Today we visited one of our favorite national parks. Ton really loves cactuses and Joshua Trees. It was originally in our plans for the trip with our friends last fall, but we cut it out due to time constraints, so we decided to head over on our way to the coast.
Near our campsite in Joshua Tree.
The drive took a little longer than we thought, and we ended up driving around for over an hour looking for a place to spend the night. At that point Ron realized that we probably needed fuel, so we ended up driving back out into town to the Marine Base to get fuel. The fuel there was 50 cents a gallon cheaper than in town.
Part of the trip was along an old section of Route 66.
We got back to our campsite just in time for sunset, and had a nice walk shooting pictures of the sunset, rocks and Joshua tree’s. It was also fantastic weather, clear and 79 degrees, so for the first time on the trip we will not need the heater.
Today we did what most Americans do which is watch the Super Bowl. The RV park at Nellis was having a Super Bowl watch party and we signed up to join it . Our son Alex joined us for the party driving back 4 hours from a long planned trip to Phoenix to see us.
The game was unusually good though none of us really cared who won. We all decided to pull for the Eagles as they were the underdogs, and the underdogs won in an exciting way.
A slow day for us. We spent the morning taking care of laundry and using the internet at the office to publish the blog and do some research on next stops for us.
We decided to go to a Chinese Lantern Show that was advertised in the local paper. It looked like it would be interesting and a nice way to spend an evening. It totally blew us away. It was 5 or 6 acres of really complex lanterns, though they did cheat and use led lights instead of candles. Ton killed the battery on her camera taking pictures. We had a hard time selecting a couple of pictures for the blog. It also included a show of Chinese jugglers, acrobats, and a mask dance that was really extraordinary. The young women went thru a series of masks in just a couple of seconds. We have not been able to figure out how she did it, but it was really cool.
This frog changed colors.A famous tea maker.Chinese opera.Pandas.And of course a dragon.This is a traveling show if it ever comes to your town I highly recommend you go.
We moved into the city for the weekend. Today was about a little shopping, giving Scout a bath to knock some of the mud off of her, and going somewhere we could use WiFi to catch up and post the blog. We finished everything except the internet stuff as it turns out we are in the only part of the park that does not have WiFi.
Ron woke up a little early to go for a walk and chase some big horn sheep around for a while trying to get pictures. Ton’s from yesterday were better.
After breakfast we set out to explore the rest of the park. We took a couple of short hikes and really enjoyed ourselves. The weather was perfect for hiking, mid to high 60’s, and we picked a couple of easy places that still gave us wonderful views of the Red sandstone that gives the park it’s name. We really enjoyed Valley of Fire, it is a nice size and has a variety of places to visit. It is the equal of many National Parks for things to see and do.
This Raven kept an eye on us for a few minutes while we were walking.
Our next stop was planned for Lake Mead National Recreation Area if you are wondering what the abbreviation in the title for the day is short for. Ton and I were both surprised by Lake Mead as we thought the Lake would be front and center, and for the first 40 miles it was almost invisible. Instead we had a drive thru a typical Mojave landscape with occasional burst of Red from Sandstone deposits. It was not at all what we expected. We are staying at a campground called Las Vegas Cove. Once again we are parked along a river and the Lake is far away. We enjoyed a nice dinner watching another colorful desert sunset. We managed to actually drive less than 100 miles and were content to park up around 2pm. Maybe we can slow down.
Our alarm was set for 4am so we could get up to witness the eclipse/Blue/Blood/Super moon. The skies were clear, but it was really cold. The temperatures had fallen more than we thought and it must of been around 20 degrees. Ton stuck her head out of the truck and told me to call her when the moon turned Red. I stuck around and watched the eclipse from the inside of the truck. When the moon turned Red I told Ton and she reluctantly rolled out of bed to take a look. After a few minutes she could not get a good picture and was very cold so she decided to get back under the blankets. I followed her a few minutes later. So while we witnessed the eclipse/Blue/Blood/Super moon we have no pictures to prove it, you will have to take our word for it.
Ton loves Joshua trees, we passed this one on the way to Valley of Fire.
After a little nap we got up and headed towards Las Vegas to Valley of Fire State Park. It is about 70 miles from Las Vegas and is quite striking. It has very Red Rocks throughout with many different shapes and forms. As we were arriving we noticed about 100 RV’s parked on BLM land just short of the state park and Lake Mead National Recreation Area. We assume camping is free there and we were tempted to park there for the night, but decided to opt for the State Park and pay the camping fee.
Small arch in Valley of Fire.
