Chaos Leaves Town

After the visit to the Big Bottom Festival, James and I decided to just head north.

I had already been in contact with the insurance adjuster guy via email and he wasn’t too enthused about driving from Tacoma clear over to Randle so he and I came up with a plan. Since I wanted to head up north anyway, to escape the heat, (it is August in this timeline), I did some searching online and decided that heading west from Randle over to I-5, stopping in Tacoma to meet with the insurance guy, and then heading up through Seattle, turning east off the freeway would make for an interesting trip. And the best part was we could do this in one day. My goal was to escape the heat by heading north and staying in the Cascades and either I had to backtrack the way I’d come, or find a new destination. And I found googleing a few RV parks in the forested Cascades north of Tacoma and Seattle that would be cooler and should be nice places to stay. Here’s a link to a map showing both Randle and Marblemount which I decided was going to be my destination. Oh, and Tacoma and Seattle are on it too. Map of Randle to Marblemount…

Only a 4 hour drive from where I was to Marblemount which should give plenty of wiggle room for traffic and meeting the insurance guy. I also did a search and found a couple three RV parks along the freeway on the route where we could stay if it took us too long. But those looked embedded in urban areas, I wanted to be in more rural areas. Less population density. Hopefully I’d be able to bypass those freeway parks.

But first, we wanted to take a night or two after the festival, rest, shower, shave at a RV park with services, and decided to backtrack a few miles from the Big Bottom festival area to Packwood, Washington. There’s a big ol’ RV park near there with all the amenities so we could take showers and go out. Ended up staying there for 2 nights.

Quite a bit of room and nice long spaces for us modern Class A’s towing a car. Had all the services like 50 amp. Wifi wasn’t great, but worked. Packwood is just a mile from the park and we found another older park right in the downtown area. Might be more interesting place to say if staying longer in the area ‘cus you could walk to downtown or ride your bike around town (one of my favorite things to do).

The park we stayed at was Packwood RV Park. Their web page say they’re in Downtown Packwood but that’s simply not true. They’re around a mile maybe two away. Here’s a few more pictures of the park.

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After I’d been in Randle a couple days, my son drove over from Walla Walla where he lives to join me and the family at the Big Bottom Festival. He was early as I’m the only family in town at the moment. And when he dove into the park, he lets me know that now the park has a big Southern surrender flag the Stars & Bars proudly displayed right at the entrance to the park. As I said last time, they have a big one already attached to the owners/managers trailer. WTF? I’m surrounded by racist bigots I guess. I’d already paid for two nights and like I said last time, there’s not much choice in the small town of Randle for RVs so I stayed put.

James and I roamed around Randle, checking things out, visited the best bar in town, had dinner at the most popular restaurant in town, that sort of thing. Also stopped into the other RV park in town and that one is a membership only park where you have to buy in to be able to park at a reasonable rate. Since I didn’t expect to every be in Randle again, it wasn’t a bargain. They did have Wifi though, but I was told it sucked.

As you can see, James and Hunter were enjoying their vacation.

Lots of very nice pine trees here at the RV park. Since we’re up in the mountains, shade wasn’t that important this year here as it was mild, but they are appreciated none the less. Continue reading →

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…

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Just a short post about Hagerman and environs nearby. Several things about the town I like that involve bike riding. There are several halfway strenuous hills I can ride up every day, there’s a couple of interesting bars with grills. One is Wilson’s Club. Nice older bar where I was hanging out one afternoon and a slightly tipsey young women comes in and heads straight for me. Wants to talk and be all friendly like. Sure, I got no problem with that. After a while she joined her friends I spent some time checking out the antiques all over the bar. They had a couple nice IPAs on tap, flat TVs with the games on, and a typical bar type kitchen.

Then across the street is the Riverboat Restaurant which has a bar too. Here’s the thing about that…I went in one night and had dinner at the bar, local fresh caught fish. It was soooo good that I came back the next Friday for the same meal. And the gal that cooked it poured the salt on it. It was barely eatable. Terrible. I asked and it was the same cook…the bartender recognized me and remembered me getting it before. But…Gag.

