Month: May 2020

August 20, 2018 Las Vegas NV

When we were doing the planning to see both of our sons we new that it would be hot in Las Vegas but our experience was that it cooled down at night to a point where it was comfortable.  The night before we left Dylan looked up the weather for Las Vegas and said it was quite hot, the high was supposed to be 106 degrees.  

Driving over we stopped at a rest area about 50 miles outside of Las Vegas.  The thermometer on the dash said 111 degrees, and as we stepped out of the truck we were hit with a wind of about 20 miles per hour that felt like a blast furnace.  As we pulled out of the rest area Ron asked Ton what she thought a room would cost in Vegas.  Without hesitating Ton began the research.  It turns out rooms were cheap, The Rio was offering a rate of $30 plus a $34 dollar resort fee.  We both decided that was cheap enough to not bother stress testing the A/C unit on Scout as the overnight low was supposed to be 92 degrees.  The deal got even better when we checked in as Ron asked if they had a military discount and that got us down to $15 plus the resort fees.

Elvis and a show girl.  After all it is Las Vegas.

Alex had to work late as this is the first full week of school in Las Vegas so we decided to eat in the room.  Ton whipped up some food in Scout and we carried it up to the room for dinner.  We spent the evening talking about teaching and particularly teaching in Las Vegas which is infamous for having a low priority for schools.  Alex earns every penny of his salary.

August 19, 2018 San Diego CA

Our final day with Dylan on this trip was the San Diego Zoo.  Dylan is a member of the zoo so we were able to tag along for free using his membership.  The San Diego Zoo is world famous and rightfully so.  We spent 5 hours going from exhibit to exhibit.  We hit all of the big animals and really enjoyed ourselves.

Impressive big cat at the San Diego Zoo.
The San Diego Zoo specializes in taking care of elderly elephants.  This one is over 40 years old.

Our other priority for the day was to find a fan.  Our roof fan has decided to stop working and probably needs a new rain sensor, as it seems convinced it is raining and will not open.  After the zoo we went to Costco and Ikea and they were both out of fans as it has been unusually warm here.  Finally we found a fan at Target.

Dinner was another great meal at a seafood market and restaurant.  It is an old part of town, but the food was really outstanding and the line to get in never ended while we were there.  San Diego has really been a good food experience on this trip from the unexpected Thai Hamburger to the great sea food.  It was good to see Dylan and we really enjoyed ourselves here.

August 18, 2018 San Diego CA

Dylan swung by to pick us up about 930.  After a breakfast of noodles prepared by Ton we headed off to our first stop of the day the Tijuana Slough Wildlife Refuge.  It is one of the areas that the office Dylan works in manages.  He took us on a nice walk through the slough and he explained some of the challenges of managing wildlife refuges in a metropolitan area of nearly 3 million people.  

Tijuana Slough Wildlife Refuge.

The next stop was some shopping at the Navy Exchange and Commissary in San Diego where we saw a food cart advertising Thai Hamburgers.  Of course we had to go see what Thai Hamburgers were.  Well they are not hamburgers at all.  Dylan actually guessed that the “rolls” would be sticky rice and he was right.  The meat is barbeque pork that Thai call Meu Ping, and it was delicious.  The three of us split a “hamburger” and pronounced it a messy but delicious meal.

The final stop for the day was to join the Timbers Army San Diego group to watch the Timbers.  They were going to meet in a pub downtown so we headed downtown but were quite early.  We wandered around for a while and blundered into one of Ton’s other items on her list, Oscars Mexican seafood.  We each had  an excellent Fish Taco, and some ceviche.

The game was a huge disappointment as the Timbers looked listless, and were never in the game.  We left a little early to head back for the night.

August 17, 2018 San Diego CA

Today we headed into San Diego to spend the weekend with our son Dylan who is working there for the Fish and Wildlife Service.  We had a slow start as we wanted to wait for traffic to die down before taking off.

