Alpine Coach Association Rally

This was the scene this morning -- that's Auntie Violet on the left with the long row of Alpine coaches behind her. By this evening, the line stretching the other way is just as long. They had 110 coaches registered, but way more than that have shown up. It is such a rarity to see more than one Alpine (there were only a little over 4000 ever made) in an RV park, so this is pretty amazing. The sentiment seems to be that since there is no longer a manufacturer, having good rallies and other get-togethers is a good way to keep the re-sale value of the Alpines up.

It was warm enough last night that for the first time in months, we did not turn on the heat in the coach. It was a bit chilly this morning, but a long way from the cold we've been used to the past few months. We wandered down to the office tent about ten and got registered. They had nice blue bags, ACA calendars and note pads.

This afternoon there was a heavy hors' dourves potluck at four o'clock that was the first official function. I had a round of brie that I divided in half and wrapped pastry around to bake. I put some of Brother Pat's walnuts on one half and his hazel nuts on the other. It seemed to go over pretty good because by the time we got through the line (we were in the third group) there was little left. I was going to take another picture when I took it out of the oven, but didn't think about it again until I'd already taken it over to the table... The picture on the left is part of the group gathered for the evening. Guaranty RV of California has brought five rigs that are for sale that are in a U-shape in the middle of the gathering. The table for the food was set up in the middle.

Forry was having trouble with the generator running, but not seeming to charge the batteries. He stopped to chat with some fellows who were working on another coach with the generator slide out. It turns out there is breaker switch on the generator that had been turned off that he didn't know about. It's great to be around people with the same kind of rigs that know some of the quirks!

Quartzite

Well, not quite to Quartzite yet. We are parked out in the desert on BLM land a few miles out of town. We arrived a day early for the Alpine Coach Association Desert Rat Rally and there are already more than fifty Alpines here! They are expecting over one hundred. We have not been to anything like this before. It should be interesting. We are especially interested in the "gearhead" session tomorrow afternoon when everyone shares their tips about dealing with any issues with our "orphan" coaches. (Western Recreational Vehicles who made Alpine coaches in Yakima went out of business last spring.)

We did all we could this morning to get ready. Filled the water tank (100 gallons) with fresh water; pulled in the slides; brought up the jacks; hooked up the toad; then drove over to the dump station to empty the gray (capacity 100 gallons) and black tanks (capacity 78 gallons) so that we would arrive hopefully able to stay a week. When you live in an RV, you certainly become more aware of the details of daily life and what is essential -- water, sewage, electric and propane -- as well as diesel for the rig! A certain amount of every day seems to be spent dealing with one or more of them.

The sun was shining brightly, the air was warm (it is so good to be back in sandals again!) and the sky was a brilliant blue as we left Newberry Springs. The one thing we didn't do while we were there is visit one of the pistachio stands (Forry's stash of pistachios was already pretty good.). There are lots of groves of fairly small young pistachio trees around the area. They have white bark and right now, no leaves. We heard that undeveloped land sells for $10,000 and acre if you are adjacent to power and further out it's still $1000 an acre. We saw a lot of deserted-looking homesteads with boarded up and calapsizing bulidings -- it looks like many people had dreams of making a living in the desert. It's hard to believe that those kind of land prices will hold up in today's economy.

Tomorrow, I'll try to get some pictures of all the rigs at the rally and the desert where we are.

Work Day...!

Greetings!
We had a wonderful day yesterday. We had sort of scoped out the little "strung-out over miles" community of Newberry Springs on Saturday. We found two churches about a mile apart on the same road as the elementary school. One was a Mormon stake house and the other a Community Church. The owner of the RV Park says there is a 3rd "somewhere out there off the road a ways," but we never found it.

We didn't get up terribly early Sunday and by the time we showered and ate breakfast I thought it was too late to go to church, but it was only 10:30 and services started at the Community Church at 11 AM which is only about seven miles away from us. It has got to be the friendliest church we have ever visited. We were about ten minutes early and people came from the other side of the building from where we were sitting to say hello. There were probably at least 150 people there -- I have no idea where they all came from as it doesn't seem that populated around here!

