Approach to Red Bay

My technical adviser wants me to correct myself. Regarding getting the email notification about a new blog post, it does not contain a link, it just simply opens up into the blog itself. But if you choose to read it there, you cannot get the photos to open into the carousel mode of viewing, so all you will see is the cut-off versions. Like I advised, if you sign up for the email notification, once you receive one you would be better off just opening the blog in your browser of preference. Nuff said…

After leaving the North Shore area, we headed south, aiming for Red Bay, AL. We did an over-nighter at the Minneapolis Southwest KOA, then headed into Des Moines, IA for a couple of nights at the Des Moines West KOA. We made good use of our time in Des Moines, starting with a visit to the Des Moines Downtown Farmer’s Market in the Court Av. district at the base of the Polk County courthouse. This has to be one of the premier farmer’s markets we have been to, coast-to-coast, hands down. It was jam-packed, humans and K9’s, and they had wall to wall booths for farmer’s products, crafts, and all manner of food to nosh on. Several musical entertainers were interspersed throughout the massive downtown area. Being kinda like “produce snobs” (former life-long residents and escapees from California, the  produce capital of the U.S.), we were pleasantly surprised at the quality of the fruits & veggies.

While we were downtown, we veered over to the capitol complex and wandered the grounds taking in the statuary. At least we got to see some history before the numb-nuts cancel culture gets to it…

On our way to find some chow we cruised by and found Pappajohn Sculpture Park. A walkabout took us by several “interesting” pieces of sculpture. It appeared the park would best be enjoyed after dark, since all the sculptures seemed to have ample spotlights surrounding or contained within each piece.

From Des Moines we continued south to the tiny town of Kansas City, Missouri/Kansas and a couple of days at yet ANOTHER KOA, the Kansas City West/Lawrence KOA. It was OK as far as KOA’s go, the only drawback was it is about 30 minutes driving to get to downtown Kansas City and be prepared for at least one toll highway, I-70, the toll is between KC and Lawrence.

Our excursion into KC led us to check out the City Market, a semi-indoor marketplace. It was a sad example of a “city market” in that there was a serious lack of patronage when we were there.

Lunchtime we took a short stroll to Jack Stack Barbecue and partook of some BBQ that came highly recommended through social media and local sources. The area was pretty cool to walk through, the BBQ fare was good but not extraordinary.

For our grand finale in the big city we stopped by the Boulevard Brewing Co., local brewer of craft brews. What I found out, heretofore unbeknownst to me, was that Boulevard has two “sister” breweries, Brewery Ommegang and Firestone Walker Brewing Co., and those are certainly a pair to draw to! And Boulevard has an outstanding offering in their Space Camper Major Volta Imperial IPA…

Southbound and down, into Branson, MO we went. A couple of days visit with Jeanne’s sister Denise’s family provided us with a nice day on Table Rock Lake with Denise and husband Tom, and a nice BBQ feast put on by Jeanne’s niece Savohna and husband Robert. This stop has now taken top billing for how far off direction my on-board trucker’s version GPS (nicknamed “Rosie”) can possibly get. We were programmed for the Tall Pines RV Park near Silver Dollar City, but Rosie  took me in the opposite direction, up into the hills above Table Rock Lake and the half-lane wide, winding and congested roads. For that particular day’s lesson in 4-letter word vocabulary, Jeanne, I do sincerely apologize! 

Red Bay, Alabama hasn’t changed much over the course of the last 7 years. I’ll cover our exploits there in the next post, stay tuned…

Views From the North Shore Scenic Byway (aka: Hwy. 61 Along Lake Superior)

With Voyageur’s N.P. in our rear-view mirror, it was southward-bound. Still having issues finding available space at the RV parks, we snagged a one-nighter at the Cloquet-Duluth KOA and caught a couple more nights at the Tettegouche State Park. Between both stays, we managed some minor hikes to sights between Duluth and Grand Portage (the US/Canadian border), about a 146 mile stretch. As a start, Minnesota Point is a narrow strip of land projecting out to “sea” (meaning onto Lake Superior) which has several beach areas. Driving out that way we got some expansive views from the roadway looking down at Duluth. The day we were there it was not the greatest of beach weather, but the beaches were still pretty busy. On our way out of the area we got to see an “Aerial Lift Bridge” in action. That would be a form of a draw bridge that leads to the Duluth Harbor Basin. At the mouth of the canal they have the Duluth North Pier Lighthouse and the Duluth Harbor South Breakwater Outer Light, as well as the Duluth Harbor South Breakwater Inner light. Snapped a few pix, waited for the boat traffic to clear the aerial lift bridge, and off we went for more adventure.