Ton saw a Mexican Grocery next to the hotel so while Ron went to get some fuel for Scout she had a good time shopping for good cheap vegetables and a Mexican pastry for breakfast.  She was very impressed with the quality, variety and cost of the vegetables.

The drive into San Diego was thankfully uneventful and we arrived at the Navy RV park we will be staying at around 130pm.  Dylan was able to get off work a little early so we knocked off two of Ton’s items from the agenda.  The two breweries she wanted to visit in San Diego were fortunately only a couple of blocks apart so we were able to visit them both.  The first was Alesmith and we were quite impressed with both the facility and the beer.  The next stop was Mikkeller Brewery.  Mikkeler is an interesting operation as they are from Copenhagen Denmark.  They consider themselves gypsy brewers who work out of different breweries around the world.  The brewery in San Diego is the first brewery they have had that is their own.  The beer was interesting and the art in the brewery was very nice.  When it came down to voting on the best beer Dylan and Ron picked Alesmith and Ton declared a tie.

Dylan enjoying a taster at Ballast Point Brewing.

We ended the day with a nice meal at the campsite.

August 16, 2018 Victorville CA

Today was a travel day.  We wanted to avoid Los Angeles so we decided to head east and go around LA.  So we headed east and across the central valley.  We are always impressed when we drive across the huge central valley.  We have a good time trying to identify all of the different crops and trees we pass by.  Truthfully we spend most of the time going that is a tree but not sure what kind of tree unless there are big orange things hanging on them, but we have fun nevertheless.

An “Okie” display in the central valley.

Today we stopped at Blackwells Corner Store.  It is famous as the last place James Dean was seen alive when he filled up his Porsche there on his way to a car race in Salinas.  He was later found a few miles down a back road having wrecked his car and killed himself and his passenger.  Ron commented that he never really got the obsession with James Dean, Ton said it was because I was never cool enough to get James Dean.

Ron was not cool enough to get James Dean!

As we headed into Victorville we realized we were surrounded by pretty large thunderstorms.  Ton checked the weather app and we learned that there were flash flood warnings for Victorville so it was a good time to park up for the night.

August 15, 2018 San Luis Obispo CA

Today we started the day visiting one of our favorite places in central California.  Near San Simeon there are beaches that are covered in Elephant Seals.  We have visited this site three times previously and always enjoyed ourselves. This time we again enjoyed ourselves though as advertised there were fewer seals than normal, though many of the full sized males were there and really impressive.

The elephant seals at San Simeon.  Some of the males are 16 feet long and weigh 5000lbs.

After visiting the seals again we had a nice burger at a general store that had been in the same family since 1916.  It was an interesting set up as they had a burger place selling Hearst Ranch burgers, a high end wine tasting bar, and a post office all in one large room.  We split a burger as it was quite large.  

A wine bar and post office.  Only in California!

After heading over to Paso Robles to get some fuel we eventually headed back to our campsite and had a nice dinner.

August 14, 2018 San Luis Obispo CA

It was time to finally leave our friends Pae and Supachai.  For our going away Pae prepared a great Thai breakfast of Cao dom.  Ron really loved it.  Thanks to our good friends Pae and Supachai for hosting us and showing us around the bay area.

Ron enjoying a beer at Central Coast Brewing.

Heading south we camped up in San Luis Obispo.  We visited a really nice brewery called Central Coast.  We enjoyed a couple of beers and were really pleasantly surprised when the bill came as we did not realize it was happy hour and the beers were $2 off.  The last stop for the day was the Madonna Inn.  It is a hotel that has been the place to be in San Luis Obispo for decades.  Trip Advisor describes the decor as eccentric and Ton says they are right.  Below are a couple of pictures that prove her point.

The dinning room at the Madonna Inn.  That is a lot of pink.

August 12, 2018 San Francisco CA

Today we played tourists in San Francisco.  We headed into the city early to beat the traffic and headed to the Embarcadero area.  We lived in the “Bay Area” in the late 90’s so had done the San Francisco tours in the past with visitors.  We were trying to convince our friends that they did not need to do this.  Luckily they insisted as we really enjoyed ourselves.

