Category Archives: California

Day 2 – ACA Pre-Rally – Nethercutt Museum (Valencia Travel Village, CA)

2015/03/22 davidhobden@mac.com 2 Comments

Warning! Today’s post is very picture-heavy… consider viewing on the website with your computer instead of on your mobile device.

www.UrbanEscapeVehicle.com

Day 2 of our rally started off with a fine selection of muffins, pastries, and more; all in the grand Alpine Coach Association tradition 🙂 And oh… I forgot to mention, yesterday we had breakfast burritos! Our hosts for this rally have sure outdone themselves already!

After our satisfying breakfast, everyone jumped in their respective vehicles or car-pools and headed out for the days scheduled activity; a guided tour of the Nethercutt Collection & Museum located in nearby Sylmar which is only 20 minutes away from our park.

Once again, here’s our itinerary for the week:

If you’re a “car-nut”, this place is for you! The Nethercutt Museum & Collection consists of two buildings of the finest restored vintage and antique automobiles in the world. They also have a huge assortment of mechanical musical instruments; but I was here to look at the cars 🙂

Be sure to click on the name above for a link to their website, or click here for a YouTube video tour that I found online taken in 2012. And if you are so inclined, here’s a link to another YouTube video of this fine car collection which was filmed for the TV series; My Classic Car from Season 9, Episode 10. On the My Classic Car episode, the host, Dennis Gage, tours the maintenance shop and restoration area of the Nethercutt Museum – which was something we weren’t able to see during our tour.

Streetside view of the Nethercutt Museum. This is across the street from the other building which houses the “car salon” and mechanical musical instrument.

We all gathered for our guided tour outside one of the buildings until they opened the doors.

I’ll let you read about the founders and how the museum collection came to be, from the website link I provided earlier.

So now… sit back and enjoy some of my favorite pictures from the day. But don’t worry, I didn’t include all 300 of them.. just my favorites, maybe 100, or so 🙂

Here we are listening to our tour guide inside an exquisite re-creation of an opulent automotive “grand salon” of the 1920’s and 1930’s.

Then we were set loose to browse the fine automobiles on our own recognizance.

It is my strong opinion that this is where the term “trunk” comes from. What do you think?

I’ve always liked the decorative “mascots” or hood ornaments… I’m sure some of these cost more than a new car nowadays.

Hope you’re not too bored with all the hood ornaments already, because there’s more to come…

But first, we ascended the semi-spiral staircase to the upper level(s).

Once on the first upper level, we viewed the fine displays and antiques.

And remember when I said earlier that there were more hood ornaments…

I have to wonder if there’s a larger collection of these anywhere else in the world?

We ascended yet another set of spiral stairs.

And found ourselves in the world of mechanical musical instruments, and they all worked…

But, before we listened to all the antique musical boxes in the huge room, we viewed the Louis XV style grand dining room.

Check out the infinite number of chandeliers effect in the mirror.

We viewed and listened to the various mechanical musical instruments that included: Nickelodeons; Cylinder & Disc Music Boxes; European Orchestrions; Grand Pianos; and more. Link here for more info on these devices if interested.

After viewing and listening to some of the finely tuned mechanical musical instruments, we got a mini-concert from the Wurlitzer pipe organ. All of these instruments were demonstrated by the museum’s mechanical music master technician/curator who acted as our tour guide.

After our senses were astounded with the visual and acoustic grandeur, we descended the many flights of stairs to depart the building.

We then went across the street to the second of the Nethercutt Museum buildings for a self-guided tour. By the way, did I mention that this is all free of charge? Here we were greeted by more finely restored automobiles and memorabilia that we wandered around gaping at.

I don’t think I’d kick any of these cars out of the garage for leaking oil on the floor, would you?

This 1936 Pierce-Arrow Travelodge trailer was a big hit with the Alpine Coach group.

And now, just when you thought there couldn’t be any more hood ornaments to take pictures of…

There were also display cases full of other types of antique automobile memorabilia.

Even headlights…

and horns…

spark plugs…

and more cars… Yay!

And then, just when we thought there couldn’t be anything more to astound us, we toured this cool train and luxury car that is stationed behind the building. Click here for more info on this 1937 Canadian Pacific Royal Hudson Locomotive and Pullman Private Palace Car.

We stood in line to get the free tour of the locomotive and the 1912 Pullman Private Car.

After listening to our tour guide give us the details, we toured the inside of this fully-restored luxurious palace car:

We stepped out of the car and onto the massive locomotive.

Yes, we even got to ring the bell.

That was one awesome locomotive! See a YouTube video of it’s farewell trip here.

And what an awesome museum! This is definitely a must-see attraction and you can’t beat the price.

We finally exited the museum late in the day and headed back to the campground.

On the way back to the campground, we made a stop at the local Camping World to get a new flex-hose water connection. I replaced the water filter when we got here, but the short flex-hose that connects to my quick-disconnect, developed a leak. Apparently, I overtightened it. Oh well, it was only $7.

Then we pretty much just lazed around for the rest of the day recuperating from all the walking. At least, that’s the excuse we used.

I hope you enjoyed today’s post. Tomorrow we take a tour of the William S. Hart Park & Museum, so check back in for a full recap.

