motorhomediaries

(A note written the second week of August - I know I was going to put the new stuff at the top of the page, but I forgot that when I was actually doing it.  It is on chronological order, sorry.  I'll try to do it right in September - to change August is too much work.  ANd, well, any work is too much work)

First Week of August

Frankly can't believe its August.  We're still not over the vacation mode thing.  We've been on the road for a little over two weeks ... not unusual for vacation.  We still say "wow, we left (whatever) at home"...except there is no home and, for God's sake, how did I end up on the road withoug a cheese slicer?

The Oregon Coast is really interesting.  No, its dynamic.  Exciting.  The dune are interesting.  The darn trees are growing right on the darn sand.  Its soooo wrong.  But, you're driving along and there is nothing boring.  It all makes you sit up and say "whoa, look at that!"

The Dunes State Park in Florence.  Vey interesting as the trees meet the sand 

We're in Tillamook ... which may lend a urgency to the whole "cheese clicer" thing.  Moving on. 

There's nothing much to recommend Tillamook execpt for the incredible motorcycle roads around the 3 cape loop and the dairy co-op.  Other than that ... well there isn't other than that. 

Let's start with the the cape Loop, and thank you letterbox planters for bringing us to some fabulous places. 

Heading West from Tillammok is the 3 Cape Loop, which is THE motorcycle road here.  And full of bikers.  Great views.  And a lighthouse.  I love Lighthouses.  This one, one of the first on the Oregon Coast, was vandalized in February by local loser 20-somethings whose families are living with the embarrassment, and left a $500,000 damage to the lighthouse, that likely won't ever be raised to pay for tha damage because loser boys don' have it.  Good thing is they'll do time as they're up for 2-3 felonies.  That doesn't fix it.  Cape Lookout/Cape Mears is just plain lovely.   See photos.

 We motorcyled the whole loop and there were some lovely places and several State Parks and Beaches.  And they are all free.  Hello Caifornia!!! Oregan parks are all frikkin' free.

And then.  Yes.  there is the Tillamook Dairy Collective.  But let me back up a bit.  Our friend, Connor, told us we had to look up Tim and Susan of the Ti-Sue Dairy in Tillamook, with whom she went to College.  So we rolled into Ti-Sue Dairy, which turned out to be minutes up the road from us.  Tim was there and a great host.  He took us on a tour of the dairy.  We met a day old calf and a dozen or so preggers cows' the are really big...and pretty sweet.  And then I milked a cow ... and no, we have no photo of that because, dudes!!!!! I own the camera and nothing gets out that I don't want to do.  Get over it.  So, Tim told us that the Tillamook brand just won a huge international cheese competition. Well, duh. )more on this later)  OK, here's the farm.  And thank you Connor.

 OK.  Tim is a member of the Dairy Co-operative that runs the Tillamook Cheese Company and had some good recommendations.  So that was our next stop.  We went upstairs and watched what we thought would be pretty boring cheese prep.  I was used to Sonomoa Cheese Company which I said earlier made me hate Jack cheese forever.  This didn't make me hate cheese.  It was interesting.  They take the cheese curds and pack them into plastic bags, which are are vacuum packed and aged.  The the aged cheese .... huge frikkin' blocks of cheese .... are processed and packaged for consumption.  I tell ya... I buy tillamook cheese on a regular basis.  Thats what I choose to buy, Tillamook mega sharp chedder.  No, its not called that.  But they are the only cheese company that sells sharp chedder inthe regular grocery store and that's what I buy.  But who knew they have aged white chedder and pepper chedder, and all sorts of flavored cheese and, oh, SMOKED cheddar.  At the facility they have tastings of various cheese and who knew they had aged white chedder and habenero chedder. Oh yum.  But, as exciting as that was...