We covered the Embarcadero area in detail, and hit a couple of the big tourist sites along the water front.  It was a beautiful day so we had nice views of the bay.  As we kept walking we visited the Ghiradelli chocolate factory for an ice cream sundae.

Ton liked this painting from a small museum on the Embarcadero.

We ended the day at the palace of fine arts which Ton and I had never visited.  It was built for the world exposition in 1913 it is quite impressive and fortunate to be still around.  Originally it was built to only last for the exhibition, but people loved it so much they decided to keep it.  Over time some of the love faded and the maintenance deteriorated, during World War II the army took over as it was located on military property, and used it as a motor vehicle maintenance area.  After the war it had deteriorated to the point where they considered tearing it down, but fortunately did not.

Tourists. Alcatraz on the horizon in the background.

All of our touristing around resulted in a new step record for our friend of 30,000 steps in one day, so we decided to reward ourselves with some Chinese food for dinner.  It was a really nice day.

August 11, 2018 San Jose CA

Today was much more relaxing than yesterday.  We started with a nice breakfast near our friends apartment.  On Saturdays they close the street in front of our friends apartment and have a giant Yoga session.  So while we were eating our high calorie breakfast we watched about 300 people doing a group yoga session.  

Feeling guilty, we decided to go and do some walking ourselves.  We started at the Santa Clara Mission.  It is one of a string of missions the Spanish used to control California when they colonized it.  The missions reach from San Diego to just north of San Francisco.  Everyone in California knows the stories of the missions as it is a main part of the curriculum for all students in 5th Grade.  Even if you move here from another state or country like we did, if you have children you get to know all you could want to know about missions.

Santa Clara mission.  The first mission in California named after a woman saint.

Santa Clara mission is probably the most well maintained of the missions as it is on the campus of Santa Clara University which is a Jesuit college.  This school is well endowed and the church building is obviously well loved.  We were going to go inside to take some pictures, but there was a mass going on.  We stood in the back for a few minutes and were wondering about how well attended the mass was on a Saturday, when we realized that they were consecrating about 10 new priests as Jesuits.  

The campus of Santa Clara University.

Later we did some walking around the neighborhood, and had a nice Vietnamese lunch in a giant Vietnamese shopping area in San Jose.  

August 10, 2018 San Jose CA

We had the alarm set for 6am, so we could meet our friends Pae and Supachai for happy hour.  The early drive was easy but like last year in British Columbia the smoke from the massive wild fires in California and Oregon reduced visibility to around a mile for the first 200 miles.  The fires in California this year are really bad, and the worst of the traditional fire season has not even begun.

We covered the first 340 miles in about 6 hours and we were looking forward to meeting our friends for a happy hour drink, but when we merged on to I-80 near Sacramento the freeway came to a complete halt and traffic was stopped as far as we could see.  Searching the radio we found out that there had been a serious accident about 3 hours prior and a California Highway Patrol Officer had been severely injured.  Only one lane of the freeway was open and the backup was 15 miles.  Not knowing how bad it would be we ended up gutting it out and it took 3 hours to cover the next 12 miles.  As we were driving it turns our the CHP officer and the person he had pulled over for a traffic violation were struck by another car at full speed and killed.  The snowball effect was now we were still about 70 miles from San Jose, but instead of being thru before rush hour we were in the middle of rush hour and those 70 miles took another 3 hours.  So the bottom line was today we covered 340 miles in 6 hours and 84 miles in 6 hours, for a total of an exhausting 12 hours.

We had a nice Japanese dinner that we just made with our friends and another couple, and Ron crashed into bed about 9pm.

August 9, 2018 Canyonville OR

It has been awhile since our last trip.  We spent most of June and July working on getting the house ready for our travels and getting the paperwork done on purchasing François for our future trips to Europe.  Needing a break we decided on a short trip to see some friends in San Jose and to visit our two sons.

