#15 Coveys Great Adventure - August 2015 - Utah, Idaho, Oregon

Hurricane, Utah, at the end of July was HOT. Fortunately, we have three air conditioning units on the coach and ran them all day and well after dark. The air temp didn’t drop below 80° until after midnight.

Heat aside, it was good to spend time with Liesa, and to sit in one place for a whole week to relax and to knock off a few maintenance projects. I replaced the ignition switch to try to fix another no-start problem, replaced the air conditioning filters (very dirty!), cleaned the air conditioning roof units, etc.

It wasn’t all work, though. We took a day to go to Kanab, the self-proclaimed western movie capital of the world. Since the 1930’s, over 80 films and several hundred TV shows have been filmed in-and-around Kanab. The whole town became extras in those epochs, or developed businesses to provide catering services, horses, props, drivers, motels, sets and all the other stuff that film productions need. John Wayne was in Kanab so often that he built the pool for the main motel in the late 1940’s.

Downtown Kanab. Not much going on today....

Kayeanne and I had visited Kanab several years ago during their semi annual western days celebration, and had promised Liesa that this would be an exciting, interesting day. Well, Kanab without the special event is really quiet, as in dead quiet. We walked the town, browsed a couple of shops and had an expensive lunch. Not what we had planned on, I’m afraid.

While we were there, we tried to visit the Best Friends Animal Society , but the highway was closed for a police action. After sitting in line quite awhile with no indication of how long we’d have to wait, we gave up and went back to St. George. We’ll try again when we are at Liesa’s for Thanksgiving.

View from our site at Deer Creek

We figured that we had about “done” Utah at that point, so we headed straight north to see Park City, the last place on our “go-see” list in this state. Deer Creek State Park in Wallsburg proved to be a really nice place to stay. Our site had a panoramic view of Deer Creek Reservoir and the park has lots of walking areas for us and the dogs. On the downside, though, this is the first state park we have seen that had dirty restrooms and showers. I’m glad we didn’t need them. I’m not sure what caused that, but it is quite  unusual in our experience with state park campgrounds.

Kayeanne finds a friend

Kayeanne and I had been to Park City on a Control Data (remember CDC?) boondoggle in 1980. I’m not sure that the main street was paved then, but I am sure that there was only one main street. Needless to say, we were not prepared for the transformation initiated by the 2002 Winter Olympics. Today, Park City is as toned and buffed as Newport Beach, and just about as expensive. On the way into town we passed two new Porsches and a Ferrari.

The doorman at Artworks Gallery

Downtown Park City has restaurants galore, wall-to-wall bars and any number of shops happy to sell you anything from the latest mountain technical gear to designer chaps. We did discover one thoroughly original store and spent a pleasant time talking with the owner and browsing a very eclectic collection of American artist-made glass and metal sculpture, pottery, jewelry and other unique “stuff”. It’s called the Artworks Gallery, and we will certainly visit again if we have the chance. And, the club sandwich at the Main Street Deli may be the best I’ve ever had. It certainly was the biggest. They make their own bread, which was delicious on its own.

Friday morning we packed up and headed north to Idaho. About 15 miles down the road, the coach suddenly shifted into neutral, clearly not a good thing. Five miles later it did it again, so we pulled over and started calling places for advice. Smith Power in Salt Lake City is the Allison transmission factory service center for Utah. They strongly recommended towing the coach to them “to minimize any further damage.” With visions of thousand dollar bills flying out of our bank account, we contacted CoachNet who called Stauffer’s Towing and a couple of hours later the biggest wrecker in the state showed up.

What you never want to see

Smith Power works on lots of RVs, they even have power hookups in their parking lot just for coaches waiting for service. Smith Power is a very large operation, working 24 hours a day, six days a week. Despite a heavy workload, they put someone right on our problem as soon as we arrived, hoping it was a simple fix. No joy. We resigned ourselves to staying the weekend in the parking lot.

Ted, the Allison expert (he really is) unexpectedly came into work on Saturday and spent most of the day working on Ripley. Despite the factory diagnostic system and crawling through every compartment looking for clues, he couldn’t find a “smoking gun”, a definitive cause for the problem. It was clearly electronic, though, so no damage occurred inside the transmission itself, a big relief. Ted did discover that the transmission hadn’t been serviced since the coach was built 14 years ago, so we attended to that, and updated its firmware. Fingers crossed, we haven’t had any recurrence of the problem as I write this three weeks later.

A little nervous about not finding a hard cause, we pulled out Monday afternoon headed to Downata Hot Springs and RV Park in Downey, Idaho, a place that Kayeanne somehow picked off the interweb. The RV park section wasn’t any great shakes, but the hot springs were great. Natural hot water keeps the water in the pools at 104°, which is very toasty, indeed. Lucy and Schroeder also had a great time sniffing the horses in the pastures that surrounded the park. Since nothing had broken on the coach, the next day we headed west to Sun Valley.

Our kind of campsite

We took a chance without a reservation and lucked into the only campsite at Boundary NFS campground that we could fit into. Boundary is just 4 miles north of downtown Sun Valley. The site itself was just what we like, spacious, private and the view was terrific. After what we spent at Smith Power, the $5 a night camping fee was certainly welcome. Jim and Kathy Kirby have been camp hosts at Boundary for 16 years, so there is very little they don’t know of the area.

Downtown Sun Valley park

We both liked Sun Valley. While there is clearly a lot of money in the area (Oprah has a place nearby), we didn’t get the sense of smug entitlement that we felt in Park City. It is hard to say where the town of Ketchum stops and Park City begins, but it feels like many people really live here year round, making it a real community. Between the two towns, most services are available, too. Atkinson’s market is work a visit even if you don’t need groceries.