Congdon Park in Duluth is home to Tischer Creek and the Tischer Creek Falls. They put in a nice creekside trail that was about a mile and a half of small waterfalls. We let Woodrow Wilson take us on that walkabout. Here’s a mishmash of sights along the trail…

The town of Two Harbors contains the Two Harbors Lighthouse Museum as well as the Two Harbors Lighthouse. We weren’t real keen on seeing ANOTHER lighthouse museum, but we hoofed it out to the lighthouse for views of town and the lake. Right across the bay from the lighthouse there was an interesting iron ore mining/processing center.

Beaver River Falls, located on, oh, let’s guess…the Beaver River, in, maybe, let’s see, the “town” of Beaver Bay, on, well, Beaver Bay of Lake Superior was another of the advertised “10 Best Waterfalls on Minnesota’s north shore”. Well, maybe in another life. At present time there was very little water in the river, so the “falls” were less than spectacular.

Split Rock Lighthouse is a popular tourist stop along the north shore. We opted not to pay the $24 to be able to get up close and personal with it, mainly because I am a cheap b@$t@rd and we have actually seen our share of lighthouses, both coasts and all points in between. But they had a nice wayside rest that had a clear view of the lighthouse, so I got my pix anyway.

Gooseberry State Park contains Gooseberry Falls with a short hike to see them. The hiking trails are easy, well kept and travelled, and parking can be a zoo during season. They say there are (5) total falls along the river here, but we kept to the main touristy few.

Tettegouche State Park gave us a pretty good workout. The trail to get to Two Step Falls was a mere one tenth of a mile from our house. The only issue was then it was a matter of 200 stair steps straight downhill to get to the viewing area. I know that I sucked a lot of air getting back to the top, but it was worth the view. High Falls was only a half mile hike from our house, but then it also added 100+ more stair steps, straight downhill. Again, the view was worth it and you also encounter  the swinging bridge. On a more even note (terrain-wise; “even”, get it?!?) it was an easy walk down to see the mouth of the Baptist River. We happened to accomplish that one early in the morning with NO beachgoers anywhere to be seen. 

Caribou Falls was another disappointment. We let Woody lead the way along the path which followed the Caribou River. They advertised less than one mile to get to the falls, however, the river was pretty sad water  volume-wise. We hiked more than one mile and saw no end in sight. I had my suspicions about the location of the falls and think we passed by the area without realizing it. The photos advertised were obviously in a heavy torrential setting, far from what we were looking at. It was still scenic, as the pictures suggest.

The Cross River Falls were pretty cool even though the water was low there as well. And these were right off the highway with no hike required.

Temperance River State Park is home to the Temperance River Falls. These falls landed into some deep gorges and again, this was right off the highway with very little hike to get to.

Cascade River State Park contains its namesake falls. These also included some fairly deep gorges. With most of the sightseeing points of interest located within various state parks, it is very convenient that if you pay for any of the park entrances ($7 per car/day), your pass gets you into all the parks. And as you can see, there are a lot of state parks  here on the North Shore.

And for our grand finale, we hit up Pigeon Falls on the Pigeon River at the US/Canadian border. In the advertising for these falls they are likened to another border waterfalls area, namely Niagara Falls. Sorry, no where near in the same class as Niagara and not even close to size and scope. But still, these were pretty cool falls, with an easy paved/boardwalk path to get to them.

OK, so I hope I left nothing out. And I really really really hope I get the right photos with the right narrative. But, hey, if I don’t, sue me. If you can find me. And remember, you should click on each of the photo blocks to be able to see the photos uncropped, in a carousel manner. Until next post…

Spearfish Canyon

Spearfish Canyon is a National Scenic Byway traversed by the So. Dakota road designated “Alt 14”. We loaded up Woody and headed out to sightsee a 13 mile section, basically between Spearfish and the area called Savoy. There are several trails, campgrounds, picnic areas, and points of interest along the route, we chose to travel from south to north, ending in Spearfish. 

