Wandering Around In Oregon

When you last joined us, we were heading out of Grants Pass and aimed northward to a series of RV rallies associated with Family Motor Coach Association.  Our first stop was Canyonville at the deluxe Seven Feathers RV Resort for the Full Timers Chapter rally.  We got to enjoy the company of some of our old RVing chums and to make some new friends, do some serious eating, check out the cluster of small nearby towns and just enjoy the magnificent setting.  As soon as the rally concluded, we saddled up for the long hard drive five miles up the road to Myrtle Creek where we continued to prowl the antique and thrift shops for whatever little baubles caught our fancy.  The trolling resulted in several more eggcups for the collection.

The highlight of our trip thus far was an 8-day stay with our make-believe relatives, Gail and Ruthee.  Their little slice of Oregon is blessed with a bucolic beauty, big hills, big open fields, big trees, big sky and a whole lot of peace and quiet.  Very quiet – except for a lumber truck or two that swarm past with a big whoosh.  Ruthee, being an enthusiast of word games, informed us that this flock/herd/covey of wild turkeys is known as a “rafter”.  This rafter consists of mom and last year’s crop of chicks, all boys.  They hang around quite often, hoping the horse will spill some her oats and they can nab a quick snack.

In the evening we were visited by this young doe.  She was eyeballing us with no small amount of suspicion as Howie leaned out the coach window to take this photo.  Earlier she and Ruthee had come eyeball to eyeball, barely three feet apart.  Obviously someone has been hand feeding her because she never did bolt away but rather sauntered off.  We hope her tameness and curiosity don’t result in a bad end for her.

Most of our stay with Gail and Ruthee was pretty laid back, consisting of hearty lunches (Gail’s an old farm boy and likes his big meal at noon) and an almost-as-hearty happy hour.  Net result?  Five more pounds.  We made treks to Albany and Salem to hit the stores and do some recreational shopping but our big outing was to Silverton for a tour of Oregon Gardens.  Open since 2001, this botanical display garden sprawls over 80 acres and includes a system to recycle Silverton’s waste water.  While there were plenty of plants in bloom, it was the conifer garden which most intrigued me.  The collection is extensive with heavy emphasis on dwarfs and weeping varieties.  And the place just plain smelled nice!

Upon first arriving at the garden, we took the 25-minute narrated tram ride around the entire garden and then set off afoot to explore the areas which most interested us.  And that saved our knees and tootsies for a stroll through downtown Silverton and its plenitude of antique shops.  Graced with enormous hanging baskets of petunias, Silverton is one sweet-smelling city.  The city also proudly displays  a number of very attractive murals on the walls of its downtown buildings, including a depiction of Norman Rockwell’s “Four Freedoms”.   And the antique shops yielded up a number of eggcups.  The collection had already taken a major step forward with gifts from Gail and Ruthee and a bonanza at J&J’s Antiques.  I’d tell you where it’s located but I have no idea…all I recall is that we went down a bunch of back country roads to get there and it’s an endless string of barns and barn rooms filled (and I do mean filled) with interesting stuff.

Although most days were clear and sunny, from time to time the air became hazy and there was a faint hint of smoke in the air.  Linn County is the Grass Seed Capital of the World and after harvest the remaining stubble is burned off to eliminate any weed seeds which might have invaded during the growing period.  These burn-offs, technically referred to as “thermal sanitation”, are heavily regulated and very precisely administered.  Billows of smoke such as this leave behind blackened fields with well-defined perimeters, often within just a few feet of dwellings. 

After eight days of dry camping, we had to stop at a full service RV park before heading off to yet another round of semi-boondocking.  Then we headed east via U.S. 20 which follows the Santiam River over hill and dale, around sharp bends through seemingly endless fir forests.  As we neared Sisters, we came upon a long stretch of forest badly burned, the remaining trunks black with silvered branches in stark contrast to the charred trunks.  We had ample time to observe the burned area, being slowed down by some heavy-duty road construction. 

