On the Road Again

After seven sleepy months at our home base, Jojoba Hills SKP Resort, we hit the road again in our 07 Alfa motorhome for a long summer of travel.

 

Our route will include more stops than shown on this map. 

We are going to drive US-2, the northernmost US highway that runs from Everett Washington to Mackinaw City Michigan, about 3446 miles. 

Our return route will be conditional on fall "color" and weather.

I have posted a page, Summer 2021, on the right side of this blog that lists what parks we will be stopping at and for how long. I do have reservations at most of them, but I am always open to the fact that RV plans are written in Jello and can change for a lot of reasons.

So far we have driven a little over 700 miles and are in Redding California where we will stay for four nights. 

On Sunday we took our first walk of the season. We were very lazy over the winter, and my knee blew out this spring, so we are starting very slowly.  

Also, we have both gained weight during this COVID year, and although we are not yet officially on a diet, we are trying to eat less.

We went to the Sundial park which is the starting point for several easy trails along the Sacramento River. The bridge itself is very interesting.

The water sparkled in the sunshine.

 Several Canada Geese kept an eye on the people.

I was somewhat disappointed in the fact that the trail we took was not along the edge of the river. At ten in the morning it was already in the 90s. I do have to get used to the heat! This trail goes on for 17 miles. We walked 1.7 miles (round trip). 

We will do better tomorrow!

Fifty Shades of Green - More walks in Bandon Oregon Area

Tuesday we hiked the last three miles of trails at the National Estuarine Research Reserve.

There is a theory that many of your feelings or reactions today are a result of something that happened to you at an earlier time, and that by understanding your past, you better understand your present. I don't agree with this 100%, but wonder if my love for green places such as parks and forest is a reflection of the joy and freedom I felt while playing in a small wood lot near my home when I was in second through fourth grade.

It was part of a old farmstead that had been donated for a park but not yet developed. There was a large pond, a creek, and a wooded area that was quite overgrown. 

Sixty plus years ago it was safe for a little girl to play in the woods by herself. It was my imaginary kingdom. I remember pretending I was a pioneer. It was were I learned to love nature. 

Most of the time I went there alone, and if other children were around, we avoided each other! 

I remember some boys had a tree house in the woods. Not the kind you can buy at Lowe's for $1000. Theirs was made with scraps of old lumber. They built it themselves, and no girls were ever allowed. 

Hours spent "in the woods" were some of my happiest. And now, although I suffer from the aches and pains of age, a walk in the woods remains one of my favorite activities. 

I feel like I have come full circle so to speak. But now I have a nice boy to share the woods with.

The large old growth trees of the Estuary land were logged out in the past. Some of the old stumps are still there.

 

 

On the drive back to Bandon, we stopped at a place where you get a pretty good view of land that is being logged.

From Beaver Hill Road, the many stages of destruction and renewal can be seen. From clear cut to full grown forest, each its own shade of green. As much as I love the forest, I realize it is a resource. Trees harvested for lumber are a crop. I'm just glad they set aside some for recreational hikers like us.

Thursday we went hiking at Bullard's Beach State Park, starting at their "horse camp".

The first mile of our hike was on a soft sand equestrian trail. It wasn't really hard, but I count it as a mile and a half because of the sand!

By taking the right turnoff, we came out into the regular RV camping area. From there we walked a very civilized asphalt path along the road back to the Horse Camp where we had started. Another three mile day. 

 

 

The Coquille River, flowing to the ocean, separates the park from Bandon. It was just across the road from the path we walked.

This would be a great place for a picnic, under a really great tree!

 Maybe we will bring lunch here next week when we come for a walk to the lighthouse.

Me

#1 Why did we go to Myanmar and Vietnam

I decided to wait until we returned from our trip to Myanmar, Vietnam and Hawaii before I blogged about it. 

I knew I couldn’t do the trip justice if I tried to post day-by-day as we went along. I will be putting up posts about it every few days for a while. I will try to keep each post reasonably short so as to not burn out on writing them (nor burn you out reading them 🙂).  Hopefully this also encourages you readers to come back for more. I hope you will enjoy following along and sharing the adventure.

Of all the places in the world to travel to for a winter vacation, why did we choose these three? Craig and I love living full time in an RV, because although we enjoy travel to new places, we don't enjoy 

• flying on airplanes, 
• living out of suitcases, 
• eating every meal in restaurants, or 
• checking into and out of hotels. 

