#18 - Coveys Great Adventure – November 2015: Heading South

November 30, 2015: Heading South

Sunday morning, November 1, came with mixed feelings. While we were certainly ready to hit the road after spending October in one place, we were sad to leave a place we love and people we really like. I hope we see the same folks next year. We signed up again for October 2016 before we turned in our keys and books and pulled out. 

As I mentioned in the last report, we have catching up on coach maintenance and repairs, starting with the transmission fluid replacement in Salt Lake City, then new tires and rebuilding the Aquahot heating system in Tillamook. Our first stop on the way south was Eugene, OR, for our appointment at Kaiser Brake and Alignment. Kaiser specializes in heavy truck and RV chassis work. We wanted to get the front end aligned to match the new tires and get the engine coolant (14 gallons!) changed, too. All went well until the road test, when they didn’t like something about the brakes. Ripley is our first coach, so I don’t have any basis to judge what does and does not “feel” right. Back at the shop it wasn’t good news. The front disk brakes had been incorrectly serviced with the wrong grease, and the calipers were frozen on the pivot pins. The calipers had to be removed, cleaned and flushed, and new pads installed. Luckily the disks were still good. The rear drive axle brakes hadn’t been serviced properly either, and needed new drums and new shoes. The only good news was that the tag axle brakes “just” needed disassembly, cleaning, lubrication and adjustment. What we thought would be several hundred dollars turned into almost $3,000. As painful as that was, we should be able to count on at least 5 years before having to repeat any of these items. We are now completely caught up on all maintenance and are confidently looking forward to heading east next spring.

We stayed at Armitage Park campground in Coburg, just north of Eugene. It is another of the really nice Lane County parks like Richardson Lake, where we stayed in September. Armitage is a very attractive, spacious park laid out along the banks of the McKenzie River. It is much smaller than Richardson Lake, but the camp sites are huge. We stayed in site #8, a pull through that was so long that we didn’t have to unhook the car dolly going in, and still had room to park the car in front of the coach when we did unload it. Armitage even has cable tv at each site, unheard of at publicly owned parks. We’d go back to Armitage in a shot.

We stopped in Grants Pass, OR, for a couple of days last year and had differing opinions of the area, so we decided to visit again. Beaver Creek RV Park turned out to be a quiet, comfortable, friendly place with all the amenities that we needed. It’s located just north of Grants Pass in the small town of Merlin, not far from the Rogue River and the Rogue River – Siskiyou National Forest. The park is home to a large flock of Canadian geese that really got Schroeder’s attention!

It is also about 6 miles from Wilderness Images, a really interesting place that does great work rehabilitating wild birds and animals. If the patients can’t be successfully released back to the wild, they are provided lifelong homes at the refuge. Eagles, hawks, vultures, bears, mountain lions, and many other birds and creatures live out their lives in relative comfort and security in return for being gawked at several times a day. Many of them do seem to enjoy being the center of attention, though.

Over 1 million beads on this bear

Grants Pass is also home to Fire Mountain Gems, one of the largest suppliers of beads and beading related products in the world. They carry over 280,000 items, a dazzling array of shapes, colors and sizes sourced from every corner of the world. When Kayeanne discovered that tours are given there was no question of what we were going to do one afternoon. The whole operation seemed very well managed. I was very interested to hear that they did all of their own web design, hosting and creative in house. They clearly have a very capable staff. The founders still own and run it, too. Pretty impressive. 

We had heard many good things about Ashland, OR. Among other things, it is the home of the longest running Shakepeare festival in the world. It turned out to be just as nice as promised, although the festival was closed for the season. We spent three nights at the Point Campground in Emigrant Lake County Park.

Although the lake was closer to pond size due to the drought, the setting was really peaceful and quite beautiful. We just about had the whole place to ourselves, too. Located three or four miles from downtown Ashland, it was about perfect. Ashland has a large, active Unity church and Kayeanne enjoyed attending on Sunday.

With more than two weeks before we needed to be in St. George to see Liesa and Luis for Thanksgiving, we spent a lot of time pouring over maps, checking the weather forecasts and flogging the internet for campground information. We really wanted to go east across Oregon, through Klamath Falls and then head south on US 395 down eastern California to Reno, but the weather already looked too cold with many places expecting snow (!!). We avoid snow or worse, freezing rain and sleet at all costs, so that route was put aside for warmer weather. We had already been up and down the coast a couple of times, and even the best coastal route added about 400 miles to the trip. We reluctantly focused on the most direct route, straight down I5. Neither of us like I5 very much. It is fairly rough and pretty boring once you get south of Redding, but it is the shortest way to St. George. Once we resigned ourselves to it, we decided to make the best of it and revisit one of our favorite areas, Grass Valley and Nevada City, CA (see blog #5).

