COEUR 'ALENE, IDAHO

Well, it is July 23rd and we are in Post Falls, Idaho about 5 miles from Coeur d'Alene.  We will be here till July 6th because I couldn't find a closer park due to the 4th of July holiday.  We are in this not so desirable park.  The only space to fit us is what I call a drive along, a wide street with hookups on each side of the curb.  Our power cord is too short to reach the receptacle so they lend us an extension which works well.  We are right next door to a pilot fuel station and almost literally on I-90.  It was the only place I could find thru the 4th so I am grateful for that.

We have had some fast food here and also we went to a Japanese restaurant the cooks benihana style, right in front of you.  Food was o.k., a little overspiced.  We went to pay a surprise visit to fellow blogger Mike Kuper and his wife Donna.  They are in Tamarak park in Coeur d'Alene, right in town, they reserved the space two months in advance, the Ironman triathalon is going on this weekend so all the parks are full. 

We strolled around town in Coeur d'Alene, nice old college town and had lunch at a bar and grill called the Beacon.   Table was outside and weather was perfect.  Had really good burgers and fries and then walked around the shops and bought some candy at a cute sweet shop called "Honeybees".  The weather is changeable and we have a little rain.  While there we both went to the Dr. in town for checkups and bought lots of vittles at a grocery called "Super 1"  Other than that we are just sitting, waiting out the holiday till we leave for Missoula, Montana.   Well, it is the 4th of July and we  go into town to watch the fireworks, which are just beautiful.  Today is Saturday and we eat lunch at home and then take a beautiful winding drive up into the mountains to a town called St. Maries.  We pass the north end of Lake Coeur'd'alene which is just gorgeous.  We stop at a marina for liquid refreshment and then move on, a lovely day for a top down drive.

 

The top pic is of the lake and the bottom is of sculpture of mooses around town

 

 

 

 

Loved this lake

VETTEBRATION IN THE YAKIMA VALLEY, WASHINGTON

PORTLAND, OREGON   JUNE 15

We have been at this rv park Jantzen Beach, nowhere near the beach and doesn't even have a sign with its name on the road.  We found it by accident.  Cloudy and rainy when we pulled in and cloudy and rainy when we pulled out 3 days later.  We had a very narrow spot and didn't even take the car out because of the nasty weather. 

YAKIMA VALLEY, WASHINGTON,  JUNE 18TH

We never saw a sign for hway 97 but got here anyway, it just took a little longer.  We are at the Suntides Rv Park next to the Suntides Golf Course.  We have a very nice site, long and wide with lovely grass and pretty plum trees on our site.  The weather is gorgeous, sunny and in the high 70's to 80's.  What a wonderful weekend for the 3 day corvette event we are going to participate in.  It is called a Vettebration and 77 cars will be there for all parts of wa, bc, even Texas.  The first day here which is Wednesday, we meet some real nice neighbors and they invite us to have bbq dinner with them, what a nice way to start our trip in Washington.  The next nite Thurs. we go to the Red Lion Hotel in town where the corvette club has a hospitality room and register for the event.  Then we go over to the Chevrolet dealership which is sponsoring the show and they give us a beautiful steak and chicken dinner with all the sides, and all the wine, beer, any beverage you wish.  We participate in the 50/50, if you win one half goes to charity and the other is yours and Joel buys $20 worth of tickets.  Guess what, we won, it was $177 and Joel took out his $20, took another $20 to double his bet and gave the rest to their charity, which is Kids Wishes and Dreams.  They were all amazed. 

Today is Fri. the 20th and we are at the car show at Sarge Hubbard County Park, a beautiful park with grassy fields to park in.  At noon, they judged the cars and we were given a wonderful lunch of pasta with meat sauce and chicken alfredo and salad and rolls.  It was delicious.  Then we hung around to see the trophies given out.  Afterwards we went back to the rig to rest and then at 5pm we went back to the hotel to line up with the other vettes to caravan over to the Yakima Speedway.  They let us all on the track to race 4 laps.  The grandstands were full of cheering people.  We race around real fast, smoked our brakes, whee, took pics and videos.  Put up your volume to hear the cars and me screaming.  After that we went back to the hotel and had a pizza and salad party and lots of delicious cakes made just for this occasion.  At about 8pm we went to cruise on Yakima Avenue, with lots of other classic cars.  They only do this cruise 2 or 3 times a year and the people come out in droves to watch and line the streets with chairs.  Lots of fun, went back to rig and fell into bed like a rock.

