We had a quiet weekend here at Paradise RV Park in Panguitch, Utah. The temperature swings from the daily highs to the overnight lows was a whopping 40 degrees or so – highs in the 80s with lows in the 40s.
Yesterday we made a day trip to Bryce Canyon National Park. The park entrance is aboout 25 miles from Panguitch. We entered the park with my America the Beautiful Lifetime Senior pass – without the pass the entrance fee is $35/car. Our first stop was at the Visitor Center, one mile into the park. From there we went to the General Store – I was desperately in need of benadryl allergy tablets. My eyes were itchy and watering. I found benadryl there and got some relief.
We drove up the main park road – it’s an 18-mile road that dead ends at Rainbow Point. We found a picnic area there and had our lunch. We’d stopped at Subway in Panguitch on the way here and I bought a 6-inch sub and Donna got a salad. We brought along a cooler with drinks and watermelon slices. The watermelon we bought at the vegetable stand on Saturday is supreme. The guy that grew it really bragged about it – he told me it was a county fair gold award winner and the sugar content measured at 13 to 15 brix. For comparison, he said most watermelon at the grocery store measures around 6 or 7 brix. Donna and I agreed, he was right. The seedless watermelon is one of the sweetest we’ve ever had.
Our plan was to scope out the viewpoints on the way up the road without stopping, have lunch then make our way slowly back down, stopping at points of interest. The park is a narrow strip of land along a ridge. The northernmost area is crossed by a highway – UT12 and the park there is only accessible by foot. The main park road runs from the entrance north to south and the elevation varies from about 7,200 feet above sea level to 9,115 feet above sea level at Rainbow Point. At Paradise RV Park, we’re at an elevation of a little over 6,600 feet above sea level.
At the viewpoints in the national park, you can see for miles and miles. I have a lot of pictures to add to this post. If the photos start to get redundant, that’s the nature of the park. The views are spectacular, but like at Cedar Breaks National Monument, you can start to get numbed by it all. If you make the effort to really look at the different viewpoints, you can see there are differences even if they are subtle at times.
Rainbow PointSunlight on a ridge far away to the eastBlack Birch CanyonAgua Canyon
At the Agua Canyon viewpoint, a raven perched on a fence rail and posed for photos. He was totally unafraid as people walked up within a few feet to take a picture.
The next stop was at Natural Bridge viewpoint. Natural Bridge is a misnomer – it’s more correctly called an arch. These are formed when hard cap rock layers are over softer substrate. Over time, water erodes the softer substrate and creates a hole under the cap rock. Wind then enlarges the hole over centuries or even thousands of years.
You can see how water runoff courses through the arch
At Inspiration Point, you can see where water that comes down from the ridge from three directions join together. The resulting stream bed, when dry, looks like a road along the bottom of the canyon.
Looks like a road through the trees at the bottom of the canyonAnother angle from Inspiration Point
On the way to and from Bryce Canyon on UT12 near Red Canyon, the highway goes through two arches.
Highway UT12 near Red Canyon
While we were in the park, we had a few clouds overhead. As we came down from Rainbow Point we had a few raindrops, but it wasn’t anything to worry about. Lightning strikes can be worrisome in the park as over the last 25 years four people have been killed and six injured by lightning.
I need to mention Sunday night’s dinner. Donna made a new recipe – shrimp poached in coconut milk. It was awesome.
Shrimp poached in coconut milk over rice with broccoli
After we returned home, I took a nap – the benadryl made me drowsy. The wind really kicked up in the late afternoon and we had a few raindrops here. We can expect rain later today. Donna went out for bike ride this morning while I was writing this. She wanted to get a ride in before it rains – the forecast calls for rain again tomorrow and possibly on Thursday morning with high temperatures in the upper 60s and low 70s.
From the start of this blog, I always said I would post honestly – the good, bad and the ugly. This post has it all. Wednesday’s prime rib dinner at the Rupert Elk’s Lodge lived up to its billing. The prime rib was excellent, the corn on the cob was fresh and our baked potatoes were well seasoned and perfectly baked. The salad bar wasn’t the greatest, but everything was fresh. We couldn’t eat it all, so we brought home some leftovers for steak and eggs for me and steak salad for Donna.
Thursday morning it was time to leave Rupert. Our first stop was the dump station in town. I had filled our fresh water tank before we left the Elk’s Lodge and after dumping, we hit the road with empty holding tanks. Our route had us heading south on I-84. We turned off onto ID81 to take a shortcut into Utah where we would pick up UT30 west.
As soon as I hit the exit ramp, I sensed trouble. I saw a line of vehicles stopped on the overpass and the truck ahead of us was stopped at the top of the exit, waiting for traffic to clear. Once we were stopped, I could see the source of the hold-up. A tractor-trailer rig with an over-sized flat bed trailer failed to make the turn onto the northbound on-ramp. The extra-long trailer was hung up on the concrete barrier. I feared we would be stuck for a while before we could continue. The thing was, the direction we wanted to go was opposite of the trapped trailer.
A couple of gentle toots of the horn got the attention of the trucker in front of us. He saw I was indicating a right turn. He was able to move forward and left enough for us to squeeze by. Trouble no more, we were on our way. The shortcut on ID81 was a good choice. There was very little traffic – we only saw a few cars every 10 minutes or so. The speed limit was 65mph, so we weren’t going any slower than we would have traveled down the interstate. The road surface was good. The only downside was the narrow road with little to no shoulder.
