Half Moon Bay and the Kings Mountain Art Fair

One of Mo’s friends from her teaching days is a sculptor, and she was showing her wares at an art festival near Half Moon Bay over the Labor Day weekend. See her work here, it’s wonderful! http://www.sharonspencer.com/

It’s always nice to return to the coast, especially since Mo used to live there for so many years. She knows her way around, knows the special little places to find, and enjoys going back for visits. What we hadn’t really considered when we thought of going was that every single camping spot on the entire coast was already spoken for long before Mo started looking around for something to reserve. We decided to go anyway, and take our chances finding a place to park our home. We knew Wal-Marts don’t exist on that part of the coast, but thought maybe we could find a wide place in the road somewhere, or some other kind of creative kind of boondocking opportunity would present itself. It was to be an adventure and we were ready.

We left early Saturday morning, with most of the holiday traffic already landed. We traveled west on 120 toward the 580, the 880, and on to HWY 92 winding over the last range of hills and down to Half Moon Bay. The best part was the gentle fog rolling in over the hills and the dramatic drop in temperatures as we got closer to the ocean. Lovely! The air was so fresh and clean, and when the sun came through it was sparkly and white.

Arriving before noon, we optimistically tried the local state park for cancellations, none of course. We wandered up the coast with other ideas in mind when we saw a large group of RV’s just south of Moss Beach at the Pillar Point Marina. For 30 bucks a night we were privileged to park on asphalt with no amenities other than proximity to the ocean and reasonable safety for us and our rig, not a bad deal really on the coast of California during Labor Day Weekend with no reservations. Later we realized that the place wasn’t policed very strongly, and it would probably be a fine place to boondock for a night on the coast if one didn’t take advantage of it too often, and landed late in the evening and left early in the morning.

We returned each evening to our parking lot haven, and woke this morning to an almost completely empty space, with nothing to obstruct our view of the marina, the fishing boats, and the ocean beyond the breakwater. Reading about the marina was interesting, and it was nice to see a place that was devoted to commercial fishing rather than just fancy boats. You could even buy fresh tuna and halibut right off the pier from the catch of the day. We chose instead to eat our fresh fish at Ketch Joanne’s, a great little restaurant that was another of Mo’s hidden gems from her years in Montara. http://www.ketchjoannerestaurant.com/

http://www.smharbor.com/pillarpoint/index.htm

Once settled in, we spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the tiny sweet town of Half Moon Bay, with its delightful shops. I especially enjoyed Cunha’s Country grocery store, which has been there since the 40’s, with rows of incredible variety in a small store, organic foods, and specially bottled sauces and dressings. Favorite was the Roasted Raspberry Chipotle sauce which we used for a great dinner of bbq’d pork chops and Cream Vidalia Onion Dressing for the salad.

Then there is the feed store.
http://www.halfmoonbayfeedandfuel.com/fnfindex.html

Still in place, right in down town. Walk in off the sidewalk to the smell of hay and grain, chicken feed and chickens even. Huge walls covered with livestock ribbons, saddles and ropes, and all you could need if you had animals. Downtown. It was amazing. Of course, we laughed with all the other people on the sidewalk at the feed store clerk trying to catch an unruly rooster in downtown traffic. I guess he must have escaped the feed store somehow. Mo said that she used to buy all her feed here when she had the ranch back in Montara. It was wonderful to see it still operating and doing so well.

We had a great time walking beaches, and took a side trip to explore the tide pools at the Fitzgerald Reserve
http://www.fitzgeraldreserve.org/

On Sunday we spent the morning at the Kings Mountain Art Fair, a wonderful venue in the redwoods on SkyLine Drive, with booths of paintings, ceramics and sculpture from the finest juried artists around, including Mo’s friend Sharon.

http://www.kingsmountainartfair.com/

We spent Monday relaxing and then drove to all the farms along the highway that are so celebrated for their pumpkin festival in the fall. I found gorgeous flowers at a great nursery and had a great time.