After we settled in we went for a short walk near the campground to a site of some Indian petroglyphs. They were quite impressive. Our reward for ponying up for the campground came in seeing 5 big horn sheep a couple of hundred yards from Scout. While we have been in lots of places with signs warning us to watch for big horns we had never actually seen one until today.
Petroglyphs in Valley of Fire.Big Horn sheep near our campground.
I love the west. Today we drove a ridiculous distance thru the Mojave Desert. We wanted to position ourselves to see the Blue Blood Super Moon eclipse tomorrow and decided a good place we had never been before would be Kershaw-Ryan State Park near Caliente Nevada. So to explain tomorrow is a blue moon, the moon is supposed to turn red after the eclipse, and it is a super moon. The only problem it was over 400 miles away. But we decided to go for it and if we were tired in Tonopah we would shorten up the trip.
The drive from Reno to Caliente is thru mostly unoccupied desert. Quite often you do not see anything built by a human for miles and miles. Our route once we got clear of the urban area around Reno was US 95 to Tonopah, US 6 to no where in particular NV351 to a small town we forgot the name of already and US 93 to Caliente. We are familiar with US95 from Fallon to Tonopah as it is the route we take whenever we go to see Alex or to Death Valley, we had one of our flat tires on US95 near Hawthorne a few years ago. We had never been on the rest of the roads on the trip but they were fun and really isolated. Route 6 goes thru long empty valleys with nothing to stop you. The roads are straight as an arrow for miles and miles. Ron began looking at how many miles it was before turns in the road and we had stretches of 11, 14, and the longest of 16 miles of perfectly straight roads.
This stretch of highway was 14 miles without a curve.
NV351 is also known as the extraterrestrial highway as it skirts Area 51 where everyone knows the government is secretly keeping the aliens that come to earth. The businesses along the road know a good thing when they see it so they have set up souvenir stands. We of course stopped and bought a magnet to put on the fridge at home.
Ron could not resist getting his picture taken with an alien.
Our stop for the night was at Kershaw-Ryan, Ron was a little worried about arriving late in the day as it is a small park. There was no need to worry as we have the place to ourselves. it is a pretty location in a little canyon, and all of the facilities look brand new. We went for a short evening stroll, and the Blue-Blood-Super Moon gave us a little preview.
Ton had a restaurant on her bucket list that is near Reno. So we began our day by heading towards Gardnerville to get a Basque meal at JT Basque Restaurant. She had read about this place at a Basque Museum in Boise and she had been looking forward to the next time we passed thru Reno to give it a try. We had the family style meal which included all you could eat soup, salad, beef stew, bread, beans and French Fries, and an entree and a small bottle of wine. The food was superb and it only cost $25 per person. Ton was really pleased and crossed JT’s off her bucket list with all of her expectations met. If you are in the Reno area JT’s is worth the 45 minute drive over to Gardnerville.
After JT’s we headed over to Virginia City. It is one of the most famous boom towns from the gold rush era. At one point it had a population of over 30,000 including Mark Twain who worked at the paper in town. It is in the hills above Reno and has a great collection of mid to late 19th century buildings. It was a nice way to spend the afternoon and we were impressed with the buildings and the setting. We were tempted by a couple of the saloons in town, but were too stuffed from our lunch in Gardnerville to do it. It is probably overrun with tourists in the summer, but was pleasantly quiet in January.
The Red Dog Saloon founded in the gold rush in the 1880’s.
Our last stop was the Costco in Sparks. We were excited because the Sparks Costco had Diesel available and our experience on our Alaska trip was that Costco had by far the cheapest diesel in any town. So after going out of our way and driving during rush hour to get there we were disappointed that the Costco fuel was actually higher than one of the major chain stations in town. This is the first time Costco has let us down.
Today was a driving day as we decided to get serious about chasing warmer temperatures. The drive was long, but very easy as there is almost no traffic on the whole route. When we left we were surrounded by snow for the first two hours. The beginning of the trip was along Oregon State Highway 31 which is one of Ron’s favorite roads. It goes from LaPine to Lakeview, and is really remote and very scenic in a stark way.
After Lakeview you enter California and have to pass thru the state agricultural inspection station. After our experience losing our apples crossing into Canada, Ton was worried about losing our oranges so she had prepared by peeling the oranges and hiding them in the cabinet. Ron was sworn to commit perjury and swear we only had apples and bananas on board. All of this was for nothing because when we arrived at the inspection station it was closed.