The long drive southwest on UT30 had similar road conditions with even fewer cars along the way. We’d left the Idaho farm country behind and were driving through a mostly barren landscape. There weren’t any real towns – just a few clusters of houses in a place called Rosette – they even had a post office there. Eventually we crossed the border into northeast Nevada and found the town of Montello. No stoplights in Montello. The road designation changed at the border to NV233.
We finally hit I-80 and headed southwest toward West Wendover. A few miles down the interstate, I heard a loud bang – it sounded like something had hit under the front of the coach. I checked the side mirrors to see if there was anything in the road and didn’t find anything. Then Donna said, “We need to pull over – I can see a basement door open.” She was looking at the driver’s side view mirror and from her vantage point, she could see something that wasn’t in my view.
I stopped on the shoulder and walked around the front of the coach. What I saw qualifies as ugly. It wasn’t a compartment door she was seeing. It was the front body panel mounted under the driver’s seat from the front of the coach to just behind the front wheel well. I looked it over and found the rear bracing of this panel was bonded with a type of epoxy to two braces in front of the wheel. At the front of the panel, it folds toward the center of the coach at 90 degrees and has four rivets holding the front of the panel.
We heard a noise earlier on ID81 but didn’t see anything out of order. I thought the sound may have come from a farmhouse we were passing at the time. In hindsight, I think the bonded braces broke free there. This allowed the panel to flex back and forth from airflow and on the interstate, the rivets gave way. Now the panel was slightly bent away from the coach and would flap in the wind until it completely broke off.
I thought I could secure it well enough with duct tape and gave that a shot. We got back on the interstate and I kept our speed at 55-60 mph. It held for about four miles, then went bang again. I pulled over and this time, I opened the front generator compartment, cleaned the bulkhead there with rubbing alcohol and ran the duct tape around the front edge of the panel with the tape adhering to the bulkhead. This seemed more secure but it only held for about another four miles. This was getting real ugly.
I didn’t like working on the driver’s side of the coach on the interstate shoulder. Fortunately, the traffic was light and most drivers moved out of the right lane giving me plenty of room. But at one point, I looked up to see a car traveling at about 80 mph barreling right past me about two feet away!
I knew I had to do something besides duct tape. I rummaged around and found two small screws. I put them into the rivet holes – holes in the panel no longer lined up with the holes in the bulkhead, but I was able to pound them in with a hammer. Then I duct-taped over the screw heads to hold them in place and re-taped the panel.
Back on the road this held. We stopped at the Pilot-Flying J in West Wendover where I topped up the tank with 69 gallons of diesel at $4.01/gallon! Gulp, $276 worth of fuel brings our fuel costs to about $500 since we left Mount Vernon, Washington. This Biden economy is killing us.
Donna bought another roll of duct tape at the travel center and we continued east into Wendover, Utah. Our short run in Nevada was done and we went east on I-80 to Utah exit 4 where Donna found a boondocking spot on BLM public land off Leppy Pass Road.
Boondocking on a level area of BLM land
I added another screw to my temporary fix and re-taped it.
Temporary fix – you cab see the adhesive residue from my first tape jobs
We saw a few other RVs in the area but we were spaced well apart. We were at an elevation of about 4,300 feet above sea level. I never realized the Bonneville Salt Flats had this much elevation – it definitely is enough to affect the power of naturally aspirated engines. I disconnected the truck and we took a drive out to the Bonneville Salt Flats Speedway area. The speedway was first used in 1912 for timed top speed events. While we were there, an organization was preparing the course for a motorcycle speed event. There was great movie about a motorcycle at Bonneville called The World’s Fastest Indian made in 2005 – it’s a story based on the life of New Zealander Burt Munro starring Anthony Hopkins
They used to have a straight track nine miles long with a black stripe for Speed Week – a week-long event to set speed records sponsored by the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA). Speed Week was canceled in 2014 and 2015 due to poor conditions from heavy rain. Mud washed over much of the flats. Between the leaching of salt into the aquifer and mining operations, the amount of salt has gone down greatly over the last 50 years. Where the salt surface was once more than two feet thick, it’s now only about two inches thick and the track is less than three miles long. The speed track is no longer striped, they use flags and markers for the course.
This marker is at the end of Bonneville Speedway Road where the flats areTrucks in the distance preparing the course for motorcycle trialsSalt surface scuffed by Donna’s shoe
When we returned to the coach, I re-hooked the truck to the coach. Another coach came in and set up about 100 yards from us. At first it looked like they were going to stop right next to us. Really? It’s wide open here on the flats.
Sunrise over Bonneville – still lots of smoke in the air
Friday morning we found a couple others had pulled in during the night – SUVs with people presumably sleeping inside. We pulled out and drove east on I-80 for 80 miles and hit UT138 south. This route bypassed Tooele (pronounced TOO-illa) and had very little traffic. I was a little worried as most of the route had no shoulder and if my temporary panel repair broke, I had no place to stop. We made it without incident and stopped for the day at Fort Deseret State Park. It’s a quiet place to dry-camp for the night, but’s it’s the strangest state park we’ve ever encountered, I wrote about when we stayed here last year.
Saturday morning we continued south on UT257 which became UT129 at Milford, then UT21 at Minersville. We drove through the town of Beaver and found I-15 south there. The interstate immediately climbed and we reach the summit at 6,500 feet above sea level.
