Month: September 2017

With having to deal with the closed interstate and the bridge and mirror, we arrive at Emigrant Springs State Park after dark. It’s 35 degrees, according to my phone, in the closest town, Meacham, Oregon. It’s heading down into the twenties in a few hours.

We stop at the vacant gate house to unhook the truck and to try to see where the campsites are. I don’t know how they even knew we were there, but two women appeared in a golf cart and asked if we needed help. Yes, we did, thank you. They were the campground hosts. One of them got out so Jane could ride in the cart while the host showed Jane the available sites. Mike and I chatted with the other woman. They were sisters, 18 years apart in age and best buds.

When Jane and the host returned, they reported that the only sites available were tent sites — no hookups. The host said, “You can use a generator at night if there is a medical reason.” We did need to run a CPAP, but didn’t want to bother people and listen to the generator all night ourselves if we didn’t have to. We have a small inverter for this kind of situation. (For non-RV’ers, the coach has large 12 volt batteries to power lights, water pump, and a number of other things, but 120 volt equipment does not work unless you are connected to “shore power.”) This is the first time we have camped without a power hookup.

Our very kind and friendly hosts asks Jane about firewood. Jane loves a fire so she immediately orders some. Our campground hosts were the two sisters and Richard, who I assume was the husband of one of them. The three of them live in a fifth wheel trailer. By the time we get the RV to the campsite, Richard has already delivered the firewood to our site. Great service.

We don’t have a campfire tonight. Tired and hungry, we fire up the propane furnace. Jane has precooked spaghetti in the refrigerator (which runs on propane when not hooked up to 120 power) which she heats in the gas oven. We enjoy the meal and long, unhurried conversation, then make up the bed over the cab for Mike and retire for the night.

It’s morning and that generator now has to go to work. We need 120 volts for the coffee pot. Mike must like the cab-over bed. The sound of the generator cranking up doesn’t cause the slightest stir.

After breakfast, Richard, the campground host, knocks on our door. He says the site across the road is open. It has full hookups. He asks if we want him to move the firewood. I’m thinking that would be great, how kind to ask, but certainly we can do that ourselves since he has already delivered it once.

Over pancakes, Mike tells us a story about the nearby town of Pendleton. We wouldn’t mind just hanging around the park, but the story is so bizarre, we agree to drive into Pendleton. We would not have guessed that in Pendleton, Oregon, you can tour a once-secret underground, with restaurants, bars, brothels and opium houses! Mike explained that the Chinese laborers building the railroad could not be on the street at night, so they built their own city underground. We call to check on the tour and are disappointed to find that today’s tour is sold out. We decide to spend the afternoon exploring the park on foot.

Long before there were any settlements or railroads in this part of the world, Emigrant Springs became an important stop for the westward emigrants.  A park interpretive sign explains: “It is a campground today, just as it was for Oregon Trail emigrants. Long before that emigration, Native Americans also took advantage of this site’s abundant waters and found shelter among the towering trees. Relations between emigrants and the Indians were generally positive in the Blue Mountains.”

“In the first week of January, 1812, a party of trappers and traders, members of the Astor Overland Expedition, crossed the Blue Mountains in this area. Traveling on foot in bitter cold, often waist deep in snow, they were the first white men in this area. The route they traveled between St. Louis and Astoria [on the Oregon Pacific coast] developed into the emigrant route to the Oregon Country, later to be known as the Oregon Trail. Wagon trains, Oregon bound, started their journey with the “greening” of the grass on the prairies, and crossed the “Blues” after completing some 2,200 miles of their journey, from late August to early October. Then, as now, this was the first forested area on the route.” From park sign.

