Into the Valley of Wine

Wine Country...

Looking at the 10 day weather forecast I appeared that it would be raining on Thursday when we had planned to be in Napa, CA. So, instead of stopping in Willits, CA today, we pounded out 229 miles all the way to Napa, so tomorrow, Wednesday, it will be clear....we'll do some bike riding around old town, and do some wine tasting. We'll be here two days. We'll then head home on Thursday, a day early since it is forecast to rain so there is no point in still being here Thursday. We may break up the 450 mile home stretch into two days.

Scenic HWY 12 - Sonoma Highway

The drive south on HWY 101 today was very pleasant.....mostly divided highway. It stayed cold all day, but is supposed to get into the 50's here in Napa tomorrow! We are staying at the Napa Valley Expo RV Park.....it's part of the County Fair complex....with our Good Sam discount it costs us $31 per day......full hookups, including 50amp.

Elaine is making Fajitas for tonight's feast.....the sun has set, and life is good.

California Dreamin'

The beginning of the Redwoods....

We exited California on November 20th on our journey into the frozen tundra, and re-entered California today, December 7th....Pearl Harbor Day....the "Day of Infamy" always sneeks up on me. Thank you to all those servicemen past and present who dedicate their lives to keeping us safe, and enabling us to lead this amazing lifestyle!

After stowing the portable fire place away in the basement storage we bid fairwell to Harris Beach State Park....a place I plan to spend time at in the future warmer months, and headed into

Brookings in search of fuel....this would be our last chance to get diesel under $3.00 for sometime. We pulled into a Chevron station on the southern edge of town and pumped 80 gallons of diesel at $2.79...best price since Idaho Falls. As soon as we crossed the border the price jumped to $3.09, so we saved $24.00!

The great scenery does not respect borders.....

A few miles later we crossed back into California and immediately were directed into a border check station where we were asked if we had any "Christmas trees, or any other kinds of trees on board"...we saw that they had, indeed, confiscated a couple of Christmas trees......apprently it's against the law to smuggle the odd Christmas tree into Caifornia....the only contraband of any interest to the inspectors were the apples we had purchased in Aberdeen, WA, but since they were store bought, no problems.

We stopped at the Safeway in Crescent City to stock up on a few supplies for the rest of the week, and were on our way within 30 minutes.

Originally, we were only going as far as Arcata....about 103 miles, but after about 20 miles of narrow, windy road we were blessed with divided highway all the rest of the way to Eureka, and then again after Eureka, so we continued on to Fortuna, where we are now, courtesy of River Walk RV Park and Campground.....a very nice park, albeit a little "close"...free WiFi, and grass....sites could be a little more level, though.


Our day was over before 2pm.......both of us needed to do some "work"...you know, that stuff that results in money being deposited into your checking account a couple of times a month. It is going to be cold here tonight....around 24 degrees.....yup, the block heater has been on since we docked.

"red sky at night....sailor's delight"

20 miles north of California border...

World headquarters of Rogue Brewery.....one of our favorites!

The Newport dawn saw cold temps, and a brisk wind....dawn being close to 7:30am......I decided to dump the tanks again, and to add fresh water...we were down to 50 gallons. When we move every day I don't hook up to city water....we just leave the water pump on and use our fresh water.....our capacity is 160 gallons, so we can run for a long time off that. My hands, though gloved, were still getting numb....the wind chill was probably down below 20. When we dump the black tank I fill it at least twice with clean water and dump again.....so far through two motorhomes we have never had any odor.

I pulled the electrical umbilical cord around 9am, and then eased out of space #44 toward HWY 101 south. Our "plan", which is always fluid, was to drive 176 miles southward to Gold Beach, however, the road was so easy to drive today that we continued on past Gold Beach to Brookings. Brookings, we learned, is also called the "banana belt" of Oregon. Day time temps often reach 70 degrees in the winter. It is a good 15 degrees warmer at this time of night compared to last night in Newport. We are overnighting at Harris State Beach......$18 for full hookups, plus cable TV, and a view of the Oregon coastline. We have 30amps of power, but the pedestal also provides a separate 15amp plug in on a different breaker, so I have plugged that into the engine block warmer enabling us to run both electric heaters inside with 10 amps to spare. They also provide good WiFi for $3,99 per day.....Elaine and I are both using the same account as I blog. Good thing, because my Verizon aircard only gives me 250 megabytes per month....I chose not to keep the unlimited usage and save $15 per month as I rarely use more than the 250, but on this trip I have been using it a lot. Fortunately for me just as I was getting upwards of 220 megabytes around the 2nd of this month the biling cycle ended and I got another 250 megabytes!


