Category: Daily Life

Day 7 Pacific Coast

 

This morning our battery was down to a 50% charge. We are not supposed to let it get below that. We need to move further south so our furnace fan does not run so much if we want to be able to use other electrical items while boondocking. In the meantime, we turned on our generator to start recharging the batteries. The solar panels and alternator will add to it during the day so we will, hopefully, be fully charged again by the time we park tonight.

Dave says there is a winter storm coming that will bring snow as low as 2000 feet. Snow has become a bad word. We don’t want anymore of that stuff. South. Must keep moving south.

We drove by Westport Beach RV Park. It is a Good Sam Park right on the beach. We might want to stay there some time.

I saw a sign of a true optimist today. It was one of those deer crossing signs overlaid with the red circle and slash that means “not allowed.” Does the owner of that lawn think the deer are going to read and obey his sign?

Coming into Fort Bragg we saw a sign saying, “Train Depot 1 Mile.” It turned out to be Skunk Trains.  We are guessing those are tourist trains but the name makes me wonder about the owner and marketing people.

I saw a place that sells satellite antennas and chain saws. Apparently, if you buy the first you will need the second to get a signal.

In Gualala, California, we ate lunch at the Bones Roadhouse which specializes in BBQ, Brews, and Blues. Motorcycles encouraged. Lots of cool memorabilia hanging on the walls and from the ceiling.  Great music. Good food. They offered corn bread as one of the sides so I got mine to go. Yum!

“Ranch for sale; 971 acres; beach, ocean, timber.” Anyone want to guess the price? Me either

“Road Narrows.” Why do they never tell us when it widens?

So, we are driving down the road, pointed at the ocean, and there is water on both sides of us. Now what?! The road did an amazing U turn and dipped way down.

There are cattle guards across the highway here. We are on open range land.  So it shouldn’t have been surprising to see a cow standing right at the edge of the pavement munching away but seeing the one using the edge of the road marker as a scratching post startled me.

Coming around a curve, I suddenly found myself looking DOWN at a multi-level switchback. I think I’ll cry now.

Awhile later we met a larger motorhome going the other way. The brand on it was “Brave.” I thought, “Or stupid.” Like me? After all, I agreed to take this road without checking our what that might mean.

We camped at Wrights Beach campground in Sonoma Coast State Park. This time the campsite was $35 for  boondocking on a perfectly level site, in the sand, right on the beach. Check out these views.

  

Instead of having a drop box for the camping fee, though, this one said to pay the park host. No one was home there. Either time Dave tried this evening. Nor when he tried the next morning. So we got that view for free.

When we stopped for the night our batteries were 100% charged. Generators are only allowed to be run between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. So we turned on our generator to do our computer stuff and to run the pump for Dave’s shower and washing dishes. Then we turned it off for quiet time.

It really is quiet time, too. We have no cell phone or EVDO signals here so we can’t do any internet things. So we played cribbage. Then I read while Dave went for a walk on the beach and played games on his iPhone. These are the types of things we used to do when we went camping. Well, not the iPhone part.

TTYL,

Linda

Day 6 Pacific Coast

This morning there was an electrical discharge inside our RV caused in part by our new solar system. Mostly it was caused by Dave’s failure to communicate. He forgets that I can’t read his mind to understand why he makes some of the decisions he does so when he announced his decision I felt like either: a) he thinks I’m too stupid to understand his reasoning, or b) my input is irrelevant. Neither made me happy. So I blew up. The solar system is fine. And after making him explain his thinking to me, so am I. We will, eventually, learn our limits.

In Eureka, California, we stopped to get fuel and groceries. One of the gas stations was named “Patriot Gas.” That made me NOT want to go there. I don’t like to see businesses exploit patriotism.

The road in this area begins and ends freeway time after time. I kind of wish they’d make up their minds but it does help keep us alert.

We planned to eat lunch in Garberville but the town is so small there was no place to park our RV. We traveled some very narrow streets making a good faith effort to no avail.

We played leap frog with the mail carrier. He/she drives fast between sets of mailboxes.