Our new campsite is next door to the host’s site. They have a campfire burning all day. I think the firewood operation is their own business, and they have plenty of wood. Even though it is the middle of the day, the hosts are out warming themselves by a cheerful fire. I wonder over to start a conversation. I accuse them of moving us next door to them for the same reason my 4th grade teacher would move me up to the first row — to keep an eye on me. They stay here for four months every year, June-September. Next week, they will relocate to the camp in Arizona where they live the other eight months. I ask about new hosts. They will be no more hosts until they come back in June. The park will close next week for the winter, but the heated bathhouse will remain available for those using the hiking and horse trails in day use part of the park.

I was curious, why was the hood of their truck propped up with a piece of wood? I had seen a number of trucks with the hood propped up like this and couldn’t figure out why.

“Pack rats. They love to climb up and chew on the hoses, fan belts, and insulation. But they don’t like it with the hood open. They also don’t like those rope lights on the ground we put around the trailer. They won’t cross it. We took one of those darn things back to Arizona with us last year in the basement.”

I don’t know if that’s knowledge gained from scientific research or mythical knowledge passed on from RV’ers who have come before. Anyway, it’s knowledge that has been passed on to me and I’m passing it on to you.

The conversation turned to black tanks and toilet paper. I don’t know how; these things just happen with RV’ers. I told about our incident where we accidentally hooked up the water supply up to the black tank clean-out valve. They allowed they had done that, too, but didn’t notice it until water came up out of the toilet. Then they told me about their new black tank and how much it cost. The old one cracked. Naturally, I wanted to know exactly what happened when they discovered this.

One of the sisters also instructed me that I didn’t have to buy that expensive RV/Marine toilet paper, that any toilet paper labeled septic safe was fine. To test this, you put some of the paper in a jar of water see how well it disintegrates. She got up, went into her RV and came out with a roll of paper to give me. When I got back to our site, Jane wanted to know why I was carrying a roll of toilet paper.

Adventurer Richard Branson offered this advice to fellow thrill seekers: “If you’re embarking around the world in a hot air balloon, don’t forget the toilet paper. Once, we had to wait for incoming faxes.”

The sun is getting low. It’s cold; it’s time for us to make a fire.

It’s heading down to 28 degrees tonight. Rob got the soles of his boots smoking trying to get his toes warmed up in the fire.

They say good things must come to an end. We had thought that Mike would be riding with us to Boise tomorrow and he would fly back to Portland from there. But he found a flight out of Pendleton. I was amazed you could get a commercial flight out of Pendleton to Portland. The airport, the Eastern Oregon Regional Airport, is served by one airline, Boutique Air, which is subsidized by the Essential Air Service program of the U.S. Department of Transportation.  Pendleton has some mining businesses; the Pendleton Roundup, a huge festival and rodeo once week a year; and the headquarters of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation is in nearby Mission. I read the Confederated Umatilla Journal, and it appears that the Tribe has every government department that a state government would have. These government officials likely provide some business for the airport.

We need to leave the camp in the truck at 5:15 a.m. tomorrow to get Mike to the airport for his 6:45 a.m. flight. Mike says it won’t take long to get through security there, and it’s a 20 minute drive.

Lifelong memories can’t be scheduled. They just happen when they’re supposed to.
Quoted in Reader’s Digest.

 

Last night we learned that I-84 was shut down west of Portland for 50 miles due to firefighting activity. Another detour ahead.

Mike is leaving his car at the Portland airport and we are picking him up there. We are careful to arrive when he is ready to jump in because there is no place to park this rig there. We stop in the through lane of the departure area just long enough for him to hop in, and we only get a couple of honks. Drivers in Portland are noticeably more patient than in Atlanta and drive more slowly.

Mike occupies the navigator seat. He directs me across the Columbia River to the Washington side where we proceed along the river on Highway 14, the Evergreen Highway. We drive east along the Columbia River gorge on the two lane road and through narrow tunnels that look they were blasted through the rock a century or more ago.

