Blur

It's all starting to become one. I spent about two weeks in the Redwoods between Jed Smith, Crescent City, Eureka and Ukiah. It's a hard place to leave. Hopefully next time I'm there I'll be far enough removed from the Park Ranger's lecture about how we cut down 95% of the millennial Redwoods. There was one 1500 year old tree he had a picture of that was growing over the top of a fallen 2000 year old tree. They used pictures of it to advertise how long the wood will last because the one underneath was still solid. In the second picture he showed, you could see that they had cut down the second tree so now it was just a stump on a log. But, I already wrote about all that.


Once I left Jed Smith I only went about 9 miles down to Crescent City where I decided to stop and have a real breakfast, something I hadn't done up to that point in the trip. While I was sitting there I checked my disc golf app and it turned out I had just passed a beach course about a mile back. It seemed silly having only gone 9 miles but I decided to pull into the RV park across the street and go play the course. After a week of boondocking, I needed to dump my tanks and charge up the batteries anyway so the idea of stopping hitting a beach course wasn't a hard sell. On my third day at the park, when I went to pay for my fourth, I asked what the weekly rate would have been and for barely more than the cost of the extra day I already owed, I turned into my first week long stay anywhere in the RV (other than Fest and Burning Man).

Crescent City is an interesting dichotomy epitomized when I was photographing the beautiful sunset on the beach right up until the point where the drunk guy came literally tumbling down the sand dune next to me, half gallon wine bottle still in-hand. The scenery there is amazing! The coast there is like nothing I have seen anywhere else with it's massive rocks (islands?) and wild crashing waves. I met some of the most welcoming people you'd ever want to meet while I was there, but of course the first interaction I had with someone in town I wasn't buying either food or a campsite from was a guy who began our conversation by telling me that he had just gotten out of jail and that's why he was enjoying his 10am beer on the jetty next to the tee box I was standing on. It's also the first place I got a real taste of California's tweeker problem. According to my sister, a lot of it is due to other states practicing what she calls, “Greyhound Therapy” where a state will close down a mental institution and give all the inmates/patients bus tickets to California.


So now you're asking yourself why would I have stayed there a week? Especially when places like Jed Smith and Whistlers Bend and even Moab didn't get a whole week? Well I gotta tell ya, there's just something about Jefferson... er... um... Way Northern California. I ended up meeting the guy that designed the beach disc golf course which not only led to several days of frisbee throwing lessons and my first ever win at Dubs (doubles), but I also got to go see his house up in the mountains and climb around on some massive ancient redwood stumps (I didn't stray from the trails much at Jed Smith, I'm kindof a stickler for the rules ya know). He made 4 of the nuttiest pizzas I have ever eaten, I can't even remember all the different toppings that were piled on top of them, Elk and asparagus and pineapple and curry and and and... And then a bunch of people came over and we read a play! Yup, disc golfing made me a thespian. Well, for an evening anyway. A truly delightful evening. One for which I have to reach back a couple of years and thank Burning Man for. Learn to accept thee gifts the universe brings you. My week in Crescent City was a gift on many levels.
It was also the first place I took my bike off the carrier and went for a ride since the playa too. I tried in Oregon but I got nowhere because it can't go uphill. I was standing on the cranks and we just stopped moving. But the gradual hills along the coast were no problem and the mostly flat city area made the bike a great way to get around. I really do need to look into an electric hub though if it's going to be my mode of local transportation.


Eureka!!
Ok, Samoa. After my week in Crescent City I couldn't resist the call of Humboldt County any longer. I thought I was going to stop at Trees of Mystery on the way there but I ended up driving straight on through. I headed to a campground way out on the peninsula of Humboldt Bay. I stayed there one night amongst all the sketchy patrons and then headed over to the disc golf course right up the road for a quick round before going to meet my friends in Eureka. As seems to be the way out here, the course was pretty hard to navigate. Tee signs and pin numbers get vandalized by the non disc golfer park patrons (tweekers, drunks, homeless), fairways cross, the closest tee box to the pin is not necessarily the next tee box, etc. So after I got confused around the 5^th or 6^th hole I played I was ready to bail and just head to town. But I saw a local playing the course and decided to wait and ask him where some holes were. Ended up playing a couple of rounds with the dude. I never would have found the last hole on the other side of the creek and I had thrown at the wrong pin on a couple of holes in the middle. As again seems to be the way out here, if you can happen upon a local to show you the course your experience will be WAY better. So it was with a smile on my face and not frustration that I headed into town.