California

Day 1 – Alpine Coach Association Pre-Rally (Valencia Travel Village, CA)

2015/03/21 davidhobden@mac.com 1 Comment

Yoo Hoo! We arrived safely at the Valencia Travel Village for the Alpine Coach Association Pre-Rally to the FMCA Rally in Pomona. We made it here around 3 PM on Thursday after successfully navigating the bumpy and busy LA freeways thanks to our Rand-McNally GPS. Whenever we get near a major city after being in the wide open southwest – it seems that all the drivers are impatient and in a hurry… common-sense and courtesy seem to be things that are reserved only for non-urban areas. Oh well… we’re here, with only a few frazzled nerves from the sudden traffic jams and lack of merge etiquette.

Here’s an awesome sight… a long row of fine Alpine Coaches. I think there are about 30 Coaches in attendance, (I’ll confirm that number later). Our Coaches filled up the first two rows near the entrance to the park and we ended up in the front row with a view of the pool and spa across from us. 🙂

Everyone gathered at the designated meeting spot for our “Meet & Greet Social”. Once again, it was nice to see old acquaintances/friends and to meet new ones.

After an hour of “catching-up” with folks, it was time for our catered dinner from Panda Express. Great selections, great food, great people!

After our fine meal, we finished setting up the Coach and relaxed for the evening. We were lucky to get a shot for the satellite dish through the tall trees around our site. I thought we might have to move forward or back a few feet but it worked out.

In case anyone’s interested; here’s a view of our schedule for our time here at the Valencia Travel Village:

Since Friday is a “free” day, we decided to check out some sights in and around LA. I thought about downloading the Harley, but decided against it after recalling our freeway experience(s) on the way in here. So, we jumped in the Silverado and plugged “Hollywood Sign” into the iPhone. What did we do in the days before GPS?

After 35 miles and about 50 minutes later, we ended up at the Griffith Observatory parking lot which is also on the road to the Hollywood sign (which is closed).

Here’s some pics of our time at the observatory:

Hollywood sign as seen from Griffith Observatory.

LA skyline through the smog, from the Griffith Observatory.

Hollywood sign in the background, picture is from the top of the Griffith Observatory.

Memorial to James Dean at the Griffith Observatory.

Plaque on the Memorial to James Dean at the Griffith Observatory.

We each took turns walking through the observatory because little dog, Coach, wasn’t allowed 🙁

Giant rotating earth inside the Griffith Observatory.

Giant rotating moon inside the Griffith Observatory.

Stilla and Coach greeted me outside the building after my fast-paced whirlwind tour. Pretty cool place… wish we had more time without having to worry about the dog… it was too hot to leave him alone in the pickup. Another must-see place.

After we left the observatory, we drove a little ways up the road to the Hollywood SIgn. A park ranger said that this is the first time in 20 years that vehicles can travel part way up the road. It’s still blocked off about 2 miles from the sign. Then we cruised around Hollywood and found ourselves at the La Brea Tar Pits.

The Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits was pretty cool. But as usual, no dogs allowed inside the museum. At least we were able to walk throughout the grounds with him on leash.

I’m running late this morning, so I’ll close for now and join the group for our scheduled trip to the Nethercutt Museum. Stay tuned for Day 2 of our Pre-Rally…

Arizona, California

Imperial Sand Dunes (Winterhaven, CA)

2015/02/11 davidhobden@mac.com 2 Comments

Almost caught up now… here’s what we did on Sunday:

We loaded the ATV back onto the pickup to go check out the nearby Imperial Sand Dunes that we had heard so much about.

The BLM website says this about the dunes; “Located in the southeast corner of California, the Imperial Sand Dunes are the largest mass of sand dunes in the state. Formed by windblown sands of ancient Lake Cahuilla, the dune system extends for more than 40 miles in a band averaging 5 miles wide (map). Widely known as “Glamis” and a favorite location for off-highway vehicle (OHV) enthusiasts, the dunes also offer fabulous scenery, opportunities for solitude, and a home to rare plants and animals.”

Google images has some really good photos… click here.

We took Interstate 8 for about 15 miles from our campsite near the Quechan Casino Resort and took the exit to the recreation area / ranger station. We went into the ranger station to get more information about the area. What we found out set the tone for the rest of the day… the fee to take the ATV or even our pickup into any of the dunes was $50 for a week. Of course, we’re told if we had bought our permit outside the dunes, it would only be $35 for a week. Only a few places to get the permit other than online. Oh, and also… if the ATV doesn’t have a current state OHV permit, well – that will be an additional out-of-state permit cost 🙁 And don’t forget – if you don’t have the proper size and color fluorescent orange flag on your OHV, you will certainly get a citation and fine, said the nice ranger lady.

So, after checking our “value-meter”, we decided it wasn’t worth it for just a day of riding on dunes. However, the ranger told us we could go down the side service road for a few miles to view the “plank road”… that didn’t require a permit. She also told us about a viewing spot (way up north) that is also free. We could drive up there and get a birds-eye view of the dunes from a hilltop. These were the only non-fee areas we could go. Ya just gotta love California, right?

Here’s a picture of the signs that surround the dunes at every access point… we saw these throughout the day.

So we left the ATV on the pickup and took the service road through the soft sand to look at the “plank road”. Here’s the information placard. And you can click here for more information on this “road”.

After viewing the “plank road”, we took the ranger’s advice and drove north on Blythe Ogilby Road. This north-south road skirted the dunes on the east side, until it meets State Route 78 which cuts through the dunes east-west. To the north of 78 is the North Algodones Dunes Wilderness Area where no OHV’s are allowed. To the south is the massive expanse of sand dunes that are designated for off-roading. Link here for more info on the dunes from my friend Wikipedia.