We turned onto Highway 1 and were immediately greeted by signs saying, “Winding Road Next 22 Miles” and “Next Services 26 Miles.” So we pulled off to the side of the road and ate lunch. It’s best if I not do these roads on an empty stomach.

This road makes me think of those “Zoom, zoom” type ads. You  know, the ones where they demonstrate how well their vehicle hugs the road. I am so glad Dave is not a zoom, zoom driver. Of course, he doesn’t want me to get sick any more than I want to be sick.

We camped at Westport-Union Landing State Beach, paying $10 for the privilege of boondocking. The view is worth it.

Dave spent the time between pulling into camp and sunset turning electrical things on and off to learn how many amps each thing draws. Well, how else are we supposed to learn what we can and can’t do while boondocking?

TTYL,

Linda

Back to the Coast

We made it out of camp this morning with about 10 minutes to spare before the 11 a.m. checkout time. The weather is heavily overcast but there’s promise of sunshine ahead.

Wow! The sun is now reflecting off the clouds as brightly as it does off snow in Minnesota at this time of year.  We miss our friends and family back there but I sure don’t miss snow!

We just passed a sign warning us it is illegal for vehicles like ours to drive in the left lane when we we saw another sign warning, “Right Lane Closed.” I bet you didn’t know we are driving a hovercraft. Neither did we. Let’s see, which law shall we break?

Today we got caught in a new definition of stop and go travel. Those who get queasy easily should probably stop reading now and skip ahead to the next paragraph. Not long after we left camp, my system got upset and I developed diarrhea. Every time I needed to go, Dave tried to find a place to stop. None of the places he found could be long term places. I found myself wishing our toilet had a seat belt so I could just stay there awhile. We made at least three of those emergency stops before the medicine I take when this happens kicked in. I hate have such a vulnerable digestive system. It has been giving me trouble all my life so I’m sure it will continue to do so but I sure wish it would only act up when we are parked for the night rather than when we are out on the road or in some other public place. If I’m ever with you and suddenly ask directions to a restroom, please answer quickly. Thanks.

Dave and our daughter have a different problem. I call it the head banging, feet hanging syndrome. They are both so tall they have trouble fitting into a lot of the small RVs we prefer to drive or the beds those RVs contain. Dave is pleased to have found the Winnebago View since he now has no side effects of this syndrome.

We passed a sheep farm with a llama standing guard. Our daughter’s former in-laws tried that once. Supposedly, llamas will protect sheep from predators. The llamas they got, though, were afraid of the sheep! It was interesting to me to see this llama looking like he was doing his job.

Oregon Highway 38 rocks! The sign said so: “Rocks”

Today’s interesting street name was Lutsinger Creek Road. I had images in my head of being at the Renaissance Fair and listening to a performer play the lute while singing. Do you suppose this street was named after someone whose ancestor did just that?

We stopped at the Dean Creek Elk Viewing Area. Guess what we saw there? You got it in one!

By the way, that picture was taken with Dave’s new camera. It was a lot better than the ones from my camera.

We stopped at the DQ in Reedsport for lunch. Dave bought the food and brought it back to the RV to eat since I was still not sure I felt like going far from home. I like their chicken strips basket because they offer gravy as one of their dip options. Dave eats his chicken strips plain so I get lots of gravy. I also get his toast. He gets my French fries although he seldom eats them.  

I could live on bread and meat. Fruits and vegetables are optional as long as I have bread and meat. Which is part of why I’m fat. Salty, crunchy snacks and lack of exercise are the rest of the reasons. I tried to blame it on heredity too since my grandparents and their siblings were not skinny people. But when you look at my parents that theory gets blown out of the water.

The Safeway here has a sign saying “Serving Reedsport since 1935.” I hadn’t realized that grocery chain had been around that long. I guess I really wouldn’t know that since *I* haven’t been around that long!

Now we are camped for the night at Bastendorff Beach County Park near Charleston, Oregon. This place was recommended to us by Deb at AM Solar. I’m glad she told us about it. Here’s the view from our campsite.