Eureka!!
No, for real this time. I pulled into town and let my people know I was there. A short time later I was enjoying my first Pho. The next afternoon, one of my friends came and picked me up and we went to Arcata and played The Redwood Curtain. There are not enough letters in the word WOW to express what an amazing disc golf course that is! I've hit one helluva lot of trees in the year since I started playing this game but there is something downright mystical about hitting a tree that's a thousand years old. Not to mention climbing up a ten foot high stump and throwing from inside of it! The highlight, however, was almost acing their pond shot! And it's on video!!
The next night we went out for the monthly Eureka Arts event; street musicians, open artists studios, all sorts of good stuff... Even a zombie crawl going on! And, in the disc golf is a small world realm, the zombie in the pope outfit came up and asked me if I had gotten to play The Curtain... Yup, it was the guy I had played the other course with a couple of days prior! As if that wasn't cool enough, one of my friends is studying with a local Artists whose studio we went into and checked out. He invited us to come back the next day and paint! Unfortunately, he got food poisoning at the open studio, everyone had food out, saw way too many people walk up to the tables, scratch their nose, and then start digging around in the pile of cheese for just that right slice. But my friends invited me to their house, I painted for most of the afternoon and then got to watch some modern glass blowing and even try it out!! Truly delightful people I'm quite fortunate to have met.


The next day it was time to hit the road and get to my sisters house before she went out of town (I had the timing of her trip wrong, but that's jumping ahead a little). The Vogue had other ideas. I ended up at a shop a couple of blocks from the RV park for most of the day with a flat tire. Turned out the o-ring on the valve stem on one of the inner rear tires was bad. Now I'm not gonna say it happened on the way to Burning Man when the guys that replaced the alternator torqued on the valve stem with a crowbar to get an air hose on it, but that mighta been the last straw. At some point I need to get a set of heavy duty valve extenders so that it's easier to check and nothing has to get bent or pried. Once I was back on the road after the cheapest repair ever ($54 + the $5 part, and the kid spent a couple of hours getting wheels on and off) I straddled a piece of a shredded truck tire on the highway that left one side of my Ultraguard (the giant mudflap across the back of the RV) flapping in the breeze. So it was a short day of driving and I stopped in Ukiah where I had the world's greatest chicken fried steak at the Highway 101 Bar and Grill. It's so big I didn't even have to order an extra one to go. And it's soo good I savored it for 4 meals! So the next morning I woke up and did a quick fix on the mudflap by drilling a couple of holes and moving a two of the bolts and then headed off to one of the local disc golf course there for a quick round. Unlike the other courses I'd been playing lately, I was completely alone on most of this course. Crossing fairways weren't a problem, nor baskets right next to tee pads and there wasn't an addict to be seen. Well, except the one addicted to throwing plastic at trees.

From there it was just a hop, skip and a double double animal style with extra spread and no lettuce or tomato to my sisters house in Stockton where I opened the door and stepped out into mid August Philadelphia weather. After more than a month of you better have a sweatshirt as soon as the sun goes down (and in most cases pants and a coat), that was quite unexpected. The next morning I did something I've never done before... I took the RV out to go somewhere (A disc golf course, of course) and then drove right back to where I came from. Could I be any less California than driving a 29,000 pound diesel bus as my commuter vehicle? That course is about to host the NorCal Championships. I'm probably sticking around here a week longer than I thought I was going to so I can check that out. I know that because... You guessed, it, I met up with a couple of locals while I was there and got to play a round with them. No pizza, no theater and nobody had a stick long enough to get my disc down out of the pine tree this time though.

Sick

Or... How to not spend 4 days in the Redwood Forest


Apple Cider Vinegar & Honey. My Mom's daily drink. It's usually mine, until I run out and then it can take me forever to mix up the next batch. Which is what happened in this case. So I get a sinus headache that rivals any migraine you've ever had. Before I went on, “The Juice” full-time, I had a bout of headaches so bad that a couple of doctors were looking into, “Cluster headaches.” Well, that's not what it is. Even I get fooled once in a while, I had one last 5 or 6 days a couple of years ago and I went to the doctor to get checked for a sinus infection. He said yes and wrote the scrip but on the way from his office to the drug store I blew the headache ending golf ball sized gob of snot that had been causing me all the pain. I know... TMI. Just wanted you to understand how my trip to the Redwoods has been so far. Today is my last day here, I'm out of allergy/cold meds. At least I finally mixed up The Juice last night but it will take a few days before that starts working again. Mom always used Heinz vinegar and whatever honey was on sale. A couple of years ago I switched to the Bragg's vinegar and for about the past year I have been using the raw, unfiltered honey. If you suffer from allergies or sinus headaches, you really owe it to yourself to mix up a batch of this stuff and drink a little bit every day. I believe my Mom's mix was a cup each of the vinegar and honey in a half gallon pitcher of water and she would drink a small juice glass every morning. I usually mix it in a bottle of some sort (a water bottle with a chug removed for the vinegar and honey will work), make it much stronger and just take little swigs.


