The MoHo and Other Traveling Tales

3 AM thoughts…and back to the Valley of Fire

I am listening to the sound of rain on the roof at the moment, around 3:30 am I think, and with sleep deciding to take a holiday around 2, I decided it might be a good time to catch up on things. We are parked at the lovely Fort Stevens State Park, on the far north Oregon coast near Astoria, in one of only two open loops, and our rig is just steps from the showers. To spare the sleeping Mo, I slipped over to the unlimited hot water for a very long shower before settling in with computer and tea to remember how it felt back in Nevada just 8 days ago.

While we were traveling in Las Vegas, I didn’t have my computer or camera with me, and of course, didn’t take time to read all the blogs I try to follow. Sometimes when I let the reading slip, I get a little bit worried about folks. What if I miss something truly earth shattering that has happened to someone I care about, even though I may have never met them? I know this is a bit silly, but then it happened again. A distant blog friend experienced a life changing moment and I missed it. It is their life and their story, so I won’t link to it here, but if you know Sherry and David you might want to be sure to check in and send good thoughts.

Blogging is a personal hobby, reading blogs has been a diversion that I enjoy, but we all know it doesn’t require the kind of commitment that up front, real life friendships require. It is somehow ephemeral, and when we slip away for a time, the world doesn’t end. At least not usually.

So when I slip away from writing, I have learned to at least try my best to catch up on my reading. I would hate to jabber away on some stupidity, all lalala about whatever is going on at the moment, completely ignoring that someone is seriously ill, or has lost their life-time pet, or worst of all, their life. Yeah, this blog is all about me, but somehow things shift a bit, and it is also about my interaction with readers as well. After all, all those comments and all those hits mean I am no longer in this thing alone. Just one of those 3am thoughts, I guess.

Now, here in the darkness of a rainy night, I will slip back into the photos of our day at the Valley of Fire more than a week ago, and remember.

Our second night at the Main Street Station was fabulous. We were moved down to the 4th floor, without the expansive views of our first night, but with only the tolerable white noise of the big fans on the casino roof just below us. We were also blessedly on a non smoking floor. To bed by 2am or so, we slept on the perfectly firm bed with a cushy top, snuggled up by a great comforter and several different kinds of pillows, soft to very fat. Take your pick.

Sunday morning we ambled down around 10 to enjoy one of the best Sunday brunches in Las Vegas, or so it said. It was wonderful, 8.95 each for an amazing spread, including unlimited pourings of champagne, with or without the orange juice. Our waitress was diligent in keeping our coffee and our champagne glasses full. The choices were just about limitless, but we did manage to keep our meal somewhat reasonable in size, picking and choosing among our favorites. Everything was scrumptious.

After that leisurely breakfast, it was time to get out of town and see the desert. The last time we were in the area, we went to Laughlin, and we also have been west of town in the Red Rocks area, and thought it might be nice to try something different. A quick check of Google maps on the phone showed the route east to Valley of Fire was a simple turn north from our Main Street location to I-15, and another simple 20 miles or so to the turn toward Lake Mead.

The desert was incredibly gorgeous on that Sunday, with brilliant skies made even more beautiful with wild clouds that threatened rain, although it never actually fell. Our first view of the Valley of Fire was lovely, but if you only pass by on the highway and maybe stop in at the visitor center, you could miss the full effect of this remnant of the Colorado Plateau. I am a red rock canyon country junkie, and had no idea there was a piece of red heaven this far south.

The visitor center was a great stop, with wonderful displays explaining the complex geology and faulting of the area. I saw familiar names that I carry in my heart, Chinle, Moenkopi, Navajo, names of the sandstone formations I am so familiar with farther north. Here, the Apache sandstone overlies Chinle, pink and yellow as well as red, a rainbow of hues that seemed especially surreal in the late afternoon light.

We drove north into the park toward the White Dome area, where I found a trail leading down a canyon and across slickrock that looked like pastel watercolors. Again, only the iPhone to try to capture that color, but Mo had her Fuji mini camera as well, and took a few shots while I was running around oohing and aahing at the amazing color and formations.

We checked out the campground as well, 30 bucks a night for hookups, with several spaces big enough for two or three rigs with unobstructed views of the desert beyond. There were plenty of vacancies, and we added this spot to our list of places that we might like to camp someday. It would be great to just hang out here and have time to wander among the rock formations.

