Land of 10,000 Lakes

Posted on July 11, 2021 by rvrrat520

Voyageurs National Park was our next tourism destination. We broke the drive up and did a couple of nights at the Jackpot Junction Casino in Morton, MN. While there we found a couple of points of interest to see. The Birch Coulee Battlefield was a small area on the outskirts of Morton. It is touted as one of the bloodiest battles of the U.S.-Dakota War even though it was only a day and a half battle back in 1862. That, and there were only about 20 men killed during that skirmish. Horses fared worse, they had about 90 casualties. The battlefield was a short walking circular path through the field, with little history lessons posted here and there. They also had small concrete markers with footprints on them to designate the standing location of combatants, pointing out into the field to small white marker posts which designated the locations of enemy fighters. This battle was pretty much a close quarters type of battle as evidenced by the distances depicted, and it easily demonstrated the ill-fated logic of the U.S. force on choosing such an open, unprotected location to set up camp.

The other point of interest was Ramsey Falls on Ramsey Creek in the town of Redwood Falls. This was an easy drive-to with no hiking required. There is a nice viewing platform at the parking area, and if you want a closer look you can do a tiny bit of rock scrambling to arrive at the top of the falls.

The view of the falls from the observation platform/parking area

Onward and upward, again, we lucked out and I think we found the absolute last available RV site in the entire Great Lakes area. It just happened to be Arnold’s Campground and RV Park in International Falls, MN. Now, the town of Int’l Falls is nothing to write home about, it is a run down small town right on the Canadian border. In fact, if the U.S. side residents need to hit a Walmart or a Safeway, the only ones in the area are across the Rainy River in Fort Francis, on the Canadian side. And, according to signs posted around Rainy Lake, all non-essential cross-border traffic is prohibited. So there’s that…

I have to say, we were seriously underwhelmed by Voyageurs National Park. Even the rangers say it is not a real popular park in the Nat’l Park system. We hit the 3 visitor’s centers at Rainy Lake, Kabetogama Lake, and at Ash Creek. They are not open every day, even during this, the peak season, which tells you a little something about their popularity. We were in serious lake country (“Land of 10,000 Lakes, duh!) but driving around and through the area the scenery is mostly thick, green trees. Even the “lake view” trail near the Ash Creek Visitor’s Center provides you with a semi-obstructed (trees) view of water. We made one attempt at night viewing, trying to catch sight of the Aurora Borealis from the Rainy Lake Visitor’s Center, but only managed to fight the mosquitos until midnight. We spoke to a ranger about the lights on another day and he mentioned they are best seen in colder weather, more often during Spring and Fall. Such is our luck…

For our last hurrah at Voyageur’s N.P. we broke out the bicycles for a nice leisurely ride on the Rainy Lake Trail. That trail starts near the International Falls Chamber of Commerce in town and pretty much follows both Hwy. 11 and the Rainy River to the Rainy Lake Visitor’s Center. The trail weaves it’s way off and onto Hwy. 11 on it’s 15 mile stretch to the visitor’s center and is paved the whole way. You have to be ever vigilant due to the large number of BIG red deer roaming the area, particularly the nearer you get to the visitor’s center. There are not a lot of sights to see along the way, again you travel through thick stands of trees. But we got our 30 miles in and it was a pretty good workout during the last leg of the trail heading to the visitor’s center.

That catches us up for now. Stay tuned for the next blog post, same bat time, same bat channel…

George Mickelson Trail and Exit Strategy for So. Dakota

Posted on July 5, 2021 by rvrrat520

OK, so Murphy would not leave us alone. After waiting about 40 days total for our appointment at Dakota RV in Rapid City to get our Schwintek slide out system fixed on our bedroom slideout, we left South Dakota unsatisfied. It seems that when we went in and made the appointment, after the service guy said he was ordering the parts needed AT THAT TIME, he failed to do so. 40 days of appointment time wasted! I held my mud and spared everyone within earshot an extensive lesson in 4-letter vocabulary and just apologized to them for wasting their time. Under my breath I was all, “You guys can kiss my big fat bicycle riding a$$!” Cue Willie Nelson… “On the Road Again”… Man oh man was I fuming…

So we had to relocate and we found space at Black Elk Resort in Hill City. It was a stroke of luck, seeing we are fast approaching the 4th of July weekend and most places are booked solid. The Black Elk Resort is a very nice albeit small RV Resort with cabins and a quaint little taproom on site for local beers/wines.

Welcome to Black Elk Resort & the Palmer Creek Taproom

Taking advantage of a couple of days of moderate weather we tackled portions of the George Mickelson Trail. In total we rode almost 30 miles covering the section which includes the (4) railroad tunnels only labeled on maps as Tunnels A-D. These are all in the area between Hill City/Burlington Trailhead and a little past the Rochford Trailhead. It’s only about a 25 mile stretch of the entire 108 mile trail, but I’m guessing it may be the most scenic section of the trail.

Welcome to the Mystic Trailhead of the George S. Mickelson Trail

Moving day took us a little farther than we usually prefer to travel in a day and we landed in a little county park called Sioux County Conservation Board Park in Hawarden, Iowa. It was July 2, and as you can imagine, all couple three dozen RV parks we tried to find space at were jammed to capacity for the holiday. But we were pleasantly surprised with the county park. They run on first-come-first-served basis and the site we chose was concrete pad with 30/50A surrounded by well kept lawn. They have a centrally located water spigot for fresh water and a dump station next to the sites. There were restrooms with showers also next to the sites. The park is right on the Big Sioux River and there is a boat launch right there in the park. We settled in for about 3 days to get us past the holiday weekend. We took the time to take care of some chores like a Costco run into Sioux Falls (1-hour drive away from the park) and a hand washing of Rosie. We toured the Nature Center they have on site and I got to relive my younger working years when I happened upon a patch of ragweed along the park road to the boat launch. At least I assumed it was rag, no hint of being cultivated. For those of you uneducated in the ways of the 420 lifestyle, ragweed is Cannabis of the low-to-none THC variety that tends to pop up in the wild, same type of Cannabis grown in the hemp “industry”. You gotta smoke a truckload to get even a headache. Without “firing up a fatty” I could not confirm the presence or absence of THC. But it is a pretty good likelihood the patch was good ol’, run-of-the-mill ragweed, especially since it was populated by a good number of males (unwanted gender in the cannabinoid world since they contain very little THC and tend to fertilize the women and change the energy of the female plant into seed production.)