WHO THE HELL KNEW THEY MADE ICE CREAM.   O..... M....... G.  Yes, I said that.  O.M.G.  Ice cream.  Let me tell you.  OK.  They have a 3 scoop sample for $3.  We each did that.  You could also a 38 scoop for $25 which was really tempting.  But no, we chose 3 each.  Now, y'all have to realize that the two perfect foods are pizza and ice cream.  We just had the perfect ice cream.  When you think that the normal commercial ice cream is, like,  5 to 7% butter fat and theirs is 11-14% butterfat, you realize how just damn good this stuff really is.  And the flavors.  Manomanoman

Tillammok Cheese Collective wich was absolutely packed with cars .. and people.  And the cheese packing area.  Big ol' blocks of cheese being divied into smaller blocks for resale 

About a quarter mile from our campground it the road that lead to Munson Falls State Park.  According to our map its a five mile round trip to and back fronm the falls.  And two letteboxes there.  So that;s what we did this morning:  Mark, Bogart and me.  Great walk.  Beautiful park.   

After our hike we went to the Tillammook Air Museum.  Tillimamook was the site of blimp hangars during WW2, and one of the hangers still exists.  The air museum is housed in Blimp Hanger 2.,  

 Thank you Tillamook, we had a nice time here.  Onward to Olympia.

I have received several emails from people asking after the morons; how they're doing with the "big adventure".  Ya'll have seen how stressed out Bogart is, making her hike all those miles with us.  Following are photos of Zsa Zsa and Cooper traveling.

 The Second Week of August

The road to Olympia was peppered with more towns than previously.  Mostly little tourist towns.  Think Santa Cruz with no sun ...oh wait, that IS Santa Cruz.   With 101 going straight through these otherwise forgotten little hamlets, they appear to be thriving ... if tourists ambling along sidewalks and cars in parking lots would indicate.  What stands out is the folliage.  Most little main streets are lined with huge, overflowing, hanging baskets of flowers.  I also liked the trees growing on rocks out on the water ... and no, I wasn't fast enough to get photos of them, darn it.  But I got the flowers

We planned to stop in Astoria for lunch today because it's half way between Tillamook and Olympia.  But the town wasn't as cute as the name sounded so we we didn't.  Its quite the riverport city and, as such, both the streets and the riverway were congested.  As we approached the city, however, my eye was focused on this big ass bridge between Astoria and someplace Washingrton..  All I could think of was 'oh no, we're not going over that are we?'.  We weren't.   Phew.  I don't mind most bridges but this was looooooooooooooong, narrow and high.  All the wrong things.  I counldn't even get all of it in a photo.  So we stopped for lunch on a reststop, a few miles out of town, overlooking the whole Columbia Basin.  One of the best things about taking out home with us is the ability to fix a nice lunch in a nice place and sit outside an enjoy it.

 Our campground was delightful.  And we got one of the best campsites.  Oh, there were some lovely partial and no-hookups in the back, but this was more like a park than a "campground".  We had a ton of space and, well we have a ton of stuff, so we took up our space.  We're here for several days so we had the smoker out and the grill out... and it rained so we had the pop-up thing out.  And it was easy hopping around the Tumwater/Olympia area from here. 

We decided to take it easy here and not spend every minute site seeing.  I mean:  we are not on vacation, ya know.  And there were mundane housekeeping things we needed to do.  Like grocery shopping.  The windshield cracked so we had the awesome Wilkonson Mobile Glass guys by to fix it... that's a much longer story but we'll leave it here that these guys are troupers and I'm recommending them on every RV website I can think of.  'Nuf said.  But it rained one day and we just hung out under the pop-up thingy and smoked some ribs and read.  Mark played with his new lathe but I don't think he actually made anything. 

Today we went siteseeing/letterboxing.  We were more successful at the former than the latter.  Olympia letterboxers plant their boxes in very cool places but they're really into either short cryptic clues or stupid long stories that are, literally, pages long and you get so frikkin' tired of reading it you lose interest in the boxes.  Or, worse, they're planted in wet, slimey, sloppery places.  We loved the places they took us, but we got pretty tired of the crap... so, of the 4 million boxes planted in this general area, I think we got 4, plus we're counting the two we found but the stamps weren't in the box.  We found 'em, darn it.  Anyway.  Tumwater Falls park is lovely and worth a mention.  We found one empty box here after following 20 pages of clues, and were skunked on the other after climbing all over slippery rocks next to a waterfall. 

On a motorcycle trip to Canada in 1985, I stopped at the Olympia Brewery.  We parked at the parking lot next tothe falls and walked up a trail to the brewery and took a really fascinating tour.  I don't keep track of these things, so I didn't know the brewery closed in 2003.  Bummer.  It was really a neat tour, beer drinker or not.  Having toured probably hundreds of wineries, I thought a brewery was far more interesting.  Anyway, its closed.  The building is still quite cool and the Schmidt house is on the historical registry.  Lovely house.