We took 78 to the Glamis Beach Store. We had traveled about 50 miles from the first ranger station we stopped at along I-8. The over-priced Glamis Beach Store even had a note on the their entrance door explaining why they were so over-priced… citing; distance, the short season, and the high electric bills, etc., You even had to pay $2 there to just use the restroom. Here’s a pic I copied from google images.

There were a few “vendor communities” set up along the highway to cater to the many off-roader’s camped at the designated BLM sites. I forgot to check on prices for camping.

Finally, we reached the “no-permit required” hilltop parking area that the ranger lady told us about. Here’s a couple pics. We’ll have to come back when we can stay awhile.

We continued west on 78, and passed through the dunes until we hit 115 south to the town of Holtville. We skipped a farmers market and small-town fair that was going on in Holtville and continued back to Interstate 8, then home. We had basically circled the entire dune area.

Hopefully, we can come back here with my brother and mom/stepdad sometime in the near future to spend a week. Although, we might have to save up some money to do so 🙂

That’s all for now folks… tomorrow (Monday) we start heading north to get to the Lake Havasu Fireworks Rally we signed up for starting on the 11th. Stay tuned…

California

Sick Dog – Sick Aqua-Hot (Winterhaven, CA)

2015/02/09 davidhobden@mac.com 2 Comments

I have some catching up to do… Here it is Monday – and I haven’t posted since Wednesday! I think I’ll break it up into a few separate posts for easier reading.

Therefore, for this first post I’ll tell you about Wednesday and Thursday. I last posted on Wednesday morning and predicted that we’d just hang around the campsite, which is exactly what we ended up doing. At one point during the day, we did a nice hike around the area and then we joined our neighbors here at our boondocking spot around 4 PM for “Happy Hour”. This has clearly become a daily tradition with the six or seven rigs that are parked near us. Everyone brings their own beverage of choice along with a small snack to share. We took cheese cubes and pretzels.

After happy hour, our little dog, “Coach” had another “episode”. This is the second or third time he has had this “seizure” of sorts… he seemed disoriented and was wobbly on his feet and would just plop down on the ground… probably out of necessity, because he’d fall over if he walked any distance. All we could do was put him in his bed and make him comfortable. We tried to have him drink water when he could hold his head up steady enough. I watched him until about 3 AM, when he just jumped up and started to walk around again. Although, unsteady at first, he seemed to quickly regain his balance, so I walked him around the campsite while keeping a watchful eye out for coyotes. He drank lots of water and seemed pretty much fine again. Sure wish we knew what causes this… internet searches point to several causes, and we can’t afford seizure medication. One source says that if you start anti-seizure medication, you have to administer it for life – you can’t stop or it will actually trigger seizures and make them worse. We remember that he was chewing on some peanut shells during “Happy Hour” – maybe he’s allergic?!?

The first time he had this “episode” was while we were in Redmond Oregon at the FMCA Rally back in August. But that time, he threw up first, so we thought for sure he’d eaten something while we weren’t looking. He was fine in the morning after we watched him all night. The second time, was a couple months ago, when he seemed to have to throw up, but couldn’t produce anything other than foamy spittle… he just fell over and laid there until we picked him up. He was over that in minutes, which made us believe he had lost his breath coughing/throwing up and just got light-headed. He’s always had a strange cough, kind of reminds me of the kennel-cough that our previous dog “Elvis” had at times. For those that don’t know, we lost Elvis to a coyote in our back yard just before New Year in 2013-14 🙁 He was 8 years old. Little Coach is 2 years old now.

Little “Coach” at his favorite spot on the back of the couch by the big window.

With little “Coach” back up and running around like his usual self – on Thursday morning, Stilla jumped in the shower after turning on the diesel switch for the Aqua-Hot and quickly reported that there wasn’t any hot water. Huh?!? I went outside and confirmed that the Aqua-Hot exhaust pipe was cold. Yup, not working! I opened up the bay compartment to check the light panel.

The “Diesel-Burner Status” light and the “Pump # 3” light were on but the “Heating Status” light was not. I broke out my service manual which I had printed out from the resources available on the Alpine Coach Association technical library website. I keep this in a plastic document protector inside a plastic envelope stashed in the bay next to the Aqua-Hot system. I pulled off the Aqua-Hot cover and began troubleshooting with my multimeter. I did the voltage checks for the “control module” because it seemed like a good place to start. It checked out good on all the inputs and outputs except for one test that indicated replacement of the control module. But, the fact that the “Heating Status” light wasn’t on still bothered me, so I kept flipping through the manual and found the obscure note that indicated the tests I had just done, were only valid after ensuring that both the “Diesel-Burner Status” and “Heating Status” lights are on.

Since I already confirmed that 12 volts was present at wires 22 and 23 on the electronic controller, the book led me to the coolant sensor.

Electronic Controller with panel cover removed. Located on left side wall of bay.

While troubleshooting, I had to “fool” the switch into thinking the cover was in place by using the tool below.

And here’s the culprit. The boiler fluid “coolant” sensor wasn’t working. There was zero resistance between tabs on the sensor and when I jumped the two wires… the Aqua-Hot fired right up!

I remembered seeing an RV in the lower parking lot back at the casino that had a banner advertising RV Service/Repairs. I jumped in the pickup with manual in hand to see if he could help me locate a new sensor.