After about 50 miles on this road, we are across the river from the town of Hood River. I didn’t know this is where we were going to cross, but just before we get to the turn, Mike directs me to get into the short right turn lane to cross the Hood River Bridge. I check the right mirror closely, then change lanes. As I look forward again, I see a warning sign. I have only a second to read the warning across the top of the sign. It says “Low Clearance 14′ 6.” No problem; we only need 12 feet. Later today, I will find that there was a second warning tacked onto the bottom of the sign.

It’s an old two-lane drawbridge, with considerable traffic in each direction. Hood River is where the closed stretch of Interstate 84 reopens. Normally, in light traffic, you could steal a few views of the river from this bridge, but not today. Once out over the river, it’s obvious we are on a very narrow bridge. There is no shoulder. It doesn’t seem like there is enough room for two-way traffic. I glance at the draw bridge structure above us as we as we approach it and see a two men and a woman standing on the upper structure as we go under. Authorized officials, I presume.

It’s uncomfortable, but there are no clearance problems. Then, bam! Oops, that was our mirror. The RV has large truck mirrors. The RV itself is 8.5 feet wide, but the mirrors extend well beyond that. An oncoming truck also had large mirrors. The housing of the side view mirrors are designed to give somewhat when an obstruction is encountered. But the impact caused the larger glass panel of the mirror to pop out and fall away; the smaller blind spot mirror was hanging on by a wire.

At the other end of the bridge, we pay the $3.00 toll. The toll collector looks at the mirror and says “Oops.” The thought comes to me, well, since your bridge caused me to loose my mirror, maybe at least you won’t charge the toll. No such offer. There is a parking lot for a marina and a DMV office on the Oregon side. I am very relieved to still have the smaller mirror. It’s much better than no mirror at all. In fact, it would be impossible to drive this RV without a side view mirror. (Forest River didn’t bother to remove the almost useless windshield-mounted rear view mirror. You can glance in that mirror to see if someone is standing at the kitchen sink, so it’s not completely worthless.)

I reattach the dangling heater wiring to the remaining mirror part and pop it back into place. Mike and Jane want to go back across the bridge in the truck and see if we can retrieve the missing mirror panel. They talked me into it. We unhook the truck and head back to the bridge. The toll is only $1.00 for the truck. Mike is in the back seat, passenger side. He is about 6′ 3″ and has long arms. We drive slowly. We spot the mirror. Mike opens the door and says, “Three more feet,” then “Stop!” He reaches down and picks up the mirror and shouts, “Go!” We manage to turn around on the Washington side and head back across the bridge. As we approach the bridge, this time with more time to read the warning at the bottom of the sign: 9 ft. lanes. I’d like to think that we would have had the good sense and the opportunity to fold the mirrors in if we had seen the warning before. The toll taker takes another dollar. I ask Mike if he got a good view of the river water when his face was just over the grate. He says that when he leaned over to pick up the mirror, he was looking right through the metal grate down to the water.

Most of the glass is still in the mirror panel, but it’s shattered. We can pop the plastic panel back into the housing, but the vibration will cause the shattered glass to fall.

I drive the truck to the nearest store where Mike buys clear packing tape. We tape the mirror up, attached the heater wires, and pop it back into the housing. It’s hard to see through it, but Mike says, “Well, you’re legal.”

Before hooking the truck back up to the RV, the three of us sit at the dinette and enjoy the sandwiches and veggies Jane prepared.

Now eastbound on I-84 from Hood River (the town on the Columbia River), the river gorge is on our left. It’s very wide; there are many boats with salmon fishermen. We see a large hydroelectric dam. Mike educates us about northeastern Oregon. He has traveled the area many times on Forest Service business. We pass the  Forest Service supervisor’s office for the Umatilla National Forest. It’s on Umitilla Indian Reservation land, so the Forest Service pays the tribe rent every year. I think, there’s a lot o national forest land around here, I wonder why the office was built on Indian land at an interstate exit.

I ask Mike what the weather will be like at Emigrant Springs. He says that this is the second coldest place in Oregon. Not the kind of thing I would look for. I ask how cold he would expect it to be now. He says probably freezing or below tonight.

