping and it was full every weekend despite some pretty wet weather. Oregonians are tough.

 I think I mentioned last year that many trees were being killed by moss. The moss essentially strangles the the tree. The shore pines that dominate the Park's tree coverage are especially vulnerable and the change from last year was striking. Apparently this is a naturally occurring cycle, not an invasive attack, so OPRD has no choice bu to let it run its course. When we first visited the Park in 2014, the trees grew so thickly that it was almost impossible to walk off the trails. Now you can see for dozens of yards as you walk and the trail sides are littered with fallen  trees. After every storm the rangers have to clear dead trees off the trails. 

Covid hit OPRD quite hard because it is completely dependent on the revenues it generates. It doesn’t get any tax support, so when the virus forced the closure of all of Oregon's state parks for several months the revenue simply stopped. Between the layoffs and deferred seasonal hiring campground maintenance really suffered.

One of the big jobs at Nehalem is keeping all the trees trimmed back so that large rigs like ours are able to get into the sites, even to get down the roads in many cases without scraping tree branches. Site A2 is always a challenge for us to get into, but this year the staffing shortage made it especially so. I didn’t time it, but I’ll bet it took us 15 minutes of backing and filling to get in unscathed. I do know we held up traffic for quite awhile, but everyone was patient. Kayeanne is a very good guide; there’s no way to do that kind of maneuvering alone.

A few days later, during a heavy rain, one of the large overhanging trees split and started to fall onto the coach. I got onto the roof and cut away enough of it with a small bow saw that we carry to get Ripley out of the site undamaged. The rangers brought out chainsaws and removed that tree and one next to it. There’s a third one that will need to go soon, too.

The beach at Manzanita was pure joy

As much as we like Nehalem, I think the dogs truly love it. As soon as we pulled into the Park they both stood up and start sniffing. Schroeder immediately went on deer, squirrel and rabbit alert. They both seemed to experience real joy when they hit the beach and the leashes come off. Lucy is now so lame that we didn’t try to make it over the dunes to get to the beach from the Park, we took them to Manzanita where the beach access is much easier.

Covid hadn’t hit the Park quite as hard as it did the Mill, but it certainly made an impact. All of the yurts were closed, which did make our job easier, but that was offset by fewer hosts. There are usually eight host couples in the park, but this year just five. It wasn’t bad during the week, but the Park was sold out every weekend and the work load got pretty heavy. One change that really helped was that the rangers delivered pallets of firewood right to our site. We no longer had to ferry it from the wood barn a few bundles at a time in a golf cart. Now we can sell it right off the pallet. The bathrooms were open, but the showers weren’t, something the campers, and I, really missed.

My first shot at Nan bread

Despite being shorthanded, we still had time for special projects. Kayeanne joined with another host to make new curtains for the yurts. They set up a production line in the meeting hall (closed for Covid) and knocked out several sets. I tried a couple of new recipes.

We became friends with Sharon and Gary Sams last year when we both hosted here. We got together in Park City in June, and they included Manzanita on their Oregon coast road trip. We had a great time with them around a fire one evening drinking quite good wine at The Winery at Manzanita, and then eating great fish tacos at Riverside Fish & Chips beside the Nehalem River. I hope we can see them again when we are in Salt Lake over Thanksgiving.

Voting while on the road certainly wasn’t easy. We applied for Texas absentee ballots in August, as soon as the application was posted. I had them sent to General Delivery at the post office in Manzanita, the closest one to the Park. Kayeanne’s arrived on October 8, but mine didn’t. I waited a few days and then called Polk County. I discovered that they had sent my ballot to our co-op mailbox in Benson, the address we used for the primary election ballots. The person I talked to acknowledged the error, but said Texas state law prohibited sending out another ballot. I called the Benson post office to see what could be done. While they were sympathetic, none of the suggestions were workable given that we had the only key to the mailbox and the time left to election day. I resigned myself to not voting.

Then, on October 27 I got a text message from the Texas Democratic Party reminding me to send in my ballot. For some reason, I replied. 15 minutes later I got a call from a woman who took immediate issue with the clerk’s interpretation of the voting law. An hour later I was on a conference call with her, lawyers for the Party, and Schelana Hock, the Polk County Clerk. The upshot of the call was that Ms. Hock agreed to send another ballot, and even volunteered to drop it off on her way home. That’s when I made a mistake.

It never occurred to me that the she would spend the money to use FedEx to send it. I assumed she would use Priority Mail and gave her the Manzanita post office address. As soon as I saw the tracking number the next morning I realized that I had screwed up. FedEx won’t deliver to post offices because the post offices don’t get paid to handle FedEx deliveries.

I spent the next two days battling with FedEx’s really terrible automated system trying to get the package rerouted. Trying to deal with that system raised my blood pressure to dangerous levels and sent the dogs into hiding. I had given up when I got a call from a real person at the FedEx distribution center in Portland where the package surfaced for the second time. She finally figured out how to get it delivered on Saturday, October 31, to a FedEx drop off location 15 miles away in Rockaway. An hour after it arrived there I had my ballot! Now, all I had to do was fill it out and give it back to FedEx. Except, that this location was just a pickup and drop off point. They could not originate shipments. The closest FedEx location that could on Saturday was in, wait for it, … Portland, a hundred miles away. It was now 2 PM and I was supposed to be working. I’m thinking I’m done, when Kayeanne pointed out that UPS offers overnight service. too. The UPS Store in Warrenton 45 miles away was open. Victory was in sight! Sure enough, they can guarantee delivery by 10 AM on November 3. for just $85.10. Yikes! But too many people had worked too hard for me to quit now. I now know the cost of virtue, but I VOTED!

Just a word about Schelana Hock: To me, she personifies the meaning of “public servant”. She could have shrugged this off, but instead she took it upon herself to fix it. I am grateful to her for her service. I’ll bet every one of the thousands of county clerks and ballot handlers in this country hold themselves to the same standard. 

October seemed to fly by; suddenly it was Nov, 1. We turned in our keys and headed to Eugene to begin to work our way to Salt Lake City to spend Thanksgiving with Liesa and Cory. 

For some reason I don’t seem to be doing much reading lately, but wine drinking hasn’t tailed off. This month we enjoyed Trader Joe’s Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon – Napa 2017, and a very nice Spanish white wine Raimat Saira Albarino, also from Trader Joe’s.

More soon,

Bob