South Dakota and Minnesota

The road leading away from the Wyoming national parks was steep, climbing twice to over 9500 feet of elevation.  There were long stretches where the Wilsons were moving uphill at a maximum of 40 miles per hour, to the delight of lines of drivers behind us.  And there was a tremendous amount of road construction work.  There were many miles in the mountains of unpaved roads that looked like new highway being laid.  In fact, we saw a surprising number of road crews all along our route.  Makes one wonder if this is part of putting America back to work.

But at least the scenery was spectacular.  Once we came down out of the hills and started across South Dakota, it wasn't.  Mile after mile of flat corn fields and pastures.  Very few trees.  I don't like to insult my South Dakota and Minnesota brothers and sisters, but it was a boring landscape.  The one exception was Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota.  We saw George, Tom, Teddy, and Abraham as sculpted by Gutzon Borglum.  Quite wonderful.  Then we drove about ten miles away to see the mountainside carving of Crazy Horse.  The whole area was beautiful, with more forests over a wide area than I ever expected to see in the middle of the country.  Otherwise, there wasn't much to see in those two great states.

But as we crossed the mighty Mississippi River into Wisconsin, the scenery changed dramatically.  All around us were rolling farm fields of contrasting green and gold, with lovely barns and silos.  Suddenly the road was lined with trees, and there were even splashes of red, orange, and yellow.

There was an information center just past the border.  Nancy went in to get some information and came out shaking her head.  "That's a really nasty guy behind the counter," she said.  "I asked a couple of questions and he was incredibly rude."

"I'll go have a look at that jackass," I said.  I went inside and asked him if he had any information on campgrounds.  He handed me a pamphlet about Wisconsin state parks and apologized that he didn't have anything more comprehensive.

After we left the center and were walking back to the motorhome, he came hustling after us.  "Were you interested in campgrounds locally?" he asked. 

"No," I said.  "Campgrounds around Madison." 

"Sorry," he said.  "I don't have anything more."  And he went back into the building.

"That was weird," said Nancy.

"Obviously," I said, "he was jilted by a bubbly woman when he was younger."

"No way," she said.  "He must have heard me complaining."

Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks

I remember visiting Yellowstone Park with my family almost 60 years ago.  The details are hazy, but I have these images of bears approaching cars in the road, and tourists passing food out to them.  I wondered if that actually happened, or if it's some sort of bogus recovered memory. 

On Monday morning we entered Yellowstone park.  The woman at the toll booth told me that my age qualified me for a National Park Senior Pass.  Ten dollars for a free lifetime pass into all US national parks.  There are some advantages to getting old.  Damn few, though.

I drove the motorhome, towing the pickup truck, around the southern part of Yellowstone, which took us to Old Faithful.  While most of Yellowstone turned out to be uncrowded, now that school was in, the Old Faithful facility was almost full.  My memory of 60 years ago was of a modest parking lot and visitors' center, but it's now an enormous installation, with shops, an automobile repair shop, a huge information center, and acres of parking.

Yellowstone has a bunch of geysers, but Old Faithful's claim to fame is that every 60 to 110 minutes, more or less like clockwork, it has a spectacular eruption.  Park rangers calculate the time for the next expected performance, give or take 10 minutes, based on the duration of the previous blow, and post the time at the center.  We saw that it would be about an hour before show time, so we had lunch in the motorhome, walked the dogs, and made our way back, along with hundreds of other tourists.

Sure enough, right on time there were a couple of preliminary squirts, then a column of steam well over 100 feet high. 
 

                          

But after all the anticipation, the show was a little underwhelming.  And I swear that I remember being somewhat disappointed in Old Faithful all those years ago, too.

We stayed a couple of days at a campground on the eastern side of the park. Altogether there were three days with no internet access and no cell phone service.  How do people live like that?

Wildlife viewing is part of the park's draw.  The usual strategy is to drive along until you see a gathering of automobiles, indicating that animals have been spotted.  Several times we came across large herds of bison, the species of buffalo the Indians hunted.  Bison are herbivores who have enormous neck muscles that make them powerful excavators.  They tend to congregate to graze in the fields beside the roads, and they cross the highways without paying much attention to the cars that have stopped to see nature up close.  In spite of warnings, tourists likewise seem to have no fear, and gorings happen every year.  One time we were so close that we could hear them snorting as they ambled past, and our dogs began barking maniacally, which made Nancy fear a bison attack on the truck.
               

We also saw a small herd of elk.  But not a single bear.

Yellowstone is, of course, a wondrous place, with an unmatched variety of attractions.  But a catastrophic fire in 1988 and smaller fires since have resulted in many extensive areas of nothing but dead trees, and have made it less attractive.

