Coffee-break

Well, guess what? We're in Newberg already! And yes, that's a whole week ahead of schedule.
I've said it before .. you can make plans all you want, but things happen ..
And boy, did they happen! But let's not get ahead of schedule and I'll try to chronological-ize (I don't think that's a word) this post a little.

We actually left Palm Springs according to plan on Friday, although even that almost didn't happen because the day before James came back from golfing, and power-washing the truck, with the wonderful announcement that the truck's computer indicated the injectors were failing again! Son-of-a-@#!$%^!
So, we canceled our next campgrounds, extend our stay in Palm Springs, rented a car, ordered new injectors and drove the truck to a mechanic ... only to find out that the injectors were all of a sudden all fine!
Long story short, it turned out that moisture from pressure-washing the truck had caused the computer to throw the codes, and when everything dried all was OK again!
Pffffft! Doesn't that beat it all!
It took us some time to reinstate most cancellations and cancel some installations .. or something like that, but at the end of the day we were back on schedule!

So, of we went on Saturday! Since it was going to be a long and hot (truck's AC still not working!) day, we left early and soon we passed our old stomping grounds, or at least the cut-off to, Lake Arrowhead. I'd hoped we could go for a visit while we were there, but it wasn't in the cards this time ..

Evertything went smoothly, until we started to reach Los Angeles and found ourselves in some endless stop-and-go traffic. Funny how you seem to forget about things like that. We quickly remembered though, that this is not a place we want to be! Way to busy!
Unfortunately we had to brave it for one last time, since I'd bought a spinning wheel (on-line) from a lady in Ventura, and passing so close going north it seemed not such a big deal to pick it up while in the neighborhood.

Eventually we reached Lowes in Ventura where the hand-off took place, and after a short lunch we were back on the road again. 

 

The sun was already setting when we reached the Santa Nella Campground around 6.30 pm, about 2 hours south of Sacramento, where we'd reserved a pull-through site.
And after a simple dinner, we decided to call it an (early) night. 'Nough for one day!

The next day was a Sunday, always a good day for going through a big city, and we breezed easily through Sacramento this time.
An hour later we left the I-5 (talking about a rough road!) and took the 20 towards the coast. We passed Clear Lake around noon and parked the truck alongside the road to have some lunch. We'd been here before, about 9 years ago, when we traveled from Vaillecito to Gold Beach, and it was fun to see it again. It's a beautiful area!

We made good time that day and around 4pm we arrived at our campground in Willits, the Golden Rule RV Park.

                                                     

After a quick set-up it was time for ... you guessed it, Happy Hour!
We spend a relaxed evening and a good night sleep in this peaceful RV Park, which, by the way, is on the same property as Ridgewood Ranch, the horse stud-stables where Seabiscuit, the famous race-horse, was bred.

OK, moving on, the next morning we headed for Eureka, where we had the first look of the pacific ocean since 2011, when we park hosted here in Gold Beach, OR.

Yeah, the ocean!!

What a wonderful sight! This part of the coast is just so beautiful!
Lots of interesting rock formations:

                                                    

And picturesque lighthouses ..

Unfortunately we had a 1.5 hr (!) delay, just before Crescent City, due to repairs being done on the continuing slide areas. This part of the coast apparently is highly un-stable.

OK, now we're getting to the part where our luck ran out! We decided to top of the truck's tank at a local gas-station in Crescent city. No problem, no?
Since we're BIG, we usually use the big truck-stations on the freeways but Hwy 1 doesn't have any of those, so we made the narrow turn into this one ... only to hit the bollard guarding the entrance, wiping out the left back-side of the RV!!!

(This picture is from after we arrived in Newberg ..)

Not good, or  %$#@*&!
Needless to say we were a little 'shook-up', especially me, myself and I, but James, always the more unfazed and practical, gassed up, pulled in a side-street and started taping and strapping things together and collecting all solvable parts from the road.

Oh well, as Forest Gump said 'Shit happens', and we went on the road again for the hour drive to Turtle Rock RV Resort in Gold Beach, where we'd planned to stay for 2 nights.

