Thursday, November 7, 2013 (Pahrump, NV)

We woke to more sunny skies; we love it. Today was going to be a long travel day for us, around 275 miles. The scenery between Hawthorn and Pahrump was pretty barren with small desolate towns few and far between. We have it pretty good compared to some of the homes we saw in those towns.   We did start to see our first Joshua trees.

Joshua tree

We drove by Columbus Salt Marsh, the white stuff is salt

We arrived at Pahrump about 2:30 p.m. and got checked in at Wine Ridge RV Resort. The park looks pretty nice and our pull through site is plenty long.

Our pull through site at Wine Ridge RV Resort

View out the back window of our 5er

After we got setup we took a walk around the park to check out all the amenities. They have two pools and two hot tubs, but only one pool and hot tub are open and only the hot tub is heated. Rats, it would have been nice if the pool was heated. They have a pickleball court – we’ve yet to try that sport out, it looks like a combination between tennis/ping pong/badminton. They also have a lot of park models here that people can rent. We talked to a couple people that actually winter here, I think it might be a little cool in the winter for my tastes. We also walked around their vineyard, which is pretty small; they offer tours so that will be on the agenda. We will be here in this location for a week so should have plenty of time to see the local sights, check out Death Valley and relax.

Upper pool closest to our site

Lower pool

Wednesday, November 6, 2013 (Hawthorne, NV)

The sun was shining but it was very cool outside this morning. We had a shorter travel day today of only 149 miles. We arrived at Whiskey Flat RV Park around 12:30 p.m.

When we headed out this morning our check engine light came on, so when we were checking in, Rich asked about a good local mechanic since there were no Chevy dealers in Hawthorne. After we got setup, Rich took the truck to the mechanic to get it checked out and luckily came back with the report that everything was just fine. Whew.

We didn’t do much except in the area except walk to the local grocery store and take a walk around the park. We did notice that every so often we heard a big boom. Well Hawthorne is home to the Army Ammunition Plant and the landscape around the area is dotted with bunkers. Apparently the booms we heard was the army exploding ammunition outside of town.

Tuesday, November 5, 2013 (Bordertown, NV)

We woke to partly sunny skies this morning.  Actually we had a beautiful sunrise over the mountains this morning.  We had our breakfast and then got into the packing up the 5er mode.  We are getting this routine down, though I am glad that we normally don't travel every day.  Right now we are spending several days traveling each day so we can get down to warmer weather and then we will go back to our routine of staying put for a couple of days in each spot. 

I have developed a very bad habit of not screwing the lids of containers on tight and I did it again this morning.  I had filled our water bottles and as we were loading up the truck, I knocked one over on the counter in the 5er and over it went and water went everywhere.  What a mess I had to clean up, hopefully this will teach me a lesson.  After I got my mess cleaned up we were ready to head out.  Today our travel day was between 2.5 - 3 hours, perfect in my book.

We had an uneventful and safe drive to our destination but saw some very unsafe drivers between Susanville, CA & Bordertown, NV.  We saw two separate instances where cars passed us and barely had time to get back in their lane before hitting the oncoming traffic.  The cars in the oncoming lanes had to veer over to the shoulder to avoid a crash.  It's not like we are crawling along, we were traveling at 60 mph.  I think they must have problems in this area because this was a designated daylight headlights use area. 

We got to our RV park around 1:00 p.m. and are in another state, Nevada, today.  The sunshine was very welcome though it is not all that warm, in the low to mid 50's.  After we got the 5er set up, I did sit outside in the sunshine reading for awhile, it sure felt good.

Bordertown RV Park, Bordertown, NV

We did take Gracie for a little walk around the park and checked out the other rv's that are staying here.  It is always fun to see what models and types of rv's are in each park and what states they are registered in. 