After playing twenty questions… the nice gentleman at the service rig concluded that my troubleshooting was sound and he gave me the number of an Aqua-Hot Service representative that was in nearby Yuma. I called him and quickly made an appointment to meet a couple miles down the highway at Arizona exit 2.

I met Lloyd De Gerald, a factory authorized service representative – He sold me the sensor for the low-low price of only $63. 🙁 He not only had the part on hand, but for an additional $50 deposit, he also had the special tool needed for installation since the new part had wires “pigtails” already on it, so you had to use a home-made special cut-out socket to install. After paying for the part and leaving a deposit, I went back to the Coach and drained a couple gallons of the boiler antifreeze into a bucket. I installed the part with no problem, Lloyd even teflon wrapped and pipe-doped the sensor for me. But then, I ran into the next problem. My Aqua-Hot doesn’t have the radiator cap on it like most(?) models. It only has a recovery tank… and well, you can’t fill it back up with the fluid I saved in a bucket through the recovery tank. I called Lloyd, who had another special tool for filling these type Aqua-Hot systems. So, I made another trip to meet Lloyd, luckily it was only a few miles away in Yuma (we’re right on the CA/AZ border by Winterhaven), and I exchanged the first special tool for the second, which is an RV water pump with quick-disconnects for easy hook up to my drain valve along with the battery clips to power it up.

While talking with Lloyd, I found out he and his wife, planned on visiting the Yuma Territorial Prison in a couple days on Saturday. As did we… so we made plans to meet up and tour it together… I could return his special tool to him then and get my deposit back.

Once back at the Coach, (and just before dusk – we missed today’s happy hour, I might add), I used the pump to put the boiler fluid back into the Aqua-Hot system without incident and it fired right up. Yeah! We can shower again!

Here’s a pic of the Aqua-Hot all back together again. This is both our hot water and heating system for the Coach. Although we haven’t needed the heater since we left Colorado, we still need our showers 🙂

We closed out our Thursday evening with a trip over to the casino for a bite to eat and to support the local Quechan Indian Tribe by leaving some money in the slot machines 🙂

Stay tuned for my next post… the neighbor’s invited us to tag along on a 4-wheel drive trip to the Valley of the Names on Friday. And then we visited the Yuma Territorial Prison on Saturday… Imperial Sand Dunes on Sunday… lots of pics…

California

ATVing & Los Algodones, Baja Mexico (Winterhaven, CA)

2015/02/04 davidhobden@mac.com

On Tuesday morning, we jumped on the ATV to check out some of the trails behind our campsite. Stilla carried our dog, Coach along for the ride.

We ran into a lot of “dead end” trails:

At one point, we rode down through the “wash” below our camp site. You can see our Coach on the hilltop.

The Urban Escape Vehicle is 2nd from the left.

We found a lot of hidden campsites… some occupied, some not.

We even found a Pet Cemetery. We stopped to look around and pay our respects. It was rather unexpected to find this as we were riding along one of the more improved roads. Some folks put a lot of work into their pets’ final resting place.

There were even a couple gravesites marked “Unknown” that some caring folks took the time and effort to do. I thought that was nice.

One of the trails we followed ended abruptly at a cliff-edge overlooking the canal.

After backtracking a ways… we got on a trail that went as far as the border which you can see in the pictures below. The parking lot is the one we paid our $6 to park in when we visited Los Algodones last Saturday.

We had worked up an appetite, so we decided to spend the afternoon on another trip into Los Algodones, Mexico for a late lunch. We left little Coach in the big Coach with some windows and vents open for cool air circulation, and took the Silverado to the $6 dollar parking lot, which is just a couple minutes down the road from our campsite.

It wasn’t long before we were sitting in the shade at one of the restaurants in Los Algodones, Mexico.

I took pictures of the menu in case any of you “blog-readers” want to place an order for delivery… might take a while tho 🙂

I ordered a Pacifico beer with my meal expecting to get a normal size one… this guy was huge, but it was OK, Stilla helped me finish it.

Stilla ordered one of the combo plates – burrito, enchilada, and tostada.

Stilla also ordered the tortilla soup that we shared.

I had the fish tacos, they were delicious. I’m becoming a fan of these.

After, lunch we ran the gauntlet of vendors again… I couldn’t count the number of times we heard; “look here – almost free”.

I was thinking of Cheryl and my brother Steve when I saw this horse sculpture:

I was thinking of myself when I took a picture of these neat stained glass items:

When we had enough of the vendors and peddler’s, we headed back to the border crossing, which to our surprise and amazement, had a line that stretched for blocks… it wasn’t at all like this last Saturday! We walked right out as quickly as we walked in the last time we were here. We overheard some folks say that they hadn’t seen it this busy since 2008… it was like some sort of weird star alignment and everyone decided to come visit at once on this Tuesday.

Here’s a picture of the front of the line. The border crossing building is at the end of this covered walkway and to the right where there is still more covered walkway up to the checkpoint.

Here’s a picture of the middle of the line. You can see more vendors and peddlers trying to get everyone’s last dollar up to the last minute.

And here’s a picture of the end of the line… way back in the distance is the end of the line. As you can probably tell from these pictures… Stilla and I sat at the outside bar section of one of the restaurants, took pictures, and waited until the line became more reasonable. We sat there for almost two hours while we nursed a margarita. Sometimes, you just have to do, what you got to do 🙂

It was almost dusk again by the time we got back to little Coach. He was just fine again. What a good guard dog. Sadly, we missed “Happy Hour” with our neighbors today since it took so long to get back out of Mexico.