The Schmidt House on Schmidt Street across from the Brewery.  And the Memorial Rose garden attached to the house.  Again, I marvel at roses growing so successfully in this climate.  I mean, the sun did come out each day ... at around 5 pm.   Otherwise. mostly overcast.  For roses? 

Olympia is the Capital of Washington State.  A fact I probably knew but didn't really care about.  But the capital is a nice old center, and the view of the waterfront is quite spectacular from there.

We walked around the waterfront and had a picnic lunch on the boardwalk overlooking the yacht harbor.  I thought I took pictures but the only one that ended up on the camera is one of a boat with a cute little dog looking back at us.  But I did get some nice shots of Puget Sound.  

The whole waterfront is a sort of mini version of Seattle, or maybe Vancouver, with shops and restaurants ... oh, excuse me - Bistros ... and smacked of tourism.  So we didn't hang around there.  Its a city.  A pretty clean city, but a city none-the-less, and I just don't get into cities...unless they have cool historic sections, which in Olympia is called Tumwater. 

At the end of a peninsula is a great city park called Priest Point.  At only 314 acres, it doesn't compare with my Alum Rock Park, and it doesn't have the elevations, but it is pretty.  Not to mention a couple thousand letterboxes.  Accompanied by stupid little stories that we got sick of, so, of the thousands, we only found two.  And one of them wasn't one we were looking for.  But we got a nice hike out of it. 

Today, we headed out along the Puget Sound to the Olympic Highway Loop.  Beautiful motorcycle roads.  You'll have to take my word for that, as the pictures really sucked.  When we got to Discovery Bay, minutes from Port Townsend, the sky opened up and, what we thought was fog turned into a pretty bad rainstorm.  We, of course, weren't dressed for it.  Oh, we have our kevlar jackets on for wamrth, but people with brains woulda been wearing at least chaps.  No.  jeans.  Now wet jeans.  Jeans are not waterproof.  Fortunately, our jackets are.  And, I'm in my half-face helmet.  Sigh.  So we stopped in Discovery Bay for lunch instead of Port Townsend, and I still got my oysters.  So what can I complain about.  Instead of continuing around the peninsula in the pouring rain, we opted to head home.  Not the most pleasant ride, but we've been in worse.  Um, in Washington a couple of years ago when it snowed on us on our way to Canada via Seattle.  And I was totally in kevlar on that trip.  But, I digress.  Disappointing.  I've been from Port Angeles to Olympia and Port Townsend to Olympia on motorcycles before, but I've never been around that damn pensinsula.  Not happening this trip either.  We head to Leavnworth tomorrow.   Actually, it'll be nice getting back to the sunbelt.   While its absolutley gorgeous right now, as I type this, in Tumwater, the Pacific Northwest is just too moody for me.  And, yeah, I know, this is the first time we've actually been rained on so that's pretty amazing in itself; we just prefer the sun.   Maybe we'll be back here someday, maybe not.  'S'OK either way.   There's so much to see waiting in front of me ....yadda yadda.

Leavenworth, aside from being warm and sunny, is just so frikkin' cute.  And I mean that in a good way.  OK, authentic?  Not on your life.   With a thriving timber industry and a railway hub, LEavenworth was a boomtown in the early 20th century.  Everything moved out in the mid-1920's, pretty much decimating the town.  Following with the depression and WWII, things just got worse.  Because of the Alps like seeting in which the town sits, the locals got together in the '60's and decided to make themselves a "Bavarian" tourist trap.   And have succeeded quite well.  It IS a tourist trap, but with the gorgeous Wenatchee River offering beaches and water activities, its a delightful tourist trap.  We walked our butts off.  Around the riverfront and on the (I"m sure, manmade) island, we probably did 3-4 miles.  A lot of work for only 2 letterboxes, but the planter did warn us she was going to show us the whole riverfront park. 

Like other areas of the Northwest, I was again entranced by the hanging baskets of flowers.  Everywhere.  All through the town.  Very charming and colorful.  We planted a letter box in the town center at the bandstand.   