 

 

 

 

Mike Daugherty is a forester with the U.S. Forest Service, Region 6, in Portland. Mike graduated with Rob from the University of Georgia School of Forest Resources forty-one years ago. Mike has worked in the West his entire career; California, Idaho, Washington and Oregon, and even during the summer while in school.

After three years of preparatory courses, the School of Forest Resources admitted about 45 undergraduate students each year,  divided into two sections. On the first day of school, our group of about 20 or so students all met each other at the same time in the same class. Some had done their preparatory work at UGA and some came from other colleges. This created for us a unique experience within the context of a large state university. We didn’t even have to change classrooms. When one class ended, the professor left and the one for the next subject showed up. We had five or ten minutes between professors to socialize in the hall and the break room downstairs. During longer breaks, we utilized the horseshoe pit outside. There were no lectures or lab work on Wednesdays. Each Wednesday, we all loaded up in university vans and headed out for field trips. For instance, we toured the Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory in Otto, North Carolina.

I mention all this to explain how deep friendships were formed with men and women who did not know each before that first day of forestry school. Then we started spending all day every weekday with our fellow students. And some of us, nights and weekends, too, but no academics were usually involved with that. Another significant bonding experience for the Class of 1976 was the Conclave of Southern Forestry Schools hosted by our school that year. It was a totally student organized and managed event, with hundreds of attendees from Texas to Virginia and participants in multiple physical and academic competitions. There are many stories that were created that April, but their telling must wait for another day.

After graduation, the members of our class dispersed all over the country and even the globe. Some spent their careers as foresters, some as lawyers, doctors, financial consultants, association executives, and airline pilots. But our members come back to Athens for reunions, including our 40th last year. After the event in Athens, Mike came to Atlanta to extend the weekend and stayed at our house along with Sam Dolliver and Sharon Nix Dolliver. Lance “Scribble” Hunt and wife Shirley, from Roanoke, Virginia, parked their RV in front of our house for the night. They had parked in the school forest the previous two nights. Chris and Clair Barneycastle, who live nearby, also joined us for a great evening around the table.

Back in Portland, we set up at the Pheasant Ridge RV Park in the suburb of Wilsonville. We haven’t been able to get in touch with Mike for a long time. We came through Portland to visit with him, but now we are not sure we will see him. We are relieved to get a text saying he will come to our place. We expect a call when he gets to the park. Unexpectedly, at 6:00 pm, we hear a loud knock on the RV and in comes Mike. He just looked for the vehicles that fit our description. We have a beer, then head to a Mexican restaurant. Yes, Sam, Sharon and Lance, it reminded me of our many visits to Manuel’s back in the day.

Mike will come on board with us for a a couple of nights. We made reservations at Crater Lake National Park months ago, but this becomes another gash in our plan — cancelled due to fire. So we plotted a direction on the map from Portland toward the direction of home, and determine we will head out of Portland on Interstate 84 the day after tomorrow. We choose a destination, Emigrant Springs.

The next day, Mike works a half day. We meet him near his office, which is near the food stalls that Portland is famous for. Each of us chooses a different vendor, then sit down together in a nearby park. It’s sunny and pleasant. Next, we walk to Powell’s, a very interesting bookstore. The highlight of the day, though, is Voodoo Donuts.

It’s a good thing we’re in Portland for three days. Remember that salt water taffy from Seaside? Jane has to find a dentist. Fortunately she finds one she is very pleased with. The dentist has the machine that does 3-D imaging and creates caps. She has a new cap in 2.5 hours. The Ford engine that has done so much work to get us this far is badly in need of an oil change, it’s first ever. It’s get fresh oil and a new filter at Pro Auto Care.

