Category Archives: Elks

Day Trip to Hovenweep

It’s been an eventful week – some good, some not so good. I’ll start with the good stuff. Monday afternoon we drove over to the Cortez Elk’s Lodge and enjoyed a cold brew on the patio. The view was similar to our back deck – we were overlooking the golf course. Donna wanted to check out the golf course and driving range there.

Golf course view from the Cortez Elk’s Lodge

Donna wants to hit a few balls at the driving range and maybe play a round on the course while we’re in Cortez.

I played pickleball on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I took Thursday off as I had an appointment with Clint, the only local RV repair guy – but that’s another story I’ll get to later in this post. Donna alternated between pickleball and tennis. Friday was too windy for pickleball.

On Friday morning, Donna went over to the Owers Farm to help Carolyn with weeding. Then, after lunch, we made a trip to Hovenweep National Monument. It’s about an hour drive from Cortez on mostly two-lane county roads across the border into Utah. Hovenweep is an interesting place. It was inhabited over 800 years ago by a large number of ancestral Pueblo people – what were formerly called Anasazi. These people were farmers and also skilled at building, utilizing bricks made from mud, rock and plant material. Most of the building ruins there were originally built from 1230 to 1275 AD.

The area is thought to have had many creeks and springs providing water to the canyon where Hovenweep is located. Around this same time, the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings were also built. The people of Hovenweep didn’t stay here for long. It’s theorized that after the towers, storage buildings and dwellings were built, decades of drought ensued. It was once thought that the ancient Puebloans simply disappeared. Nowadays we know that they relocated – some went to the Rio Grande valley in what is now New Mexico, others went south to the Little Colorado watershed in Arizona.

Today, the Navajo, Hopi and Zuni tribes can trace their ancestry back to these people. We hiked from the visitor center to the Square Tower, then on the way back we took the Tower Point loop. The hiking path was well-marked with stone boundaries and the terrain was uneven, flat stones. Wear good, sturdy shoes if you come here!

Stronghold House
Tower Point
Hovenweep Castle
Square Tower – Hovenweep House on top of the canyon in the background

I should have had Donna pose in a picture or two to give a sense of scale. These were large structures, many stories high. It was a fun and entertaining way to spend the afternoon. When we came back to town, we made another stop at Loungin’ Lizard. Once again the beer was cold, but the food was off and the service a bit hit or miss. We’ve heard from a local person that’s what you can expect there – hit or miss.

On Saturday, Donna and I played in a pickleball tournament put on by the Cortez Pickleball Club. They call it a “Shootout.” I didn’t play all that well, but we had fun. The format had us playing three games with a different partner each game, then based on total points scored you either moved up one court or down one court for another three games with different people.

Now the not so good stuff. In my last post, I mentioned two issues we were having, both related to water. We have water dripping from behind the shower, either from the water supply line at the shower valve or the shower head connection. I cannot find a way to access either area. So, in the meantime, we are only running the fresh water pump on an as-needed basis to prevent a constant drip.

As if that weren’t enough to contend with, the fresh water supply suddenly lost flow and pressure. I was fairly certain the problem was the check valve at the hot water tank. I ordered a new one. When it was delivered on Tuesday, I drained the hot water tank by pulling the anode rod. I was surprised to find the rod had eroded down to the core material – it was about the diameter of a clothes hanger wire. The tank was full of anode rod bits and mineral deposits.

Once I had the tank cleaned up, I embarked on a comedy of errors – at least that’s how I think of it now. When I removed the check valve, I saw I had ordered the wrong replacement part. The Amazon description says it’s for our Suburban water heater and it will fit the heater tank, but the other end of it is a female coupling and I needed male couplings on both ends. Grrr. I cleaned up the old check valve as best as I could and reassembled it and filled the hot water tank.

Good news – it worked fine then! I went back to Amazon and ordered replacement anode rods. I enjoyed a nice, hot shower with good water pressure and flow. Donna had half a shower before trouble hit again. We lost water flow and pressure. I went back to Amazon and found the proper check valve and placed another order. We were stuck for the remainder of the week without good water pressure.

Thursday morning, the only local RV repair man came out. I explained the water drip situation to Clint and showed him the dilemma regarding access. He looked at the options and couldn’t come with a good solution. As I feared, he said it wouldn’t be a mobile repair job and would have to be left at a shop – it wasn’t something that could be done in a day. The only way to do it would be to either cut through the wall or cut the shower enclosure and patch it afterwards. Not good.

Friday Amazon delivered the new anode rods, but the check valve wasn’t scheduled to arrive until Saturday. I would need to remove the anode rod to drain the tank to install the new check valve, so I waited to do the repair on Saturday.

New anode rod on the left, old eroded anode rod on the right

In hindsight, I can see that I should have drained the hot water tank when I put the coach in storage. Leaving water in the tank for eight months without use eroded the rod.

I should mention that I had to buy a 12″ adjustable end wrench in order to remove the anode rod. When we were full-time RVers, I always had all of my tools with me – now I only pack a handful of tools. An adjustable wrench should have been in that handful.

The check valve arrived mid-day on Saturday and I set to work. I removed the old anode rod, drained the tank, then replaced the check valve. After installing the anode rod, I opened the pressure relief vent and turned on the city water supply to refill the tank. I opened the bathroom faucet to check for flow and pressure and was disappointed. I couldn’t figure out what was going on.

I went back outside to check the hose and saw water dripping from behind the hot water tank. I shut off the water and hustled back inside. The pex hose connection to the check valve was leaking profusely. After fiddling with it, I could see that I was missing the rubber gasket. I looked around inside the cabinet where I was working and couldn’t find it.

In a panic, I drove to the hardware store and found a Sharkbite-type 90 degree pex elbow fitting that I thought would work. I came back and started disassmbling the fitting when I had a sudden epiphany. I picked up the old check valve and sure enough, the rubber gasket was lodged inside it. Doh! I installed the gasket on the new check valve and put it all back together. Another refill of the hot water tank and pressure check was a success. Good flow and pressure, no leaking. This was not one of my finest repair attempts.

New check valve – note arrow showing direction of flow

After that long winded tale of woe, I’ll talk about dinner plates. Last Monday, Donna grilled shrimp kabobs with onions, mushrooms, tomatoes and pineapple chunks. She served it with tare sauce on the kabobs and I put soy sauce on the side of rice.

Grilled shrimp kabob

Tuesday she made something new – hoisin glazed pork bowl. The recipe called for thinly sliced carrot, radishes, mushrooms and scallions – it recommended using a mandolin the get the radish thin enough. We don’t have a mandolin but with my Japanese 180mm bunka knife, I was able to cut the radish nearly paper thin.

Japanese 180mm bunka – forged by Teruyasu Fuijiwara

The vegetable medley was placed over the thinly sliced pork that was seared and then baked with a hoisin marinade. I mixed everything together before eating it and it was delicious. I would happily go the through the meal prep for this dish anytime.

Hoisin pork bowl

The daily temperatures were in the mid 80s through Thursday. Then a front came in bringing wind and cooler temperatures – the high was 71 on Friday, only 68 on Saturday. The overnight lows have been around 40 degrees. We’ll see more of the same for a few days before it begins to warm up again mid-week.

