Travel for winter of 2011 and 2012. Oregon Coast

Oct. 5

 We got the water turned off and the house closed up for our winter trip.  Able to leave Colfax and on the road again by 9:15.  We spent the first night in Ainsworth State Park which is along the Columbia River not far from Multnomah Falls and about 35 miles east of Portland.  It rained on us off and on through the day and heavy rain in the night. 

Oct. 6

Today we drive to Seaside Oregon to spend 4 night.  The campground is nice and surprising, lots of camping rigs.  We exprore the town and find the area where all the shops are.  Spent the afternoon checking out the shops.  The street goes to the beach where there is a turn a round and a statue of Lewis and Clark.  We also sat for awhile and watched the people on the beach flying kits etc.  Had a great seafood dinner at Normas Seafood Restaurant.  The weather cleared and the sun even came out.  We had a good day.

Lewis and Clark

Oct. 7

Rain in the night and still rain in the morning.  Decided to go to Canon Beach which is just down the road about 10 miles.  We had mist most of the day.  Had fish and chips for lunch and walked around the shopping area of Canon Beach.  We road along the beach to see the famous Haystack Rock.  Too cold and rainy to even get out of the car.  Not many people on the beach.

Haystack rock at Canon Beach

Oct. 8

Today we head north to Astoria.  Stop at Lewis and Clark National Historical Park.  There is a reconstructed Fort Clatsop there.  It is where the origional fort was located.  The Corps of Discovery remained at Fort Clastsop from Dec. 7, 1805 until March 23, 1806 when they started their return trip.  They didn't have a very good weather while there.  Of the 106 days the explorers spent at the fort, it rained every day but 12.  We watched a movie  about their trip west and stopped at the museum in the visitors center.  We walked down to the canoe landing where an old dougout canoe was in the trees.
Went into Astoria and looked around.  Stopped at a grocery store and Costco before going back to Seaside.  We wanted crab for dinner so stopped at a seafood market and bought two big crabs.  Seafood is expensive along the coast so we have only bought these two crab.  Have enought left over to have crab cakes for dinner tomorrow. 

Sacagawea and Jean Baptiste

Fort Clatsop

Canoe Landing

Dougout Canoe

Oct. 9

It rained hard in the night but is just cloudy today.  We went to visit the Salt Works here in Seaside.  By the time the Corps of Discovery arrived at the Pacific Coast its supply of salt for preserving and flavoring food was nearly exhausted.  To remedy this, three men set-up a salt making operation at the beach in present day Seaside.  Salt was obtained by boiling sea water day and night in kettles placed on an oven built of stones and fueled by trees and wood debris along the shore.  Soon it was producing three quarts of salt a day. 

Tomorrow we leave and go down the coast to Newport area and will stay there for 4 nights.
Happy Travels, Barb   

Salt Works

Nevada, Idaho, Colfax Washington

April 13

Today we travel north through the state of Nevada.  We start our trip on the loneliest highway in the US, highway 50.  It is definitely desolate along the roads in Nevada.  We stop for lunch in Wells and before we left town it starts to snow.  The wind in blowing hard and the snow is going sideways.  We decided to try and get further today so we are spending the night in Jackpot NV, right on the border of Idaho.  Our RV park in right next to the casino.  We go to the casino for dinner and finally put some money into the slots.  We both put in $5 and both lost $5 pretty fast. That night it snowed again hard and the ground was white. 

April  14

This morning the sky is blue but it is cold outside. The road is dry and there is still snow on the grass.  We head north into Idaho and stop in the town or Hagerman at the visitors center for the Hagerman Fossil Beds Nat. Monument.  The fossil site out of town is closed because of a fire.  We saw a movie about the area and there were lots of fossils on display.  There is a life size model of the Hagerman Horse.  Ate lunch at a restaurant before moving on.  Got to my sisters house in the afternoon.  We had stopped here on the start of our trip durning Labor Day weekend.



Hagerman Horse





Hagerman Horse skull



April 15

Going shopping with my sister today.   Dick is helping my brother-in-law, Dick around the winery today while we shop.  We had fun shopping and got some good bargains.   

April 16

Shirley and I go shopping again today.  It is Dicks birthday today and he is helping around the winery again today.  The boys are putting the foil and labeling the wine from this last harvest.  Shirley and I hit some good sales and get good bargains again today.  Shirley cooks Dick a delicious steak dinner with birthday cake for desert for his birthday. 