The day after we arrived at Boundary, a single guy on a motorcycle pulled in and set up a small tent in the next camp site. The next day we met Gregoice Forestier, a French air force fighter pilot from Paris who is spending a month touring the West on a rented Harley. We

Greg and scribe 

invited him to dinner that night and had a great time learning about his life and travels. We hope we can connect with him again someday. Who knows, France is on our bucket list and it’s a small world. He’ll certainly be back from his posting to Mali by the time we get to Paris.

After three days we’d seen about all we needed to see in Sun Valley so we headed to Boise. On the way, we stopped off in Twin Falls to get the chassis air conditioning checked. As we’d headed west, the temperature had been climbing and the dash air conditioning hadn’t been keeping up. Twin Falls Truck Service ran a battery of tests and recharged the system, which made it a little better. They also discovered that the engine air filter hadn’t been changed in many years, if ever, and attended to that, too. That done, we continued to Boise.

Dog park, pool and spa at Hi Valley

We decide to splurge a little and booked into Hi Valley RV Resort in Eagle, ID, a suburb just north of Boise. Hi Valley is one of several G7 Resorts parks in Idaho, and is a first rate operation. Immaculate grounds and facilities compliment a pool, a spa, and a great dog park, all overseen by a terrific staff.

The farm in Emmett. Note smile.

Our main reason to come to Boise was to visit Emmett, Idaho, where Kayeanne’s grand parents had a small dairy farm that she visited every summer until she was in her late teens. It took visits to the and County Assessor and Clerk offices to dig into old records to locate the address, but we finally found it, just across the road from the town airfield and golf course. She was pleased to see the place again, and it brought back many pleasant memories for her.

In Grangeville: an original steam tractor

Several years ago I had been through Idaho on a couple of motorcycle trips. For some reason, I had been really impressed with Grangeville, a town a couple of hundred miles north of Boise. Nothing would do, but we had to go see if I was right. Sadly, I couldn’t see why I thought that Grangeville was particularly unique. The area was ok, but the town wasn’t very appealing. It looked like any one of hundreds of other towns that we have passed through since we set out. Disappointing, but good to find out.

Lake Cascade from Crown Point campground

Two days later we headed south to Lake Cascade State Park, about 30 miles south of McCall. We managed to shoehorn our way into a space at Crown Point campground that was never intended for coaches our size, but it had a great view of the lake. We had a fine time there walking along the lakeshore with the dogs, and exploring the whole perimeter of the very pretty lake. 

The beach in McCall

We also took a day to visit McCall, also on water, Payette Lake. McCall isn’t very big, we saw the whole town in less than two hours of casual strolling. Payette Lake is even prettier than Lake Cascade.

Crystal Crane in sore
 need of maintenance

The ladies liked the hot springs

Really unlikely setting for a hot spring

After four nights at Crown Point, we needed to head west to get to Coburg, just north of Eugene, to try to have some work done on the coach at the Monaco service center. On the way, we stopped at Crystal Crane Hot Springs and RV Park just south of Burns, in central Oregon. This place was a dichotomy: a great hot spring that fed a small pond that was marvelous to soak in, but surrounded by an RV park that badly needed maintenance. We planned to stay two nights, but left after one. Given the location out in the middle of seeming nowhere, we were quite surprised to be able to pull in two TV stations on our antenna, and even better, both were PBS.

Since we left Crystal Crane early, we had a day to fill before our reservation in Eugene. A web search uncovered Prairie NFS Campground in the Deschutes National Forest a few miles west of La Pine. It proved to be a lovely campground along a stream that meandered through a small meadow. No water, power or sewer connections, but we’d love to go back for a longer stay. I did manage to put a couple more large scratches in the coach when I misjudged some tree branches. I’ll know where they are if we come back.

Richardson campground is one of several Lane County recreation facilities that surround Eugene. It is located on a large reservoir and includes a couple of marinas in addition to the campground. It was a treat for me to see so many sailboats here. It looked like sailboats out numbered the power boats by 10:1!

The camp sites are large and shaded, and the surrounding area has hundreds of acres of grass and woods that the dogs really enjoy. We’ve been catching up on chores and shopping, and washed the dogs. Monaco couldn’t fit us into their schedule, but we found a local RV repair shop to take a look at some issues we’ve been having with the slide outs. They squeezed us in on short notice and tried, but didn’t fix the problems. That seems to be the theme lately: we pay money but nothing actually gets fixed. That’s very aggravating, and expensive.

Today, the 30^th, we’ll head north to spend a couple of weeks near Port Townsend, Washington, and then return to the Oregon coast for six weeks.

We have been constantly reminded of the fires burning everywhere in the region that we recently  traveled through. For days on end the sky has been overcast with smoke, often reducing visibility to a couple of miles, and the smell of burning trees has been with us day and night for weeks. The fires caused us to change routes and plans a couple of times. We lost track of the number of fire crews we encountered along local roads clearing brush and preparing fire lines in anticipation of the flames jumping the next ridge if the wind shifted. 

Tent cities, supply bases and helicopter landing pads became common sights as we made our way through Idaho and on into Oregon. As travelers we found it sobering. I cannot imagine what it is like for the people living in those areas, wondering if that wind shift will send the fire racing toward their homes.

Luis Orozco is Liesa’s significant other. He is a wildland firefighter based at Jacobs Lake near the north rim of the Grand Canyon. He has already spent a couple of weeks fighting fires in northern California, and just arrived today in Missoula, Montana, to help defend those hard-pressed areas. Our best wishes are with him and his crew.

More soon,

Bob