After services (they have a nice 18 person choir and good music) a fellow named Pete caught us as we were shaking hands with the pastor and invited us to lunch. We hesitated a few minutes, and thought "why not?" Pete and Dixie live almost fifteen miles from the church in a community called Calico Shores which is built around a pair of man-made lakes of about 30 acres. (All of these "lakes" around here are filled from wells -- they are pumping from about 300 feet down.)

We ate and talked and laughed a good share of the afternoon. Dixie is an RN who commutes three days a week (12 hour days) to Loma Linda where she works in Labor and Delivery. Pete is retired and it was amazing how much he and Forry are alike. Pete was also formerly a pilot -- they spent a couple of years in Liberia, Africa where he flew for a mission group while Dixie worked at a lepersorium. He flew Super Cubs AND a Cherokee Six, which is one of the airplanes that Forry had! (We used to fly it to Baja with the Franzes and the Kramers and all the kids...!)

We got back to the RV Park about 4:30 and had enough time before dark to get one side of Auntie Violet cleaned before dark. Forry has a cleaner that you wipe on and then just wipe dry.

This morning we did the other side and the front and back. She was filthy with the grime from the de-icer stuff and sand that she got went we came over the passes from Oregon. THEN, we decided we'd better do the car too as after the coach was clean, it really looked bad!

THEN, we decided to go for a walk as we hadn't walked yesterday. We are trying hard to get back into the exercise regimen that we sadly neglected over the holidays -- as did everyone else we talk to!

We are planning to leave for Quartzite and the Alpine Coach Assoc. Rally in the morning, so decided we should run into town for last minute groceries and to stock up on paper plates -- you need to conserve water out there as there are no hook-ups... I think Forry likes the idea of not doing any more dishes then you can help as the dishwashing is his job.

We did go out to dinner and had a great Mexican dinner at Dos Domingos in Barstow, but we are both pooped tonight!

Newberry Springs

We spent the day today at Twin Lakes RV Park near Newberry Springs, California. We'll spend the next couple of days here then head for Quartzite. One thing nice about RV Parks like this is they don't have rules against hanging clothes outside like most of the ritzier ones. Forry strung the new line Granddaughter Havela gave him for Christmas from the toad to a tree and I washed some towels and hung them out. It seems like the nicer a place a park is, the less "green" it is.

There isn't too much vegetation around here, it's mostly grease wood and salt cedar trees like the one in the picture. Also called tamarisks (I think), they are much disliked by forestry people as they are considered weed trees that force out other trees. Their roots pull of salt from the deep ground that contaminates the soil around them so nothing else will grow.

It's a full moon tonight. We were out walking as we watched it rise, it looked huge! It got pretty warm today -- we had all the windows in the RV open. It did freeze last night.

MUSINGS WHILE MAKING TUNA FISH SANDWICHES

I was thinking about Martha (my late beloved mother-in-law) this noon when I was making some tuna sandwiches for lunch. As I buttered the bread I recalled her urging me to "be generous with the butter, make sure it covers the edges so the bread doesn't dry out," as we prepared sandwiches for the harvest crews. It was quite a contrast to my Mom, who with five kids, was always very sparing with butter -- and other food. Not that we never had enough to eat, but there never was a surplus. Anyway the sandwiches were good -- I learned to cut dried apricots into the tuna at a little sandwich shop at Manito Park in Spokane.

Birds seen today while we were out driving around:

Ravens, red-tailed hawk, Say's Phoebe, Black Phoebe, white crowned sparrows, mourning doves, geese, mallards

Into the Desert

Today we drove out of the fog/smog of the San Joaquin Valley into sunshine and the Tehachapi Mountains, then into the Mojave Desert. It was finally warm enough to go without long sleeves -- and if the wind wasn't blowing, I'd even put my sandals on. Everyone we've met has been complaining about the cold. I understand that Snoqualmie Pass (the major mountain pass from east to west in Washington State) is still closed and the I5 is closed between Olympia and Portland because of flooding, so I guess this isn't too bad.

