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Back in the early 90’s there was a time when we didn’t own a recreational vehicle. But the urge to travel was upon us.

So we visited a local RV dealer and asked if they ever rented their motorhomes. They said they would but it would not have bedding or dishes. We could supply those so we rented what turned out to be a brand new Class C for three weeks and headed west.

We took U.S. Highway 2 which takes the same route as the then Burlington Northern Railway stopping at places of interest to us along the way. One of those places was Havre, Montana, then headquarters of the BN.

There we met a PR guy and talked trains. We told him about our then current model railroad, the Midland Industrial, and my fictional history of it.

“History of the Midland Industrial Railroad

The Midland Industrial Railroad came into being in the early 1970s when the Burlington Northern merger made the BN owners of trackage though several neighborhoods in the city of Midland. Since the BN prefers through traffic to local switching, they sold fifteen miles of former CBQ tracks, from Dowling Yard to Isle Yard, to the Midland Industrial Railroad, retaining the right to run their coal trains through to serve the power plant in the Essex neighborhood. The BN also sold several Great Northern locomotives to the Midland Industrial.”

He was surprised at how real my history sounded. He said it sounded just like what the BN would have done.

If you are interested, you can read more about our Midland Industrial at Midland Industrial.

Once we reached the west coast we dropped down to U.S. Highway 30 for the trip back east thus following the Union Pacific Railroad.

What brought all this to mind? Today we stopped for lunch in Green River, Wyoming, which brought back memories of our stop there all those years ago.

That time we stopped at the huge freight yard in Green River. They have a bridge that crosses their yard where Dave decided he’d go to take pictures. While waiting for him, I sat down on a bench outside the yard office. A fellow came outside several times while I was sitting there. He turned out to be a UP conductor waiting for the yard to assemble his local train. We talked a little and he asked me which direction we were traveling. I said east and he went away. Shortly he returned with a multi-page printout of the manifest for a train that would be heading our direction that he thought we might enjoy chasing. The next time he came out he was astonished to see me actually reading the manifest. When he realized how much I was into this stuff he went back in the office and came out again with more stuff for me including a current timetable, a book of track spots, and a plastic holder into which crews put their switch lists while working to protect them from the elements. I wish I’d asked the guys name. He sure made my day!

And I enjoyed it all over again today just remembering it.

TTYL,

Linda

Stopping along Interstate 80 eastbound at the Salduro rest area at mile marker 10 gets you this:

Eastbound travelers have a raised platform they can use to help them see over the trucks in the rest area.

Westbound travelers could just walk past their trucks.

Continuing east we come to the Great Salt Lake another place so huge you feel like you can see the curvature of the earth.

To infinity and beyond!

TTYL,

Linda

“Rerouting,” is what my GPS says when we take a turn off our preplanned route. Those of you who’ve been following my blog know I said we were going to be leaving California via Highway 101 north. If, however, you check the map that shows where we are you will find us far from there. And if you noted the location of the campgrounds I complained about in my last blog you will have a clue as to which direction we did take.

So here, for Gary France’s A Blogger’s Centerline Day photo challenge (http://garysusatour.blogspot.com/2011/04/abcd-will-you-take-part.html) is a picture of my foot pointing towards the centerline of Interstate Highway 80 as we travel east through Nevada in our motorhome.

No, I don’t normally put my foot up there. It’s much too far away. I had to slouch way down in my seat to reach that far but the rules of the challenge said at least part of me had to be in the picture so what you see here is me engaging in risky behavior. Not very risky, though since there was no traffic anywhere near us. If one of those famous I-80 wind gusts had happened to come along just then, though, you might have seen a picture Dave took of me rolling in the aisle after having been dumped from my precarious perch. Fortunately, the wind gusts came both before and after I did my slouching bit for the world of bloggers while I was safely buckled into my seat.

For those of you new to this blog, we live full-time in a 35-foot motorhome traveling all over the U.S.A. At the moment we are headed to Minnesota but we have a ways to go yet before we get there–1607.82 miles according to my mapping software. Since we only drive a couple hundred miles a day it will take us at least a week to get there. I hope all those days turn out to be as pleasant as this one.

TTYL,

Linda

Why is it campgrounds don’t feel they have to honor their advertised prices? Twice in a row now we have picked a park partly based on their price only to have them charge more when we get there.

We stayed here the night before last.

The fairgrounds does not have an RV park per se. What they have are various places on the grounds where there are hookups. They parked us right outside a restroom where we had a 50 amp hookup. Which would have been excellent if they charged us their advertised price of $20 per night.

They didn’t. They charged us $25. A 25% increase!

Last night we stayed at Desert Rose RV Park in Fernley, Nevada. Desert Rose is a member of Passport America, as are we, which means we get to stay here for half their advertised price of $28 per night.

Except they charged us $18 instead of $14 per day an increase of 28%!

I have no problem with places raising their prices. I do have a problem with them not changing their advertising to reflect those price changes. Without those changes to the advertising they are, in effect, pulling a bait & switch which I really don’t like. If any other business increased their prices at that rate without advertising the change the Consumer Protection people would come down on them like a ton of bricks. Why do campgrounds feel they are exempt from fair advertising?

TTYL,

Linda

Julie and Lisa own an RV similar to the View we used to own. We are blog and forum friends who actually managed to meet face to face once in Virginia. They live in California. When Julie read that we were headed up I-5 to Oakland, California, she sent me an email recommending we stop for lunch at Andersen’s in Santa Nella. Now these two people know good food so we took their recommendation after checking Google maps to be sure we’d be able to park our RV there. No problem.

Only this far from our RV to the restaurant.

Andersen’s with -sen not -son. That means it’s probably Danish. I learned that from our former neighbor. (Hi, Karen.) So I wasn’t surprised to see this sign out front.

These two characters are Hap-pea and Pea-wee. They are splitting peas for Andersen’s famous split pea soup.

Julie recommended the split pea soup, fried chicken, burgers, and milk shakes. So Dave had a French dip with potato salad and I had a California grilled chicken sandwich with a fruit cup and we both drank Diet Pepsi. Hey, isn’t it enough that we stopped at their recommended restaurant?

In case you are wondering a California grilled chicken sandwich is a BLT on a bun with a chicken breast, cheese, and avocado plus Ranch dip.  The fruit cup was mostly melons which I don’t eat so I had a few grapes and a piece of pineapple then Dave added my melon alongside his potato salad to his lunch. So, for a change I ate all my sandwich and Dave brought home half of his.

We ate too fast to remember to take pictures of the food but here’s a couple more treats they offered.

The gift shop.

And the bake shop.

I was too busy taking pictures to think to buy something from those baked goods cases. Dumb!

TTYL,

Linda