After many hours of work I’ve finished writing a couple more articles for the RV repair section of the blog.
My Coleman heat pump system started to make noises a few months ago and it had gotten so loud neighbors complained. That called for either repair or maintenance so I removed it from it’s basement compartment and performed maintenance on it, and then back in August ’18 I had a road accident, the side of the RV got scratched and one of the basement doors bent so the complexity of getting the damaged door changed prompted an article. So, here they are…enjoy!
I’d paid for 3 nights here in Goldfield and that’s plenty. A longer stay wouldn’t be very interesting at this time because the town is a work in progress. There are several historical buildings that aren’t open to the public yet so all you get to see are the exteriors. I’m disappointed that the old hotel is still not open to tourists as that promises to be spectacular. What I read about it is that the woodwork: staircases, counters, bookcases, tables, etc., and nearly all the furniture in the hotel is the original stuff! Once it’s all polished, reupholstered and what not, it should be spectacular.
And here’s some shots as I drove around town. This is pretty much a destitute looking area but the few residents left in the area are trying to make it a tourist destination. I don’t think I saw a new house anywhere so it’s looking like it’ll be difficult to keep the place from eventually becoming a ghost town.
I did find this saloon at the edge of downtown where my random rambling in the car had taken me. Had a cherry coke while I watched the ancient dog try to keep himself in the shaft of sunlight coming through the dusty and distorted window pane. Meanwhile, whenever he got comfortable, he’d drool and wet himself, leaving a couple small puddles for the bartender to clean up each time.
I have come to appreciate the Burns-Hines area quite a bit. The town does have a lot of empty stores or they are less modern then you might expect, but the town could be making a comeback. At least I think it might.
Most of the businesses are on this main Burns street. Go a couple miles towards Hines and there’s a group of big box stores where I do my shopping. The area right between Burns and Hines seems to be where all the business activity is now. In downtown though, there are a couple healthy businesses.
After doing my shopping, it’s back to the RV park in Hines. I like sitting in the shade like an old dude, conversing with my peers, enjoying the weather.
After the nice 3 days and nights at soap lake, it was time to continue on down into Oregon. Some of you might remember that I have a ‘home base’ in Burns Oregon regarding my VA medical care. I’m required to show up at least once per year for a check up which is basically to ascertain whether or not the meds I’m taking are still appropriate.
Last year they started doing a video visit with a new doctor instead of an in person visit with a PA (physician’s assistant). The doctor I don’t care for. She prescribed a nasty drug that according to the side effects promotes prostate cancer in men my age with my prostate condition. The drug gave me burning urine and exacerbated my condition as soon as I started taking it so I stopped after 5 days as the symptoms were getting much worse. WTF was she thinking!!?? So I’ll be asking for a different physician my next check up.
Anyway, back to travel. Here’s a look at eastern Washington south of Dry Falls. It’s mostly sagebrush in this area north of Pasco. I grew up in Kennewick, right across the Columbia River from Pasco. After passing through Kennewick, the freeway heads straight for Umatilla Oregon where I again cross over the Columbia. After an hour of driving through dry and rolling hills I entered the Umatilla National Forest. Where you can see some fire damage.
Marblemount is tiny with the last census listing just 203 population as of 2010. It’s pretty obvious while touring the town that it’s income is derived mainly from people passing through or staying at the two nearby RV parks. Nearly always in the spring summer and fall.
It’s funny that there’s so many overpriced restaurants there in town. While James was with me, there was a Seahawks game on and we ran into town and had dinner at one of them while watching the game. Nice big flat screen. I think is was a 55″. Big anyway. We lost.
After the game, headed back to the RV park and lounged around. Moved the RV 5 spaces closer to the office building as the tree directly south of our first spot just trashed the satellite signal. After moving, got a good DTV, and the Wifi improved slightly. Even though I could see the external antenna, and pointed my high gain antenna at it, the Wifi still sucked.
Here’s a look at the park. This is the main road in. You can just make out my RV with the DTV antenna up there in the distance. This was the 3rd spot I moved to to get both DTV and a better Wifi signal.
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.
All set up in Packwood.
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.
Riding my bike around this large park, found that they have a store too. Not exactly well stocked but, has some stuff.
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.
Decades ago, there was a busy dairy on an island in the Snake River. The island has spectacular views of the many nearby springs erupting from the canyon walls of the Snake River Gorge. The dairy is now a State Park. I can picture it becoming a national historic site some day. The volume of water spilling out from the cliff faces is what prompted early settlers to dam some areas near this island to harvest electrical energy as that became popular. The springs here are particularly large so it made sense back then.
I was in the area staying in Hagerman, and I’d read many brochures that mentioned the 1,000 Springs area so I made time to visit. The area is only 8 miles away from Hagerman, the weather would turn out to be hot later in the day so I headed towards the island and arrived around 10 am.
As I wound my way down the road way from the top of the bluff down to the river, I could see a large spring off in the distance…
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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. 