Our home at Sioux County Conservation Board Park

“Downtown” Hawarden contained a small area called Calliope Village we had passed on our initial arrival in town, so we ventured back to take a gander. It consists of several old-style buildings billed as “A recreation of Sioux County’s first seat of government.” I did my tourist’s duty and snapped a few pix.

So that catches us up for now. Since we got hosed by Dakota RV Repair, we had to project out to an alternative repair facility. We settled on a return (yuck) to good ol’ Red Bay, AL to give some business to some of the local boys on the Tiffin off-site worker list. We were able to get things started with some HDMI cable wiring work by “Nick” on the 26th, so will be killing time for the next 4 weeks. Tune in later to find out how we filled the time. Until next post…

Deadwood, Custer State Park, and Parts & Pieces of Rapid City and Sturgis

Posted on May 29, 2021 by rvrrat520

(Blogger’s note: I am still trying to get the technerds at WordPress to assist me with my photo issues, which I am sure is due to operator error, but since I am a cheap b@$t@rd and don’t pay for the premium version, the help is in slo-mo mode. But I have sort of stumbled on a way to post my photos and keep their portrait vs. landscape integrity. I will be posting pics in the “tiled gallery” format when I have the two formats mixed. I will not be able to caption them. But if I post a section containing only portrait style pics, I will continue to use the “gallery” or individual modes. Those I will be able to caption. OK, enough nerdiness.)

We found a home at Three Flags RV Park between Rapid City and Sturgis. With trying to get some repairs done, we jumped on a one month stay here. This was a clean, little park right on Hwy. 90 and like all the other parks in the area I imagine it will be a zoo in August due to a few biker enthusiasts who like to frequent the area during a yearly motorcycle rally. (OK, so the town is generally about 6,500 residents until the rally starts, then it burgeons to the vacinity of about half a million folks!) But, whewwww, we’re safe for now, it only being May.

Gee, I wonder why they call it “Three Flags RV Park”?

We made an initial run into Rapid City to get a quick feel for the town of about 75,000 folks. It was pretty spread out and when we got to a kind of center of town, we stumbled upon something called the “Fruhlingfest-Spring Market”. According to one of the local attendees, Fruhlingfest is a German Springtime festival. We were disappointed in that we kinda expected it to be like a farmer’s market, but there were no farmer’s fare. There were several beer vendors, some serving up flights of tasters, and some vendors of things like local art and jewelry. They also had a stage with live band. Until that moment I don’t think I have ever seen a git-tar picker dressed like a hot dog.

Deadwood was in our sights for a visit so one of our better weather days (lots of rain and WIND, so far) we headed over sans Woodrow Wilson. Deadwood is quite the little tourist town, famous for being the town where Wild Bill Hickock was murdered. We walked the main drag, had a nice lunch at the Deadwood Social Club, and checked out the infamous Cadillac Jack’s Gaming Resort. After donating a couple of bucks to Jack, it was time to head back to civilization.

We wanted to drive the loop around Custer State Park, so we loaded Woody up and headed out. Now, we have been to Mt. Rushmore and in the area a couple of times, however I don’t think we covered the bulk of Custer State Park, so parts of our drive took us on a revisit (mostly the area of Needle’s Eye) while we got to access more of the park than previously visited. We got to see a lot of tatankas and Pronghorn, as well as a few Prairie Dog colonies. We got to view scenic areas like Stockade Lake, Sylvan Lake, and the first public school in the Black Hills. The Glen Erin School taught the young’uns from 1882-1920 and as it stood was in really good shape. We stopped in beautiful downtown Custer for lunch at the Mt. Rushmore Brewing Co. and had an outstanding portabella mushroom “burger”. The beer, meh, not so outstanding. Jeanne (the Jeep driver, I drive the bus) tells me all in all we drove about a 200 mile distance for the day.

Although we have already been to Sturgis, we wanted to revisit and assess any changes. Not a lot different this time around. We stopped off at the Knuckle Brewing Co. for snacks and a taste, not excited about any of the fare. Then we wandered out to see the area of Buffalo Chip for our first viewing. They tend to draw quite the big name talent for the rallies, and “the Chip” covers a pretty big area. None of it was open, but we did get to see it nevertheless.

That catches us up for now. Until next post

Our Time in Sheridan, Wyoming

Posted on May 21, 2021 by rvrrat520

Sheridan was a quaint little town of about 17K omni-generational residents. We found home at Peter D’s RV Park at the northeast corner of town. A clean little RV Park, but sites are stacked on top of each other like cord wood. And you’d better love howling winds. Those winds got so bad our last couple of nights, we had to bring in the windward slideouts or risk thrashing of the slide toppers.

After taking care of some routine business, Jeanne and I went into town to do our usual walkabout. Sheridan, like most of the other towns in Wyoming, was pretty much devoid of stray garbage and well maintained. It was also a continuing, refreshing experience to encounter ZERO instances of graffiti and homeless encampments/garbage dumps! Maybe a partial explanation for the lack of graffiti could be that there seems to be a proliferation of local residents who are well armed and willing to protect their environment from the thugs who currently infect a majority of our society. To borrow a famous movie quote (albeit altered), “Dorothy, your not in Kalifornia any more.” The main drag had a multitude of mostly cowboy & fishing themed statues. At Peter D’s direction, we had to poke our heads into King’s Saddlery, home of the world famous King’s ropes (as in those that are used in cowboy-ing and rodeos). King’s definitely jammed in a ton of goods into a small space! They make and sell saddles and all things leather having to do with the cowboy lifestyle. The back “room” to the showroom was a free museum of, well, you probably guessed it, everything of a western theme. Wall to wall saddles, guns, related equipment, and of course the prerequisite trophy heads mounted on the walls.