World’s Fastest Indian Was Here

From the start of this blog, I always said I would post honestly – the good, bad and the ugly. This post has it all. Wednesday’s prime rib dinner at the Rupert Elk’s Lodge lived up to its billing. The prime rib was excellent, the corn on the cob was fresh and our baked potatoes were well seasoned and perfectly baked. The salad bar wasn’t the greatest, but everything was fresh. We couldn’t eat it all, so we brought home some leftovers for steak and eggs for me and steak salad for Donna.

Thursday morning it was time to leave Rupert. Our first stop was the dump station in town. I had filled our fresh water tank before we left the Elk’s Lodge and after dumping, we hit the road with empty holding tanks. Our route had us heading south on I-84. We turned off onto ID81 to take a shortcut into Utah where we would pick up UT30 west.

As soon as I hit the exit ramp, I sensed trouble. I saw a line of vehicles stopped on the overpass and the truck ahead of us was stopped at the top of the exit, waiting for traffic to clear. Once we were stopped, I could see the source of the hold-up. A tractor-trailer rig with an over-sized flat bed trailer failed to make the turn onto the northbound on-ramp. The extra-long trailer was hung up on the concrete barrier. I feared we would be stuck for a while before we could continue. The thing was, the direction we wanted to go was opposite of the trapped trailer.

A couple of gentle toots of the horn got the attention of the trucker in front of us. He saw I was indicating a right turn. He was able to move forward and left enough for us to squeeze by. Trouble no more, we were on our way. The shortcut on ID81 was a good choice. There was very little traffic – we only saw a few cars every 10 minutes or so. The speed limit was 65mph, so we weren’t going any slower than we would have traveled down the interstate. The road surface was good. The only downside was the narrow road with little to no shoulder.

The long drive southwest on UT30 had similar road conditions with even fewer cars along the way. We’d left the Idaho farm country behind and were driving through a mostly barren landscape. There weren’t any real towns – just a few clusters of houses in a place called Rosette – they even had a post office there. Eventually we crossed the border into northeast Nevada and found the town of Montello. No stoplights in Montello. The road designation changed at the border to NV233.

We finally hit I-80 and headed southwest toward West Wendover. A few miles down the interstate, I heard a loud bang – it sounded like something had hit under the front of the coach. I checked the side mirrors to see if there was anything in the road and didn’t find anything. Then Donna said, “We need to pull over – I can see a basement door open.” She was looking at the driver’s side view mirror and from her vantage point, she could see something that wasn’t in my view.

I stopped on the shoulder and walked around the front of the coach. What I saw qualifies as ugly. It wasn’t a compartment door she was seeing. It was the front body panel mounted under the driver’s seat from the front of the coach to just behind the front wheel well. I looked it over and found the rear bracing of this panel was bonded with a type of epoxy to two braces in front of the wheel. At the front of the panel, it folds toward the center of the coach at 90 degrees and has four rivets holding the front of the panel.

We heard a noise earlier on ID81 but didn’t see anything out of order. I thought the sound may have come from a farmhouse we were passing at the time. In hindsight, I think the bonded braces broke free there. This allowed the panel to flex back and forth from airflow and on the interstate, the rivets gave way. Now the panel was slightly bent away from the coach and would flap in the wind until it completely broke off.

I thought I could secure it well enough with duct tape and gave that a shot. We got back on the interstate and I kept our speed at 55-60 mph. It held for about four miles, then went bang again. I pulled over and this time, I opened the front generator compartment, cleaned the bulkhead there with rubbing alcohol and ran the duct tape around the front edge of the panel with the tape adhering to the bulkhead. This seemed more secure but it only held for about another four miles. This was getting real ugly.

I didn’t like working on the driver’s side of the coach on the interstate shoulder. Fortunately, the traffic was light and most drivers moved out of the right lane giving me plenty of room. But at one point, I looked up to see a car traveling at about 80 mph barreling right past me about two feet away!

I knew I had to do something besides duct tape. I rummaged around and found two small screws. I put them into the rivet holes – holes in the panel no longer lined up with the holes in the bulkhead, but I was able to pound them in with a hammer. Then I duct-taped over the screw heads to hold them in place and re-taped the panel.

Back on the road this held. We stopped at the Pilot-Flying J in West Wendover where I topped up the tank with 69 gallons of diesel at $4.01/gallon! Gulp, $276 worth of fuel brings our fuel costs to about $500 since we left Mount Vernon, Washington. This Biden economy is killing us.

Donna bought another roll of duct tape at the travel center and we continued east into Wendover, Utah. Our short run in Nevada was done and we went east on I-80 to Utah exit 4 where Donna found a boondocking spot on BLM public land off Leppy Pass Road.

Boondocking on a level area of BLM land

I added another screw to my temporary fix and re-taped it.

Temporary fix – you cab see the adhesive residue from my first tape jobs

We saw a few other RVs in the area but we were spaced well apart. We were at an elevation of about 4,300 feet above sea level. I never realized the Bonneville Salt Flats had this much elevation – it definitely is enough to affect the power of naturally aspirated engines. I disconnected the truck and we took a drive out to the Bonneville Salt Flats Speedway area. The speedway was first used in 1912 for timed top speed events. While we were there, an organization was preparing the course for a motorcycle speed event. There was great movie about a motorcycle at Bonneville called The World’s Fastest Indian made in 2005 – it’s a story based on the life of New Zealander Burt Munro starring Anthony Hopkins

They used to have a straight track nine miles long with a black stripe for Speed Week – a week-long event to set speed records sponsored by the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA). Speed Week was canceled in 2014 and 2015 due to poor conditions from heavy rain. Mud washed over much of the flats. Between the leaching of salt into the aquifer and mining operations, the amount of salt has gone down greatly over the last 50 years. Where the salt surface was once more than two feet thick, it’s now only about two inches thick and the track is less than three miles long. The speed track is no longer striped, they use flags and markers for the course.

This marker is at the end of Bonneville Speedway Road where the flats are
Trucks in the distance preparing the course for motorcycle trials
Salt surface scuffed by Donna’s shoe

When we returned to the coach, I re-hooked the truck to the coach. Another coach came in and set up about 100 yards from us. At first it looked like they were going to stop right next to us. Really? It’s wide open here on the flats.

Sunrise over Bonneville – still lots of smoke in the air

Friday morning we found a couple others had pulled in during the night – SUVs with people presumably sleeping inside. We pulled out and drove east on I-80 for 80 miles and hit UT138 south. This route bypassed Tooele (pronounced TOO-illa) and had very little traffic. I was a little worried as most of the route had no shoulder and if my temporary panel repair broke, I had no place to stop. We made it without incident and stopped for the day at Fort Deseret State Park. It’s a quiet place to dry-camp for the night, but’s it’s the strangest state park we’ve ever encountered, I wrote about when we stayed here last year.

Saturday morning we continued south on UT257 which became UT129 at Milford, then UT21 at Minersville. We drove through the town of Beaver and found I-15 south there. The interstate immediately climbed and we reach the summit at 6,500 feet above sea level.

We left I-15 shortly and my repair was still holding up. We took UT20 which was a steep climb up 7% grades to the summit 7,920 feet above sea level. The descent down the east side is even steeper at an average grade of 8%. We found Paradise RV Park a few miles north of Panguitch, Utah. It’s a nice RV park with very low rates and no real amenities. Donna met the neighbors who’ve been coming here for years. They said over the last few years the ownership became absentee, only coming around to collect fees and the place is slowly deteriorating, though still pleasant. We paid $134 for a week including tax and might extend over the Labor Day weekend.