So there are these trees here. Really really big trees. One of the first things I did when I got here was go to the Ranger's lecture about the park happening at the visitor center a frisbees throw from my campsite. He spent 45 minutes trying to make the National and State parks (the Redwoods are the only place the two organizations work together) sound as awesome as he can, what it really comes down to is what an incredible bummer (his word) it is that it only took us stupid humans a blink of an eye to cut down 97% of a forest jam packed trees that were thousands of years old. The ones that are left are truly spectacular... But 97%. And the only reason it wasn't 100% is because a small group of people got together to, “Save the Redwoods” and started buying up property and getting the government to start making the parks with it. In the end, they saved 3%. There's more than 3% of the land that belongs to the parks, but it was logged so they call it, “Second Growth” forest. They actually had to re-log some of that because there were too many trees all growing at the same rate (and all in straight rows).
Anyway... Stout Grove. Home of the Stout tree. One bigass tree. I went across the footbridge yesterday and walked around for a while, took a bunch of pictures. Headed back today for the guided ranger tour but the footbridge had been packed away for the winter.
--
This brings up a whole nother aspect of this trip that I just realized is working out slightly better than last years trip. Namely that I seem to be one of the very last people that is getting to do certain things. Half of Whistler's Bend Disc Golf Course basically closed after the first round I played there, the course lost two holes every day I was camped there. Which, of course, is WAY better than last year when the government shutdown had all the cool parks along my route closed. Not to mention going from Utah to Kansas City for deep fried french toast and home made corned beef hash only to find the place I had seen on tv at my sister's house had gone out of business a year prior. Pulled into the first campground I saw in Tahoe only to be told that they were closing that day, just there to board the place up.
--
All the cool hiking trails are on the other side of the river so I spent the day nursing the headache, wandering the campground and, as usual for a month and a half into living in it, still settling into the RV and cleaning up after Burning Man.
Spent a bit of time painting while I was there. Yes, past tense, this is an editorial recap of my time in Jed Smith State and National Parks. I moved on a week ago today. First time I've had good internet to post this, good lesson, park next to the office if you want good wifi, not on the outlying edges of the park. Jed Smith is definitely a park I would like to return to in both Summer and Winter to see what it's like at it's extremes. Not to mention getting to do more of the hikes. The trails out here are spectacular.

One pic from Stout Grove before I go


Time to post this and go write Crescent City while I sit here with my laundry.
Oh laundry... You never ending pain in the ass! Whether it's the Vogue or something else, one of these days I'm going to have the washer/dryer combo unit in the RV/camper. Granted, that means I still have to put them away... With a single unit I can't get my clean clothes out of the dryer and throw the dirties in the washer, but still...

The Next 3500

I am sitting here in the Lava Lake RV Resort in the Cascade Mountains with 3500 miles and 39 days in the Vogue behind me. This has been one hell of a trip, and one I don't plan to do again. At least, not like this. Took me a couple of times to realize that driving from Fest to Burning Man takes the worst week of my life and puts it smack dab in-between the two very best weeks of my life. With that in mind, it's a good thing I have the cat with me this time so I don't have to worry about him or rush to get back, taking my time this year, seeing some sights and trying to enjoy life a little bit.


It's raining this morning, first time I've seen that since the playa. It's great because of the severe drought that's been hitting the West Coast. Also cool because it means I have an excuse to sit with the computer and not be outside in the awesomeness. I stopped in a NorCal town called, “Weed” to play a round of disc golf before coming to Oregon, seen pictures the past few days of the town on fire. I guess that's the double edged sword of living up here amid the beauty of the mountains and forests, when the fire comes, it doesn't care. I will most likely pass Weed again on my way South, not sure if I want to go see the devastation or just leave it to disc golf memories and pictures. I will probably stop though, since I've never seen anything like that before. And yeah, I might go see how the course fared.


I guess I should catch up a little on the past months goings on.


Fest was Delightful! Best one in a long time because the most magical thing happened to me this year... Groundz came a callin! It's this Festies dream come true! For those not in the know, Groundz is the original committee formed to put together the Philadelphia Folk Festival. The, “First Family” as it were. The second family on the farm was Graphix, now there's a whole lot of stuff I could go into about that on many levels and this could turn into a massively huge story about my 18 year history at FolkFest and what I know of it's 53 years, but that's not what you came here for. Suffice it to say that, due to some serious Festival Magic, I began volunteering with Graphix I believe my third year. I did that for a bunch of years, went back to being a paying customer for several years and then wound up volunteering again with Parking the last 4 or 5. Then earlier this year, while I was up there this year a month ahead of time for the Parking Picnic, one of my friends from Goundz said they could use some help and would I come up the next weekend. Um... HELL YES!!! I ended up on his crew doing carpentry work, couldn't have imagined anything better! Suffice it to say that him saying to me, “You're a Groundz kid”... Even just thinking about it gets me goose pimply and watery eyed. Being asked to actually be on grounds is probably the greatest honor I've experienced (And the Chairman asked me 4 times just to be sure!). Without naming names, a chairman of another committee (of which there are now 60) said to me, “I'm jealous. I see how they are over there. How close a Family it is.” It's funny that the RV was all about getting me out of Pennsylvania and now all I want to do is park it on that farm for the summer along side my family and leave my blood, sweat and tears at a magical place I call Home.