We took a circular route back, traveling east toward Lake Mead and then along the North Shore road into North Las Vegas. The drive was so much fun in the little Fiat, and the gorgeous sunset over the lights of Las Vegas as we dropped back into the valley was the perfect finale.

The next morning, Monday, we explored our own casino a bit more. The one thing we didn’t like about Main Street Station was the lack of simple restaurants. We only had the big buffet and the fancy restaurant and brewery, but no place to get a morning cup of coffee, not even a pot in the room to brew tea! As we were leaving, we discovered that the Main Street Station is linked with a closed skywalk to the California casino across the street, and there were half a dozen different venues, just steps away from our room that included espresso and bakeries, little coffee shops, and lots of other goodies. We were really happy with our choice to stay Downtown at Main Street rather than on the strip and would choose it again. Especially since it is so easy to get out of town entirely from this area.

Once again, we did the cattle call seating option for Allegiant, with a bit less success this time. Our number was too high to get seats together, and I ended up in the very back of the plane, in an aisle seat across from the big exit door with no window at all. A bit claustrophobic to say the least. We arrived home a bit late to rain and snow in Medford and snow on the pass. Gotta love winter coming finally in February, I guess. Overall, the trip turned out to be a delightful little winter escape.

Sinning in Sin City

It sounds good, but really, at this stage in life, sinning amounts to little more than eating way too much good food and dropping a few bucks into the slot machines. But there is nothing quite like a trip to Vegas to get a taste of all the excesses available to anyone who has the time and money. The most excessive part of this short little whirlwind trip for us was popping for tickets to Elton John’s concert at Caesar’s Palace, The Million Dollar Piano.

For years the music of Elton John was part of the background of my life. I enjoyed it, but never paid much attention. As years went by, however, I would hear something amazingly melodic and rich and sure enough, it was Elton John. I also heard that he put on a concert rivaled by few that was worth seeing. I think the first time I tried to get tickets was back in the early 90’s, in the days when phones would do automatic redial trying to get through that busy signal. By the time I got through, the tickets were sold out. That story was repeated a few times, more recently when he was playing in Portland and other venues in the northwest. Always long gone by the time I got through.

Now, however, he is playing in Vegas. Maybe that is a sign of the times, when all the old stars finally make there way to the Vegas stages. Motley Crue and Chicago are even there right now. The nice thing about this, though, is that there are enough shows scheduled that getting tickets is not an impossible dream. Hence the four day trip to Las Vegas. Allegiant Airlines flies out of Medford, direct, for a very reasonable price. The airline tickets were cheaper than the concert tickets at least. Cut rate airlines are an experience of themselves. Buying online, we discovered that if we wanted an assigned seat, it was an extra 8.95 for each leg of the flight, if we wanted water in flight, it was 2 bucks a bottle. If we wanted to check in prior to boarding, we had to pop for the assigned seat. Mo and I were reeling from the concert tickets and decided to skip the seat assignments. No big deal, right? It was only an hour and a half flight anyway.

The reality was funny, though, like the old days with Southwest airlines cattle calls, we had to get to the airport early enough to hopefully get a low number for the lineup. Once on the plane, we could take whatever seats were left by the time we got there. We checked no baggage and brought peanuts for sustenance.

Arriving in Vegas after ten pm, we caught the rental car shuttle to the state of the art new rental car facility about 7 miles south of McCarren field. I was impressed. The whole car rental experience was simple and straightforward, at least until we attempted to open the windows of our tiny compact car, a neon yellow Fiat 500. It also took Mo a few miles to discover that the reason the engine kept winding up was because shifting was required. No clutch, just shift by hitting the joy stick on the console. Sirius radio and heated seats added to the delight of a tiny car that somehow felt pretty darn roomy inside and had lots of zip on the road.

Mo and I haven’t been to Vegas since 2004 when we flew down and spent a day in town before driving for a week or so around Death Valley. We decided it might be fun to stay downtown near Fremont street and the Main Street Station turned out to be a great choice. On the first night we had a room on the 14th floor facing north, right over the freeway and the railroad tracks. No earl plugs? ahh. I had no idea I would need them inside a big hotel. Somehow we ended up on a smoking floor as well, but a phone call to the desk was worthwhile since the next morning we were moved down to the non smoking, much quieter 4th floor for the rest of our stay.