At Savoy, before starting north, we headed down Roughlock Falls Rd. to check out a couple of points of interest. First up was Roughlock Falls. The falls are on Little Spearfish Creek about 1 mile past Savoy. They have a nice parking/staging area there, with well built/developed sidewalks with hand rails and various viewing platforms along the creek. It was nice to see the water here was just as clear as the waters in Montana and Wyoming. 2 more miles past Roughlock Falls lies a film site used in the movie “Dances With Wolves”. Not a big wow-factor for me, just another narrow canyon area among many. It might not even have been recognizable as the film site, considering our current time of year and the scenes in the movie were winter scenes…

Back to Alt 14 and points north. Right in beautiful “downtown” Savoy sits The Latchstring Restaurant sitting on the junction of Little Spearfish Creek and Spearfish Creek (the latter runs adjacent to Alt 14 all the way to Spearfish). Spearfish Falls is located directly behind the restaurant, accessed by a 1.5 mile roundtrip trail. The trail is easy, with just the first short section having a mild grade to it. This trail was also well maintained with a nicely developed viewing platform area at the bottom of the falls. There is an upper viewing area simply off the parking lot of the restaurant with a skewed angled view of the top of the falls. This was the most visually intense waterfall of the 3 total to be seen today.

Kissing Rocks (aka: The Dice) are laying in the middle of Spearfish Creek and if you are not paying attention, you can drive right by them without taking notice. There was barely enough shoulder to pull over to ogle, but we managed. Another feature known as “11th Hour Gulch” was supposedly a stone’s throw away. The gulch is a 50’ wide slot carved into the canyon, According to our “tour guide” (Spearfish Official Activity Guide), “blink and you’ll miss it.” And it claims there is a “parking lot” just downstream from the gulch. There is no “parking lot”. Yes, we blinked.

Victoria’s Tower is a limestone face rising above the canyon floor. We found it looming over a private residence in the canyon and photo opportunities were limited, but I successfully snagged a couple.

The Homestake #2 Hydroplant stood at the trailhead for The Devil’s Bathtub. The Homestake Mining Co. built the plant on Spearfish Creek in 1917 to generate power for use by their gold mine in nearby Lead. They have since abandoned use of this plant, but still use an older (1911) plant in Spearfish.

Woody decided to sit the next one out, so Jeanne & I took off K9-less in search of The Devil’s Bathtub. I do have to say the trail(s) to get there are a bit lacking in trail markers (to say the least), particularly since there are a lot of private residences/properties in the area with GREAT signage advising all to stay out. This was a moderate hike based on some rock scrambling as well as crossing the creek 8 times. If I’m not totally brain dead, I believe the bathtub is actually on Squaw Creek which feeds Spearfish Creek. Once we passed the third trail marker, we were on our own for trailblazing. Trails followed the creek on both sides, at times intermittently (hence the creek crossing) and there was quite a bit of foot traffic seeing that The Devil’s Bathtub is a pretty popular point of interest not only for we the tourists but also for locals. We hiked (more accurately described as “stumbled”) upstream for about 9 tenths of a mile and “found” The Devil’s Bathtub. Well, picture picture picture and we turned around and returned to the Jeep. We thought it was a cool find on our part…until the next day when surfin’ the web regarding The Devil’s Bathtub I discovered there is a common confusion as to where the bathtub is actually located. Many people stop at the “false” Devil’s Bathtub which is a small pool area fed by a short water slide/fall. In actuality The Devil’s Bathtub is about another 2 minutes upstream. Well, after giving Jeanne another of my awesome lessons in 4-letter vocabulary (%$#@&*^”%$#@&*^!!!!!!!!) we made another trip back to “the tub” a couple of days later and retraced our hike, this time actually arriving at The Devil’s Bathtub. I was glad we returned, the sights are spectacular. Now, for anyone planning on a visit, from The Devil’s Bathtub parking area it is a 2-mile round trip hike to see “the tub”.

The final point of interest we saw along the scenic byway was Bridal Veil Falls. There is a viewing platform right on the highway and no hiking to view the falls. It seems the name “Bridal Veil Falls” is used on numerous falls throughout our country, we have seen many. This was one of the most underwhelming I have seen.

That about covers us for the Spearfish Canyon National Scenic Byway. Until next post…

Christmas in Kalifornia, 2020

In Slidell, LA, home was the Slidell Elk’s Lodge. The lodge is settled in among the spanish moss covered oaks along the Liberty Bayou on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain. We stayed a couple of days and toured the areas we did not see when we were here years ago in the French Quarter. Jeanne found the Lafayette Cemeteries to be big in the tourism stream, so we ventured in. Cemetery #1 was closed for repairs, but we found #2 open and walked among some very old burial sites. Walking through the nearby neighborhood I was facinated with many of the old victorian homes with what appeared to be real gas porch lamps.

Jeanne also found the Audubon Park, home to the Tree of Life. There is an area of the park containing two meditation labyrinths and while we were there they were occupied by several folks meditating (it looked more like a yoga class to me, probably was). The Tree of Life is one gi-normous oak tree that draws a steady stream of visitors.