But Grand Teton National Park, just south of Yellowstone - now that must be one of the most beautiful places on Earth.  The Teton Range is a series of mountain peaks rising abruptly from level ground, and the tallest, most jagged is named Grand Teton.  These are young mountains, only seven million years old.  I recall thinking, all those years ago, as we drove from Yellowstone to Grand Teton, that the less famous park was actually prettier, and Nancy and I agreed that it was still the case.

Shortly after entering Grand Teton Park, we stopped at a picnic area and had lunch in our motorhome with the most magnificent view I can ever recall - the Teton Range in all its glory, with patches of snow, rising above a lovely lake, and the trees and bushes in the early stages of their fall color changes.         

The valley there in Wyoming is called Jackson Hole, and the town at the base of the famous ski area is Jackson.  We drove there and talked with a lady park ranger at the information center.  When I told her about my bear memory, she confirmed that it was accurate.  She grew up in the area, and as a girl she saw twenty or thirty bears every time she visited Yellowstone, and now she spots one at most, even though there are more bears in the park than ever.  But a decision was made long ago to stop the bear-human interaction by eliminating access to human food, and while it's safer for both species, the magic of seeing those wonderful and frightening animals up close and personal has been lost, and it's sad.

Big Sky Country

Whenever we break camp and head on down the road, each of us goes through a series of standard tasks. Nancy makes sure that everything inside is stowed away safely and ready for travel. I lower the DirecTV satellite, retract the standard TV antenna, raise the leveling jacks, and bring in the slideouts. I disconnect the shore power and the water supply, then I connect the sewer hose and empty the holding tanks. Then, if the tow vehicle is detached, we hook that up again.

On Saturday morning we were preparing to leave Whitefish. As always, I hooked up the hose from our holding tanks to the ground-level sewer hookup at our campsite and pulled the handle to flush out the "black tank" containing toilet residue. But the procedure took an unusual turn. I looked over and there was a fountain of brown at the end of the hose. There is a plastic connector that screws into the sewer hookup, and the hose had come loose from that connector, dumping the mess onto the ground and fouling our site before I could shut it down. Things weren't smelling too fresh.

As a foursquare, take-full-responsibility person, I immediately ran into the motorhome, told Nancy the horrifying truth, and whispered to her, "Let's get out of here before the trailer park manager catches us." We hit the road in record time.

RV life is a series of learning experiences. Being a guy, I usually blame equipment failure when something goes wrong. But I can see that failing to check sewer hose connections may have played some small part in this episode. I'll avoid that mistake in the future.

Our next stop was Butte, Montana. The drive from Whitefish along State Highway 83 through several national forests is absolutely stunning and highly recommended. It led eventually to a very different landscape - one that had us saying, yes, this is big sky country.

I'd sometimes wondered what that term meant. Every place has the same amount of sky, right? But on the way to Butte, the forests disappeared. Impressive mountain ranges were visible in the distance on all sides. Although there were rolling hills, the overall surface was relatively flat, and there were no tall trees to obstruct the view. So there was a panorama from side to side of around 170 degrees, And the clouds were magnificent - cumulus along the edges and fluffy flying saucer clouds overhead.

In Butte we parked overnight for the first time at a Walmart Superstore. Unless there are local restrictions prohibiting it, Walmart allows recreational vehicles to park for free on the periphery of their parking lots, in hopes that the travelers will buy their necessities at their stores.

Thinking that Walmart was just too upmarket, Nancy went shopping for supplies at the adjacent Dollar Store. She ran into a former hospice nurse whose husband had been transferred from San Diego to Redlands to Butte. She hated living there, saying that the people were very unsophisticated and uninterested in anything outside their routine existence. Of course that's only one woman's experience.  But it doesn't sound good.  And I suspect we'll find a lot of that in the small towns and small cities across America. 

The next morning we headed for Yellowstone Park.

Glacier National Park

A few sprinkles of rain - the first of our trip - fell on us on the way to Whitefish, Montana.  The sky was overcast.  A definite change in the weather, and it didn't look good for our tour of Glacier National Park.  On the positive side, the cooler weather was good for sleeping.

You may have heard of Whitefish.  Even though it's isolated, up near the Canadian border, it's an upscale resort town, with some serious real estate prices for homes on the shore of its beautiful mountain lake.  The downtown shopping district is a nice one, but the main drag is completely torn up for sewer work, which diminishes the charm, and must be driving the storeowners crazy.  Would we live there?  No.  It's certainly pretty enough, but without a college nearby, our intellectual prowess would inevitably decline.