Jeanne, as usual, came up with our local sight-seeing adventure this time around – Shell Creek Falls. We loaded up Woodrow Wilson bright and early one morning and headed out on the 68 mile drive to the falls. This took us to Ranchester, then west on Hwy. 14 through the heart of the Cloud Peak Wilderness Area in the Bighorn National Forest. There was still a bit of snow as we climbed into the 9,000’+ range, and we were giddy the whole way anticipating all the multitudinous herds of moose and elk we were about to behold. Sibley Lake sits right off the roadway and was a “cool” sight to see, totally frozen over. We stopped at Burgess Junction to have breakfast at the Moose Crossing Restaurant inside the Bear Lodge Resort. For any of you thinking of checking it out, better that you maybe start that diet you’ve been mulling over. A simple bacon-egg-hashbrown breakfast was absolutely ruined with the worst hashbrowns we have ever had (even Jeanne complained she dang-near broke a tooth gnawing on the badly overcooked potato shards). With our teeth still intact, we continued on to the falls. There is a small Forest Service center on site and lots of concrete walkways leading to various sections of the canyon top overseeing areas of Shell Creek, as well as the waterfall. It was unfortunate for us that the FS center, the heads, and the parking lot were closed (I am assuming seasonally), however we could still access the walkways for all the viewing. In fact, there were many other folks taking in the views at the same time as us, I might suppose the place was just as busy as if it were open. We headed back home, planning on grabbing a little Jeep trail road (FR 26 aka: Copper Creek Rd.). Unfortunately (or very fortunately, depending on your perspective and whether you are a “glass half-full or half-empty” kinda spirit) the beginning of the road was covered with substantial snow. Not wishing to become a customer of the local Search & Rescue outfit, we sagely decided to backtrack Hwy. 14 instead. The whole moose-elk thing was a thorough disappointment, not a single sighting the entire 136 miles. We did happen upon numerous sightings of Pronghorn (sometimes referred to as Antelope, sometimes Deer) but like as was once said in another altered TV show phrase, as the Soup Nazi said in “Seinfeld”, “No photos for you!”

We have found the people of Sheridan to be over-the-top friendly. Special thanks to Peter D and to Tom Schwerr for your time, insights, and stories. We have successfully set up a visit by a mobile RV tech as soon as we land in Rapid City. Hopefully, we can get the grinding issue with the slideout resolved through him. Until next post we, as you, will just have to wait and see…

W. Yellowstone Follies

Posted on May 19, 2021 by rvrrat520

Before we could EVEN get serious about our travels, we headed back to Caldwell, ID so as to retrieve our bicycles from our storage unit. A couple of days there got us a very nice catch-up visit with Jim & Stacy Camara (former co-workers, from another life seemingly far, far away). Bicycles in the rack, it was onward & upward.

Our first planned gig was to stay in the megalopolis of W. Yellowstone, MT and check out the area other than Yellowstone National Park (we had pretty well covered that on two prior trips). Jeanne found Baker’s Hole Campground just 3 miles outside of town, a National Forest Service campground in the Gallatin National Forest. This was a scenic little campground right on the Madison River and actually had some limited sites with electric hook-ups. It was heavily forested but we actually got a site with enough open sky to get non-HD satellite reception. (Note: this campground fills very fast, it is suggested you get here well before noon if you intend to get a spot with electric. I particularly liked site #22, a long, pull through with probably enough open sky for satellite reception). They had water spigots scattered about the campground, as well as pit toilets, but no sewer connections or dump station on site. The interior roads were pretty skinny & tight, but I think I managed to navigate them without destroying the 40’ beast’s paint job. We got set up, reconnoitered the campground, the Madison River and downtown, and generally settled in for the next 4 days. It appeared to me that the Madison River is a pretty big deal in the fly fishing world (take heed, Paul Sullivan!) and there was no shortage of fishing guide outfits in town.

Our big adventure day we chose to take a bit of a driving tour (200+ miles roundtrip). The first leg of the trip took us from our campsite on Hwy. 191 north to Hwy. 287, then to the areas of Hebgen Lake and Earthquake Lake. Hebgen Lake was beautiful and fairly large. Unfortunately, a sign posted at the lake informed us that during certain times a green algae pops up making the water toxic to humans and pets. I guess looks can definitely be deceiving. Continuing north on Hwy. 287, just a stone’s throw from Hebgen, we found Earthquake Lake. It seems back in 1959 a 7.5 quake hit the area near midnight causing a massive landslide which blocked off the river in what was called Madison Canyon, creating Earthquake Lake. It was a local catastrophe, 28 people died, about 250 folks (campers in the area and residents) were trapped/stranded as the roads were destroyed by the quake. The new “dam” caused the Madison River to morph into Earthquake Lake, gaining about 9’ of depth per day for about 3 weeks, to its eventual size of 5 miles long and about 190’ deep.

At the small town of Ennis, Hwy. 287 forked off and took us to the two small Montana ghost towns of Virginia City and Nevada City. These are not true “ghost towns” in the strictest sense of the phrase. Nevada City is a group of salvaged buildings that had been relocated and grouped together on the site they now occupy, and is a tourist attraction that at the time of our visit was not open for the season yet. However, we were able to walk about the exterior and at least see the structures from the outside, all in all still interesting to see.