When we checked in, we got the obligatory free drink coupons at the casino here on the grounds, so we decided to check it out.  Why do casino's have to be so smoky?  I guess I'm glad they are, that way we are not tempted to spend very much time in them, not that I would be anyway.  Rich and I are not real big into gambling, though we did put a couple dollars in the penny slot machines.  Needless to say, we didn't win big.  =)  After about 30 minutes, we'd had our fill and headed back to the 5er.

Today my mom turned 73 years old, so I called her after dinner and had a nice long chat.  The rest of the evening I spent catching our blog up to date and now it is off to bed as tomorrow is another travel day.  

Monday, November 4, 2013 (Alturas, CA)

We woke up to no snow and dry roads, yahoo.  Now our prayer is that it stays dry for the rest of the day so we don't get deicer all over our 5er.

We got packed up and were ready to hit the road around 10:15 a.m.  Today will be a longer travel day than we normally travel.  We like to keep our travel days to around 2-3 hours, which from Bend would put us in the Lakeview area, but there are not a whole lot of RV parks around Lakeview so our goal is to get to Alturas, CA.

While Rich was working at ODOT the last 18 years, Lakeview was one of the locations he supported, so he has driven that stretch of road many many times and is very familiar with it.  Once we got past Lakeview, it was new scenery for the both of us.  We had a very pleasant drive with sunny to partly cloudy skies but no moisture from the sky or on the road all the way to Alturas.  We drove straight through with no stops and made it to Alturas around 2:30 p.m. 

Sullys RV Park, Alturas, CA

Sully's RV Park was a good place for a one night stop.  There wasn't much to the town and we paid the highest diesel prices yet - $4.41/gal.  yikes.  There wasn't much around, so other than getting set up and going and fueling up the truck, we just stuck around the 5er.  Once the sun went down, it got cold outside, so cold that we couldn't leave our outside water connection attached to the 5er.  Lucky for us, we have a well insulated RV so we stayed nice and warm. 

We had a nice dinner at home and watched a movie and called it a night.  We'll be hitting the road again in the morning. 

October 31 - November 3, 2013 (Bend, OR)

Thursday
We got up early because my daughter Amber was going to stop by for a quick visit before we headed out for Bend.  We had a nice though very quick visit with Amber, she had never seen our home in person, so it was fun showing her around.  Amber has a birthday tomorrow, so before she left, I got to sing her "happy birthday" song in person instead of over the phone. 

After she left, we got things stowed away and were on the road to Bend.  Unfortunately for us, because of the long delays we had with the 5er repairs, we are now dealing with snow in the forecast over the weekend.  We hit rain going over the pass and because there is snow in the forecast they had deicer on the roads which is very hard on metal, so our 5er got covered in deicer - yuck. 

We had a uneventful drive, other than the rain and arrived at Crown Villa shortly after noon.  We stayed at Crown Villa after we sold our sticks and brick house last fall until we officially retired from ODOT April 1st of this year.  We had a very nice pull through site.  In all our travels to date, Crown Villa has been the nicest RV resort we have stayed in.

Crown Villa site 489

After we got set up, Rich had an appt with his barber of 36 years, so off we went.  After his haircut, the sun was still shining so we headed back to the 5er to wash all the deicer grime off.  It took us about an hour, Rich washes and I dry. 

After that chore was done, we decided that in "honor" of my dad, we would go out to eat at Chan's restaurant.  Three years ago today my dad passed away, I can't believe it's already been three years.  When my mom and dad would visit us in Bend, we always had to play a game of miniture golf and then go eat at Chan's restaurant.  If we wouldn't have had to wash the 5er, we might have been able to work that game of miniture golf in.  We had a very nice meal at Chan's and had fun remembering my dad and mom's visits.

Friday

Even Gracie remembers our time here at Crown Villa.  I took Gracie for a walk in the field behind Crown Villa this morning and she remembered that this was where she got her ball thrown for her.  She couldn't understand why she didn't get to play today, well it was because I had forgotten to bring her ball with us, oops.