Donna grilled chicken wings, thighs and drumsticks for dinner and served it with sauteed veggies we found at the local grocery. We also bought some veggies and great watermelon from a roadside stand in town. The couple operating the stand were full-time RVers for 13 years before settling near here and they grow their own vegetables which they sell.

Grilled chicken with Mediterreanean vinaigrette and sauteed vegetables

We’re near Bryce Canyon and plan to explore this week. The temperature reached the mid-80s today and is supposed to get there again tomorrow before we have a cooling trend with rain probable on Tuesday and Wednesday. We are finally away from the smoke and have decent air quality after breathing wildfire smoke since early July.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!

Saved by the Elk’s

While I was writing my last post, after the farmers’ market Saturday morning, Donna went for a walk. When she came back she told me she walked all way back to the downtown area and it was getting busy – many more people out and about than we saw earlier.

We decided against going back downtown for wine tasting where most places required reservations and opted to head east to the Airport Wine District. This is an interesting area. During World War II, the Army Air Corps built a training facility next to the existing Walla Walla Regional Airport. They put in a new runway and constructed over 300 buildings for administative offices, barracks, mess halls and storage. The facility covered over 2,100 acres. B-17 Flying Fortress crews trained there.

After the war, the new Air Force declared the base surplus and turned it over to the city of Walla Walla in 1947. In 1989, the Port of Walla Walla took over operations. The airport is mostly used for General Aviation although there is one commercial airline in operation.

The old army buildings were soon home to small manufacturing businesses and eventually 14 wineries established operations there. The wineries produce their wine onsite from grapes sourced from Walla Walla and Columbia Valley appelations.

We visited the CAVU winery there. CAVU doesn’t require reservations – many of the others do.The winery name CAVU comes from an aviation term – ceiling and visibility unlimited (CAVU) – ideal flying conditions. Their specialty is wines based on the barbera grape although they also offer a very nice sauvignon blanc, tempranillo, malbec and a Bordeaux right bank style red blend. We tasted seven wines and ending buying two bottles of Barbera Rose, two bottles of 2019 Barbera and two bottles of 2019 Rule Breaker II. The Rule Breaker is a blend of barbera, cabernet sauvignon and petit verdot grapes. The wine maker calls it Rule Breaker because his usual rule is not to blend barbera grapes with other varieties.

The Airport District also houses a couple of breweries with pubs and outdoor beer gardens and a few eateries. We stopped at Burwood Brewing Company and tried a beer in their outdoor area. They had very good beer!

Burwood IPA

The we went to Quirk Brewing for a second cold one and enjoyed their beer as well. Both breweries had a food truck on their premises. If you’re in the area, I recommend taking the short drive to the Airport District and checking it out.

Sunday morning it was time to hit the road. We wanted to head down to Twin Falls, Idaho, but to get there we’d need a stop along the way. We opted to boondock and Donna found a few options. We ended up boondocking in a small gravel turnout near Huntington, Oregon, south of Baker City. To get there, we traveled on I-84 first through more wheat growing country, then made the climb into the Blue Mountains up Emigrant Hill to Deadman Pass. The road has several switchbacks and is a 6% grade. We saw a few trucks, one RV and a couple of cars on the road shoulder with overheated engines. I-84 in Oregon tops out at Blue Mountain summit 4,193 feet above sea level.

The boondocking spot was fairly quiet and the overnight stay was uneventful. Trains came by, but they were on the other side of the river, far enough away not to be bothersome and they didn’t have to cross a road and blow their horns.

Snake River view from our boondocking site

Monday morning we were back on the road southbound on I-84. It was just over 200 miles to Twin Falls but the slog through Caldwell, Nampa and Boise slowed us down. The traffic was heavy there and, as usual, all of the city folk were in hurry, driving like idiots and causing traffic snarls.

Our plan was to stop at Rock Creek County RV Park in Twin Falls. They don’t take reservations – it’s all first-come, first-served. We thought arriving early afternoon on a Monday, we would find an open site. We thought wrong. The place was full. Tthe camp host told us the Twin Falls County Fair was only a week away and every place was full.

Last year, we stayed at the Elk’s Lodge in Rupert. It was only 40 miles away, so we headed there. We found the five RV sites with water and electricity were all open – no one was staying at the Elk’s Lodge. I paid for two nights at $20/night and we set up.

The Elk’s have saved the day again – it wasn’t the first time we had to go to plan “B” and the Elk’s never let us down.

Elk’s Lodge site has us backed up to the golf course – Hole #1 499 yards par 5

Adjoining the Elk’s Lodge is the Rupert Country Club which features a tree-lined 18-hole golf course. The land is all owned by the Elk’s but the country club leases the acreage for the golf course and operates it.

Yesterday, a truck with a camper pulling a long (20 feet or more) enclosed trailer came in next to us. The guys rolled a golf cart out of the trailer along with their clubs and headed out to the golf course. They were out all day.

Their trailer hitch is interesting. Due to the length of the camper, the hitch is cantilevered three feet or more from the rear of the truck. I don’t know how much tongue weight he has, but that’s a lot of leverage on the hitch receiver!

Look at the cantilevered hitch extension

Later, when the guys came back from golfing, they pulled some equipment out of the trailer. I was curious as I didn’t recognize it.

DryJect machines

I had to ask about it. It turns out they have state-of-the-art machinery called DryJect which is used to aerate and condition turf. Normally, turf is aerated by pulling cylindrical plugs out of the soil. This loosens the soil and allows oxygen to penetrate, improving the health of the turf. Sometimes soil amendments are added to the holes created.

On a golf green, this means a clean-up is required. The cylindrical plugs of soil lay on the surface and look similar to goose droppings. No one wants that on the green. The DryJect machines work by injecting a high-pressure jet of water mixed with sand or other soil amendments, fracturing the soil and creating the aeration pocket. The pocket is simultaneously filled with the sand or other soil additive, leaving a smooth surface with no clean-up required. These guys travel around and treat golf course greens – golfing their way around the country while earning a living. Sweet!

I originally paid for two nights here, but after visiting the lodge for a cold one, I decided we needed another night. Lodge members told me about the prime rib dinner on Wednesday night and convinced me it wasn’t something we should miss. They have a special rotisserie that allows them to roast up to eight prime rib roasts at a time. They dry rub the meat the day before. The dinner includes salad, choice of potato and fresh corn on the cob for $25/plate. Beer is $3/pint. I signed us up.

The weather here in Rupert has been pleasant. We’ve had daily highs in the mid 80s and overnight lows around 50 degrees. This morning, it was 53 degrees outside and 63 degrees in the coach – just right for sleeping with a window open and blankets on the bed.

Tomorrow we’ll head out of here and travel through Utah on the west side – avoiding the gauntlet on I-15 that extends from Tremonton through Salt Lake City to Provo. I detest that drive. Instead, we’ll head in a westerly direction to West Wendover, NV and spend the night near the Bonneville Salt Flats. Our next stop will be Panguitch, Utah where we expect some very fine weather.

Miles of Wildfire Smoke

Donna spoke to the Elk’s Lodge camp host and arranged a late checkout for us on Saturday. We wanted to stay connected to the electric service as long as possible to cool the interior of the coach. Saturday’s forecast for Coeur d’Alene called for triple digit heat. Just before we pulled out at 1pm, I fired up the Onan Quiet Diesel generator and disconnected the power cord.