We enjoyed a slow Saturday morning walking Fremont street before we boarded the sleek and efficient SDX bus to the strip. We spent the rest of the day walking the strip, in and out of all those incredible casinos that are like a huge Disneyland for grown-ups. Grown ups with more money than we had, for sure, but I still really loved strolling through Neiman Marcus fingering Oscar de la Renta gowns, Jimmy Choo shoes, and Prada bags. I like a good bag. Two hundred bucks is a big deal, but when I picked up that 2,800 Prada bag I wondered about my daughters and how one purse could pay a couple of big mortgage payments, or a pair of shoes could pay for some badly needed dental work. Vegas is definitely a place to feel the ridiculous imbalance that is part of our culture now. There were lots of homeless folks in our end of town as well.

After miles and miles and hours and hours of walking, we settled in for the “sin” part, a great Italian supper at Trevi’s in the Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace. I had some kind of succulent drink that should have been on a cruise ship with red italian wine, peach liqueur and who knows what else. It was decadent and delicious. We just sat there a long time enjoying our meal and the changing (fake) skies that turned from dawn to dusk several times as we sat there in the courtyard. I don’t think there is any place better than Vegas for people watching, either, and we were fabulously entertained by the shifting crowd passing by on the mall.

Finally it was time for the show, and we filed in with several thousand other excited folks, dressed in everything from jeans to spandex to sequins. I knew I had been sequestered too long in the back woods when I realized I was gawking at the gorgeous young girls wearing what must be the latest “thing”. Their dresses were stretchy like a girdle, covered the part from the breasts (barely) to the panty line (barely), with platform shoes that had heels with more inches then their skirts. It was great fun, but sure did remind me that I am in my sixties and fashion is completely irrelevant at this stage.

Once inside the theater, we could feel the excitement building. I was surprised that the crowd was so diverse, all ages, all styles, and all seemingly thrilled to be there. When EJ came on stage, the roar was huge. He was dressed tastefully in a sparkly black tuxedo, with a nod to his old self expressed in some crazy bright red tennis shoes and a subdued pair of barely colored glasses. He started with “Benny and the Jets”, not one of my favorites, but the lights and the music and the sound built throughout the show in a way that kept me alternately in goose bumps and tears. You have no idea how much this music is in the background of our lives till you hear the melodies and find yourself singing the words.

His voice is deeper and richer, and while he doesn’t hit the high notes the way he once did, there is a strength and quality in his singing that is breathtaking. Two young men from Croatia on electric cellos, (appropriately called the Two Cellos) expanded the richness of the music and his percussionist took my heart away, even his tambourine sounded like a full scale orchestra. And yes. The Piano. The Million Dollar Piano. I never heard anyone play a piano like this, truly. Rachmaninoff maybe. I know, apples and oranges, but still. Goosebumps and tears. It was not just a rock-n-roll concert. It was incredible. Of course, I wanted it to never end.

We left with the crowd with our eyes filled with lights and our ears with sound, enough that the lights and sounds of Vegas seemed almost irrelevant. Caesar’s Palace is right next to the famous Bellagio Fountains, which obligingly started up their musical water dance in time for us to enjoy. On our way south along the strip, I saw many of those girls in those skinny dresses and high shoes, tugging at the dresses and carrying their shoes! Another reason to maybe skip this particular fashion trend!

We found our SDX stop and climbed up to the upper deck for the slow ride back downtown, thoroughly enjoying the street shows below us at each stop. It was a great day, but we both agreed that the next day was going to be our chance to get out of town and away from all that glitz and craziness. Vegas is great but the desert calls.

Just a quick note here as well, I didn’t pack a computer or even a camera for this trip. Managed to get these photos with my iPhone. It is rather amazing what a telephone can do, but of course, it ain’t the Nikon.

It’s all about Red

At the moment, however, everything seems black and white and shades of gray with a little bit of brown and green thrown in here and there. January is gone and February has returned, as it usually does every year. In spite of my usual feelings about dreary February, this year seems different somehow. Maybe because our winter has been so mild, or maybe because I seem to have surrounded myself with RED.

