Debriefing

 We left Salem with the temps in the cool 80's and drove the short 160 miles south on Interstate 5 to Canyonville, Oregon on Thursday, July 1st. Canyonville is the home of Seven Feathers RV Resort, which is part of Seven Feathers Casino, and is a very popular spot for rv'ers to visit while traveling the west coast. The beginning of the Fourth of July holiday influenced the attendance at the park, as we found when we approached the check-in portico.

Gazley Bridge over the South Umpqua River just outside of town is a great place to cool off. The temperature was in the 80's and we were lovin' it!

This part of southern Oregon is the heart of the timber industry. This section of an old growth Douglas Fir tree now has a "hat" to protect it from the weather, but when it was new it contained enough lumber to build a three bedroom home, thereby protecting others. When cut by M&B Logging it was 142 years old.

Several huge lumber mills surround Canyonville, and we couldn't resist stopping for a couple of photos.

And with tens of thousands of logs waiting to be milled, you gotta wonder why the price of lumber is so high.

Our site at Seven Feathers, number 123, was wonderfully cool as the sun set. We took advantage of the shade by sitting out until all hours.

Leaving Canyonville, we were soon out of Oregon and into California.

The smoke from the several fires burning in the Siskiyou National Forest was evident, both by sight and smell.

Two hundred twenty six miles further south, we pulled into Win-River Casino RV Park in Redding, CA. Not intending to stay more than one night, we didn't even go into the casino. The satellite signal was blocked by trees, the local TV stations were running reruns of Judge Judy, and there wasn't a cable connection, so we enjoyed a comfortable evening outside.

We noticed on the way into Redding that the water level of Lake Shasta was extremely low. This lake has been in existence since 1944 and the water level has never been this low since it was first filled.

Providing water for irrigation and domestic use throughout the Sacramento Central Valley, as well as electricity, it is a key element of control of the Sacramento, Pit, and McCloud Rivers.

We left Win-River this morning telling each other that another rv park will be our stop the next time we're in the area. Interstate 5 south toward Sacramento is a long, mostly straight road, in need of repair as are most roads in California, so we had a chance to look at the countryside as we passed through. Evidence of the record-breaking drought is everywhere along the route.

Getting closer to Sacramento, the famous rice fields of the area came into view. This is going to be a tough crop to grow if water gives out.

Two hundred miles under our belt today got us home. We're going to stay put for awhile and try to get our tiny house done so we'll have a "home" to return to as we travel. One of the things we had to do as we got into town was fill up with fuel.

Welcome to California, where your gas tax dollars are not spent on road maintenance.

The motorhome is settled in and we're looking forward to a good nights sleep.

And, of course, today, July Fourth, is Sasha’s birthday! She’s seven today, and had her annual bowl of vanilla ice cream! Hand fed, no less!

So, here's the wrap:

6,588 miles

66 nights

101 hours of driving

$2,800 in fuel costs for the motorhome

And roughly $2,900 for lodging

An additional 4,618 miles on the tow car, not counting towing mileage

An unfathomable number of dollars spent on fuel for the car....

We saw some sights, By Golly, and enjoyed the trip. A few bumps and bruises later, we're home and planning out next trip in October. We'll be busy with the Tiny Home for awhile, so I'll post a few pics as we progress, but it's back on the road ASAP!

Thanks for traveling along with us!

Food Trucks, Coffee Kiosks, and Homeless Camps

Salem is not the same city that we remember from our last visit here, when we would ride our bicycles downtown, and rarely worry about locking them up. 

We stopped for gas at the station near a major grocery chain this morning. Lots of people and cars, and, in Oregon, lots of attendants that are required to pump your fuel for you. The regulations regarding that were temporarily suspended due to the heat a few days ago and the evening news had a story about locals not being able to figure out how to pump gas, resulting in huge lines at gas stations. As we fueled the car, a recorded message played over and over on the PA system, warning us not to leave valuables unattended, leave the car, and to watch for suspicious activity. Mobile solar surveillance stations were placed around the parking lot. What...??!!!

We decided to go out for breakfast at Patty's Off Center in downtown. We soon noticed that there literally is a food truck on every bare lot! Take your choice: mexican, vegan, or "Oregon Burrito". We also noticed a huge number of coffee kiosks, trailers, or, call them what your will, small semi-portable buildings serving coffee drinks. 