We left I-15 shortly and my repair was still holding up. We took UT20 which was a steep climb up 7% grades to the summit 7,920 feet above sea level. The descent down the east side is even steeper at an average grade of 8%. We found Paradise RV Park a few miles north of Panguitch, Utah. It’s a nice RV park with very low rates and no real amenities. Donna met the neighbors who’ve been coming here for years. They said over the last few years the ownership became absentee, only coming around to collect fees and the place is slowly deteriorating, though still pleasant. We paid $134 for a week including tax and might extend over the Labor Day weekend.
Donna grilled chicken wings, thighs and drumsticks for dinner and served it with sauteed veggies we found at the local grocery. We also bought some veggies and great watermelon from a roadside stand in town. The couple operating the stand were full-time RVers for 13 years before settling near here and they grow their own vegetables which they sell.
Grilled chicken with Mediterreanean vinaigrette and sauteed vegetables
We’re near Bryce Canyon and plan to explore this week. The temperature reached the mid-80s today and is supposed to get there again tomorrow before we have a cooling trend with rain probable on Tuesday and Wednesday. We are finally away from the smoke and have decent air quality after breathing wildfire smoke since early July.
*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!
While I was writing my last post, after the farmers’ market Saturday morning, Donna went for a walk. When she came back she told me she walked all way back to the downtown area and it was getting busy – many more people out and about than we saw earlier.
We decided against going back downtown for wine tasting where most places required reservations and opted to head east to the Airport Wine District. This is an interesting area. During World War II, the Army Air Corps built a training facility next to the existing Walla Walla Regional Airport. They put in a new runway and constructed over 300 buildings for administative offices, barracks, mess halls and storage. The facility covered over 2,100 acres. B-17 Flying Fortress crews trained there.
After the war, the new Air Force declared the base surplus and turned it over to the city of Walla Walla in 1947. In 1989, the Port of Walla Walla took over operations. The airport is mostly used for General Aviation although there is one commercial airline in operation.
The old army buildings were soon home to small manufacturing businesses and eventually 14 wineries established operations there. The wineries produce their wine onsite from grapes sourced from Walla Walla and Columbia Valley appelations.
We visited the CAVU winery there. CAVU doesn’t require reservations – many of the others do.The winery name CAVU comes from an aviation term – ceiling and visibility unlimited (CAVU) – ideal flying conditions. Their specialty is wines based on the barbera grape although they also offer a very nice sauvignon blanc, tempranillo, malbec and a Bordeaux right bank style red blend. We tasted seven wines and ending buying two bottles of Barbera Rose, two bottles of 2019 Barbera and two bottles of 2019 Rule Breaker II. The Rule Breaker is a blend of barbera, cabernet sauvignon and petit verdot grapes. The wine maker calls it Rule Breaker because his usual rule is not to blend barbera grapes with other varieties.
The Airport District also houses a couple of breweries with pubs and outdoor beer gardens and a few eateries. We stopped at Burwood Brewing Company and tried a beer in their outdoor area. They had very good beer!
Burwood IPA
The we went to Quirk Brewing for a second cold one and enjoyed their beer as well. Both breweries had a food truck on their premises. If you’re in the area, I recommend taking the short drive to the Airport District and checking it out.
Sunday morning it was time to hit the road. We wanted to head down to Twin Falls, Idaho, but to get there we’d need a stop along the way. We opted to boondock and Donna found a few options. We ended up boondocking in a small gravel turnout near Huntington, Oregon, south of Baker City. To get there, we traveled on I-84 first through more wheat growing country, then made the climb into the Blue Mountains up Emigrant Hill to Deadman Pass. The road has several switchbacks and is a 6% grade. We saw a few trucks, one RV and a couple of cars on the road shoulder with overheated engines. I-84 in Oregon tops out at Blue Mountain summit 4,193 feet above sea level.
The boondocking spot was fairly quiet and the overnight stay was uneventful. Trains came by, but they were on the other side of the river, far enough away not to be bothersome and they didn’t have to cross a road and blow their horns.
Snake River view from our boondocking site
Monday morning we were back on the road southbound on I-84. It was just over 200 miles to Twin Falls but the slog through Caldwell, Nampa and Boise slowed us down. The traffic was heavy there and, as usual, all of the city folk were in hurry, driving like idiots and causing traffic snarls.
Our plan was to stop at Rock Creek County RV Park in Twin Falls. They don’t take reservations – it’s all first-come, first-served. We thought arriving early afternoon on a Monday, we would find an open site. We thought wrong. The place was full. Tthe camp host told us the Twin Falls County Fair was only a week away and every place was full.
Last year, we stayed at the Elk’s Lodge in Rupert. It was only 40 miles away, so we headed there. We found the five RV sites with water and electricity were all open – no one was staying at the Elk’s Lodge. I paid for two nights at $20/night and we set up.
The Elk’s have saved the day again – it wasn’t the first time we had to go to plan “B” and the Elk’s never let us down.
Elk’s Lodge site has us backed up to the golf course – Hole #1 499 yards par 5
Adjoining the Elk’s Lodge is the Rupert Country Club which features a tree-lined 18-hole golf course. The land is all owned by the Elk’s but the country club leases the acreage for the golf course and operates it.
