Chaos Leaves Town

The next few days I spent riding my bike around town and enjoying the weather. Oroville’s population is only a few thousand, down from when it had it’s glory days supplying the growing Northwest with fruit, but overall, it’s a nice town. Quiet, peaceful, low crime rate, nice weather, and plenty of opportunity to fish, boat or hunt if you like that sort of thing.

A couple of days after I got to town, there was a parade celebrating spring or something. Here’s a few pictures of that:

The color guard marches by...

Off in the distance, something...

Nice horse drawn carriage.

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A couple days later in Oroville, I took my camera along with me on my bike ride, but first a picture of my rig all neat and trim.

The workhorse. Wasn't a bit of trouble for 13,560 miles.

Beautiful sunshine and a nice peaceful river right behind my space.

A view over to the RV park clubhouse. I got to like that hill in back.

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It’s now May 1st and I’ve had a nice stay in Walla Walla visiting family, wandering around town and partaking of the many wines available here in the Wine Tasting rooms. I took the kids out again for a goodbye evening.

My son James pretending he's gotten a call from a gurl.

What did she say?

It's a good picture of me! Since you can't really see me.

During the evening my kids met some friends and they invited us over to their place to enjoy a little b’day party.

B'day boy gets a private hip dance.

See the boob? Love the boob! He seems stunned.

Time for a lap dance! Still looks stunned.

A couple days later we get together with sister and BIL for a family dinner at her place.

Sister Terri in her kitchen.

BIL Gary helps out.

JP enjoying a little sports on the telly while Mush enjoys a good book.

Daughter Mush decides to help cook.

A couple days later and I take the last picture of my RV at my favorite RV campground in WW.

This campground is off Military Road. It’s about 5 miles from downtown, it’s quiet, the rates are good, and there’s lots of flowering trees. Not the dripping kind but flowering. I did have to pick pedals out of the RV for weeks afterward but it was worth it.

The next morning, May 6th, I head North to Oroville, Washington. It’s on the boarder with Canada and I plan on spending a week or more there to check the town out. Here’s a few pictures from the road and at Dry Falls.

There are some lonely roads in eastern Washington, this one is north of Pasco.

I wanted to visit Dry Falls again, they are along this route north. I haven’t been there since I brought Maria six years ago. She had terminal brain cancer and I took her on a road trip to help get her mind off her troubles for a while and as a thank you for being our friend for so many years. We made a big circuit in the RV around eastern Washington. Even stayed at Fishtrap Lake outside of Spokane. We, I still miss her allot. A beautiful woman in every way.

A little countryside south of dry falls. This was filled with water.

And here are (were) the falls. Ten times bigger then Niagra.

Go here for a Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_Falls

And another article: http://www.gonorthwest.com/Washington/northeast/Dry_Falls.htm

Check out this map, I came up north on WA-17. The dry falls are a few miles south of the ‘T’ with US-2. When I left the falls to head on up to Oroville, I took a left at the ‘T’, and got back on WA-17 a few miles west. Dry Falls Lake is right at the base of the ancient falls: http://ncwportal.com/grant/cities/dry_falls_junction/map

The view easterly from the interpretive center.

Looking at the ancient river channel. Southerly.

Looking northerly. That's part of Coulee City in the distance.

A few minutes later and the sky was semi-overcast. Gives a milky look to the following pictures.

Still a pretty good sized body of water here.

I've been told the fishing is pretty good here.

Imagine what roar the water would have made. The overlook would have been dry so this shot would have been a boiling mass of 65mph water with huge chunks of ice in it.

And a final look south.

I moved a little north to get this shot of the precipice. Four hundred feet high.

This little block house is used by the Park Rangers.

Back on the road heading north. Still early in the day, around 12pm, not very far from Walla Walla at this point. And it took me about an hour to find fuel in Pasco when I’d passed through earlier. Then off in the distance I see scattered rain coming down.

Passing some of the 10's of thousands of acres of wheat in this area.

Lots of farm land and a few scattered towns astride the highway.

Rufus - Woods Lake, by WA-17. This is Chief Joseph dam.

It got cloudy quickly and then started to rain. I got onto US-97 heading due north after the dam.

Crossing the river at Chief Joseph...don't know the name.

Arrived at the RV park in Oroville. Right on the river.