But until then... The Dude and I have the road.


I don't even want to go into all the mechanical issues with the Vogue this year. I had to put in another alternator, this time in Indiana. The regulator went and it was pouring a shit ton of power into the battery... Enough that it boiled the damn thing almost dry. And it was a brand new battery (yes, another thing that was replaced last year as well). There are lots of other little stresses, oil pressure and engine temps, a one time coolant drip, occasional hard shifting, etc. Etc.

Burning Man was awesome yet again. I found out they have a disc golf course there, got to play a couple of rounds but only went once because it was miles away. Gave them some sponsor cash and got some schwag (discs, stickers and t-shirts). The guy that puts the course together has asked me a couple of times if I want to help them set up... Thinking about it, especially since I won't be driving out again, although great in theory, there are just too many problems to make it worthwhile. So next year I can fly out and make early entry (Wednesday) to help build. I boarded The Dude in Reno. He wasn't happy but I think even he knows it was worth it to come along on the trip.


After the first time I went to Burning Man, my friend Melissa went to Burning Man. After I dropped her off t the airport last year I went to Lake Tahoe. This year, she came to Tahoe as well. It's SUCH a peaceful place to decompress after the burn. She rented a car so we could leave the campground, that was really cool this year. Went up the mountain to see The LA Boys (a group of young Jaggoffs from our Burning Man camp) and went into South Lake Tahoe for some awesome BBQ.


From Tahoe I again headed West on 80 but this year but that's where the similarities to last year end. Having become the Disc Golf addict that I am, my first stop was in Rocklin, Ca. I stopped there last year to go to the Camping World store, this year it was for the Disc Golf course. It was flat and sandy with a marshy little creek that almost took my proto f7. Probably would have had a local not come by and picked it out of the marsh. There were lots of oak trees but the course was pretty wide open and nothing longer than a par 3. Not like what I'm used to on the East Coast. From there I set my sights on Shasta Lake thinking it would be a good place to camp but the lake was so low it just looked creepy. From there I stopped next in Weed to play a nice little mountain course with a great view of Mt Shasta.


Oregon.
Holy fucking mountains! I really have to hand it to the Vogue, she's been rockin it up and down this crazy shit. There is a road to get up to Crater Lake that is the scariest road I have been on in the bus. There was no shoulder, no guardrail and the drop-off was hundreds of feet straight down. I rode the center line and still felt like I was too close to the edge. The views are so worth it though.


My first stop was not Roseburg. That's where I had to turn around because my Burner friend that lives there apparently lives in Winston a few miles back. After a couple of days of hanging out and using his wifi I went over to Whistler's Bend campground, home of one of the coolest Disc Golf courses I've played to date. Unfortunately, I'm one of the last people who got to play the course in it's original incarnation. The campground is adding a bunch of full hookup RV sites where the first 5 holes have stood for many years. Their most famous hole, “Top of the World” is going from 14 to 13 and they added an awkward shot around the showers and bathrooms to old 14's alt basket. I got to play 1 and 2 my first couple of times but they were destroyed too the last day I was there. Top of the World is a throw down off a mountaintop. It was spectacular! Probably threw it a dozen times, ya gotta throw two or three after climbing all the way up there! I hung my first throw WAY out to the right and it just kept going straight forever. I was sure it was just going to keep going off that way. I thought it was never going to turn. It just kept going. But... In the end... A Boss is a Boss. It hooked up like nothing I've ever seen, made a 90 degree left turn and started heading towards the basket!! That first one landed about 35' right, pin high. My closest birdie putt was about a 25 footer uphill at the basket in a perfect straight line from the tee. My big mistake was not buying an inflatable kayak (or even a tube) before going to Whistler's. With a short walk across the neck of the oxbow, there would be quite a fun ride down the Umpqua river right back to my campsite. Whistler's is one place I'm going to have to look into being a campground host at one of these days. The idea of getting to spend a month or three camped out literally ON that cool a disc golf course is hard to beat. Speaking of which, I thought it was uber cool that all the disc golfers camped out there had their portable baskets set up at their campsites. I wanted to get a picture of it but there wasn't a good angle where I could get more than a couple in the shot. After three nights there it was time to go get bent.

Bend.