Well, it is Sunday morning and we are on our way back to hotel at 9am to compete in a road rally. They give us written instructions, street names, write down names and numbers of things along the road and we have to fill it all out.  It takes approximately 40 miles.  Loads of fun.  We end up at one of the corvette club members houses and they treat us to all our leftovers for lunch . 

Also we did the poker run.  It costs $5 to enter and you stop at various points in the rally and get playing cards, 5 in all.  Whoever gets the best hand wins the pot and guess what, we won.  We had 3 kings.  We won $100, I guess this was our lucky weekend.  We had a wonderful 3 days with great people and hope to come back next year.  Right now I am doing laundry and then we will go food shopping and out to eat.  Tomorrow we leave for Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

Pictures of the snow covered peaks on Chinook Pass

 

 

 

 

Aren't these pics lovely

 

 

I make my first snowball in 50 years

 

 

Corvettes on the grass

 

 

Beautiful lake in the park

 

 

The videos are of the speedway race we were in. 

Turn up volume to hear my reaction

 

Our special spot

 

 

You have to watch this small video below to hear the sound

 

 

COBURG, OREGON, SOUTH OF EUGENE

Well, it is Tues. June 3rd and we are at Premier Rv Resort in Coburg.  We stop at the Monaco service center but there are no appointments available, so we continue next door to rv glass solutions.  We drop our trailer in their parking lot and drive to the rv park which is only about a half mile down the road. It is a very nice park, lots of well maintained grass and shrubs.  We get a huge pull thru.  We contact satellite guy and he comes over and finds out we have a bad hdmi cable going from the tv to the receiver.  Fixed within a half hour, yay.  We go out shopping.

On Friday our windshield is delivered and put in right on our site, we also have an rv mobile tech come over (extremely honest and reasonable) and he fixes our broken door lock, key fob problems, reversed side cameras, and our non operational fan switch for a/c on our engine.  Everything is fixed. 

We have dinner and I prepare a new dish, chicken picatta.  It is made with white wine, butter, lemon juice and capers.  It turned out delicious.

Well, it is now Saturday and we are looking at some new furniture for our rv, and we buy a double recliner to replace our old couch.  They will install it on Monday when we leave here.  We stop at a wonderful classic car show at a high school and walk around looking at lots of great cars.  We have arby's for lunch.  It is Sunday and we are lazing around before we take off in the morning to re-hitch our trailer and get our recliners installed and take off for Salem Oregon about an hour up the road apiece.  Stay tuned for more news.

PHOENIX, OREGON OR BUST

It is May 31st and we are in Phoenix, Oregon, close to Medford.  We pull into Holiday Rv after only 1 and a half hours of driving.  Got a large pull-thru site.  A tree branch is over our satellite dish so we hook up to the parks cable system which happens to be dish network.  We are starving so we go to "Debby's Diner" for lunch.  I have a philly cheese steak sandwich, not bad and Joel has a Rueben which he enjoyed.  Diner is 2 years old and all chrome and bright colors, it is delightful.  We then take a ride around town and stop into a british grocery and pick up some bananas and chocolate biscuits.  We had bagels and lox for dinner.  The next day Sunday is a beautiful day and we go to a wonderful Mexican restaurant in the shopping center next to the park.  Beautiful place and wonderful food.  Back to rv to relax. We are going to be here for one more night.

Well, Mon. morning we make an appointment to have our cracked windshield replaced in Coburg, Oregon this week.  We are leaving for  Allied Recreational tomorrow in Coburg.  It is a Monaco Service Center.  We need to have a few things done.  This morning we take a ride to Ashland to Lithia Park, the gps got confused but we found it anyway.  We took a nice long walk through the woods along a creek.  Then we ate at "Louie"s in town.  We sat on the back deck overlooking a lovely flowing stream. Joel had fish and chips and I had their famous recession burger and it was very good.  Service was great.  Then we went to the historical museum in Medford, but alas, closed down.  What a pity, now this town has no museum.  Then we went to Walmart to load up on groceries.