I got into Oroville around 4:40pm. This campground is just 4 blocks west of downtown. Not very old, lots of nice large spaces. And right on the river. Big problem was the lack of WiFi. They had it when they first opened but decided it was to expensive to continue. I had to ride a couple blocks over to the library whenever I needed to do my on-line stuff. But I rode my bike every day so it wasn’t to much hassle. No cable either, and no off the air TV stations. So I’d have to ride over to a bar to watch games. But since it was early May, wasn’t much happening on TV either. Daily price was a little high, considering the lack of WiFi and TV, but it was convenient.

Park like setting right behind my space.

Looking westerly down the river.

Very swift, and cold.

So, now (May 6th, 2010) I’m in Oroville. I’d planned on coming here six years ago but never made it. There was a bar for sale right downtown then and I was considering putting my money into that. I’m glad I didn’t because it didn’t have enough parking, facilities were a little rough from what I could see through the windows, as it had closed down, and they had two other competitors within two blocks. Probably why they were trying to sell. Back then the price for the business was pretty good though. What turned out to be my favorite bar in town was just across the street.

I stayed in Oroville for over 3 weeks so next time I’ll have more pictures. After a week, I did decide to head up the road to another RV park where it was only $7 per day. Just electric with a dump station and water available but it helped save me some money over the $150 per week I’d paid at the first place I’d stayed. It’s just north of town near a big box local chain store. That was handy ’cause I could go shopping, then it was only 100 yards from my RV. The bike ride into town was 2-3 miles but I really needed the exercise anyway.  Met a nice gal at the bar in town so we hung around a bit and had some fun talking every once in a while. But still no WiFi! Apparently the people here that own the RV parks haven’t gotten the word that RV’ers are really interested in having it. Don’t even mind paying a little extra.

See you next time, thanks for reading!

As many of you might remember, I’ve often spoken of the very attractive  women up here in Fairbanks. Today I thought I would show some pictures of 2 or 3 that I haven’t posted before.

One of my friends was downtown when the crane fell over.

My best friend up here, Allison.

A nice young lady I met downtown while she was on break.

They are all over the place. Hard to keep your eyes on the flowers when you have lovely women like this everywhere.

While in the Portland area, I stayed up in Corbett. A very small town east of Troutdale up in the hills above the Columbia River Gorge. This area is very nice, and the RV park I stayed at honors the Passport America card so I stayed for half price.  Here I am all set up. The weather was fine, a little cloudy, and it rained a couple times, so I didn’t need to extend the awning. Comfy spot. A little distant from anything, like 10 miles or so, but not bad if I planned my trips to do shopping and then meet friends.

My parking spot.

The park office was seldom staffed. And aside from the WiFi going down a couple times, didn’t really need to be. Nice and quiet.

The main building...with the showers and laundry.

On the 29th of April, I said goodbye to my friends and headed off to Walla Walla to visit the kids and family.

Just some roadside scenery.

Heading into the Walla Walla Valley.

And here I am parked amongst the fallen tree blossoms in Walla Walla.

It only takes four hours to get to Walla Walla from Portland. I didn’t take many pictures because I’ve shown them so many times before here on the blog.

The next night, my kids picked me up and off we went for a little night life.

#1 daughter perusing her Kindle.

The band starts warming up.

And here a beautiful young lady has enticed me to get out on the dance floor! Egads!

Still at it. She's a great dancer but I held my own with her.

Hangin' in there.

Boogie down!

Lots of fun, and good exercise too.

Mush gets up to belt a couple songs out.

Rocking the joint!

#1 son gets in there to play the drums a bit.

Still hittin' it.

And the final set.

I wish James had gotten some better pictures of that gal. What a total babe. She paid me a complement or two as far as the dancing went. We went out on the floor several times and she hung in there. Had a great time. I do smile more when I dance then the pictures suggest.

I still have a few friends in Oregon, in the Gresham, Portland, area. So I always spend a couple to a few weeks here as I pass through. As I mentioned in the last update, I made it up to Portland and then spent the night visiting with my friends Jeff & Jackie. They have a beautiful new babe, Mattie, (not sure of the spelling but when she’s old enough to be incensed by that I’ll be dead or senile so what do I care?), and I got to hold her for a while, then off to bed in the RV. They bought a house that has a nice, nay, perfect place to park right across the street. It’s your typical crowded neighborhood but the spot is right on a curve before a cross street and the houses driveway is not anywhere on the curve. I could stay there for days. Only problem is the lack of electricity.

Anyway, continuing the previous post, after spending time with Jeff, Jackie & Mattie, then spending the night across the street, I headed off 10 miles to Troutdale to visit Theresa…she doesn’t happen to be working now like Jeff & Jackie, what with her broken foot and all, so I got the time to visit with her.

Theresa, her bf Lee & I end up at the bar!