With this portion of today's tale you will understand just how much my life has begun to revolve around Disc Golf (Or Frolf, as they call it here out West). With each frisbee costing as much as an entire box of golf balls, most people put their name and number on their discs in the hopes that it will be returned if it gets lost. I've probably found and returned two dozen in the year since I've started playing and about half of the ones I've lost have come back (or are waiting for me to pick them up when I get back to PA). One of the ones I found at my home course in Sellersville, Pa. had a guys name on it and in stead of a phone number it said, “For a free kombucha bring to humm kombucha”. So I did. I have to say, it was one off the coolest Road experiences I have had. The people I met at humm kombucha were truly delightful! Just sitting here for a while with a goofy smile on my face thinking about it.

I went up to Sisters and played the course from the picture on the disc. I probably should have stopped in the little Old West tourist trap town that is Sisters but I was on a mission to get to the next course the guy at humm kombucha told me about, Mt. Bachelor.
Which brings us to Lava Lakes RV Resort, which I thought would be close enough to the course to spend the night at and then go play in the morning before moving on. Silly me. I need to look at the map before picking a road and see what kind of climbs I'm going to put the old girl through. Having alrready passed the highest peak on this road (Mt. Bachelor) to get to the campground, there's no way we're gonna climb back up there to take a chairlift up and walk down a mountain (My knees don't like walking downhill). That overnight was 4 days ago... It's beautiful here. One weird thing here is that the ground sounds hollow. All sorts of places when I walk it just has this hollow thunk to it. On the roads, on the trails, on the hunks of lava, even on the gravel pad my RV is sitting on. It's eerie.


Besides Disc Golfing, I have been doing some Geocaching along the way on this trip. It's a great way to get out and see some local stuff. I know where Little Lava Lake gets it's water from thanks to Geocaching. And were it not for the cache there I probably wouldn't have gone down to that lake at all which also means I wouldn't have gotten to see the giant tree graveyard along the trail. I need to get online and pay the 3 bucks so I can load up my real GPS with all the caches along my travel route, trying to do it with a smartphone in remote areas is nearly impossible.


That's pretty much where we're at at this point in the trip. I'm about to get the bus ready to head the rest of the way down the mountain and then onward to Klamath Falls to see another friend from Burning Man. 97, the road from there to Weed, where I will pick the I5 back up, was closed the other day because of the fire so I will end up seeing it.



Oh, and let's not forget the deer.  Oregon has some seriously inquisitive deer!

The first 7000.


In the books.


7000 miles, 7000 lessons, or so it seems.


Lesson #1... Don't EVER leave the cat again!!
(Other than the weeks of Burning Man and Fest because pets aren't allowed and it's a dangerous environment for The Dude especially)


I'm almost glad to be back here at my house having gained some insight into what it will take to live out on the road. As with most things I venture into, I tried to read and prepare as much as possible, but again as with most things I struggled with some MAJOR growing pains on the maiden voyage / shakedown cruise. My timetable was way too short and things got a little too out of control but all in all, what a great first trip it was!


It will be nice to be able to pull everything out and start over putting things away now that I've spent a couple of months in the space and have an inkling of an idea how things should work, what I need all the time vs. what I need once a week, once a year to things I just shouldn't have brought. For example, although my welder came in handy at Burning Man to help fix a trailer hitch (I'm assuming my shitty weld didn't hold because I never heard either way from the trailer owner), it was a big bulky thing that was in the way almost the entire time. I finally threw out the bamboo poles that held the generator exhaust deflection tarp at Fest right before I left California... After a month of their totally being in the way all the time. Can't do stuff like that in such a small space.


One of the biggest lessons was water... Or more specifically, coffee. Knowing what I know about the Vogue, I don't drink or even cook with what comes out of the taps, triple filtered or not (And I WAY over-sterilized the tanks). Because coffee for me is a social experience I ended up making a shit ton and it severely impacted the potable water supply at Burning Man. I think I'm going to have to make specific 'coffee hours' at Fest and the burn because there were times I had too much fun with the flow of people as I brewed them cups and before I knew it half a day would fly by and the water supply would be 2 gallons lighter.


Perhaps the greatest lesson I have learned as far as the Vogue herself goes was imparted to me by the last mechanic who worked on her in California, the one that identified and changed the fuel filter that nobody else could find. “Don't over-think this project.” Truer words have never been spoken. So far, everything that has been wrong, has needed the simplest possible fix (removal of the water bottle from the poop tank, changing the fuel filter, etc.) but the route chosen to get there has consistently been the most expensive and biggest possible project. This needs to stop. K.I.S.S.