Rich took the truck in for an oil change and then we made a Costco run for groceries and lunch.  We ran into one of our ODOT co-workers, Pat Creedican and spent a few minutes catching up before Pat had to leave for a hunting trip.  Hope you had a successful hunt Pat.  We also ran into two friends from our church at Westside and spent quite a bit of time catching up with them and news about the changes at Westside.  It's always fun to see who you will run into at Costco.

Later in the afternoon, we hiked Pilot Butte with Gracie which is a Bend tradition.  Coming down the Butte we ran into another friend from Westside and spent some time catching up.  It is always so invigorating to hike the Butte and the views are incredible.  

View from top of Pilot Butte

View from top of Pilot Butte

Saturday

We woke up and decided that breakfast at Jakes Diner was on the agenda.  After breakfast, we ran a few errands and then headed over to see our friend Burla who is 91 years old.  We spent about an hour visiting before we wore her out.  It is always good to visit with her, she definitely loves Jesus. 

When we sold the house, I took a lot of our books to a local used bookstore and still had a credit on file, so we had to make a stop and pick up some more books.  I plan on doing a lot of reading in the warm sunshine when we are down south.  I'm not one of those kind of people that can go in a bookstore and come out with only one book, it's usually an armful and hours later and this time was no exception.  I did try and keep to paperbacks to keep the weight down.  I know people suggest I try a Kindle, and I probably will sometime in the future, but there is nothing like having a good book in your hand and turning the actual pages.  

Gracie got another walk and then we just spent the rest of the evening relaxing at home in the 5er. 

Sunday

We were excited that we were going to be attending our home church, Westside this morning.  The one thing that Rich says he misses most about leaving Bend is not being able to attend church at Westside, and I would have to agree with him.  Westside has started an online web service that several people have suggested that we check out so we can stay connected.  We still want to attend the different churches each weekend in our travels, but the online service will be a nice supplement.  For those of you who don't like to attend an actual church, give it a try, you may enjoy it. 

As expected, we thoroughly enjoyed our morning at Westside, catching up with friends and worshiping at Westside is always a very uplifting experience, they have some incredibly talented musicians and the sermon was great.  

After church we headed to Starbucks for our traditional after church latte and ran into David & Cheryl who are watching over our hive of bees.  It was great chatting with them again.  Then we went and had lunch with two other couples from church - Sandy & Steve and Gina & Sean and Gina's beautiful little daughter Alena.    Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures.  It sure was good to see and visit with everybody.

After lunch, we ran by and said a quick goodbye to Burla and then made a quick stop at Albertsons and ran into another co-worker from ODOT, David Brown.  We had fun catching up on some more ODOT news with David before heading back to the 5er as we had another friend from church, Armand coming for a visit.  Armand is our Paulina Lake fishing buddy.   He is amazing in the fact that he has "MS" and one side of his body doesn't work that well, yet he doesn't let it stop him from getting out and hunting and fishing and doing what he enjoys.  He has adapted different ways of doing things, like reeling in a fish for example, he doesn't let his MS stop him from doing what he loves.  We had a very nice visit.

Whew, that was a lot of visiting for us, but it sure was fun.  In the morning we are heading south and are praying for dry weather and no snow. 

  

October 15 - 30, 2013 (Mehama & Salem, OR)

I'm playing catch up on our blog, so these were some of the highlights of our adventures during this timeframe while staying at my mom's house. 

I've lost track of the actual dates, so these may be in random order.....

One of my highlights during this time was that I spent one Saturday visiting two of my girlfriends I haven't seen for quite some time.  I started the morning out with a visit to Jan and a tour of her new bathroom renovation project.  She always has the most fun projects going on, whether inside her house or in her garden.  We spent the morning catching up, it had been several years since we had touched base - where does the time go?  

