Settled in Milton Freewater…

I’ve been here in M-F for a few weeks getting settled but I wanted to write about, and post pictures about some things that are totally meaningless in the grand scheme of things, but which I found to be interesting at the time. And since I’m rather bored, and have nothing better to do at the moment, I hereby present, stuff I want to write and show pictures about.

Back when I was helping my brother get ready to move, I was staying in Mojave…a small town north of where my brother lives in Rosamond. It’s the town just outside of one of the world’s largest airplane graveyards so you’ve probably heard of it. I’ve been meaning to visit this vast airplane parking lot on my many trips to Rosamond I’ve made over the years but never quite made it. And this time was no exception. I could see them off in the distance whenever I drove into Mojave, but just never ended up touring the area to look at airplanes. Most of them are commercial jets of course.

 But I did take some pictures of the trip between Mojave and Rosamond as there’s interesting terraforming going on with the Golden Queen Mine. It’s been there for over a century. I would pass by it every morning as I headed south the 13 miles  to Dan’s place.

There’s road construction going on this section of highway and the speed is limited to 55 MPH on this normally 75 MPH road. And due to fuel prices I happily obeyed the posted limit in order to save on gas…which in this area of California was in the $5.999/gallon range. And mileage I was getting in the car did improve. It was so easy to get into the habit of driving slower all the time to save on fuel.

And here’s what we’re up against…

What a mess…

And there was much much more. Every room was full of boxes filled with crap. Garage was full too. I spent hours every day for most of two weeks helping box stuff up. How one guy can end up with that much ‘precious’ stuff is beyond me. But of course I live in an RV and space is limited so I might have a biased view.

And this is his project car that I’d spent hours working on during my visits over the years to help him with it but we were never able to get it started and running whenever I was there in town. Even has a rebuilt engine. The last time I worked on it, maybe 4 years ago, the carb was the problem. So he rebuilt it…he used to have that skill…but that didn’t do it. Still wouldn’t start. (Of course he doesn’t work on this every day, there might be months between).

It’s an old ’66 Studebaker Daytona. Something like the 250th car made from the end of production for the company. It’s basically a wreck IMO but he doesn’t think so and has been working on it slowly for 15 years now. It used to be his daily driver. Now he wants to restore it to functional…not as a show piece I don’t think…just as an ol’ timey daily driver. Nostalgia is a powerful thing.

I did find a very nice Thai restaurant there in Mojave. If you ever pass through Mojave, it’s worth stopping for eats. Anyway, after two weeks of helping Dan pack, I headed due north towards Carson City, Nevada. I’d originally planned on spending the first night on my trip to Oregon right near the CA/NV border but as I arrived there so early just decided to push on north to Fernley, NV instead. It’s only a 6-7 hour trip at 55 MPH and I even stopped for fuel outside of Carson City.

Here’s some purdy rocks along the route…

Then spotted this interesting cloud formation over some hills west of the highway. Death Valley would have been way over on the other side so these are the some mountains to the west of my route. Much of this area is National Park land.

Pretty neat views along the way.

Heading into Nevada the trees start getting thicker as the elevation increases. And there’s a lake up in these here hills.

When I arrived in Fernley, I was tuckered out from driving and while wandering around (I missed the turn for the RV park I had planned on checking out. Didn’t see any evidence of a bunch of RVs parked anywhere either as I passed the area I thought it was in, plus the traffic was heavy) saw a sandwich board sign that said ‘RV Parking in Rear’ outside a motel. I remembered that this place used to have a small RV park as it was across the street from the Amazon warehouse where I worked for a few months years ago. They don’t have an RV park anymore they informed me as I walked into the lobby.

Anyway, I was across the street from a large mostly empty open space with several semi’s parked for the night there. I didn’t want to drive around any more since it was pretty close to 5 PM so I joined them and settled in for a night of dry camping, within walking distance of WM if I’d needed anything. Another RV settled in next to me. Safety in numbers sort of thing.