Virginia City is a different type of ghost town. There are numerous currently operating businesses interspersed among “ghost town” structures & businesses throughout the downtown area. Many of the “ghosties” had open doors which gave us views of the interiors as they had operated back in their days. There was also a small “boot hill” cemetery perched on a hill overlooking downtown. Both of these ghost towns are nowhere near anything like normal ghost towns such as Bodie, CA, but are still fun to explore.

Our driving tour continued as we backtracked to Ennis, then continued on the main spur of Hwy. 287 up to Norris, turned east on Hwy. 84 to Four Corners where we started south back on Hwy. 191. Our destination was the town area of Big Sky, MT and along this part of Hwy. 191 we were treated to some beautiful scenery as the highway follows along the Gallatin River. We even happened upon a stretch where we could watch some white water rafters.

This guy was watching the rafters as well…

Upon our arrival to Big Sky, after a short break for lunch at the Lone Peak Brewery & Taphouse, we headed off for Ousel Falls. The trail to the falls was well constructed, well maintained, fairly busy, and pet friendly, so Woodrow Wilson got to stretch his legs and lead us on the short jaunt (1.6 miles) to the falls. The trail had some brief, minor elevation changes, but nothing difficult and no obstacles/rock scrambling. Again, beautiful scenery, worth the effort, but I have to say it was not one of the most spectacular waterfalls we have ever seen.

On our return to the campground, it was time to re-arrange our travel plans. At our last travel day we encountered issues with one of the bedroom slideouts. It appeared the dual motors were not operating in sync. If you know me or have been following this blog at all you already know that I am fairly incompetent in “the ways of the wrench”. So how the heck do I fix this sync thing?!? Well, by golly, when in the dark, find the light, in this case go to the good ol’ standby…the Tiffin RV Network (tiffinrvnetwork.com). Bazillions of topics, comments, common problems, common fixes, etc. posted by Tiffin owners. Lo, and behold, there I found a step-by-step on how to re-sync the slide motors. On moving day, I followed the step-by-step and son of a gun the slide seemed to return to sync. This came with a big “BUT”, as we have recently also encountered a God-awful metallic grinding at the beginning of retraction for that very same slideout. Even in sync, the grind remained. So instead of our formerly planned short travel days here and there through Wyoming toward South Dakota, we decided to change to a straight shot into Rapid City. From W. Yellowstone we headed into Sheridan, WY and took a 4 day respite to check out the area and in the meantime make an appointment for someone to check out the grinding. Jeanne located a mobile RV tech in the Rapid City area and made contact with him to arrange for the diagnosis/repairs. Our 4 day stay in Sheridan, WY will be covered in the next blog post, so stay tuned…

C’mon, Man, Give Me a Brake/Break!

Posted on March 4, 2021 by rvrrat520

Yeah, it’s been a while, but not a lot to catch up to. A lot of family stuff keeping us on the left coast, but we did manage to sneak over to southern Nevada for some alone time. First stop was bee-you-tee-full Pahrump, Nevada where we spent a couple weeks hangin’ at the Pair-A-Dice SKP park. With the insane China-virus-hysteria still in full force, going places and trying to live life normally is still nigh on impossible. The really nice thing about Pahrump is it is surrounded by open desert, with scads of areas to head out to in the Jeep and cap a few rounds off to relieve some of the daily pressures (OK, so the only limit on the number of rounds I capped was the severe pain-in-the-ass shortage of ammunition available in any of the gun & shooting supply stores).

Heading, yet again back into “unfriendly territory” that is, Kalifornia, we wanted to do a few days of boondocking on the west side of Death Valley, a place known as the Panamint Valley dispersed camping area. This would turn out to be more of an adventure than we bargained for. Taking Hwy. 190 west through Death Valley, between Stovepipe Wells & Panamint Springs, we encountered a “glitch”. Now having been full-timing on the road for over 8 years, ocean to ocean and passing through all of the lower 48, I have traversed some of the steepest grades this country has to offer. But on this particular trip, I have found one of the worst. The above mentioned section of Hwy. 190 happens to contain a 9 mile stretch of 9% downhill grade. Thus far I have been able to manage all grades utilizing my lower gears coupled with my engine brake. Any brake use has been infrequent pumping just to take the edge off my RPM’s. But 6 miles into this downhill we got nailed with “that odor”. I immediately found a skinny piece of shoulder to pull off and stop. As I opened the door, the tell-tale “wisps” of smoke were emanating from my front wheels. Ouch. So there we sat, staring off at the flat valley floor 3 miles ahead. After a 30 minute “brake” break, I fired ol’ Rosie up and continued downhill. Not wishing to even touch my brake pedal, I made it down the remaining 3 miles using only first & second gears with the engine brake and absolutely no brake pedal use. Whheeeeeewwwwww! We made it to the dispersed camping area just west of the road to Ballarat and gleefully set up for a big “brake” break, 3 night’s worth, to be exact.

Being this close to the ghost town of Ballarat, we just HAD to see it. It was a mere few miles drive down the dirt road (don’t worry, all you “pavement Princesses” out there, no high clearance or 4×4 necessary) to get to the “center of town”. This was about as disappointing as a “ghost town” could be. There were a couple of mud walls here and there, old metal parts and pieces scattered about, and one whole building with a sign designating it the “Ballarat Jail-Morgue 1898”. I have my suspicions as to the authenticity of the sign.

Just walls left on all but one building in “town”

Seeing we had been to Death Valley on a few prior trips, there was not much to try and see. But we were close to the Windrose Charcoal Kilns so we took the slow drive up into the hills. The kilns were used by the early miners to create the fuels (charcoal, I presume) used for smelting. We found them to be pretty well preserved.

The really big downer about this time around in Death Valley, it happened to be nearly full moons all 3 nights. If you are not aware of it, Death Valley is an international Dark Sky Park. Needless to say, skies aren’t much dark if there is a big ol’ lit up cheese ball right in the middle of them. We missed out, big time.

OK, so that kinda catches us up for now. Until next post…

Does Anybody Want to Save a Boatload of Money?