We are staying in an RV park just outside Whitefish, which is about 20 miles from the west entrance to Glacier National Park.  The main drive is called the "Going to the Sun" road, and parts of it have a vehicle size limit of 21 feet in length, which means that we will have to go in our Mazda pickup truck.  Since there are bears in the park, and the roads are curvy, we decide to leave our dogs Tammy Faye and Sophia behind. 

Glacier is, of course, magnificent.  Happily, the sun was out.  The west entrance is on a lake surrounded by tall tree-covered mountains.  Nancy and I went for a hike on a trail in a cedar forest and felt as one with nature.  The road climbed up and up until you're looking over a valley that was carved by a glacier eons ago.  The vistas were so jawdropping that I felt even more insignificant than usual.

Nancy tells me that my comment above about intellectual prowess was pretentious and stupid and people wouldn't realize it was a joke.

Coeur d'Alene, Idaho and Missoula, Montana

Between Walla Walla, Washington and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho the scenery at this time of year consists of a monotony of wheat and barley fields.  For almost 200 miles we felt as if we were in the spice deserts of Dune, with interesting angles and intersections and shapes of fields, but nothing but yellow grain as far as we could see, except for occasional small oases of trees and green fields.  We think of Washington as lush and covered with trees, but that's the western side of the coastal range.
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Coeur d'Alene is a beauty.  It's right on a mountain lake.  Somebody put a lot of effort into making the downtown pretty.  Manicured green lawns, flowers, and trees, all well cared for.  There's a wonderful marina, just off the shopping district, that you can walk around.   

The people look like a healthy lot.  Lots of runners and bicyclists.  There are two or three colleges in town, so the residents are on the young side.  It's very noticeable in both Walla Walla and Coeur d'Alene that drivers have an attitude different from what we're used to in California; they stop for pedestrians even when they don't have to.  Nobody seems to be in a big rush.  They tolerate outsiders who are clueless about which direction to turn.

We were there in Coeur d'Alene the day before Nancy's birthday and came across The Grill from Ipanema - a churrascaria (a Brazilian steakhouse).  We'd eaten at one of those on a cruise ship and loved it.  Although we don't plan to go to many restaurants on our trip, this was something we couldn't pass up.  The waiter brings by one meat course after another on a vertical skewer and either carves a chunk for us or slides pieces down.  It's a fun way to celebrate getting older.

If it isn't obvious, Nancy and I liked Coeur d'Alene a bunch.  We could envision living there someday, if we ever leave Santa Cruz.  A downside is that winters can be rough.  There was also some haze in the air that made the distant views a little less spectacular, and we never asked the locals whether that's a chronic condition.

From Coeur d'Alene we drove up to Missoula, Montana.  We'd read a lot of good things about this city and had thought that it was a possibility for future residence.  It's in a pretty natural setting, but the streets were too wide and busy, even in Old Town, for it to have the charm that Walla Walla, Coeur d'Alene, and Santa Cruz have.  There's a nice University of Montana campus that we explored a bit.  It had a wonderful academic feel to it.  One thing we noticed that was that it was sadly lacking in diversity.  We saw almost no African-Americans or Latinos, and even Asians were poorly represented.  This was not Stanford North.

We had a great birthday appetizer course at the Red Bird Restaurant in Missoula, a beautiful wine bar downtown.  The waiter, an honest sort, didn't recommend the local wines, but he steered us to a fondue course that was sensational.  So we had a great time in Missoula, but it plummeted in the future home rankings.

Our next stop is Whitefish, Montana, just outside Glacier National Park.  We've been anticipating an exploration of that area for years.

Wine country

Fun is good.  We're starting to have some.

A couple of days ago we stayed at an RV park in McMinville, Oregon, in the heart of the Willamette Valley, which is known for its great Pinot Noirs.  We went for a wine and cheese tasting downtown, and bought one example of each.  We were saddened to learn that the summer was so cool that many of the wineries in the area aren't even releasing a vintage this year. 

McMinville also had a great farmers' market which featured some magnificent produce - at boutique prices.  While there we heard from one of the vendors about how nice Walla Walla, Washington is - and since we Wilsons are known for our spontaneity, we altered our route to see if she was right.

I'm happy to report that Walla Walla was a fabulous experience.  We are staying for a couple of days parked at the Elks Lodge.  I joined the Elks a few weeks back mostly for the opportunity for service to my community but also because they offer bargain RV sites across the country. 

The lads at the bar in the Elks lodge told me that we had picked a great time to visit Walla Walla, because a big car show was scheduled for Saturday.  Frankly, this did not rev Nancy's engine.  But we like to experience as much local color as possible - and the car show turned out to be wonderful.  It was one of those exhibits of old automobiles, some from as far back as the 1920's, some from the days of my youth, and even some new models.  Block after block of the most beautiful vehicles, renovated and restored and modified, most with fantastic paint jobs.  Artwork, to my eye.  A smaller version of Hot August Nights in Reno. 