Mo was away for two weeks, doing her annual dog sitting for brother Dan near Portland and I kept myself busy with three weeks of soil survey work to make up for the last trip and filled in the spaces with knitting, sewing, quilting, and baking. Even with the lack of snow, the temperatures still call for keeping the fire going and an occasional shoveling project to keep the driveway clear. With Mo gone, I really hoped to be spared any big snowstorms since I don’t drive the tractor and wouldn’t have a clue how to plow our road. Abby stayed with me for company and that soft little feeling of safety at night that seems to go along with having a dog by your side. She was good company.

Back in December, we happened on a great sofa sale and the delivery happened while Mo was away. Our old sofa (not THAT old actually) was big and sloppy, perfect for the huge living room we had back in the California mobile, but here in our cozy house it was just too massive. Once again, Melody and Kevin were the happy recipients of our hand-me-downs and we filled the living room with a perfect brick red sofa and loveseat. Still comfortable, but scaled more to our style, our bodies, and our room. Kevin is thrilled to have the huge sofa with two recliners added to his living room, and now they have enough seating for all the dogs, cats, teenagers, and adults that hang out at their house. I love the color of the sofa, not really red, but a brick color that is almost impossible to capture in a photo, and believe me I tried!

On a Saturday weekend I drove the hour and fifteen minutes to the well known and fabulous quilt shop in Merrill, called the Tater Patch. What a delight for the senses! I picked up some red and pink and white fabric to go with what I already had and managed to find a heart quilt block on the internet. I filled more gray days with brilliant fabric, following internet tutorials, and dropped in to the small neighborhood quilt shop as well for instruction and encouragement. I even managed to hand quilt the hearts and just finished the binding yesterday after Mo returned home. When I tired of quilting, I picked up the sweater I am knitting for Deanna, making progress, but just bit slower since I discovered playing with fabric and cutting it all up and sewing it all back together. Nutty pastime!

More red.

On the previous Monday, daughter Melody had three days off in a row, an almost unheard of delight. She cleaned house like crazy for two days and on the third day she piled into the car with my granddaughter and a LOT of baking supplies and headed for Rocky Point. We spent the day making an incredibly decadent cake she had seen on the internet last year called, “Lincoln’s Red Velvet Cream Cheese Cake”. The cake is filled with an entire cheesecake between two layers of rich red velvet and frosted with cream cheese frosting decorated with white and milk chocolate. Sinful!! I cut a slice, cut another one for Jean the local quilting lady to thank her for her help, and sent the rest home to the previously mentioned houseful of big men, teenaged boys, and assorted others. Good thing! That cake could destroy a month of dieting in one day!

More red.

Speaking of teenagers, my youngest grandson turned 13 last week. Another day in town searching for just the right thing yielded a sporty athletic jacket that seemed to hit the spot. How in the world do you have a clue what to give a boy turning 13 that isn’t a video game or money! I was sure to include the gift receipt with the jacket, but it wasn’t needed.

I’m happy to have Mo back home. Somehow her way of having a regular routine keeps me happy in a way that I don’t manage myself. I wander aimlessly, doing things at all different hours of the day and night, eating strange things at the wrong time, and waking up at four am to sew with no one else to consider. Dogs and people like routine I think. Abby and I are both happy to get up like normal humans around 6am, and eat dinner in the evening, and go to the hot tub at the same time most nights.

I have been reading about folks traveling in Texas, at Quartzite, in the desert southwest, and down in Florida. Much as I love the desert, those Florida beaches and crystalline rivers are calling me hard for next winter. I really do hope we can be there. In the mean time, we are planning a coast trip again, this time traveling north as far as we feel like going, and fully expecting rain and storms. The Oregon Coast can be so gorgeous and dramatic during stormy whale season. Should be fun, and we will leave the first of March.

We are also planning the mid-summer trip to Colorado for Mo’s family reunion near her sister’s home in Denver and just got excited when we looked at the map and realized that we could leave via the northern route and finally get the MoHo to the Black Hills and fill in that South Dakota hole on our map. Should be a fun trip. Again, we don’t want to be gone for more than two weeks or so because this year for sure we are going to camp at some of the fabulous places right here in our own beautiful Oregon. I still remember Laurie talking about the beauty of Joseph Oregon, and that is on the summer list as well.

Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet

Seems as though time just slides by beautifully when winter slips in. This was a work week for me, and the one day I had to drive to town to the “real” office was the day before the huge northwestern snow storm blew in. Lucky me! The rest of the week I worked at home, snug as can be in my little office with the wood stove cranked up high and the cat snuggled in next to me in his bed. Mo plowed a few times, I shoveled and ran the snow blower, and we hauled half a cord of wood to the porch, but the storm didn’t cause us a bit of trouble.

I am working on a rocky soil problem, and my head is filled with stones, cobbles, boulders, and gravels of all sizes. Each of these has a specific size and description of course, and eventually I will get it all sorted out and plugged into all those nice little NASIS fields and someday someone will request some interpretations for the Knot Tableland and out will pop a nifty little report, generated specifically for their area of interest from the data we gather, refine, and populate.

As I sit in the office fiddling with numbers, my mind wanders back to 2004 and 2005 when I was mapping out on the Knot Tableland, and dug a ton of holes in those stones, cobbles, and gravels and described those soils. It was hot and dry, and most of the time I was alone. That is the way we work in soil survey more often than not.

So this week, my mind has been split between recalling those memories as I look at my old descriptions, and talking on the phone with the project leader in Klamath till my ear was sore. ( I gotta get another ear piece!) We resolved the issues, and on this Saturday night, two more soils are written, cleaned up, and put to bed in NASIS.

Then, right in the midst of the worst of the windy snow, I got a call from my daughter Deanna saying that she and her husband were coming down the five and did we want to meet them for a short visit before they chained up to go over the Siskiyous. Wow! Deanna and Keith have their own truck and haul jet engines all over the country, but they haven’t been down this way in at least two years. I don’t get to see my daughter very often, so Mo agreed to drive, whiteouts or not, and we headed over the pass to Medford.

We had a great visit at Shari’s, next to the big Pilot truck stop where they could park the rig. I even remembered to bring the sweater I am working on for Deanna to check the fit. It was perfect and she likes the colors. I still can hardly believe this little girl of mine drives that great big truck.

Somehow, in the midst of everything else, remembering the last days of our trip home from the desert up the California coast just slid right by with an occasional thought, “Oh yeah, that!”. So here is the promised “rest of the story”.

When we left Vandenberg, there was a bit of fog hanging around making the hills look mysterious and mystical. The route led through Pismo Beach, a beautiful place to spend some time, but since it was only 9:30 in the morning when we arrived and still quite foggy and chilly, we decided to continue on to San Luis Obispo. First I had to check out the local quilt shop, and with early morning traffic in the small town almost non-existent, we had no trouble parking the MoHo right in front of the store. I browsed through the windows, but decided that waiting another 90 minutes for them to open was silly and we continued on toward breakfast.

Our route home from Vandenberg AFB could have been simply a run up the 101, but why do simple when challenging is an option. We instead decided that we were up for the winding beauty of California’s scenic coast highway 1. Listed in many places as one of the most beautiful drives in the world. Why in the world would we miss the chance to crawl along the steep cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean in a motorhome towing a car.

One of my favorite restaurants along this part of the coast the the Apple Farm in San Luis. We were seated in the beautiful glassed in gazebo with brilliant sun shining in the windows framing the lovely hills surrounding us. As usual, breakfast was scrumptious, with home fries and “California Scramble” which included lots of spinach, artichokes, olives and other California stuff. I really appreciate my California upbringing and being exposed to things like artichokes, avocados, and olives as everyday food. I grew up eating lots of fresh stuff from the lush gardens and orchards where we lived that are now just pavement.

We continued north to Morro Bay and our last chance to hightail it back over to the simpler route along 101. The sun was out, the skies were clear, and when we saw the sign saying it was only another 135 miles to Monterey we decided to go for it. It was a great drive. Winding and a bit challenging at times, but nothing too difficult. The only thing about this road that is bothersome is the lack of places to pull over and actually spend time. I was in the passenger seat, and the skies were a just a little bit murky from the morning fog, so my photos aren’t that great. Of course, with the proliferation of digital photography and google search, there are at least a bazillion photos of every single stretch of this beautifully amazing stretch of road. I even have some from other trips we have taken, so I wasn’t too concerned about missing out. In fact, it was nice just being able to do the white knuckle thing now and then without worrying about photography.

