rvcityblog posted on September 15, 2011 07:00
Glen’s Southern Adventures 2009
Our trip south began late afternoon on Thursday, October 22. We left Thursday hoping to beat the predicted bad weather due to arrive Friday night. We spent our first night in the Leitch Collieries parking lot, at the entrance to the Crowsnest Pass.
On Friday we arrived in Creston, B.C. and had a nice visit with my sister. After spending the night there, we headed across the border into the United States. The only problem we had at the border was with the dog food, which they confiscated because it had lamb in it. We did not have any food in our fridge so we were O.K. that way. We made it to Portland, Oregon and spent the night in a Camping World store parking lot. In the morning we found signs indicating ‘no overnight camping’ but no one knocked on our door during the night and, in fact, there were 3 other couples spent the night there as well.
Sunday proved to be an adventurous day. After missing our turn to go to Lincoln City, Oregon we got directions from a local fellow for a route that was not on a map but would join up with the road we needed. It proved to be the most scenic drive, full of twists, hills and valleys and small picturesque farms. It was a road that was especially enjoyable with the Jeep as we could enjoy the scenery more than we would have if we were navigating the motor home. The directions given landed us in Lincoln City as promised and we continued on down to Florence, Oregon. We had great weather, lots of coastal scenery and at one viewpoint we watched a pod of Humpback Whales. Near Florence and the Sea Lion Caves we were at another viewpoint where there were so many sea lions on the beach you could not see the ground beneath them and what a racket! We spent that night at Jessie M. Honeyman Memorial State Park. It was just like camping here at home, with lots of big, tall pine trees all around us.
Monday morning, October 26, we woke up to rain. I got soaked to the skin packing up and it was raining so hard we couldn’t see very far at all. We decided to head inland and crossed into California at Arcata, proceeding down to Redding, California. The rain eased up but at the higher altitudes it started lightly snowing and the wind made it very cold. We spent the night at a roadside rest stop in Lassen Volcanic National Park. We woke up to a very chilly morning and drove straight to Reno, Nevada. When we reached Reno we found it still very chilly and decided not to stop but to keep going south, hopefully to warmer weather. Well we did not find warmer weather! Every time we stopped for fuel it was still chilly so we just kept on driving, finally ending up in Las Vegas at 10pm that night. It was slightly warmer there so we spent the night at Sam’s Town RV Park where we cleaned up and warmed up!
Wednesday morning we decided enough was enough! We didn’t do our usual Las Vegas fun/touring/shopping. We packed up and left, determined to find the warm weather. We drove straight to our spot at Senator Wash Reservoir, Long Term Visitor Area just outside of Yuma, Arizona and finally found warmer weather! We arrived just in time for ‘Happy Hour’! We thought we could arrive unannounced and surprise everyone but our neighbor, Kooky Uke, spotted us and everybody came out of their RV’s to greet us. We all sat down and had a great Welcome Home Party and got caught up on all the news since we last saw each other.
Thursday morning I went to make an appointment to have our fifth wheel delivered from the storage lot. Boy, did I get a surprise at the storage lot. During the Yuma summer heat I had 4 tires blow. They looked like a hand grenade had torn them apart. I can tell you it is not fun changing 4 tires on a triple axle unit with only a bottle jack and blocks of wood. Somehow we managed to do it and by Thursday afternoon we had our unit parked in its spot. You know the old saying “things happen in 3’s’? Well, that’s what happened to me. First, it was the tires. Then, the propane regulator was shot. I had to go to Yuma and buy a new one. The third thing was the generator. It was not getting fuel so I took off the electric fuel pump and sprayed WD40 into it. That did the trick, and it worked just fine after that.
By Friday afternoon we were fully living in our fifth wheel again. Wendy, my wife, had the inside all cleaned and set up and the future looked bright.
On our second outing to town (for groceries and supplies) we came across our friends, the wild burros, on the side of the road. We stopped to let them cross and one of them stuck its head right in the open window of the Jeep. Wendy was worried it would bite me or something but I just laughed and thought it was another day on the desert!
I’m sure we’ll have lots more stories to share in the next issue. Bye for now!
Glen and Wendy Leeder