Our goal was a great little breakfast shop off of Center Street (get it?). Tucked into a small strip mall, Patty's is a local go-to we hear, so we decided to try it out. It's an eclectic shop, with a huge rooster on the roof to identify it, and dozens of poultry related signs hanging inside.

Breakfast was very good. Donna ordered extra crispy hash, and it came just as she had hoped!

My order of Uncle Mike's Redneck Benedict was a taste treat! An herb biscuit (sage and marjoram), two sausage patties, two eggs, smothered in sausage gravy and garnished with scallions....my cardiologists' number is......

As we drove around town, we couldn't help but notice that under every highway overpass, in every public park, and on the narrow grass strip in the parking lot at Pet Smart, a tent city has sprung up. Now, I know I'm old fashioned, but there's something inherently wrong with a situation where the "unhoused" squat on public or semi-public land, pay no fees, pickup no trash, and have enough money to smoke marijuana and eat McDonalds sandwiches. Trust me....eyes on. I can't help but wonder where this problem originated, and why is it such a huge issue in metropolitan areas? 

Ok, enough with that. I can't fix the problem, so I'll ignore it like so many others do.

On a lighter note, the weather has turned cloudy, with cool temps in the 70's and 80's! Wonderful!

Frying Pan, Part Trois

 It was a short travel day today, only 90 miles to Salem, Oregon, but it required more than 4 hours to travel. Just five miles west of Cascade Locks, we saw scattered debris of a small rv along the road. We had heard that Interstate 84 was closed for several hours Sunday afternoon, so this must have been the site of the accident. Unfortunately, we weren’t quick enough with the camera to get a pic. 

As we approached Interstate 205, east of Portland, we got caught in a huge traffic jam.

The photo doesn’t look like much because we, along with half the rest of Oregon, were concentrating on the center lane.  The highway split into north and south branches, and no one knew which lane to take. As it turned out, we could have saved a bunch of time hopping into the open left lane. Oh, well.

Turning south on I 205 gave us a glimpse of stopped northbound traffic.

A quick stop for fuel, and we slid into Hee Hee Ilahee RV Resort, site 46. We’ve stayed here several times in the past when the park was new. Now the trees are near mature, the concrete sites are beginning to deteriorate, and the price has doubled. It’s still nice, but is showing a need for some maintenance.

When we arrived, the temperature was 117 degrees, F. Another new record. Thats three record setting days in a row! Fortunately for everyone in the northwest, a cold front blew in in the early evening and as I write this at 9:00 pm, the temp is 79 degrees! Wow!

 Lets hope for a cool one tomorrow!

 

 

Frying Pan, Part Deux

 After a record temperature setting day yesterday, the band played the same song again today, only with more vigor! We took off at about 10 this morning for a day trip to the Washington side of the Columbia River Gorge, and by 2:15, the temp was toasty.

The evening news out of Portland, Oregon, tells of even hotter temps tomorrow. Yesterday set all-time heat records. Today was even hotter, and the forecast is for even warmer temps tomorrow! I'm glad we'll be going to Salem, Oregon, because it's only going to be 113 tomorrow!

We left Cascade Locks and traveled over the Bridge of the Gods to the north side of the Columbia River. So named because legend has it that a stone bridge crossed the river millennia ago, but collapsed, forming rapids in the river. Evidently indigenous peoples named that stone arch Bridge of the Gods, so....

The bridge is problematic for larger vehicles, both for weight and size. We paid the $2 toll and slid across in the car. From the viewpoint on the Washington side, we got a great view of Cascade Locks and the Columbia River.

As we drove east on Highway 14, the terrain changed dramatically. Soon we were in layers of molten rock that poured from cracks in the earth about 15 million years ago, coating 65,000 square miles two miles thick! As the Ice Age ended, huge amounts of water poured through the Gorge, scouring the rock and leaving giant gravel bars.

We turned north on US 97 toward the town of Goldendale, passing huge wind farms.

Goldendale lies in the Klickitat Valley, which advertises itself as the home of famous Goldendale Hay, with 35,000 acres of Alfalfa and 25,000 acres of wheat. A scenic turnout pointed out the extraordinary dormant volcanoes in this part of the world.

Mt. Ranier is readily seen in the distance.

But Mt Hood is a bit harder to see, just below the corner of the sign.

From Goldendale, we took WA 142 back to the west, passing abandoned farms along the way.