Choosing to leave the coast this morning rather than on the holiday, we are back to Jamestown today after a reasonably easy drive home. Mo will be returning to Klamath tomorrow after our quick little foray to the beach, and we still have a couple of good camping trips waiting for us before the snow flies.

John Day Country and home

The picasaweb link posted here is to an individual album that are part of this day’s story if you want to see additional photos. If you like, you can click on the link and see the entire album on Picasa. http://picasaweb.google.com/kyotesue/TravelingOregonToHome

Last night we traveled till we felt like stopping which put us at another Oregon State Park, Unity Lake SP. This place is truly a treasure, off the main track, maybe 3 miles from Unity on HWY 26. The park is small and quiet with large spaces along the lake, big pull through sites in the middle, shade from the typical desert locust trees, and no people. Admittedly, it was midweek, but still, midweek in August, and there was the camp host, another trailer next to him, a car camping family from England traveling the west, and a couple of small truck trailer combos down the way. There are probably more than 40 sites here, so the emptiness was a surprise. The cost was great as well, with water and 30 amp electric for only $17. I know it’s the desert, but it’s lovely, with sage and grasslands, and great views. The night was blessedly dark, not a single light or sound to mar the stillness, and the temperature dropped to 42 blessed degrees. I slept great!


We left this morning by 8, an easy start since we didn’t even have to unhook last night. Continuing west along HWY 26 we were surprised by the steep climbs and drops as we crossed the Blue Mountains toward John Day. I got my favorite thing while traveling, not another car in sight for miles at a time. Not far west of the sage country at Unity SP, we found 3 really nice campgrounds on the east side of Blue Mountain Pass, FS camps with no hookups, but open and lovely, shaded with a small creek. We thought it would be great to boondock for 3.50 a night with our pass in the FS camps, then drop down to Unity for a couple of nights of hookups to get ready for some more cheap boondocking. Someday.

I got my first view of the Strawberry Wilderness and Strawberry Mountain, an area I have heard of but never seen. The Oregon Trail passed through here and the interpretive viewpoint with the big covered wagon was a delight. The landscape is open and empty of people, with big ranches, irrigated alfalfa fields, all surrounded by thickly forested mountains and peaks. Truly lovely, and a great drive if you don’t mind the ups and downs. The Tow-Haul got a good workout on this part of the drive for sure. We stopped in John Day to visit the Kam Wah Chung State Heritage Site, location of some truly fascinating history about the Chinese immigrants who were part of the building of the west. In California we have visited several places that have a great deal of history involving the Chinese men who came here, without wives and families, to work incredibly hard and try to reap some benefit from the better economy here in the US compared to China at the time. My home is Jamestown is surrounded by huge areas that were hydraulically mined, mostly by Chinese, and Mo and I visited Isleton in the Delta last Spring, also developed mostly by Chinese. The exhibit in John Day brought all these parts and pieces together for the first time in a way that helped it all fit. It is an amazing story.

Leaving John Day we continued west to the John Day Fossil Beds. So many people seem to pass through this fascinating land without actually seeing it, so this time we made it a point to visit the visitor center at the Sheep Rock Unit. The visitor center has an amazing array of fossils that have been recovered from the 3 different areas of the National Monument, and the explanation and interpretation of the natural history there is magnificent. They even have the work area where paleontologists clean and catalogue and work with the fossils that is visible to visitors, with huge glass walls that allow you to watch the work in progress. The Miocene period is a repeating story in my soils work, and in most places I have mapped, there are interesting formations that are the result of the activity that occurred during this time, from 12 to 50 million years ago, give or take a weekend. Here in John Day, it was all about volcanics, as in the Sierra Nevada, and in the Columbia Basin. It was great seeing really beautiful artistic interpretations of all that was going on here while Table Mountain was being built in Jamestown, and while the diatomite in the Klamath Basin was forming, while the Latah Formation in Spokane was building. Great to see everything in perspective all at once somehow. I am so glad that we took the time to actually visit the visitor center. Just a little aside, while we were there, 3 German tourists arrived, and were taking many careful photos of the American flag flying against the very blue sky.
Our trip for the day ended back in home territory, at brother Roger and Nancy’s home in LaPine, Oregon. Nice to visit them, since they were unable to attend the gathering in Spokane. After a nice dinner out, we slept again to clear skies and cool temperatures in the low 40’s before we headed out home the last 100 miles or so to Rocky Point.