I wasn't quick enough to think to grab the camera as we first came over the Tehachapis to get a picture of the THOUSANDS of wind generators that line the pass area. The picture above is just of the last of them. The area signs describe the area as the "Wind Generator Capital of the World" and they could very well be right.

The top picture is for Sister Sherry. I drove the last couple of hundred miles today -- two lane roads, freeway and the last a dirt road into Twin Lakes RV Park where we are staying for a couple of nights. The address here is Newberry Springs. It is run by a very young nice Asian lady who has it on the market because her manager passed last winter. We are parked by one small lake -- more like a pond -- the other lake is all dried up. There are three white geese and about a dozen Mallard ducks in the pond.

This park is somewhat off the beaten path and there are only a dozen or so rigs here. The couple who pulled in with a fifth-wheeler shortly after we did are from Issaquah. Last night the people who pulled in just ahead of us were from Everett. Most of our conversations with them have been about the terrible conditions up in Washington...

Last night we were talking about the 350 square feet of living space in Auntie Violet compared to the house in Spokane which had more than 2400. One thing about it, we definitely have no rooms we aren't using!

Hurry up and....

We were up early this morning, wanting to get a good start. Forry had hooked up the toad last night and we had taken out all of the garbage and put everything away etc. We had spent an extra day at Old Orchard, getting some laundry done and making a trip into Home Depot at Chico. We needed to get a few things before we were ready to boondock (camp with no hook-ups for water or electricity or sewer) on BLM (Bureau of Land Management, i.e. public land) land at Quartzite.

We got four big packs of firewood and a bucket. The firewood is on the "bring sheet" for the Alpine Coach Association Rally that we are planning to attend from January 14-19th. The firewood is for evening campfires and the bucket is to catch shower water (the water that runs too cold to step into at first) that can then be used to flush the toilet. (All in the name of conserving water!) We've been to seminars at Life on Wheels conferences on boon-docking, but this will be the first time we've tried it for more than overnight. The other instruction is to come with your water tank FULL and both your gray and black water tanks EMPTY.

As we were unhooking the electricity and water this morning, I noticed that our neighbor -- who had been up and going even earlier than we had -- did not look very happy. He had the hood up on his toad (towed car) with a battery charger on with power from his coach. When I asked him what was wrong, he said he had left the key on in his car the night before and had run the car battery down and now his charger had been on for a half hour and didn't seem to be working. I called Forry over to check and sure enough there was NO spark at the battery terminals. So Forry went to get ours while the fellow kept protesting that he didn't want to delay us. After he hooked up our charger up, Forry remembered that his new compressor had a battery booster on it that could be used to start the car. But by the time he got it out, there was enough juice from the battery charger to start the car. The fellow was going to leave it run for a couple of hours in neutral while he was going down the road. It was a Honda and he said he had run it before while he was towing it without any problem...

So, it was ten AM before we got going. It gets dark by 4:30 and we didn't want to be looking for a campsite at night. About 4 PM we cut over to Hwy 99 from I5 at Los Banos to a little RV park called The Viking at Kingsburg. (There is not much of anything in the way of towns and/or RV parks on I5 once you leave Stockton) It is very different from any other place we have stayed. I had called earlier this afternoon and the lady they told me they didn't take reservations, but had "lots" of pull-through spaces left. We followed another rig (who turned out to be from Everett also heading for Quartzite) in. She went into the office and quickly came out and met me before I got there. If you are an overnighter, you are not supposed to go to the office, but are to pull into any vacant spot -- there were only two left -- then fill out an envelope from a box on a post, put your money or a check (no credit cards) in it and put it into a slot in the post. No human interaction at all!

This isn't a very attractive place and there are no amenities at all, so we'll just spend the night and head out again tomorrow. We'll check out a few places closer to Quartzite and stay there until the ACA Rally starts next Wednesday.