And of course, we just HAD to peek in on the Urban South (NOLA) brewery and pick up a few slushies for our son Chad to sample. As you may recall, we had just visited the Urban South HTX Brewery (Houston).

The travel from Slidell, LA was “pretty much” uneventful, with a series of overniters at various Elk’s Lodges and the Rover’s Roost SKP park in Casa Grande, AZ. Very few travel distances are complete without Murphy sticking his nose into everything and this one was no exception. We have always had bad luck with road quality along I-10 along the southern edge of the US. Somewhere in there we suffered a very large chipped floor tile in the bedroom, thank you Louisiana DOT. Oh well…

On a much happier note, we made it back to Kalifornia for the family XMAS with our kids/grandkids. Home was again the Atascadero Elk’s Lodge, and Chad & Crissy hosted us all at their house in Atascadero and a fun time was had by all. We spent one morning taking a family walk over to Atascadero Lake and walking around the lake. There we found someone has started a painted rock “snake”, trying to encircle the lake with painted rocks. Since I paint a few myself for our FB group “RVersRock!”, I just had to leave a couple for the “snake”. A few days later we took a short hike up Pine Mountain at Stadium Park in Atascadero, looking for one of the nine worldwide mysterious metallic monoliths scattered from Romania to Australia to Atascadero. We found it at the top, overlooking Atascadero’s downtown/city hall area. And wouldn’t you know it, we happened upon a few painted rocks along the trail, these from a FB group called “HiYaRockProject”. We decided to relocate them to the rock snake at Atascadero Lake.

One fine sunny day we relieved Chad & Crissy of their parental duties and took Hailey & Ellie out to Morro Bay. We wanted to check on the RV park there for availability (sorry, China-virus-hysteria in full effect, park closed), so we walked the surf line instead. 

That catches us up for now, counting down until we can escape Kalifornia yet again. Until next post…

Hangin’ In Texas, 2020 Style…

Well, we got our satellite antenna problems fixed, SATS2GO did us very well, we would highly recommend them if you are ever in the Montgomery/Conroe area of Texas (No. Houston area) and need satellite antenna assistance. I mentioned we stayed at the Lake Conroe/Houston North KOA in Montgomery. This was a fairly nice KOA, lots of family stuff (aka:things for kids), and with a stocked, catch-n-release pond for no license required fishing. The only problem I had with the park was the neatly, well trimmed grass areas, especially at our site. It seemed our site had the bulk of sticker weeds in the grass. They were the round spiral type stickers and they were more deadly than any of the goat heads we have encountered nationwide! It’s like my wife Jeanne has not had many personal lessons in 4-letter word vocabulary, but she got another barrage of them, every time I stepped on one of them buggers!

Using the KOA for our base for the week, we spent all our time pretty much driving around checking the areas, still looking for that “Ah, feels like home!” moment. We covered the area pretty well, even finding time to take a couple of brewery breaks. We had previously been to and thought we might like the area of The Woodlands, Texas, but it had been a few years since we were there. This time through sealed the deal for that area…a big no. Traffic has become an absolute nightmare with the congestion now. And to top it off, it seems the state of Texas is on a tear to spend highway construction dollars before they lose them, so in EVERY town we go through they are tearing up ALL their roads at the same time. With all the cones and reduced lane widths Jeanne gets even more lessons in 4-letter vocabulary from me. It ain’t fun maneuvering a 40’ bus towing a Jeep through some of that quagmire. (But, knock on wood laminate, no issues as of yet…). We did kinda take a liking to the area of Conroe/Willis/Montgomery and Lake Conroe, but it did not trigger that “home” feeling. As far as “beer breaks” went, we checked out a couple local breweries, one was the B-52 Brewery in Conroe. It was an interesting place, despite the China-virus hysteria bull$hit, it looked to be family friendly with a large outdoor area with lots of cornhole games and outdoor seating, pet friendly. They had some pretty good offerings, from stouts to IPA’s to sour fruiteds. Our son, Chad, also sent us on a quest to find the Urban South HTX brewery in Houston. We found it. If you are into the slushy style of sour-fruited beers, this is the place for you! I even gave a couple of them 5’s on the free Apple app “Untappd”. They don’t do a bad job on some of their IPA’s as well.

