Rocky Point – Page 8 – The MoHo and Other Traveling Tales

Alaska Bound 4 Days and Counting

Four days. 4 DAYS. How many lists do I have? Certainly a lot more than 4! I am blogging about this why? I have no clue, other than the fact that it helps me to write things down. It helps me to remember. I love to journal about times past, to write the stories as they happen, to sometimes summarize the stories years later, or summarize the year past. I also like to write about what I am planning, because it’s so much fun to go back after the planned event and read what I thought it might be like.

Alaska. We are embarking on the “epic journey”. Although as I follow along as other RV’rs travel this road I am thinking maybe it is no longer quite so epic. The highway has been tamed a bit, it seems, so I am not really expecting epic. I expect long, I expect a bit of monotony, I expect frost heaves and gravel.

I remember once about 40 years ago I saw the Canadian Rockies west of Calgary for the first time. Of course I had seen photos, but nothing really prepares you for the magnificent mass of those mountains. The closer we got to them, the less I could breathe, with their weight lying heavy in my chest. Truly breathtaking. I expect moments like that one to come in completely unexpected places.

Recently there was a blog discussion about places folks wanted to go in their RV, and Alaska was the subject of many comments, both pro and con. I don’t know why I want to go to Alaska, but I realize that it isn’t so much that I want to go to Alaska, as it is that I want to do the road. I want to know that I “did” the road. I know many people who did it in the days when it was a wild place, when gas was hard to come by, and the animals were everywhere. Now, as I read the blogs, I see the standard tourist destinations come up, the photos and stories, each with a different perspective, but still very similar. Has the road been completely tamed? Will we be one in a long line of RV’s plying the highway?

We haven’t made any reservations, wanting instead to stay flexible in our route and our timing. We have “plans”, though, thoughts about where we want to stay, and places we want to see. For me, big on the list are the lakes along the Cassiar Highway and a soak at Llaird Hot Springs, and I want to put my kayak in as many BC lakes as possible. Sure, I want to see “the mountain”, but I am not attached to it, and reading about the crowds in Denali makes it a bit less exciting.

For me, it is about the journey, about the feeling of the road opening up ahead to vistas I have never seen. Flat and boring spruce, or magnificent take-your-breath-away mountains and turquoise lakes. Either way, it’s new, and it’s far. I like the idea of “far”. I like actually being on the road, the driving part, the riding part, the moving part where your body is vibrating with the engine, where the unknown road opens up ahead of you, with the extra benefit of a bathroom ten feet away, and the dog and cat with us.

Mo has been the one checking and rechecking the MoHo, making sure all is well. All wasn’t well with the house batteries, they were five years old and heating up. Scary. Especially with all the photos of RV fires that have been in the blogs lately. Last minute trip to Klamath to buy new batteries. So many folks have talked about batteries, but I couldn’t remember where to find the discussions, so Mo just did her own research and came up with two 12 volt Trojans, for some reason not sealed, but supposedly the best. Once a year maintenance. Then, while installing the batteries, she blew the big 110 amp fuse on the inverter. No clue what was wrong, but after fiddling for a long time, she made an appointment at Central Point RV.

With the holiday weekend coming up, we were a bit concerned, but she drove down early yesterday morning and was back in less than 6 hours with a new fuse, the generator problem solved, and the MoHo is mechanically ready to go. The technician said that the linkage to the carburetor in the generator was stuck, and that it needs to be run every few weeks to keep it clear. Mo thought the problem might have been related to the battery/inverter issue, so was glad that she had checked the generator before she went to Medford. They charged Mo 80 bucks for labor and 45 bucks (ouch) for the fuse. Hope we don’t blow that one very often. It was great to call the night before, get an appointment for the next morning, and have all the problems solved so quickly.