MOUNT SHASTA CITY, CALIFORNIA

Well, it is May 28th, and we just pulled into the Koa campground here in Mount Shasta.  It is a gorgeous little mountain town.  Our site is plenty long enough, but alas can't get our satellite signal, but that is ok because koa has expanded cable with 52 channels, whee.  We go to the Black Bear Diner in town for lunch, been in business since 1940 and we both have chicken pot pies and green beans and bacon.  The food is good.  We have water with our meals because all the water here comes from springs and is delicious.  We drive around the little town and then come back to the coach and hang out at the campground.

Well, it is Thursday and we will be sightseeing today.  We go up to Trinity Forest to the lower, middle and upper water falls.  Watch all of the videos, they are so beautiful.  Even the photo of Mount Shasta is so lovely covered with snow.  The weather here is hot during the day but at night it goes down into the 50's.  We have a great time at the falls and the creek there and then go out for dinner to Casa Ramos and have a nice Mexican dinner. 

It is now Friday, our last night here.  We are in an enormous pine forest, lots of logging going on and a train to keep you informed with its whistle.  We take a long ride up in the mountains to a place called Bunny Flats, intending to go up to Panther Meadows to look around but alas the road is closed.  So we come back down to the Mount Shasta Fish Hatchery.  It breeds all the trout and stocks all the rivers and streams with money coming only from fish licenses.  It also had a nice museum on its premises showing you the history of Mount Shasta which in the 1800's was logging and gold mining.  In fact it had so many single men that all the town had was mostly saloons and brothels.  We enjoyed the beautiful weather.  Tonight I will cook dinner and get ready for our trip tomorrow to Phoenix, Oregon which is 3 miles south of Medford.  Lots of things to do there.  We have a huge crack in the lower passenger side of our windshield so we will have to get a new windshield while we are there, among other things of course. 

 

Just had to put in this picture of the town of WEED, ha ha

 

 

 

Isn't this mountaintop magnificent

 

 

Trinity Forest and its beautiful creeks

 

 

Trout in the fish hatchery

 

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These are the waterfall pics, make sure you look at the videos

Natures Wonders

 

REDDING, CA

May 21, Jgw Rv Park in Redding, Ca

We rely on our new gps to get us to I-5 and to this park.  The gps passed with flying colors and we pull in about 4:30 pm.  The first spot we park in will not give us a satellite signal, so we move to another spot but too many trees surrounding us will not let the satellite pick up the signal.  This park has no cable tv even though they advertise that they do, so we will have to do without tv for a week, ugh.  The park is lovely with lots of trees and flowers and very well kept, the sacramento river flows through it and the river is beautiful to see.  Just look at our beautiful site(pic). 

Today we went to the Sundial Bridge and Turtle Bay Exploratorium.  The Sundial Bridge is a gorgeous structure.  One huge pylon on one end and cable hold up the entire 720 feet of bridge.  It is a pedestrian bridge only which spans the Sacramento River.  The walking surface is made of a light blue translucent glass, really a sight to see.  At the end of the bridge is the Arboretum(tree zoo) and botanical gardens.  Lots of gorgeous plants and ceramic sculptures.  We went into the museum and had some fun with lorikeets(wild parrots that only drink sugar nectar and fruit for their diet) and the butterfly exhibition.  School is still in session here and there were field trips going on with loads of kids. 

We then went to Wienerschnitzel for lunch (we really love those hot dogs) and then back to the coach for some R & R.  We have cinnabar cinnamon buns and coffee for a snack and then I make shrimp marinara for dinner.  The weather here is a heat wave and it is in the 90's during the day.  With no tv we are really roughing it and we are reading a lot of books.  Thank heavens we have our internet.