Yesterday, a truck with a camper pulling a long (20 feet or more) enclosed trailer came in next to us. The guys rolled a golf cart out of the trailer along with their clubs and headed out to the golf course. They were out all day.
Their trailer hitch is interesting. Due to the length of the camper, the hitch is cantilevered three feet or more from the rear of the truck. I don’t know how much tongue weight he has, but that’s a lot of leverage on the hitch receiver!
Look at the cantilevered hitch extension
Later, when the guys came back from golfing, they pulled some equipment out of the trailer. I was curious as I didn’t recognize it.
DryJect machines
I had to ask about it. It turns out they have state-of-the-art machinery called DryJect which is used to aerate and condition turf. Normally, turf is aerated by pulling cylindrical plugs out of the soil. This loosens the soil and allows oxygen to penetrate, improving the health of the turf. Sometimes soil amendments are added to the holes created.
On a golf green, this means a clean-up is required. The cylindrical plugs of soil lay on the surface and look similar to goose droppings. No one wants that on the green. The DryJect machines work by injecting a high-pressure jet of water mixed with sand or other soil amendments, fracturing the soil and creating the aeration pocket. The pocket is simultaneously filled with the sand or other soil additive, leaving a smooth surface with no clean-up required. These guys travel around and treat golf course greens – golfing their way around the country while earning a living. Sweet!
I originally paid for two nights here, but after visiting the lodge for a cold one, I decided we needed another night. Lodge members told me about the prime rib dinner on Wednesday night and convinced me it wasn’t something we should miss. They have a special rotisserie that allows them to roast up to eight prime rib roasts at a time. They dry rub the meat the day before. The dinner includes salad, choice of potato and fresh corn on the cob for $25/plate. Beer is $3/pint. I signed us up.
The weather here in Rupert has been pleasant. We’ve had daily highs in the mid 80s and overnight lows around 50 degrees. This morning, it was 53 degrees outside and 63 degrees in the coach – just right for sleeping with a window open and blankets on the bed.
Tomorrow we’ll head out of here and travel through Utah on the west side – avoiding the gauntlet on I-15 that extends from Tremonton through Salt Lake City to Provo. I detest that drive. Instead, we’ll head in a westerly direction to West Wendover, NV and spend the night near the Bonneville Salt Flats. Our next stop will be Panguitch, Utah where we expect some very fine weather.
As planned, we left Charbonneau Park Thursday morning and made a short drive a few miles downriver to Hood Park. Check-out time at Charbonneau was noon, so we took our time getting ready to roll and pulled out just after 11:30am. At Hood Park, we weren’t allowed to check in until 2pm. I used the downtime to dump the gray water tank at their dumpstation, then we parked in the lower lot to have lunch and kill some time.
Across the Snake River from Hood Park is the Tri-Cities Grain Company. Trucks offload wheat there where it’s transferred to barges. They had an unbelievable pile of grain out in the open alongside the grain elevators. It was by far the largest pile of grain I’ve ever seen. I’m curious as to why it’s piled up out in the open like that.
Huge pile of wheat to the right of the grain elevators at Tri-City Grain
We checked in promptly at 2pm and drove to site 20. Donna was driving the Nissan Frontier and following me – I didn’t bother hooking up the tow bar for such a short journey. We didn’t have the view we had at Charbonneau, but we had a spacious, quiet site.
Lots of space at most of the sites at Hood Park
This is another Corps of Engineers park, just like Charbonneau and again I paid $12/night for 50-amp electrical service. There are a few other COE parks nearby along the Snake River. We were only staying for one night, we had reservations in Walla Walla, Washington next where we would be on full hook-ups.
There were more pleasure boats on this section of the Snake River than were out above the Ice Harbor Lock and Dam. I also saw a few barges heading upriver that had to stage and wait for the locks to open and lift them up to the next water level behind the dam. After offloading grain, the barges carry fertilizers and fuels back upriver. There’s always conflict between environmentalists that want to do away with dams, locks and barges and farmers and merchants that rely on the barge system to move goods.
The dams create hydro-electric power for the regions and also keep the shipping lanes at a minimum of 14 feet deep. The barges can draft about 10 feet fully loaded. Without the barge system, a lot more trucks would have to be on the road and railroad infrastructure would require a lot of upgrading. I don’t see it going away anytime soon.
Sunset over the Snake River
We had another leisurely morning on Friday. Our destination, Blue Valley RV Park in Walla Walla, was only 52 miles away and wouldn’t take much over an hour to reach. We pulled out of Hood Park around 11:30am and went back upriver on WA124 which took us northeast, then east through farmland. As we moved away from the river, we left the fruit growers behind and saw nothing but wheat fields for miles.
At the junction with WA125, we turned south and WA125 took us into Walla Walla. As we approached town from the north, we drove right past the Washington State Penitentiary – also known as Walla Walla State Penitentiary. It houses over 2,400 prisoners including some of the most notorious in the northwest. The Hillside Strangler, Kenneth Bianchi, is there and also Gary Ridgeway, a mass murderer of women known as the Green River Killer. There are many more dangerous mass murders serving life sentences there.
We found the RV park next to the Veterans Memorial Golf Course. The park is paved and has well-kept landscaping. The sites are all back-in only, but have plenty of room. We’re in site 8 which was easy to navigate. The only downside to this end of the park is it backs up against a dairy distributor. Late yesterday afternoon, a truck dropped a refrigerated trailer that I think is filled with ice cream in the lot. The reefer unit runs almost constantly – you can hear the generator run at full power for several seconds – at times maybe up to a minute – then it drops to idle speed for no more than a second before it revs up again. It became annoying in the night.
