Last stop: Napa Valley

Nancy and I met in Berkeley, California back in 1968, when I was stationed at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, and our first date was in Napa Valley.  At that time the area was a culinary wasteland, with few good restaurants, and it wasn't yet known as one of the great wine regions of the world.  Times have changed.

In 1976 there was a blind tasting of wines in Paris, Napa vs France, and Napa won.  Since that time the reputation of Napa wines has soared, as have their prices, and Napa Valley has also become a foodie destination.  We like going there. 

Our campground was a state park at the fairgrounds in the city of Napa, with nice big level well-maintained sites.  In most of the campgrounds we visit our rig is in the upper echelon, but here we had enormous diesel coaches on either side of us, each a million dollar unit, give or take $500,000.

Napa itself is a great little city, with lots of good restaurants.  Back in 2001 COPIA: The American Center for Wine, Food, and the Arts was established as a non-profit, with Robert Mondavi and Julia Child among the principals.  Alas, attendence didn't support the enterprise, and COPIA went bankrupt in 2008.  The buildings are still there, and it's now a site for high-priced dinners and cooking demonstrations by well-know chefs. 

We drove alongside the pretty vineyards, and explored the towns of Yountville, St. Helena, and Calistoga.  We did a wine tasting at St. Clement Vineyards, one of our favorites, and visited the architectural marval called Castello di Amorosa, built between 1995 and 2006 by Dario Sattui, the owner of V.Sattui Winery, using medieval techniques where possible, running out of money as the end was near.  One hundred seven rooms and 121,000 square feet.  As a modest fellow castle builder, I am in awe of his accomplishments and even more so at the size of his ego.  V. Sattui wines are, I believe, very good, and those produced under the Castello di Amorosa label are even better.  The photo below doesn't do the castle justice.  It's quite incredible, really.

For our last night on the trip, we had dinner at one of the great Napa Valley Restaurants, Mustard's Grill.  The fantastic grilled quail appetizer will live in our memories as long as we have any.  Highly recommended.

The next morning, back to the real world and its problems.  We arrived back in Ben Lomond to find that our tenants' hot water heater wasn't working, our own hot water heater was leaking and needing replacement, our water supply well pump was dying, our driveway gate was broken, and the pickup truck was making funny steering noises.  Welcome home!

Mendocino

One of our favorite places in the world is Mendocino, California.  The drive there in a motorhome, however, is not for the faint of heart.  We turned off Highway 101 onto the beginning of Highway 1, which rose and fell and veered left and right and rose and fell again on a long narrow road to the California coast - a video game of a drive, which we survived.

Once we reached the coast, the views, of course, were spectacular.  We pulled into a campground directly overlooking the ocean just north of Mendocino.  It had a certain seediness related to the quality of the RVs overnighting there, and that didn't meet Nancy's high campground standards .

Mendocino, a mile away, overlooking a beautiful bay, has a certain magic and is a great town to walk around in.  It has a lot of high end restaurants, high end shops, and high end lodging.  The area is also a center for high end marijuana growing, and there's a medical marijuana clinic in Mendocino, but unfortunately it doesn't accept Medicare.  We've visited Mendocino a number of times over the years and have fond memories of staying and dining in some of the charming B&Bs there, such as the MacCallum House.

We were approaching the end of our trip, and we decided to end it on a high note - which is known as the "Nancy principle" of pleasure travel - by spending a few days in Napa Valley.  The nicest way to get to Napa from Mendocino is by turning off the coastal highway onto Highway 128 and following its sometimes hair-raising twists and turns through a redwood forest and beside the rolling hills and vineyards of the lovely Anderson Valley. 

I turned our coach into the parking lot of the Navarro Winery, overlooking beautiful vine fields of red and gold, for a wine tasting.  Nancy was concerned that there was no exit strategy for a big motorhome such as ours - that we were trapped, perhaps permanently.  After a delightful tasting experience, we bought several bottles, and drove on a gravel road to the top of the hill, where the winery's trucks go, and made a U-turn, which allowed us to escape and continue making our way toward the Napa Valley. 

The Oregon Coast

The central coast of Oregon is one of the most beautiful drives anywhere in the world - rivaling or even besting Big Sur. 

 

 

We drove south from Cannon Beach and stopped in the town of Tillamook, Oregon, which is famous for its cheese factory.  There is a self-guided tour in which I was able to observe the first assembly line I've see since those I Love Lucy episodes from my youth.  This one was real.

  

We were given a view site at a great campground in Newport, Oregon, right on a beautiful marina and next door to a wonderful aquarium.  We watched the feeding of a giant octopus, who turns red with excitement when offered a fish dinner.  The aquarium is almost as impressive as the Monterey Aquarium; its display tanks aren't quite as dramatic, but it has some outdoor exhibits of aquatic animals - otters, puffins, and so on - that Monterey doesn't.

Across the city's innovatively designed arch and suspension bridge is the Nye Beach upscale tourist area, which we loved.  Appealing shops and restaurants and great views of the Pacific Ocean.

 

Further down the coast, just before we reached California, we pulled into a campground in Brookings, Oregon, right on an ocean beach.  There was a lady in the office checking her motorhome in for the night.  She told the manager that her children didn't like having RVs on either side of theirs.  The manager asked her what color her kids were.  That seemed insensitive to me, and I expressed my outrage.  Turned out that the "children" were her dogs.  Imagine my embarrassment.

Election night in Oregon

Our motorhome has a satellite dish on its roof which when a button is pushed will elevate, rotate, and tilt until it locates its satellites in the sky, so that we can receive DirecTV programming.  When we pull into a campground, we push that button and prepare to watch some quality programming.

Tuesday was election day in America.  We wanted to stay in a beautiful little Oregon beach town called Cannon City that we had passed through some years back.  There was one very nice campground there, but when Nancy called on Monday to make sure they had room for us, she asked, fortunately, about satellite TV reception and was informed that all their sites had trees overhead and couldn't access DirecTV signals.

So we stayed in a nearby town called Seaside, which had a campground that was overpriced but provided clear sightlines to the sky, and we hunkered down to watch our nation select her leader.  For us, more gripping than the Super Bowl, and arguably more important.

Nancy and I spent most of the day glued to the TV set in our RV living room, too nervous to eat.  (I wish.)  I won't reveal toward which candidate we leaned, but we slept well Tuesday night, and awoke to a beautiful Wednesday morning. 