 

 

We got in trouble once trying to enter the U.S. with an apple from Aruba. Lesson learned. Or maybe not. We suggest that you don’t try to bring any fresh food across the border to the U.S. Some things are allowed, some things are not, and the regulations are not made well-known. We haven’t eaten out much on this trip and we keep a good stock of groceries on board. We can now give you some definite no no’s. Peaches are allowed, by the way. Last night, we made a point of converting our peaches into peach cobbler. We should have made mashed potatoes and key lime pie instead.

First, we have this fancy card that is supposed to mark us as “trusted travelers.” We got Global Entry cards a couple of years ago to expedite international air travel. You apply, they do background checks, you appear for an in-person interview with a Homeland Security officer, fingerprints are taken, and you get a plastic card. I don’t know what it’s good for, really. Returning to the U.S. last February, we thought it was nice that we could use a special lane with no waiting time. You hold the card out in front of a camera, and everything you know about yourself and more comes up on the border patrol agent’s computer screen before you approach the booth. After this crabby woman yelled at me for not starting and stopping at the proper place at the proper time, I wondered what all those credentials were really worth.

We use Nexus lane again; there is no line. We drive up to the booth after the machine cleared us to do so. We both instantly recognize the same crabby woman we encountered seven months before. She really enjoys having that badge. After the usual questions, she starts asking about food. Jane starts going through the list. “That officer will tell you where to park. Take this paper into the building.” We are not very trusted travelers after all.

They take our passports and keys. This time, we are only detained 25 minutes. The agriculture protection agent comes in with a bag of fruit and vegetables that he had picked from our refrigerator. We’re not sure all that was taken, but we see potatoes, limes, bell peppers, and sliced apples. OK, I just want to eat bacon and potato chips, anyway.

With that hurdle behind us, we hurry off because we have a long drive to our campground in Olympic National Park. We are eager to set up camp and be ready for the arrival of Emily and Stuart who are driving separately to join us there and spend several days camping with us. Checking the map and studying the detour that we had been warned about, the drive down through Seattle and Tacoma and back up the other side of Pudget Sound looks daunting. We consider taking a shortcut using a ferry. Before diverting a long way off the main route, we pull over to check availability. There are no unreserved spaces on the next ferry for a rig our size. We keep driving. When they work on a highway in State of Washington, they just close the road down for miles. I think U.S. Highway 101 along the northern coast of the Olympic Peninsula was closed for maybe 50 miles. The detour was unreal. Two state roads that went through hills and woods and were not all paved. This probably added about 2 hours to the drive. The result was that we arrived at the campground just before dark. As we have said, it’s better than after dark. From the time we broke camp in Canada to the time we pulled into the campsite at Sol Duc Springs in Olympic Natl Park, we have traveled, including through some pretty remote stretches of road, over nine hours. Stuart and Emily have been driving independently. So, it seems miraculous when Stuart and Emily reach the ranger station at the entrance to the park right behind us! The little ranger station in this extreme northern area of the park is closed now. We get unhooked, back into the site at the very small campground, and start to unwind. It’s late, we are hungry and too tired to cook. The four of us walk across the bridge over the Sol Duc River to the small Sol Duc Hot Springs lodge and have a warm and delightful dinner.

 

 

Our daughter, Emily, and son-in-law, Stuart, live in White Rock, a beautiful community that is part of the Vancouver metro. Their house is a few short blocks from the shore of Semiahmoo Bay and the Strait of Georgia. The homes in White Rock are on a steep hillside overlooking the sea. From the kitchen, dining room, living room, and deck of their home, you have a nearly 180-degree view of the sea and of some of the coastal area of Washington State.

Emily and Stuart prepare a wonderful dinner and serve it on the deck at sunset.

 

 

 

When sweet Emily was about 3 years old, she gave me a cup like this one. It was the first present that she ever picked out for Rob. He used it for at least 25 years before it cracked. Incredibly, Emily just found an identical one for Rob on eBay. See the additional word she added?

Our first grandchild! Emily and Stuart are expecting a baby in February!