Not bad, huh?

TTYL,

Linda

Not Leaving Town

We got up this morning knowing we had finished at AM Solar and it was time to leave Eugene, Oregon. But we had a few things to do first.

Greg stopped by our RV on his way into the shop to be sure everything was working right and we visited awhile. Then Deb joined us to take pictures in case we decide to write a testimonial for them once we figure out how all this works for us.  

After breakfast when we went into the office to say goodby to the rest of them we mentioned we had errands to run before we left. When Deb learned one of them was to buy packing tape so we could mail back the seat we will not be using on the Segway she insisted she should help us do that. So she packed it and weighed it and checked rates and told us she could send it by UPS cheaper than we could do that or mail it. So we gave her the postage money and let her do her thing.  She really likes to help people.

We finally left AM Solar about 11 a.m.

And went, of course, to WalMart. It’s amazing to me how quickly we run out of stuff. We are going to have to learn to plan our food supplies better if we are going to be able to park out in the boonies for extended periods of time.

That done we went to the gas station to get diesel and propane. It’s still weird to me to have station attendants fill our gas tank for us. I think Oregon is the only state doing that.

Then we went to the post office to pick up our mail. We don’t get a lot of mail since we do everything we can online but we do try to remember to have mail forwarded to us whenever we know where we are going to be at least four days in advance. Since we tend to make our plans by the hour instead of the week that can be challenging.

Then we went to the local Social Security office. Dave will be 62 next month so he spent part of last evening on the computer applying for social security. But they need to actually see certain documents. So we took those documents into the local office today and finished the application process. Sometime early next year money will start magically showing up in our bank. It will be nice to have some coming in instead of it all going out.

Then we went shopping for a book. At AM Solar I discovered one called Adventures on America’s Public Lands describing all the Bureau of Land Management Lands and what they have to offer. Since we can camp free or cheap on those lands we want to own this book. Border’s said they could order it for us but we won’t be here when it comes in. Barnes and Noble said they could order it for us but… REI didn’t have it listed on their website so we didn’t even try their store. I guess we’ll have to order it online when we know where we are going to be far enough in advance to get it there.

As we began discussing what we’d like to do for lunch we saw a Red Robin restaurant. We really like their burgers so we decided to go there. Their parking lot was too small for us to get into so I directed Dave into a lot next door.  

I really must learn to look up when choosing parking places. We broke some branches off some low hanging trees. Dave actually had to climb up the ladder on the back of our RV and pull the branches off our rig. Oops.

We’ve been using Google Maps on Dave’s iPhone to help us find places. We needed to buy a couple of small file boxes so Dave entered Staples into the search box and it found three of them not far away. So we drove to the closest one but it didn’t look like an area where there would a Staples store. So we stopped at a curb and Dave looked at the details of this one. It’s a place that sells nails, wire, staples, etc. So he looked at the details of the next one and it was a real Staples office supply place.

But on the way there we passed an Office Depot so we turned into the next driveway which connected with Office Depot’s parking lot. That meant we were able to buy file boxes that match the one we bought at Office Depot before we left Minneapolis. I guess some wrong turns become right ones.

Now it was late afternoon and we were finally ready to leave town. So we drove four miles south on I-5 and stopped at Deerwood RV Park. At least we are now on the correct side of town for leaving tomorrow.

TTYL,

Linda

Solar System

The people at AM Solar are wonderful people. Greg, Deb, Kathy, Michael, & Josh care about their customers and the world we live in. I could tell that before we even walked inside their office. Check it out.

Their driveway is covered with these pavers that are designed to let the rain go through into the earth rather than run off into the nearby slough.

When you walk up to their front door you see this rain chain which helps direct the rain to the ground much more gently than gutters do.

And this car belongs to Deb. Look closely and you can see the extension cord by the garage door that is being used to charge the car’s battery.

Those things made me trust even more than I already did that these people would do right by us as they installed our new RV solar system.  

  

I’m so glad Dave persuaded me to come to Oregon to have this done.  Even in December.

TTYL,

Linda