After hiking through the Riverfront park for hours, we walked around town, looked in shop windows (like, we need more stuff?), did some winetasting, and then went up to Gustav's for a glass of  local beer/wine.   Gustav's has an upstairs "beer garden".  Its. upstairs, but its not really more than a terrace.  With a great view.  And a pretty much burger menu...oh, except for their "world famous reuben".  Now, I love reubens, but I'm not having a sandwich for supper.  We asked what would be considered the most "authentic" German restaurant in town .... knowing full well "authentic" isn't exactly what this town is all about.  Its mostly burger places, that might serve a German style sausage or two, but very much geared to families and kid's tastes.  But Anreas Kellar was recommended; we'd actually parked the bike very close to it and passed it while we were walking.  So, we took the bait and had dinner there.  We were famished after all that walking and no lunch (I'd meant to pack fruit and stuff but I didn't), so we went in for an ealy (for us) dinner.  Maybe 6:30?  The place starting filling up after we left, so we were early.  But, there was a guy playing accordian and that was fun.   The German potato salad rocked.  And the spaetzle was very good.  We gotta learn how to make those two items.  Mark had his weinersnitzle and I had my German sausages.  Everybody left happy.  The only thing wrong with the place is that it didn't have an outdoor area.  It was in a cellar; Kellar means cellar in German, Mark informs me. 

We're staying at the Thousand Trails a few miles outside Leavenworth.  What a beautiful "Preserve".  TT prefers to call their properties preserves rather than campgrounds.  We've stayed in several and haven't been disappointed, but this one was truely lovely.  HUGE property, with not a lot of campsites, so they are private and secluded...not to mention pretty darm big.  Ours was very nice, I'm surprised it was still available.  Our next door neighbors were a little noisy but they left early on the second day ... woohoo.  Three kids.  Why do kids scream so much?  Did I do that when I was a kid?  Several hiking trails attached to the property.  The first day we did one they labeled as "hard".  It was short but it was intense.  Straight up, and, consequently,  straight down.   I.  Hate.  Downhill.  But the view from the top was worth it.  The second day, we did a more moderate, but longer, trail.  Really beautiful.  Fabulous park.  If we were to ever come through here again, I'd definately stay here.  There are more partials than full hook-ups, and we saw a bunch of sites Marilyn would consider perfect.   Also saw some itneresting pop-up camper trailers, but didn't have the camera when we went by them.  They also had one camping area right on a man-made lake.  Very pretty.  Mostly tents there, but right on the lake...how cool.  Of course, then there woulda maybe been even more mosquitoes. 

Had a great time here.  We like Leavenworth and we love being back in the sun.  Onward to Coeur D'Alene.

We rolled over Eastern Washington and into the Coeur D'Alene Elk's Lodge.on Friday the 13th.   The Elk's have a nice set-up here...not the lodge, that's pretty run down, but the RV park behind it is big, grassy, wide spaces, and with some of the biggest frikkin' motorhomes I've ever seen.  Any thoughts that the Beast was big are gone.   There are longer, wider, and just plain bigger motorhomes out there.  And a lot of them are in Coeur D'Alene.  Most of these people are going in the opposite direction from us.  Perhaps that should worry me.  And there are a good number of full-timers among them.   The people in the lodge were friendly and the drinks are cheap.  Hey, we're unemployed and homeless, here. 

We were in Coeur D'Alene about 5 years ago for one evening, on a motorcycle trip with our dear friends that, ostensibly started and ended in Spokane.  I've wanted to come back and spend some time, so that's what we did.  Neither of us had been to downtown Coeur D'Alene, even though Mark went to college in Spokane.  Its small, but darn cute.  Coeur D'Alene isn't small, it got a lot of 'burbs with a lot of mall-ettes.  But downtown is small.  And the LAKE.  Man, that goegeous.  We walked around downtown and drove around the lake one day.

There is a floating sidewalk that makes a big loop through the yacht harbor and out onto the lake.  Its very cool.  Out at the lake end of the circle, beyond the towers, there are picnic areas.