We took a drive through town and bought a few things at the Walmart which is west of Walla Walla and actually in a town called College Place. You wouldn’t know it’s a different town as the neighborhoods run together. Donna picked up a ribeye steak and I grilled it for dinner. She served it covered in sauteed mushrooms with patty pan squash sauteed with onions, garlic and rosemary and a spud on the side. A simple, delicious meal for less than $10/plate.
Ribeye steak dinner plate
We woke up to rain this morning. It rained sporadically until about 10 am, then it quit. The skies remained overcast and it was only about 63 degrees outside. I put on jeans and boots – I’ve worn nothing but shorts and filp-flops on all but a few occasions this summer. We drove downtown to the farmers’ market on Main Street.
Farmers’ Market on Main Street
We found some excellent locally grown produce there.
Colorful peppers, cucumbers and eggplants
One of the things we’ve really come to like this summer are donut peaches. Donut peaches have many names – most common are donut, flat peach and saturn peach. They originated in China but were introduced to the US. Most of the commercially available donut peaches are grown in California, but they are fairly common in the northwest. They are easy to break in half to remove the pit. I like to cut it into thin slices and add them to cereal. They are great in cottage cheese as well. The name donut or flat peach comes from the flattened shape.
Donut peach – top viewDonut peach profile
After shopping the market, we took a walk through downtown on five blocks of Main Street. There were a number of eateries with street-side dining and boutique shops. Many local wineries were represented with tasting rooms, shops and even restaurants. Most of the winery shops were on the north side of Main Street.
Statue of a farmer on Main StreetHistorical Walla Walla photos on the wall of the Odd Fellows Temple
We may head back to town and check out some of the wines this afternoon.
Today’s high temperature should be in the mid-70s. Tomorrow we can expect it to be a little warmer. We’ll pull out of here tomorrow and head south into Oregon. Where we’ll stop next is undecided at this point, but we’ll figure it out.
*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!
We rolled out from Skagit Valley RV Park around 10:15am Monday morning. We’d decided to head back over Stevens Pass on US2 to Wenatchee, then go south toward Walla Walla. We were off to a slow start as it took a while to get through the towns of Monroe and Sultan. The climb over 4,064 foot high Stevens Pass is a tough slog – I think it’s a steeper climb going west-to-east than the westbound trip was.
We lost more time in the tourist town of Leavenworth and had a slow go through Wenatchee. Donna found a Corps of Engineers (COE) park near Tri-Cities and we programmed it into the GPS. The Tri-Cities of Washington are the adjoining towns of Kennewick, Pasco and Richland. The COE park we headed for was Charbonneau Park on the east bank of the Snake River outside of Pasco.
It turned out to be a long day as the 300-mile trip took over six hours. We checked in around 4:45pm and were assigned to site 27, a long pull-through with a view of the water. It has 50-amp electric service but no fresh water or sewer at the site. With my America the Beautiful Senior Multi-Agency pass, we paid just $12/night.
View from our doorstep in site 27
Downstream from the park is the Ice Harbor Dam. The river at the park is really a reservoir called Sacajawea Lake. The reservoir is 30 miles long, but it seems more like a wide area of the Snake River rather than a lake.
Spacious site 27
We saw some traffic on the river – Monday night a riverboat came upstream, presumably through the Ice Harbor Lock, and cruised past us in the dark.
Riverboat cruise in the night
Tuesday morning we saw a barge transporting grain down the river. The Snake River is the largest tributary of the Columbia River. It originates in Wyoming and extends from Yellowstone National Park to the Tri-Cities where it completes its 1,087-mile journey converging with the Columbia River.
Snake River barges are much smaller than the tows we saw on the Mississippi River – I wrote about them here. A typical Snake River towbarge is a tow boat and four barges joined together. There are eight ports along the river where grain from farms in Wyoming, Idaho and Washington is loaded onto the barges. The barge holds the equivalent amount of grain as 140 railcars or 538 semi-trucks. It’s the most efficient way to transport the grain to deep-water ports on the Columbia River where it’s off-loaded onto ocean-going ships for export.
Snake River towbarge
We took a drive Tuesday to explore around the area. Our first stop was the Ice Harbor Dam. The visitor center was closed but we stopped at the Indian Memorial overlook. The dam was completed in 1962, 15 years after the project started. There were many delays over environmental concerns. Vessels enter a lock on the west side of the dam – it’s 86 feet wide and 675 feet long.
Ice Harbor Dam
Once the dam was built and the river began to flood, it covered a native American burial site. Representatives of the Yakima, Warm Springs, Nez Perce, Umatilla and Colville tribes agreed to have a single memorial built rather than relocate graves.
Petroglyphs on rock at the Indian Memorial
Then we drove through Pasco – where we were delayed for 30 minutes by train traffic near the railyard – to Kennewick. We did a little shopping at the Winco Foods there, then stopped for lunch at Thai Garden. Donna really enjoyed her lunch dish of swimming rama – sauteed spinach, chicken and Thai peanut sauce. I had pad thai and it was average at best.
We didn’t spend too much time out and about. Donna wanted to hike along the river and I wanted to practice guitar – I hadn’t played for a few days. Donna practiced clarinet after her hike.