Here’s TJ hobbling out using her crutches.

We all told her she would never get a guy with that get up but she persisted.

Here’s my friend Max resting after her bar tending shift.

And here’s Theresa’s BF – Lee. Yeah, he always looks like that.

That night I spend in a field nearby to the new LT’s tavern. I could have hung around Gresham for the rest of the day, maybe taken a hike on the really cool bike path that goes for miles, but I had shopping to do so off I went towards downtown. It takes 20 minutes to get downtown driving a car but I only went half way in the RV. After shopping for around 20 minutes, I couldn’t stand it anymore (shopping is so not fun-but I did get a case of beer) so I just left the RV there in the parking lot and jumped on a nearby Max light rail train heading downtown.

Riding the light rail, heading downtown…

There’s the Max train after I jumped off near Saks 5th Avenue.

A little of downtown Portland, Oregon, USA. One of the most livable cities in the world.

Another interesting building.

One of my favorite places. Saks! Fifth! Avenue!

Saks has shrunk.

This whole building use to be Saks, now it’s got all sorts of upscale businesses in it. Can’t really see them in this shot.

There’s some stuff, surrounded by those velvet ropes, set up in an artsy way. Canned food drive, apparently. I later had a nice cappuccino down there.

Taking the sky bridge across the roadway. View to the South.

This is the view to the North from the sky bridge.

This guy has been doing this for years.

You ought to see people jump when they approach him and he suddenly moves. There are many bronze sculptures in downtown Portland so you can’t blame people for thinking he’s the real deal.

Another bronze.

More sculptured seals.

A much older building but it’s still ‘stylin’.

Here’s the 100 year old courthouse.

It might be over 100 years old but it’s not like Europe where they have 1,000 year old public buildings, but it’s at least something to give us some history.

“May I help you?”

And of course, a tour of downtown Portland shouldn’t miss without a picture of the world famous “May I help you?”, “Umbrella Man” sculpture. Or whatever it’s called.

One of the quiet streets in downtown. How about that?

Another, older building, but the shot was really about all the arrows.

Pioneer Square.

Lots of times this square is filled with people.

On the way back home, there’s that leaky glass tower. There’s two of them and they are a maintenance nightmare…it rains in Portland, and these towers leak badly.

The subject of this shot is the really neat purple color of the seats. I love that color in this setting.

And heading off east, towards Gresham.

The morning after I went to Hearst Castle, since I went to sleep early the previous evening, around 10pm, I woke up at 5am. Weather was still pretty dismal, but at least the rain had let up somewhat. Got on the road by 5:30am, after a light breakfast and brewing a big pot of coffee to take along the trip. Figured I could get out of California near the end of one long day of driving so that was my plan. I was still mad about paying so much for a dry camping spot in a state park so wasn’t about to give them any more money if I could help it.

Heading up the coast on Highway 1 was an eventful trip, there were several road wash outs that I had to traverse with at least one of them looking like I should reconsider and turn back. I didn’t, and it worked out. But the road crews had been working at it early I guess, and most washout traverses were uneventful, if a little worrisome. The whole morning was twist-y turn-y driving up and down ocean side steep hills. But the views were spectacular, and the cloudy weather added a certain suspense to the trip. There were some homes along the way that were interesting, several had been converted into art galleries. This was the Big Sur I’d heard about. Interesting but really nothing more then some rich peoples homes and a few scattered classy businesses.

Around 1pm I found a place south of  San Francisco to leave the coast and head east inland on nice roads without to many hills and soon found myself heading due north on the I-5 freeway. This portion of the drive is pretty boring, nothing but farmland and a few small to large towns to pass through. Since I have a 90 gallon diesel tank, I can go up to 900 miles without fueling and sometimes that really helps the fuel budget, since I can put off purchasing fuel in small towns with high prices. And on this stretch of freeway I was able to find a minor price war and got the 55 gallons I needed for a full tank at a decent price. Enough fuel to get me into Oregon. The prices here were nearly  $0.80 per gallon cheaper then along the coast.

Late in the day I crossed the border into Oregon and maybe 15 miles later stopped at a little town in the Coast Mountains where the signs extolled the virtues of two different RV parks. Remember the storm I told you about? It had roared though here that morning and dumped inches of rain on the area. I had to cross a foot deep creek to get into the park. I was a little worried and just parked there looking at the creek, over it’s banks, spilling across the access road, for at least 5 minutes before I decided it was unlikely for that little flood to sweep a 22,000 pound RV off the road.