The views today were just amazing all day long....we found ourselves "ooohing and aaawing" continuously, and stopping a lot to take pictures. Even with all the stopping we covered just over 200 miles today, and it only took us 5 hours.....5 hours is my driving sweet spot. We mapped out the rest of our trip before leaving Newport this morning. We will travel southward to Arcata, CA tomorrow, then from there down to Willits on Tuesday, and arrive in Napa on Wednesday where we will stay 2 days and do some exploring. We'll leave Napa early Friday and beat it home on I-5....only about 450 miles.

We had our first camp fire of the trip tonight. After I got the fire going I set up the BBQ and grilled a couple of Filets while Elaine whipped up some fried potatos, and a great salad. While the steaks cooked we sat by the fire drinking some more of that great Rogue Brewery Moca Porter. After dinner we sat by the fire with some egg nogg and Kalua, and listened to the best of Johnny Mathis.

Sitting here watching Sunday night football on NBC.....Vikings losing 7-14 to Phoenix in 2nd quarter......life continues to be good!

Heceta Head Lighthouse

Do you see what I mean about the views? These pictures are mere feeble attempts to capture the beauty of the Oregon coastline. Tomorrow the Redwoods!

On the road again....

Friday night (December 4th) got down to 21 degrees in Jewell, OR.....ouch! That's the kind of temperature where skin sticks to metal. Saturday's dawn revealed another crystal clear day....our fourth clear day in a row. We haven't seen this much blue sky since southern Utah back on November 21st.....can that be true? We've been on the road for 15 days? Man, oh man, let's just stay on the road for a couple more months!

Our tentative plan was to leave Jewell around 10am....I've been trying not to deploy every piece of equipment we own each time we stop for a couple of days, and it really pays off when I can button up the coach in about 25 minutes and be on our way. It was still under 40 degrees when I started up the Detroit Diesel....we left the block warmer on all night, which meant we could only use the gas furnaces to heat the coach and the water bay, or we would go over our 15amp ration...as it was we were right at 13 amps most of the night, and I had to turn off the block warmer for 10 minutes to make coffee as that put us up to 17 amps...didnt' want to have to run into the garage to reset the breaker again....I had to do that the first night, because I got a little greedy.

Near Nehalem

Nice little rest stop....
Further down the Oregon Coast

Yaquina Bay Bridge in Newport, OR

The drive down the Oregon coast through Nehalem, Tillamook, Lincoln, Rockway, Arch Cape, and Depoe Bay was as wonderful as it was the last two times we passed through them over the past 15 years. There are hundreds of interesting little RV parks, shops, antique stores, etc. in these quaint little ocean front towns.

We arrived in Newport, our destination for today, around 3pm, and checked into the Port of Newport RV Park and Marina, and walked over to the world headquarters of Rogue Brewery for dinner, and some great beer....I had a couple of pints of Mocha Porter...what a yummy beer! The picture above was taken right around sunset...the bridge in the background is the Yaquina Bay Bridge. There are dozens of beautiful bridges along the Oregon coast, and this, in my opinion, is the most beautiful of them all.

Right now I am sitting here updating the blog, and watching the Texas v. Nebraska football game...Nebraska is up 6-0 right now, but Texas is driving.

Life gets better and better....Cheers!

Layover day....

Yesterday we had no where to be, or to go. Our plan is/was to stay in Jewell for 2 nights, so Elaine went into her friend's home to do her conference call, while I cleaned 10 days of road gunk off the Cannondale bikes so we could take a ride later that day. I had bought some mineral spirits the day before at the Home Depot in Warrenton, OR to clean the gunk and rust off the chains, plus some throw away rags to wipe the bikes down....they were filthy, and it took me close to 2 hours to clean them up and ready them for the ride (clean and lube chains, air up the tires, adjust brakes, mirrors, and re-install the bike bags (handlebar and trunk bags).

By this time it was close to Noon, and the temperatures were up to the high 40's. Our riding planwas to head north on HWY 103 toward the actual center of Jewell, about 7 miles north.
The clouds were allowing sunshine to break through, and there was no wind! We both had on thermal, long sleeved riding shirts, vests, and windshells as well a full finger gloves, and we needed all that!

Elaine, all bundled up against the cold!

I love old barns......