We stopped in the town of Klickitat for a picnic lunch. We sat in the car with the engine running and the ac going and in the shade of a tree in a city park!

Highway 142 follows the Klickitat River, which appears to be one of the muddiest rivers in the west!

Despite the thick water, dozens of people were cooling off with a raft, tube, paddle board, blow up mattress kinda trip!

We became a little concerned when we saw an empty kayak drifting down river....

But we quickly saw the passenger. He/She is the green hat bobbing in the center of the photo with the paddle in hand!

Returning to US 14, we were amazed at the confluence of the Klickitat and the Columbia! The muddy stuff is on the near side, but the Columbia soon assimilates the dirt, and it disappears.

The evening news has said that at about 9,000 feet on Mt Hood, the temperature was 96 degrees today. It's HOT!

From The Frying Pan.....

Most, if not all, of the West and Southwest is ratcheting up for a heat wave. Temps in record territory are going to be common. In an effort to escape the heat in Walla Walla, Washington, which is in the southeast corner of the state, inland, and surrounded by wheat fields, we drifted west into the Columbia River Gorge. When we left WW at about 10 am, it was 85+ and rising rapidly. 200 miles west, when we arrived at the Cascade Locks/Portland East KOA, the temp in the shade was 107. It was 2:30 in the afternoon, and still getting hotter.

US Highway 12 west out of Walla Walla sent us to US730 south along the Columbia River.

The river is so overwhelmingly huge that it looks like a small ocean.

As we left the Palouse hills of Walla Walla, it became obvious that the Columbia had been doing it's erosion job for thousands of years. The formations were awesome.

Interstate 84 was picked up south of Umatilla, and became our latest favorite road after the nightmare the other day driving into Walla Walla! Near Arlington, Oregon, we started down a long grade toward the Columbia. 

The views in the Columbia River Gorge Recreation Area are beautiful.

The rv park is located in the hamlet of Cascade Locks, Oregon, on the south side of the river. Named for a series of locks built in 1896 to aid in navigation. The locks were submerged in 1938 by the construction of Bonneville Lock and Dam, and the creation of Lake Bonneville. Highlights of recent activity in Cascade Locks include: an attempt by the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs to build a casino in town (on hold), an arrangement whereby the city would sell water for Nestle for bottling (rejected by voters), and a proposal to add pedestrian lanes to the Bridge of the Gods nearby for hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail. This is a.....nice.....community. The remains of the locks and surrounding area has been converted to the Cascade Locks Marine Park, with fishing piers and picnic areas.

Near the marina, a bronze commemorates Sacagawea and Lewis and Clark's Newfoundland dog, Seaman.

Lewis and Clark passed through the Gorge in 1805, with the much needed help of Sacagawea and her French Canadian husband Charbonneau, with whom she had a child, Jean-Baptiste, who is riding on the back of the young woman.

Driving west we arrived at the Columbia River Gorge Waterfalls Road, which is historic US 30, the original road through the Gorge. The first waterfall we came to was Horsetail Falls.

Many people were enjoying the cool water at the base of the falls.

Wahkeena Falls is a delicate brook burbling down the mountain. Quiet and peaceful.

We wanted to stop at the most spectacular of the Columbia River Falls, Multnomah Falls, but the parking lot was jammed, the number of visitors was immense, and it was 108 degrees. Nope, not this time. The ribbon falls is spectacular, however, falling 620 feet in two tiers. It's said that over 2 million people a year visit the falls, and I believe most of them were here this afternoon!

Back at camp, Site 86 held our attention for about 45 minutes, long enough to down a couple of glasses of iced tea, then we retreated indoors. Even though the park is shaded by mature Douglas Fir trees, it was still hot! This park was a last minute decision when we heard about the heat wave. The original plan was to dry camp along the bank of the Columbia at BLM's John Day Dam. Very little in the way of shade trees and no electricity quickly put an end to that plan! A couple of frantic phone calls found this site at the last minute. The sign at the entrance said "Full", but there are a handful of sites still available at sunset, so I suspect some people changed plans.

Because of the trees and the narrow roads in the KOA, we had to do some fancy footwork getting into the site. Three left turns around rv's placed too close to the road, pickups and campers poking out into the street, and small children riding training wheel bicycles in unexpected directions caused Donna to describe the event as "the closest we've ever been to hitting something". Now to worry about how to get outta here!