I call this Thumb and Classic Car.  I'm still learning how to take photos and videos with Nancy's iPhone and will get better, I promise.

On our return to the motorhome in the Elks lot, one of the car show participants was preparing to drive his lovely yellow and white 1955 Chevy up into a trailer. The exterior of these vehicles are so pristine that the contestants don't subject their babies to the dangers of the open road any more than necessay. He told us that he had found the car buried in mud, with plants growing through the windows. The owner said that he could have it if he could haul it out, and he did. So, a free car. Then he spent $100,000 in restoring and improving it - and he had won one of the prizes at the Walla Walla show.

Nancy immediately decided that this gentleman was unmarried, for obvious reasons, and upon her questioning, he confirmed it.  However, I suggested later that it was a risky assumption.  Some of our married friends have unusual obsessions, too, which have not resulted in divorce, yet.  You know who you are.

Walla Walla is a thriving wine area, and downtown Walla Walla has a number of tasting rooms.  We dropped into the one for Mansion Creek Cellars.  Very friendly couple who've been growing grapes for a while and making very nice wines for about six years.  Later, as we were walking our dogs downtown and listening to a good blues/rock band outdoors after the car show, we passed the above mentioned tasting room, and the winemaker popped out and asked us to drop by in a while for a little sushi party they had planned.  We did, and had a nice conversation with them, and Nancy invited them to visit us when when we get back to California. 

They are interesting and fun people, and I hope they come and see us.  This is in contrast with some of Nancy's previous invitees.  I remember the two schizophenic men who stayed with us overnight when she was a psych nurse in Newport Beach.  Then there were the Cobbs, a family of talented street musicians, living out of their van.  We came across them in Mendocino, and a few days later they knocked on our door in Ben Lomond.

So we leave Walla Walla, which you many know is famous for its onions, with tears in our eyes.  Next we head up to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and then into Montana.

On the road

What a change in lifestyle for the Wilsons!

Before, our daily existence consisted mostly of television, internet, hobbies, meals, sleep, and pet interaction.  Suddenly our motorhome arrived, and we sprung into constant action.  First there was the party to organize, with all the details that involved.  Afterward, we had to make our stick and stucco home ready for the time we'd be away. Then the motorhome had to be prepared to be our domicile for the next four months.  What kitchen tools should we take along?  How could we keep up with the television shows we love?  How would I be able to watch the 49ers disappoint me once again?  What sort of internet access would we have on the road?  Which clothes to take?  How many ball gowns?  Suit, sports coat, or tuxedo? How would we transport our bicyles?  Hundreds of decisions to make. 

And not a lot of time to make them.  Since the motorhome arrived two months later than promised, we didn't have the luxury of a shakedown cruise - staying in compgrounds near the dealership for a few days to pinpoint what didn't work, so we could have the service department fix any shortcomings.  Time was critical, because it was important for us to be in New England for the color changes, and the leaves wait for no one. 

So we did the best we could to make the ship ready for a long voyage.

Saturday, September 3, is launch date, if we can get it all together.  Not much sleep, up early, rushing like maniacs, loading up all our supplies and equipment, finding places for everything.  Finally, at two o'clock, we feel that we've done all we can.  Deep breaths.  Make sure everything is secure.  Stow the satellite dish.  Retract the leveling jacks.  Bring in the slideouts.

Uh .. problem.  The big slideout won't come in.  It makes feeble attempts, but I can't get it to slide into the closed position.  That will not do.  You can't drive down the highway with your bedroom and dining room sticking out into traffic.  I call the dealership, but the service department is closed, and the salesman has no solution.  Will we be stranded before we even get started?

I try everything.  It seems obvious that the available battery power isn't quite enough to do the job.  I turn on the onboard generator and plug in shore power from the home circuit.  Nothing works.  The system doesn't allow the engine to be running when you retract the slideouts, but as a last attempt I start the engine and let it run for ten minutes or so, in hopes of boosting battery charge to the max, then shut it off and run back to the controls - and the slides magically retract.  Whew!

We get through the driveway gate and hook up the tow vehicle and are on the road - although much later than planned.  We arrive at our first night's campground in Redding after dark but manage to find our assigned space.  I figure out how to hook up electricity and water.  Everything is new.  Everything is a challenge. 