Our first stop was the dump station next to the Kootenai County Fairgrounds. Then we were westbound on I-90. We had a short drive – under an hour – to Northern Quest Casino in Airway Heights near the Spokane airport northwest of the city. They have a parking lot designated for trucks and RVs. We parked along the south edge of the lot where a couple of other RVs were located rather than parking in the marked stalls where truckers were parked.

I kept the generator running and both air conditioners on until we locked up and drove to Dick and Roxy’s place at 4:30pm. We found their house in the South Hill neighborhood of Spokane. We had a great visit and talked over dinner – Roxy had seasoned flank steak with a prime rib rub and Dick grilled it on his Traeger. Roxy also made a Mediterranean quinoa salad and a side with cucumber, tomatoes and other ingredients – perfect on a hot day.

We left a little past eight o’clock – we needed to get back and fire up the generator to start cooling the coach again. I didn’t want to leave the generator running while we were away. We had the generator and air conditioners on past midnight. One of the neighboring RVs had their generator on all night.

I didn’t mention the smoke. When we left the Elk’s Lodge and drove through Spokane, the smoke was thicker than ever. The wind had shifted and smoke from the fires to the north was coming down to us. My throat and eyes were irritated.

Sunday morning we woke to the sound of raindrops. I hoped it would knock the smoke down, but it didn’t rain very hard. We hit the road a little after 9am and the scenery on westbound US2 was surreal. The combination of smoke and light rain made it feel like we were driving through a Scottish moor. But it wasn’t foggy, it just had the appearance of fog.

We drove across US2 through Coulee City and had an uneventful but somewhat eerie day. We dropped into the Columbia Gorge at Orondo and went north on WA97. We found the Lone Pine Fruit Company. Donna had researched dry camping there. They were closed on Sunday, so we found a level area and set up for the night.

Boondocking at Lone Pine Fruit Company lot

In the photo above, you can see the smoke hanging over the Columbia River. Across the highway, the ridgetops would disappear at times due to the thick smoke.

Ridge across the highway
Wildfire smoke

Monday morning Donna bought some fresh fruit before we hit the road again. We went south to Wenatchee and followed US2 west up and over Stevens Pass. The pass topped out at 4,064 feet above sea level. I think Wenatchee is about 700 feet above sea level.

Once you drive past the ski area westbound, there is a long 6% grade descending the other side of the pass. I’m familiar with this road and knew to keep my speed in check. At the bottom of the grade, there is a 180-degree narrow single-lane turn. You need to be below 40mph in a big rig for that turn. I used the Jacobs Engineering engine compression brake to keep us at 45-50 mph the whole way down.

About a quarter of the way down we saw two RVs ahead in a turnout on the side of the road – a gasoline powered class A and a smaller class C. They pulled out ahead of us and quickly pulled away. A few minutes later we came around a bend, still descending steeply toward the big turn and saw them stopped in a turnout again. This time the class A motorhome had smoke billowing out of his front brakes. We could smell the burning brake pads as we drove by. They were obviously descending too fast and had to brake hard or maybe he was riding the brakes all the way – I do know they were going much faster than we were.

When we had a gasoline-powered coach, I didn’t have the luxury of a Jake brake. To make a steep descent, I would slow down, gear down and figure my target speed. If I wanted to target 50 mph, I would brake to 40-45 mph, then release the brakes and allow them to cool. As my speed crept up past 50 mph, I would brake again under my target speed, release the brake for cooling and let my speed slowly increase again. Repeating this procedure all the way down a long grade avoids overheating the brakes.

We stopped in Arlington at the Pilot/Flying J travel center near the intersection of I-5 and WA530. I topped up our tank with about 60 gallons of diesel at $3.58/gallon. I paid over $200 – last year I would have paid around $135!

We found our way to the Skagit Valley RV Park on the south bank of the Skagit River in Mount Vernon. We were checked in quickly and directed to site 53 with full hookups and 50-amp service. The elevation is about 50 feet above sea level. I was surprised at the amount of smoke in the air here. I thought we would leave the smoke behind once we crested the Cascade Mountains. We’ve traveled through more than 700 miles of wildfire smoke!

This morning Donna fixed a nice surprise for me. One of my favorite breakfast dishes is Eggs Benedict. I usually only get it when we go out for breakfast. Donna had all of the ingredients, so she made it for me this morning!

Eggs Benedict

We’ll spend the next two weeks here. We’re looking forward to spending some time with Kevin and Alana and the grandkids. We had a cool, comfortable night and the temperature this morning is in the mid-60s. We’ll have daily highs around 80 degrees. The forecast calls for cooler weather ahead – low 70s by Friday.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!

Cuban Ham Jam

Last week’s weather here in Coeur d’Alene stayed true to the forecast I mentioned in my last post. We had daily highs in the low to mid 80s from Tuesday to Friday. It rained a little on Wednesday morning – enough to clear the skies of the smoke from wildfires.

We had a fairly quiet week for the most part. Donna’s been practicing clarinet and had a visit from a neighbor while she was playing. Our neighbor to the left of us stopped by to compliment Donna’s playing. It turns out she was a former clarinet player. She left the following morning so we never found out why she no longer plays.

A couple of days later, I had a similar experience while playing guitar. The door was open and my sound must have carried – a guy stopped and knocked and I thought, “Oh no, I must be disturbing someone.” No, he just wanted to say he enjoyed the music!

I’ve been setting up my ham radio in the afternoons when I have some shade next to the coach. My Buddipole Versatee vertical antenna has been tuning up on the 20-meter band nicely. I made contact with Lou (EA7JE) in Barcelona, Spain a couple more times. I also had a strange phenomenom occur. On Thursday while I was surfing the band, I heard a guy transmitting from Athol, Idaho only about 15 miles away! His name was Gene (K7TXO). Theoretically we shouldn’t be able to make contact on the high frequency 20-meter band at that distance. Our signals should shoot over each other’s antennas with a take-off angle that sends the signal to the upper atmosphere. But we talked like we were sitting across from each other.

A little while later, I made contact with Mark (N9FAL). He was operating portable on the north side of the Coeur d’Alene airport, maybe five or six miles away! The conditions obviously favored a ground wave that allowed close proximity contact. I’ve had this happen a few times before, once in Mesa and twice when we were at Lake Pleasant. It didn’t happen on Friday or Saturday here – radio wave propagation can be unpredictable at times.

On Thursday and Friday, there was a lot of noise on the band and I could see some kind of strong interference across the band every 40 kilohertz or so. I saw a video on YouTube made by Josh Nass (KI6NAZ). He used a Software Defined Radio (SDR) program to show the interference on the 40-meter band. It looked very much like what I was seeing on 20-meters. Josh used the SDR to triangulate the origin of the noise on 40-meters. It was a series of powerful signals that obliterated all other signals near their frequency. The triangulation alogorithm placed the sources west of Havana, Cuba and also off of the southern coast of Cuba – probably from a ship.

These are presumably being created by the Cuban government to hinder communication to and from the island. The operators responsible for the jamming noise are actively monitoring the band and the noise signals move across the band to stop specific communications. Most of the ham community think the Cuban government is only jamming on 40-meters, but I find it strange that the 20-meter band had noise that looked very similar.