April 17

Stayed around the house today.  In the afternoon  a group of people came for a wine taste and Dick and I help.  We are coming back to Parma Ridge May 1st to help out with their open house at the winery.

April 18

Rain this morning as we are leaving for home.  This will be our last day of travel for this trip.  The weather clears for awhile but we get into clouds with rain and snow most of the way home.  We get into Colfax around 2:30 and as soon as we enter town it starts to snow.  Could hardly see the road because it was snowing with big flakes and coming down really hard.  We finally get parked and go home to wait for a city worker to come and turn on our water.  We even get our TV cable hooked up again today.  It is good to be home and the house survived the terrible winter they had here in Colfax.




Coming home to a snow storm


We had a wonderful trip and totally enjoyed all the places we visited.  People ask us what place was our favorite but that is a hard question.  Each place is unique and we have many favorites and would like to return to revisit some of them in the future.  On the road for 229 days and traveled 14,643 miles in the motor home.  Don't have the exact mileage for the Jeep but it is somewhere around 9,000 miles.  We were in 38 states and 5 Canadian Provinces.  We have now been in every state except Hawaii and we are planing on going there in 2012.  We learned on thing, this country is large, too large to see everything in only one trip or even in a lifetime.  We met some wonderful people along the way and collected lots of name cards so we can keep in touch.  We will continue to travel in the winters, away from the cold and snow, for as long as we can.  We have the travel bug and want to see more of this country.  This is the last blog for now and will start a new blog when we take off the the fall. Definitely Happy Travels, Barb

Nevada

Mar. 29 & 30

Sunny and nice today.  Do a little shopping and sit outside and enjoy the sunshine.  On Wed we go to the lunch buffet at Boulder Station Casino just down the street.

Mar. 31

Sunny again today and we drive to Hoover Dam.  We stop at the new bridge and walk across it.  It is an amazing bridge that they built above the dam.  The road use to wind down the canyon and over the top of the dam.  We drove down to the dam and drove across it.  I got some great pictures of the new bridge.  We drove to Boulder City and had good hamburgers at the Coffee Cup Cafe.  There were some interesting shops along the street so we did a little shopping.

New bridge

Hoover Dam

April 1

It is hot today so we spent all afternoon at the pool.  The water was great and we enjoyed the relaxing afternoon.  We drive into town and have dinner at one of the casinos and then go to Fremont Street Experience.  Tonight there are free concerts along the street featuring country music entertainers.  The Academy of Country Music is holding their award show on Sunday in Las Vegas so all the country stars are in Vegas.  Fremont Street is a 5 block entertainment zone which features the world's largest video screen 90 feet above the pedestrian mall.  It was quite the sight with the lights from the video screen, music and a large crowd of people.  We listened to a couple of performers but didn't stay long because it was still 86 degrees out and the crowd was very large.

Fremont Street Experience

April 2

Still sunny and hot today.  We stay around the motor home most of the day.  My niece and her husband, Terri and Steve pick us up for dinner.  We had a great seafood meal and enjoyed our evening with them.

April 3. 4, 5

The weather is a little cooler and I fell like I'm coming down with a cold so we stay in the campground for a few days. 

April 6

Sunny and a little cooler today.  After lunch we drive to the Strip area of downtown.  There are lots of people walking and traffic is bumper to bumper.  We decide it is too busy there so just drive up and back down the strip and look at the many hotels and casinos.  We have dinner at Memphis BBQ and order fried dill pickles to try. 

The Strip

April 7

After breakfast we drive north to the town of Overton and meet some friends, Jack and Rosie, we met at Central Ferry Campground three years ago.  We are meeting half way between when we both are camping.  We have lunch with them and have a good visit.  They are spending the summer working in Yellowstone. 

April 8

After lunch we do some shopping and Dick bought a shirt and shorts.  My sister and brother-in-law flew into Las Vegas so we met them for drinks at a casino.  Dick and I ate dinner at the Mexican Restaurant.

April 9

Today is a busy day.  After lunch we go to visit my two great nephews.  We met James, Teresa and Desmond who is 6 mo old and Brian, Rachel and Ethan who is almost 4.  My sister and husband and another niece, Debbie are there visiting also.  Tonight we are going to a surprise birthday party for my niece's husband, Steve. 