The other funny story is about the Protect-a Tow. We wanted to do business locally, and RV Trailer Warehouse in Medford finally agreed to order some in and promised to save one for us. The folks there weren’t too good about returning calls, or giving us any idea of when they might actually get one in, so Mo finally ordered one on the internet directly from the Canadian manufacturer. It was actually cheaper even with shipping that the local guy quoted. It was supposed to arrive within 8 to 12 business days via expedited mail. According to the tracking number, it was only processed through Toronto, Canada, on June 29th. When Mo went to Medford, she picked up a Protect-a-Tow from the folks who had ordered one and saved it for us. He said the return policy was good if we didn’t use the one we bought. We will hopefully return the one that shows up in the mail after we are long gone. Apologies to the local store, but if he had been more on top of keeping us informed, he would have had the sale, even if it WAS more expensive.

Our trip looks to be somewhere in the vicinity of 7,300 miles, just a little bit more than our cross country trip to Niagara last summer. Streets and Trips has been tweaked and shoved and waits patiently on the laptop. Lists like this: laptop, plug, external drive, baby laptop for Mo, plug, phone, plug, charger, camera, plug, charger, baby camera, plug, charger. GPS, GPS cord, tripods, Mo’s phone, plug, charger….GEEZ when will someone come up with a wireless charger and wireless power for all these toys. Oh yes, Kindle, and plug.

Another list: passports, animal certificates, copies of important documents saved to an external,cancel the TV, cancel the paper, cancel the mail. Mow the lawn and spray the Liquid Fence once last time. Make sure the house sitters have all the relevant phone numbers. Dog food. Cat food. Dog leash. Cat leash. Clothes for rain, clothes for being cold, clothes for being hot while still traveling through Oregon and Washington and maybe the first part of BC. How many shoes and what kind of shoes for each situation. Walking sticks. Dry bags for the kayaks. Find a dry bag for the camera in the kayak!

I finally resorted to paper lists, on those 5 inch hot pink lined Post It notes. One for each of the next four days, lined up in a row along the counter with the piles of stuff to go to the motorhome. More lists. Mo install the Protect-a Tow, blow the pine needles off all the roofs today. Make cookies. Make spaghetti sauce for freezer. And yes, “go to July Fourth Celebration in Klamath”. That one is on Monday, and thank goodness the parade and festivities don’t actually start until 5pm, so we have all day Monday to do “stuff”. Then Tuesday more stuff, and then finally Wednesday morning we are off.

Summer Solstice

The longest day of the year, the shortest night, the beginning of summer, time to celebrate. I love to celebrate the turning of the seasons, the changing of the light. I ring bells at Winter Solstice, with that wonderful feeling that winter light will be lengthening and summer returning. In the midst of the summer solstice is the thought that already the sun is turning away. Strange thought when summer has only just begun to warm the forest here and the trees are only now fully leafing out. The weather on this first day of summer did not disappoint us, with the hottest temperatures of the year so far. It was a gorgeous, crystal clear, beautiful, 80 plus degrees today, and I think I could see the tomatoes growing taller as I watched them.

We didn’t do a Solstice party, but we did have a bonfire last Sunday night. With the formal notification of the beginning of fire season, the last day for outdoor burning was June 20, so we invited the neighbors and built the last big outdoor fire of the season. Wes and Gayle live most of the time in Arizona, relocated there after many years in Oregon. Their place here is a lovely mountain home, just across the road from our house, and it’s nice when they return for the summer. They waited a bit this year because of our cool temperatures, so we were glad to see them come back in time for some neighborly visits before we leave for Alaska. Of course, it’s also nice that they are here since Wes is our resident summer lawn mowing person and house care-giver while we are gone. Wes has no grass to mow next door and seems to get a kick out of riding around on Mo’s mower. At least that is what he says. Personally, I just think he is a truly kind and generous neighbor! Gayle has treated us to many lovely meals, both here in Oregon and when we have visited them in Arizona in the winter.

When I invited them over, I said to come for hot dogs and a meal composed entirely of non-home-cooked food. Most of the time I love to cook, but lately with the extra work weeks taking most of my time, not so much. Our get-together was more about a chance to have a fire and enjoy the outdoors than it was about eating. We did have a good time, in spite of the store bought picnic, and the hot dogs roasted over the fire on a pitchfork hit the spot. I even found humongous marshmallows, big as a fist, labeled appropriately “campfire marshmallows”. I laughed so hard when we tried to eat them, they were HUGE and sticky and Gayle needed a fork and a plate to deal with just one.