To plan or not to plan.
I choose to NOT PLAN!
I recently read on a Burning Man discussion something to the effect of, “The less you plan, the less you are setting yourself up for disappointment when you don't do them.” Along that line, I had one actual plan going into the ride back here and that was deep fried French Toast and home made Corned Beef Hash at a diner in Kansas City I saw on tv at my sisters house in California. Got to KC and the place had gone out of business. Stupid television. Stupid planning stuff.
A short series of comments on facebook later, however, led to 3 amazing days in Chicago with some super cool people I met when we camped together at Burning Man. That was a fantastic unplanned. Speaking of Fantastic, Let's talk Moab. The only reason any of that happened was because a guy standing in front of an information sign overlooking the, “Scenic View” smoking a cigarette and nursing a bad tooth noticed my Pennsylvania license plate or Phillies cap and struck up a conversation. Thank you kind sir! It was truly unreal... And by that I mean the most real thing I saw the entire time. Peeling another layer off that onion, I was only on Highway 50 because a Burner I met at Fest told me it was the most beautiful road in America. Same with taking the road I tookout of Moab back to the highway, it was a backtracking pain in the butt and I lost my daylight because I hiked the heck out of Dead Horse Point but the pilot dude I met in the RV park with the toy hauler he'd just gotten was pretty adamant about that being the way to get back to the highway after riding it on his Harley. He was right of course. My neck hurt like heck from craning it to see out the windshield and up the rock cliffs to my left and right and in front of me and behind me and holy moley donut shop!
So again, no plan is my plan. The best things happen when I just fly by the seat of my pants.


Don't waste daylight.
Mornings are worth getting up before the sun.


I never thought there would come a day I'd be more comfortable driving a 35' bus than I am driving my Jeep but that happened this week too. It feels quite strange sitting in the Jeep and it's incredibly weird how it feels like I'm sitting on the road.




So ultimately, what did I really learn on my first trip around the country in an RV? I learned that all those years I thought living in an RV would be the coolest thing ever... I was right.
Now that I had a small taste of it, I can see the goal clearly in front of me, so working towards it has become much more of a necessity rather than the esoteric concept it used to be. If I play my cards right, I'm pretty sure I've laid the groundwork necessary to be a full-time Rver. I just need to stay focused on the goal and make sure my income generators are ready to go so I can go. I need to look more into the workcamping scene and set up some places for next year. I know, that goes against the making no plans concept but, as with any lifestyle, there are job and financial considerations and constraints. But when those constraints can come in the form of hosting tours of a remote lighthouse on the Oregon coast for a month, SIGN ME UP PLEASE!!!

Now that I have arrived in Colorado, I have something to say to Utah.
I'M SORRY!
I don't know what to say other than that, but of course I will say more.
Much more.


I had no concept of what Utah was. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch.
In my imagination it was all about Mormons and weirdos and a stolen NBA team that should have left it's name behind when it moved because how much farther from reality could it get. And a couple of good quarterbacks. But other than that I didn't know didly squat about Utah and I looked down my nose at the state. I am sorry. I think I was too stressed out to notice much along Route 80 on the way out, I took a couple of pictures of salt on telephone poles as I drove across the dried up lake-bed but other than that I don't remember anything impressive.


Even with the two National Parks closed I was AMAZED by the natural beauty that is Utah. AMAZED!!!!


Now I'm no stranger to the desert, I spent a lot of time in Arizona when my sister lived there and this is the second leg of my second trip across the country, each on a different road through different states. But Route 50 across Utah was the first time I really started pulling over to the side of the road to take pictures other than absolutely having to stop and take a picture of Cadillac Ranch when I passed that on the first trip. And when I say pulling over, I mean sometimes only going a mile before the scene changed so much I had to stop again. Along Route 128 my neck started to Ache from craning it so far forward and trying to see up the canyon walls I was driving through.


Highway 50 was recommended to me by a Burner friend who took off in an RV several years ago. Said it was the most beautiful stretch of road in America, with my limited knowledge, I wholeheartedly agree. I bought a t-shirt at the first campground I stayed at that says, “I survived Nevada's Highway 50 America's Loneliest Road.” I knew I was in for something special on a road where, for hundreds of desolate miles, literally every other vehicle you see is an RV. At one of the “Scenic View” stops along Highway 50 there was a guy who asked me what part of Pennsylvania I was from (I was sporting a Phillies cap and the Vogue has PA plates). He's an antiques dealer from Quakertown and this was his 6^th time circumnavigating the lower 48 (He's been to 45). He pulled out his atlas and I forget most of what he showed me but basically he said I had to take the turn off on 191 and head down to Moab. I have a knack for seeing the passion in people as they talk about things they love on a different level and I could tell I had no choice but to see the thing that made his eyes blaze when he spoke of it. Speaking of blaze, we watched a truck set his brakes on fire below us while we chatted. Now that the Vogue can crank up the hills, it's the descents that scare the shit outa me, especially after watching that. He waved to me as he was getting back on the highway when I was getting off at the next stop to buy myself an atlas. I have 3 GPSs and google maps on 3 devices, but there's just something about a paper map.