And that’s all for now… it’s late morning on Wednesday as I finish up this journal entry. We’ll probably hang around the Coach today and maybe go check out the casino at some point later this evening.

Stay tuned…

California

Moving Day Monday (Winterhaven, CA)

2015/02/03 davidhobden@mac.com 1 Comment

On Monday we decided to head over to the Quechan Casino Resort. It is located on the south side of Interstate 8, about 8 miles west of Yuma and 2 miles north of Los Algodones, Mexico. This is the place we reconnoitered last Saturday when we visited Los Algodones for the first time.

View of the Quechan Casino after exiting I-8

We settled on a boondocking spot just south of the main RV parking lot at the casino. The spots here are more open than at the casino and we backed up to a dry river bed, aka “wash”, that is about 20 feet below the back of the Coach.

I wonder if I can take the ATV down this embankment into the wash? Hmmm?

Before we headed over here in the early afternoon, I spent a little time getting some more waxing done on the Coach, which as I mentioned before, is a multi-day chore. It’s best to tackle a little at a time until I get it done… and then when I’m finally finished… it’s probably time to start again, right?

We said our goodbyes to our friends from the Alpine Coach group. They are going to stay at the Cocopah Casino for a while longer. And then we followed their advice, and found the Union 76 service station that allowed us to dump and take on water.

When we arrived here and picked out a spot, we had just backed in and started to put down the pads to keep the jacks from sinking into the sand, when the neighbor came over and introduced himself and his wife. They invited us to come over for “Happy Hour” – they (and other’s) were grilling up some shrimp and had made some jalapeño poppers stuffed with smoked salmon to share.

It’s amazing the number of nice people you meet out here RVing 🙂 After we extended the jacks, put the slides out, and staked down the patio mat, we pulled our chairs over and enjoyed an hour or two with our new “neighbors”.

After “Happy Hour” we fell back into our usual routine – Stilla had made a stew earlier, so we had dinner and then watched TV. And also, as usual when boondocking, we ran the generator for an hour or so to top off the batteries for the night.

Stay tuned… I wonder what we’ll do tomorrow?

BTW – Have I ever mentioned that Monday is my new “favorite” day of the week now? Since I retired – when I wake up on a Monday morning and realize I don’t have to go in to work – I feel good. Life is good 🙂

California

Bro Time (Westley, CA)

2014/09/25 davidhobden@mac.com 1 Comment

It’s been a couple days since my last post. We’ve been busy hanging out at my brother Ron’s house in Westley, CA. Let me bring you up to date:

We arrived early Tuesday evening after our long day’s drive down I-5 and through Sacramento. After hugs and a tour of the house and adjoining machine shop, we made a trip to the local WalMart to replenish the fridge and more importantly – get some steaks for the BBQ grill. We spent time grilling and catching up. It was great seeing them again, it’s been a long time… years in fact.

We parked on the street beside their house during our stay. Ron graciously provided a power outlet so we could run one of the air conditioners or the microwave without having to start our generator.

Wednesday ended up being a full work day in the fully-appointed machine shop next to the house. I conned (I mean, talked) Ron into doing some modifications to the Silverado’s bed-rails and motorcycle ramp. Nephew James stayed home from work and helped out as well. Ron figured out how to slice a long piece of aluminum off the bed rails so I can better secure my tonneau cover when I’m not carrying the Harley. He also invented a quick-release mount for the motorcycle ramp to secure it on top of the rack. Now I don’t have to struggle with a bunch of bungee-cords every time I transport the ramp.

Here we put everything back on the Silverado after having to disassemble the truck rack to make the modifications.

The tonneau cover now rolls shut and and fits tightly between the bed rails. Thanks Bro!

Ron even took the time to modify the pivot bar that holds the three-piece motorcycle ramp together… the bar was too long and the hole for the pin allowed for too much movement between the individual pieces, so he cut it shorter and re-drilled a new hole for the pin. Now it’s much safer to use, and there’s no chance for a foot or even worse – a motorcycle tire to accidentally slip between the pieces.

I forgot to take a picture of the quick-release mount that Ron invented to secure the ramp on top of the rack during transport. But here’s some pics of Ron in action:

We closed out the evening with another great BBQ meal in the back yard.

It rained Thursday morning… just enough to make us not want to get packed up and move. But, we need to move on down the road and get back to Colorado Springs before our son William comes to visit us in October. So we slowly got packed up by noon, said our goodbyes’s and thanked Ron & Terry for everything. It was about 1 PM by the time we hit I-5 headed South.

Hopefully, I get to see my brother again on Thanksgiving… he’s planning on being in Arizona, as do we.

The roads between the many orchards in the area were muddy from the rain. Lots of vehicles coming onto the roadway from the orchards had made a mess of the pavement. Looks like I get to give the Urban Escape Vehicle and pickup a serious washing now.

The sun came out and it dried up quickly. It wasn’t long before we had to turn on the dash AC again.

We started going through our routine of finding a campground or RV park while traveling down the road since we had good cell signal on I-5. It looked like the Elks Lodge in Barstow would be a good destination for the day. The website said it had 77 RV spots in the Lodge parking lot. So I plugged it into the GPS and we decided to make it a long travel day. Also, we still needed to decide what route to take back to Colorado, and Barstow happens to be located at the point where we can either choose to go North on I-15 through Las Vegas and then on to I-70, then I-25 at Denver to get to COS; or – we can catch I-40 East at Barstow which will take us through Flagstaff and Albuquerque to get on I-25 to COS.

