A slight detour

Slight detour may be slightly incorrect. Because we left two days early we decided to go to Monterey to see the Aquarium. But the day started nice with a visit to one of our regular stops between southern California and home the Olive Pit......



The Olive has plenty of great parking for RV's and while Scrabble Queen shopped I took a few pictures. As you may notice I brought my bike and we will get another one in San Diego for my Queen.


Oh and look who showed up at the Pit to say hi and get a free gasoline fill-up. Isaac the youngest of our brood and the last chance to get a daughter named Sarah or Amy but then again boys are just fine. He left us after filling up and made it to San Diego in record slow time after going 40 miles in 2 hours in LA.


Mount Lassen in the background always reminds me of Matthew who tells us in his Geology class they talked about Lassen's eruption that dropped rocks the size of VW's in New York State.


Everything that falls from the trees at the Olive Pit arn't olives so I tried out my micro focus on the Powerful HP935 mini-muse camera.


We drove through San Jose to a town called San Juan Bautista home of the largest of the California Missions started by Junipero Serra in 1797. We were surrounded by brown rolling hills with trees and green along the Pajaro River.


My artsy picture of the day - water draining on the asphalt.


And the flowers of the day. These are the last of the blooms on this tree.


And it even looks like fall here.



Scrabble Score --- Finally a tie at 342

Quote of the Day

A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do. ~ Bob Dylan

Off we go..........

Trip 2 of 2005 - so off we went filled the tank at $2.09 at the AM/PM and entered Interstate 5 at exit (on the entrance side) 182. It was just getting light when we left. We decided to leave a couple of days early because the weather over the passes looked clear and nice. It was a little foggy up to Grants Pass but we did fine.

Of course when in Medford the Harry and David store is a must so we stopped off there for a little shopping (actually Scrabble Queen shopped and I called Verizon). Last trip it took a month of huge bills before we figured out upping the service plan for the cell phone saved about 300%. So I got that all fixed up and waited........and waited..........and waited. At wits end after 45 minutes I just had to make a one-man search party. Of course as I got out Scrabble Queen was just walking out........ Special wrapping took all the time.




Well, of course, going up the Ashland grade to the summit was a mess the fog was very thick and it looked pretty bad but about halfway up with deep snow all around we finally saw blue sky and clear roads. I think a day earlier and we would have been in the deep stuff - like this guy.


The car was at a little convenience store near the summit in a place called Castella, California. The town is near Castle Creek a little meandering creek in the Shasta National forest. This is NOT the castle the town is named after.



My artsy shot of the day was the vent pipes on top of the store.



Now the real castle isn't a home or building made by man bit this magnificent rock outcropping on the mountain. I just wish I could display the larger version of the pictures here. I've been wanting to get a picture for years and my able navigator remembered the store and a funny story of Ed making a pit stop there on their way to San Diego and how he ventured into the Ameigas room instead of the Amigos room.......


Last is the distant view but,again, the larger version is breathtaking.


All in all it was a very nice day. Tomorrow we are off to San Juan Bautista, the largest of the California Missions.

Scrabble Score Scrabble Queen 327 the contender 334 Yahoo - great start..... She would have won but missed a chance to double then triple her "X"


Quote of the day

"There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds." ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

G.K. Chesterton produced nearly a hundred books, including the classics Orthodoxy and The Man Who Was Thursday, and biographies of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis of Assisi. He wrote articles for about 125 periodicals, and was also a talented literary critic, mystery writer, economic and political analyst, social commentator, orator, humorist and poet.

Cape Foulweather

We started the day at Wandering Spirit RV park next to Spirit Mountain Casino. The RV park and casino was our residence the last two days after taking off from the Eugene area.

Spirit Mountain Casino is in Grand Ronde, Oregon on State Highway 18

... and has hosted such notables as Dwight Yoakam, Pointer Sisters and

Willie!!!! Bill Cosby is scheduled for November 11 six days from today.
Their logo is a coyote leaping Spirit Mountain and their frequent gamblers club is called the Coyote Club. We joined because it's free we got key chains and cute red coiled plastic things with a hook on the end we can use in the future.


Well it had been raining all the time we were there and there was no let up on the drive through Lincoln City which is on the coast. While there we stopped at the Tanger outlet for two sweaters, two sink screens, one phone call and two hot dogs. I also went to the "Shutter Bug" to windowshop and heard there was a high wind and flood advisory.

We drove out of Lincoln and realized it was where I had taken a picture Andrew had asked me about with pampas grass on the left and windows on the right and a bridge with the sunset beyond in the center. Well Andrew Lincoln City at the Mo's Seafood restraunt was the place.

Just past Lincoln City at the top of a bluff sits the visitors center for Cape Foulweather. We stopped there once, on a beautifully sunny day, and I wondered how it got that name. Today passing it and catching a gust that almost blew us down the cliff 300 feet I suddenly knew!

