The MoHo and Other Traveling Tales

Alaska planning and a BIG thank you!

Tentative route for our Alaskan Highway Trip in June.

It’s been a while since I wrote, and I wanted to take a moment to say a big “Thank You” to everyone who posted helpful websites, blog addresses, and ideas about how we might begin planning our Alaska trip. I am currently working three weeks in a row, so I can have a few extra work-free weeks for our next trip down south, commencing Saturday March 19th. In between plugging away with numbers on the NASIS soils database, I have taken some evening time for playing with the Streets and Trips program and trying to get comfortable with the software and the planning process.

Mo traveled the highway in 1974, and I love looking at the old slides.

I am pretty intuitive with computers and software, but still had to fiddle around a bit before I could get much done. I’m getting better and better as I practice, and actually exported the GPS file for our planned Southern Desert route to my Nuvi Garmin yesterday. Looks good! I am excited to give the whole mobile navigation thing a try, especially with the option to navigate without cell phone reception or a computer connection. I don’t have a wireless card, and in the Canadian part of the Alaska trip especially, it would be irrelevant. I love Garmin Girl, but the better ability to control and review routes and maps while in motion with a full size computer screen seems like it will be a good thing. Mo is just shaking her head, asking how I plan to watch the phone, the GPS, and the computer all at once while telling her which way to turn! LOL

I had the Alaska trip programmed for “fastest” and our driving speed as slower than average, and couldn’t figure out the route it kept trying to take me through British Columbia. We definitely want to return via Jasper and Banff, since the weather might be warmer in Late July than mid June in that part of Alberta. However, until now, I had never heard of the beautiful Highway 37 Stewart-Cassiar route through British Columbia. After a bit of internet research, we decided to take that way north from Seattle, heading west from Prince George instead of due north to Dawson Creek and Mile 0. We will see all that on the way back, and our Highway 37 route will intercept the Highway in the vicinity of Laird Springs somewhere. There is a stretch with 249 miles between gas stations on 37, but just as the AlCan route, most of the road is paved.

The other big thing to think about is how to protect the baby car from rocks. I saw many options for some kind of gravel protection devices, so that will give Mo something to think about and construct before we head north in mid-June. Even though the highway is almost completely paved, there are still long stretches of gravel, and 90 miles of gravel could do a lot of damage. I am already looking at the shiny MoHo and thinking about all those dings and chips that will probably be a great reminder of our trip on the mighty Road.

In the mean time, I have actually managed to keep reading most of the blogs that I follow, enjoying everyone’s travels and trying to comment as much as I can. Although sometimes I do take the option of reading directly from the Google reader and there are no comment options in there, but it sure goes a lot more quickly.

Tentative plan for the March Desert Southwest Trip

I am watching the Desert Southwest with particular interest as the temperatures begin to heat up. Originally we planned to travel in late February, but Mo’s brother had a bit of a serious bout of illness and we wanted to be home if need be. Brother is doing great, postponed trip is on the calendar for a next Saturday departure, and the desert is heating up fast. Whew! We originally thought we could do some great boondocking in the Borrego Springs area, but with our dog and cat, I would imaging that we will need to have electricity for air conditioning to keep the pets cool while we hike some of those great canyons I have been seeing on all the blogs. We also plan to check out the casinos in Laughlin, and try out a couple of the Army Family Camps near Tucson and at Fort Huachuca where Mo was stationed for a few months while in the Army Reserves. Of course, there are always family and friends who winter in the southwest that we want to meet along the way as well.

Our trip home will be up a road that is a favorite of ours, Highway 395, and we will boondock in the Alabama Hills where Al and Kelly have been recently. After reading Al’s blog, I especially want to take the time this year to go to the visitor center at Manzanar and to the Movie Museum in Lone Pine. We finally decided that we probably didn’t need to take the kayaks to the desert this time. Sigh. I thought maybe we could try out the Salton Sea, or Lake Havasu, or drop into Lake Mead for a bit. But we also didn’t want them to blow off in the high winds I keep reading about, especially it we could only manage a few hours of kayaking, and that only a slim possibility anyway. We will pop on the bikes, however, I am sure we can use them somewhere!