When we got ready to hit the road, we decided we were going to “slowly make our way” (to be painfully described here shortly) toward the megalopolis of Red Bay, AL. We have a couple of minor fixes needed on Rosie, so we contacted a couple of the folks who do Tiffin work outside of the service center and set up dates in early December. So from Montgomery we headed for San Antonio. OK, keeping our drive days short. It was only supposed to be a 3 1/2 hr. drive. And mostly 2-lane backroads which we love to travel vs. the pinball action between truckers on the major freeways. We wound our way S/W, at some point getting onto little Hwy. 237 toward La Grange. Well there happens to be a whole string of small town areas along the route, all of which do nothing but sell “antiques” out of their yards. Some are pretty big outfits, putting up large steel buildings to house their “antiques”. And as we were forced to slow through these areas, we came upon the “antique” capital of the area…a place called Round Top. It just so happened we were there during some big sales/show event and I swear every resident of the state of Texas was there to buy “antiques”. The 2-lane highway was at a standstill for a little over one hour! “Hey Jeanne, wanna hear some more 4-letter vocabulary?!?!” Once we cleared that traffic fiasco, we were on our way through La Grange and on down to catch I-10 for the last short leg into San Antonio. Cruisin’ along, fat, dumb, & happy (sorta), we happened upon an accident on I-10. Traffic stopped, all lanes. “Hey Jeanne, c’mon, say it with me, &$%#>@!*$@!*&%!!!!!!!” This time, 3 1/2 hours at a standstill… So we finally made it into San Antonio, to the San Antonio/Alamo KOA. This was also a very nice KOA, also with a stocked fishin’ pond (I get it, they like to fish in the great state of Texas!). 

We only spent a couple days in San Antonio, been there before, but wanted to re-visit the River Walk and this time check out the Alamo. China-virus hysteria strikes again; the weekday, lunchtime visit we made to River Walk revealed NOBODY walking the Walk, and every restaurant along the Walk was closed. We walked on over to the Alamo and went in on the free ticket (you pay $7 for a guided tour which takes you into the museum part). I do have to say, visiting the Alamo was a waste of our time, it is not conducive to great photography moments (I took very few pix), and it was marred by massive construction projects on its outer grounds. Not what I expected, by a long shot. So we resolved ourselves to walking around the outskirts of the River Walk and down to the Pearl market area. The area was heavily decorated for the upcoming Dia de los Muertos celebrations. We got our fill of painted skulls, then decided to “skip town” (har-dee-har-har!).

We headed north into the Kerrville Elk’s Lodge for a couple of nights. We found Kerrville to be home to “The Coming King Prayer Sculpture Garden” containing “The Empty Cross”. We walked around gawking at the sculptures and marvelling at the number of “prayer rocks” scattered about. We also found in little ol’ Kerrville a small brewery called Pint & Plow Brewery. We just had to partake of their wares, only to find nothing spectacular.

Next up was a return day-drive into Fredericksburg. We walked the main drag, which appeared pretty much unchanged since we were last there several years ago. We also happened upon the old historical jailhouse which we missed last time around. A quick lunch at Burger Burger and we were outta there. Jeanne heard Burger Burger was a “must-do” when in Fredericksburg, but we were underwhelmed with the food.

Lubbock, TX, was next on our radar. We spent a week at the Lubbock Elk’s Lodge while exploring the area, taking care of some chores, and shopping for supplies. My first obligation was to stop by a pay my respects at Buddy Holly’s gravesite at the City of Lubbock Cemetery. While in Lubbock we ran accross an area of Mackenzie Park called Prairie Dog Town and, like most barren lots throughout the town, it was inundated with the little critters. For you chow-hounds out there, a place of note for lunch, we ate at “The Lost Cajun” and boy, howdy I had some ‘dat good ol’ Jambalaya!

Wichita Falls was just an overnighter for us, again at the Wichita Falls Elk’s Lodge, then it was on to Sherman, TX and the Lazy L RV Park. How we were surprised to find the 903 Brewers just a 5 minute walk from our bus. OK, arm twisted, yeah, we partook. And again, for all you slushie heads out there, 903 Brewers is well worth your effort. They also had a couple of stouts that were outstanding!

One day we took a ride back into Gainsville to look at some properties, then swung around back to Denton (No. Dallas area) to see that area. We took Woodrow Wilson with us and took him on a walkabout around the town square area at the old Courthouse museum, then ate some pretty good pizza at J & J’s Pizza across from the Courthouse. 

Well, not a lot of overall excitement in this blog post. We’ll have to try and squeeze in a little more sightseeing as we hunt down that “Ah, feels like home” moment. Until next post…

Circle the Wagons, Squaring the Circle, Circular Logic…

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 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

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).

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).

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…”