The sun came out and we drove to Cannon City, which has an upscale beach town feel.  There are no chain stores, the sandy beach itself is spectacular, and all the shops and homes are pretty.  Nancy, Tammy Faye, Sophia, and I dropped into a shop named Puppy Love and looked for cold-weather attire.  We found haute couture raincoats for Tammy Faye and Sophia in the San Francisco Giants colors - black and orange - and were parent-proud to follow them down the streets of Cannon City.

The owner of Puppy Love said that after seven years she was ready to jump ship and leave the area, because the weather was getting her down. This year good weather didn't come to Cannon City until August, and she couldn't take it any more. For Nancy and me, it was a charming and appealing and dog-friendly place. Sophia and Tammy Faye didn't express an opinion, but I suspect they liked it, too.

The Olympic Peninsula

Even in the rain, Washington's Olympic Peninsula was incredibly beautiful, with fall colors that made you think of New England, except for fewer reds. 

Our campground was in the town of Sequim (pronounced "squim") on the northern edge of the peninsula, between the larger towns of Port Townsend and Port Angeles.  Our hosts were extremely friendly, and one of them jump started the pickup truck that we tow when we couldn't get it to turn over.  We took it to the Les Schwab store just a block away, and they changed the corroded terminals and pronounced the battery healthy.  Turned out that they didn't have a battery for our truck in stock, which may have played a part.

Nancy and I drove down to Port Townsend, which we had looked at in the past as a potential future home but at that time concluded that it was just too far from civilization and the bright lights to picture ourselves living there.  This time we thought it was absolutely charming, with lots of great shops - book stores in particular - and a number of restored older buildings.  There is a campground right in town, overlooking the water, not fancy but within easy walking distance of downtown.

We asked the locals about their favorite restaurants for lunch, and the one that came up was Sea J's Seafood Cafe, which also had the highest ratings in Trip Advisor on the internet.  It was tricky to find, a little funky, with family style tables.  Its reputation was for the best fish and chips in town, so we both ordered that, and we shared a praline milkshake, I regret to admit.  Probably the best fish and chips ever, and the milk shake was wonderful.  It was a working class cafe, and most of the customers appeared to be commercial fishermen.  Everybody was friendly.  Great local color experience.

We'd been considering spending a month at one location next year, and our visit convinced us that Port Townsend would be a perfect place to hunker down next April and get to really know the place.

Back in Sequim, we visited the Dungeness River Audobon Center, which had an extensive exhibit of stuffed flora and fauna from the area.  They also offer wild mushroom identification walks, which would have been fun if our timing had been better.  We took the dogs with us on our favorite walk of this trip - over a magnificently restored railroad bridge and on a long trail through the trees.  On the bridge we were at treeleaf level; there were very few evergreens along the way and the colors were spectacular.  Quite a beautiful scene, and the weather was relatively nice that day.

Leaving Sequim, we headed west, along the northern coast of the peninsula, then took the Olympic Highway, which led to perhaps the most beautiful mountain lake I've ever seen - Lake Crescent.  It's big and isolated, and very few houses were visible.  The water was like glass and we could see the reflections of the yellow and orange trees at water's edge on the far shore, with green-covered mountains rising on all sides.  I highly recommend it and we hope to visit it again next spring.

Visiting friends in Lakewood, Washington

Friends from medical school invited us to park our motorhome at their house at Lakewood, not far from Seattle, and stay a while.  I managed to maneuver that big boy onto their semicircular driveway, out of the way enough for them to get their cars out of the garage.  They even ran an electrical cord out to our coach.

They live in a very pretty community of nice homes on a golf course, with great landscaping in the neighborhood, with lots of maple trees, spectacular this time of year because of the leafy color changes.  It was a lovely place to walk our dogs, even though there was rain every day.  They say that they like the weather and don't mind the overcast that is almost constant for eight months of the year.  They appreciate the cool weather, coming as they do from the uncomfortable heat of Louisiana.

One night we were served fried oysters, the other night deep-fried soft shell crabs, crawfish etouffee, and apple pie with ice cream.  Louisiana-flavored southern dining at its finest.  Not exactly diet food but much appreciated.  Alcoholic beverages were served.

Our hosts showed us the towns, parks, and scenic wonders of the area.  We could almost see ourselves living in that part of the country but wondered if the weather would get us down as winter crept along.

Our host, a retired OBG, and his wife moved here a few years ago from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  We enjoyed reminiscing about the trouble he and I used to get into back at LSU Medical School.  Not all our conversation was politically correct, but no one was seriously offended by the frank expression of ideas.  It helped that we stayed away from politics and religion.

Nancy and I greatly appreciated their hospitality and kindness.

Anacortes, Washington

Our well-thought-out plan was to take our RV over to the San Juan Islands on the ferry from Anacortes, Washington and spend some time there. Several hundred dollars to transport a 37-foot motorhome and our pickup, but we'd heard great things about how beautiful it was.

But after several months without precipitation along the Washington coast, we arrived in the middle of an extended rain storm. Constant and often heavy, it was going to make it difficult to enjoy the San Juans, so we decided to stay this time on the mainland and return another day to see those islands in their full glory.

We pulled into a campground in Anacortes right on the waterfront. Across the bay we saw a marina, hills covered with trees, and a couple of industrial plants that were kind of ugly during the day but magical at night all lit up. It was a great campground, but part of the reason we stayed four nights was that the Giants were playing in the World Series on the weekend, and the 49ers had a Monday night against the Cardinals. All had positive outcomes.

 

Anacortes is an attractive, interesting town that is half ferry terminal, half tourist destination. It has great bookstores, interesting restaurants, a nice library, and a friendly vibe. One night we put on clean clothes and went to Adrift, a seafood restaurant, for great fried oysters and cioppino.

The third day we were there, the clouds parted and the sun shone through. How beautiful! We took the dogs on extended walks on the hiking/bicycling trail that went through the compground – almost to town in one direction, onto a bridge in the other. We also drove through a beautiful rain-forest-style park outside Anacortes.  We enjoyed ourselves in spite of the rain.

O Canada

Crossing over the Canadian border was relatively painless, the only difficulty being the two inch clearance for the mirrors on each side of the motorhome at the inspection booth.

