Recently we have been in territory that we didn’t know or had forgotten might be on our bucket list. In our minds we have reserved the concept of Bucket List for big things like the Great Wall of China or a drink at the Rex Roof top Bar in Saigon (excuse me – Ho Chi Mhin City) and Angor Wat, well you get the picture. Places a long way from the USA.

As we plotted our eastward trip, much later in the season than in past years, the idea of traversing the Lincoln Highway got into our heads. We have driven US 20 almost coast to coast and most of US 1 and all of US 90 and bits of Route 66. We have only come as far as Salt Lake City, but already we are overwhelmed with places that ought to be on any RVers bucket list (others too, but the road miles are great). We climbed out of Sacramento on US 50, a segment of one of the Lincoln Highway alignments, to a stop in South Lake Tahoe. We circled the lake and took a couple of wonderful hikes. Hurry now to see the gorgeous clear lake 6th in size in the US only to the Great Lakes before the developers spoil it.

From there we climbed the mountains and started across “The Loneliest Highway In America.” As we drove US 50 toward Ely NV we passed through Fallon and Austin and Eureka. Only Fallon was more then a blink as we passed. Ely was a major rail center and home to a large mine that has given silver, copper and some gold over the years. There we paused to spend time with Bev and Dan who we last saw in New Jersey in the Fall. They were westbound as we were eastbound and we decided that Ely would be an appropriate stop. For our major entertainment we road the Nevada Northern Railway behind steam locomotive engine 40 which has been running on that line since it was bought new in 1906.

Blowing down after the run!

The cars were 20’s Pullman passenger cars with an open flat car in the consist for those willing to brave the cold. I spent 5  minutes out there. The ride included a tour of the machine shop and engine shop as well as the RIP (Repair In Place). For railroad buffs I will post many more pictures and provide the link here.

Looking back towards the shore

Center of the spiral

Passing white pelicans

We never made it to Bear River, we did make a brief stop at a missile display outside the plant at what was Morton Thiokol, the place where the solid state boosters for the Shuttle were manufactured.

A broken bolt that I replaced was a cute story. Many of you responded accordingly. Today we learned of lives in peril. We’ve been following and including in our prayers for healing BJ and Beth for some time. There are others as well but no need to extend the list here.

We noted that we were going to be passing through Kansas City in a few weeks and sent a message to long time friends who live there that we would like to get together and offered a fairly broad window for that stop. The response was that they were planning to be in Europe for the entire window, but Dianne had some malady that needed to be tracked down before they knew they could travel. So if the medical news was bad we would be able to visit. If the news was good, we would have to wait until next year. In this case the news appears to be good so as we pass through Kansas or near we will think of them and be grateful that they are traveling in Europe and not hassling with doctors and the medical support community which would enable us to visit.

Got another message yesterday from RV friends in Sacramento (close enough) who have been having a rollicking good tour in Arizona with a caravan that they were back home a week early was there a chance we were nearby and could visit. We were passed them by a couple of hours and on the phone we agreed to meet sort of halfway for dinner. Then Anna Lee got on the phone with Carol and the news was less than wonderful and there was no way they could make the 90 minute drive each way for dinner.

While we were planning to meet Anna Lee and her husband for dinner in Truckee, CA we figured we would drive around Lake Tahoe starting up the west side. I’ll leave the review and pictures for another post, we noted that the Donner Pass Memorial Park was just west of Truckee and determined that we would take some time to visit. OY! talk about bad planning, bad execution and failed leadership. Every peril they could face came to seek them out and they brought some on themselves. The monument, put up in 1919, sits atop a 20 foot high plinth so they would always be above the snow to see the pass they were headed for. The Donner party were doomed the moment they chose to follow an unproven route over the Sierra Nevada.

Tomorrow we hope to meet up with Bev and Dan in Ely NV on US 50. This meet up almost failed because Kiki got sick (the cat). Kiki is fine, continuing to make them crazy and with any luck we will see her and the two who keep her home on wheels moving.

The other get togethers we have on tap are in Rochester on the 30th and the 1st then we return to the coach which will be in Salt Lake City and continue doing what we do.

Some thing are made to break, others just break because they can. I am not sure which category this falls into, but it caused me a few minutes of aggravation and then some giggles when the fix turned out to be so easy. It started with my walking around the coach and just sort of looking at things to be sure everything was “okay” sort of “looking for trouble” and I found it.

This is looking up at the underside of the living room slideout room behind the driver. The very one that was repaired last Fall in Red Bay. That bolt lying on the ledge is a stop meant to prevent the mechanism from pulling in too far. It broke off the mount above.  Look at the next picture and you will see how it is supposed to look. This is the rearward arm of the mechanism.