It so happens that my Mom, Stepdad, and other brother Steven along with his better-half Cheryl, are currently in Las Vegas on vacation. So I contacted them to be sure they are still there (they will be until Saturday) so that cinches it – we now have our next destination… Las Vegas, here we come!

Typical highway scenery after we got close to Bakersfield.

It was 7 PM when we finally rolled into Barstow looking for the Elks Lodge. We found it, but it was closed! We wondered why the Elks.org website didn’t show info on the Lodge but we did find all kinds of info and reviews on google. The place looked like it was being sold. Anyway, we chalked that up to another lesson learned… don’t trust google without verifying!

So we did a quick search for other overnight options and found a Flying J truck stop 4 miles further down on I-15. Good enough for the night since it’s late anyway. And besides, we now want to hurry up and get to Las Vegas tomorrow so we can get as much time as possible in with my Mom/Stepdad & other brother Steven and his better-half Cheryl before they go back to Phoenix and/or Las Cruces on Saturday!

We did 335 miles today… whew! I don’t want to do that too often.

Signing out from the truck stop… C U tomorrow!

California

Avenue of Giants & Moving Day (Westley, CA)

2014/09/24 davidhobden@mac.com

We did it! We completed the entire Hwy 101 “Pacific Coast Highway” although as I type this, I remembered that the signs started calling it the “Redwood Highway” once we dipped into California.

Our Hwy 101 adventure started in Olympia WA, where we went North to Port Angeles, and then headed South along the entire Washington/Oregon coastline – all the way to Leggett CA where you have to either choose to turn on Hwy 1 (which continues along the CA coast) or stay on 101 which starts inland. We chose to continue on 101 inland so we could jump over to I-5 via State Highway 20.

We had decided to head down to Westley, CA to visit my brother Ronald. Westley is located about 80 miles South of Sacramento.

So to catch you up on our continuing adventure – we left the Chinook RV Resort in Klamath CA on Monday at a leisurely 11 AM. Our goal for the day was to take the “Avenue of Giants” because you just can’t get enough of these magnificent redwoods.

But first, we caught our last few views of the Pacific Ocean.

After driving through the town of Eureka we finally got to the turnoff for the Avenue of the Giants which is a 31 mile scenic byway that parallels Hwy 101. It was awesome – but again, pictures just don’t do it justice. Here’s a link to my friend Wikipedia for more information on the route: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avenue_of_the_Giants

We pulled off to the side at the first opportunity to view some of the trees first-hand.

Here you can see that the leaves are already changing colors… more evidence that it’s time to keep heading South 🙂

After our scenic (but somewhat slow-paced) excursion through the Avenue of Giants, we got back on Hwy 101 proper and noticed that the scenery was changing dramatically… it was definitely drier here.

We turned East on 20 to get over to 1-5 but it was getting late (about 5 PM) so we started consulting our resources to find a spot to spend the night. Our Passport America app turned us on to Kelly’s Family Kampground near the town of Upper Lake which is on the North side of Clear Lake.

After turning off the highway for about 2 miles to get to the campground, our Rand McNally GPS guided us in. What a beautiful campground… and we had it all to ourselves with the exception of the owner who bicycled from her house at the entrance road to greet us. We decided to boondock for the night because the sites were heavily wooded with no line-of-site for the satellite. Also, it just looked so peaceful by the pond – so that’s where we decided to lower the jacks.

This is the road into the campground. The owner – I think she said her name was Patti Kelly, only charged us $12 for the night. Our travel distance for the day was about 230 miles. The only bad thing about the campground was no signal on the iPhones with AT&T and only one bar on the MiFi JetPack with Verizon which also equated to no signal because we couldn’t get any emails or websites to upload. But we had satellite, which was nice after sitting by the pond in our folding chairs to watch the evening local wildlife and stars.

The camp store and office – all but closed for the season.

Our boondock spot next to the pond.

That’s the Urban Escape Vehicle on the other side of the pond.

Our view out the front window.

There were wild turkeys everywhere.

Little Coach didn’t know what to make of the turkeys… he didn’t know whether to chase them or be scared.

In the morning (Tuesday) I did a PMCS, that’s Preventive Maintenance Checks and Services for you non-Army types, and found that one of the baseplate connections on the truck seemed loose. It moved up and down and it shouldn’t do that! This is the towbar connection point on the truck that is permanently mounted to the frame on each side. I inspected further, and found that the bolts were slightly loose, the bolt head was gouging into the frame as you can see from the picture below. There should be a flat washer there. I didn’t have any large flat washers on hand in my stash, just smaller diameter ones, so I tightened the bolts (on both sides) as best I could and made a commitment to stop at the earliest opportunity and get new washers.

So after just a few miles, we found a NAPA store in the town of Upper Lake with a big parking lot. I broke out the tools and took the bolt out to go inside for the right sized flat washers and also new split-washers for the “nut” side of the bolt.

Good thing I had everything needed. It pays to be prepared. I had to use the cordless drill driver to grind down the edges where the bolt head had gouged the frame and then I used my red loc-tite to put everything back together.

I only did the one bolt because it was so difficult to get the lock-nut off in the limited space available, and the other bolt looked fine at this time. I figured that once I get to my brother Ronald’s house, I could tackle the other one. I purchased extra washers to keep on hand.