After my visit with Jan, I decided to drop in on another girlfriend, Lynn who I also hadn't seen in awhile.   This was a surprise visit as I hadn't called her ahead of time, lucky for me she was home and we had a great visit catching up with each other.  I'm  sure glad I stopped in. 

You know those articles they have in the paper for hikes or activities in the local area?  Well one Sunday the Statesman Journal ran an article on hiking to Shellburg Falls which is in my mom's back yard almost.  I hadn't been to Shellburg Falls since I was a teenager, so that Monday, Rich, Mom and I decided to go for a hike.  Mom and I jumped on the 4 wheeler and Rich and Gracie rode in the trailer - I know, we wouldn't win any safety awards for that stunt - but it worked.  We were able to ride the 4 wheeler to the back of my mom's property and park it and hike the trail to Shellburg Falls. 

It was a beautiful fall day with good company and beautiful scenery.  Here are some pictures from that hike.

Walking the road to Shellburg Falls

Shellburg Falls

Me, Mom & Gracie @ Shellburg Falls

Kelly, Rich & Gracie taking a break

Walking back through the crunchy and fragrant leaves - it was beautiful

We saw quite a few people taking advantage of the beautiful day and a nice hike so I guess those articles in the paper do get people out on these hikes.

We did quite a few more projects around mom's, here Rich was putting in a fence post to fix part of the fence that had fallen down.



Me and mom on the 4 wheeler



We spent a lot of time clearing and burning brush around mom's house.  We also made about 3 cords of wood from some downed trees.  We also got to help celebrate my niece Jennifer's 20th birthday.  We had dinner at the Wooden Nickel on all you can eat chicken night with my brother Jayme and his family and my brother Jeremy and his family and my mom. 

We finally got word that our 5er was ready to pick up on October 29th.  We really enjoyed our time with mom and helping her work around the place and spending time with some of my family members but we are ready to head south before the snow flies.

When we drove down to Guaranty RV in Junction City on the 29th, we stopped at the Cabella's store in Eugene and spent some time shopping.  We got to Guaranty around 11:30 a.m. and the service rep took us out to go over our repairs.  We open the door to go inside and the keyless entry that they were suppose to fix isn't working and once inside one of our cabinet doors above the refrigerator has come apart and is hanging there, wow what is this?!?  The service rep was very embarressed and said he'd get someone on it right away.  We proceeded to go through our list and found that our oven still didn't light correctly, even the service rep couldn't get it to light.  We also found some wood trim around the slide that they had to fix was not put back properly and was loose.  We were very frustrated and disappointed and wondering if we were ever going to get on the road.  Our service rep knew how frustrated we were and got things moving on these repairs right after the tech's got back from lunch.  We were thinking we should have stopped at Guaranty first before going to Cabella's so they would have had more time, but that is hind sight for you.  To make a long story short, they got the wood trim fixed, they repaired the cabinet door above the refrigerator (because there had been no heat in the 5er for the last 1.5 months, the wood had shrunk and pulled apart aparently)  but will be sending us a new one, they adjusted some contacts on the keyless entry and got that working and the service manager knew how to hold his fingers just the right way and was able to get the stove lit.  So we were able to hit the road around 3:00 p.m.  Needless to say, we were not overly impressed with our experience but were glad they were able to get us on the road.

We had made reservations at the Phoenix RV Park in Salem for the next two nights.  We got the 5er set up in the RV park and the refrigerator turned on and cooling and then headed back to mom's.  We were spending one last night at mom's.

We got up the next morning and packed up the rest of our stuff and all our freezer and refrigerator food and headed to Salem to finish up getting the 5er ready to hit the road tomorrow. 

Me and my beautiful mom - Love you mom!

 Wow, we had a lot of stuff to put away but we finally got it done.  Tomorrow we head for Bend for four days.

