Chaos Leaves Town

My friend Jackie, her SO Jeff and daughter Madeline were heading off to visit family in Philadelphia where Jeff grew up, and they invited me to watch their house for them while they’re gone. I’d have to watch and feed the dog and cat, but I’d have access to a 60″ TV with satellite. Oh, and the fish, I’d have to feed the fish. I’d house sat for them a couple years ago and since the dog and cat survived the experience, they probably figured it would be ok to let me do it again. Worked out for them too as their other plan of either having someone come once or twice a day to let the dog out and feed them, or take the animals to friends houses wasn’t very good for the animals. Turned out it was perfect timing what with me turning up in town at just the right time without any other obligations which made it easy for me to say, “Sure, I’ll watch your house for you guys, go, have fun, don’t worry bout a thing”.

Anyway, I left the RV park on Aug. 20th, went and did my shopping, wandered around town for a few hours and headed over to Jackies. Note the yard, all brown like. They’re having a drought here like in California so the weather is really beautiful and great for everyone, but there’s not the usual rains up in the foothills of the Cascades, and so, a drought. Means they don’t water their lawn.

I park almost directly across the street. In the next picture, I’m standing right where I took the above picture, turned to the left of course. And I string 75′ or so of electrical cord over to their garage to plug in so my batteries stay charged and the refer runs. It’s only a 15 amp extension cord so when I’m there hanging out in the RV (during the times they’re home…so I don’t disturb their routine) I can use the computer on their WiFi and my TV but I have to switch the refer to gas. It’s fine living like that as long as the weather isn’t cold. Can’t use my electric heaters if it’s too cool, not enough amps available.

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Opps, meant to get this published sooner than this, but things happen.

After spending a week with my sister and BIL, the other members of the family started arriving. Son came over first, then Teri’s son Bruce and his girlfriend along with the father (Teri’s ex), Bob, who all rode over together from Seattle in a rental car. And Dan came with them too.

Absent were my daughter and her boyfriend, than Dan’s son Paul, his wife Jenn and son. None of them could make it over from Seattle and daughter couldn’t make it over from Michigan. Too bad. The trip was also to take in a rock concert. One of those ‘Gentlemen of the Road‘ concerts. Foo fighters, Mumford and Sons, etc. Now my family was all hot to go see the concert and all but I’m more of a classical music kind of guy these days. AND, I twisted my back that Friday so I was hobbled anyway and would not look forward to standing or lying on lumpy ground while the concert rocked around my hobbled self. So I stayed home while they all went to the concert. I had fun without them.

Here’s Teri’s house. Note how nice the yard is.

And here I am parked right in front. And right next door is that house that’s abandoned. The yard’s a mess.

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(Backtracking a little here…)

The first two hours of travel from Crooked River Ranch to Walla Walla, is through country that looks like the below picture. There are huge areas that are closer to the Columbia River that are used for wheat. Most of the land looks like this though.

Here’s some strange little town that grew up right at a 90° corner of the road for some reason. Lots of nearby farmland, many closed businesses here because these huge corporate farms have trucking companies bring in their supplies and they don’t buy locally these days so lots of small farming towns are dying all over the US. 

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Next morning (July 31st, 2015) I leave Orland and head due North on I-5. A few hours later and I exit I-5 and head NE on US-97. This puts me on the path towards Walla Walla. My plan was to stop and visit the Ice Caves near Tule Lake but when I’d checked the weather early in the morning, I found that it was going to be another scorcher, at least part of the way, and most likely near the caves. And though I would be comfortable down inside the caves (there’s ice down there!), I was fairly certain when I returned from visiting them the RV would be very uncomfortable and would take hours to get its temperature down. Even with my makeshift AC running while I was gone.

Well, OK, I thought, I’ll skip the Ice Caves until later in the year. This trip I’ll just drive up to near Crooked River Ranch in Oregon and stay at a little RV park up there in the foothills of the Cascades, off the beaten track. Advantage was that I’d get there around 4 or 5 pm while most of the travel day was in the foothills where I’d get some relief from the heat of the valley floors in California.

And sure enough, by the time I get to Shasta Lake, outside air temps are still fairly reasonable. In the 80’s. And it’s around noon.

Hey, that bridge to nowhere you’ve heard about…

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A week after the sailing disappointment…

We headed back to Bluewater Sailing, and this time, we rented a smaller boat with sails that are just lashed to the masts instead of rolled up inside of them. I checked the weather that morning and based on that, I took my light jacket out of my carry all for some dumb reason. It didn’t take up much room, there was a ‘chance’ of rain, but I just didn’t think I’d need it.

And when we arrived at the harbor, here’s what was still left from an early morning rainstorm. Puddles all over the parking lot. Hardly any customers on this fine Saturday.

Brennan is smart enough to leave the soft top of the BMW up. Continue reading →

A few days later, we went to a AAA baseball game in Lancaster. It was kind of exciting as the home team went ahead in the 5th with like 8 runs, then the opposing team came back and in the 9th, won the game 9-8. It was fun seeing all those hits of course. Too bad about losing the game though.

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As I mentioned before, my friend and neighbor had a slick new to him BMW with a 500HP engine just itching to try out on a local race track, Willow Springs Raceway. As luck would have it, it’s just up the road from here, and on June 13th he and I headed over there to get on the track and give the car a workout. I’m the ‘pit crew’ so I’ll just get to watch while Brennan takes her out on the track. We arrive at the track pretty early in the morning after a night of intermittent rain, but the tracks already dry, so that’s good. And Brennan has to sit through the driver training and all so I had some slack time.

And here’s a shot of the hill the track goes up and circles off again.

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