Here’s a picture of the “wallowed out” hole in the frame caused by the bolt head not having a flat-washer underneath it to spread out the clamping force. There’s a lot of weight and pressure put on these two bolts when we are pulling the truck around corners and over some of the “fine” roads we have traveled recently.

With my confidence at a much higher level about the safety and security of the truck and Harley behind us, we continued our travel along State Highway 20.

Very dry with evidence of recent forest fire here.

Once we got to I-5 and started heading South, we stopped at a Pilot/Flying J to fuel up. 80 gallons at $4 per gallon 🙁

We continued through Sacramento – man do they ever need to fix these roads! And the traffic was terrible… Lots of folks passing and weaving – in a hurry to get to who knows where – and lots of trucks too. There were uncovered gravel trucks, open loads of tomato trucks, and even an uncovered hay truck, which reminds me – I need to check the intake to the air filter to clean some of that out!

After 196 miles today (Tuesday) we ended up at our current destination: Westley CA, home of my brother Ronald and his wife Terry. Here’s a few pics of the route into their little town – don’t blink, you’ll miss it if you go too fast 🙂

Preview of the evening’s agenda.

Stay tuned…

California

Trees of Mystery & More… (Klamath, CA)

2014/09/22 davidhobden@mac.com

It was 2 PM on Sunday before we got away from the park today. We changed sites 3 more times before we solved our power problem that I described in yesterday’s post.

The camp host was very accommodating and moved me to another site, but it was just another 30 amp pedestal and I had the same problem as before. The Surge-Guard display toggled between “No Ground” and “Check Wiring” and wouldn’t stay connected to shore power. So the camp host found me another site but I had to wait for the current occupant to leave. It was also a 30 amp site and once I was able to pull in and plug in, I still had the same problem. At least this time, I didn’t put the jacks down or the slides out before I plugged in.

The camp host kept checking on me throughout the morning, as did several other overly-enthusiastic camp occupants… Nice folks here. I had just resigned myself to “boondocking it” for the rest of today and tonight (I even warned my neighbor about running my generator) when finally – a 50 amp site opened up unexpectedly, and the camp host moved me in. Everything worked fine on the 50 amp in site #1 🙂 I was really starting to worry that my problem was with the Coach and not the park power. Although, I’ve never had problems on 30 amp power before, that is – other than tripping the breaker because we forgot to turn off the coffee pot while we still had an AC running or the microwave.

It turns out that most of the tenants here at the Chinook RV Resort are long-term residents that stay for the entire summer fishing season or longer, and most have travel trailers or 5th wheels that are fine on 30 amp power. All the other big rigs (Motorhomes) here are parked at the limited number of 50 amp spaces. Of course, I won’t know for sure until I get to the next campground and I plug into 30 amp again, but I’m going to assume for now that my Surge-Guard was simply doing it’s job, and the park’s 30 amp wiring here needs an upgrade. All the pedestals and boxes here are pretty old and deteriorated. The first one I plugged into almost fell over, the wooden pole was so rotten.

With the power problem solved for now, Stilla put some more clothes in the washer/dryer combo while I got tips from the camp host and others on local sites to see. We left at 2 PM with a list of things to go see and do today, so follow along and enjoy the pics.

Our first tip was the Klamath River Overlook on Requa Road which is a loop that climbs the mountain, (hill), that overlooks the mouth of the Klamath River at 600 feet. It was only 1/2 mile from our campground. Here are the views.

We still didn’t see any whales 🙁

Our next tip, which is a place we had passed on the way into town the day before – and knew of already, was the Trees of Mystery and Sky Trail (Gondola) Ride. This was one cool place that has a lot of history. It was founded in the early ’30s right off Hwy 101 and is only 3.5 miles North of our campground. Many of the trees here have been seen in Ripleys Believe It or Not. I’m sure this is one of the most visited and photographed sites in Northern California.

Here’s a link to their website if you would like more information. http://www.treesofmystery.net Enjoy the pics… although, as usual – the pictures don’t do the place justice.

The entrance fee was $15 per person. Now this was definitely high on my personal value-meter. Well worth it!

We passed some folks on one of the trails that were fascinated with something on the ground and were taking pictures… it turns out this is a rarely seen banana slug that was crossing the trail. So, I followed suit and took a picture also. So enjoy.

Once again, I don’t know how Stilla does it, but she found some more Germans. There was a film crew from Germany climbing one of the trees. They were doing a documentary on the Redwoods. We watched them for a while, at one point they even put a camera drone up in the air to film the climbers.

We continued on with our tour after the climbers were out of sight.

A highlight of this Place of Wonder is the Sky Trail (Gondola). It was included in the entrance fee. We had a six-passenger gondola all to ourselves. It takes 8 – 10 minutes to make the 1570 ft trip up the mountain.

Here is the entrance at the bottom.

Going up…

and up…

Our obligatory selfie:

Here we are at the top.

Here you can see the Pacific Ocean in the background.

After our fantastic trip above the trees, we drove back to the Coach to get little Coach so we could go through a tree. Unfortunately, we had left him in the Coach because we assumed the Trees of Mystery park wouldn’t be dog-friendly – the opposite was true, they allow dogs on leashes everywhere in the park, even the gondolas! But it was too late for little Coach to make his mark on any of the greater than 2,000 year old trees. So anyway, we picked him up and continued 1.5 miles the other direction (South) from our RV site to the next tip we got from folks at the campground – The Tour-Thru Tree!

I had to pull the mirrors in, but we fit. Here’s a picture I took in the mirror after we passed through and I pushed the drivers-side mirror back out.

