Chaos Leaves Town

After enjoying ancient Greek art, spent the next 2 weeks or so just hanging around the Stagecoach Tavern and visiting with friends. But the poor ass WiFi was annoying so I headed up to Corbett and the nice little RV park up there. Advantage is really fast WiFi, and a change in scenery. Oh, and the bath room just being 50 feet from my RV instead of 100 yards away. Got all my laundry done, cleaned up the RV a little, read books, and surfed the internet. The nearest bar is like 3 miles away, and the weather precluded riding the bike down there so staying home was the rule of the day. But there is a nice old fashioned grocery store across the street from the RV park so I’d wander over there, buy a latte and sit and read the newspaper. This being retired stuff is kinda cool.

Parked in Corbett.

The office and facilities.

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Maybe you all aren’t interested in ancient art, too bad. It’s my blog and I’ll post art if I want to.

A little more ancient Chinese art.

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Bare with me here…this post is about my visit to the Portland Art Museum to see ancient Greek, Chinese, Roman artifacts and statuary. I had moved back to the RV park behind the Stagecoach tavern after spending several days helping Jeff & Jackie remodel their kitchen and I’d noticed the ad in the local paper about this show. Since it’s all the way downtown, and I’m out in Troutdale, I took the bus to the nearest Max light rail station and took the train downtown. I can catch the bus just steps from my RV.

Ready to jump on Max.

The Max trains are very comfortable, fast, and allow relaxation on the way downtown. I use them as often as I can, and these days usually every time I go downtown. You can see that the weather is typical for Portland, but if you live here long enough this type of weather is comfortable. It’s when it’s been raining for several day or months that it drags on you.

Crossing the Willamette river.

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After enjoying the Blues Festival, and Ilwaco for a few days, I headed back down the coast road to Seaside. I was enjoying the weather here on the coast so much that I paid for a months stay in SS. They were still having a heat wave in Portland so it was better to just stay on the coast and avoid that.

This was the scene as I headed to the bridge crossing from Washington into Astoria, Oregon. This is pretty much what Lewis and Clark would have seen, except there wouldn’t have been a bridge. They did boat over to this side to explore a little.

The area where Lewis and Clark landed when they explored this side of the Columbia.

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Stayed in Seaside for a week enjoying the cool weather but my daughters plans had changed as her and her band had been invited to play at a blues bar up in Portland, Duff’s Garage. So, traveled back to PDX and parked at my regular RV park on Sandy Blvd (see last post). Called up Margie and talked her into coming along and driving me there since I don’t have a car. Some of Shelly’s high school friends were there as well. It’s a fairly nice bar in an old industrial area on the East side of Portland and from the looks of the area if we hadn’t arrived early parking would have been a little difficult…as it was, we parked just a few feet from the front door. Nice.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the evening.

Mush gets ready for her set.

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Arriving in Portland, OR, I headed straight to Rolling Hills RV Park on Sandy Blvd. Right next door to the Stagecoach Tavern and very close to TJ’s house. Spent a week there visiting with friends and having a good time generally, except for the god-awful WiFi at the park. It’s sucked for the 6 years I’ve been coming here and they seem to be unwilling to modernize it. It’s an old 11MBPS system! And there is only ONE directly connected antenna. On the offices roof, and that’s 50 yards from the first RV spot, through lots of trees. All the other antennas are ‘repeaters’, the old style so they only have half the bandwidth (so, no more then 5.5MBPS). Sometimes, late at night or early in the morning, the signal is good enough but nearly all the time, it’s barely adequate. Then, one of the nice RV spots I found open is way far away from the single BR available for RV’ers. Annoying.

But, with all it’s faults, it’s certainly convenient. Close to my friends, close to shopping, close to a nice bar, nice flat cement pads, good water, cable, lawn & a picnic table at your site, stocked loaner library, etc., etc.. So, despite the faults, I stay there often.

All parked and snuggled in.

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After leaving Ely, I headed due North on US93 with a destination of Glenns Ferry, Idaho. I’ve visited this town before, years ago, and always remembered it fondly for some reason. It’s not very big but it was pretty friendly last visit. This time I had a plan…rent a space large enough for a shop and design and build a level system that would operate my propane injection system on 5% grade hills. So I wouldn’t have to do it using the Off/On switch on hills. So, with nice weather, not to hot, not to cold, off I went.

Lonely roads here in Northern Nevada…

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I finally felt comfortable enough with the RV that I decided it was time to head north. My plan was to avoid that steep hill where the engine had blown the last time. Once burnt, twice shy. The plan was to head west on I-40, maybe visit Hoover Darn, skirt the east side of Las Vegas on SR-93, and head due north to Ely, Nevada. I knew this would be an interesting trip as I’d never traveled this exact route before but knew from research that the roads I was going to be traveling were pretty remote. There was a long section where it was reported that the cell phone wouldn’t be working and if I had a problem in that stretch, it’d be a long wait before someone would pass by and be able to relay a message. But with the potential of some excellent views along the highway and little traffic.

On SR-93 after leaving I-40.

As you can see, some of these roads are pretty stark. When I’m in areas like this, it’s fun to reflect on how the Indians must have perceived travel though desert like this. Did they have enough incentive for discovery to make a journey like this on a lark or were they forced by conditions at their old homes? Or both, or some other reason…like adventure or curiosity.

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I spent a few days at the caverns and enjoyed the area immensely. Weather was fine, though a little warm in the afternoon, and the services like WiFi left a little to be desired but still, I enjoyed it enough that I spent several days there.

Grand Canyon Caverns RV park.

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After that little trip to Walnut Canyon, I settled into a RV spot in Flagstaff at Black Bart’s RV Park & Restaurant. It’s a great location, not right in town but close enough to everything that it’s convenient. When I’d stayed here back a couple weeks before, there weren’t too many campers so the WiFi was…acceptable. This time, it was awful. So, with their permission, I moved around and tried several different spots to see if I could get a better signal. It wasn’t signal strength that was the problem, it was too many people trying to get on-line and download videos and such. I did find a place just 40′ from the only outside antenna they had and I’d get 5 bars of signal, but it hardly ever got above 1MBPS. Very annoying. When the conditions were just right, I could get 11MBPS from the hotel across the freeway! In fact I spend most of my on-line time on that hotels free WiFi.

All parked at Black Bart’s.

It might not look it, but it was a bear getting the RV level. The spot had a big slope to the left in this picture. It was quite a step from my steps to the ground. Had to be careful.

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