April 10

Sunny and warmer today.  We stay around the campground today and in the afternoon enjoy talking to our neighbors.  For dinner we go to Grimald's Pizzeria. 

April 11

It's sunny and nice as we leave Las Vegas.  We enjoyed our stay and will probably come back to Vegas next winter.  The drive up through Nevada is pretty boring.  The mountains are pretty but the scenery is pretty much the same for the 300 miles.  Our campground in located right on the border of Nevada and Utah.  The motel and gas station are in Utah and the casino and campground are in Nevada.  After dinner we drive into the little town of Baker which is at the edge of Great Basin National Park.  On the way to town we saw 5 bull Elk along the road about 30 yards from us.  That is the closest I have ever been to an Elk and have never seen that many at one time.

Elk

View from our campground

April 12

Today it is cloudy but not too cold.  After breakfast we drive to the Great Basin Nat. Park and go to Lehman Cave Visitors Center.  We get tickets for the 1:00 cave tour and watch two movies on the cave and the park.  Not much of the park roads are open because of snow so we can only drive a little ways into the park.  We eat a picnic lunch before our tour which last for 90 minutes.  This cave has great decorations and formations like stalactitetes, stalagmites, columns, draperies, flowstone, soda straws and rarities like shields.  We have seen 5 caves on this trip and this is the wettest one.  We all got dripped on on the tour and there was standing water on the floor in places.  The melting snow is entering the cave and it is especially bad this time of year. 

Lehman Caves

Tomorrow we travel north and probably spend the night in Wells NV.  Our next stop will be my sister's house in Parma ID where we will spend a few days.  I need a shopping fix with my sister.  We should be home sometime next week.  Definitely Happy Travels, Barb

New Mexico and Arizona

Mar. 16

We move north to Albuquerque and our campground is off of historic Root 66.  We are parked on top with a nice view of the mountains. 

Mar. 17

Sunny and it is going to be 80 degrees today.  After breakfast we go to the Petroglyph National Monument.  It is located on the edge of Albuquerque.  The petroglyphs are on basalt boulders broken away from lava caprock.  Lava flowed from a large crack in the Earth's crust.  Next we drove to Albuquerque Anderson-Abruzzo International Balloon Museum.  It is named after the two men  balloonist from Albuquerque who completed the first manned crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in 1978.  Their gondola named Double Eagle was on display.  They landed in Miserey France which was close to the spot where Charles Lindbergh successfully ended his own momentous crossing 50 years earlier.  There was also a capsule that went to the edge of space.  Next we went to Old Town where there are lots of shops.  We had lunch at a good Mexican Restaurant, Cecilia's.  Dick had seen it on Diners, Drive-in and Dives.  One thing about New Mexican food is they cover it in red or green chili sauce.  The red is too hot for me and the green is even hotter.  I always asked to put the red chili sauce on the side and ordered more salsa to eat with my meal.

Petroglyphs

Balloon in museum

Capsule that went to edge of space

Double Eagle

Mar. 18

Today we drove the Jeep south to Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument.  There is a string of three pueblo ruins that people lived in 300 years ago before leaving the area in the 1670's.  We visited two pueblo ruins, Quarai and Abo.  Quarai is pretty much original with only 15 % rebuilt.  We had a great New Mexican lunch at an old hotel in the town of Mountainair.  The hotel is haunted and has been featured on the TV program Ghost Hunters.

Quarai

Abo

Mar. 19

Today  we pretty much stayed around the campground.  We did some shopping and just enjoyed the day.

Mar. 20

It's sunny and nice today and we stayed in the campground all day.  We watched some NCAA basketball and Dick watched Nascar race on TV.  Late in the afternoon Dick tried to fix our step into the motor home.  It hasn't been working very well.  It took both of us to put it back together and it seems to be working.

Mar. 21

 Sunny but very windy.  We were going to leave today but because of the high wind warning for New Mexico and Arizona we decided to stay one more day.  We went into town  and did a little shopping and ate lunch at Rudy's which is a southern chain restaurant.  The food was good and even took a pound of brisket home. 