We had reservations at a campground in Surrey, British Columbia, which was supposed to be just outside Vancouver.  Turned out that it was only a few hundred feet from the border.  But nice hosts.  One of them, an older gentleman, was meticulous as he directed me into position on our campsite, but so incredibly slow that I was ready to ask Nancy for assistance, which is something I never expected to consider.

Most of the other campers were Canadian.  Turned out that  Surrey is the garden spot of Canada, with less bad weather than any other region, so a lot of snowbirds park there to escape the harsh Canadian winters elsewhere.  They would go further south - to California or Arizona - but can't afford the insurance for medical care in the US.  They stay within the system.

The four of us piled into the Mazda pickup and we drove to Whistler, which is rated as one of the best ski areas in the Americas.  Quite a long drive which took up most of the day, but absolutely gorgeous scenery along the way.  And Whistler is a beauty, with great architecture and a lively feel.  Even though skiing hadn't started yet, lots of people there.  Probably a fantastic place to ski, although it apparently gets really cold during ski season, and was already quite chilly as we walked around, in late October.

Driving back, we hit rush hour Vancouver traffic - maybe the slowest crawl for the longest time that I've ever seen.

The weather hadn't been great for some time, and the rain picked up.  We decided to head back into the States.  The campground hosts suggested a different border crossing with wider lanes and less traffic.  But we were backed up for miles.  When we finally reached the crossing guard, he asked if we had any fruits or vegetables, and when we answered honestly, he directed us desperados to pull over for an inspection.  We had to place Tammy Faye and Sophia in a kennel enclosure beside the customs building while Nancy and I went inside.  We met with an agricultural officer and Nancy spilled her guts about what we had in our motorhome, including several fruits and vegetables and some nice lamb chops.  Some of the fruits and vegetables and all the lamb were confiscated by the woman, unsupervised in our motorhome, before we were allowed to proceed.  Took forever.

We felt really happy to be back in the good old USA.  Nancy was irate at having someone check out our motorhome without either of us being present.  And I miss those lamb chops, already.

Washington Wine Country

After driving along the Columbia River, with its scenic beauties, we crossed the bridge into eastern Washington, and the countryside lost its luster - a reminder that up and down the West Coast, the prettiest areas are along the coast and the coastal mountain ranges, and the inland landscapes are drier and less interesting. 

Yakima, though, was more attractive than I expected.  There are hills surrounding it, and even though they are covered by brush rather than trees, it's a more interesting look than the rest of south-central Washington. 

The Yakima Valley is one of the major Washington state wine regions.  On a drizzly day we walked into the Kana Winery tasting room in downtown Yakima and were impressed.  They concentrate on Rhone-style wines, and we especially loved their wonderful, reasonably-priced reds.  We bought their Dark Star (a mix of Rhone varietals) and a dry Reisling.

We drove a half hour to the Rattlesnake Hills wine region and toured a couple of family-run wineries there in the countryside.  Friendly people, nice tasting rooms, but the wines were disappointing.  So a lot of Washington state wines are great and some should be avoided.

Heading for the Canadian border, we drove northwest, and as we approached the Cascade Range, the rain turned to snow.  Magnificent views of snowy mountains and hills covered with trees - lush green with splashes of yellow color.  The snowfall was fairly heavy, and driving seemed a little dicey, but to be honest, on our crossing through the mountain passes we never climbed above 3000 feet, and the temperature never dropped below freezing.

Portland and the Columbia River Valley

At our campground outside Portland heavy rain tattooed our motorhome most of the day, but we wanted to explore the city, and Nancy found several activities for us. 

Powell's City of Books is one of the biggest bookstores anywhere in the world - acres inside, with new and used books mixed together - and a huge counter where people go to sell their books to the house.  I found a cheap copy of a coffee-table cookbook from La Mere Blanc which was too expensive for my blood when I dined at that Michelin three-star restaurant in France many years ago.

We walked through the Portland Museum of Art, which had a number of lesser works by famous artists - Degas, Monet, Renoir, Picasso, and others.  What I will remember most about it was the confusing layout and the difficulty we had in finding an exit.

Dinner at Gracie's Restaurant in the Hotel deLuxe was our first night out on the town since we left California.  Delicious small plates in an elegant room.  Our favorite course was Pork Belly Crostini.  Jealous?

The next morning we headed for Washington wine country, driving along the Columbia River, which is incredibly beautiful, especially with the leaf color changes at this time of year and a sprinkling of snow on the peaks.

The weather cleared, and we pulled into a lovely campground in Boardman, Oregon which was almost completely empty.  We chose a campsite overlooking the Columbia River.  There was a hiking and biking trail that followed the river, and Nancy and I mounted up and got some much needed exercise.

Oregon's Willamette Valley Wine Country

Oregon is famous for its Willamette Valley Pinot Noir wines.  Our remembrances from previous trips are that the wines are aggressively priced for what they offer.  On this visit we confirmed those impressions.

Unlike the two wineries in southern Oregon we sampled earlier, those in Willamette Valley have high tasting fees - around $15 in many cases - and the wine offerings are heavily weighted toward Pinot Noir.  After learning that we live in the Santa Cruz area, the pouring technician at Bethel Heights Vineyard told us that the founder of Bonny Doon Vineyard, Randall Graham, had been a mentor of theirs and was important in the early years of getting their enterprise on its feet.  They had very fond memories of him.  Small world.  The cost of the Pinot Noir we purchased there?  Fifty bucks.  Ouch!  And to be honest, it was good, but not memorable.

At our campground we asked if there were any wineries in the area with more drinker-friendly prices.  They recommended the nearby Stoller Family Estate.  It's a majestic place, its rolling hills covered with lush vines, its tasting room beautifully designed and expensively executed.  The wines?  Very nice.  We bought a dry Reisling and their flagship Pinot Noir.

Back at the campround, we sauteed a couple of Walmart filet mignons, served with a shallot pan sauce, and opened a bottle of Pinot Noir from the Santa Cruz Mountains to see how it compared with the local product.  We liked it better than any of the Oregon Pinots we'd tasted.  I think we in California prefer more powerful, fruit-forward red wines; that's what we're used to.  Matter of personal taste.  Maybe a more sophisticated palate than ours would lean more toward the Oregon style.