The noise disapeared yesterday and I had several contacts including long conversations with David (KE5MXF) in Newalla, Oklahoma and Jimmie (KA5DOB) in Alamogordo, New Mexico. While I was outside on the radio, a fellow ham stopped his truck in front of our site. He was Scott (KA6SUY) from Chico, California. He’s here at the Elk’s Lodge in a fifth-wheel trailer with his wife. He only has a two-band (VHF-UHF) radio with him though. There are active repeaters here on those bands and a net is held every evening at 6:30pm. I’m able to join the net with my handheld Yaesu FT3D transceiver.

Last year, we found something new in the area. There’s a parking lot about half a mile east of the lodge that became home to a number of food trucks. We went there on Thursday and I went for the Korean truck and ordered Bi Bim Bap – a rice bowl with stir fried meat and veggies topped with a fried egg and spiced with kim chee. Good stuff, but the spice had my head sweating! Donna didn’t find anything she wanted there, so she made herself a salad back at the RV park.

For the first week we were here, the Elk’s RV park was full. Everyday a few people would leave and their sites would quickly be re-occupied. RVers were turned away every afternoon. Early last week it changed. It was as if someone flipped a switch. Suddenly there were a dozen open sites. My theory is that many people scheduled vacation time to coincide with the Fourth of July holiday and now they’ve gone home.

I knew we were probably going to have an issue on Thursday when three campers took up residence behind and adjacent to our site. There was a small class C motorhome, a small teardrop trailer and a truck camper. They were all traveling together and when they set out a portable fire pit, put up a few canopies, tables and chairs it looked like party central. Sure enough, when we went to bed at 10:30pm, they were sitting around the campfire talking loudly. I don’t know what they were thinking – it was like they thought they were at a campfire secluded in the woods. In reality, they were at an Elk’s Lodge in a residential neighborhood with RVs within 20 feet of their party. The Elk’s RV park has quiet hours from 10pm to 7am. We had to ask them to tone it down. They lowered their volume, but still kept Donna up until well past midnight. Thankfully they pulled out yesterday.

Friday morning we secured everything in the coach. I removed the window covers and disconnected the power cord. I left our table, my antenna, the grill, the truck and a few odds and ends in the site while we drove the coach to the dumpstation on Dalton next to the Kootenai County Fairgrounds RV park. It had been 11 days since we last dumped our holding tanks in Moscow. We should be set until we’re leaving Coeur d’Alene now.

We found pickleball! On Thursday we went to Cherry Hill Park and found temporary courts set up. We didn’t get there until 10am and most of the players had already called it a day. We were able to join in and get a couple of games with people still there. They told us that most of the play at that park is organized in advance. What we came across was a group of 4.0 level players on one set of courts and beginner lessons on the other courts. They told us about open play at Memorial Park.

Yesterday we went to Memorial Park and found eight courts with open play. There were probably about 40 players there but the courts opened quickly with a four-off and four-on format. We each played seven games with less than five minutes between games. It was fun and we’ll go back.

Donna served a few delicious and interesting meals since my last post. First up is a grilled chicken thigh with an Asian inspired marinade. She served it with roasted sweet potato and grilled bok choy.

Grilled chicken thigh and bok choy with roasted sweet potato

After pickleball on Thursday, we made a stop at Costco. Donna found fresh wild Alaskan sockeye salmon. I looked for a case of bottled water, but couldn’t find any. I asked a store employee and he told us they were out of water! Then he told us why – he said members of a fire fighting crew came in that morning and loaded up all of the water. I don’t mind them taking all the water they could get their hands on – they’re battling a lot of wildfires in the forests around here.

Donna grilled the salmon with the same Asian marinade she used on the chicken thighs and it was excellent. She served it with white rice and french-cut green beans topped with everything bagel seasoning.

Grilled salmon plate

At Costco, we also bought a two-pack of whole chickens. I broke them down and Donna brined two chicken breasts Saturday before she grilled them. She made a Moroccan spice topping and served it with the leftover rice and French-cut green beans. I don’t think chicken breast gets much better than this.

Morrocan spiced grilled chicken

The temperature warmed up yesterday and we’ll see 90 degrees again today. The forecast for the coming week is mid-90s and close to 100 next weekend. Our plan is to pull out of here on Saturday. We’ll spend the night at a casino northwest of Spokane near the airport, then continue on to Twisp, Washington on Sunday. We’ll be in Mount Vernon on the west side of Washington on Monday.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!

A Tale of Two Beaches

The temperature reached the mid-80s on Friday. Donna and I took a drive over to Hayden Lake. We cruised around the lake last year in Midget-San, but didn’t find any public access to the lake. This time I wised up – I took a look at Google Earth and found Honeysuckle Beach. It’s actually really easy to find – you just head east on Honeysuckle Avenue to the end of the road where there is a free parking area and boat ramp. They have a small concession trailer – candy and ice cream – and a sandy beach with an isolated swimming area.

Swimming area at Honeysuckle Beach

It’s a beautiful area with grass and shade trees as well as the sand and water. Hayden Lake has an area of roughly 3,800 acres with about 40 miles of shoreline – definitely large enough for watercraft and there are three public boat ramps. But, as we found last year, most of the shoreline is privately owned and access is limited.

Saturday morning we went to the Kootenai County Farmers’ Market. It’s only about a mile away from the Elk’s Lodge at the corner of Prairie Avenue and US95. We found all of the usual vendors there and lots of shoppers. The market is set among large coniferous trees and the ground is covered with wood shavings. It’s one of our favorite markets.

Trees, vendors and lots of shoppers

When we returned from the market, I set up my ham radio equipment. I put up my Buddipole Versatee vertical antenna and tuned it for the 20-meter band. I really like my RigExpert antenna analyzer – it allows me to really fine-tune the antenna resonance. The atmospheric conditions were not favorable and I remembered the electrical interference I experienced here last year – the noise floor was high on Saturday.

I was able to pick up several signals – including a guy in Barcelona, Spain (EA7JE) – I think he was belting out 1,500 watts. He couldn’t hear my transmissions though. I tried joining in a few other conversations, but it seemed my signal was too weak. I was beginning to wonder if something was wrong with my radio output stage – I knew my antenna was set up right. Then I reached Steve (WQ6L) in Cupertino, California. Cupertino is just outside of San Jose, about 800 straight-line miles from here. He told me my audio was crystal clear with a strong signal – so all was well, it was matter of the atmosphere not cooperating with me. That’s how ham radio can be sometimes.

We had more smoke in the air over the weekend. Sunday we decided to drive over to Sandpoint – about 45 miles from here. We visited Sandpoint in our first year on the road – you can read about it here. Sandpoint is a cool little town right on Lake Pend Oreille. By the way, the town of Ponderay is adjacent to Sandpoint and that’s how you pronounce Pend Oreille.

Lake Pend Oreille is the largest lake in Idaho – the lake is 43 miles long and has a surface area of 148 square miles. It’s over 1,100 feet deep in some areas. Unlike Hayden Lake, Lake Pend Oreille shoreline is mostly uninhabited forest. In Sandpoint, there is a city beach with free parking and lots of sandy beach. It has a couple of lifeguards and a designated swimming area. The lake is also popular for boating and we saw power boats, kayaks and lots of sailboats on the lake.

City beach and swimming area in Sandpoint

In the beach photos of Sandpoint you can see the haze from wildfire smoke against the mountains in the background.