With the temperature useasonably hot, we decide to head for the Oregon coast.  Nancy finds a campground near an Indian casino in Oregon as an intermediate stop.  The casino itself is not appealing, but the campground is high end - beautiful landscaping and facilities, with lots of expensive motorhomes.  Then it's on to a campground in Coos Bay, Oregon.  More often than not, it's necessary for me to run the engine for a while to boost the batteries enough to get the big slide to come in.  This is not confidence-inspiring as a permanent coast-to-coast solution.  Luckily, the dealership from which we bought the motorhome has a branch in Coburg, Oregon, which is on our proposed drive path.  The people there couldn't be nicer, and the technicians get right on the slideout problem, raising the cutout amperage feeding the slide motor, and it seems to work.  Fingers crossed.  They also dealt with a couple of other minor problems, and they let us stay on their lot overnight, hooked up to electricity, for free.

With the tension of so many uncertainties and so much to learn, up to this point the motorhome lifestyle has been as much work as fun.  We feel that we need a vacation.  So we make reservations for a couple of nights at a very nice RV park in McMinnville, Oregon - in the heart of the Willamette Valley wine country.  The only hitch is that our GPS - which is specific for motorhomes - tries to save us a few miles by sending us on a ferry.  By the time we realize what GPS girl has in store for us, we are in a long line, and we see a big truck up ahead dragging butt as he enters the ferry, sending up sparks.  This does not appeal, so we make a U-turn and take a more conventional route. 

We're now relaxing in our second day at the McMinnville campground, and we can take a deep breath.  It's swell here.  RV life is good and getting better - we think.

After the party

The story so far:

About ten years ago Nancy and I began dreaming of selling our house, buying a motorhome, and getting to know our homeland better.  By the time we had the house ready to sell, the public wasn't ready to buy, and the economy was in the toilet.  But we kept attending RV shows all over California.  The salesmen came to know our faces.  It was a little embarrassing.

One day it occurred to us that we were approaching the autumn of our years, and if we were ever going to have this adventure, it had better be soon.  So we rented our main house rather than trying to sell it, and got serious about selecting a motorhome.  About six months ago I came across a new design called the Thor Challenger 37KT.  It had a unique floor plan and an elegant dark wood interior, and both of us felt that this, finally, was the one for us.  We test drove one in Southern California at a big dealership but decided to order exactly what we wanted from a dealer closer to home. 

Our new baby arrived at the dealership in Fresno about two weeks ago.  We drove up, inspected it, gave our approval, and they started work on the extras we had ordered - a DirecTV dish that automatically finds the satellites, a satellite radio antenna, and a tow hitch and brake for our tow vehicle (a Mazda truck).

On Tuesday, August 23, 2011, we drove our Mazda pickup back to Fresno, and while they worked on the towing mechanism, we underwent a four hour session of instructions, during which I realized that I didn't know much about how to operate a modern motorhome.  But I was not disheartened.

We took delivery on Wednesday, late in the day, which made it nighttime when we arrived back in Santa Cruz County.  The prospect of driving the motorhome up our country road, let alone getting it through the narrow gate on our driveway, in the dark of night, was not appealing, so we stayed overnight at the RV lot at the Santa Cruz Elks' Lodge, of which I am a proud member.  The next morning I drove the motorhome up the steep climb past our driveway to a spot that allows large vehicles to turn around.  With Nancy down the road, waving to stop oncoming traffic, if any, I made it onto our driveway.  We rotated the mirrors to reduce our width and with the help of friends got through the gate with inches to spare. 

I'm happy to report that our dogs Tammy Faye and Sophia seemed to like their new digs.

Saturday evening was party time to introduce our new motorhome to friends and neighbors.  It was wonderful to see everybody, show off the new toy, drink a little, eat a little, and collect ideas for what to see in America. 

Since the party, we've been running like gazelles to get everything ready for takeoff on Saturday morning.  So many decisions and shall we say a few disagreements over what to take and what to leave behind.  We're both exhausted and nervous about what lies ahead.  But so excited.  Wish us luck.

Our circuit will take us up into the wine countries of Oregon and Washington, then over to Montana and Glacier National Park, down into Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, across to the Great Lakes area and into Pennsylvania, where we'll visit with Nancy's family before heading up to Maine to follow the leaf changes down through New England.  We'll travel along the East Coast to Asheville, North Carolina and Charleston, South Carolina, then across to New Orleans, through Austin and San Antonio, then Albuquerque, New Mexico, and back to California.

As we move about the country, I'll update this blog frequently and tell you about the mini-adventures we have - the interesting trailer park folk, the mechanical breakdowns, the scenic beauties, the regional food, the bizarre points of interest.  We'll do our best to post some pictures.  I'll try not to bore you with stories of how wonderful our dogs are.