We are parked up for the night in a casino campground in Reno. We stop here most of the time when heading south. We may be looking at alternatives after this stop as the area around the casino is deteriorating and the maintenance of the campground is neglected.
Today was a small scale pub crawl thru Bend. After a little shopping in the morning we visited three breweries. Monkless Brewing is one of our favorites in Bend. It is a relatively new brewery, but we really enjoy their beer. The second Brewery was a new one for us called Immersion Brewing. It was also very good though it had a tough time following Monkless. We ended the night at the original Cascade Lakes Brewery this time in Redmond. Ton wanted to see the Civil War Basketball game between Oregon State and the University of Oregon. We reprised our favorite beers from last night and while the game was really sloppy the right team won so all is well.
We are off on a short trip south. The first stop is to see our son Dylan to say Happy Birthday. When we got up to leave a trip of the road status showed 17 inches of new snow on the passes over the mountains to Bend. As a result we decided to take a longer route that would keep us out of the snow.
We found ourselves unexpectedly in the Columbia gorge and coming into Bend from the north. We have talked about the gorge quite often so I won’t say much today. It was mostly dry and thankfully we ran into no snow.
We met Dylan for dinner at Cascade Lakes Brewing. The food was ok, good pub food, and their IPA’s were exceptional.
For the night we are in a camp ground at the fairgrounds expecting 2” of snow and 29 degrees. Ron is looking forward to getting somewhere warm.
Our neighbor to the North. We have not explored Washington that much in Scout as we had done a lot of traveling there in our early days in the Pacific Northwest.
Today was our last nights camping on this trip to Alaska. We took care of some business at the Navy Base getting Ton’s military ID card updated, we also did some shopping at the base. We picked up a collapsible wash bin for plates, and a new mini-rice cooker.
We both really enjoy Whidbey Island and spent the rest of the day visiting some of our favorite places and a new brewery. We ended the day by going to one of Ton’s favorite restaurants in the Pacific Northwest. It is Christophers in Coupeville and it has the best mussels we have ever had. We had our biggest meal of the trip, and we will probably get two more meals out of the leftovers.
We appreciate sunsets so much more when we are in our campers.
We made it back to the campsite just in time to enjoy another spectacular sunset over the Puget sound. Another great day on the trip, hopefully we will have many more in the future.
Today was our 36th anniversary so we decided to take it easy and celebrate in a town we had been intending to visit for a while. We had visited Wenatchee in the past with our sons as part of a hockey trip and remembered it as a small farm town. We had heard that it had boomed since we last visited.
After a lazy start to the day we started the visit by trying to get a spot at Confluence State Park in Wenatchee. They did not have anything available but overflow in the day use parking lot, but the location was good even if the price was not ($25)for what was nothing more than a parking lot. We decided to stay there anyway.
Next stop was Costco to stock up on some final things before we headed up to Canada. We were looking for some good local beer, and some fruit. We found them though it was a little pricier than we expected. So far Wenatchee is not cheap.
The next stop was Pybus Public Market it was billed as the newest attraction in Wenatchee and was indeed nice. The best thing for Ron is that he got to see the last twenty minutes of the Timbers game, and even better, they won.
While at Pybus we were looking for a nice place for dinner when Ton realized that most of the restaurants in town were closed on Sunday. This caught us off guard as we are used to the restaurants in Portland all being open on Sunday. Since we were now committed to the area we had to look at our alternatives.
Watching the Timbers and sampling beer.
Leavenworth was about 20 minutes away and had a lot of open restaurants so we headed there for a German dinner. We also visited a couple of breweries. So thank you for saving the day Leavenworth.
It is still extremely hot and smoky. The high was 96 degrees, and visibility was only a couple of miles. Hopefully we get a break soon.
The plan for the first day was to head from Portland taking Forest Service Road 25 and US-12. FS-25 is a summer only road that goes between Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helens. We were looking for a new way to head east and this was new to us. FS-25 was a very rough road built just for Tigers. While paved there were areas of very high disrepair that required paying attention to what was going on. The drive was pretty but the views were spoiled by the intense smoke we are currently getting in the Pacific Northwest. A combination of a severe heat wave and very large wild fires in British Columbia made for very poor air quality and visibility.
A very smoky Mt. St. Helens.
In typical Corbin fashion we blew threw Yakima, Ron missed the campground and ended up driving an extra hour until we spotted Wanapum State Park. A little pricey compared to the Forest Service Campground we planned to stay in but having full services is nice as it was in the mid 90’s when we pulled in, so the AC is getting a test run tonight.