Posted on October 21, 2020 by rvrrat520

This post will be a short mish-mash of disorganization since we have not exactly settled back into our “routine”, but the main point will be about a great money-saving tip, provided to us by our RV friends Bud & Meredith Bradley. That will come at the end. But for now, since the great year of 2020 has been such a disaster and none of our plans have panned out (or so it would seem), we contemplated our future travels. We came up with plan #7,892. That would be a run back into the great state of Texas, after, of course, a short visit with the kids & grandkids. Texas has not fallen off our radar screen as a potential landing target when we decide to “retire” from the full-time RVing lifestyle, the eastern half of the state in particular. We also anticipate this year to be the first for us where we will not return to Kalifornia for family holiday times.

We hit Kalifornia, still suffering smoke filled skies albeit not as thick as before, returned Jeanne’s mom to her normal life, then made a beeline south for some children & grandchildren time, first stop Santa Rosa, with our home parked at the Petaluma Elk’s Lodge. Jenn, Gus, & grandson Max “The Gladiator” have been poised, seemingly forever, to get evacuated due to the wildfires in their area, but now the danger was diminishing, enough so that we actually drove into the danger zone to visit them. Max will be having his 9th birthday at the end of November, so we celebrated a little early. Max is into Nerf guns & Pokemon cards, and he made bank on Nerf gear and Pokemon. I was trying to figure out the Pokemon “game”, but I swear, the people who come up with this stuff must be on a continual acid trip! We then chased each other around, blasting away, Nerf darts everywhere! We wanted to go check out a local brewery, Cooperage, but thanks to China, they were not open on the day we were there. So we ended up at 3rd St. Aleworks in downtown Santa Rosa. Unremarkable beers, not the best nachos we’ve had, but we still had fun with Jenn & Max. While at Jenn’s, I took the opportunity to make use of her kitchen and cook up a whole bunch of my father’s famous Chile Verde burritos which we promptly chowed down on. I rolled up a bunch for Gus to take in his lunches, as well as a bunch for us to freeze in the bus for easy dinner nights. Jenn & Gus had chef’s duty one night and they made some outstanding street tacos for us. It was a very nice visit, as usual, and sad to see it end.

Atascadero Elk’s Lodge (my home lodge) was our next run. As is the case with most of the Elk’s Lodges, the lodges & lounges are still closed because of the China virus bull$hit but thankfully the RV lots are open. We had fun with Chad, Crissy, Little Miss Hailey & Little Miss Ellie, even a couple of granddaughter sleep-overs in the “camping bus” as they call it. We had arts-n-crafts time, Jeanne found a new hairdresser (see photo), and mommy & daddy got a childless date night. With Jeanne’s birthday just passed, Chad & Crissy also treated us to a birthday dinner followed by some ice-cream cake. One day Chad & Crissy took us to their club winery, Rava, where they did their product pick-up and we got to sample some of the winery’s offerings. Hailey & Ellie had fun running around the small pond and playing on the swings. During our time here Chad took Jeanne & I to check out Manrock Brewing Co., Santa Maria Brewing Co., and Liquid Gravity Brewing Co. One standout quaff was Liquid Gravity’s “Twist & Stout”, an imperial double stout. We took everyone out to dinner at a little hole-in-the-wall called “Don Q’s Restaurant”. The service was not great (mostly due to the China virus hysteria, no doubt), but the food was unique and very tasty.

Miss Hailey Hairstyles, by appointment only.

After saying our good-bye’s it was eastbound & down. It would seem the motorhome gremlins had recently hitched a ride with us. We started with my DEF system. We had just fueled up, DEF included, when out of nowhere my “DEF Low” emergency warning light and dinger came on while driving down the road. Scratching my head, I got out and checked the DEF tank. No obvious leakage, the little red light on the gauge lit up but the gauge showed full, so I popped the cap and re-seated it thinking it could be similar to when your “check engine” light comes on in your car & they always start with checking your gas cap. As we continued down the road, the “DEF Low” warning continued, but stopped after a short distance, so I repeated the “scratch head” motion and kept going. Probably a couple hundred miles down the road the Gremlins were thinking I had it too easy, so my “jacks down” warning light and siren goes off. Repeating the “scratch head” motion, I got out and checked the guilty jack. Sure as $hit, it had rattled down about an inch from it’s normal seated position. I checked the bay containing my hydraulics system, found no obvious leakage, then hit the auto-store button again. The errant jack pulled back to it’s normal storage position and my hand returned to it’s now-normal “scratch head” position. So, our escape from Kalifornia went like this. Keep in mind, I personally do not like long travel days, and if I drive more than about 4 hours I am not having fun. We did a long run from Atascadero to the Needles Elk’s Lodge. Their RV lot is just a flat dirt/gravel lot with FHU’s, but you can’t complain about the $20/night rate. Since it was just an overnighter, we left the Jeep hooked up to Rosie the bus. The next day it was off to Gallup, NM and the USA RV Park. There, we needed to disconnect and use the Jeep but in unhooking it, BAM! the gremlins struck the Jeep and killed the battery. Now, when the supplemental air brake system was installed the tech told me they put in a trickle charger for the Jeep battery, so I did not need to disconnect the battery when towing any more (as I had been up to then). So much for trusting the “trickle charge”. I got a jump from the clerk at the park and ran the Jeep for a while to get it back up to speed. In the morning I ran the Jeep into town for a little more charging, then we hooked up, disconnected the battery, and off to the races we were. Another long day brought us to Clovis, NM and the Wagon Wheel RV Park. We left the Jeep hooked up overnight, then continued eastbound into Texas. We landed in Waco after yet another long day’s drive, just barely beating the sunset. Jeanne found an RV park called Flat Creek Farms RV Park and we pulled in just as the sun disappeared. Those dang gremlins hit me again! Dead battery, again! Bottom line – there were no spaces available at the park, so we had to overnight at a nearby Flying J, with another jump start to start the next day. And just to pile on my already $hitty disposition, driving through the nightmare of a residential area just to get to the RV park I had to maneuver through skinny streets and low hanging trees. In doing so, my satellite antenna took some serious damage from one of the branches. Hey, Jeanne, have you had enough lessons in 4-letter word vocabulary yet?