In the past couple of weeks we had 7 cords of juniper delivered, huge rounds that Mo splits with the hydraulic splitter. It’s a hard, hot, and nasty job, and this time she has avoided huge divots in her legs created by flying chunks of wood with the soccer shin guards I got her for Christmas. Mo does all the splitting and we share the stacking chores. The loads come 3.5 cords at a time, and it took us three days to do the first load. Today we started on the second. The juniper is reasonably priced firewood, but it is full of huge knots, one of the reasons it looks so beautiful in woodcrafts. Juniper is encroaching on the native grasslands in Oregon, and the juniper eradication program is making an attempt to take it back a notch. The result is lots of big, dry juniper, needing a home for the winter. We are happy to oblige. I love it. It crackles and snaps, not a problem in our enclosed stove, and it burns hot and long. Mo loves it less, see previous entry regarding shin divots. Today she said something to the effect that we had enough juniper for a couple of years and next time we were going to order it split. She thinks the cost of split wood might not be as much as a busted splitter.

Mo fed our campfire with some of the huge rounds that were impossible to split to a reasonable size. I brought out the fancy Thermocell mosquito repellent device, along with the Off Clip-On device and tried to keep the biting monsters at bay. Wes was about ready to head back for Arizona, since even with the fire smoke and all the devices, the mosquitoes still were trying to have us for dinner. Must have something to do with the nice days warming up and everything is hatching beautifully.

The weekend of the 12th was the big graduation weekend in Klamath, and town was filled to the brim with celebrants, including my niece Savannah. My granddaughter Hillary will also be graduating in a few weeks from Klamath Union High School. Hard to believe that little baby girl is through with high school.

On Friday, the 10th, my friend Maryruth ( we are getting close to 50 years of friendship) and her husband, son, and daughter-in-law returned from an Albany graduation via Rocky Point. Mo and I turned over the big house bedrooms to them and spent the night in the guest cabin with Abby and Jeremy. It was a great way to be sure that the cat didn’t do his friendly cat thing and scratch at the guest room door till they opened it and purr all night on Maryruth’s chest. The cabin is a real treat, with morning sunlight and a warm little wood stove for the night chill.

I cooked a real supper for them, no store bought stuff this time, plank grilled salmon with lemon hollandaise, fresh asparagus, and salad from our greenhouse garden. I even made an old fashioned apple dump cake for dessert. Yum.

One of the great old traditions of Rocky Point are the amazing little steamboats that come here every year. Not your average big boat, but beautifully built little water crafts that are operated by true wood-fired steam engines. We heard the toots from the house and decided we definitely needed to run down to the lake to check them out. We also wanted to check out the newly remodeled resort. Rumor had it that there was a new bar adjacent to the existing restaurant, so we were happy to find out the rumor was correct. After walking along the dock to admire the steamboats, we enjoyed the beautiful view of Pelican Bay from the restaurant for just the price of a round of drinks. It’s wonderful to have friends stop in and visit. It’s also nice to have a special little place close by to have a nice dinner with a gorgeous view. Note to self: dinner at Rocky Point Resort soon!

…

Squirrels, deer, rabbits, and mosquitos

“Squirrels are nothing more than rats with fuzzy tails that can climb trees”. This comment was posted on Judy’s blog today and I laughed out loud. Of course, I also feel that way about deer. Cute in the forest, far, far away from where I live, but nothing more than big rats with voracious appetites in my yard.

Between the squirrels, the rabbits, the deer, the voles, and the mosquitoes, I often wonder about the joys of living in the forest surrounded by the lovely wildlife. Thanks to the mosquitoes we also have a healthy population of bats, good wildlife of course, but a bit less so when they buzz our heads in the evenings while lounging in the hot tub.

Oh yes, chipmunks as well, lots and lots of them. Just caught myself in a great big “sigh”. We have a very large hole in the ground along the back property line between the lawn and the forest that also has some kind of critter playing around that is much bigger than a squirrel and I think bigger than a rabbit. Abby’s favorite thing is racing out the door to the back yard in pursuit of whatever furry thing is out there. I have been hearing a lot of owls around lately, many voices of many different types, and am gleefully hoping that they are here because of all the other fuzzy critters that are around. Help!