As you can guess it wasn't a very happy, although very pretty, drive ..

After talking about it for a little we decided that it was probably better to cut our week-long stay along the coast short, and head for Newberg, our end-destination, the next day.
Especially since we had rain in the forecast and we weren't quite water-tight anymore ..

 

After we arrived at Turtle Rock we quickly settled in for the night and walked to the beach to watch the sun go down. We definitely needed a calming end to this day ..
We actually camp-hosted at this campground during the summer of 2011, so it would have been fun to hang around for a day or two and see of the owners were still there, check out the town and go for a hike at the beautiful State park. Bummer ..

That night it got down to 34F! Wow, what a difference with those last nights in Palm Springs (61C)!
The days were beautiful though, clear and sunny and quite warm, which made for very pleasant driving conditions, all the way from Arizona.

And so it went, we drove all the way to Newberg the next day. It was another gorgeous day and we passed all the gorgeous places we were going to spend some time at during the rest of the week .. if not for .. sigh ..
Fortunately, Newberg is only an hour from the coast, so .. we'll be baaaaack!

And this is our new site! It turns out we're in a Christmas tree orchard, how about that for a change?

It's a beautiful green, 2 acre  parcel and we are the only ones there! To get to Doug and Brenda's yard and house you'll follow that small pathway here towards the camera ..

... and go through the gate ..

It will be the extend of James' commute to work in Doug's office/house .. not bad!

OK, I think that's enough for this post. More fun stuff in the next one!

 

And here we are, in Desert Hot Springs, basically having made full circle from where we started, a mere ten (yes, TEN) years ago, it's unbelievable but true!
But what a ride it has been! The things we have seen!
(Jeez, I sound like Dr. Seuss!)
Nine years ago (4/19/01) we were on our way to our second camp-host job in Gold Beach, OR, and camped at Caliente Springs, this campground's 'sister' park, a couple miles down the road. This is how we looked:

And here we are today. Same difference! I think we still look pretty good for such an old rig!



The same mountain is still sitting in the background there .. duhhh

A little less snow than in '11 though, this spring has been very hot so far up here.
Like it's sister, Sky Valley RV Resort is a pretty park, lots of mature palms and colorful landscaping:

Spring is already in full swing over here, like Arizona, these southern states go pretty much straight into summer after a couple of weeks of warming up in March.

That's the RV there at the top left amidst those blazing magenta Bougainvilleas! They're like weeds down here, same as the Lantana and Oleander ..

Both parks are very popular for their mineral hot springs (13 springs on each property!), and we've spent some leisure time soaking in the balmy hot water of the pool (90F) and the hot tubs (104F!).

 

                                       

There's also a few ponds .. always nice to see a little water in the desert ..

And of course it attracts all kinds of birds and water fowl ..

          

The day after we arrived it was Easter. It's not a Holiday we 'do' much about but some eggs are usually involved and I always try to decorate a little with some spring flowers and so on. Being in the desert there wasn't much available this year though, so I had to do with the outside cacti ..

                    

At least the French toast for breakfast got spruced up a little by 'Peeps' ..



The one thing Caliente does have, but this park is lacking, is a little 9 hole executive golf course. We played it 9 years ago, and went for a repeat this time around ..

The rest of the week, in between playing golf at several different courses in the area (Palm Springs has 150 golf courses!), we checked out a whole bunch of RV Parks and Mobile Home parks to see if any could be contenders for future winter destinations.
We've ruled the obvious bad ones out and took down the info on the ones we liked. 

It will be at least two years before James will be licensed, so we won't be back until than, but we at least have a rough idea of where we want to be or, even more important, where not.
We're even debating renting one of the park-models that are popping up in all parks, it might be a cheaper way to go than bringing the RV down or even buying a second RV to park down here. Well see!

Like I mentioned, the weather has been unusually hot for this time of the year (of course, just our luck), but worse than that, it has been very, very windy.
Apparently the months of April and May are notorious for high winds and they aren't kidding!From our arrival on Saturday until now we've had constant winds of 25-30 miles/hr with gusts of 40-50.