A sign spotted at the local grocery store (Indian reservation country). Is that all you need to ward off Mr. Repo Man?

Well, we found space the next day at the North Crest RV Park in Waco. There, we got set up and promptly drove the Jeep to Autozone where they checked the battery and charging system, no issues. Head scratched. I also found a mobil satellite repair outfit, SATS2GO, out of the Willis area, so after a few days of rest and decompression, we moved the short distance over to the Conroe Lake/Houston No. KOA. So here we sit, waiting for the satellite repair, then it will be on to some good ol’ Texas ‘splorin’.

North Crest RV Park is buried in large trees.

I guess it wasn’t as short as I thought it would be. I mentioned saving some greenbacks. Our road warrior buddies & fellow Texans, Bud & Meredith, recently turned us on to an RV Fuel Program by TSD Logistics, Inc. It is a credit card system you use at truck stops. They have a $20 sign up fee and easy-to-use phone app (that’s “easy” according to Jeanne), you just need to use the trucker lanes at the truck stops when you fuel up. It does not include discounts for DEF, but the diesel savings is substantial! There are various participating gas stations and each has some minor (cents, not dollars) fees they add to the transactions. Examples of the savings we have enjoyed are: 32.97 gallons purchased, saved $19.03; 40.29 gallons purchased, saved $12.97; 55.73 gallons purchased, saved $34.94; 63.75 gallons purchased, saved $36.15; and 63.94 gallons purchased, saved $48.09. I’ll leave it to you do do your own math re: price per gallon savings. Pilot stations (and presumably Flying J) do not participate in the TSD program for RV’s, they already do the Good Sam program.

That sort of catches us up for now. Until next post…

Circle the Wagons, Squaring the Circle, Circular Logic…

Posted on September 23, 2020 by rvrrat520

You get the picture, right? Circle? We basically left Idaho, “circled” back down to Kalifornia then back to Idaho (with Jeanne’s mom Yvonne in tow) to give Yvonne a little break/vacation from Anderson, CA. The “circling” went like this…

Our first stop after leaving the Cd’A Casino was the Columbia Sun RV Resort in Kennewick, WA for a few days. This is a very nice RV resort in the tri-cities area. We managed to make time for some drive around exploring as well as a bike ride along the Columbia River on the Sacagawea Heritage Trail and the Columbia Park Trail. During our bike ride we rode through a section along the river where workers were setting up for an upcoming event. In a unique response to the current bull$hit China virus hysteria, the workers were setting up assigned spaces right on the river for the upcoming annual air show that was about to be held over the river. The assigned spaces were for spectators to park their cars on (in good ol’ American “drive-in” fashion). We got some nice river views, including highway bridges and the Gateway Arch, Tower Beacon lighthouse. On our local drive we found the Bombing Range Brewing Co. which we just HAD to check out. The beers were OK, as was the rather large taco salad, and it is definitely a pro L.E. outfit.

From Kennewick we returned to Caldwell, ID to offload our bicycles, then continued south toward Anderson, CA. We overnighted at a brand new (in fact, still in progress) RV park in Burns, OR, called Quail Ridge RV Park. Quail Ridge is not much of what I would call a “vacation destination park”, but it does have FHU’s on a large open gravel lot. Since we had left Caldwell, we were plagued with smoky skies from all the left coast wildfires. We sucked it up and drove straight on through to Anderson, taking Hwy. 395 down to Alturas, then Hwy. 299 into Redding, smoky skies all the way. A couple of nights at the Win-River Casino and then it was back toward Idaho, trying to escape the ever-increasing burnt skies, with Yvonne riding shotgun. We initially wanted to drive up through Klamath Falls, OR into Bend, then over back to Caldwell. Those plans, like most well-laid plans, changed on the fly due to wildfires and road closures. We were forced to backtrack the way we came into Kalifornia. “$%#&*@!”

We were unable to find much relief from the intense smoke. Here is a bit of a montage of what we encountered all the way back into Idaho.

We overnighted at the Desert Rose Casino in Alturas, CA. This is a small, hole-in-the-wall casino but they do have a large flat back lot area on which they allow free overnight RV parking. Then it was on back to Quail Ridge RV Park for a 2 day rest, and finally back to Ambassador RV Resort in Caldwell.

Our home at Desert Rose Casino. Not a lot of neighbors…

Our whole time, so far, here in Caldwell has been cursed with smoke filled skies. With just a few days left, we will be making the return trip into Kalifornia. And right now, as it stands, our plans are in perpetual change mode. You’ll just have to wait…until next post.

A Little Idaho Wandering

Posted on August 30, 2020 by rvrrat520

The start of this post will be a bit boring for all you non-blogger types out there, I give you fair warning. So if you are so inclined you will probably want to skip forward to the photos. And to top all of my incompetence off, I see my photo captions are not appearing in the blog itself. Great! More headache to deal with, so bear with me. At least you can see the pictures!