We hiked about 6 miles on Sunday.  A couple of different areas, but a lot of ups.  Which of course means a lot of downs, eventually.  Mineral Ridge was a mining area at one point, and there is a lot of history.  There is also a 2.5 mile loop, with an elevation change of 687 feet.  That wasn't so bad going up, because it was pretty gradual...some steep spots but fairly moderate.  Coming down was another story.  It was straight damn down, pretty steep in places.  There were 2 letterboxes on the mail loop trail, and another one that took us a half mile round trip, roughly, on a spur trail.  Fabulous trail, a road less traveled, obviously, than the main trail.  It was narrower, some spots it was a pretty sheer drop (that the planter did warn about), and we didn't meet any other hikers there.  We had a picnic on the top of the ridge overlooking lake Coeur D'Alene..

Just down from Mineral Ridge is Beauty Creek Road and several trailheads.  There were 6 more letterboxes here - a series - so that added 3 more miles to our day.  The Beauty Creek Trail was straight up and straight down.  Without the nice views to make up for it.  My dogs were pretty damn tired, I can tell you.  All in all, though, it was a great day, some great trails, wonderful views... and 9 letterboxes.  First time, ever, we have gotten that many withought being skunked once.  And some of these boxes have been planted for years.  I was disappointed that there were none in downtown Coeur D'Alene, though.  So we're going to plant one there.

Monday we are in Spokane.  Mark went to Gonzaga University, in Spokane.   When we were here five years ago, we hiked around and he showed me all the sites, including the University, which is lovely.  We retraced some of those paths on this trip, and took a few new ones.  I like downtown Spokane.  The Riverfront Park is wonderful.  There is an amusement park, lots of grass, lovely bridges crossing the river, and lots and lots of hanging flower baskets.  the northwest is all about that. 

We took a quick tour of the Gonzaga campus.  Mark showed me his dorms, and the older buildings.  They've done a lot to the campus, not just since his day, but since we were here last. 

Above are the administration building and the church on campus, St. Aloisous.  Gonzaga is a Jesuit college, so there are a lot of religious artifacts all over campus 

Right near campus is THE PIZZA JOINT that Mark and his friends hung out in whilst in college, Pizza Pete's.  Last time we were in Spokane we ate here and the pizza rocks.  Really.  Well, we didn't actually EAT there, we ordered pizza to go and ate it at the Bulldog bar next door, which, apparently, is common..  Ditto this trip.  We made a choice...do we want to eat downtown in a nice place or do we want to relive old memories.  I'm glad we chose the latter, because the Bulldog is great local dive bar, with a fun bartender.  Add a rockin' good pizza from next door and you have one fun evening.  Its the Gonzaga Bulldogs, hence the name of the bar.  Local beer on tap and decent cheap wine...with pizza.  Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

Its Wednesday and we're in Missoula, Montana for the night.  A thuderstorm is rolling over us but we're outside under the awning.  The weather is lovely, except the storm.  Which is kinda cool because its all thunder and no lightning.  I like thunder.  I hate lightning.  Mark is the opposite.  Cooper, weenie that he is, high-tailed it under the couch on the first peel.  Its a nice RV park, although we're only here for the night.  Big spots, lots of trees.  And, once again, we find that RV'ers don't sit outside in the evening.  They walk their dogs, they walk around looking at other rigs (yeah we do that too), and they may BBQ outside, but almost no-one, no-where just sits outside and enjoys the outdoors. 

The most notable thing about the North Central states is that there are vast expanses of nothingness between the hardly anythings that we pass.  Even what would pass as a large town here is hardly anything.   Missoula, for instance, is one a two story buildings, peppered with fast food and chain stores.  Lots of chains. 

We decided to hurry across Montana, with a brief dip into Wyoming because the freeway went that way, and South Dakota to Madison.  Then we could get all the business taken care of in Madison and mosey back across SD and Wyoming at our leisure.  I'm gonna say that this part of the trip has not been fun.  After driving a billion miles in one day, staying one night in Missoula, I said, nope, we're only going to drive this far, and then stop when we see something... chances are we're not passing this way again.  So we saw "Deer Lodge Historic District, next exit" and we took it.  This is the first territorial prison, now a museum.  I thought it was very cool. 

Right about that same time, I also said: nope, we're staying two days in Bozeman.  I don't care if I SEE Bozeman, I'm just not driving (OK, passengering) a billion miles in one day for an overnight.  Mark totally agreed... I mean, he is the one working here.  So we are staying at Bear Canyon RV park in Bozeman for 2 nights.  Lovely area.  We got in early enough to set up, relax and then enjoy the sunset over cocktails.