Fall 2012 Trip to the Pacific Northwest

After a one month coachwork repair delay resulting from a regrettable operator error, Nancy and I and our kids Tammy Faye and Sophia headed north in mid October to have a look at Oregon, Washington, and southern British Columbia.

We had a full gas tank as we left Ben Lomond, and at around seven and a half miles per gallon, we hoped to reach the promised land of cheaper gas before having to refill.  On the second day, running on fumes, ignoring the "low fuel level" messages on the dash, we passed the Oregon border and found a gas station at $4.08 a gallon for regular, much better than the $4.70 at home.  If we had run out of gas, it would have been entertaining for a reader of this blog, but unpleasant for the heroes of the story.

The fillup cost $270.  With our nearly dry tank, I was looking for a milestone of $300 but will have to wait until the oil producers jack up their prices even higher.

One of the favorite campgrounds of our big trip all around the country last year was the Seven Feathers RV Resort.  It's near a casino in southern Oregon, but its charm is in the quality of its landscaping and the beauty of the area.  We were there for three days and used the time to reacquaint ourselves with trailer park life, to watch some important bay area sports programming on TV, and to check out some attractions in the area.

We drove our pickup truck, which we tow behind our motorhome, through the Wildlife Safari Park in nearby Winston, Oregon.  We saw elephants, zebras, lions, tigers, cheetahs, giraffes, ostriches, bison, and bears in something similar to their natural habitats.  The park has an impressive cheetah breeding program.

We also visited two wineries in the Umpqua wine region - Tesoaria and Hillcrest.  Charming someliers, decent wines, and we bought a bottle at each tasting room.  A young man sampling the wines next to us at Hillcrest Winery mentioned that he was from the area, worked on an oil rig in the Gulf, and liked to hunt.  His most unusual kill was a cougar, for which Oregon issues licenses, because they are not endangered.  He said it tastes like pork.  Along the way he also mentioned that after a lifetime of not eating pork, he finally tasted bacon, and loved it.  I asked why he hadn't eaten pork before that, and he said that it was a religious thing.  Let's see - an oil rig worker who hunts - Jews and Muslims are probably not well represented in that demographic.  But we'll never know, because Nancy and I were too polite to pry.  Damn.

Tahoe

Back into beautiful California, heading for Truckee in the Sierra Tahoe ski region.  For the first time on our trip, the weather turned cold, and we even wore sweaters and jackets.

We arrived at Coachland RV Park and pulled into our assigned site, but our roof satellite dish was unable to see the DirecTV satellites, because of pesky tree limbs in the way.  I was pretty sure that if we moved to an empty site just a few spaces down, we'd be able to pull in DirecTV signals perfectly.  (Some might say that camping and television don't go together, but we disagree.)  I went to the campground office to see if we could move, but the host lady said, "No!"  When I asked why, she said that somebody else had been assigned that spot.  I suggested that they could take our site, but she said, loudly and angrily, "SIR, I'm trying to work out another problem.  You'll have to wait."

A half hour later I returned to see if we would be allowed to move.  She said, "SIR, I don't have time to switch you around."  I said to her, "THIS is why your internet reviews weren't so good."  She said, "That's right.  Sometimes we get busy."

About fifteen minutes later Nancy's cell phone rings.  The woman was very apologetic, probably relieved not to have to deal with me, and told Nancy that we could move - which we did, after which our DirecTV reception was perfect.

A male staff member dropped by and told us he hoped we weren't upset about the unpleasantness.  I told him, "I know the lady was frazzled, but I have one customer service suggestion for her: Soft voice." 

"She's my wife," he said, "and I don't think she can do a soft voice."  My sympathies.

Years ago we used to ski at Squaw Valley, Alpine Meadows, and Northstar and were curious as to how much they'd changed.  Alpine Meadows was shut down for the offseason, road access blocked.  Northstar had seen heavy construction of residences and condos, plus an expansion of the village, and the ski lift we remembered at the base had become a gondolo.  We didn't see a lot of new housing at Squaw Valley, and the village looked much the same.

Squaw Village

We had both thought that life could be sweet living year round in a condo on the slopes.  This trip taught us that it would be impractical.  Ski villages are mostly deserted outside of winter, and we found out that year round residents at Squaw number only around 300.  So it would be difficult to feel a part of the community.  Too lonely, except for interaction with tourists.

We drove to Tahoe City, which was hosting a wine tour that weekend.  Views of the lake were amazing.  We hiked a recently completed trail along the water.

Of course Truckee is a charming town.  On Sunday they were advertising a chili cookoff, which we attended.  Lots of different versions, all of them tasty.

What a great trip this has been!  The four of us give it two thumbs and two tails up.  As unreliable as our motorhome was last fall, it was a paragon of consistency this time.  We're already looking forward to a fall trip to Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.

Reno

Our campground in Reno was one of the best of our trip - wide sites, concrete pads for the motorhome, nice green lawn which turned out on further inspection to be good quality astroturf.

The National Automobile Museum in Reno is among the best in the world.  It was established by Bill Harrah, one of the pioneers of Nevada gaming.  His collection is extensive and the quality of the restorations is remarkable.

When I first met Nancy, she owned a red Volkswagen bug convertible, exactly like this one that we saw at the museum.

My birthday was on Thursday.  We had brought from Ben Lomond a fine and expensive bottle of wine - a Merryvale Cabernet from 1997 (Napa's greatest year ever) - in anticipation of using it to celebrate the occasion at an upscale restaurant.  There was some concern that it might have deteriorated by being tossed around in the motorhome the past two months, but we were determined to enjoy it no matter what.

The next step was to choose a restaurant worthy of myself.  We drove around, auditioning several of the better casinos, and settled on the elegant Atlantis Steakhouse at the Atlantis Casino Resort.  The wine had not gone south but didn't blow us away, either.  We had a nice meal; the Oysters Rockefeller were excellent, and the steaks were good but to be honest not the match of the ribeye steak we had cooked for ourselves in Basalt.  But the ambiance was nice, the servers were great, there was meat left over for the next evening, and we enjoyed the evening immensely.

After dinner the Atlantis blackjack tables were calling to me, and I decided to risk $21 at a $3 minimum table.  After 45 minutes I was about $25 dollars ahead.  Nancy was concerned that our doggy bags might be going bad, so I cashed in, and we left.