Winter view from the hot tub

On a final note for this wet, drippy, dirty-snow-piled-up Saturday, I am fiddling some more with the Alaska plans. Linda and Bob, who traveled the highway and kept a wonderful blog about their travels, suggested we “take it slow” and we plan to do that. Laurie, who shares fabulous information about camp grounds, and FOOD! among all sorts of other RV’r knowledge, suggested we opt for no reservations and stay spontaneous, so we are doing that as well, but still trying to plan with an idea for how far we can drive in a day and where we might want to stay. I am looking forward a lot to a possible visit with Laurie and Odel on our way through Sacramento next week to say “Hi, and Goodbye” to Odel’s bad knee one last time before his big new knee adventure!

Streets and Trips does a great job of estimating times and gas costs, although who knows what that will be like in another three months when we actually commence on our journey.

I have read several blogs lately where folks are apologizing for not blogging daily and trying to determine just how important it is to do that. I do love the daily bloggers, people like Al and Rick and several others who are so committed to great photos and stories and commentary. I so appreciate gaining readers, but I also want to blog when something is happening, and not try to come up with something just because I blog, or to struggle to make each day “blog worthy”. So, I’ll be quiet at times, when I am working and not much is happening, and then when we are on the road, I’ll write as often as I need to in order to remember what I have been doing! I’m really not sure how in the world I will begin to blog about our desert trip since half the Canadian population has already photographed and written extensively about most of the places we will be going. Can I just say “ditto, ditto, and ditto” and link to everyone’s blog?

In the midst of all this lighthearted frivolity, I have to say I have watched the happenings in Japan with fear and awe and prayers for everyone there. As an earth scientist, well versed in the Cascadia Subduction Zone here in our own Pacific Northwest, I breathe silent prayers for all of us as well.

Alaska. Planning begins. Oh My.

Just a short little post today. I am hoping for some responses from some of the folks on blogland who have traveled the Alaska Highway in an RV. I know I read a great blog last summer about someone’s trip, but somehow lost it and have no idea who it was. If you are reading, forgive me! We ordered the very BIG “Milepost” publication and it was delivered yesterday to our snowy driveway by a very determined UPS delivery truck. Those big brown trucks have NO traction it seems, but he was laughing as he slid up the driveway. I am getting to know him quite well, since just a few days ago he also delivered my shiny new DVD for “Streets and Trips”, which is a bit less intimidating than the “Milepost”.

I got the software installed and immediately plugged in the first leg of our trip to get an idea of the possible route. What a great program! Once I entered the estimated price for gasoline and our estimated mpg, I had an idea of how many miles we had ahead of us and how much money I need to save up for the summer! whew. Who knows how things will be by then regarding gas prices, but there is still no better time than now. Once those prices go up they don’t often go back down for long.

Last night I sat down with the “Milepost” and after an hour or so looked at Mo in consternation and said, “Maybe we should just start driving and see what happens. I have no idea how to plan this trip!” She laughed with me, having done the road in the past, she thought that wasn’t a bad idea. The trick is to have plenty of money, plenty of time, and to stay loose. Lots of mosquito repellent helps, as well as good rain gear and a good attitude. I did find one blog on the lonely planet, and the driver talked about the beauty, but also about the many miles and miles of flat nothing.

So, if anyone out there reading this has traveled the Highway, could you please comment or send an email to me with your blog address? I want all the information I can get from real people doing the real thing, rather than all the advertisements and tours and such that keeps showing up on searches for “Alaska Highway in an RV blog”. I even went to RVForum and when I search “Alaska”, my own silly post about deciding to “go” to Alaska is the one that comes up first. Geez. HELP?!

It is Mo’s birthday today, and so far it’s been a good one. She’s getting the birthday calls as I write.

Folks are following and all I am doing is “painting the living room” and cooking

While I was writing about our trip to the California coast, and working diligently to catch up on my cruise stories, a few more followers joined my list of supporters. I want to welcome you and thank all of you, visible and invisible for your support. I also think you might deserve better than the sudden silence that followed immediately after you joined.

Welcome to PB and J, a young family writing about their travels through some of my favorite places in the southeastern US. It’s nice to see young families out there adventuring together.