I am the furthest from being computer savvy that a human can possibly get, so why I let Jeanne talk me into doing a blog in the first place just boggles my mind. But I had managed to fake my way through it for the past almost 8 years, so there’s that going for me. We started with Blogpost, but quickly switched over to WordPress and chose to let WP be our hosted server. When we wanted to access certain effects (fonts, schemes, colors, etc.) we had to upgrade to the WP business plan which was running us $300 per year plus having to renew our domain name independently (another $18 for the year, through Wild West Domains). I put up with all the occasional “upgrades” that WP kept putting out, having to decipher and relearn how to do some of the simple stuff (managing media-photos, learning the new “block editing” style, etc.). Now, we are thinking hard about coming off the road and “landing” somewhere, maybe going part-time instead of full-time RVing. We’re not in much of a hurry, but are giving serious consideration to a couple of particular areas. In anticipation of all that, I wanted to capture my entire 8 year blog onto some type of printable format. My computer advisor (Jeanne) found a plug-in at WordPress, “Print My Blog”, and looking into it, I thought it just might work. Alas, how I was wrong! I fiddle-farted with it for days trying to get a successful result, but all I got was a haphazard mish-mash of text and photos that were cut in half between pages and it threw me into a cyber rage! I wasn’t able to figure out if or how to edit the mish-mash into something usable. Again, my computer advisor (cooler heads always prevail!) hit me with something she found while surfing the ‘net called blogbooker.com run through WP. Blogbooker turns blogs into a book format, at least for those that really are savvy. In my exploring Blogbooker, I took a chance and $30 later had the standard plan loaded up. It did not take long to complete, however the PDF version that appeared was a mess as well. My photos were no longer in their original arrangement, there was a fancy table of contents page that had a strange numbering system for my “chapters”, there were long spaces, sometimes entire blank pages between posts and pix, and the pix were of a large variety. Again, I don’t know how to edit a PDF, but I figured out enough to copy & paste what I wanted into a Pages document, then spent a couple of weeks editing that document into something that makes sense and is manageable. Because of all that hassle, and after consulting my computer advisor, we decided to change our WordPress hosting over to Bluehost shared hosting. That just created a whole ‘nother series of cyber-rage-blowouts with me schooling Jeanne on my vast vocabulary of 4-letter words. I transferred my domain registration from Wild West Domains to Bluehost (many hours spent on hold with their tech support getting secret codes and whatnot to unlock MY domain name and allow the transfer), then signed up for the Bluehost Choice Plus plan. In some circumstances, you can actually migrate your entire existing blog over to Bluehost, and after another few hours on hold and talking with tech support, I found they offer to migrate your blog (for a $150 fee) for you. That would be handy to a skilled computer expert such as I (NOT!), but then the tech also clued me in that they do not recommend migrating WordPress blogs such as mine due to loss of certain functionalities and possibly some material (great, just my luck). So I sucked it up and decided to start off anew, having the peace of mind that I captured my previous 8 years onto something printable. That does no good for any of you who wish to go back and visit some of our past haunts, and for that I sincerely apologize. Also, I apologize if the “notify by e-mail” function has been interfered with or deleted for those of you who actually signed up for it. So, that brings us to current events, ending all this breathless bloviating.

Southern Idaho is our current focus on possible landing zones. One, it IS NOT Kalifornia. Two, it is within a doable striking distance to all our family still residing in Gavin’s Autocracy (aka: Kalifornia). Three, the weather is tolerable. And four, it IS NOT Kalifornia. We spent a few busy days back at the Ambassador RV Resort in Caldwell, getting some chores done. While there we had a local outfit wash & wax Rosie the MH. We also had just completed moving our stuff from a little 5×5 storage still in Santa Rosa, CA ($103/month), up to a 5×10 storage unit in Star, ID ($63/month), so we needed to get things organized and arranged. We also downloaded some unnecessary “ballast” from the bus (stuff we don’t use or need on the road).

One shiny beast, at home at Ambassador RV Resort.

We wanted to check out the area of Moscow, ID, so it was north on Hwy. 95 from Ontario, ID. We picked Canyon Pines RV Resort for an overnight stay in the area of Pollock, ID. This is out in the middle of nowhere right on the Little Salmon River. It was a very nice RV park just south of Riggins, ID. One of the reasons we chose the area was we really wanted to go see the Hell’s Canyon area, however in talking to the locals, every which way we turned it was a spread out area with just enough driving time to get to for us to be discouraged enough to cancel that thought.

Lewiston, ID was next on the itinerary. We found the Clearwater River Casino & Resort to spend a few days at while exploring the area. The RV lot associated with the casino is really a dump, but at least it had FHU’s. The location was good for us, what with Lewiston ID and Clarkston, WA right there at the confluence of the Clearwater River and Snake River (which acts as the border here between ID and WA). We got to get some shopping for supplies done (Walmart, Costco, etc.), and we chose to do the short roadtrip into Moscow in the Jeep, sans Rosie. And of course, we had to donate to the local economy of the Nez Perce tribe…

Having already inspected Moscow, we drove on past and landed back in Core-dee-ay-lean, ID (OK, aka: CD’A or Coeur d’Alene). We stuck out a few days at the Elk’s Lodge there (nice weather, by the way!), then spent 5 days at the Blackwell Island RV Resort right on the Spokane River at Lake Coeur d’Alene. This is a very nice resort park with both human and dog beach areas, boat dock, and even a small dirt BMX track for smaller kids. We spent some more time checking out CD’A (we thinks maybe a bit more snow than we would like to see in wintertime, and talking to some locals it appears Fall time the sun tends to disappear 3-4ish in the young afternoons). We also tried out a few more of the local breweries, this round “Daft Badger Brewing” and “Trail’s End Brewing” both had some tasty offerings. Daft Badger had a half order of nachos that was absolutely huge (very tasty) & we ended up boxing up about 2/3 of it for take-home!

Our bicycles have been feeling neglected for quite a while (inanimate objects “feeling”?????), so we hit the Prairie/Centennial trails that follow along the Spokane River. We meandered along the path for a 3-hour ride, then took a short jaunt into the marina area of CD’A and McEuen Park. After our bicycle trek, I needed to fabricate some type of bicycle rack we could carry with us in the bus (I forgot and left our old store-bought one at one of our stops in Montana). So a run into the local Lowe’s scored me some PVC pipes & joints. 30 minutes of manual labor and voila!, one bicycle rack in hand.