It was very hot when we arrived on Monday – around 100 degrees. We had the generator running and both roof air conditioners on for the last couple of hours of our drive. When we arrive at a new site, Donna usually keeps dinner preparation simple. Monday night she took leftover green chile turkey burgers and made them into tacos. Very simple, quick preparation and they were good! We each had the last of the fresh corn on the cob from the Conway, WA area.
Turkey burger taco
Yesterday’s high temperature was a comfortable 78 degrees. Today we should reach the low 80s and might even see 90 degrees tomorrow. As you can see in some of the photos, the sky was hazy with wildfire smoke on Tuesday. We have clearer skies today but there’s still some smoke in the air.
This campground isn’t available to us after tomorrow, so in the morning we’ll move a few miles down the road to Hood Park which is another COE park downstream from the dam near US12. On Friday, we’ll continue south into Oregon.
*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!
Today is our last full day in Mount Vernon. Two weeks have flown by and we’ll leave western Washington tomorrow. Our days here have been pretty full. On Monday, we went to Hillcrest Park for pickleball. It was very busy, but well organized. I played in the 3.5 group while Donna went into the 3.0 pool. We found their ratings here to be higher than what we’re used to in Arizona – the 3.5 group seemed more like 3.0 to me and likewise, Donna felt the level of play in the 3.0 was on the low side, so she stepped up for the last few games.
Pickleball courts at Hillcrest Park (That’s Donna in the peach jacket)
When we arrived at the park, there were players on all six courts and over 40 players waiting to get on! It moved quickly though with a four-off and four-on format. After an hour or so, the crowd thinned out – many people had arrived at 8am and we didn’t show up until 9:30am or so.
Tuesday we had dental appointments for check-ups and cleaning at Dr. Westford’s office in Everett. We both really like this dental office. The people are friendly, the hygenists are very competent and thorough and Dr. Westbrook is a first-class dentist.
As usual, I had a couple of areas that required attention. The enamel on my teeth is damaged due to head and neck radiation treatment for cancer. The radiation damage seems to never go away. I made another appointment for Thursday at 8am to fill a couple of areas where teeth had cracked and crumbled a bit.
Wednesday we went back for more pickleball and found only a handful of people at the park. We played six or seven games and had a good time. Mondays and Thursdays are the crowded days as the play is organized by the local pickleball club. Other days are just pick-up games and open play.
In the afternoon, we drove down to Kevin and Alana’s place. Kevin had tomatos, peppers, onion and a whole bulb of garlic on the Traeger for salsa he made for us. The salsa is very good! Alana wanted me to show her how I make Japanese fried rice. My method is time-consuming and laborious, but you can’t argue with the result. Everyone really liked the fried rice.
For some reason, Donna and I both slept fitfully Wednesday night. Maybe we were a little dehydrated from the morning of pickleball – it was hot with the temperature reaching 88 degrees on Wednesday. Thursday morning I was up before 6am to have breakfast and coffee before heading down to Everett for my 8am dental appointment. I wanted to hit the road by 7am, not knowing for sure what the traffic on I-5 would be like. Typically it slows down once you pass the SR529 exit and can be very slow from there.
The drive was easy and I chose to exit on SR529 and drive right through Everett to the dental office. I made it there in about 35 minutes and had to wait awhile for them to open. Originally our plan was for Donna to ride her bike to Hillcrest Park for pickleball and I would join her on my way back from the dentist. Donna opted out – she was feeling a bit off after a poor night’s sleep. I was very tired as well and came straight back. We spent the rest of the day reading and lounging around.
Friday we met Kevin and Alana and Kevin’s mother Donetta in La Conner. La Conner is a small waterfront town about 10 miles from Mount Vernon. It’s located on the Swinomish Channel which looks like a river, but it’s a channel connecting Padilla Bay and Skagit Bay. The town has a population of only about 1,000 people, but it has many attractions such as waterfront dining, breweries and tourist shops.
We met at the aptly named La Conner Waterfront Cafe and dined al fresco on their deck.
View of Swinomish Channel from the Waterfront Cafe
La Conner is a cool place, but parking can be problematic. We all had to park blocks away from the restaurant as their small lot was full and street parking was also full all through the waterfront area.
We made plans to meet again the following afternoon – I had purchased tickets for the Brewfest on the Skagit. This event was organized by, and benefitted, the Lincoln Theater in Mount Vernon. It was held at Edgewater Park in Mount Vernon just a couple of miles from Skagit Valley RV Park. The Lincoln Theater is an old, historic vaudeville and silent movie theater in Mount Vernon built in 1926. Currently they have concerts as well as some movies and plays there. They host community events and work with local school districts to put on music workshops and also have traveling musicians teach there.
The Brewfest had a line up of more than 30 local breweries and four bands scheduled to play. Tickets for the event were $25 and included six coupons for 4-ounce beer samples. In reality, most of the breweries weren’t collecting coupons and the small samples were practically limitless.
Brewfest at Edgewater Park looking toward the Skagit RiverLots of people and brewery tentsAnother view of the stage with jumbo video screen
The video screen showing close-up shots of the musicians was a nice touch. We saw all four bands and were there from around 3:30pm to 8pm. As you can see in the background of the photos, the air quality wasn’t great as wildfire smoke imported from fires in Canada filled the sky.