Our evening destination was the Military Family Camp at Monterey Pines RV Park and Golf Course. This camp is on the grounds of the Monterey Naval Postgraduate School. We called ahead for a reservation, because even at $30 a night, that was cheap for anything else around that part of California. It was good that we did, because the camp was nearly full. Our rig is technically 26 feet long, and that is what I answer when asked when making a reservation. We were given a nice pull through site on the phone, but when we arrived we were told she had moved us to space 22. I think it was the shortest, tightest space in the park, and a big 40 footer was in our originally assigned space. After crawling around slippery ice plant to try to hook up, and struggling to get level, we decided that in the future we should say we are 30 feet long so we won’t get relegated to the worst sites in the camp!

The campground is adjacent to a beautiful golf course, but the camp itself is really crowded and tight, and is backed up directly to the airport and hangars. Loud noise for much of the night, and the occasional bomb going off now and then made things interesting. We settled in, and decided to try to find a grocery store. Safeway was only 1.5 miles away, but my gosh, the traffic was horrendous! One of those things I forget about California until I get back there. We were glad for a nights rest and hookups, but might not try to come back to this one unless absolutely necessary. There aren’t any Passport America parks anywhere in the vicinity, though, so it was good for a night.

The next day we decided to do another 250 mile run and spent some time searching around Streets and Trips, CampWhere, and AllStays for a place to spend the night. We considered trying to get as far as Trinidad and the free casino, but then found a beautiful little park right on the 101 just north of Willits. Creekside Cabins and RV Resort looked really great on the internet. I tried calling to verify the Passport America Park status, but no one answered so I left a message. After driving through the Bay Area, we were ready for a nice night in a quiet place.

Winding down into a damp, dark canyon, we felt a bit of consternation, but thought maybe the park would be OK. The turn in came up suddenly and we pulled into the driveway only to discover a huge iron gate, tightly closed. It was dark and spooky there, even in the afternoon, but I got out and rang the bell. No answer. We were in a pickle because the rig was cocked at a weird angle and there was no way we would get the car unhooked and we couldn’t back up or turn around. I finally walked into the park and realized that this place might not be the best place to be. There were really old rigs with blue tarps, big dogs with spike collars, strange looking people, and a LOT of junk.

I finally flagged down a somewhat “high” dude and asked him if he could open the gate to let us come in and turn around. He was hemming and hawing but then the camp host appeared, another strange looking woman with wild hair and a gazillion tats and piercings, and said we could come in and look around. One of the reasons we wanted the park was to see some TV that night, Mo was looking forward to one of the debates, and when this woman said, “Yeah we have maybe 6 channels”, we decided boondocking was a far better choice and we managed to get turned around and outta there! Whew!

It was getting late and dark but we got back on the highway thinking we could find a casino, or a pull out or something. I had no cell phone signal, but unbelievably there was still a Verizon signal on the MiFi and I found a park about 40 miles farther up the road. We pulled into Richardson Grove RV Park a little bit later, settling in just before dark and hard rain started falling. We thought we had it handled when we left Monterey. I used all the tools available, found a Passport America Park, used the MiFi and GPS to find it, and still ran into the unknown factor. We still laugh about just how much different that Creekside park looked in person than it looked on the nice internet web site. By the way, it was no longer a Passport America Park, either, and the fees would have been 40 bucks for one night if we had decided to stay.

We surely were glad to return home the next day to our beautiful, safe, cheap, gorgeous space A12 at Harris Beach State Park in Brookings. Ahh, home, or almost home. It was so good that we settled in for two nights and three days before packing up the Tracker, putting the MoHo to bed in the storage building, and traveling home to Rocky Point.

Bungalow Heaven and taking the coast route home

As I sit here at my desk in Rocky Point, it is hard to believe that less than a week ago I was ambling along the coast highway in brilliant sunshine. The sun is brilliant out my window today, but it is reflecting brightly off the first significant snowfall we have had since October. I say significant, but I think it is hardly more than an inch or two out there, nothing to worry about, but also nothing to help with the local scanty snowpack.