September 11 thru October 14, 2013 (Mehama, OR)

Wow, I can't believe a whole month and then some has gone by already.  And yes, we are still at my mom's house.  We were planning on heading south yesterday, but alas we still do not have our 5er back from Guaranty RV in Junction City.  We dropped it off on September 19th for some warranty work and of course, we are playing the "sent the wrong part, waiting for the new part" game.  It is very frustrating and it's a good thing that we have a nice place to stay while we are waiting. 

What have we been up to the last month, well let's see.  Rich got my mom's deck power washed and stained, it looks very pretty. 

My mom and I helped out my brother Jeremy with a little project that turned out to be a pretty messy project.  My brother was having "septic" issues at his house and had the septic tank scheduled to be pumped out after he returned from a trip to Hawaii.  He got a call that the company could come early, on the morning that he was leaving, so he called my mom and asked if she'd mind running up to his house and overseeing the "job".  No problem my mom says.  So we, head up to my brothers house and we wait and we wait, no septic company.  Finally I call them and find out they had gotten lost but were still headed our way.  Well about 2 hours later they show up.  The guy opens the septic lid and says, hmmmmm not looking so good, the drainline appears to be blocked.  He proceeds to pump the tank dry and then asks us to test the line, so we run some water in the basement sink, nothing is coming into the tank, so we go upstairs and empty a bathtub of water.....big mistake, now the basement drain is backing up and we have water everywhere but in the septic tank.  It appears the drainline between the house and the tank is where the blockage is.  Yuck....the septic man was very nice and helped us get the water all sucked up and then suggests  that we need to call a drain company to come unclog the drain.  Did I mention that it is Friday afternoon by this time?  So we call the drain company and lucky for us, they had someone they could send out.  Whew, that's a relief.  So all ends well, just hours and hours later than planned.  I think my brother owes us on that favor don't you?

My mom left for her trip and I proceeded to get sick, so I pretty much spent the time she was gone under the weather.  Speaking of weather, we were here for the monsoon deluge, wow that was a lot of rain we had.  Definitely made us anxious for some nice warm sunshine. 

Rich made a trip to Bend to run some errands, he stopped in at ODOT and said hello to some of our fellow co-workers.  Rich and I also made a day trip to Bend to attend a funeral from one of his previous pastors and he got to see some old friends.  We had dinner with Bruce Raikes and his lovely wife and our friend Judy.  It was good to see them and catch up, it had been a while.  We had Sandy and Steve Parnell stop by my mom's for a quick visit, it was good to see them and catch up on some news.  I cooked a spaghetti dinner one weekend for my brothers and their families.  We've gone to a different local church each weekend.  We've visited with one of my mom's neighbors and her little boy.  We went to my niece's 20th birthday party.

We've also worked....we've made quite a dent on my mom's "to do" list.  We've moved shrubs, planted flowers, trimmed shrubs,  cleared brush and trees from along the driveway, burned the brush.  Rich has repaired her wood chipper and chain saw.  We've repaired a fence, cleaned gutters, repaired and replaced faucets.  Rich removed the pump and pressure tank from her spring house (which will be rebuilt next spring, the tank was about to fall into the water which is why we removed it now).    Rich did a little deer hunting on my mom's place, but didn't see anything legal he could shoot at.  He did see a black bear down by my mom's walking trail, we've been keeping an eye out for it's return, but hopefully it has meandered along to greener pastures.  

And my fun thing has been riding the four wheeler of my dad's.  The four wheeler has a trailer which has come in handy for hauling brush and tools but we've also taken some fun rides around the property with it.  I haven't been to the back side of the property in years, so Rich and I took the four wheeler and took a tour.  I even took my mom for a ride around the place which was a lot of fun.  I did manage to get the four wheeler stuck on that trip and we had some good laughs while I got it unstuck.  

These are some of our highlights over the past month and unfortunately we've not taken any before or after pictures of our projects, so no pictures for this entry.  

Hopefully we will have our 5er back before too long and I will be back to more regular entries of our travel adventures.  Until then, be safe and God Bless you all.