The FMCA convention was being held at the Deschutes County Fairgrounds in Redmond.  This was our second rally at this site.  We expected to spend a night in the holding area and were surprised to be escorted right to our site.  The electric service wasn’t turned on until the actual first day of the rally so we did a bit of sweltering that first night.  Then a cold front came through and cooled things off to the point that we actually had to run the furnace a few mornings just to get warm enough to feel our toes.  The rally boasted the usual displays of motorized palaces, informative seminars and vendors selling things both useful and not.  We always fall for the “not usefuls”, things which look downright miraculous in the show booth and turn out to be the modern day equivalent of snake oil.  Once again we own a lifetime supply of a product designed to clean everything but we lack the time and energy to use it.  What we really need is a haz-mat team to come in and do the cleaning for us.

Among the new coaches were some retro-style Winnebagos that took us back to our first rig in the late ‘70s.  With their simplicity they really stood out amidst the full-body-paint motorized palaces with their glitzy (might I say gaudy) interiors.  Remind me again why two people need four television sets when they are “camping out”.  And then there was this fine example of the restorer’s art…a funky little cottage that harkens back to the good old days.

When the big rally wrapped up, we had one more quick small chapter rally to attend, this time in Prineville which is only about 20 miles east of Redmond.  After two days of marathon eating, the rally broke up and everyone hit the road, headed every which way.  We stayed behind to poke around Prineville and explore the A.R. Bowman Memorial Museum.  Housed in a block building which first served as a bank then as Mr. Bowman’s insurance office, the museum is nicely laid out with coherent displays of the area’s history.  Mining featured heavily in Prineville’s past with gold and cinnabar, from whence comes mercury, taken from them thar hills.  Water sports seem to occupy weekends for a lot of folks.  Dams on both Crooked River and Ochoco Creek have created reservoirs, used primarily for irrigation but providing boating and fishing opportunities as well. 

Our main reason for staying a few extra days was to visit our friend Betty.  It was great seeing  her again and we had a nice visit, capped off with a quick trip northward to visit a friend of hers who collects antique cars.  He kindly gave us a tour of his garage and took us on  a whirlwind ride in a bright red Model A.  My legs wouldn’t bend enough to get into the rumble seat so I got to ride up front while Howie and Betty struggled to get themselves into the back for a fresh air ride.  One wishes film existed of that little effort.  There aren’t even snapshots.  Lawsuits would likely ensue.  But there were belly laughs galore and a good time was had by all.

We’ll be hanging around Oregon for a few more weeks and will be making additional reports should time allow.

From The Valley of the Rogue

Ah, at long last we’ve found some moderate temperatures!  And we’ve found them in Grants Pass, Oregon whose city motto is “It’s the Climate”.  But, as it happens, just before we arrived, Grants Pass too was suffering from temperatures well up into the triple digits and with the humidity all this greenery is bound to generate.  A nice rain has changed all that and temperatures are back to normal.

But first let’s back-track.  After a slight cooling off period in the Verde Valley, we headed for a few days in Bullhead City, Arizona where we continued to roast at desert temperatures.  Our activities were confined to recreational shopping in air conditioned facilities.  The trek from Bullhead City to Pahrump, Nevada is through some of the bleakest most boring terrain you can imagine.  It makes West Texas look downright scenic.  If it weren’t for the stripes on the highway, there’d be no color at all.  Even the sagebrush refuses to grow.  I’m not sure what possessed us to plan to spend the 4th of July in that part of Nevada.  The “flip side” of Death Valley is hardly welcoming that time of year and this was no exception.  The outdoor thermometer seemed perpetually stuck at 111.1 degrees.  Fortunately we had good solid 50 amp electrical service and so could run both air conditioners when necessary (which was almost constantly). 