Doing the math, I realized that I could make a good living by moving to Reno and playing blackjack five or six days a week.  If I bet $10 instead of $3 dollars a hand and played eight hours a day instead of 45 minutes and had the same success, that would be an extra $23,000 a month.  I'll have to recheck my logic before trying to talk Nancy into making the move, however.

Salt Lake City

Salt Lake City, founded by Brigham Young in 1846, is the capital of Utah and the headquarters of the Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints - but currently slightly less than 50% of its residents are Mormons.  Surrounded by mountains, SLC's air is a little polluted, as seen from a distance, but it's a well kept up city with trees everywhere.

Nancy and I drove to the Salt Lake Temple but were not allowed to enter it on account on not being members.  We wandered around the beautiful grounds. 

Nancy discussed the Mormon religion with a gentleman volunteer and learned, among many other fascinating facts, that if you are married in a temple, the marriage is consecrated both on Earth and in heaven.  But if you marry in a chapel, the marriage is only official for your time on Earth, and you're not guaranteed to be with your spouse through eternity.

One of the buildings at Temple Square is the Family Tree Center.  It's a wonderful resource for anyone wishing to research his or her ancestry.  The church has collected and maintained geneological data for the United States and all over the world for more than one hundred years.  This must be the largest such collection of documents anywhere.  What's remarkable is that anyone can go into the center and watch a brief movie, and then a voluteer will direct you to a huge room full of computers and assist you in looking into your past.  I found that I am a descendant of kings and knaves, but Nancy comes from a long line of investment bankers and hedge fund managers.

Leaving Salt Lake City, we passed the beautiful big lake from which the city gets its name.  Then there were vast fields of white on both sides of the road for mile after mile.  Finally we pulled into a rest stop and a sign informed us that we were at the Bonneville Salt Flats, where most of the world's land speed records have been set.  The course is about seven miles from our vantage point, near the distant mountain range; it is ten miles in length, 80 feet wide, with a black stripe down the middle.

The salt flats are what is left of the ancient Bonneville Lake, which became isolated and slowly evaporated, leaving perfectly flat plains of salt.  I wandered out onto the flats and felt compelled to confirm that the surface on which I and many others had walked was indeed salty.

Park City

Park City, Utah, less than an hour away from Salt Lake City, is home to three ski resorts and near several others.  The Sundance Institute, founded by Robert Redford, is located there and presents the largest festival of independent films in January each year.  Many of the events at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games were contested in the Park City area.  The area is lush and green and looks like Colorado.

Our RV park, a pretty one, was a few miles from the town center.  We went hiking behind it, climbing hills for a panoramic view.  Here you see our campground in the foreground and the ski jump area from the Olympic games in the background.

Park City's Main Street is the longest and best street I've seen at the base of a ski area.  Lots of restaurants and shops, some of them quite upscale. 

We took the beautiful drive up to the Deer Park skiing area.  To get to the restaurants at the St. Regis Hotel, you climb aboard the funicular - a mechanism similar to the cable car at the Shadowbrook in Capitola but much grander - which takes you to the top.  There are several dining venues, all of them beautifully designed, and the executive chef is the famed Jean-George Vongerichten.  The staff is very friendly and low key for such an elegant establishment.  However, the menu was somewhat limited during the current offseason, so we passed.

We also drove to the Snowbird skiing area, about an hour away, where I once attended a medical conference, and happened to show up during a "brewfest", with good live music and the opportunity to sample a bunch of local beers.  It's an absolutely stunning area, but as Nancy said and I remembered, the lodging looks like something built in the Soviet Union.

Dinosaur Country

At the midpoint of the road between Steamboat Springs and Salt Lake City is Vernal, Utah, which is the gateway to the Dinosaur National Monument.  We stayed at the Dinosaurland KOA, which was fairly nice, but that may have been the narrowest campsite at which we've ever parked our motorhome. 

Utah is the world's most important site of dinosaur bones from the Jurassic geologic period.  Nancy and I visited the Utah Field House of Natural History (a dinosaur museum) in downtown Vernal, which reminded us of the amazingly brief time we humans have been on the scene (between 100,000 and 200,000 years) compared to the reign of the dinosaurs (around 135 million years) and especially compared to the age of the Earth (about 4.5 billion years).  There were dinosaur bones and full size models and all sorts of exhibits explaining the collection of specimens, the kinds of dinosaurs common to the area, and other fun dinosaur facts.

My interest in dinosaurs is greater than Nancy's, so I took a solo trip to Dinosaur National Monument, about 30 miles away.  A tram carried me and the other visitors to the Quarry Exhibit Hall, which houses a quarry wall about 150 feet long still containing a huge number of visible dinosaur bones.  I suppose that the scientists had found so many bones there that leaving some for tourists to see was no hardship.

Just down the road from the Exhibit Hall I took a hiking trail, about two miles total in length, where there were embedded in the rock face a few dinosaur bones visible to an observant eye.  The weather was quite hot.  A sign recommended that you carry a quart of water with you and notify someone of your hiking plans, but the path wasn't really long enough to get a prime specimen like myself in trouble.

Steamboat Springs

The route we had planned on taking to Steamboat Springs, Colorado - the scenic mountain drive along Hwy 14 - was closed because of the forest fire that had darkened the sky over Fort Collins.  On the national news it was now being called the High Park fire, and the experts were telling us that it was caused by a lightning strike (the storm that passed over us) in an area where almost half the trees were dead from that pine beetle infestation I mentioned previously.

We detoured north into Wyoming, which looked like Western movie country, then west across the southern part of the state, and eventually back south into Colorado, fighting heavy crosswinds for most of the day.

Steamboat Springs is a pretty town adjoining a major ski area, whose top runs are visible from downtown.  It's another of those friendly, low key Colorado places where everybody is healthy and nobody is fat.  We had great shrimp po-boys for lunch one day at a restaurant with tables outside overlooking the river.

It's a scenic area, and Nancy and I took a few hikes.  One of them took us to Fish Creek Falls. 

We drove up to Steamboat Ski Resort, which was pretty much deserted at this time of year. 

Nancy and I always check out property values everywhere we go, particularly if it's a place we like.  I took a tour of an open house - Nancy is always too embarrassed to waste the salesman's time - in an upscale development.  Five thousand square feet, five bedrooms, big but not exactly a stunner, in my opinion - $2.5M.  But we also saw condos on the slopes advertised for sale for under $200,000.  So I think there are bargains to be had.