Today we left late as we waited for the mail to arrive with Ron’s birth certificate.  It turns out we need to provide a copy of his birth certificate as US passports do not show what town you were born in and that is very important in France.  We will see if the birth certificate will do the trick, the problem is that it is hand written and whoever wrote it did not have very good handwriting.  We will see if it is acceptable to the administrator in France.

By the time we got on the road it was nearing evening rush hour so we did not cover as much ground as we hoped.  Around 7pm we decided to camp up in a nice campground next to a casino.  The lady informed us we would get a 10% discount if we purchased a player’s club card so we were off to the casino to get a card.  With the card we got a free spin of the wheel and Ron won a $10 discount on food, so we ate some bad casino food.

May 4, 2018 Paris FR

The flight home was uneventful but long.  The only hitch was that American Airlines couldn’t be bothered to transfer our bags to Alaska Airline in Chicago, and just threw them on their next flight to Portland.  Apparently this is a pretty common occurrence, because as soon as we said we were coming in from Chicago the Alaska agent new what had happened.  Fortunately the American flight was only about 30 minutes behind our Alaska flight.

We really enjoyed the trip to France, and are looking forward to the next trip to Europe. For the trip we covered about 2000 miles in 27 days, primarily in Burgundy and Provence.  Even though we did not venture that far, we still could have probably spent another two weeks just in those areas.  There is still a lot of France to see, and a whole lot of other countries.

François gave us no problems, and after this trip we are sold on using a European RV instead of shipping Scout.  We are now in the process of lining up a slightly used RV over there.

Ron and François enjoying the countryside.

From a cost point of view, operating costs per day (excluding rental costs) were actually lower in France than our last two trips in North America.  Fuel and camping costs per day were lower than we spent in Alaska and our western swing.  While fuel is nearly 21/2 times higher in France than here, things are much closer together.  We were also traveling during shoulder season so when we did stay in campgrounds they were generally cheaper than their counterparts here.  As we got used to things we started gravitating towards Aires, and they are much cheaper than campgrounds.  Food was higher in Europe, but not as much as we expected.  

May 3, 2018 Paris FR

Today we planned to spend at the Louvre.  Of all of the places in Paris Ron wanted to spend some extra time there as he had never been.

It is an overwhelming place in many ways.  The building is huge, but the vast majority of people are there to see the two or three must see things, the Mona Lisa, David, and the Italian art.  Those things are clustered in one area of the museum, and that area is packed.  We did see all of those things, but the crowds were a little too much for Ron.  The other wings of the building are nearly empty and there is a lot of good art.

This is not the crowded part of the Louvre.

After about 4 hours we had enough and decided to get some lunch.  Ton was interested in getting some Moroccan food, and we found a good restaurant.  We had our most expensive meal in France, and the meal was good.  After lunch we decided to head back to Montmartre, and grab a couple of last minute things we wanted to take back to Oregon with us.  

I think we enjoyed walking around Montmartre nearly as much as we did the Louvre for the day.  We made a couple of trips to grocery stores in the area, as well as taking one last stroll (Ton would say climb) to the cathedral.  We had our final dinner at an African restaurant across from the hotel that Ton had her eye on since we checked in  The meal was excellent and the spices were really interesting.  Ton’s fish was delicious.

May 2, 2018 Paris FR

Today was our day to be tourists.  You cannot go to Paris without seeing the Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysee, the Louvre, Notre Dame, etc.  We decided the best way to accomplish this was by buying a hop on hop off bus ticket.

We accomplished the mission seeing all of the important places, but unlike all of the other cities we visited where we walked from point to point, this time we rode a bus with loads of other tourists.  Ton appreciated the lack of steps, and it would have been a bit much to try to do everything on foot, but for Ron it felt a lot more sterile from the bus.

The River Seine.