I did it, I drove through San Francisco up 19th to the Golden Gate Bridge and over. We arrived in Marin RV park shortly after. Here I will give a brief review for any RVers who are interested. It is a nice if modest park. Adequate space for most any coach and plenty of room for 4 slideouts. FHU including cable which we have not hooked up. Location is wonderful. It is a 10 minute walk to the ferry to Downtown San Francisco, no need to drive and park. Less than 30 minutes to Berkeley in light weekend traffic and under an hour to Walnut Creek. Tourist attractions along the coast are not more than an hour away.

Having said all that we are delighted to be here. We have been very busy with people since we got here. First, on Thursday we had dinner with Marlene

Picture taken on GeeWhiz

at Il Fornaio. The food was fine, the service was a bit messed up. We had a lovely time with Marlene who we met over a year ago on an OAT tour. We do look forward to seeing her again as we transit these parts in the future. We may even take another tour together some day.

Sorry about your head Michael

On or way to services we left very early and stopped by John Muir National Historic Site and spent over an hour touring the house where he penned most of his work and lived with his family while ranching and then exploring. 

Saturday found us waiting to greet Minda and Will at the coach with Leo, our youngest grand nephew, now 6 months old. They arrived as planned and Carol made lunch for us so we could get out for some hiking. Leo was a wonderful trooper and hardly showed any signs of stress from the long walk we took in Samuel Taylor State Park. Nothing in these parts is level and he climbed the hills with great verve prodding his dad to keep up the pace. Of course his position in a carrier on Dad’s chest did give him certain advantages. We returned to the coach where Carol conjured up a lovely dinner from veggies she had been hording and we all were very relaxed, Leo actually relaxed into nap land. 

At this point life is a road trip, but we have been staying put for a week or more and then moving on to our next stop in a day. As we left Malibu Beach RV and our family in Los Angeles we elected to turn what could have been one long looong day into three shorter days just because we could. The “normal” route from LA to San Francisco area is up I 5, about the same as Rochester to NYC on the Thruway. The next acceptable route would be to take the 101, especially since leaving from Malibu in a motorhome the only way to go is North on the Pacific Coast Highway/PCH/CA1 to Ventura. It isn’t even legal, much less safe, to take the motorhome over the canyons to get to the 101 directly.

Avoiding the reasonable and relatively direct we elected to drive as much of the route as possible on The 1. The other question was what stops to make and where to spend the nights. Having spent exorbitant sums for a site in Malibu (more than twice our average per night) we did not want another commercial campground or even a state park since California State Parks are now pushing the ceiling. I guess if you can’t raise real estate tax you get it from other sources. California makes New York parks look reasonable

Our first stop was the Elks Lodge in San Luis Obispo (SLO). I took the wrong exit and then took the wrong turn. After a turn around the block we found our way into the Lodge parking lot with 16 RV spots that back up against the 101 so we can enjoy the road noise right through the night. It isn’t quite as bad as it sounds, but it also isn’t the desert. We made a timely, for us, departure from SLO Elks at about 10 AM and promptly got on the 1 right out of town. I suppose I could recite the towns and the views we passed, but far better authors than I have written about them in novels and stretches have been seen in documentaries and movies. The road rises and falls seeking a foothold on the edge of the mountains that line the coast. sometimes you are almost at sea level and at other times the sea is far below as the road winds around yet another gorge that forms a cleft in the mountains. In places the road has been swept off the cliff by falling rocks and has been rebuilt either by clawing another foothold into the mountain or by building a bridge to carry the road along the face of the cliff. In places the road is so narrow that we felt we were going to demolish our passenger side on the rocks yet again and at times there were broad pull offs so we could let other drivers pass us.

Eventually we found a glorious pull off on the left, ocean, side where we could pause and have lunch and change drivers.

Looking back the way we’ve come

The road ahead of us seems tame

Eventually, with Carol at the wheel, we found our way into Monterey only to find once again that the GPS Navigation required us to make an illegal and impossible U turn to get to the lodge. We ended up disconnecting the Jeep on a deadend in a commercial strip so Carol could jockey the coach back and forth to get it turned around. Remembering the route from previous trips I guided her back out to the main road and up the hill to the Lodge with its beautiful windows overlooking the bay. We are set up here for one night only and chose not to venture into town as we have done that several times and the drive had tired us both. 

We are sitting in Malibu Beach RV Resort in one of our favorite campsites. Here is the view through the windshield:

We are wanderers. Have been since before we started RVing. For the past couple of years Carol and I have talked about where we might settle down “some day.” We had never found anyplace  we wanted to stay for more than a few weeks so the topic was moot. While we were at the Escapade we visited the “Row” where various SKP organizations and Coops had members present to attract new members. We stopped by the Jojoba Hills SKP Resort booth and spoke with John at length. We decided it would be a nice idea to stop there for a week before going on to Malibu Beach RV Resort since it is less than 3 hours from Yechiel and Miriam’s home in LA.