We finally arrived in Newport after a harrowing drive down the coast with heavy rains and increasingly torrid wind as well as a few skipped heart beats. We pulled into the "Outdoor Resorts" just as the winds became blistering and parked the RV. After about five minutes in the rain hooking up all the connections (don't ask how may times my glasses blew off in the wind) we settled in for the storm. On cable TV we found out the wind was a steady 35 with gusts up to 55 or so. I took some pictures, first from inside....


... then outside. It's hard to show in pictures the strength of the wind but look at the trees closely there are two or three that give you an idea. The rain was really falling and at the time I took the next picture it was falling sideways.


After the rain died down I took this picture of the view we have toward the ocean.


A little later I took the next three pictures as the sun (which we never saw because the sky had been black) faded in the distance.






It was an interesting day and all-in-all we enjoyed it fully.

Scrabble score - Scrabble Queen 324 ~ The Contender 297

Quote of the day

"A desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy." ~ Guy Fawkes (1570-1606)
English conspirator, Guy Fawkes Day, Nov 5th

The Ferry, the Graveyard and the Spruce Goose

We finally got the Musemobile back from the shop for some minor warranty work (Thank you Winnebago) and decided to hit the trail for a short adventure in Oregon. The Destination was McMinnville and the Evergreen Air Museum. We followed our mapquest directions and were right on course until we came to the ferry.......


After a forced U-Turn we proceeded on through the Oregon countryside. We followed the 219 into a small town named after me - St. Paul. I stopped to take a few pictures at the St. Paul cemetery and included two of them here. I have a friend I exchange photos every now and then named Phil Coles and his Welsh pictures are wonderful. This area around St. Paul reminds me a lot of his photos.




Well we finally got to the Evergreen Air Museum and it's a sight to behold.


Looking inside as you drive up you see the Famous HK-1 "Spruce Goose"


The aircraft is so huge it's impossible to photograph within the building so I got this one of a model they had on display.


As we walked in the door the first exhibits we saw helicopters (for you Larry) of all shapes and sizes.


I love these bubble cockpit one's

You saw the size of the building and the HK-1, "Spruce Goose," fills it from end to end in both width and height.


The cargo bay of the "Spruce Goose" seems to go on forever........


I used to love drawing these Corsairs my favorite as a young boy.


As were the "Flying Tigers".......


I'm not sure what this plane is but it was really cool to see suspended from the ceiling..... Note the hammer and sickle and Red stars....


The building was filled with aircraft including a Titan II missile lying on it's side.

But we did have someone with us who drove up for the visit to the Museum.
Isaac................ That was a cool thing since one of his college classes is aviation science.


No Scrabble

Quote of the Day:

"The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain."

~ George Gordon, Lord Byron

Yachats and LaDeDa plus a slug

The drive of the day was through Florence, Oregon and north on the Coast Highway past the first stunning view of the Pacific we encountered when we moved here, Heceta Lighthouse.


I added a close-up


Then there was Yachats(pronounced "Yah-hawts") the destination of the day for was the Mushroom Festival and Salmon Bake held there annually (we were honored that this was the first year they used ceramic vs paper plates for the salmon bake). Yachats is a town located in Lincoln County Oregon. The mushroom festival and salmon bake was moved into the community center and it was kind of like the crafts festivals in some of the small New England towns we used to patronize. We ate, met some nice folks from Salem, bought some goat cheese, an Iris, a wooden spatula and that was Yachats. Their city motto was rather unique. Unlike a purposeful saying like Ferris, Texas' "Forward Ever - Backward Never" It was a rather lackadaisical "LaDeDa"


We actually spent a little more time at another great coastal stop, Cape Perpetua National Recreation Area. The Cape is just south of Yachats and was actually participating in the Mushroom Festival by giving nature walks to show how the mushrooms grow wild in the forest along the coast. The center for Cape Perpetua had this wonderful sculpture of a whale in front of the building.



The views of the forest as it drops into the sea are spactacular and the wind shaped trees are magnificant.






On the way back to the car from the center I took this picture of some stairs and started to get into the car when Sharyn (my top navigator) spotted something on the stairs. You can see it on the face of the third stair from the bottom. On closer inspection.....

..... it was a 6 inch Banana Slug, mascot of University of California Santa Cruz Yuck!!!!!


A little further south I stopped for a picture of some driftwood dragons (they looked a lot like that slug) I had seen on the way up to Yachats.


The dragons were cute but on the other side of the highway was a common but beautiful view of the coastal woods I'm glad I noticed. I love this place (Oregon Coast) and it's simple beauty. This spot is near Point Cook named after the explorer Captain James Cook.


Scrabble Score - put two more games in the contender's column and I know Scrabble queen is plotting sweet revenge in her dreams.....

Quote of the Day

"Do just once what others say you can't do, and you will never pay attention to their limitations again." ~ James Cook