About the only place to stay in that area is the Nevada County Fairgrounds RV Park. As I said the last time we stayed here, the setting is beautiful but the RV park should be an embarrassment to the area residents and the fairgrounds trustees. I don’t think it has seen any upkeep in years. The sites are gravel and very unlevel, the roads are dirt and any rain turns the place into a quagmire. The restrooms and showers look like something out of a prison camp film. And then they charge $10 a day for a picnic table! Whoever is in charge of the place should be fired. 

That said, we really enjoyed revisiting Grass Valley and Nevada City. Last year, Ed and Christine Woznicki camped with us and we toured several interesting places related to the area’s mining history. The private tour that we got of the North Star Mine Power House Museum was especially memorable for me. This year we kicked back and spent a lot of time just walking around the fairgrounds and through both towns.

Try as we might, we just couldn’t find an interesting place to stay between Nevada City and St. George. Every place we looked at was either already getting snow, too cold, way off track or sounded crumby when we looked it up on the web. Finally, in some desperation, we looked at…..Bakersfield. We were surprised to discover that Bakersfield is becoming a snowbird destination. Several recently built parks have gotten strong reviews and offered reasonable prices. With some trepidation, we made a choice and headed down the road to A Country RV Park, on Rt 58 just east of the city. The park turned out to be quite nice, immaculately maintained, with large paved sites and all the amenities. It was too cold to use the pool, but the nice showers and the laundry got a workout. About the only drawback was noise: this park is located next to the freeway and across the highway from a very active train line.

Bakersfield turned out to be better than we feared; it even has a Trader Joe’s. I’m not a big movie fan, but I did want to see The Martian, so one evening off we went. It was a great movie, keeping me on the edge of my seat the whole time. It actually wasn’t too implausible, either.

We took a day trip to Kernville, about 40 miles east of Bakersfield. Kernville is located on the Kern River which feeds Lake Isabella (more like Isabella Pond now) and is very popular during warmer weather for river rafting, fishing and camping. We about had the town to ourselves at this time of year. We can heartily recommend Cheryl’s Café, where we had excellent cheeseburger soup, really good burgers and great fries. The dogs were thrilled with the leftovers.

We returned to Bakersfield on a couple of my favorite motorcycle roads, through Bodfish, Havilah and Walker Basin. It was great to see that country again; the curves never seem to end and the cows still hang out on the road. I hope that area doesn’t get “discovered” anytime soon. It really is pretty special.

After a week(!) in Bakersfield it was time to head for St. George. It is roughly 400 miles, usually more than I like to drive in one day. The plan was to cut the trip in half by spending a night at the Escapees Pair-A-Dice RV Park in Pahrump, NV. We got a reasonably early start and arrived at the turnoff to Pahrump much sooner than expected, so we decided to push right through to St. George. The coach is much easier to drive with the new tires, so I wasn’t too tired when we arrived.

We usually stay at Willow Wind, a nice park in Hurricane, about 15 miles from St. George, but the drive back and forth to Liesa’s house two or three times a day got pretty old when we were there in August. This trip we decided to stay in town despite the higher cost. Temple View RV Resort is only a mile or so from downtown St. George and less than 10 minutes from Liesa’s place. It is a larger park than we usually stay in, with a few hundred spaces. The majority of the sites have permanent residents in park model (non mobile) RVs, but still had almost one hundred sites for transients. The esthetics could be better and it needs a real dog park, but overall it fit the bill giving us easy access to Liesa and Luis (L & L). Good cable tv and usable wifi went a long way to making us happy, too.

L & L did a great job on their first Thanksgiving dinner. The turkey was done just right and all the supporting dishes were very good, too. Kudos to both of them. Liesa got her Utah drivers license a couple of weeks ago, so we went car shopping and found a nice Toyota Rav4 for her. Our close friends Ted and Judy Anderson drove from California to see the coach, visit Liesa’s apartment and spend the evening catching up. They are Liesa’s godparents and hadn’t seen her for over three years, so there was a lot to talk about. All in all, the week passed quickly and we really had a good time. 

Just over a week after we arrived, it was time to move on. We headed to Simi Valley on November 30, to spend a week visiting friends. We will be in the Temecula-Hemet area through Christmas, and then on to Yuma for the New Year.

More soon,

Bob