Saturday, June 30, 2012

Two states forward, one state back.


Oregon’s Hell’s Canyon is a beautiful, very winding drive through the mountains, paralleling much of the way the same river that passes our campground in Elgin. 


Marcia field-replaces the valence covers to match the dinette cushions she very successfully recovered.

Lewiston, across the Snake from Clarkston.

Canoe sculpture in Lewiston.
We enter Washington and the town of Clarkston and cross the Snake River to—of course!—Lewiston, in Idaho, for lunch, then return to Clarkston (why not Clarkton?) to camp at the confluence of the Clearwater and Snake rivers.

The rivers are not busy today, a Saturday, but the cities seem reasonably active.  This Granite Lake RV campground calls itself a “resort” consequently our bill goes up to $36, still less than in California for a comparable park.   A nice hiking/biking trail runs along the Snake starting at our park.  The multipurpose room is hosting a wedding reception.  For dinner I walk to the nearby Costco and bring back a pious spinach salad to split.
Farm scenes on the road from Lewiston to Post Falls.

Based on our Alberta travels, we think the brilliant yellow plants will become canola oil.



Friday, June 29, 2012

We pay homage to Wally Byam

Today we drive to Baker City, Oregon, which happens to be the birthplace of Wally Byam, the founder of all things Airstream, including WBCCI – our Airstream club.  Wally pioneered caravanning in the 1950s.  Marcia and I bought our Airstream in 2005 and joined the club the same year.  We are heading now to our fifth major Airstream caravan, although we have completed many trips of shorter duration.  The club has become a great part of our lives.

Baker City is the largest town we’ve seen since Red Bluff, which doesn’t mean it is large, but it has charm. Highway 7 brings you down Main Street, with nice one- and two-story old buildings on a wide but not very busy street.  The striking exception is a nine-story structure built in 1929 as the Baker City Hotel, but as you may guess from the year, the timing was not fortuitous and it never lived up to local aspirations.  It is impressive and optimistic, with large terra-cotta eagles framing the street-level entrances, like a government building of some sort.

Wally Byam makes up one room in the town’s former natatorium (look it up), now principally a museum covering the Oregon Trail.  We say hello, bid our adieu, and continue our trek north.  Night is spent in the town of Elgin, at the HuNaHa RV Park; although a Friday and the end of June, we are one of maybe only three campers (one with Alaska plates) plus two sites of campground hosts.  We take site 21 as they call it the best, but the only difference we can see is that it is one of maybe a half-dozen that have picnic tables.  But a nice park, smart-alecky comments aside, next to a swift-moving creek with little litter.  

Town is closed so we stay “home” and have fried egg sandwiches for dinner.

Marcia seems to be enjoying the new iPad, doing the NYTimes crossword each day, and playing Words with Friends (a Scrabble-clone) with our son Kevin in Sacramento. 



We meet a very nice woman today cleaning the park’s restrooms.  She retired from a job as school custodian in Elgin, and now keeps the camp restrooms clean plus drives a school bus.   She owns a number of acres nearby.  The campground host, however, is seasonal, living in Arizona during the winters.  Even this late in the year some snow remains on the mountains bordering this beautiful valley.

Thursday, June 28, 2012

A bush pilot, and we haven’t reached Alaska

After some morning conversation with Jay and Connie, we leave the Ana Reservoir RV Park for the town of John Daly, taking what seems the most direct albeit deserted route.  The Garmin pleads with us to take the next road left, but these repeatedly turn out either to be nonexistent or nothing more than 100-yard stubs into farms.

Much of the country along Hwy 395 looks like the 395 high-desert in California, but it eventually gets  interesting.

Clyde Holiday State Park, John Day OR
We enter some mountainous areas topping at about 5000’ and descend to Canyon City (there was gold here) and the town of John Day (nobody seems to know, but possibly a trapper that was left behind on a long ago expedition).  On the outskirts we pull in to the very attractive Clyde Holiday State Park, parking next to an Airstream of our same year owned by WBCCI members from Spokane named Lee and Gayle.  Lee, it turns out, was a bush pilot out of Juneau for 15 years and sometimes shuttled people to the Taku Glacier Lodge near Juneau.  Maybe ten years ago we and our young sons spent a day at the lodge, most memorably fighting the worst mosquitoes we had ever seen, but otherwise having a great time.

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Oregon's Summer Lake – Ana Reservoir Campground

Okay, we made it out of town, but we have some serious driving ahead to get to Dawson Creek, British Columbia, and Mile 0 of the Alaska Highway, in time for the the WBCCI Airstream Caravan "Alyeska - The Great Land"  on July 12, 2012.  And a few stops to make on the way.
No wheel should go un-torqued.  Mt. Shasta approves.

We leave Red Bluff, driving north on I-5 to Weed then head east toward Klamath Falls.  With some exceptions the area is high (3500-4000 feet), dry, and only lightly vegetated – not your usual image of Oregon. Klamath Falls features a very large lake with a shoreline lumber mill, but we never did see the falls. At Klamath Falls we headed north then east through the Klamath Wildlife Refuge for a very long time, seeing no vehicles (except, strangely, a Dish Network truck at the side of the road) and only scattered houses, but nice countryside.  We then passed through the very small town of Silver Lake and south to the Ana Reservoir, at the tip of Summer Lake.

Jay's joys (there are others)
At the Ana Reservoir RV Campground we met Jay, its owner, a member of our NorCal WBCCI Airstream club, and a newsletter advertiser.   Jay and Connie bought the campground in 2006.  He sold his business last year (“document destruction”) and is now free to spend more time at the campground, or working on his rigs, or perhaps traveling.  He has a 1965 Airstream (“a work in progress”) and a 35-foot triple axle, plus a couple rigs from other manufacturers.

Ana Reservoir is an area for people that love clear skies and air and quiet, and/or fishing.  It is near Summer Lake, which on a map looks quite large but has lost most of its water for residential and agricultural use.  His campground has 24 sites ranging from no hookups to 50 amps and a very nice shower and laundry facility. 

Coincidentally, Jay greeted us by asking if we know Dennis R from NorCal.  Dennis had just come through the area, and we had no idea he and Karen had been here.  We missed them by about a week.

This is a great transit campground, or alternatively a place to kick back and totally relax.

Saturday, June 23, 2012

A bad omen...but off we go!


I should have taken it as an omen when on Saturday, in front of 26 relatives, I managed to sink Marcia’s new digital camera into the corner of a heavily frosted wedding cake she had made for an "anniversary" party.  It turns out frosting is made from sugar, a lot of butter (Butter?  Who knew?) and shortening.  I spent the next couple hours with a sewing needle picking green frosting out of every groove and opening I could find.  As the day warmed, the butter - previously not obvious - became obvious in the form of a sticky sheen.  Marcia smiled politely to the admiring crowd, keeping the crushed corner from sight.

Red Bluff Diversion Dam Park
Cookies and wine...yum!
The next problem involved our plan to start our journey north on Wednesday.  The county decided Wednesday would be the day to chip-seal our local streets, which would make it impossible to get out our driveway.  It isn't easy packing for a three-month road trip, and much harder if our 25' Airstream trailer has to be parked a half-mile away.   We decided best to get out ahead of the chip-seal, finally departing late Tuesday in time to reach Red Bluff  for dinner.  We stayed in a Forest Service campground at the Red Bluff Diversion Dam on the Sacramento River – a great, handy, electric-and-water campground.  For dessert we enjoyed a couple glasses of wine and homemade chocolate chip ice cream sandwiches, courtesy Aja, Dana and Scott.  (They had stayed in our silver guesthouse during the three-day anniversary party.)