#30 Coveys Great Adventure – November 2016 – Eugene, Sutherlin, Coarsegold, St. George, Simi Valley

November 2016 – Eugene, Sutherlin, Coarsegold, St. George, Simi Valley

After all the rain in Nehalem last month we were really ready for some sunshine. We were due in St. George for Thanksgiving with Liesa and had about three weeks to get some work done on the coach and to relax after a pretty stressful month. Oregon Motorcoach Center (OMC) in Eugene was highly recommended by the Monaco owners group that hang out on the IRV2.com website. We called them and lucked into an opening in their very full schedule, so on November 1, we pulled out of Nehalem bound for Eugene. Three days of sunshine in a row! What a welcome change.

Leaks are really not good

Fixing the leak was our main priority, and it was also time for the annual service on the chassis, the power train and the generator so we decided to get it all done in one stop. The OMC folks are the best service group we have seen and the facility was top notch. We spent two nights hooked up to the power connections that they provide in their lot while they completed our list. While they worked on the coach we explored Eugene, stocked up at Trader Joe’s and Costco, and treated the dogs to a couple of long walks.

Pleased and relieved to get all that behind us, we made the short drive to Timber Valley SKP Park in Sutherlin, OR, one of the two Escapees parks in the West that we hadn’t been to yet. Sutherlin is a small town a few miles north of Roseburg. Timber Valley is a co-op park like Jojoba Hills near Temecula, CA, and Saguaro in Benson, AZ. Many of the co-op members had already headed south for the winter so there were plenty of sites available. 

The neighbors out for a stroll

We had hardly settled in and hooked up when Schroeder went nuts. We have become a little blasé about wildlife during our travels. Herds of elk and deer, families of raccoons and squirrels no longer phase us, but flocks of wild turkeys calmly walking through our site was a first. Shortly after that crowd moved on a pack of jack rabbits ambled by and I thought Schroeder was going to have a stroke. The turkeys, the jack rabbits and a large deer herd live in the park and are about as indifferent to people and dogs as I have ever seen.

I want one sooo bad....

Timber Valley is a nice park. Escapees are generally quite friendly, but the folks at Timber Valley were exceptionally so. Many stopped to say hi, and everyone waved when they passed by. The park is laid out on one side of a small valley along a stream. About 250 sites are situated in tiers surrounded by large green spaces and stands of trees. Many of the sites have been occupied by the same people for years and have been creatively landscaped. This park doesn’t exude the same energy that we discovered at the Saguaro and Jojoba Hills parks, but it is “off season” as one of the residents pointed out. We did play bingo and went to one of the exercise classes.

Roseburg looks like a nice place. It is big enough to have two of the three shopping cornerstones, Costco and Walmart. The third one is Trader Joe’s, of course. Everyone was hoping that TJ’s will come soon, but I think it will be awhile. Kayeanne enjoyed attending the service at the Unity church.

After battling the elements and dealing with the coach issues we were ready to relax. As I backed the coach into the site the windshield wipers came on…hmmm, I didn’t think I hit the switch. I shut them off and turned the wheel to adjust our position and the wipers started again. Ok, that’s a problem. 

The wipers, the cruise control and some lights are controlled from the steering wheel by a system called Smart Wheel. The device that transfers the control signals from the buttons on the Smart Wheel to the coach is called a clock spring and it had failed. Replacing it requires experience and special tools. No one in Sutherlin or Roseburg sounded like they wanted to tackle it, so we called OMC and they very graciously fit us into their packed schedule to get us back on the road. So instead of continuing south from Sutherlin, we headed back to Eugene for another night in their parking lot. By 10:30 the next morning (and $300 lighter) we were back on the road.

Drying out après la deluge

The other problem surfaced abruptly when Kayeanne opened the washing machine to put in a load of clothes. The machine had filled with water and several gallons errupted into the coach like a waterfall. Within a couple of minutes every towel and cloth that we carry was soaked trying to mop up the flood before any damage happened. Fast work kept the water off the carpets, averting a major crisis. We have decided that we'd rather have the storage space, so the washer is going out as soon as I can get to it. 

Like last year the weather dictated our route. We would like to cross Oregon to pick up US 395 and follow it south along the eastern Sierras to US 50 in Reno to take us back to St. George. Last year snow came early and this year it was just plain cold. The coach will handle sub-freezing temperatures when the AquaHot system is working properly to keep us warm, but it had become temperamental and we couldn’t rely on it to be running when we really needed it.

We had “done” Bakersfield last year so after checking the weather guessers we set out for Park-in-the-Sierras, an SKP co-op park in Coarsegold, CA, near Yosemite National Park that we have been wanting to visit for some time. Eugene to Coarsegold is too long for one day and the Walmart in Dixon, CA, offered a well placed stopping point. The following afternoon we pulled into Park Sierra and were immediately made welcome.

Site 425

Comparing Park Sierra (and most of the other SKP parks) to the average RV park is like comparing Beverly Hills to Pomona. The lots are creatively carved into a series of small green, heavily treed  canyons set on 140 acres just south of town. About 300 sites and a large activity center house roughly 500 people if everyone were ever home at once. The individual lots are effectively the largest we have seen anywhere because so much space has been left between them. Loosely organized in five neighborhoods, the roads twist and double back up and down the canyons giving many of the lots pretty spectacular views.

Great walking throughout the park. The dogs also loved it.

It is hard to imagine that the entire place was designed and built by the members. The only work they didn’t do themselves was pave the roads and erect the trusses in the activity center. It just didn’t pay to buy the equipment needed for one-time jobs like those. All the design, surveying, engineering, grading, site excavation, road building, water, electric power, sewer and cable TV infrastructure was done and is maintained by volunteers. We were delighted with site 425. Not only was it beautiful, when we had a problem with the cable TV three guys showed up in 15 minutes to fix it.

We really enjoyed staying at Park Sierra but needed to get moving join Liesa in St. George for Thanksgiving week. Again, it was a two day drive, spending the night among the truckers in the parking lot behind Buffalo Bill’s casino in Primm, NV. About all you can say for that is it’s free. The next day we returned to Temple View RV Resort in St. George.

The week went by quickly. Between us we turned out a very credible T-Day dinner. One of her roommates and one of her many friends joined us and we all had a good time. I certainly ate too much, so I know it was a success. Her apartment is nicely decorated and fairly neat despite the best efforts of the two young(er) roommates. Liesa is both landlord and den mother to those two.

The end of the week came quickly. We got everything ready to go only to discover that the batteries were too weak to start the coach. It took almost two hours on a charger to get enough juice into them to get the engine to crank. We planned to get an early start and spend the night in the Primm casino lot while doing a little shopping at the outlets nearby, but that plan went out the window when it took almost four hours to drive 28 miles from Las Vegas to Primm. That was the worst traffic I can remember ever being tied up in. By the time we got to the casino we just weren’t interested in anything except going to the casino for a drink.

On the 28^th we arrived at Tapo Canyon Park in Simi for ten days to see the friends we have missed all year.

More soon,

Bob