Lots of sailboats in the distance

The lake is fed by the Clark Fork River and the Pack River. It drains into the Pend Oreille River and also feeds the subterranean Spokane Valley-Rathdrum Prairie aquifer. The Pend Oreille River runs west into Washington and makes its way north into Canada before draining into the upper Columbia River.

We walked through the old downtown area and found many of the shops and restaurants were closed on Sunday. This surprised me as Sandpoint is a tourist destination. We had lunch on the back deck of The Burger Dock, overlooking the Sandpoint Marina.

Sandpoint Marina

On our trek through downtown in search of a restaurant with a water view, we entered the Cedar Street Bridge Public Market. This is a long, narrow building set on the old Cedar Street Bridge.

Cedar Street Bridge Public Market viewed from Bridge Street City Beach access

The Cedar Street Bridge was built nearly 100 years ago and originally served as a pedestrian and automobile crossing to the train depot. As train travel declined, the bridge was hardly used. In the late 1970s, access to the bridge was blocked and it fell into disrepair. The city contemplated tearing the old bridge down in the early ’80s, but a local entrepreneur, inspired by the Ponte Vecchio Bridge in Florence, Italy, proposed leasing the bridge and rebuilding it into a public marketplace. It went through several iterations over the years before the current 400-foot long building went through a $1.25 million renovation in 2007. Like most of Sandpoint, we found many of the shops in the market were closed on Sunday.

By the time we returned to the Elk’s Lodge, the temperature had climbed above 90 degrees. It was time for air conditioning! It’s partly cloudy this morning, but we can expect the temperature to rise well above 90 degrees today. The rest of the week looks a little more comfortable with highs in the mid-80s.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks

Hot and Smoky

I failed to mention in my last post the smoke around McCall coming from wildfires in northern California and in Oregon. In the 24-hour period we spent there, it got steadily worse. The drive to Lewiston was smoky and Donna’s eyes were watering so bad, she had to keep them closed for miles. Once we climbed Lewiston Hill, we left the smoke behind and I figured we were in the clear.

After we set up at the fairgrounds in Moscow, the wind shifted and it got hazy. By Tuesday morning when we left, it was very smoky. I hit the dump station before we left – we had 50-amp electric service but no water or sewer hook-ups there. While I was dumping our holding tanks, a guy pulled up behind us with a travel trailer. He said he was camped two sites down from us at Juniper Park in Ririe. He was headed to the Coeur d’Alene area but said he was having trouble finding an available site. Our plan was to go to the Elk’s Lodge in Coeur d’Alene where we would have electric and water, but once again no sewer.

As we drove across the Coeur d’Alene Indian reservation, we left the Palouse. The Palouse is a name given to the wheat growing region north of the Snake and Clearwater Rivers, east of Walla Walla and north of the Camas prairie. The northern boundary is around the Palouse River, south of Spokane. The boundaries of the Palouse are nebulous and the origin of the name is unclear, but it’s been called the Palouse since at least the mid-1800s.

We’ve stayed at the Coeur d’Alene (CdA) Elk’s Lodge for the past five or six years. They don’t take reservations, but we’ve never had a problem getting a site – until now. They were completely full including a couple of dry-camping sites. Donna was on the phone looking for alternatives while I discussed possible outcomes with the camp host. She said she could get us in on Thursday if we arrived early. Donna found dry-camping availability at the Kootenai County Fairgrounds RV Park where we had to pay $25/night for a place to park on dead grass! The temperature reached the mid-90s both days there so we had 10-hour generator run times both days to keep the roof air conditioners on.

Once again, the smoke from wildfires caught up with us in CdA. I think this actually kept the temperatures down from the original forecasted highs as it blocked a lot of the sun. It also made for interesting sunsets.

Sunset at CdA fairgrounds

On Tuesday afternoon, we made a run to Winco Foods, but otherwise just hung out. It was too hot for much activity. Donna got out early Wednesday morning to beat the heat and took a five-mile walk.

When we were in Moscow, I programmed the local repeater in my Yaesu FT3D handheld transceiver and was able to participate in the local net call there. Last night, I had two CdA repeaters programmed in and found another net on the air. Ham operators in Florida have been trying stay in contact with Cuba and had success over the weekend, but now the Cuban government is jamming frequencies on the island to prevent Cubans from communicating with the world.

Yesterday afternoon, I stopped by the CdA Elk’s Lodge again to confirm availability for today. The camp host advised me to come by early. She said if I drove over in the truck by 7am, as soon as someone pulled out, I could pay for the site and she would hold it until I brought the coach over. Five sites were expected to open up – a couple of them would go to the people in the dry-camping spots.

This morning I didn’t take any chances. I drove to the Elk’s Lodge, arriving at 6:15am and hung out waiting to see if I could get a site. At 7:15am, she told me she had site 24 for us. I wrote a check to cover us until the end of the month – it’s $25/night for 50-amp electric service and fresh water hook up. Sure beats $25/night for a spot of dead grass at the fairgrounds. She said she wanted to water the grass in the site while I went to pack up and retrieve our coach and it should be ready by the time I returned.

Donna drove the truck and I drove the coach back to the Elk’s Lodge – no sense in hooking up the truck to drive a few miles and unhook it. We were set up in no time and I immediately refilled our fresh water tank. We were below a quarter tank – we hadn’t had a fresh water hook-up since we left Ririe on the sixth. Even though we are connected to city water here, I like to have a full fresh water tank. Anything can happen – we’ve been in RV parks before where the city water was unexpectedly shut off due to some emergency or another. With a full fresh water tank, we have no worries.

We’ll be here through the end of the month. Our plan then is to head west. We have one night booked in Twisp, WA, then we’ll cross the north Cascade Mountains to Mount Vernon where we have a reservation for two weeks. We don’t book reservations way ahead of time usually, but we knew it was a good idea in western Washington to have a confirmed place to stay.

Donna served up a couple of new recipes this week. Starting on Monday in Moscow she made a ginger-garlic cashew chicken dish. Very nice.

Cashew chicken

Last night she served up shrimp with tomatoes and corn over garlic-smashed potatoes.

Shrimp with tomatoes and corn

Tonight I think I’ll go for the pizza night at the Elk’s Lodge and give Donna a break in the kitchen.

The weather forecast calls for highs around 90 degrees daily except for a spike to the upper 90s on Sunday. No rain in sight according to the weather guessers.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!

Smoke on the Water

My previous post included a photo taken at the swimming area at Legacy Park in McCall. You can see across Payette Lake to the pine-covered ridge at the north side. On Sunday evening, I saw a video clip on the local news taken from the same point where I stood to take the photo, except you couldn’t see more than 200 yards across the lake due to smoke from wildfires. Smoke is everywhere out west; it’s unbelievable.

I wasn’t able to post over the past few days in Mountain Home, Idaho due to spotty Internet access. Spotty is being kind – our current location only has 3G, but it’s far better than Mountain Home which was like a dial-up connection 25 years ago. There was a Verizon LTE cell tower about half a mile away from the Gem State RV Park and that tower had several cells (nodes). Each node was directed to cover a slice of the 200 degree fan of coverage from that tower. However, the node pointed at the park had the largest slice and covered the most densely populated area of coverage. It was overwhelmed by cell phones most of the day.

