Note to readers: Sorry about the delay, I’ve not been myself lately. The previous delay between posts was due to a necessary hospital visit for surgery and this time it’s been because of a week long illness. It seemed to be a powerful version of the flu that I was lucky enough to have had my shot for so some of the symptoms were reduced or missing altogether. But still, in this area of the country I’m currently staying we’re seeing one of the largest outbreaks of flu in the country and I caught it. Day before yesterday was the worst day of them all with fever and chills all day and night but today, I’m feeling much better. I hope the length of wait between this post and the next won’t be so long.
I’d been in the Snake River Canyon area for a couple months and had plans to do another raft trip down the snake but my brother and nephew began to talk about some music venue called Big Bottom Music Festival. Hmm. A music festival huh? And my nephew would be playing? I’d be up for that. It’s outside of Randle, Washington and apparently has been in operation for over a decade but after I decided to go, had a hell of a time finding information about the venue anywhere online. Well, whatever my brother and nephew told me I couldn’t get lost and they’d have me follow them in when they got to Randle since I’d get there before them and would be staying at the local RV park.
And off I went…
Followed I-84 up to Hermiston. First I drove clear over to the Columbia just north of Hermiston to try a little RV park I’ve been aware of for literally decades but never had the opportunity to stay there. The Hat Rock RV Campground seemed to have all I’d need at a half way decent price and when I arrived first thing I asked was how their Wifi was. Terrible they tell me. Er, really? Yep, at the only open spots they had, it was not good at all, so they said. As I drove out of the park, I stopped at those sites they had open and tested their signal with my phone. Sure enough, no or very weak signal. Ok, well, disappointed because I really wanted Wifi, headed back towards Hermiston because I knew there was one RV park that was a PPA 1/2 price club park and maybe they had OK Wifi since they are in town. And ended up spending two nights at Pioneer RV Park there in town and found, despite a warning of the opposite from the manager, very high speed Wifi. Nearly 14 Mbps download speed. It’s surprising how few park managers really have any idea of what kind of Wifi they’re broadcasting. Those who say it’s GREAT are usually the most wrong.
There in Hermiston, as I was leaving town, it was time to fuel up, and I stopped at a biodiesel station. Not very busy even though they had the lowest diesel price I’d seen in all of town. The owner seemed to have a problem getting my card to work, had to enter it 3 times. Eventually I got both the RV and car filled and was ready to head on out. A couple weeks later, I couldn’t find the charge on my card. Seems as if it never went through. I’ll take care of it when I get settled after the Big Bottom Festival, I thought. And promptly forgot until months later, and couldn’t find the paperwork. So I have no idea if the poor station got their nearly $200.
Back on the road, I chose to take the Washington side road after crossing the Columbia River at Umatilla just a few miles from Hermiston. Followed the river road a few miles and then turned north on the 221 which takes you to Prosser. Then followed 22 to Yakima. These roads paralleled (sort of) the Yakima River and despite having lived in this part of the country my entire life, I’d never been on them. So that was interesting. Off the beaten path for sure. Two lane roads most of the way, had to watch my driving.
It was a bit foggy the morning I crossed the Columbia.
Heading towards Prosser.
And here’s the Yakima River.
And here’s Union Gap outside of Yakima.
And inside Union Gap. It is famous for some reason. I forget why.
And just out of Union Gap. Yakima is just 1/4 mile on.
The Yakima River isn’t very big, but it’s been used for over 100 years to water the apple crops in the Yakima area. 
As I drifted through Yakima, I was astounded at all the new construction there. I was the Montgomery Ward Service Manager there for a couple years, bought a house, the whole deal, and it was a bit of a small surprise to see the growth. After Ward let me go, didn’t take long to discover there isn’t much for someone with my skills to do. No jobs. So I wrote my first technical article and was lucky enough to have it published in the national electronics magazine, Popular Electronics. At the time, it had the largest electronics hobbyist readership of over 360,000. Eventually, I’d earn nearly $3000 from the article and the PCBs I sold for the circuit. Lots of fun, but the money only trickled in so it wasn’t as though it would allow us to stay in town. Had to move on to someplace more lucrative for an electronics guy like me. So ended up in Portland, Oregon. Rented the house for a while, but eventually had to sell it. Had a neighbor family we’d made friends with manage it for us and 2 years later found that she had embezzled over $1300 of rent money. So decided to sell. Made a nice profit though. Well, whatever. That’s all in the past.
And soon I was out of Yakima proper and in the hills to the west. 
Big ‘ol man made dam. Looked like a huge beaver dam at this distance.
Made a nice reservoir though.
Wow, a dirt dam holding back all that water. Scary.
And I arrived in Randle at the Shady Firs RV Park. After having checked other RV parks in the area, figured this would be the best of the lot, but not necessarily great. 
Nice big park with lots of trees. Services were OK except no Wifi. As I drove in, I noticed a Stars & Bars southern surrender flag on one of the buildings but didn’t think much about it, especially as there was a black woman sitting with what turned out to be the managers in residence (or new owners, never did find out for sure). They took my money and guided me to my space. From what I’d read and heard here, none of the RV parks in town have Wifi. So I just didn’t have an internet connection. Gasp! Was pretty happy I’d anticipated and handled all my banking business before coming down in Hermiston. 