Lainey, Alana, Kevin and Donna at Brewfest
Alana bought a fifth ticket and our granddaughter Lainey joined us. It was a fun afternoon. Earlier in the day, Kevin golfed in a tournament and finished the day in third place on the leaderboard. He’s golfing again today as the tournament continues.
Saturday morning Donna took a bike ride and stopped at a few farm vegetable stands she discovered along the way. She also stopped at the farmer’s market for donut peaches and picked wild blackberries on the way home. On Thursday, after lunch in La Conner, we bought fresh corn in Conway that was superb. It was so good that Donna had to cook the remaining two ears of corn after we each had one for dinner – seconds were definitely in order. We’ll get more today.
Donna’s farmstand haul
I spent Saturday morning dismantling my Buddipole Versatee vertical HF ham radio antenna and packing it away. Then I broke out the compressor and set the tire pressures on the coach and also the Nissan Frontier in preparation for the road tomorrow. I’ve always been a stickler for proper tire inflation and over the last eight years, it’s served us well.
I still haven’t decided our route or even our destination tomorrow. It looks like it’s too hot and smoky to consider eastern Washington or the Idaho panhandle. I’m thinking maybe we’ll head down through Yakima and on to Bend, Oregon or maybe head to Walla Walla and down through eastern Oregon. In any case, we’ll meander southward and end up back in Mesa, Arizona around the 15th of September, giving us a month to get there.
*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!
We’ve had a fairly quiet week here at Skagit Valley RV Park. The park is full and it seems like there are a number of long-term residents of the place. I’m curious about the fifth-wheel trailer next to our site. I haven’t seen anyone there and the trailer is covered with cob webs. There’s a Dodge Ram pickup truck parked in the site, but I haven’t seen it move. There are current Washington license plates on the rigs but the lack of activity seems strange.
We got together with my oldest daughter, Alana and her husband, Kevin at Farmstrong Brewing on Wednesday and our granddaughter Lainey joined us. The brewery is only a quarter of the mile from the RV park, so Donna and I walked there.
On Thursday, we met them at the Skagit Golf and Country Club where they’re members. Alana texted us and advised when she thought they would be coming off the 18th hole. We arrived a little after 3pm and saw them on the 18th green. We watched them putt, then went to the clubhouse for a drink and early dinner. Kevin’s son Nick was also there. I don’t know why I didn’t take any photos!
It’s always nice to get together with my daughters and we’ll get to see Alana’s family again tomorrow for Sunday dinner. Other than that, it’s been mostly our usual activities. Donna went out for a couple of bike rides and she practices clarinet every other day or so. I do the same with my guitar.
Speaking of the guitar, I use pedals to alter the sound of my electric guitar. I especially need them with the small practice amp to get an over-driven tube sound and I almost always run some reverb and delay. For the past ten years or so, I’ve used an Hermida Audio reverb pedal which is pretty subtle. It adds a little ambience, like your amp is set up in an empty room with wood floors. I thought I might like something that had a little more flair than that.
I did some research and thought the Omni pedal designed by Robert Keeley would be the one. I found a good deal on one with free shipping and bought it. It’s smaller than the Hermida Audio pedal and fits nicely on my board, but it packs a lot more sound than the Hermida! It has three base settings – room – spring – plate. Each one of these settings can be adjusted for the intensity of the effect. In the room setting, it can be subtle. The spring setting gives a little more oomph for the surf guitar sound and the plate setting can get really wild. I’m liking this pedal.
My pedal board – the signal runs from right to left
I have my pedal board set up with the guitar plugged into a TC Electronic tuner on the right. This pedal will cut the signal from the guitar and display the note being played and whether it’s flat or sharp, allowing me to quickly tune the guitar without any sound coming from the amp. Next in line is a MXR Modified OverDrive pedal. This boosts the guitar signal and can drive the amp into distortion – great for rock songs. The next pedal is the Keeley Omni reverb unit and last is a MXR Carbon Copy delay. I use a very conservative setting on the delay as it can easily get out of control and oscillate. Set carefully, it can create sounds like U2’s guitarist, the Edge. That’s my simple pedal board set-up.
I also have my Buddipole Versatee vertical high frequency ham radio antenna set up. I had a hard time getting it to tune – the closest I could come to resonance was a standing wave ratio (SWR) of about 1.5:1. A lot of guys would be happy with that, but I’m used to this antenna tuning to a SWR of 1.1:1 or less. The higher the SWR, the more loss of signal going out. Higher SWR can also force the output stage to reduce power to prevent damage. It’s a vicious cycle. To compound the issue, the 20-meter HF band conditions have been poor. Yesterday I futzed around with the antenna again, resetting the coil and counterpoise and got the SWR below 1.25:1. Better, but not perfect.
It rained off and on overnight and we had a couple of showers this morning. We didn’t let that stop us from going to the farmers’ market at the Skagit River Walk park. I told Donna if you stayed inside every time it rained in western Washington, you wouldn’t be out much! Of course, July and August are typically the driest months of the year, but they still average 1.2 and 1.3 inches of rain respectively. At least we don’t have any smoke now.
Cloudy, dreary day at the farmers’ market
We’ll probably have a few more showers through tomorrow morning. Today’s high is only 68 degrees. Tomorrow should be a little warmer and dry by late morning – early afternoon. As I mentioned, we plan to go to Kevin and Alana’s for a cookout.