When I wrote my last post on Saturday morning I was lucky to have a decent connection for an hour. Fortunately, Donna had completed an article for Escapees RV Club before we left Grangeville.

We left Mountain Home on Monday and continued to head in a southerly direction. I didn’t want to blast down I-84 – the speed limit here is 80mph and I don’t drive the coach that fast. After topping up our fuel tank with 67 gallons of diesel, I followed a route that took us down a nice county road that mostly paralleled the interstate. It took us through a lot of farmland with potato fields and some cattle. Idaho is the largest producer of potatoes in the country.

We followed back roads all the way to Rupert, Idaho. These county roads were mostly smooth with speed limits of 55-65mph. It was easy driving with very little traffic. We passed through a small town called Bliss which had a deep valley to the south. The valley was filled with dense smoke and I couldn’t make out any details of the terrain there.

We found the Elk’s Lodge in Rupert. I checked in at the lodge and was told we could dry camp for free. We set up in a level area with a golf course behind us and had happy hour at the lodge. Donna prepared a simple dinner of garlicky tomato and zucchini with parmesan and Italian sausage. She found the best corn of the season at the Mountain Home farmers’ market – the farmer told her it was picked that morning and would be the best we’ve had. He was right.

Simple dinner with great corn

We left Rupert Tuesday morning and this time I took a route down ID81. This state route was similar to the county roads we took the day before. The speed limit was 65mph, the road surface was decent and traffic non-existent. After crossing the Utah border, I had no option but to get on the interstate at Snowville. I-84 had miles of construction and only had one lane open. It merges with I-15 at Tremonton and we stayed on I-15 through heavy traffic in Ogden.

We left I-15 south of Ogden proper at exit 332 and went west through an area called Syracuse. We were on a wide boulevard lined with shopping centers and businesses. It gave way to a residential area and narrowed to one lane in each direction. The road ended at the entrance to Antelope Island State Park. The entrance to the park is at the start of the Davis County Causeway. We had reserved a 90-foot-long pull-through site at the Bridger Bay Campground. I checked in at the entrance and the girl working there told me to go seven miles across the causeway and take a left when we reach the island, then take the next right. We found our site without any difficulty.

Antelope Island is the largest island in the Great Salt Lake. It has an area of 28,022 acres and is roughly 15 miles long north-to-south. It’s home to bison, mule deer, antelope and other wildlife including coyotes and badgers. Just as we entered the island, we saw a bull bison standing behind the entrance sign with a statue of a bison on the other side.

Bison on the island
Our site at Bridger Bay Campground

The campground is dry-camping only. We’ll boondock here for three nights. After setting up, we took a drive in Midget-San to have a look around. We started by going up to Buffalo Point. You can see in the photos the amount of smoke over the Great Salt Lake.

Midget-San at Buffalo Point
View south from Buffalo Point – lots of smoke
Bridger Bay from Buffalo Point – campground is on the edge of the beach to the right of center

We made a loop past the beach access area, the Island Buffalo Grill and visitor center. Then we drove 11 miles down the paved road on the east side of the island to Fielding Garr Ranch. There weren’t very many cars on the road, but there were some day-use tourists that thought nothing of stopping in the middle of the road to take pictures of bison.

View east across Farmington Bay to the mainland

The smoke made an interesting sunset last night.

Smoky sunset

I spoke too soon about internet access here. I’ve been struggling to complete this post as the Verizon signal fades from 3G to 1X with no internet. I’m giving up at this point.

Amber Waves of Grain

I dismantled my antennas and organized the trailer Sunday afternoon. I only had a few things left to do Monday morning before we hooked up the trailer and loaded the MG Midget in the parking lot. We weren’t in a hurry, but it was nice to have things 80% road-ready when we got up in the morning. We hit the dump station again before heading out of town on US95 south.

This route had a series of short climbs and descents as we drove through forest land at first, then farmland. We only planned to travel about 135 miles to the McKay’s Bend Recreation Area at Myrtle, Idaho. When we were going through Moscow, Donna called the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) office at McKay’s Bend to inquire about site availability – they don’t take reservations. They didn’t have anything available for rig of our size.

So, we switched to plan “B”, which was the Elk’s Lodge in Lewiston. The descent into Lewiston on US95 is a six-mile 7% grade! I’m always thankful for the Jacobs Engineering two-stage compression brake in these situations. The Elk’s Lodge in Lewiston boasts of 10 RV sites with electricity and water. What we encountered was indeed 10 hook-ups, but the layout was goofy. They had the power pedestals and water spigots for each site spaced about 15 feet apart. Apparently whoever laid out the plan thought RVs could back in to the pedestals. The problem is, the lot is too small for anything larger than a pickup truck to back into the site in that fashion. We found four RVs – three fifth-wheels and one motorhome all set up parallel to the hookups – each occupying about three sites. There wasn’t any room for us to park near a hook-up.

The lodge was closed on Sunday and Monday, so the large paved lot in front of the lodge was empty. We found a fairly level spot and decided to just dry-camp overnight.

Lewiston Elk’s Lodge – our coach is in the distant background above the “K” in the sign

The lodge is beautifully located above the Snake River. We wished we could’ve entered the lodge – the backside of the lodge is all glass and I’m sure the view is stunning.

Snake River from the lodge parking lot – that’s Clarkston, WA across the river.

Explorers Lewis and Clark had a great influence in the Northwest. The Snake River separates Washington from Idaho here and the two towns at the confluence of the Clearwater and Snake Rivers are Clarkston, Washington and Lewiston, Idaho. Two bridges span the river to join the two towns. The Southway bridge is visible from the lodge.

After we set up, Donna needed to stretch her legs, so she went for a walk. She went downhill on Country Club Drive from the lodge and found a tunnel under Snake River Avenue that brought her to a bike/hiking riverwalk. Here are some pictures from her walk.

Donna’s selfie at the tunnel
Looking west across the river – Clarkston
Southway bridge
Heading upriver on the path

Without electricity and water, we didn’t see any point in hanging around the Elk’s Lodge. We looked online for something down the road on US95. The problem was planning around the upcoming holiday weekend. Most of the campgrounds on our route are state parks and they were all booked. There were some RV resorts, but even the most expensive places were booked over the Labor Day weekend.

We thought about booking a couple of nights, then finding a place to boondock over the three-day weekend, but we needed to get caught up on laundry. We found a place in Grangeville that could accommodate us through the weekend with full hook-ups, albeit just 30-amp electric service. The owner took credit card information and told us to take site 25 when we arrived. He said it was a long back-in and we would be fine without dropping the trailer.

It was only about an 80-mile run to Grangeville. Most of the drive was through wheat fields with some forest land in between. From Coulee City near the center of Washington to western Idaho, we have seen an unbelievable amount of wheat. In some areas, the golden wheat fields stretched as far as we could see. Harvest time is now and we saw a lot of wheat farmers working the fields.

This was a fresh cut “small” wheat field
Train trestle spanning a deep gulch along US95

We arrived in Grangeville around 11am. We were in for another unpleasant surprise. Site 25 wasn’t a long back-in – it was cramped site with a low tree blocking the rear of the site that was so low we wouldn’t be able to get the cargo trailer under it. If we parked there, half of our coach would be in the roadway and the power pedestal at the rear of the site would be 50 feet from us. Donna made a call to the owner, Greg. He wasn’t onsite and she had to leave a message. While we waited for a call back, I looked over the place and found four or five sites that would work.