Fort Collins

Fort Collins is high on every list I've seen of the best retirement cities, so we wanted to see how we liked it.  On a flat plain, it's surrounded by mountains in the distance but doesn't have the transcendent physical beauty of some other towns in Colorado.  And because of rapid expansion, the traffic situation isn't ideal.

What Fort Collins does have is one of the great downtown social scenes anywhere.  Partly that's because the sidewalks are extremely wide, and just about all the restaurants have European-style outdoor dining areas.  On the Friday night we visited, there was a great mix of young and old, several musical groups played, and we felt a wonderful vibe.

Our KOA campground was a good one, well kept up, with large sites and a lot of amenities.  Everybody was friendly, and we had a delightful evening with a nice couple from Florida Nancy had invited over for appetizers and deep conversation.  There was a big lake which was fun to walk around with our dogs.

Tammy Faye and Sophia especially enjoyed trying to chase after the numerous rabbits on site.  We maintained a firm grip on their leashes, although I wonder how much danger their prey would have been in had they broken free.  By the way, I don't think I've ever before seen our girls so happy as on this trip.

Fort Collins is about an hour away from Estes Park, the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park.  We left the dogs in air-conditioned comfort and drove our pickup truck up the mountain to see the sights.  The landscapes were beautiful, but disturbing because of so many dead and dying trees.  In fact, that had been a familiar sight, particularly when we passed Vail some days earlier.  It's apparently a beetle infestation, aggravated by the drought Colorado is experiencing, which weakens the trees' resistance, and the usually warm winter, which allowed the beetles to flourish. 

As we neared the treeline - the altitude at which trees become sparce and then disappear - we encountered a "million dollar highway" situation.  No shoulders, no guardrails, no hope if a wheel goes a few inches past the white line.  Dizzying to look over the edge and imagine yourself tumbling down the vertical face.  Would your vehicle burst into flames when you hit bottom?

Nancy began feeling a little queasy.  Then she closed her eyes and said she didn't want to go any higher.  At one point she told me to pull over and let her out and she would wait for me to come back down.  For some reason I got the giggles, probably because of high altitude cerebral edema; at least that's my story.  I finally pulled over at a view site at nearly 12,000 feet elevation, and we joined some other tourists walking along a path to a promontory overlooking a spectacular view of snow-covered mountains.  Nancy had taken offense and didn't want to be within ten feet of me.  Finally she called me over, asked for the camera, and said, "Why don't you climb over there where those fellows are sitting on that high rock at the edge of the cliff, and I'll take your picture." 

I realized that this was a half-hearted attempt to send me to my death, but didn't take offense, and started on my mission.  Nancy told the guy next to her, "I should have asked him for the keys before he headed out."

I think she started feeling bad about her homicidal gesture and called to me to come back, but as is well known, I don't always have good sense, so I kept going, gingerly climbed up the rock, stood up, looked over the abyss, and scrambled back down.

Safely back at our campground, interpersonal relations more amicable, we experienced a remarkable light show that night when we stepped outside.  There was almost constant lightning all around us - but no thunder.  It was eerie and exciting, and it went on and on.  The storms must have been far, far away, even though they seemed very close.

The next afternoon the sky darkened, and we learned that there was a fire in the mountains about fifteen miles away, with no immediate hope of containment.  I'm sure that the unseasonably hot weather was a factor, and possibly the lightning storm from last night that had eventually moved through.  Toward evening we observed the terrible beauty of a sunset seen through the smoke of that nearby forest fire.

Boulder

Statistically, Colorado is the least obese state in the union, and Boulder, Colorado is the least obese city.  It may be the most physically active place in America, with the fittest people.  What, you may ask, were Nancy and I doing there, other than messing up their statistics?

Always looking to save a buck, I had located on the internet an Elks Lodge (I am a proud Elk!) which one web site said had services for RV's, on the outskirts of Boulder.  When we pulled into the parking lot, we saw hundreds of Hispanic young people all dressed up - not the usual Elks demographic.  A bit of searching led us to an area in back where there were electrical and water hookups, and no other campers.  After setting our motorhome up, I went looking for an Elk official, to make our visit legal, but there were none around; they had rented the facility that evening for a huge Quinceanera party. 

We remembered a great downtown pedestrian mall - Pearl Street - from a previous visit.  It's a big, wide, tree-lined boulevard of several blocks, with interesting restaurants and shops on both sides, and room in the center for a variety of street performers.  We spent at least a half hour watching a guy doing comedy, juggling, and unicycle riding, impressed by his ability to draw a crowd and extract money from it. 

What I'll always remember in the future about Boulder is the incredible number of bicyclists, all of them young and slim and dressed for the Tour de France.  Colorado in general has unbelievably extensive bike paths, and Boulder is an extreme case.  Nancy asked someone where they keep their old, fat people, and the answer was that backsliders feel uncomfortable and move out.

An artist friend of Nancy's had recommended the Leanin' Tree Museum - the best collection of Western art - cowboys and  Indians and landscapes - I've ever seen.  There were many magnificent large sculptures outside, and wonderful paintings inside.  Don't miss this museum if you ever go to Boulder.

I also visited the National Center for Atmospheric Research, just outside Boulder, set against dramatic stone hills.  The impressive facility was designed by famous architect I.M. Pei, who camped out in the area before deciding how best to integrate it into its environment.  Inside were exhibits describing the current status of climate research.  In the basement was a room full of supercomputers working on computer simulations attempting to predict future climate changes.

On our last morning in Boulder I assigned Nancy a mission: to find, in this temple of health and fitness, a doughnut for my breakfast.  She drove around for at least an hour, asking people where she might find a Winchell's, a Krispy Kreme, a Dunkin' Donuts.  No luck.  Finally, she spotted a chocolate glazed for me in a Safeways Grocery Store. 

Pretty good doughnut.

Aspen and Basalt

Almost forty years ago, when Nancy and I were young squirts, we had a tiny class A motorhome, and a couple of times in the winter we drove it to the Aspen ski area. At that time there was only one RV park with electricity anywhere close to Aspen, and we stayed there. The walls of that primitive camper were paper thin, and it got so cold at night that the furnace pilot light would go out, and we had to negotiate every morning as to who was going to get up and relight it.