I have followed Connie and Tracy at the Gypsy GMas for some time now, as they create their full-timing life while continuing to work. I treasure reading the incredibly open stories and enjoy how much Connie shares her feelings about life, love, working, and creating a more meaningful life.

Welcome also to Erik, who does not yet have a blog, but plans to start blogging when he begins his full time journey, and in the mean time is learning from all those full time folks out there sharing their stories.

I have followed John and Carol for some time as well, while they kayak in the gorgeous clear waters of north central Florida, one of my favorite places in the world. Check out their great blog “Our Trip Around the Sun”.

But back to the living room. It is snowing again in Rocky Point, it is February, my least favorite month to be in snow country, so of course it’s time to do a nice big home project. When Mo built her home in 2002, she painted everything a lovely off-white, to create light and open airy space in the deep forest. On the other hand, when we worked together on the mobile where I lived in California, we painted warm colors and white trim that also created a nice environment that we both enjoyed.

It’s been a year now since I have shared Mo’s home, and we came to the joint conclusion that it was time for the white walls to exit and something a bit newer to enter. We spent the last year or so looking at colors and thinking about just how it might look with the change.

…

Combining households at this stage in life is always an interesting process. Mo is understated and has great antiques, and likes neutral colors and not a lot of “stuff”. I am flamboyant, love the southwest canyon look, and love my ceramic chickens, rocks, jars of sand, and a ton of other stuff. Her paintings are European originals gathered from her travels. Mine are mostly inexpensive prints, a few good prints, and limited edition photos of rocks, sand, and other southwest themes. Pulling all this together in a cohesive unit has been a fun process, and both of us have a goal of creating a home that feels warm and welcoming to company, but most of all, comfortable to us.

It works! The color we settled on is a warm honey gold called on the paint chip “Chamois”, but we laughingly refer to it as our pumpkin/carrot soup bisque. It’s fun in that sometimes it is a nice warm yellow gold, and other times in turns peachy, or bronzy, or who knows what color to call it. Much like my beloved canyons, the color shifts with the light. I love that. We decided to accent with another darker warm butterscotch color that initially looked a bit like baby poop till we fixed it a bit. Now it also is perfect. Amazingly, the light is warm and the rooms aren’t a bit darker than they were when the walls were white.

In the midst of all this, an old folk song from the late 80’s keeps running through my head. I used to have it on a CD somewhere, or maybe it was a cassette tape, sung by one of the women singers I used to follow, but when I went to the internet, I could only find the actual authors of the song and the You Tube video. Don’t click on the title unless you want to get redirected to YouTube and a very silly bluegrass song, the gist of which is that the world is falling apart and so…

Why Am I Painting the Living Room?

Ah yes I can see how my tombstone will read
Here lies someone of exceptional worth
Though she did not do a lot for her kind
Or help hold together this crumbling earth
Here lies a woman they’re saying of whom
Sure had a good looking living room…

Sunday morning dawned bright and cold today, and I started cooking early in the day for the planned Sunday dinner for Melody and her family. One of my favorite magazines is Cook’s Illustrated. This time the star of the show was an old fashioned blade pork roast with the bone in, rubbed with kosher salt and brown sugar and steeped for 18 hours, then slow cooked for 7 hours until it was meltingly tender and encased in a crackling crunchy crust. I made roasted potatoes and an apple onion sauté to go with it and that great orange spinach salad that rolls around the internet recipes. Yum. By the time the kids arrived in the early afternoon the house smelled so dang good anyone would be hungry just walking inside.

I love having Melody and her family close enough to share a simple Sunday dinner, and I love that the almost 18 year old and the 12 year old still like to come and hang at Grandma’s house. Melody’s husband Kevin brought their Wii console and we all laughed ourselves silly over bowling, baseball, and tennis. Mo and I really cracked up watching our little Wii selves jumping and rolling on the tennis court. This week is Mo’s birthday, and the kids all spent a lot of time making handmade cards for her and I made her requested carrot cake.

It was a wonderful way to spend a very cold and snowy week, with temperatures dropping into the single digits. It was also a wonderful way to spend a perfect Sunday before I go off to work again tomorrow.