Daytime and sunset views from the motorhome 

There are a lot of mountains around Bozeman, and, we were told, some really nice hiking trails.  Bozeman also boasts a mega-mile urban trail system.  We've been doing a lot of wilderness hiking, and we love that, but we decided to take the urban trail map and do that today.   The loop we chose took us into Bozeman and back to the campground ... roughly 10 miles round trip.  Very rural area. Even the "housing tracts" are pretty rural, right next to huge open fields of whatever they're growing here.  Hay.  Lots of hay.

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 I have to tell you about Wall, South Dakota.  Wall is a block long oasis in the middle of no-where, about halfway between two medium sized somethings.  In 1931, this guy Ted Hustead graduates from pharmacy school and buys the Wall town drug store, moving his family from civilization to this hole in the ground.  There weren't enough people in the town to keep a pharmacy busy, so they struggled for years.  One day the wife notices all the cars going by onthe interstate and thinks, hmm there are no stops between there and there, those people must be thirsty.  So they put up signs out onthe interstate reading "Free Cold Water", and people started stopping for the free cold water.  And then, of course, they'd buy ice cream, or something else, and the drug store started to flourish.  Wall Drug signs dot the interstate in both directions now... not just with free water, but they house a museum, a gift store, and a pretty good restaurant.  They still have free water.  One sign along the road said "Buffalo Burgers" so that caught our interest.  We'd planned to stop for lunch anyway, but we've really tried to avoid tourist traps.  And Wall Drug is certainly a tourist trap, but the food was good.  The whole block is now, essentially, Wall Drug.  And across the street are a couple more tourista places, all dolled up to look like a western town.  And CROWDED!   They even have RV and tourist bus parking.  www.walldrug.com

We are in our new hometown of Madison, South Dakota.  Cute little town founded in 1860, and home to the Dakota State University.  Not the SOUTH Dakota State U, just Dakota.  Interesting.  Lovely buildings, circa 1868.  It looks like school is just getting ready to start, as students appear to be arriving in town. 

We are staying on Lake Madison.  Pretty good sized lake, with lovely houses, and right next door is a golf course.  Darn, Mark shoulda brought his clubs along.  And on the golf course is a bar and grill.  They'll get to know us soon enough.

 Friday night we went over for dinner at the golf course.  Its a casual place, but not pub food.  They have steaks, fish and pasta.  And local beer on tap.  Staffed by Dakota State college kids who rock.  Nice kids, friendly, articulate.  What a concept.  Anyway, it was pretty crowded on Friday night.  On the right is a shot of the sunset over the lake from the deck of the restaurant. 

Its Saturday and we decided to follow some letterboxes to Brookings.  There are no letterboxes in Madison.  One in Sioux Falls, which I'm told is the Big City, so we're a little surprised by that.  But there are supposed to be 6 in Brookings.  So off we go to Brookings.  Now Brookings is big enough to have a Lowes...so that's BIG in these here parts.  Its also the home of the South Dakota State University Jackrabbits.  And this was "welcome back jack" day.  The town was full of kids returning to school, parents dropping them off, etc.  Nice town with some lovely parks, and the school is quite nice.  A LOT of money in their athletics program, the sports fields are unbelievable.  The high school sports fields were unbelievable.   And there are no state taxes in Sd, and their property taxes are close to the lowest in the country.  But their schools are gorgeous.  Hmmm. 

We ended up with 4 out of 6 letterboxes for our drive.  Two of them were in a park that the university uses for its landscape/horticulure/etc programs.  Gorgeous park, right next the campus.  Based on the buildings we saw, its primarily an aggie school: seed research building, dairy research building, equestrian training; huge greenhouses

McRory Park on the SDSU campus.  They have several of these critters on the garden made up of odds and ends,  This guy's tail was a  orange traffic cone.  Kinda fun poking up from the plants.

We're in Lake County, and you understand quickly why its called that.  Lakes, lakes and more lakes.  On the road we took back from Brookings, there were often bodies of water on both sides of the road ... I felt like I was in the Florida keys or something.  Some are little lakes and some are huge.  Lake Madison is probably midsized.  I couldn't get the pictures I wanted but this might give you an idea