All these years later, and that RV park is still the only one in the area with services. It didn't look much different to us.   If improvements had been made, they were too subtle for us to identify.  The campsites and driveways were still gravel, not concrete. There were a few high end motorhomes parked there, but most of the residents were permanent, living in trailers that had seen better days.

We had wonderful memories of Aspen when we were young and hoped we would still love it.  Back then Aspen was the jewel of American skiing, with great restaurants, upscale shops, and an aura of money and class. Even so, we peons had felt comfortable there. Everybody seemed friendly and the snootiness factor was low. We remembered several fabulous restaurants fondly – the Ute City Bank, the Copper Kettle, and especially the Parlor Car Restaurant, which consisted of several railroad cars on a siding, with Victorian decor, private dining rooms, and haute cuisine.

Driving into Aspen, everything looked familiar, but altered. Two wide downtown pedestrian streets were still there, but the trees were much taller than we remembered.

What had been the Ute City Bank restaurant was now a Burberry clothing store.  The shops looked new money instead of old money and didn't seem as classy or charming as before – or maybe we were just nostalgic for what had seemed so magical in our youthful experiences there.

At a tourist information kiosk we asked a lady about the restaurants we had loved. She said, “Believe it or not, I worked as a prep cook at the Parlor Car and the Ute City Bank many years ago.  They're all gone now."  We couldn't find the row of colorful Victorian houses that we remembered.  They've probably been torn down.  Okay, enough senior whining.  Aspen is still a beautiful, picturesque town at the base of the Ajax Mountain ski area. 

One shop that was still there was the Butcher Block, which features overpriced but delicious meat and gourmet items.  We splurged on a rib eye steak and grilled it that night, and it was so good that we didn't share it with the dogs.

Another memory I have from those days is trying and failing to find a Benedictine monastery outside Aspen.  This time I got good directions, and we drove through wonderful landscapes until we reached a modest group of buildings at the base of a magnificent mountain range.  Unfortunately, we didn't see any monks and simply explored the areas in which we were allowed, including a gift shop run on the honor system.

Back at our campground, at the fifth-wheeler parked next to us, we said hello to two couples a bit younger than us - a Canadian man and his Australian wife, and friends of hers from when she lived in Australia.  In the course of a spirited political discussion, the Canadian told me that when Obama delayed the pipeline for a year, his prime minister, Stephen Harper, told the US to screw itself; they were going to sell their oil to China.  I told him that they'd better be careful about going to bed with China; China would try to take over their country and we might not save them. 

I figured that with that promising start, international relations had been dealt a fatal blow - but in the meantime Nancy had asked the others over to our motorhome for a drink before dinner.  The three Australians joined us while my debate opponent remained on the phone with urgent business.  By coincidence, in the refrigerator we had an Australian sweet wine to serve our guests.  We learned all about the great things to see in Australia, and Nancy and I were assured (probably incorrectly) that Australia would be delighted to take us in if we ever wanted to move there.  By the time we exchanged pledges to visit each other, it was ten o'clock, they hadn't eaten dinner, and I suspect the Canadian was fuming.  Unfortunate.

Our campground, by the way, was in the town of Basalt, about fifteen miles from Aspen.  There wasn't much to Basalt when we visited all those years ago, but it's now a charming little village, with several excellent restaurants, cool shops on a pretty main street, and the best modern public library I've ever seen.  A Whole Foods Market is just a couple of miles away, in an adjacent town.  Nancy and I added Basalt to a list of places we might consider if we we're ever run out of Ben Lomond.  In fact, we've talked about possibly returning to our Basalt campground this winter, in February or March, to get back into skiing and see how well we would tolerate the seriously cold weather.

Colorado Wine Country

Stowing our gear inside, disconnecting from water and power, hooking up the pickup truck for towing - everything went so smoothly that Nancy said, as we pulled out from our campsite in Ouray, "Don't want to get cocky, but we're really getting good at this." Thirty seconds later, when we pulled onto the road, a bumpy maneuver at that campground, one of the sliding doors between living area and kitchen jumped open and couldn't be retracted. It turned out that a screw which holds the track in place had never been seated properly, and I had to figure out how to remove the sliding door, sink the screw, and return the door to its track. So we continue to have a problem now and then, but truthfully we're delighted that on this trip they've all been minor and owner-correctable.

Colorado isn't considered a wine mecca, but there are now around one hundred wineries in the state. One of the most prominent winemaking areas is along the western Rocky Mountains. On the way to Aspen we stayed over the Memorial Day weekend at a state park near Palisade, near the center of wine country. It was an attractive campground, surrounded by impressive sandstone cliffs. Families were out for the holiday weekend. The weather was beautiful. Ah, Colorado.

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We drove into the town of Palisade and stopped at a liqour store, thinking, who better to advise us as to which wineries to visit.  The clerk didn't seem to know, but a lady customer who looked like someone who had sampled a few bottles over the years gave us a couple of names.

One of the recommended wineries was some miles out of town, past manicured fields of grapes and pretty fields of peach and apple trees. The other tasting room was a two-winery showcase in town. Our impression of the wines we tasted was that the usual varietals – chardonnay, merlot, and so on – were perfectly okay but nothing special. They also offered a number of fruit wines, and I enjoyed some of them more than I expected to. The lavender wine, however, was not a favorite of Nancy's; she detected notes of soap and potpourri.

A bartender/owner of a restaurant in Ouray had told us, when he learned we were from California, that we shouldn't expect good wines from the Palisade area, because the vines were too young, and that for a quality alcoholic beverage we should go to a brewery instead. For lunch we dropped in to a Palisade brew house and sampled some excellent local beer with our sandwiches.

Life in Ouray

We loved being in Ouray, and spent six days there, the most we've stayed in one place in our motorhome.  It was exhilarating to be in that clear thin air and to look up at the beautiful green mountains surrounding us, some still with snow on top.  The downtown, just a few blocks from our campground, has a nice feel to it.  There are several restaurants, a bookstore, a grocery, a little hardware store.  Small town America, friendly people.  Ouray is a tourist destination, but the nearest ski area is Telluride, some miles away, so it's low key and unpretentious, and it made us happy.  We could almost imagine ourselves living there, except that it might be a little too isolated.