Mar. 22

Cold and cloudy and a little snow in the night.  We can see it in the mountains across from the campground.  We head into Arizona to the little town of Sun Valley which is by the Petrified Forest National Park and will stay for 2 nights.  After getting set up we go into the town of Holbrook and visited the petrified wood store.  They sell all kinds of things made out of the wood even tables made out of large slabs of polished petrified wood which are for sale for over $10,000.  Their outside lot was full of petrified logs. 

Mar. 23

Sunny and nice today and after breakfast we drove to the Petrified Forest National Park and the Painted Desert.  We made a lunch to eat along the way because there are no restaurants.  We stopped at the visitors center and saw a movie about the parks.  There were lots of logs outside of the visitors center and walked around the trail.  We stopped at the pull-outs along the road.  At Newspaper Rock we could see petroglyphs etched into the large rocks below the lookout.  At Puerco Pueblo there were ruins of a 100 room pueblo built about 1250 and may have housed 1,200 people.  Spanish explorers found no one here in 1540.  In the Painted Desert the vistas of the varied colored landscape were breathtaking.  We stopped at the Painted Desert Inn which is a National Historic Landmark.  The inn is no longer in use as a place to stay and eat but is open for tourist to see the inside and enjoy the view.  There are many beautiful Indian paintings on the walls.   When we got back to camp the two couples by us, one from British Columbia and the other from California, came over and we enjoyed coctails and conservation.  That is what I love about traveling and staying in campgrounds, we met so many wounderful people.

Tepees Area

Puerco Pueblo

Desert Inn

View from the Desert Inn

Painting on the wall

Celing in the Desert Inn

Mar. 24

Today we move further west to the area of Sedona.  Dick fought a terrible wind going across Arizona.  There had been a snow fall in the Flagstaff area early this morning.  The road was clear but there was snow along the road and in the mountains.  We arrived at the campground before noon.  After lunch we drove to the little town of Cottonwood and the the Tuzigoot National Monument.  This is a very impressive ruin.  It is two stories high in places with 77 ground floor rooms.  It's on a ridge overlooking the Verde River.  This pueblo was once a thriving Sanagua community built around 1125.  These people left the valley by 1400. 

snow along the road by Flagstaff

Tuzigoot

Mar. 25

Today we go into the town of Sedona.  We stop at the visitors center and get some information and maps of the town.  The red rock cliffs surrounding the town are awesome.  We stopped at some of the shops and ate lunch at the Cowboy Club where we had cactus fries with our lunch.  That night we wondered if we were on the right time as Arizona doesn't observe daylight savings time.  We finally decided we had spent the last 4 days on Mountain time and should have been on Pacific time.  That is how it is when retired.  We are never sure what day it is and not worried what time it is. 

Mar. 26

It's partly cloudy and windy today as we head to the little town of Jerome.  It is built on the side of a high mountain.  The road there winds up the mountain and the view from the top is of the Verde Valley.  The town was once a copper and gold mining area and 15,000 people once lived there.  The population is now only 400.  The town of full of shops and lots of tourist are shopping and looking around the town.  There are stairs between the streets to get around on foot.  We ate lunch at Haunted Hamburger out on the deck with a great view of the valley below.  Next we drove to Prescott and were surprised how large it is.  We came back through Sedona and by coming on a different road saw lots of beautiful red rock formations.  We drove up to the airport to get a good view of the town below. 

Jerome

View of Sedona from the airport

Sedona red rock

Mar. 27

It is a beautiful day today with a clear blue sky and no wind.  We are riding the Verde Canyon Railroad which goes from the town of Clarkdale to the ghost ranch of Perkinsville and back.  We packed a lunch to eat before getting on the train which left at 1:00 and won't get back for 4 hours.  The train took us through the Verde Canyon and followed the upper Verde River.  The canyon is spectacular with the red rock and basalt cliffs.  We had two cars to be in, one inside and an outside car where you stand along the railing or sit in the middle.  It was such a beautiful day we chose to be in the outside car where I could take many pictures of the scenery.  We had a great day seeing beautiful country.

Train in the station

Train winding up the canyon

Red cliffs

Mar. 28

It's a sunny and beautiful day as we leave to drive to Las Vegas.  We are going to stay here for two weeks and wait out the bad weather north.  Our campground in on the east side of town and only 6 miles from the strip.  We get settled and sit outside and enjoy the good weather.  We will leave here on April 11th and head north towards home.  Definitely Happy Travels, Barb