 And. It. Just. Doesn't. Stop! All Day, all night!

Aaaarrrgghh!

Can you see the wind moving these palms?

Oh well, two more days to go, I'll survive. We'll be back on the road on Saturday! Next stop: somewhere midway California.

See you on the road! 

 

Lake Havasu at Mesquite Bay

Well, as you can see "We are not in Kansas Florence anymore, Toto!"
Yes, hold the presses, but totally according to plan, we actually did leave on Wednesday!

After picking up the RV on Monday we cleaned it (it was actually surprisingly clean), and moved all our stuff back in.
On Tuesday we cleaned the house, had a little fare-well happy-hour with the neighbors, and spend the night already in the RV (while still in the driveway).

On Wednesday morning we were up bright and early due to the little white monster, aka Merlin, who didn't want to settle, and yelled non-stop through the night! We didn't sleep a wink!
Oh well, it got us out even earlier than we thought, so not all was lost ..

Morning rush hour around Phoenix was done and over with when we drove through, and the rest of the drive to Lake Havasu was smooth and uneventful ..

Our first glimpse of the Colorado River, just past Parker

We arrived at the campground at the north end of town around 2pm and quickly set up.
By that time the temperature had risen to 85F, not too bad but we very happy to be able to turn on the AC!
We had a few small repairs to take care off, the kitchen faucet was plugged and both microwave lights were kaput, but fortunately there was a Home depot not even 10 minutes away (and a Walmart and a whole shopping-mall!) so we got that quickly resolved!

Just in time for happy hour! This sunset was actually the next evening, and by the time I took the shot it was almost over, but you get the picture!

We actually managed to get a good night of sleep that night. Merlin had seemingly come to terms that the RV was home again and only yelled twice. Good boy, Merl!
While it was still cool, we went for a short early-morning walk into the Havasu National Wildlife refuge. There's a trail-head entrance right at the back of the campground. Cool!

After that we spend the rest of the morning checking out the campgrounds in this northern part of town, to see if any of them would qualify for a future snow-bird destination, which was the reason we made this detour to Lake Havasu to begin with.

Funny enough, we since than have come to the conclusion that we like our park the best. Several others were pretty enough but either too expensive, too cramped or too busy, so we would actually pick the one we're at!

While in the neighborhood, we checked out a few of the pretty bays along the Colorado River. These are only about 5 to 10 minutes away from the campground, so very convenient for cooling of or/while swimming on a hot day!

Even closer by is Castle Rock Bay, I could actually walk over there in about 10-15 minutes..

It's pretty and quiet and perfect for fishing or swimming, and if you have a canoe or kayak you can actually make your way through the reeds and reach the river.

While we were there early the next morning it was very quiet and we met some of the local wildlife ..

  That's a Western Grebe there on the right in the picture.

Another thing we're taking into consideration while considering an area for future stays, is of course how many golf courses there are!
And in that aspect Lake Havasu is rather lacking unfortunately. There are only three courses of which one is an executive one, which can be fun, but is not too much of an interest for long-term use.
One of the other two has 2 separate courses, which adds another course to the equation, but it is rather pricey, Actually, both are.
All in all, they will work, but there's not too much to choose from of course .. not like Palm Springs for instance, where you have almost too many to choose from!

So, we'll keep Lake Havasu in mind. Maybe for a month's stay or so in the fall or spring, while going north or south, but maybe not for much longer than that.

James golfed bot courses, and picked up a brochure at one of them that mentions a lot of RV parks and golf in Yuma. We of course know that it is a major hub for snow-birders, but we had not really looked into it that much.
We will now though, since it looks like the RV parks there are cheaper, as well as the golf, with many courses to choose from. Even two interesting looking RV & Golf Resorts!
We'll see. We're still 2 years out from coming south for the winter again, so we have some time to think things over.

For now, we spend some nice and quiet days out here. Just enough to recuperate from all the activity lately of finishing the job, packing and planning and being on the road again after 5 months.

 

Tomorrow we'll be moving on again. 

Palm Springs, here we come!