We have not considered a Coop until now. We have stopped at a few of them and they have been very nice, but the members did not seem very welcoming to guests and it seemed it would take some effort to become part of the group. The welcome at Jojoba Hills has been anything but cool. People walking buy have stopped to talk and we have been greeted by everyone with a nice welcome. The views from the site we are on are wonderful

and the facilities are second to none. We are planning on getting on the wait list and leaving a fully refundable deposit on Monday when the office reopens. The refundable nature of the deposit reduces the risk should we get cold feet, in fact the membership payment is also refundable when we decide to leave the coop so the financial risk is pretty small.

Things I never thought would be part of our life, California as a residence (not domicile), staying in one place for an extended period of time, owning a golf cart. We do not plan to give up regular travel, but it is nice to think of having a home base in the warm, away from the crowds, near our West Coast family, with access to fine culture to our north and to our south when we want to take advantage of it. I have no idea how this will work out, but I am looking forward to yet another change in our life style.

To our Rochester friends: we are not giving up the apartment, yet.

When we set out for a drive in the desert we never know quite what we are going to experience. Some happening can be downright terrifying. Even in the Far East where dragons abound we never got into quite this situation. As you can tell from the open door I bailed out and ran, turning back only to get this picture:

Amidst all our other activities the jeep has mostly stayed placidly on paved roads, occasionally venturing off onto gravel roads. We have never quite gotten to a place to venture a bit further into back country. Yesterday the mail came with our permit for Arizona Trust land access and I decided to see if we could take advantage of it now that we are about to leave AZ behind for a year.

Just north of us is Boulders Staging Area with many trails and jeep tracks scattered across acres of BLM land – thank you fellow taxpayers. I downloaded this map and we set off to see what we could do. I will admit we were foolish. We went alone, we told no one where we were going. We trusted Ruby to do whatever we asked of it. We had a great time and other then some new AZ pinstripes we had no incidents. Looking at the map you can see the approach road from Highway 74 and Loops 6 and 8. That is all we did, about 4 miles once we got on to Loop 8. That took a couple of hours. Here is Ruby with me at the wheel climbing over some steep narrow boulders:

The picture almost does this climb justice. 

Where we came from

Where we are headed

Have to have at least one picture of Carol taking a picture 🙂

A week and a half ago we were in Phoenix at the Diane Schuur concert. We left on Saturday to get set up at the Pima County Fairgrounds just east of Tucson for the 55th Escapade, a gathering of about 900 RVs, members of Escapees, for 5 days of fun and education and an opportunity to spend money on “stuff” you just can’t find anyplace else. We even bought a new satellite dish and had it installed so we no longer need to listen to the dome whine as it keeps shifting from one satellite to another. I attended seminars on several of systems in the coach, water, 12 volt electric, etc. I could have taught a couple of them, but there is always something new to learn, or be reminded of.

We made new friends and renewed acquaintance with people we had met along the way. The two best socials we attended were for RVillage and Xscapers (you may need to log in to do more than read the post). RVillage is a one year old social network for RVers of all stripes. We sign in and “join” each camping place we stop in hopes of finding other like minded RVers nearby to sit and chat with. There were well over 80 members attending the social which offered bubbly and snacks to celebrate the first anniversary.

Escapee membership has been steady and not growing in particular because it is perceived as a club for retired full timers (read that as OLD people). The membership has been aging and there is need to bring in younger members who are raising families and working from the road. Thus a new club-within-a-club called Xscapers has been created to welcome younger members while also including the young at heart such as us. The focus is on mobile connectivity and more spaced out less intense gatherings than Escapade. Escapade is wonderful, but it is five intense days that do not leave a lot of time to keep up with daily activities, especially for those who need to keep up with their businesses.

How’s that for a summary of 5 intense days?

We moved on back to Phoenix after a two day stop in Tucson to visit a high school classmate (Margie) and her husband. We arrived in Phoenix and got set up in plenty of time to get to a concert at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts which is actually in the Scottsdale Arts Center where we heard Ladysmith Black Mambazo perform. We have owned recordings of this group from before they got together with Paul Simon to record “Graceland” which lead us to going to Memphis and to tour Graceland some years ago. We seem to be catching up on things Medical while in Phoenix, lab work and such and doing less museum going than usual. Had a delightful visit and dinner with Mary and Tom in Cave Creek after I wrote most of the above.

For now we are busy planning – how I hate that word – our travels through to May 3. As I may have mentioned before we are flying out of Salt Lake City on April 29 to be in Rochester until we fly out on May 3. We are going to the RPO concert on Thursday and then the Percussion Concert in Kilbourn on Friday to hear the world premier of a piece written to honor John Beck. On our return to SLC we will continue east arriving in VT for our nephew’s wedding on June 13. There will be a “minor” detour to Spartanburg NC where we will attend Camp Freightliner to learn more about this chassis we are planning to live on for as long as we are able to be on the road. We will also have our annual service done while there.