Paris is lovely, and though yesterday it looked like all hell had broke loose downtown, today you could not tell there had been a riot going on around here.  We got wrapped up looking at stuff, and forgot to eat lunch.  We did stop into a chocolate shop and had a nice chocolate sundae, and found a place for dinner later in the day.

Street Scene in Paris.

May 1, 2018 Paris FR

Today is labor day in France.  We decided to stay in Montmartre for the day as we were not sure what was going to be open in the center of the city.  Also, there were some marches planned, and there was a rumor that some people were going to use the marches as a pretense to cause some problems.

Our hotel is very centrally located in Montmartre.  We started the day by heading to the cathedral at the top of the hill.  Montmartre is located on a pretty good sized hill, and it is a decent climb up to the cathedral.  The views of the center of Paris from the cathedral are expansive. 

The Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Montmartre.

Montmartre is famous for it’s cafe culture, so after spending about an hour deciding which cafe to eat in, we settled in for a lunch and to do what everyone else is doing, people watch.  It is an interesting combination of tourists from all over the world, and locals.  We enjoyed the lunch, though  we had high expectations, and were a little disappointed with our food.  

The streets of Montmartre full of tourists and locals.

After lunch we took another turn around the area, looking at the sites, and mostly the people.  We did a little shopping and went back to the room to drop off our purchases, and take a siesta.  Instead of a siesta, we were entertained by watching the riot that had broken out in the center of the city live on TV.  A McDonalds was sacked and a it was not a good day to park your Mercedes downtown as it looks like the rioters specifically targeted them for burning.  

After we got our fill of watching the TV, we decided to go back up to the cathedral for sunset, and dinner.  At the cathedral we saw that we were not the only ones ignoring the riot going on a few miles away as there were several hundred people up enjoying the sunset.  

The Basilica lit up after sunset.

Another thing Paris is famous for are pickpockets, and we noticed a gentleman suddenly confronting a younger man quite loudly.  It turns out he noticed that the young guy was trying to get into a woman’s purse, and intervened to stop it.  The young guy took off, and the lady rewarded the good samaritan with a couple of kisses on the cheek, and then sat down on top of her purse to finish watching sunset.

The Eiffel Tower from the Basilica of the Sacred Heart.

April 30, 2018 Paris FR

After an early start where we returned François to France Motor Home Hire. We had a quick meeting with the owners there and have a preliminary plan to buy a European based vehicle from them, instead of shipping Scout to Europe.  We will post more as things develop along this line.

We arrived in the station at Sens, purchased our tickets and boarded an express for Paris within 10 minutes.  Our timing could not have been better.  After arriving at Gare deBercey station in Paris we took a taxi to our hotel in the Montmartre district of Paris.  When we arrived it was really miserable.  About 40 degrees, raining and really windy.  Our motivation to go out and explore Paris was pretty low, so instead we hit a grocery store and settled in to our room for a rest.  The weather is supposed to be better tomorrow, so Paris can wait.

The neighborhood near our hotel in Paris.

April 29, 2018 St. Julien de Sault FR

All things must end.  Last night there was a heck of a storm that woke us both up.  For the second time we had a thunderstorm in France with a pretty healthy dumping of rain, even possibly some hail.  We spent the morning packing up and cleaning François so that we can have a quick and easy turn around tomorrow before heading to Paris.

We left Merry around 11 am with about 80km’s to cover to the Aire we spent our first night in.  The GPS finally decided to cooperate and kept us on good 2 lane D roads, and even decided to by-pass a couple of towns rather than send us thru the middle of them.  As a result we made really good time getting to St. Julien.  

The wine has been fantastic in France so I thought we would include a picture of the plant that has added a lot of fun to the trip for us.

We needed to fill up the fuel, and after that we had some time to kill.  As it is Sunday nearly everything but restaurants are closed.  Across from the gas station was a McDonalds, and we thought why not?  This was the most high tech McDonalds I have ever seen.  You ordered your food at a 4 foot touch screen.  One interesting thing is that we had heard that we might run into trouble with our American credit cards here, and for the entire trip we had never had a problem paying with our credit cards until today at McDonalds. The giant screen rejected all three of our chip cards, so we had to take our little slip up to the one cashier on duty and pay for our 2 coffees and fries with cash!