The weather was very pleasurable in CD’A, clear skies, 80-90’s in temperature, and our Sea Eagle kayak was yelling out our names from it’s dust gathering position in our storage bays. We launched from the RV park boat ramp/beach area and cruised up the Spokane River for about an hour, cruising through some pretty fancy riverside homes, before discovering our inflatable floor section was losing air. So we turned around and returned to the park. An inspection of the air valve for the floor section revealed a nick in the plastic rim was causing the leak. Hello again, Lowe’s! No luck finding some type of rubber seal/washer that I could use to seal the leak, good ol’ Google to the rescue sent me to the local Ace Hardware establishment. They had a plethora of different types of seals & washers. I picked a few different types and found the good old-fashioned O-ring did the trick. Good to go for the next ocean voyage…

Finished at Blackwell, we made the arduous journey (OK, 30 miles away) over to the Coeur d’Alene Resort & Casino near Worley, ID for a couple of days of boondocking (free) in their parking lot for RV’s. They do have numerous 50A hookups for which they ask $20/night, then refund some of that onto a Player’s Card if you so choose to get one inside the casino. And yes, again, we donated to the local economy of the Coeur d’Alene Reservation. This is a nice Casino/Resort which has an 18-hole golf course which I guess is used in the LPGA tour (or so their signage tells us).

Our home at Coeur d’Alene Casino & Resort

So, our plans are to kinda circle back on down to Caldwell, ID through Kennewick, WA, where we are going to do some more sorting through the storage stuff and prepare for a run into Redding, CA to pick up Jeanne’s mother & bring her back to Idaho for a couple weeks or so. It’s all tentative, never know when something attracts our eye…Until next post!

****OK. So this is an edit added at the end. I’m trying to solve my lack of captions and thinking maybe the artsy-fartsy mosaic type of format isn’t supporting the use of captions. So here I will add pix into the standard “gallery” block in WP. I can’t cross my fingers any more than they are now, they look like one big Gordian Knot. I see the captions appear at the bottom of these pix in the edit, I’m assuming they will show up on the blog once I update the post. If you find no other edit additions in the waning seconds after I publish this one, I have solved that issue, WHEW! But now I am disappointed I cannot caption my pix in the mosaic mode. Baby steps…

****OK, so I lied. This addition to the addition is to inform y’all that I went back and changed my artistic mosaic format of my photo blocks into a standard “gallery” block and added the captions back in, it drove me nuts having certain types of photos with no explanation (aka:caption). I will reserve my future use of the mosaic style for those series of photos that need no caption…Now, I really mean it, “until next post…”

Life goes on…

Posted on August 14, 2020 by rvrrat520

China virus… Riots all around… Goofy politicians. Unneccessary societal closures… & tons of new RVers out there making it a little tougher to find spaces at RV parks…like I started out, life goes on. Sorry, it’s been a little while since my last real post, but we’ve been floating in limbo pretty much all year, as have most of you. A big change for us has been our decision to change this blog over from WordPress hosting to Bluehost shared hosting. The big drawback was we could not bring the entire 8 years prior worth of posts over to Bluehost, so we are basically starting from scratch here. So be it…

I am still trying to get acclimated to Bluehost, so this post functions as a test procedure, as well as keeping y’all up to date on our limited activities. From Kalifornia, we headed up to Idaho. We are still looking for a possible landing zone to come off the full-time road gig, and the southern part of Idaho is currently on our radar. Jeanne wanted to do some boondocking, so one of our first excursions was to some Forest Service land near Sun Valley, ski area to the stars. As it turned out, someone mentioned that to get to the area we stayed at, we had to drive past Arnold Schwarzenneger’s fancy digs. Not sure if that was true or not, no sightings of the Terminator. While here we walked Woody around the area of our site, checked out the ski lodge area, and took a drive to Stanley to see the valley below the Sawtooth Mountains.

Our home at the Lake Creek Rd. NFS area of Sun Valley.

We stopped off for a couple of days to stay at the Mountain Home RV Resort. We ran into a little plumbing issue with our kitchen sink drain hose (OK, a leak!). Unfortunately, I found trying to find some replacement one & a half inch flex hose to be a daunting task. In the tiny hamlet of Mountain Home, I hit every plumbing, hardware, and ranch supply store they had – not a one had what I needed. They all pointed me to the tiny local RV parts store, which just happened to be closed that day. I called the big boys, Home Depot & Lowe’s in Boise (50 miles away) and neither of them had it either. I lucked out and found Dillon’s RV, Marine, & Powersports in Boise that just happened to have my hose. Yippee! A short road trip and wham, bam, fix was done!

The pool/spa area at Mountain Home RV Resort

We had to make a side run back to Eugene, OR, to get some body work done on Rosie the bus and once finished, we headed back toward Idaho. Ourt next stop was the Elk’s Lodge RV lot in Bend, OR. There, Jeanne found the Deschutes River Trail, about a 3-mile loop trail that followed a section of the river from Farewell Bend Park. We left Woodrow Wilson at home for that one. It was a nice, easy, scenic hike on well kept dirt trails. I felt like we were living out the sci-fi movie “They Live”, what with all the goofballs using the trail while wearing the stupid face masks and getting nasty stares from some of them because I absolutely refuse to wear one outdoors.

We also took a short drive up to the ski lodge area of Mt. Bachelor. There, we found an RV area on the paved lot, some sites (20, I think) with power, and a large area for boondocking. They did have a nice shower/restroom building but I found they want $50/night for the power sites, just a bit way too much for the location.

From Bend we returned to the Boise area. We are planning to spend a good part of this winter in this area, provided we can get a monthly gig at one of the local RV parks. But in the meantime, we spent a very busy couple of weeks scouting, checking out properties, sub-divisions, and the area in general, everything short of contacting realtors. No decisions made, but as I started out, life goes on… Until next post.

Road Trippin', Watkins Style

Prowled county roads for a living, prowling country roads in retirement!

Tag Archives: Full time RV