A Catch-up Day

Mount Shasta was out in all of its glory yesterday as we drove south on Interstate 5. It always surprises me how mountainous southern Oregon is. We didn't leave too early as the weather forecast had said there would be black ice early in the morning. By the time we came through the several passes the roads were pretty much bare and dry, though there was as much as a foot of snow in places.

In the Siskiyou Mountains, you go through the highest pass on I5 at 4315 feet, then pop out into the high valleys of northern California with Mount Shasta shining in the sun.

We came as far as Orland, California yesterday and are staying at Old Orchard RV Park. We had stayed here when we came through last March. Old Orchard is an older RV Park with a somewhat unusual layout -- the 52 pull-through sites are all in a large circle. You drive around the outside of the circle and pull into your site. When it's time to leave, you just pull out into the inner circle and drive out. The center and the outside of the circle are all planted with walnut and almond trees of the original orchard. It was very pretty when we were here in the spring, but of course now the trees are all bare.

We'll spend today here, catching up on chores and being lazy. We need to plan our route to Arizona and make some plans -- albeit in Jello -- for the next couple of weeks.

Travel Day!

Forry is busy draining the black and gray water while I'm tucking things away inside the coach as we get ready to move on south this morning.

We've had a restful couple of days here at 7 Feathers RV Resort in Canyonville, Oregon. We've spent time in the hot tub every evening (after 8 PM it's adults only!), enjoyed some beautiful scenery -- and saw a live "Beatles" show last night at the casino.

As we were riding the shuttle bus over, the driver told us that it wasn't on the menu, but that if you asked, they had a 10 oz. ribeye steak dinner for $7.50. We were a bit skeptic, but asked and yes, they did. We split it between us along with a large baked potato, garlic toast and vegetables. It would have been a pretty cheap meal if we hadn't decided to order dessert...!

NO Snow!

We woke up to beautiful sunshine this morning -- it was so bright it almost hurt my eyes. We've gotten used to overcast dreary gray skies. The 7 Feathers RV Resort is a gorgeous place. It's only a year old. We're going to spend the weekend here and leave on Monday morning.

We took a walk this morning around the periphery of the property and along the creek that runs through it, The Umpqua tribe has done a great deal of work improving salmon habitat along the creek. They actually had their first spawning salmon return last fall. There are several dead snags among the evergreens along the creek. We heard and then saw a large pileated woodpecker. It must have found a treasure trove of bugs in a hole it hammered open, for it let me get right under the tree where it was working. I sure wish we would have had Forry's camera. His is much faster and might have gotten a better close-up.

Back on the Road!

We're back on the road again and it feels good! We left Hubbard this morning headed for Camper World in Wilsonville for an oil change and for them to try one more time to install the stabilizer. We didn't bother to hook up the toad as it was such a short distance and we knew we would have to just unhook again for them to get the RV in the service bay. I just followed Forry and the motorhome. The sun was shining at Hubbard (after a whole night of down pouring rain) but Wilsonville had about an inch of new show on the ground. Most of it was off on the freeway, but the parking lot at Camper World was a sheet of ice where no one had driven. This time they did have the RIGHT bracket!

We had to run back Daughter Dawn's (20 miles or so) with the toad while they were working on the RV as she called to tell me that I had left my plastic box of sewing machine needles behind. That doesn't sound too bad, but at $5-6 a packet and about 30 different kinds, it was worth the trip. We gave the grandkids one last hug and were on our way again.

By the time we returned to Camper World, they had all of the work done and had even done their test drive, so we hooked up the Jeep and took off about 12:30 finally heading south on Interstate 5! It was a funny drive -- we went from sunshine to rain to snow to slush and back again.

After hearing some RVer's talking about it on the CB, we decided to stop and spend the night at the new Seven Feathers RV Resort near Roseburg. We had dinner at the casino seafood buffet, then soaked in the hot tub just across from Auntie Violet. The weather forecast is talking about snow tonight for the pass into Californa, so we may just stay here for a day or two. It's a nice place.