11/16/2018 Well, Smoky Skies is the New Norm, I Guess…

Work finished on Rosie, it was back on the road to visit the kids and grandkids in Kalifornia and get some medical visits out of the way. Our first stop  was in the megalopolis of Sutherlin, OR. We made a return trip to the Escapee park there, the Timber Valley SKP Park for a couple of days. This is a fairly nice park as far as Escapee RV Club parks goes; spacious sites, nice dry-camping sites also available, lots of wild critters to see, and what I call “SKP Reasonable” as far as nightly rates go ($22 per night). I don’t know how I managed to do it but I found my cousin Mike and his wife Cherie, whom we have not seen in over 30 YEARS(!) or so. We got to have a very enjoyable “catch up” visit with them during our stop here.

Jeanne’s brother Dwayne and his wife Shelly have been on “piglet watch” of late, their pet pig Penelope about ready to pop. So our next stop was a 4 day layover at the Red Bluff (CA) Elks Lodge in the hopes we could be there for their “blessed event”. But alas, it was not to be during our stay. We still had nice visits with Jeanne’s brothers, Dwayne and David & families.

Our trek continued southbound, our next destination Coarsegold, CA and a visit with Jeanne’s mom Yvonne and her boyfriend, Fred. Fred was generous to allow us to once again mooch-dock at his daughter’s vacation home just across the street from his house. Besides being a nice visit, we managed to turn Yvonne onto the TV series “Suits” (I think it was a USA network series) through Amazon Prime. Now she is addicted… (It is a great show, once you start, it is hard not to binge watch…).

Then it was back to Atascadero to see our son Chad, wife Crissy and our granddaughters Little Miss Hailey and Little Miss Ellie. We split our time there between the Atascadero Elks Lodge (1 week limit per month) and the Vines RV Resort up north in Paso Robles. As is one of my favorite things (NOT!) about Kalifornia, the prices of everything continue to climb beyond ridiculous. Not only the $4 +/- per gallon for diesel fuel ($3.75 +/- per gallon for unleaded), but the Vines RV Resort (a SUN Resorts affiliate) upped their cheap sites to $65 per night and the Atascadero Elks is up to $35 per night for a dirt lot with hookups. And don’t get me started on the prices of groceries!

So the Charles Paddock Zoo in Atascadero puts on a yearly event called “Zoo Boo” at Halloween time. The whole family loaded up and took Hailey and Ellie to see Zoo Boo. Hailey had fun playing the games that were scattered around the zoo for non-edible “treats”.

We got the chance to babysit a few days and take Hailey and Ellie to the new playground just installed at Atascadero Lake Park. We also got some adult time in and visited the Barrel House Brewing Co. and Santa Maria Brewing Co. for snacks and tastings. BHBC has live entertainment in their yard where we got to see a guy named Patrick Contreras wail away on a fiddle (OK, v-i-o-l-i-n) while enjoying the best fish tacos I have ever had from Ruddell’s Smokehouse food truck.

The last couple of days we were here turned out to be the beginning of another Kalifornia inferno. The Camp Fire erupted up near Butte County, about 360 miles north of Atascadero. The smoke quickly filled the air as the fire was growing uncontrollably. And if that was not enough, the area of Ventura County to our south also began to burn out of control. These fires raged as we relocated north to Sonoma County for our medical chores and a visit with daughter Jenn, husband Gus, and grandson, Maximus the Gladiator. The smoke filled skies were horrendous, and some news outlets were claiming these skies were the most unhealthy, worldwide. Burning eyes, frequent hacking and sneeze-fests, I believe it! Our home in Sonoma County was the Petaluma Elks Lodge.

While back in this area, we wanted to go by and see the progress on restoration of the Coffey Park area, where our former lifelong home burned down in the big fire of October, 2017. It’s been over a year, but houses are starting to rise from the devastation. 

In between visits and medical appointments, we again found adult time to visit a couple of the local breweries, Russian River Brewing Co. (Windsor) and Henhouse Brewing (Petaluma). Russian River built a huge brewery in Windsor.

Well, that about catches us up to the present. Stay tuned, until the next post…