The forecast for the week ahead has the warmer weather returning with temperatures in the 80s and maybe even 90 degrees by the end of the week. We’ll be here until the 16th and we don’t have a clue where we’re heading next. We’ll have to look at weather, fire and road condition reports and decide in about a week.
By the way, after her walk today, Donna stopped in the RV park office to find out if we should be worried about our neighbor. Apparently, he doesn’t get around too well and that’s why we haven’t seen him. But the gal in the office appreciated our concern.
*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!
Donna spoke to the Elk’s Lodge camp host and arranged a late checkout for us on Saturday. We wanted to stay connected to the electric service as long as possible to cool the interior of the coach. Saturday’s forecast for Coeur d’Alene called for triple digit heat. Just before we pulled out at 1pm, I fired up the Onan Quiet Diesel generator and disconnected the power cord.
Our first stop was the dump station next to the Kootenai County Fairgrounds. Then we were westbound on I-90. We had a short drive – under an hour – to Northern Quest Casino in Airway Heights near the Spokane airport northwest of the city. They have a parking lot designated for trucks and RVs. We parked along the south edge of the lot where a couple of other RVs were located rather than parking in the marked stalls where truckers were parked.
I kept the generator running and both air conditioners on until we locked up and drove to Dick and Roxy’s place at 4:30pm. We found their house in the South Hill neighborhood of Spokane. We had a great visit and talked over dinner – Roxy had seasoned flank steak with a prime rib rub and Dick grilled it on his Traeger. Roxy also made a Mediterranean quinoa salad and a side with cucumber, tomatoes and other ingredients – perfect on a hot day.
We left a little past eight o’clock – we needed to get back and fire up the generator to start cooling the coach again. I didn’t want to leave the generator running while we were away. We had the generator and air conditioners on past midnight. One of the neighboring RVs had their generator on all night.
I didn’t mention the smoke. When we left the Elk’s Lodge and drove through Spokane, the smoke was thicker than ever. The wind had shifted and smoke from the fires to the north was coming down to us. My throat and eyes were irritated.
Sunday morning we woke to the sound of raindrops. I hoped it would knock the smoke down, but it didn’t rain very hard. We hit the road a little after 9am and the scenery on westbound US2 was surreal. The combination of smoke and light rain made it feel like we were driving through a Scottish moor. But it wasn’t foggy, it just had the appearance of fog.
We drove across US2 through Coulee City and had an uneventful but somewhat eerie day. We dropped into the Columbia Gorge at Orondo and went north on WA97. We found the Lone Pine Fruit Company. Donna had researched dry camping there. They were closed on Sunday, so we found a level area and set up for the night.
Boondocking at Lone Pine Fruit Company lot
In the photo above, you can see the smoke hanging over the Columbia River. Across the highway, the ridgetops would disappear at times due to the thick smoke.
Ridge across the highwayWildfire smoke
Monday morning Donna bought some fresh fruit before we hit the road again. We went south to Wenatchee and followed US2 west up and over Stevens Pass. The pass topped out at 4,064 feet above sea level. I think Wenatchee is about 700 feet above sea level.
Once you drive past the ski area westbound, there is a long 6% grade descending the other side of the pass. I’m familiar with this road and knew to keep my speed in check. At the bottom of the grade, there is a 180-degree narrow single-lane turn. You need to be below 40mph in a big rig for that turn. I used the Jacobs Engineering engine compression brake to keep us at 45-50 mph the whole way down.
About a quarter of the way down we saw two RVs ahead in a turnout on the side of the road – a gasoline powered class A and a smaller class C. They pulled out ahead of us and quickly pulled away. A few minutes later we came around a bend, still descending steeply toward the big turn and saw them stopped in a turnout again. This time the class A motorhome had smoke billowing out of his front brakes. We could smell the burning brake pads as we drove by. They were obviously descending too fast and had to brake hard or maybe he was riding the brakes all the way – I do know they were going much faster than we were.
When we had a gasoline-powered coach, I didn’t have the luxury of a Jake brake. To make a steep descent, I would slow down, gear down and figure my target speed. If I wanted to target 50 mph, I would brake to 40-45 mph, then release the brakes and allow them to cool. As my speed crept up past 50 mph, I would brake again under my target speed, release the brake for cooling and let my speed slowly increase again. Repeating this procedure all the way down a long grade avoids overheating the brakes.
We stopped in Arlington at the Pilot/Flying J travel center near the intersection of I-5 and WA530. I topped up our tank with about 60 gallons of diesel at $3.58/gallon. I paid over $200 – last year I would have paid around $135!
We found our way to the Skagit Valley RV Park on the south bank of the Skagit River in Mount Vernon. We were checked in quickly and directed to site 53 with full hookups and 50-amp service. The elevation is about 50 feet above sea level. I was surprised at the amount of smoke in the air here. I thought we would leave the smoke behind once we crested the Cascade Mountains. We’ve traveled through more than 700 miles of wildfire smoke!
This morning Donna fixed a nice surprise for me. One of my favorite breakfast dishes is Eggs Benedict. I usually only get it when we go out for breakfast. Donna had all of the ingredients, so she made it for me this morning!
Eggs Benedict
We’ll spend the next two weeks here. We’re looking forward to spending some time with Kevin and Alana and the grandkids. We had a cool, comfortable night and the temperature this morning is in the mid-60s. We’ll have daily highs around 80 degrees. The forecast calls for cooler weather ahead – low 70s by Friday.
*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!