When I said we fit – it was with one caveat.. I had to loosen one of the bicycles on the rack because the tire was starting to rub on one side. But hey, we fit 🙂

That was worth the $5 entrance fee. The tree is approximately 785 years old and the opening is 7’4″ (2.23 m) wide and 9’6″ (2.90 m) high.

The next tip we got from the camp host was to take the Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway which is a road that parallels Hwy 101 and goes through some more of the fantastically huge Coastal Redwoods.

But first we had to cross the Klamath River bridge.

This is the Klamath River.

After driving through some more of the scenic forest along the Newton B. Drury Parkway (which used to be part of the original Redwood Highway) to the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park we arrived at Elk Prairie and the Ranger Station. It closed at 5 PM and it was now 5:30, so we just toured the outside of the building, took pictures of Elk in and around the meadow there, and took a short walk in the woods to close out our evening.

This picture of the map on the ranger station wall shows our location. Sorry about the quality, but as always, if you click on any of the pictures you get an enlarged view.

We took the long way back along a rarely used coastal road.

For those interested in WWII trivia; we came upon a “farmhouse” that was really a radar station in disguise. It has been preserved here on the coast just south of the town of Klamath. The placard below provides some interesting information.

Here’s the roof of one of the disguised radar stations from WWII.

We finally got back to our campground just after dusk. Shore power was still working fine and we even have satellite TV through the rooftop dish at our latest spot. I worked on this blog post while we watched some TV. We’ll head on a little farther South tomorrow (Monday) before we start moving back East towards Colorado… at least that’s the plan for now 🙂

Site #1 at the Chinook RV Resort, Klamath, CA.

California, Oregon

Redwoods – Jedediah Smith State Park (Klamath, CA)

2014/09/21 davidhobden@mac.com

We got a somewhat late start on this lazy foggy Saturday morning. We didn’t leave the Elks Lodge in Brookings, OR until almost noon.

If it seems like we are moving along from place to place at a fast pace – it’s because we are. We want to be back in Colorado by October because our son William is coming in from Germany for a three week visit with his girlfriend. He intends to use our house in Colorado Springs as a jumping off point to visit the area.

Anyway, just South of town we crossed into sunny California – only it wasn’t very sunny today.

About 25 miles later, as we got close to Crescent City we spotted the signs for the Redwood National and State Forest Visitor Center, so we pulled into an empty lot out front and went inside for information on the Redwood Forests. We’ve never been here before and wanted to get the scoop on what is where – and more importantly, where we can go in the big rig.

The park rangers inside were very helpful and gave us a tip about the Jedediah Smith Redwoods which is part of the Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park. They told us about a nice drive on Howland Hill Road just outside of town here with a highly recommended “must-see” hike through the Stout Memorial Grove. And they were right – it was truly awe-inspiring! The intended destination was definitely not big-rig friendly, so we unhooked the truck and left the Urban Escape Vehicle in the parking lot behind the building.

Once on Howland Hill Road, the pavement quickly turned to dirt and it got very narrow. I kept wondering why they didn’t make this a one-way road through here, because we had to back up or pull off on the side more than a few times to let others pass, and vice versa.

Wow… these redwoods are awesome! They don’t grow trees like this in Colorado.

At one point, out in the middle of the forest, we met up with some other RV’ers from Colorado that we recognized from our stay at an Elks Lodge in Kelso/Longview some weeks ago. Small RV world 🙂 They told us they were staying in Klamath at the Chinook RV Resort, and recommended it to us for tonight’s destination. We thanked them and since we (surprisingly) had a cell-phone signal, I called and made a reservation for us to arrive later today. With that out of the way, we parted ways and continued our scenic drive.

Here are the pictures of our hike at Stout Grove. All I can say is WOW! The pictures don’t do justice to the magnificence of these redwoods.

After our tour of the redwoods here near Crescent City, we hooked the truck back up to the Coach and headed on South to Klamath. We felt lucky that we had a little sun while we were in the woods because the fog seemed to roll in just as we hit the Pacific Coast Highway again.

We arrived at our destination and decided to stay for two nights. Since this is a Passport America park, we only had to pay $15 per night. The camp host directed us to a 30amp hook-up spot next to the river, which we found out later wasn’t such a good thing… Stilla put a load of clothes into our Splendide washer/dryer combo and the motorhome’s Surge-Guard kept cycling on and off. The display for the Surge-Guard flashed the warning “Open Ground” and “Check Wiring” a few times, but it never popped the circuit breaker, it just kept switching power from the park pedestal to our inverter… back and forth. Since it was late and the office was closed, we just unplugged and ran the generator to finish our load of clothes. Once our clothes were done, I tried plugging into park power again and it kept doing the same thing, even when I had everything turned off , and I mean everything: no TV; no surround sound; no Direct-TV; no AC or heater; no Keurig coffee maker; nothing plugged into any outlets; etc., The only items drawing power would be the inverter/charger itself and the residential refrigerator, and I have to leave those on. So I unplugged again and we just boondocked for the night. I figured we would deal with it in the morning. More to follow on this.

Meanwhile, here are some pics of our current location.

We only went 45 miles today from Brookings to Klamath, but there is just so much to see here – so stay tuned!

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Category Archives: California

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Avenue of Giants & Moving Day (Westley, CA)

Trees of Mystery & More… (Klamath, CA)

Redwoods – Jedediah Smith State Park (Klamath, CA)

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