We’ve enjoyed 4th of July festivities in a variety of small towns over the years but this year was just plain too hot to venture out of the coach.  Rumor had it that there were activities at the town park on the morning of the 4th but we opted to stay indoors and drink gallons of iced tea.  Our campground was just across the road from the town’s major casino and they had planned a big fireworks display for the next night.  Even though we were facing the road and would have had a fine view from the coach, we hauled our chairs out to the street and enjoyed a grand fireworks display up close and personal, as they say.  We were so close to the staging area that it often felt as if the bursts were raining down on us. 

We also availed ourselves of a “two-fer” coupon for the all-American buffet at the casino.  When will we learn not to eat at casinos?  The food was bad but the air conditioning was good.

Driving through Nevada is so mind-numbing that the trip needs to be broken into several segments; we  made a two-day stop in Mina.  Suffice it to say that the campground is the very nicest thing in the whole town.  The two-day stay seemed much much longer.

Our next stop was Susanville, California where it was marginally cooler, being at a higher elevation, then on to Lakeview, Oregon.  Once again we stayed at the campground in the middle of an 8,000 acre cattle and timber ranch.  The last time we stayed here, there was a terrific thunderstorm and heavy rain.  Not this time…and they could certainly use some rain.  Unfortunately the county historical museum was closed on our only full day in town so we weren’t able to learn much about the region.  But they do have a wonderful jam-packed to the rafters antique shop which we trolled to our heart’s content.  They had several eggcups which have since joined my collection.  And Lakeview has a magnificent new library with a very complete used book shop where I discovered a copy of a book that’s been on my “read it next” list since the mid-‘90s.

The air in Lakeview was pretty hazy from nearby forest fires and the haze continued as we trekked across the bottom portion of Oregon, a route we had not traveled before.  I had it in mind that we needed to tour the museum in Klamath Falls so we could see what I recalled as “the world’s largest fire opal”.  The whole stop in K Falls (as it is known to the locals) was an exercise in futility.  To begin with, it was blazing hot, by Oregon standards, and our campground was 'way below par.  The voltage was so low that we had to keep everything (and I do mean everything) turned off just to have enough juice to operate one air conditioner. Although it is advertised that the campground had free cable t.v. that wasn’t exactly the case.  After making a $50 deposit, you are given a cable box and expected to install it yourself.  Two boxes and two hours later (including a 30 minute call to the cable company), we still didn’t have cable and gave up on that notion.  And the daily rate was well into what we’d expect to pay at a fine RV “resort” with all the amenities.  The amenities at this dump consisted of train noise, road noise and the odor from the horse pasture next door. 

With only one full day in town (thankfully we hadn’t made reservations to stay longer) we headed off to the Klamath County Historical Museum which is housed in a poorly-lit old armory.  There were a few interesting displays but most were too poorly lit to appreciate.  Their collection of antique washing machines was housed in a loft and had to be admired from a distance.  We did come across one small but very interesting display pertaining to a little-known fact of WWII.  The only Americans killed by the Japanese on U.S. soil were a group of teen-agers having a picnic near Bly, Oregon.  They were killed when a balloon bomb exploded.  The Japanese had been releasing balloon bombs in an attempt to set the forests on fire and thus distract troops from other war efforts.  The project was not effective because they started the bombing in May before the snows had melted. 

When we inquired about the fire opal we were greeted with some blank stares until it was realized that we were referring to a fire opal arrowhead which is housed at a local art museum.  A quick check showed the admission fee at that museum was well beyond what we consider “worth it” and so we went off to do some recreational shopping instead.  We wrapped up our brief visit to K Falls with an evening of non-cable t.v. and insufficient air conditioning.

And if ever there was a study in contrasts, our campground in Grants Pass provided the “Good” to K Falls’ “Bad and Ugly”.  It’s a lovely park with terraced sites and plenty of flowers and shrubbery.  Grants Pass is just the right size – big enough to have all the essential emporia, small enough not to overwhelm  and with super friendly, helpful citizens.  We got in plenty of recreational shopping and scored a fistful of eggcups for the collection.

We hope you’ll join us for the next leg of our journey around Oregon.