From the beginning we intended to visit Grand Coulee Dam. Ton had it on her mini-bucket list. When we woke up in the morning it was raining quite hard and continued the entire time we drove to Grand Coulee. The dam is impressive and is the largest on the Columbia River system. We watched a movie on the construction of the dam and poked around the visitors center for a while before moving on.
The drive out on the Grand Coulee Scenic Highway was very beautiful. Unfortunately with the bad weather there are no pictures. We will definitely be heading that way again in the future when the weather is better.
Looking for a place for the night we decided we needed a full service campground to clean up before heading home the next day. We settled on Wine Country RV park in Prosser Washington. It turned out to be a good choice. As we checked in they told us there were 10 tasting rooms a quarter mile away, and the RV park was having an evening wine tasting.
We headed down to the tasting rooms and sampled some wine, and ended up having a nice dinner. As we were setting up for the night the clouds lifted and we were treated to this sunset.
Today was an easy day. Woke up late, drove over to the Navy Exchange to see if they had any good deals for Christmas, and then headed up the island to our favorite coffee shop in the PNW.
Useless Bay Coffee is located in Langley and features good coffee and excellent baristas. In a nice old building. In addition we tried the Pizza in a waterfront restaurant with a pretty view towards the Cascade Mountains and Seattle. The whole country has been going thru a cold snap and even here it was frosty as you can see from the picture below.
The proverbial frost on the pumpkin.
By the time we finished lunch and our coffee we realized that by the time we drove back to the campsite it would be dark. Sunset today was at 4:30 pm and it was totally dark by 5pm. Ton did get a couple of decent pictures despite the dark.
This will be a very short trip to one of our favorite places. This is our fifth trip to Whidbey Island. We really enjoy the island and one of Ton’s favorite foods is caught fresh off the island. Penn Cove Mussels are awesome and there is one restaurant that we think prepares them better than others. We returned to Christophers for a four course dinner that started off with Penn Cove Mussels and finished with a wonderful desert, and the price is incredibly reasonable. If you get a chance and you are on Whidbey Island make sure you check it out.
Our excellent dessert after our Penn Cove Mussels.
We are camping at one of the very best military campgrounds at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. The sites are right on the sound and fantastic. They recently remodeled it and really got it right except they moved the spots back a bit from the water. In the old days you were within feet of the beach. But it is still outstanding.
A very large drift wood deposit near the campground.
Our home state. A lot of the entries are short trips to Eastern Oregon, or one day entries as we depart or return from trips to other places. We had done a lot of our exploring of Oregon before we purchased Scout.
Our first post pandemic trip ended today. We both have dental appointments tomorrow so we needed to head home despite the spectacular weather forecast for
We realized that Scout has been lonely in the driveway and has not moved in nearly a year. This is definitely not good for a RV so we were looking for an opportunity to take a trip before we take our spring trip to Europe. Ton has a much more active social life than I do and she was having a hard time freeing up time, and she is also not a fan of cold weather camping. On the other hand I had time on my hands and was going a little stir crazy at home so we made a decision for me to take Scout out on a trip by myself, this means the pictures are not going to be as good. I do not have an agenda besides getting out of the gloom of Oregon and finding some sun. The initial thought is to head towards Arizona.
Today was about getting over the mountains before the next storm runs thru and makes crossing over the passes difficult. Ton and I spent the last couple of days stocking up Scout for the trip. She was even nice enough to cook some of my favorite meals so I can microwave them. So I was ready to make an early start as the best stop for the first night was Burns which is about 330 miles. Last year we took a different route home thru central Nevada and it was really beautiful, so I decided to head south that way and this long drive would get me in position to do it.
The weather was clear and pretty warm on the west side of the mountains, but as I climbed up the temperature began to fall until it reached freezing and a there were a couple of accidents. One of the accidents involved two cars and was pretty serious. Some people get careless and try to drive too fast. One fool even tried to pass two snow plows that were spreading cinders until the guy in the plow made it clear that was not going to happen. Between the accidents and the snow plows the trip over the passes took a while.
Detroit Lake Reservoir had been drained in preparation to receive the spring snow melt. It made for an eerie picture.
Once I descended down the weather was good and the skies were clear. Eastern Oregon was its’ rugged and remote finest for the last three hours of the trip. I love the emptiness of the high desert. Last winter the campground we usually stay at was closed when we went thru here and we ended up in a hotel. This year I checked and their website indicated they were open, and sure enough they were. So all ends well today and I hope my longest drive is behind me.
Mt. Bachelor and the Three Sisters were out today once I crossed over the mountains.