Well, its Friday and we venture out after lunch to safeway for groceries.  Got some cooked teriyaki chicken wings and potato salad for dinner.  Then we stop at Camping World.  Beautiful new store but horrible service.  We can't find the way into it off the highway.  Finally Joel find a little service road, and the name of the road is Little Road and we make it in there.  It is not on the gps and no signage to tell you how to get in.  We ask why there are no signs and employees tell us the city does not allow it.  Marcus Lemonis (the ceo) will be hearing from us.  We buy some extra window awning straps and stakes and washers to hold down our outside mat.  We also renew our good sam membership.

The next morning, Saturday, we awake to 78 degrees and lots of wind.  It feels good to open up the screen door and the windows.  Joel pulled a muscle in his back so he is incapacitated today.  I am planning bubba burgers for dinner tonight.  It sounds weird but you have to try them, they are delicious.  They are in the frozen section of the supermarket and you cook them frozen in a skillet.

This is a very quiet park, hardly any kids and just the sound of birds and the rustling of leaves, very peaceful.  Well, we haven't gone anywhere else due to joels bad back and we have no pain pills.  We spent Sunday and Monday just vegging out.  This morning we will make plans for our trip to Oregon, tomorrow we will leave for mount Shasta.  Joel is now at the chiropractor and then later we will go to fetch groceries for our trip tomorrow.  We better have a satellite signal there or we will go bonkers, ha ha.

 

This is the surface of the sundial bridge

Below the sacramento river, man flying fishing in it

 

 

 

 

 

One of the water features of the park

 

 

 

Joel enjoying the lorikeets

 

 

Turtle pond

 

 

Butterfly gardens, these butterflies are eating a piece of orange

 

 

 

Cut surface of a huge redwood tree

 

 

 

 

 

Lorikeets above, joel below on sundial bridge

End to a lovely tourist attraction

 

 

 

 

GILROY, CALIFORNIA

 

Gilroy, California, May 14th

 

Gilroy Garlic Usa Rv Park, well, we pull in after eating at Carl's Jr. Hamburgers on the road.  They are really great burgers.  We get in after 2pm and get a nice pull thru on a corner site.  They put cones around us because we are a little too long for the site.  We have dinner at "Mama Mia's" in town, a nice italian restaurant, and take a little ride with the top down.  Daytime temps here are in the 90's and during the evening in the low 70's. 

The next day we do some food shopping at Safeway and bed, bath and beyond.  We always need something.  We then have lunch at "Wienerschnitzel" hot dogs. Very good, and very inexpensive.  We pick up a rottiserie chicken for dinner and walk around outlet mall.  At 8pm we got to a comedy theater to see "A farce of Nature", a cute funny drama set in the Ozarks mtns of Arkansas.  All actors did a great job and we enjoy the evening. 

Today is Saturday and we are lazing around and watching tv and doing laundry.  I am making liver and onions and mashed taters for dinner, yum.  Tomorrow we will do some shopping and check out the historic district.

Gilroy is the garlic capital of the world so they say.  Yesterday we took a little trip to Morgan Hill, a pretty hillside community of wineries and vinyards.  We traveled on some beautiful forested mtn roads.  We ate lunch at a cute pink taco stand, and then loaded up on groceries and such at Walmart. 

Today is Monday, the 19th, Julies b-day.  The weather has turned cool but still sunny and we decide to go to the beachtown of Santa Cruz and walk on their famous boardwalk.  We had philly cheesesteak sandwiches for lunch and then took a real long walk all the way to the end of the pier. 

At the end of the pier under the rafters are sea lions all sleeping and swimming.   You can hear them barking as soon as you get there, enjoy the pics. 

We eat tonight at famous Daves bbq and had the brisquet.  We also have sweet tea, the first time we have had it since we left fl.  Tomorrow we will rest up for our next trip to Redding, Ca.

 

Enjoying the boardwalk at santa cruz

 

 

 

Joel is patiently waiting for our cheesesteaks to be cooked

 

 

 

 

The water here is real cold

 

 

 

Here are the sea lions enjoying their sunbath and another one swimming

 

 

 

We stopped for capuchino and choc. covered oreos