Next week, I tried the Snake River Grill and had their Idaho Rainbow Trout. Yum. Everything was excellent the two times I went in there.

There’s three different flea markets in this town for some reason. More than I’d expect for a town this size. Also has an elders food pantry. Sort of suggests there’s lots of retired people here. It’s a smaller town and by all appearances doing well with no visible homeless population or even what I’d call a poor section of town. Here and there are some long abandoned homes for sale that didn’t sell in a timely manner but that doesn’t indicate a depressed economy for the area really. And those homes in the area for sale or not are well kept up. I did read an article in the local paper about the city council fining homes with junk in the yards, giving them X days to clean it up or pay the fine so I guess they are working on getting the town cleaned up. And it looks pretty damn good right now, so good job! Since I was touring the town on my bike, I got a street level view of most of the towns neighborhoods and they all look pretty nice. At least now they do. Never been here before so have no idea how it looked just a year ago.

Did some wandering around outside the town just to see what it’s like here…I headed NW along the Snake and stopped here and there to take pictures. Occasionally I’d cross over to the other side and see what’s up that road. Regular tourist stuff. These are all pictures from my Android phone.

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If you remember from last time, my Olympus camera was ruined by the raging Snake River…it got sloshed on while I was rafting below the Hagerman dam. A few days later I was browsing at the flea market at Billingsly Creek a couple miles from the RV park and happened upon a camera sitting on the shelf with other older cameras. Its a little blue camera by Fujifilm and has a big XP label on the front. The battery was dead of course and the guy was asking $20 for it so I passed because it didn’t really look like much of a camera and it wouldn’t turn on to test. For one thing, it doesn’t have a telephoto lens. But printed on the front cover is: “Waterproof” & “Shockproof” and also strangely enough, “WiFi”. Huh.

Went home and looked up the model number of the camera, Fujifilm XP95, and found that it has pretty much the same specs as my Olympus, with the exception of the 24X optical zoom telephoto. The Fuji only has a 5X optical zoom. Understandable since the thing is waterproof and to achieve that, you can’t have a articulated lens extending from the body of the camera. And it’s listed at the same price as a new Olympus.

Went back to the market and bought it for $15. Back home, hooked up a power supply to it and voila’, it works! Ordered a battery charger and 2 new batteries and after they arrived I now have a $100 camera for $30 that I can dunk in water or drop or whatever and it will survive. I’d learned to baby the Olympus, but I’d ruined two of them so far over the years so maybe it’s time to try a different model. I will miss the telephoto feature of the Olympus, but the shockproof, waterproof, and dustproof features of the Fuji make up for it.

Anyway, here’s the first picture I took with the Fuji, good 16MP resolution, color saturation is to my liking, anti-shake works well, nice 3″ view screen:

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You may remember from last time, that I was staying in Wendell (even though I mis-titled the article – since fixed) and visited Shoshone Falls on July 4th. After that visit, I was pretty enthused about staying in the area for a while. It wasn’t as hot as I’d expected for this dry desert like area and the weather was really nice for something else I wanted to attempt. And that was a raft trip down the Snake. I’d seen brochures about it my entire life and here I was near to a rafting company. I’d seen their flyers around town so figured I’d try to take one of their several trips on the Snake.

I’d decided that I wanted to move because the Intermountain RV park didn’t have a month-to-month rate in July and was asking too much for a weeks stay ($180), and I’d found that RV park in Hagerman so emailed them and they had an opening. Plus I’d gotten the deliveries and repairs I wanted done there in Wendell so no reason to hang around. I reservered 3 nights at the Hagerman RV Park even though I was thinking about staying at least a week, maybe a month, because I wanted to first be sure it was a nice place with half way decent Wifi. Hagerman RV park isn’t the only park in these parts but it looked like the one with the best shade for the July and August weather so it was my first choice.

So, I moved:

It only took an hour to decide I wanted to stay a month, Wifi is very fast, so went back to the office and exchanged checks, this time paying for a month. They ask for $325/mo. plus a $75 deposit on electric. Lots of shade here, a scarce item at the other RV parks I’d looked at on the internet. Continue reading →