Yesterday I sprayed the entire property boundaries with Liquid Fence, sworn to work by my friends in a California forest. Gerald said he used it all summer last year and the deer ate everything in sight in the neighbors yards and left his alone till he got lazy and quit spraying. It’s not a cheap endeavor, at 40 bucks for 2 applications, and directions that say “Apply weekly initially, then every three weeks after that”. I am applying weekly, with special attention to my roses, delphiniums, azaleas, and the baby flowering pear tree that the deer decimated last fall. Of course we have the greenhouse for the hidden veggies, “nahh na na NA na”! Other folks who have lived at Rocky Point for 30 plus years have learned to quit trying to grow things that the deer love to eat. I’m still not that smart. I WANT my roses and delphiniums, so I will continue to try to outsmart those pesky critters.

When it comes to the squirrels, I think I have won, at least so far. Of course I don’t have those flying stinkers that seem to be the problem at Al’s place in Ontario.

( If you want to read a great story about Al thinking about simulating one of those flying squirrels, be sure to check out his recent blog.)

I hung a thin wire cable between the trees in the forest, just beyond the grass, and so far the poor squirrels are completely stumped and reduced to foraging on the ground for what is scattered there by the yellow headed blackbirds, voracious eaters who like to shake all the seed out on the ground for entertainment. Lucky for me, the blackbirds all manage to head for the marsh by mid-summer and no longer eat me out of house and home.

This time of year I am filling all 8 feeders with four different kinds of food every single morning! So far the black headed grosbeaks outnumber most other birds, but we have a lot of purple finches, evening grosbeaks, stellar jays, juncos, and a very friendly white headed woodpecker. Geez! I am feeling not a little bit guilty about how devastating it might be to our little bird friends when we leave for 7 weeks in Alaska. Hopefully in July and August food will be so plentiful they will somehow manage. I don’t set up hummingbird feeders for just that reason. I have heard how dependent they get on the feeders and how important it is to be consistent if you start putting up food for them.

I have to thank everyone for the lovely comments on my last post photographs. I didn’t mention it because I was feeling a bit insecure, but that was the first day I was out with my new Nikon DSLR D5100. All those photos were my learning experience. I have discovered that my “learning experience” may go on for several years at least. I have stepped up from shooting everything with the “auto” setting, a perfectly acceptable way to take photos.

The water photo that folks seemed to like was an attempt at aperture priority slowing down the shutter so I could get that silky movement. This photo of the east side of the yard early in the morning is my first attempt at HDR. So much to learn, and so little time. Sigh. My knitting has been languishing on the shelf while I play with the camera and fight the critters and garden! I think I started the perfect easy little scarf back in Eureka with gorgeous hand dyed yarn, and am still barely half way through the skein. Maybe I’ll have a chance to knit when we are back on the road, although I would imagine it won’t be on those bumpy frost heaves on the Alaska Highway.

Memorial Day

Ahh well, the flag is a bit fuzzy in this photo, do you think when I get that new DSLR I will have no more fuzzy photos??

It felt good to put up the American Flag this weekend, for many reasons, not the least of which is to show support for our troops and especially for my two grandson’s who have both served in Iraq. Patriotism means many things to many people, and each of us has our own definition. Looking at this flag flying in the spring winds reminds me of being twelve years old in the school playground, crying with emotion when they played the Star Spangled Banner and I saw that flag waving against the blue sky. Unencumbered by political discussions and partisan arguments, I loved my country, and was proud to be living in the United States of America. I still love my country, with full knowledge that it isn’t perfect, I would not choose any other. If you want to read an excellent story about the origins of Memorial Day, go to E-Squared and Mui’s blog here. You will also get to see an amazing photo of the American Flag to help remember the reason for this holiday.

(Most of you blog readers know that you can click on the photo to zoom in and see more detail)

The Alaska planning is moving forward in earnest. My daughter and her husband have done the highway in their big rig several times in the last year, and her one bit of advice was, “Take extra headlights”. Mo is attempting to offset the broken headlight thing with a bit of ingenuity, and hopefully it will help a bit. This morning she was looking through her photos of her last trip on the highway and found a shot of her last attempt and they never had a broken headlight. I think there was a lot more gravel on the road in 1974 than we will encounter this summer, but all it takes is one good hit.