We ended up doing about 15 miles, and throughly enjoyed the countryside. By the end of our ride the clouds had almost disappeared. I got up to just over 50 degrees by the end of the ride. We arrived back at the Newell and Elaine made some great tomato soup, and I poured a tall Youngs Chocolate Stout (beer) to chase the soup.

Later that evening we went out to dinner in Cannon Beach (about 30 miles west, right on the coast....home to the famous "Haystack Rock") at a place called the Lumber Yard (http://www.thelumberyardgrill.com/). There was a local band called the Floating Glass Balls (http://www.floatingglassballs.com/) entertained us with what they call "Beach Grass"....not Blue Grass. The ensemble consisted of a violin, acoustic guitar, mandolin, large acoustic base, and what sounded like a steel guitar, but looked like a guitar with a large chromed metal disc just below the neck. Anyway, it was very entertaining. We stayed through the first set, and then headed back to Jewell.

The steel guitar like instrument is the one in the lower left of this picture

In a couple of hous we'll fire up the 6V92 Detroit Diesel and head south to at least Newport, OR.

Life is good........

Jewell of Oregon....

Over night temps dipped to 29 in Raymond, WA.....no cloud cover results in really cold temps! I checked the oil before starting up the 6V92, and need to add a couple of quarts....wow, oil that has been sitting at 29 all night (the resevoir) does not flow very fast....had to borrow Elaine's hair dryer to heat up the oil in the resevoir so it would drain into the engine faster. Left around 8:30am and pointed the coach southbound on HWY 101.

Our goal today was about 97 miles down the road to Jewell, OR.....about 25 miles directly east from Canon Beach on HWY 26. Elaine has a work friend who lives in Jewell, and has offered courtesy parking with 15 amps of juice. Below are some pictures of the space I shoehorned the Newell into today. Sometimes I even amaze myself....LOL!

Eventually we came to the Astoria-Megler Bridge, which is 21,474' long, and is the longest continuous truss bridge in North America.....no I didn't know that, but I do have a computer and looked it up...lol! There is one lane of traffic each direction....when the wind is blowing, and it was today, it is a struggle to keep your vehicle from hitting the wall. The coach was leaning heavily to the passenger side.

The Columbia River on the right and left...

Picture courtesy of the Internet....

View from the highest point of the bridge

We are snug and dry in Jewell, OR and looking forward to a couple more sunny days!

Finally going south......

It was C-O-L-D last night (Port Angeles).....frost on the ground, and on everything not covered. We had all 3 electric heaters going full blast all night (3rd one is in the water bay) plus the block heater, thus using a significant portion of our 50 amp allowance, and we were very comfortable, as we have been the entire trip. We were the only ones in the Port Angeles KOA last night. They were closed for the winter, but provide three sites with power that you can self register for, and pay for. We were grateful for every single amp we had access to last night. We got out of camp around 8am.....we had about 170 miles to drive today....our original destination was Aberdeen, WA....down in the southwest corner of the the fair state of Washington. The scenery was amazing as we drifted first west on US 101, then south on the same. We took a small detour into the Hoh Rain Forest, which was so cool.

Downtown Port Angeles

We hit Aberdeen around 1:30pm, and I was hungry.....we spied a rare Mexican restaurant on our left, and swung around the block (101 southbound is one way in this part of town), and pulled into the parking lot......just to the right of the parking lot Elaine spied a small taco place, which looked empty....she said "we always have great luck with these little 'hole in the wall' places....what do you think?"....she is right, and we went in and had some of the best carne asada tacos I have ever had. If you are ever in Aberdeen stop in at Taqueria Y Mariscos El Mar!
After vanishing the tacos I felt revived, and asked Elaine how far the next town was....she says "Raymond"....about 27 miles. I pulled up the internet on my Netbook, opened RVParkReviews.com and found the one park there...right on the Walipa River....what a view! We called ahead, and the owner said to take the first spot on the left...the only pull through...$20 for 30 amps. We arrived, set up, and then took a mile walk along the river on the bike path....now I'm waiting for the great chili and cornbread dinner Elaine's loving hands are preparing as I type. Life is great.....

Crescent Lake

Hoh Rain Forest

Taqueria Y Mariscos El Mar!!

Saw this coach south of Raymond, WA...is this a Barth?

Our site on the Willapa River

Hey, it's 42, but "feels like" 32...LOL!

Looking back from the bike path...

Sun setting.....

In the Hoh Rain Forest