Next morning I woke up to a chill house in the 40’s F so started the generator and ran the heatpump and gas furnace for a while. Remember it had been over 100 F in Mojave for nearly the entire 2 weeks I’d been there so this was a brisk wake up. Brrr. It was around 5:30 AM when I woke up, and since I was soon wide awake, went ahead and had b-fast, did some internet searching, broke camp, drove over to a nearby freeway entrance heading north and was on my way by 7:30.

A few hours later, stopped for fuel in Winnemucca, but first passed through this interesting valley outside of Fernley…the east side of the valley had several geothermal power plants. And a couple prisons.

Saw several of those interesting steaming buildings and even one long creek that came from a building off in the distance (also steaming) all the way towards the road…and it was steaming the entire way. So I guessed geothermal plants.

Off on the other (west) side of this valley, it looked like this…mostly.

Much of the valley was high desert dry though. On the west side of the valley were ancient water carved creeks. And I did see some farms near them eventually, after I’d left the prison behind. The creeks seemed to be very wide and deep. Only had a couple times where I could get a nearby look at them but didn’t manage to get a picture close up. Here you can see the white upper edge of the biggest one I spotted off in the distance.

After fueling up in Winnemucca, back on the road and several miles north of town you can see how the green starts showing up again in the valleys. And then I passed near a isolated storm.

Passed into Oregon and the weather was nice and cool. Cool enough that I had to set my dash heat to ‘Heat’ as the trip wore on. Weird weather we were having in mid-June of 2022. Big storms rolling through the PNW, across the US, and hammering the east coast. Many people died in storm related accidents, floods, tornadoes during this late storm season. And even after the storms, the heat over in the east jumped up into the 100’s in many areas. Miserable for those people over there. Glad I live here.

And then after passing though Burns (didn’t even stop, did notice the downtown is looking even more destitute than a couple years ago), I got into the forests south of John Day. Another National Forest.

Only spent the night at John Day. Got settled in at the Grant County RV park, at $35/night, and headed straight over to the Outpost Restaurant for their meatloaf dinner.  Yum. Didn’t take any pictures this visit. I would have stayed 3 nights because I wanted to play the local golf course, but they were over booked. They have no penalties for not showing up so people make a reservation ‘just in case’ and then never show up. Especially when the weather is unsettled. Making it difficult for travelers who just want a few days rest here. If they would ask for 1 nights forfeit if they don’t show up, that sort of thing would swiftly end.

Next morning, headed on 395 towards Milton Freewater. Here’s a few shots of the route. I love how it changes from forested mountain terrain to valleys, to rolling hills as I approach the Walla Walla valley. Although there are a couple very very steep sections, it’s a very relaxing drive if you keep your speed down. Even in a large RV. There are some corners and slopes where I need to slow down quite a bit but since M-F is only 3.5 hours from John Day, going slow is just fine. There are some pullouts where you can stop and hang your toes in the mountain stream if you want. Several overlooks along the route too. There are a couple small stream-side parks along the route too.

And then I passed through Pilot Rock, than Pendleton. This shot is outside of Pilot Rock. The next is inside Pendleton.

M-F was in view 30 minutes after passing through Pendleton and I headed to my standard RV park there in town. They were going to save spot #1 for me but since I didn’t make it there in April like I’d told them, because of the torn retina, I had to settle for a not as desirable parking pad nearby. Don’t have much cement pad to work with as I’m crowded over because of the fence on the drivers side. Just enough room to open my LR slide.

We had a big bad storm roll up into M-F a week ago, on July 2nd, and over near the Blue Mountains it was so fierce they evacuated a small town in it’s path because of the 2″ diameter hailstones they were predicting. Big enough hail to kill people, so they evacuated the town, or maybe they just talked about it. Can’t find a news article about that. Definitely big enough to damage or destroy property. Cars, roofs, people’s heads.

Anyway, that was the trip I wanted to show. but didn’t get to last article. Thanks for visiting and reading my stuff!

Happy travels!

Oh, BTW, I’m planning on a months visit to Coco Beach in Costa Rica. I’ll be staying in a VRBO rental around 2o minutes drive from the Liberia airport. Already put my money down on the place. I’ll wait until September to buy the plane tickets. I’ll head there on Nov. 14th and stay until Dec. 14th. Should be fun.