So here I am in Randle Washington waiting for my brother and nephew plus family to show up to guide me to the Big Bottom Festival, wherever that was. I had a vague idea that I’d passed the field where the festival might be (I imagined a big empty field where 10’s or hundreds of RVs would end up parking). Turn out I was very wrong. And my son was trying to decide to come along with us and visit. Shaping up to be fun.
Thanks for reading, hope you come back and join me next time when we visit the Festival.
You may want to skip this post. It’s a sound-off about a sucky Saturday.
Every Saturday I take the woman out to eat. Should we go this Saturday? The evening was to bring snow, rain, cold. Monday and Tuesday, bitter cold. Sure, we’ll go out and eat. We went to the best diner (farther away) where I had fish and chips. She had 21 shrimp and chips. (Fresh cut fries). The waitress was “honey” to everyone, but us. Though we received excellent service. I chatted a bit. Food was good and plentiful as usual. Time to pay the bill. Uh-huh. My woman had water to drink. I had coffee. Said to the waitress, “Discrepancy. What’s the charge for iced tea?” She, “Oh I wouldn’t charge you that on purpose.” Sure. Haven’t heard that before. It seems restaurants and diner waitresses add on drinks to up your bill in this area. Evidently 16, 18, 20% of the bill isn’t enough of a tip.
That service station wasn’t owned by Eastern Indians was it? The local Sunoco is. Yesterday I stopped to top off because OPEC Crude is steadily rising. Speedway, which bought out Hess is next door but using their pump pay system is worse than going in for the Good Sam discount at Pilot/Flying j. Anyway, the Indians don’t maintain their pumps. Pulled up to the 1st. Bag on nozzle. Backed to the pump behind. It wouldn’t read my card. Thanks for chip cards. Moved to next row and backed to pump 1. Swiped card and pump said, “remove nozzle and select grade.” Then didn’t work. Swiped card 3 more times. Nothing. Went inside and told attendant those 2 pumps wouldn’t take my card. “How much gas do you want?” $20. “But I don’t think it’ll take it all.” He said, “if it doesn’t it’ll go back on your card.”
On removing and pumping the gas, siphoning it would have went as quickly. ~10 minutes later, my $18.51 worth of gas was dispensed. I returned with a slow burn attitude to the cashier where I asked for a refund of the unused amount. He again informed be it would go to my card automatically. Sure. Stations like this are why I’ve frozen my credit.
This was a bad Saturday. Our government owned Postal Service didn’t pickup the mail again. So the Netflix dvd and other mail didn’t get picked up. We saw a pickup wrecker towing a small postal delivery vehicle toward the post office on the road to home. Couldn’t be our postal truck? Nah. Probably.
This was after the gas top-off.
It’s Sunday morning and 34 degrees. 9:58 A.M. The snow and rain stopped. Not too windy. Ill head out shortly to check my motorhome for inside leaks. It seems SE Pa. is becoming a rain forest. 68″ of rain during 2018.
In the past I resealed all side windows. And all seams on the roof. Repaired the cab to roof seam and rebuilt the inside ceiling and overhead bin after a heavy snow caused a leak. Redid most of the interior. And wheel bearings, brakes. Did not change the outside. And other mech repairs, rebuilds.
So, hope your enjoying your travels and safely, JIm. With less headaches!
What a weekend you had, Sam. Well, it’s in the past so best forget about it. I know what you mean, some weekends, weeks or months just don’t go as planned. I had months like that in my old RV, the ’94 Bounder. Before I got all the annoying little issues fixed during the first two years, it would seem to have something break every trip. And then one day in year 3 I noticed I hadn’t had to fix anything or pay for much of anything other than diesel in months. Oh happy day!
But even now, though I don’t have to repair this Winnebago as much, there’s still bad weekends. Not too many thank the gods.
Yes, I am enjoying my travels. I’m kinda stuck here in Pahrump for the time being because I ended up in the hospital for umbilical hernia surgery 3 days before xmas and had 2 weeks of recovery afterwards and then after getting better from that, got the flu! This area has a very high incidence of the flu this year and though I got my flu shot back in Sept, still caught it. Of course the shot helped make it less traumatic as I had fewer symptoms than the vast majority of those without the shot, but it still knocked me down for a week. It finally let up yesterday for good. Whew.
Now if only the weather would get all sunny. That would be great.
Hi Jim; Correction: Evidently the USPS did deliver mail. After 6 P.M. My bad. In September thieves (thief?) broke into my motorhome. Someone who knew the entrance code into the storage yard. National General insurance reimbursed me with a handsome payoff. Selling the motorhome is now a consideration. And getting rid of many personal items would be a wise move.
Happy Trails.
Well, all’s well that ends well I suppose. Glad the USPS did the job.
Ahh, another storage yard RV break in. Gah, those places seem to care little about our property. But even then that’s not the only place it happens. My brother bought a new Class C with slide a few years ago and parked it in his sons DRIVEWAY. And a couple neighborhood toughs well known around the area for causing people problems decided to break in and steal all the electronics, damaging a bunch of stuff, including the front door. Lucky he had insurance. But the stuff he got as replacements by the RV shop were all inferior brands. The bad guys were never prosecuted as they had no proof. Just suspicions. But I hear a lot more complains about RV break ins from people about storage yards then personal driveways.
To bad you’re giving up motorhoming. I find it’s still fulfilling my wanderlust. But, you do what you need for your own satisfaction. Hope you stay a reader in any case!