So why did we leave our Alfa parked while we went off to Southeast Asia?

Because we wanted to visit our son, Gil, who has been teaching English in Yangon, Myanmar for the last five years. 

My son the poster boy

Merikay and Gil in front of another poster advertising the school he works for.

During our first few years of full time RVing, we didn’t want to put the Alfa in storage and had no real alternative as to where to park her. When we found Jojoba Hills, we knew it was a perfect place to leave her for a month or more without worry. 

I wanted to add Thailand to our itinerary, but Gil has been there many times and suggested we all go to Vietnam for a week instead. So we did.

One of the great things about being retired is that you don't have to go home to go back to work. If you want to travel for one week, two weeks, a month, it doesn’t matter. You have no time clock to punch, and the only limit is your own endurance and budget. Both of which we stretched to the limit on this trip!

Then, when thinking about the return flights to San Diego from Hanoi, I decided this was the perfect opportunity to visit the last state on our RV travel map - Hawaii.

   

Many RVers have these maps and have different personal rules for earning a state sticker. Some say they have to actually camp in a state; we may have counted one or two that we have just driven through. Hawaii is a special case. The Alfa doesn’t float, so she had to stay at Jojoba Hills, but we count this trip as our 50th state anyway. 

Joko and Craig

Our son was named Gil after my father. When he was in high school, he went to Indonesia as an exchange student. His Indonesian family and friends had a hard time with the "G" in his name, so he took "Joko" as his nickname.

He now goes by Joko MacKenna to his friends in Southeast Asia, and as I continue this story I will call him by that name too. 

Coming Soon:
# 2-Sights in the streets of Yangon, Myanmar 

Last Post for Summer of 2018 - Grand Canyon - North Rim

Only one in ten people who see the Grand Canyon do so from the North Rim. Hopefully, this post will inspire you to be one of the ten percent in the future. It was easy to get to, and we had no problems going there with our 35' motor home. There were also lots of cabins and the rustic lodge looked delightful.

But before I include pictures of the canyon,  I have to include a couple of wildlife shots.

I know there are deer everywhere, but this gal, who was resting with a few other does near our camp site, had such big ears I felt like smiling when I looked at her.

Craig likes the picture of her friend:

Ravens are also common birds in campgrounds. They are so smart. If you look closely at his eye you can see the reflection of the ground and just a hint of the picnic table I was sitting at. I wish I had gotten a bit more background above his head, but this is an excellent example of what my Sony RX10iii can do. 

These first two pictures of the canyon were taken from the Bright Angel Point overlook near the Lodge on Wednesday afternoon.

I wasn't sure if it was going to stay clear.

I've been to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon a couple of times and am always overwhelmed by it. Not much needs to be said, except I am amazed at how big it is.

This following is the one of the most South-Rim-like images that we saw from the North Rim.  (The actual South Rim is visible in the upper left.)

The North Rim Lodge has a wonderful viewing room with big plexiglass windows.  Of course, what you see may differ each time you're there.

The following pictures were taken on Friday when we drove out to several overlooks, including Cape Royal and Point Imperial.

That day the air had been washed clean by the rain and the day was incredibly beautiful.

We are very old fashioned. We take pictures of each other instead of taking selfies.

The following image suggests that some of what's now rock was once liquid and swirly like ice cream.

The 19th century folks who named features of the Grand Canyon called many of them "Temples".  This view may have contributed to the name:

The line in the middle of this image was probably a dead tree.  Or perhaps something left behind by extraterrestrial aliens when they came to visit.

The track in the lower part of this image is a tributary of the Colorado River, a bend of which is visible further away.

Tourists above Angels' Window, through which you can see the Colorado again.

It may be hard to see that this scene includes two rock towers, between which you can see a similar rock wall further away.





















Final Words:

We have been back at Jojoba Hills for almost two weeks already. The next two months will be busy with Craig getting his cataracts removed, and visits with friends and family for the pre-holiday times.

On Christmas Day we will be leaving on a three or four week trip to visit our son in Myanmar (Burma) and some additional travel in the region. 

Keep an eye open for posts about that trip and our return to the RV travel life in Spring.

Until then, thank you all for following this blog and for leaving so many encouraging comments.  

Hugs ...