We also have ordered the Protect-a-Tow recommended by Linda to try to offset some of the damage from flying gravel between the rig and the Tracker. There are several options out there, but this seems to be the favorite of many folks doing the highway with a toad. Rain, of course, is a given, even if we have some good weather, it is just about certain that we will have rain. Living in the northwest mountains, we already have plenty of fleece, boots, rain gear and flannel, so the trip should feel just about like the past few months of cold, wet springtime at home. I am especially grateful that we will be in the cozy MoHo, unlike Mo’s first trip in the Scout, hiding out inside with mosquito coils burning while it rained.

We do plan to have campfires whenever possible, but will not be taking any firewood. The “Burn It Where You Buy It” rule is in effect in most places in the western forests, and while I haven’t read the full rules yet, I would bet we couldn’t take firewood into Canada anyway. Instead we are packing plenty of firestarter and Mo is taking her baby chain saw to take advantage of whatever may be found locally en route.

And yes. Rather than borrowing my daughter’s very expensive professional Nikon equipment, I ordered my own camera, the Nikon D5100 with a metal mount 55 to 300 lens, which Al says will probably pull my arms out of their sockets. The 18-55 will hopefully get those great wide angle views that I will need in the vast expanses of the north country. I read everything I could find comparing Nikon DSLR’s and appreciated Al’s link to Ken Rockwell’s site, a truly amazing resource.

Of course, the biggest job seems to be thinking about and planning our route. I have played and adjusted and researched and am still fiddling with the thing a bit, trying to get an idea of the time we will need to really do all that we want to do and yet still leave some loose, unscheduled time to take advantage of whatever amazing moments choose to present themselves to us. According to the “Streets and Trips” plan, we are now up to 39 days and approximately 6500 miles for the MoHo, with some possible side trips in the Tracker that aren’t included. Since I am still working part time, I can’t have a completely open-ended trip, and besides, Rocky Point in summer is one of the best places in the world and we don’t want to miss all of it.

I have been sitting with the hard copy maps, Mo’s favorite, the laptop, and the 2011 Milepost, trying to get an idea of where we might stay along the way, how many miles a day we can expect to drive, and what we don’t want to miss. I really do love the planning part, and hope that all the planning won’t interfere with the spontaneous, wild moments I hope to experience as well. I’m following along right now as several RV’rs travel through Alaska, and it’s really interesting to see the different perspective of people who are even traveling together on the same route. I’m sure our trip will have it’s own flavor as well.

In the midst of working my regular job and planning for the upcoming trip, I have been gardening, planting goodies in the greenhouse, and watching tiny seeds sprout. The days are still about 20 degrees below normal, and when I open the door to the greenhouse, my glasses fog up immediately with warmth and humidity. At night it stays above freezing, even though we have had frosts in the more open areas of the property. I planted a row of new roses along the driveway to replace the sad twigs that couldn’t handle the hard winter. The new roses are a hardy shrub variety that are grown on their own root stock and are reputed to bloom with as little as 4 hours of daily sunlight. With our big forest, sunlight is always an issue for blooming plants. I also bought a killer 4 gallon backpack sprayer so that I can saturate the property with nasty smelling “Liquid Fence” to thwart the deer and rabbits. I’ll let you know how it works when the summer is over and the dry fall brings in those ravenous critters to eat everything in sight.

With snow in the mountains, 4-wheelers in the forest, and traffic everywhere, I am grateful to be spending this holiday quietly at home after an overnight visit from my daughter and granddaughter. For a couple of girls often plugged in to electronic stuff, a game of dominoes last night on the dining table was a bit different, and I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe with some of their antics. A bacon and waffle breakfast was just the send off for them to return home and enjoy a much deserved day off.

The sun does come out now and then, the grass is getting much greener, and I even spent most of the day outside yesterday enjoying the colors of spring.