April 28, 2018 Merry-sur-Yonne FR

Our night in the car park at Flavigny was uneventful, except after the warm nights in Provence it was quite chilly back in Burgundy.  When we woke up and got going Ton decided that the candy tins at the factory here in Flavigny would be great gifts so we needed to kill time until it opened at 930.  

Ton remembered there were some spectacular canola fields as we came into town.  We decided to take a short walk up to get a closer look.  It was a nice walk and we enjoyed being out in the quiet French countryside. 

Ton in front of a huge field of Canola.  This is the last canola photo, we promise.

After completing our purchase at the candy factory we headed over to the town of Vezelay.  It is another one of the most beautiful villages in France.  We were back on D roads of Burgundy.  The countryside in Burgundy is definitely much quieter than the countryside in Provence, so the drives are a lot more enjoyable and the scenery is terrific.  

A town in Burgundy.  The roads in Burgundy are much quieter than in Provence.

Several people we had met on the trip said that Vezalay was a town not to miss.  It is another of the most beautiful villages in France, and as you drive towards the town it is quite striking.  The weather has taken a turn for the worst with temperatures in the 50’s and on again, off again rain.  But we caught a gap while we walked up the hill to Vezelay’s Cathedral.  The town was interesting and pretty but once again felt touristy, especially compared to Flavigny.  While we were in the cathedral a mass started with about 15 nuns coming out to join the mass.  

The Cathedral in Vezelay.  It is a very striking white color, and interesting because it has less art in place than other Cathedral’s we have visited.

The last stop of the day was at Merry-Sur-Yonne which has a nice ring to it.  The campground here is first class, and the bridge into the small village over the river Yonne is quite pretty.  Ton has declared it the nicest campground she has been in, though we both did grumble a little about paying €19 after several nights of free or nearly free camping.  However, the warm reception from the British owner, warm unlimited showers and the electricity have reduced the grumbling.  At the end of the day we walked down to the Yonne River and had a quiet end to our day.

The bridge over the Yonne River near our campground.

April 27, 2018 Flavigny-sur-Ozerin FR

Today we had to bite the bullet and do some freeway travel.  We needed to get north so we can be in position to turn François in on Monday.  So we put 300km’s under our belt in one long leap.  We choose the town of Flavigny-Sur-Ozerain as it was the site where one of Ton’s favorite movies was filmed, Chocolat with Johnny Depp and Juliette Binoche.  It is also on the list of one of the most beautiful villages in France.  

A street scene from Flavigny, one of the most beautiful villages in France.

The trip north on the Autoroute was uneventful even though the GPS insisted on routing us right thru the heart of Lyon (France’s second biggest city) instead of taking the bypass that all of the trucks did.  However, traffic was not too bad so Ron forgave her and we did get to see Lyon at 70kph.

Since we last left Burgundy the canola has really grown.

We arrived in Flavigny around 2pm and found it quite peaceful.  Our first stop was a candy factory in an old Abby that has been producing Anis based candies since 1591.  After some sampling of the wares again we purchased some tins of the candy.    

A cool Renault RV with the logo of the candy factory we visited today.

All of the other most beautiful villages felt a little commercial, Flavigny most definitely did not.  We spent about 20 minutes looking for the tourist information office when we realized we had walked past it twice before noticing the sign in the window saying it was closed until July.  We wanted the tourist information office to see if it would be all right to spend the night in their parking lot. After walking around the town for a couple of hours and enjoying an afternoon coffee and beer,   we finally decided on our own that it was ok to park as there was no police in the town to ask.  Right now we have finished our dinner and are enjoying some wine in a very peaceful and serene parking lot, with birds chirping in the background.  

Ron at one of the medieval gates to the city of Flavigny.