We both felt that it was a successful trip, with all the moving parts of the MoHo working fine, and both of us were glad to pull up into the driveway under the huge firs around Mo’s house and settle in to a few days of respite before I have to return to work in California.

Traveling through Idaho

Here is the Picasa web link for photos for today:
http://picasaweb.google.com/kyotesue/TravelingIdahoToOregon

Mo and I are watching the morning news, which of course is focused on the summer Olympics in Bejing. The brilliant morning sun is flowing in through the open screen door facing east. We are in the Hellsgate State Park on the Snake River on the western edge of Lewiston, Idaho. I used to camp at this park often when I was working in this area 30 years ago, and when I did craft shows here, the lovely Dogwood Festival, held every April. Sometimes the dogwoods were in full bloom, and other times it would snow, but this area is usually much warmer than the surrounding parts of Washington and Idaho, and Lewiston is known as the “Banana Belt”. We are just south of the confluence of the Clearwater and Snake Rivers, and the Clearwater is an amazing river coming from the Bitterroot Mountains, and much of this area is part of the Lewis and Clark Trail. Here at the park, there is a lovely Discovery Center that highlights the story of the famous pair as they traveled through this country. We will be heading east and south along HWY 95, traveling through Nez Perce country, passing the Nez Perce visitor center and perhaps a casino or two that wasn’t here in the days when I did the soil survey for these areas. The Nez Perce National Historic Park has several sites in this vicinity, and it is a great history lesson to view these areas with the stories that go with them.
The photo is taken at the top of White Bird Hill, site of a famous battle involving the Nez Perce and Chief Joseph. http://www.nps.gov/nepe/

Its fun being here, recognizing all the landscapes and landforms, knowing the plants, the geology, the natural history. Sometimes when I am working in California I miss that intimate knowledge of an area that I developed over so many years working in the Idaho Panhandle. Technically we are out of the panhandle now that we came down the Lewiston Hill, once a winding steep road with many switchbacks, now a very long down grade of 7 percent that makes me very happy with the MoHo’s tow-haul feature that downshifts with just a slight touch of the brake. I lived here when the hill opened and the first weekend a semi hit one of the runaway truck ramps, and because it was unexpectedly frozen, the trucker was launched out over the 1000 foot hill to an unhappy end. Here is a great photo from the 1920’s of the original road which had 64 turns in less than 10 miles. http://www.idptv.state.id.us/buildingbig/hiways/lewistonhill.html

Our goal was this lovely park, full of big old maples that have been planted long enough ago to provide lovely shade, the Snake River out our window, electric and water, with a dump station and television reception with an antenna from Spokane. This is a place worth returning to, with so much around the area to explore, including a long lovely river walkway that goes for several miles along the Snake and the Clearwater. In a little while we will head south and plan to go through John Day in Oregon and then on to somewhere unknown for the night tonight before we head home tomorrow via Mo’s brother’s home in La Pine. We couldn’t ask for a better day to travel through this part of Idaho.