One more wild ride and then home Friday and Saturday Feb 11 and 12

Once more the skies were brilliantly blue when we woke in Eureka. The winds were calm and there wasn’t a bit of fog, but the 32 degree temperatures were still a bit daunting. We read the forecasts and knew that it wasn’t a lot warmer in the Sacramento valley to the east, and that we had snow and rain to look forward to once back in Rocky Point. Our decision was to drive the winding 142 miles of Highway 36 across the mountains, to stop for the night in a forest service campground along the way if it was accessible. If not, we would continue on toward Red Bluff and possibly go park at the Rolling Hills Casino about 20 minutes south.

Timing our travels sometimes gets a bit confusing. My ex mom-in-law lives in Red Bluff, and wasn’t going to be home until afternoon on Saturday, so we needed to plan accordingly since I wanted to stop for a visit while passing by. We wanted to spend the night in Redding on Saturday night before we spent Sunday morning getting the MoHo ready for her last month in storage. Even though we had a bit of a schedule to figure out, it was nice to just take off on the highway with the options open.

Highway 36 is 142 miles of wild road indeed. While it doesn’t have quite the grades that our Lost Coast roads had, and didn’t have quite as many hairpin curves, the big difference was that this time we were in the MoHo towing the baby car. If it had been hot, we would have unhooked the car and both driven the steepest grades, but the cool temperatures were in our favor and the MoHo did just fine. Jeremy once again settled into his dash position and it only took us 4 hours to go less than 100 miles to a small forest service side road leading down to the Basin Gulch forest service campground.

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Another wild ride

We were smart enough to unhook and take the baby car to check out the campground before driving the MoHo down that side road, and once we looked around we thought, ‘Sure, no big deal”. With our Golden Age Pass, camping was a hefty 5 bucks for a lovely little campground, completely alone in the middle of nowhere without another car or camper anywhere in sight. A mile or so before the campground, there were a few summer cabins, but we didn’t see any cars or people at all. It was only about 2:30 in the afternoon, so we had plenty of time to settle in, go for a nice walk along the stream and relax a bit before supper. I slept better and longer that night than any in very a long time, with the absolute darkness and silence of the forest around us.

The next morning we continued the last 50 miles or so to Red Bluff, and thought we might go park at the Red Bluff Lake Recreation Area to wait for Gen to get home. To my surprise, there was an RV park at the lake. The campground however, was federal, and our Golden Age Pass got us a site with water and electric for $12.50. By the time we settled in again, it was time to go visiting. Gen is 87 years old now, and spiffy and lovely as always. We enjoyed our visit before driving the mile or so back to our waiting home. The warm sun felt fabulous.

Sunday morning we took our own sweet time packing up, cleaning up the MoHo, and driving north on I-5 to Redding to our favorite credit card operated self car wash. This time we got the entire rig washed for a mere $6.50. Love it when we don’t have to keep messing with the quarters to keep the spray going. For the last time this year we slid the rig into the big shed, piled everything into the car, and headed north to Klamath Falls. It happens to us every single time. As we drop down from Mt Shasta into the Klamath Basin, in the midst of quiet contemplation, one or the other of us says out loud, “I love this place”. It certainly isn’t perfect. Winter time can be brutal and spring can be long in coming. It’s the interface between desert and mountains, and can be brown and barren at times. But the vistas are wide, and now, even in February, the Pacific Flyway birds are returning. The fields and marshes along Highway 97 are already filling with thousands of swans and ducks, and the snow geese are back.

We were home by 5, and the car was unloaded and unpacked before 6. We are getting good at this back and forth thing. It’s so good to go, and it’s so good to come home. So far, I love not having to choose between one or the other.

The “Big Move” Thursday February 10

I think today qualified as the very shortest move we have ever made from one campground to another. Our little spot at the fairgrounds in Ferndale was quite comfortable, except for the fact that we don’t have a satellite and there was very little TV reception, with the majority of broadcast stations in Spanish. After our hard driving day on the Lost Coast, we thought a little bit of TV would be good, especially since the news from Egypt seemed to be shifting by the hour. The skies were clear, but it was still way too cold to think of dropping the kayaks in the water. Our hope was that if we moved a bit farther north toward Eureka we might find a place along the Mad River or even farther north on Big Lagoon to slip into some water and christen my new raspberry colored boat.