Ouray has a number of hiking trails.  Nancy and I took one to the impressive Box Canyon Falls.  The next day I decided I could do the Ouray Perimeter Trail, a four mile hike all the way around the outskirts of the town.  Nancy declined the oppportunity.  The trail began with a long run of railroad tie steps going up, up, up the mountain opposite the Visitors' Center.

A dirt trail then continued the upward tradition.  At over 8000 feet elevation, I got short of breath and even a little dizzy and had to stop often to catch my breath.

I kept on trucking and eventually reached a beautiful waterful on the side of the mountain.

The Perimeter Trail was a spectacular two and a half hour experience, and the young couple from Kansas City with whom I shared part of the hike were impressed that a man of my longevity had survived it.

Later, walking our dogs in the permanent resident section of our Ouray campground, we passed a red double-wide trailer, from which a woman emerged.

"That little dog of yours brought a tear to my eye," she said. "I've never seen one that's such a spitting image of the Shih Tzu we buried in our back yard. I loved him so much that we tried to find one just like him. Come on back here and let me show you."

I wasn't sure if she had a photo or a statue or had had her dog stuffed. It turned out to be a little live dog that had the exact coloration of Sophia - pure white and golden tan. But this one was hyperactive, straining against the leash to be pals with out dogs, and the woman admitted that she had bought him because he looked so much like her previous dog, and his personality didn't turn out to be what she had hoped for. There's a lesson in there for all of us.

Nancy and I drove about an hour to Telluride, a ski area in a magnificent setting that we had visited many years back, at a time when most of the sidewalks on the main drag were wooden boards.  Telluride has changed a lot, naturally, and the real estate prices had soared when it became a trendy destination.  But it was surprisingly recognizable, and we found the condominium we had stayed in all those years ago.  We did feel that the people in the shops were efficient but overall not as warm as those in Ouray and the rest of Colorado, probably an effect of tourism.

Back in Ouray, the winds picked up and almost seemed hurricane-like for a couple of days.  The weather service reported gusts of 60 mph.  Our motorhome was literally rocking at times.  Sophia was almost blown over as she took a dump.  (Sophia is a dog, for those not familiar with our family situation.)

Million Dollar Highway to Ouray

When we told people at our campground in Durango that we were going to be driving our rig over the mountains to Ouray, Colorado, they said, "Are you sure you want to do that?"  That road has a reputation as one of the most frightening drives in America.  We were told that it's a narrow two lane highway, with no shoulders, no guard rails, switchbacks, and dropoffs which if taken send you straight to eternity. 

But, I thought, how bad can it be?  In fact, I'm pretty sure that Nancy and I drove it forty years ago in the little motorhome we had back then, without incident.  Not far out of Durango, heading north, the road narrowed, and the edges sloped away to nothing, but it didn't seem too bad.  Most likely the dangers had been overstated.  I asked Nancy, "Are you skeered?"

"No", she said, "but if a fly starts buzzing around, I'm not handing you the flyswatter."  She was remembering some erratic driving last year when I tried to terminate a pesky insect loose in the motorhome at 60 miles an hour.

Then we reached Silverton, an old mining town halfway to Ouray.  And the road - the so-called Million Dollar Highway - became more treacherous - narrower, with near vertical cliffs falling away just past the outer edge of our lane.  Nancy said that she had to stop herself from looking down, because she was getting dizzy and a little nauseated.  It wasn't so bad for me, the driver, near the center line, but at one point there was road work, down to a single lane, and I had cold chills as I looked down the precipice to my left, no more than a foot between us and a plunge to the river a thousand feet below.

Then the switchbacks began.  At one point there were four of them linked together.  Many were so sharp that it was difficult to keep the motorhome and towed vehicle within the lines, and once the back end of a big truck approaching us was in our lane.

Three times we climbed above 10,000 feet in elevation, and once above 11,000 feet.  This is where we had a motorhome lunch at one of those mountain passes.

I was proud of our engine.  It was noisy going uphill, and many times we were limited to 25 miles an hour, but it never faltered, never overheated, never exploded. 

Finally we headed down into Ouray, a beautiful little town in the prettiest natural setting I've ever seen. 

Our campground was just a few blocks from the main drag.  We took the dogs for a walk into town and were charmed by the small town atmosphere - the warmth and friendliness of the people, the cute stores and shops, the magnificent vistas. 

Ouray is at 7792 feet elevation, which means that you get a little short of breath as you walk uphill, but it also gives you a quite wonderful clarity of vision.  It's as if the mountains and everything else are in high definition.

Hiking back to our motorhome, a little boy in an upstairs window of the RV park office dropped his pants and mooned us, and he repeated the performance for each car that drove past.  Nancy considered telling the campground owner, but I was hesitant to restrict the artistic expression of a young person.

I don't have a photo of that incident.

Durango and Mesa Verde

Queen of the Trailer Park

On the road from Moab, Utah to Durango, Colorado the wind was incredible, tossing the motorhome around and raising dust clouds that made the distant mountains hazy.  But Durango was flawless - lush and green and surrounded by pretty hills, and we stayed there a few days at a pleasant RV park a few miles out of town. 




Queen of the Trailer Park washing the Princess

The second day in Durango we left our dogs in the motorhome, air-conditioning turned on for their comfort, and drove in our little pickup truck to Mesa Verde National Park, about an hour and a half away.  I have a vague memory of visiting the well preserved cliff dwellings there with my parents when I was a kid, and loving it.  The drive from the flat valley floor to the Visitors Center was an extreme upgrade but beautiful.  We bought tickets for a guided tour of Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwelling community in the park - and in fact, the largest in the US.  A park ranger gave our group a safety talk and then led us down a challenging series of steep steps to the level of the cliff houses.  Not everyone enjoyed the descent.

The ranger told us that the native Americans called Anasazi lived at Mesa Verde from 600 AD to around 1300, and transitioned from hunter-gatherers to an agricultural society.  They most likely settled there because of good spring water, and on the plateau above the dwellings, they farmed corn, squash, yucca, and other crops.  They abandoned Mesa Verde, probably for better opportunities, after a twenty-year drought.

Back in town, we attended "A Taste of Durango".  Durango has a number of fine restaurants, and many of them had booths on Main Street. 

After mingling with the young hardbodies at the event, we decided to hang with the older, fatter citizens - our people - at the local Walmart, to stock up for the road.

Durango was fabulous.  Colorado looks like our kind of state.