The next morning I still have the entire width of Oregon to cross so I get an early start. But not 5am, more like 8am.

Back on the road.

Wow, still stormy. And check out the snow.

And a little more snow in the mountains...this is mid-April.

Some bump in Oregon, I think.

Tried to get a shot of a valley off in the distance.

There was a huge lake, hard to get good pictures when you're driving.

More clouds! More rain! Getting sick of this weather.

Last of the mountains, just flat valley from here on.

I was lucky enough to have gotten to several Shakespearean plays here in Ashland a few years ago. A friend had her son going to college here and we were able to score free tickets to several plays. Extraordinary.

Finally arrive at Jackie and Jeff's place. That's the new baby.

What a cutie!

Jackie looks healthy and happy...

A natural at being a mom.

Swinging Matty.

See, they trust me to not drop her.

Took me another long day to get to Portland so I was worn out. Went to bed early and slept in late. Then the next day headed to Troutdale to see Theresa.

I’m going to back track here since I was able to recover many of the lost pictures. This section is about the trip my brother and I took to Hearst Castle on the coast of California. Enjoy!

Since my brother and I were in the area, we headed over to the coast to visit the Hearst Castle.  I’ve never been, Dan has been 2-3 times, but he didn’t have a problem with going again. The weather was threatening with big black clouds hovering over the area coming in from the sea. On the trip up to the castle, I’d seen a campground just a few miles from there so I figured I could stay there that night.

The castle was interesting but my feeling was that it wouldn’t have been to much fun living there, except for the pool in the basement, because it was so dark with far too many religious icons all over the place. The library was cool, with thousands of 1st edition books. I did try to take pictures but they have a strict ‘no flash’ policy and then with the weather being so bad, it was pretty dark in nearly all the rooms. But, I’ll put some of them up to at least give you an idea of what the place looks like. About the weather, we hung around the interpretive center while we waited for our bus. Dark but calm. A couple hours later, when our tour was to begin, it had started to rain and the wind had picked up. During the tour, we had to run for it a couple three times as we left one area of the castle for another. When we got up to the 3rd floor, the wind was howling, and looked, based on the trees, that it was 50-60 MPH. Kind of happy we were inside that day. The rain came down in buckets for the whole tour, over two hours.

The weather turns ugly on the way to Hearst Castle.

Storm warnings were sent out around this time...

We arrive at Hearst Castle.

Some of the statuary.

The outdoor pool. Hearst had it rebuilt a couple times over the years, trying to get it perfect.

Another view of the pool and the statuary.

Would love to live here for a time...

A little wet here.

The wind is picking up, was around 35MPH at this point.

The first room we visited was on the ground floor.

One of the living rooms.

Another set of priceless antiques.

The pottery and the painting were all very valuable we were told.

Each room had a fireplace or two...

Check out the wind blown tree tops...it was really raging for a while there.

Another of the many finely furnished guest rooms. Hearst really liked to entertain his Hollywood friends. Usually invited 20-30 people at a time to stay over for a long weekend or even a week at a time. Often flying them to San Simeon in his private plane.

One of the outdoor walkways.

A few first edition books.

Some of those lamps are worth 10's of thousands.

Another fireplace with fancy lamps!

There were several small balcony on the upper floors.

The 'Grand' room. Place for everyone to gather and talk at the end of the day.

And the dining hall.

It is quite the room, woundn't mind watching a good football game here.

Some of the rare 'gold' objects at the castle.

Still a pretty big storm out there. Happy I was inside.

We brave the weather to walk over to the pool house.

And here is the spectacular mosaic installed by Italian artisans at the pool.

A little light on the statuary.

A little more of that incredible floor.

What an amazing place to just take a swim.

And finally, the pool itself.

How'd you like to hang out here?

Amazing place. I mean, really, who wouldn't want to hang out here?

A little natural light at the shallow end.

The diving platform.

I'm thinking here of ditching the tour group, sneaking back and taking a quick dip.

And a last look at the window wall.

Well, that’s our tour of the Hearst Castle. I did get more pictures of the giant visitors center and our drive up and then down the hill to/from the castle but those didn’t survive the great ‘dead motherboard’ & ‘dead harddrive’ debacle of 2010.

Dan left me at this point and drove back to Rosamond to go to work the next day. He did inform me that he’d decided to keep working for another two years for some reason. He’s 66 now and could have retired this March. Thinks he’ll live forever I suspect.