This is the view from where we were talking:

Along 191 things started to change. The landscape got redder and bigger and it started getting weird. By the time I got to the turn off I decided it was too late in the afternoon to try to drive the ~25 miles up the side road to see the closure signs on Canyonlands so I decided to press on to Moab. I pulled over at the first RV park a couple of miles outside of town and hunkered down for the night figuring I'd head out in the morning and see some stuff before getting back on 50. Four days later I reluctantly unplugged the RV knowing I needed to be on my way but Holy Freakin Moab! It will be a high priority to go back when Arches and Canyonlands are open and to spend more time seeing all of it. I went for a couple of good hikes and one decent bike ride, enough of a taste to make me need more.
The first day, I rode the bike path a few miles up 128 which runs along a windy skinny canyon the Colorado river cut leaving almost nothing but sheer rock walls hundreds of feet high. I thought I pulled the bus over a lot, I stopped the bike every ten feet to take a picture or three. Or twenty.

This is a massive hole way up a cliff:

If I told you how far away the ones with snow on them were, you wouldn't believe me.

The second day I woke up to a flat tire on the bike so I walked into town and had a look around. On the way back I took a little mountainbike path up the side of one of the rock cliffs, the views both near and far were spectacular. The way the wind and water has carved the rocks is just jaw droppingly beautiful. The way the plants grab onto whatever they can is downright amazing in and of it's self.
The next morning I unhooked the bus from it's moorings and headed out to Dead Horse Point State Park which overlooks Canyonlands. I did most of both of the hikes even though I didn't have anything but to completely worn out pairs of old shoes because I have just never seen anything like that in my life. I know I need to go back here. I don't know how long I will stay, it could be quite some time. I may even look into a campground hosting position for next year.

One of the many views of Canyonlands from Dead Horse Point:

I was 2000 feet above the Colorado here.  I can't really put it into words, my mouth was just hanging open as I stood there dumbfounded.




After being in a place that averages ten inches of rain a year, it's been raining here since I got to Colorado.

Last day in California.

In stead of leaving like I planned to, I spent the day cleaning and straightening out the RV.  I got tired of things flying around every time I move it.  Just about everything is put away somewhere at this point, many things were just packed up and put in temporary locations, partly because I'm still carrying around all of Melissa's and my Burning Man stuff so there will be a lot of space freed up when all that's out and things start to find their permanent home.  Ate lunch at the table today, haven't been able to do that since before Fest!

I should probably head back to the camping world I went to and return the shity GPS.  Magellan.  What a piece of crap!  Unbelievably bad routing and it never gets the speed limit right for when to sound the alarm.  Too bad the one with the "Spa" is out of the way, it could still use a good cleaning on the roof and underneath, the engine still needs to be washed as well.  I'll try to find one along the way to get that done and the gennie serviced.

It's been an expensive month here in California, but it's been a great one.  The Vogue seems to finally be running good, I saw lots of family, hung out with a burner, made a new friend and had what is probably California's best cheesesteak, which will only get better when they start to use the right rolls.  I really wish I had gotten my shit together in time to not have to go back to Philly, it qwould be nice to stay here or head to Oregon to go host at a lighthouse (the call for volunteers with RV's went out) but this is the hand I was dealt and how I played it.

Mostly I'm just hoping for a MUCH less stressful drive across the mountains than I had last time, especially the Rockies!  I want to stop and see some things this time too, I'm not going to try to do 700 or 800 miles a day like I did 2 of the last 3 times I drove across the country, the other was 2 drivers, 40 hours basically nonstop.  The only thing I've ever really stopped to see on one of these trips was Cadillac Ranch and that was the very first time across.  After talking to someone who has done it before, I'm going to take Rt. 50 and see something other than the interstate this time.  66 was way more interesting than the interstate that replaced it.

All I will need to do in the morning is make coffee, unplug the shore cord, and I'll be good to go.  I like days like that.  I'm not good at days with projects and putting stuff away and Then trying to hit the road.  Now all I need to do is figure out where I'm going to go.

Sitting here in Rippon... Sounds like a good first line to a song.

At the truck repair shop (Burns Truck and Trailer Services) that the last truck shop (Righetti) sent me to. The Righetti diagnosis is crap in my fuel tank, We'll see what this place says when they finally get around to taking a look at it. Got her washed while I'm here waiting. I'm sure there's still more deplayafying that will need to be done, I have to get up on the roof and scrub that down and the underside and engine could use a good hosing off. I'll probably stop at a Camping World to return this crapass GPS (Magellan for RV's) and while I'm there I'll get their spa service that is a much more thorough cleaning than this was (And should be for triple the price)... Either that or if I'm heading back he way I came, I'll call one of the places in Reno that specializes in deplayafication now that their business is probably slowing down a bit.