Our time in Desert Hot Springs was perfectly incredible, with sunny skies and warm temperatures the entire time we were there. Our trip home up the coast was equally as brilliant, with a bit of morning fog here and there but not a drop of rain and not even the typical coastal overcast to mar the warm days. We only needed a jacket now and then to ward off the slight chill of ocean air and breezes.

We left the desert on a sunny morning, late enough to miss the worst of the LA traffic and yet early enough to spend a couple of hours on a sweet little side trip without compromising our planned nightfall at Vandenberg Air Force Base. I was born just north of Pasadena and raised in the adjacent mountain town of Sierra Madre. LA smog and traffic, and the crush of people drove me out as a young person, but there are some sweet memories of the area as well. One of those memories include the solid coziness of the modest bungalow homes on the shady oak lined streets.

I always dreamed of having one of these Craftsman bungalows, with trapezoid pillars, wide porches and big oak doors. I remember the sunlight playing on my gramma’s hardwood floors and the smell of baking cookies. Something about a Craftsman bungalow really takes me back to a life with different values than what we have today. No McMansion for me, please, just a perfect little bungalow. Ah well, so far that dream is one I have had to set aside, but I still love to cruise old towns looking for the perfect dream Craftsman.

Bungalow Heaven was a place on my want to visit list for a long time, and on this bright sunny California morning we parked the rig at a shopping center and took the time to drive to the approximately 12 square block area in Pasadena that has been set aside as a “Landmark District” I wasn’t disappointed, although I had forgotten how dark some of these houses can be with their overhanging roofs and wide covered porches. I guess sunlight isn’t in short supply in Southern California and the shade of the huge old live oaks and dark porches are a welcome relief.

The rest of the day was uneventful, with amazingly light traffic on the freeways, from the 210, to the Pasadena Freeway, to the Ventura Freeway, across the Golden State, and all the way to the 101. Piece of cake!! We thought about staying at one of the California State Parks along the beach, but they are expensive ($35 per night with no hookups) and crowded. Instead we just kept driving north to Vandenberg Air Force Base and the Military Family Camp we knew was waiting.

By the time we got there, most spots with electric were full, and it was a bit confusing to figure out where to go since the camp host was nowhere to be found. We opted instead for the $8. per night overflow camping where we could be away from the main part of camp and sleep peacefully. It was a bit like boondocking but with the extra safety factor of being on the base.

“On Base” however, had it’s own story! We read on the website that we should be prepared for a rig inspection and that we needed to go to the Lompoc gate rather than the main gate since they wouldn’t do inspections at the main gate. We arrived at the gate around 4, and after a bit of waving and gesturing, we followed the instructions of the officer and moved through the inspection area. I guess we didn’t need an inspection after all. Ambling slowly through the base, we were trying to find the campground when the dreaded blue lights started flashing behind us. Mo couldn’t figure out what she had done, since she is especially careful on any kind of military base, but sure enough he pulled us over.

We were informed that we had driven through the inspection station against the orders of the officer in charge and were to be escorted back to do it properly. The officer and his cohort led us through the base, to a proper turn around and then all the way back to the Lompoc gate. That was a bit embarrassing! It seems that a wave through didn’t mean what we thought it did! The inspection itself was strange. Several security folks told us to undo all the rig compartments (on the outside) and then they ran mirrors all under the bottom of the rig. They told Mo she had to stand in the holding room, and that I had to get out of the rig. When I told them not to lose the cat, they relented and said, “Oh fine, you can stay in there”. Funny part of the whole thing is that they never once looked INSIDE the rig at all!

We passed the inspection and drove once more through the base to find the Family Camp. It turned out to be a decent place to spend one night, but I don’t think I would want to stay here for any length of time. The only good part is that it is conveniently located to the coast, just 41 miles to Pismo Beach, and about the same to Solvang. It is cheap in a part of the state where there isn’t much available, even with our Passport America pass.

After reviewing Streets and Trips and doing some internet surfing (I LOVE the MiFi) we settled in to a nice supper and an early evening of reading and sleeping as the fog rolled in and muted the waxing moon. Instead of traveling fast, we decided to go just another 200 miles the next day to another family camp in Monterey.

Next: Monterey Pines RV and Golf and don’t depend on what you see on the internet!

Miles driven: 267