When Greg called back, Donna told him what the problem was. She told him which sites I thought would work. Donna turned the phone over to me and Greg told me to use either pull-through site 7 or site 8 – preferably 8 and to pull in facing north. Site 8 looked like the best choice, but we had another issue. The tree on the west side of the site needed to be trimmed. I ended up getting a ladder and saw out of the trailer and removed several branches. This place could use some maintenance.

We got settled in and for $130/week, I’m not complaining. The thing is, Grangeville isn’t near any recreation areas so it’s not a tourist destination. Both RV parks – Sundown RV Park where we’re at and Bear Den RV Park had availability through the weekend. There’s a ski area nearby, so I imagine that brings some tourism in the winter.

We took a drive to have a look around in Midget-San. We saw large plumes of smoke past the airport. It turned out to be controlled fires where farmers were burning the wheat stubble before plowing.

This morning, Donna took a walk through town up Main Street. She saw a few interesting things. Grangeville is the largest town in Idaho County with a population of about 3,100 people – it’s also the county seat. It also boasts the county’s only stoplight! Here are a few pictures Donna took this morning. She found a series of murals depicting some of the history here.

Farm themed mural
Logging is also part of the economy here

At the sheriff’s office, she found an old steam tractor on display.

Advanced Straw Burner

I set up my ham radio gear while Donna was out. I’m not sure about getting good reception here as we’re in a bit of a hole.

The temperature reached the mid-80s yesterday afternoon and it looks like we’ll see the same today and tomorrow. The weekend is forecast to hit the low 90s but it should cool off to the 70s for Monday and Tuesday. No rain in the forecast – we’ve seen rain when the weather guessers told us “zero percent chance of precipitation” before, so we’ll see how that works out.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and  I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!

Upriver With a Paddle

In my last post, I mentioned the weather forecast called for cooler weather by the end of the week. Maybe that was wishful thinking. Okay, it was “only” 84 degrees on Thursday, but the rest of the week was 90 degrees or higher.

I also mentioned interference I was experiencing on High Frequency (HF) ham radio bands. I figured it out – it was mostly operator error. I partly blame it on the weird nomenclature Yaesu uses. My radio, a Yaesu 991a, has a feature they call IPO – intercept point optimization. After reading the manual again, I finally figured out this was a confusing term for preamplfiers.

Preampliers boost the signal before it’s decoded and amplified by the rest of the circuits. The thing is, if you boost the raw signal, you also boost any noise or interference. I had this circuit set to Amp1 which boosts the signal 10dB – raising the noise floor. Then I was trying to use Digital Noise Reduction to suppress the noise. I was fighting myself. By turning IPO off, the noise was greatly reduced.

I’ll mention one more thing regarding ham radio before your eyes glaze over. I was on the radio with two guys in Las Vegas – one of them was actually in Henderson. These guys, Scotty and Andrew, had elaborate radio set-ups and were talking to each other and inviting others to join in the conversation. I conversed with them briefly and I should quit complaining about the hot weather. They told me it hit 115 degrees on Thursday and was 113 at 6pm when we talked. They also said the hot weather was compounded by smoke and ash from the California wildfires.

There are several wildfires burning in California right now. The central coast has several large fires as does the northern part of the state. There are also fires in southern California, but I don’t think they’re as large as the northern and central coast fires.

On Thursday, Donna rode her bicycle down to Lake Couer d’Alene. There are many good, paved bike paths in the area. She locked her bike at the marina where the trailhead for Tubbs Hill Trail is. She hiked the trail in a counter-clockwise loop. She read it is a two-mile hike and rated as easy. But she found it had hills and seemed longer than two miles! Here are some of her pictures from the hike.

Lake Coeur d’Alene
Downhill to the lake
Kids diving off a rock
Suspension bridge on the trail

Thursday evening, Donna prepared southwest chicken breasts. They were spicy! They were good, but next time she decided she should add a dollop of sour cream to the serving.

Southwest chicken and sauteed zucchini with cotija cheese

On Friday, we met up with Jim and Cindy Birditt. We made plans the night before to meet at “The Mudhole” in the Priest River Recreation Area. We loaded the Sea Eagle SE370 inflatable kayak in Midget-San and headed out around 9:45am and drove up to Priest River. It’s a nice drive through farmland and pine forest.

Jim and Cindy had just arrived before we got there around 10:45am. Jim unloaded his hard-shell kayaks while we inflated and assembled the Sea Eagle. It looked to be a near perfect day for kayaking. The boat ramp is at the mouth of Priest River right where it drains into the Pend Oreille River. Priest River was flowing slowly – just right for an upriver jaunt.

The back of Donna’s head as we started out
Jim and Cindy Birditt

The riverfront properties have some beautiful homes. But it also has some waterfront property with minimal development – we saw several places where the only dwellings were RVs. There were a couple of apparently abandoned or unoccupied dwellings too. As we paddled upriver, eventually, the waterfront homes dwindled then disappeared altogether once the river became too shallow to be navigable by powerboats.

No more visible homes – our turn-around point was the bend straight ahead
Jim and Cindy near the turnaround

We saw an osprey – it landed in a tree top near us and began calling. As we came downstream, we saw a bald eagle overhead, then we saw two more. I snapped a couple of photos of nice riverfront homes – I wonder if these are summer homes.

What a place on the river

I was too far away to get a good shot of the second home – a cabin-like structure with a water feature with two waterfalls. It looks more like a resort lodge than a home.

We cruised easily back downriver aided by the slow current. The current was somewhat offset by a headwind, but it was a great day to be paddling on the river. By the time we got back to the boat ramp, it was past noon and really heating up.

We loaded our gear and followed Jim and Cindy to the west side of town where the Ranch Club restaurant is located at the golf course. We had lunch outside on the patio and sat and talked for a couple of hours.

Jim and Cindy had burgers – they had several variations of burgers on the menu. Donna had a cobb salad and I opted for the daily special. The daily special was fish and chips made with steelhead trout. This was something I’d never had before and I wanted to try it. We’ve grilled steelhead several times, but I hadn’t tried it battered and fried.

Steelhead fish and chips

Steelhead trout are native to the west coast of North America, although they have been introduced elsewhere. A steelhead trout is a fresh water rainbow trout that migrates to the ocean and grows to a large size in the salt water. It then returns to fresh water streams to spawn. Steelhead can live up to 11 years and spawn multiple times. A rainbow trout that remains in fresh water for its lifetime is just that – a rainbow trout. Rainbow trout that migrate and become steelhead are generally larger – they can weigh up to 55 lbs – and less colorful than their freshwater brethren.

Awhile back, a guy from Michigan insisted that they had steelhead in streams “back home.” I have to differ – if a rainbow trout never enters a salt water ocean, it isn’t a steelhead. I don’t believe a rainbow trout from a Michigan stream will go to the ocean and return.

I was a little disappointed in the fish plate – it was battered heavier than I prefer. The chips were outstanding though.

We’ve extended our stay here at the Coeur d’Alene Elk’s Lodge until the end of the month. That means I’ll have to pack up and hit the dump station soon – I don’t want to risk overloading the gray water tank before we leave. The weather guessers now say we’ll see 80 degrees today before we’re back in the mid to upper 80s for the rest of the weekend. Long range they say we’ll be in the 70s by the end of the month.

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