I think I got the SiriusXM radio figured out the other day. Seems to be working pretty good, I even got most of the presets all programmed up. Changing CD's while driving a bus just isn't logistically possible and I think the most times I managed to leave a CD in before trying the radio and then opting for silence was 3½. Silence led to me singing little song snippets (of catchy old timey tunes I don't really know) over and over and over until the next stop when I would hopefully remember to change the CD... Didn't always happen and then it was another few hours before the next stop and oh boy the crap I'd be singing to myself then! On the way to Burning Man there was a lot of Black (Big) Rock Candy Mountain. And thanks to Ros, You Are My Sunshine is one that always ends up on repeat in those situations. The funniest part of the trip was 4 or 5 days in when I put on the O' Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack for the first time in forever and both of those songs were on there. And there's just no way to listen to the radio on the road, sure I can check out local stations when I stop, but with stations often only staying tuned in for a minute or two, five if I'm lucky, it's too annoying to do very long. Sometimes I can get an hour when I'm driving through a major city, but even then there can be issues that make it not worth it. Today is the first day I've really stopped to listen to it for any extended period of time, I'm really liking it. I can't stand commercials (for more than 20 years I have mostly listened to two public radio stations that are commercial free) so that part is great and the selection is pretty cool so far too.


Burns lot; Day II


They never got to me yesterday, as is the way with most of the 'busy shops' it seems. Honestly, I'm not even sure if I'm here for the right thing anymore. I stalled 3 times putting The Beast in reverse trying to pull out of the driveway yesterday morning and two more times on the way here. Those were new behaviors. I have wondered all along why no one seems to be interested in the transmission even after I tell them that it chunks down to 4^th gear and goes even lower going downhill so I can't even get back up to a decent speed after cresting the hill because it wont coast. I guess we'll see what they say when they take a look.


Last night I finally hooked up the cool little USB outlet I bought in June or July to put in where the ashtray and cigarette lighter were. I still have to figure out how I'm going to permanently mount it, but in 20 minutes I got myself accessory power where I most need it, at my fingertips when I'm driving. No more putting my phone in a cabinet to charge it or mounting the GPS on the side window next to my head because that's the only place the cord will reach.

The first guy came to talk to me at 8:30, took a pretty decent history and had me move into position in front of one of their bays. At this point, I have been here 24 hours. Probably should have signed up for a week of wifi with the Love's next door, although if I did, I doubt the USB thing would be hooked up.
_____________________________________

I'm hold up for the night at a hotel around the corner from the shop. A couple of the guys took a look at it, I told them as much as I could remember from other shops and what I've observed. The mechanic ended up calling the guy from the last shop and they talked it out for a little while and he came out agreeing that seeing what's going on inside the tank is the next step. They had me pull it around to a bay with a lift and that's where I left it. He said it will probably take 5 hours to get the tank off. This ain't gonna be cheap. I wonder how many days I'm going to be here. It's all good if this finally fixes it.

Ripon; Day 3


This morning I got a call that my fuel filter was clogged as were my fuel lines and tank. Diesel fuel, when it sits for any length of time, grows algae. The Vogue, as I've come to realize, sat for quite some time. Now I know from the last fuel filter changing that you can't see what the filter looks like so I was wondering how they knew it was crudded up. I went over to take a look and this is what they had found:

THAT is the mystery filter!!! The one that all the other mechanics looked for but couldn't find!
How many mechanics looked and didn't find it? At least 6 that I know of before I got to Burns in Ripon. I wonder if it's the 19 year old original filter?
It's truly a testament to the Cummins B that it was able to make it over 3000 miles, up and down ALL those mountains with the trickle of fuel it must have been getting through this mucky mess and the holey lines.
You have no idea the giant ball of stress that was coaxing her across the Rockies and then again through the Sierra Nevadas. And now this has me sitting here giddily excited at the prospect of trying to climb out of this valley. If I do take 80 back and go through Cheyenne, I will probably stop and show this to the guys there.


Here's Mike, the kid that found the unfindable filter, with my (former) fuel lines.

So I'm having the tank steam cleaned, all new fuel lines run and BOTH of the filters changed. I'm so happy with Burns at this point I gave them 2 more things to fix from the list while I'm here, speedometer and tailpipe. Hopefully, even with the add-ons, they are going to have me back on the road tomorrow!


Before I go, I have to say, it's been weird not sleeping in the Vogue. I really wasn't sure going in how I was going to like the RV bunk size mattress or having the cabinets right there over my head. There's been a learning curve there along with everything else, but it sure has started to feel like home. It needs a cat though.