Anyway, after the tour, I hung out in the visitor center, guess it was around 4pm, for the weather to calm a bit. It really didn’t. Finally around 4:30pm, I just braved the 200 yard walk to my RV with just a light windbreaker. Wasn’t even waterproof. Then I drove my RV back south 4-5 miles to a state park. The low cost section was blocked off. So I had to park in the expensive part of the park, $35 per night for just a spot. No electric or water, just a spot with a fire ring (it was raining buckets), a picnic table and a near by washroom. WHAT A HUGE RIP OFF. If you are thinking about going to California for camping, forget it. They are trying to fix their budget problems by ripping off campers. DON’T GO TO CALIFORNIA.

It was late, near 5pm, raining with no let up in the forecast, and miles from any other campground. So, pissed as I was at the 71% increase in camping rates in one year at that state park, I went ahead and paid and stayed. I will not camp anywhere in California again. I did try to start my genset but it always has trouble starting in wet weather so after a couple tries, I gave up and just did without AC for the evening. I had myself a MRE for dinner, even used the chemical heater that comes with it, found it to be ‘not bad’.

My MRE dinner. Comes with lots of goodies too, like Skittles, PB&J, pound cake, crackers, etc.

(The burn spot on my stove top was there when I bought the rig. I tried to sand it down and paint it once but the paint only lasted a few weeks. And yes, it was high temp paint).

Crawled into bed to read by 9:30. Totally dark and dreary by then, with sheets of rain coming down intermittently throughout the evening. Wind gently rocked me to sleep.

I have finally arrived in Alaska. I’m now at my old haunt in Fairbanks volunteering at the Ice Park Campground. I manage the place, check people in, make sure everything works, etc. Got here last Thursday evening after a long 12 hour drive.

The last couple days, I’ve been getting the computer at my desk up and running (they pretty much tear down the office in the off season). Now I have all the software I’ll need to work on the blog installed so in a few days I’ll begin uploading pictures and words here.

Stay tuned!

As far as the trip went, I left Walla Walla in early May, made my way up to Oroville, Washington, then waited 12 days for a storm to pass and the weather to get a little better. I didn’t want to see any snow on the roads up in the north. I shouldn’t have worried about that though since they had record highs earlier in April and nearly all the snow was melted. I did see some snow but not enough to worry about. And none on the roads.

Along the route, I saw 5 black bears, 2 moose, 2 deer that ran out in front of me causing an emergency braking procedure, and an elk. All the animals were pretty healthy looking. I was only able to get a picture of one animal though…a bear. But then I did find a beaver lodge and dam so I got some shots of that. Not quite as good looking as a beaver pond as I saw a couple years ago on my way up, but good enough.

It took me five days to get up to Fairbanks from Oroville and that was with one 10 hour day driving and one 12 hour day. The border crossings were easy again, the Canadians didn’t even bother to put ‘Do not use in Canada’ wrappings on the extra wine I brought into the country. The US border at Alaska was easy too, they didn’t even come into the rig, just asked to see my passport and asked a few questions. Easy breezy. I could have smuggled in 10-12 illegals in the back bedroom and made a bundle.

The roads in Canada had been trouble for 2 days with the frost heaves and road work so when I got into the US I was really happy about finding good roads for miles and miles. The roads started to get better around 20 miles north of the US border. By the time I got to Tok, around 3:30pm, I’d decided to push on to Fairbanks though I’d initially planned on spending the night. I was looking forward to getting to Fairbanks and waiting until the next day didn’t appeal to me.

Around 30 miles out of town there was a guy holding up a $5 bill as I passed so I stopped and picked him up. He’d been in Chicken, Alaska, working at a mine helping a gold miner. They butted heads and didn’t get along so he’d left the job site at midnight and had been hitchhiking for a couple days since. We figured out how far he’d walked on foot and it came out to be around 48 miles. The other one hundred and fifty miles he’d been able to get a ride. Then I stopped for him saving him another 240 miles of walking. Dropped him off in North Pole and ended up visiting my favorite bar in Fairbanks by 7:30pm. After hanging out there and visiting with my friends, I headed off to the RV park, plugged in and off to bed. Nice trip all in all. Not a single thing went wrong with my RV on this leg of the adventure.

I was able to restore many of the missing pictures, some are totally lost, but many others are back none the worse for wear. Only problem is that now I am on the road up to Fairbanks, Alaska and really don’t have the time to work on this blog like I’d like to. In just a few more days, I’ll be settled in at the Ice Park campground and will be able to devote several hours in a row to get the blog back in shape.

Thanks for hanging around! Soon there will be a bunch of pictures from the AlCan highway! Mountains, lakes, bears, moose! Oh, my!