After a bit of time, Swift Kayak stood by their promise to replace my green topped boat with the damaged paint without charge to me, and in early February my new boat was delivered to Klamath Falls late one dark evening. The shipper was traveling all over the US from Rochester New York, and his load was an amazing mixture of high end kayaks and $60,000 racing rowers. My little boat was tucked in safely and this time wrapped in some amazing felt and plastic that took considerable work to get undone, and the paint job was perfect.

We took our time with a lazy breakfast and then loaded up the rig for the short 13 mile drive north from Ferndale to Eureka. Our searches had revealed another possibility for camping at the Redwood Acres Fairground RV Park, so we drove by to check it out. It looked merely OK for 20 bucks, another parking lot with rigs lined up along the one road, and while there were full hook-ups, there was no cable and wireless could be sketchy. Instead we opted to go back the Shoreline RV, where we stayed last fall, and with our CampClub USA card we spent a reasonable 20 bucks a night, including 70 plus channels and screaming hot Wi-Fi. We knew the routine, the manager shows up around 5 in the evening to take money and check you in, and in the mean time you simply park, fill out a form, and give her a call. We again took a spot on the “unavailable” back row, where she gets a bit antsy about people running over her sprinkler heads, but after assuring her we remembered that part, and that we are only 26 feet long she calmed down.

Our spot was perfectly level on pavement, with a view on two sides of the slough. I checked the tides even though the wind had come up a bit, we thought maybe with the sun we could get out on the water. Again, it was not to be, with high tides listed before dark in the morning and after dark in the evening. In Humboldt Bay and all its surrounding rivers and sloughs, the tide is the most important factor, second only to wind. We had neither in our favor.

Instead we traveled up the coast north beyond Trinidad to check out Big Lagoon, one of three large lagoons that keep showing up in internet searches for kayaking around this area. The Lagoon was beautiful, but no more protected from wind than Humboldt Bay. Near the launch area was the Big Lagoon County Campground, completely empty except for the camp host, with somewhat rough sites right on the water. The signs warned against motorhomes or trailers, but we were sure we could fit the MoHo in there just fine. Of course, here there were no hookups at all, and with kayaking out of the question, we didn’t consider leaving our fancy smooth asphalt parking lot back in Shoreline RV. Still, it was a pretty park, and gave us something to think about when we come back sometime to try kayaking in the lagoons. Even with good weather forecasts, we also need to double check where the tides are maxing out since this area needs at least a 3 foot high tide to keep from finding yourself stranded in the thick bay mud.

We wandered back to Eureka and Costco to buy the cheapest gas around at a whopping $3.46 per gallon for regular unleaded. Ouch. Afterward, a short trip to the local Chamber of Commerce yielded some maps and photos of the locally famous murals. I plotted the addresses out on the map, since the chamber no longer had the walking tour brochures as advertized, and Mo and I parked near downtown and walked the streets viewing the murals. We actually managed to find all of them except one which we discovered later had listed the wrong street location.

It was fun, and we saw a completely different part of town than the “Old Town” where we walked the other day, and enjoyed finding the murals in what is called “Old Downtown”. The largest mural, at 70×70 feet, on the back wall of the Performing Arts Center, was truly magnificent, but my favorite is still the panels on the wall of the North Coast Co-Op.

The day ended with us back in our cozy MoHo enjoying the late afternoon sun and catching up on the world news. We then had an excellent supper with our local cheeses and watched Julia Roberts in “Eat, Pray, Love”. I loved this book, and had no idea how it would be possible to make a movie out of it. They did a surprisingly good job and we both especially enjoyed the beautiful locations and Julia’s performance. It’s a quiet little movie, but lovely, although I am not sure Mo got as much from it as I did by not having read the book, so not knowing the background of her spiritual search that was the motivating factor behind her travels.

We decided that it may have been a good thing that we couldn’t kayak because we saw parts of the area that we hadn’t seen the last time we were here, and entertained ourselves in completely different ways.

Tomorrow we plan to drive the wild highway 36 back across the mountains toward Red Bluff and perhaps spend the night somewhere along the way, depending on what we find. This time it really is a spontaneous drive, with no idea what is waiting for us. I love that, even if I get a little nervous about it at the same time.