Building the Greenhouse and Spring Comes to Rocky Point

I am still learning how to embed a SmugMug slideshow, without much luck. Yeah, I know I can do it with Picasa, but I am stubborn. So you can try out this link if you want to see the process greenhouse slideshow on SmugMug

Spring has finally come to Rocky Point. Even though we have fits of snow and hail predicted for tonight and tomorrow, the fact that the daffodils are blooming is a sure sign that spring is winning. Maybe. Mo actually started up the big mower this week and mowed all the lawns, so that is another good sign. It has been a long, cold spring most everywhere in the west, I think, with temperatures averaging 10 to 20 degrees lower than normal, and most flowering plants running 2 to 3 weeks behind their normal schedule.

One more sure sign of true spring is the bursting of the aspen leaves, and there are huge drifts of aspen along the lowlands bordering Upper Klamath Lake. I saw a faint hint of green yesterday, just a breath of a cloud of green on the tips of the aspen branches. Ahhh. Finally.

I am truly excited about the greenhouse. The raised beds are 12 inches deep, and I have a good amount of square footage to attempt some close cropped, raised bed gardening. Because the soil is thick and rich, you can plant veggies much closer together, and that also keeps the weeds down a lot. I just discovered another lovely little treat, I can sit on a 2×12 bench and have access to just about everything without having to be on my knees all the time. I’m tickled.

On another note, a recent commenter thought the greenhouse was a great idea since produce was going to get more and more expensive with the huge increases in fuel costs. Hmmm. Wondering just how much my tomatoes will cost this year. We didn’t build the greenhouse to save money, but so that we could have any kind of veggie garden at all in our cool, forested, animal infested environment. Did I say infested? Oops. Wildlife in the forest is supposed to be one of the benefits, but as a lover of gardens, I am not quite sure about that.

Back to the cost of the tomato. The greenhouse cost 699 on sale at Harbor Freight. (Do I count the gas to drive twice over to Medford to buy it and then pick it up?) The 2×12 untreated fir we used cost 71. (We couldn’t find a local supplier for cedar or redwood and didn’t want to use treated lumber). The gravel was part of the load Mo purchased for our road, so I guess I won’t count that part. The soil cost a total of 130 for composted dairy waste and topsoil. Labor? well, we won’t count that at all, but safe to say it was more than going to the store to buy a tomato. I spent about 23 bucks on some heritage seeds and about ten bucks on starts, and who knows how much more I will spend. I’m an impulsive crazy spender when it comes to plants and gardens. But for now, lets just say we are into the greenhouse to the tune of $935.00. Since I have six tomato plants, and can expect maybe a max of 5 pounds per plant, I am paying about $31.00 per pound for tomatoes, with some lettuce, spinach, herbs and other stuff thrown in. I really don’t expect to get 30 pounds of tomatoes, but who knows.

All I know for sure, is that it is a deal at any price and worth every single penny. I will have all the stuff for fresh salsa, and basil to my hearts content, one of my most fragrant favorite herbs. I won’t waste a bunch of lettuce because I buy too much because it is too far to town, and that will certainly make Mo happier. I’m awful about buying too much produce. I haven’t had a real vegetable garden in years, and have no desire to return to the Toro Tiller days when I gardened in a 2 acre plot. This is just perfect. Perfect. Well, at least hopefully it is perfect. I guess I’ll find out after a summer of trying it out.

While we worked on the beds yesterday, I also decided it was time to move the bird feeders away from any and all lawn and hung a wire from two big firs out in the National Forest just beyond our property. I now have about 6 feeders, with different kinds of food to hopefully attract a few more songbirds. The blackbirds and squirrels were making quick work of my bird food stash and they loved throwing seed everywhere for the chipmunks and rabbits to find. Too much scratching going on out there, for sure, and the flowers were suffering. I keep trying for bird photos, and am embarrassed to put anything up at all, but just so you have an idea, here is the bird feeding station. Gotta get that camera soon! So far we have lots of grosbeaks, chickadees, finches, blackbirds, jays, and some other little ones that I haven’t identified yet. Time to get out the binoculars and the Sibley bird book! After all, we are in the Klamath Basin, one of the birding capitals of the country.

The daffodils are blooming, the birds are singing, and the veggies are growing. What more could I ask for? No snow?? hah, not a chance.