Floating the Little Spokane

Here’s the photo link for today:
http://picasaweb.google.com/kyotesue/LittleSpokaneRiverAndBBQle.com/kyotesue/LittleSpokaneRiverAndBBQ

We hauled our kayaks along on this trip just for this day. The kayaks ride on top the baby car, and usually Mo and I get them loaded and unloaded fairly easily, but with Mo’s owies its good that brother Dan is around to help get them unloaded. Brother Don lives here in Spokane, and kayaking is his major hobby so he is familiar with most all the good recreational runs around here. In addition, nephew Lanson is a whitewater kayaker and does that amazing thing in what looks exactly like a shoe to me. I still can’t figure out how those things stay on top of the water the way they do, and even more I can’t imagine stuffing my body into one.
Here’s a link to information about the river.

http://www.wildernesstrip.com/Trips/default.asp?id=410&category=4&offset=3

So the family flotilla consisted of Mo and I in our lake kayaks, Lanson and Mandi in their “shoes” with an additional little whitewater kayak for Don, a sweet canvas kayak that Don has rebuilt that Mo used in the Sierra’s 3 decades ago, and a flotsam and jetsam of floatable rafts for the rest of the family. It was a feat of cooperation getting everyone loaded with something that floats, with the required lifejackets, and food and drink onto the river, all at the same time. That was about the last time we were there all at the same time, because the kayaks floated much faster than the rafts and with Mo’s injuries, we just had to let the water take us at the speed of the current, which was a nice 5 mph or so.

I actually mapped this area as well, back in the early 2000’s, but had never actually had a boat on the Little Spokane. What a lovely little river, on the way to the big river, it winds and curves through overhanging trees and between tree covered hills and pastures, with just a few of the huge houses along the bluffs visible above the trees. It took us about 3 hours to do the complete run, but it would have been quite a bit faster if we hadn’t been trying to slow down and wait in the sandbars for the rest of the group. Check out the website and don’t miss this lovely little river if you are anywhere near Spokane with a boat. I lived in the area for 3 decades and never discovered it before this day.

After the float trip we all gathered at Don’s place for another family bbq, with great food provided by Wynn and others, and all was wonderful except for the yellow jackets. To add insult to injury, Mo was standing innocently on the deck when an angry bee hit her hand and it swelled up twice its normal size. Not fair at all! We enjoyed the evening, but also enjoyed leaving and going home to cozy camp and settled Mo into her sofa pillow again while we slept through a lovely cool evening and night.

Quiet Friday

Photo link for today:
http://picasaweb.google.com/kyotesue/RiversideStatePark

Mo and I are sitting in the shade of our awning under the pines at Riverside State Park. We are camped with other family in 3 spaces right along the river. The sun is warm and it’s hot and a bit humid for the west, maybe mid-90’s, but I remember summers like this in Spokane. Lake days. The Spokane River is just below us a few hundred yards, flowing silently but with a steady current. The river is deep here, with slippery rocks dropping quickly to a clear green abyss. It looks incredibly inviting, but I am still squirrelly about swimming in strange water with things I can’t see down there. I’m a sandy beach swimmer rather than a river swimmer.

Mo is sitting here quietly in the shade at the edge of the warm sun. We went for a walk down to the Bowl and Pitcher earlier, but the walk was a bit difficult for her and we came back to rest, make sure she had some Advil and let her sit quietly.

http://www.riversidestatepark.org/ Riverside State Park is a jewel right in the city in Spokane. It’s in ponderosa pines with some light shrubs and grasslands. On one side of the river it’s dry and piney, on the opposite side is Douglas-fir with snowberry and huge outcrops of basalt from the cliffs above. The Bowl and Pitcher is actually a narrow part of the river with rapids formed by all the basalt that has caved from the flows that form the cliffs above the park on the west side. There are really great old CCC buildings all around, including a group shelter and some other buildings crafted from the basalt by men trying to escape the depression of the Depression. Bless you, FDR. There is a similar building at the top of Mt Spokane that is equally as perfect in its stone craftsmanship. It’s a bit of a mess trying to get to the park if you don’t know the area, and it was even hard for me knowing the area, because of the construction and bridge repairs that are ongoing in this city. The Spokane River dominates this town, and no matter where you are going you have to get across the river one way or another. Many things to love about Spokane, and sometimes I really miss it, especially the South Hill and all the old craftsman homes that were built in the early 1900’s when Spokane was a rich exciting city built on mining and railroad fortunes.