We docked at Grand Turk with a bit of time to kill before our planned activities, so we went down and sat on the beach and enjoyed the sand and unbelievably blue water, and view of the massive ship we’d come in on. Dave went and waded around in the surf.
This is what a tropical vacation is all about, right?
When it was time we gathered up with our fellow passengers and followed our guides down the beach to a big catamaran, for a trip out to a reef to do some snorkeling. Neither of us had tried it before, and ultimately, I chickened out. I’m not a strong swimmer. But Dave has a lot more confidence in his swimming, so he gave it a try.
I enjoyed the view from the boat.
Our next stop was Gibbs Cay, to visit Sting Rays. This was the sketchiest thing we did. The sting rays there are used to getting fed, and they come running when the boat shows up. A guide hops out and grabs one, and then everybody gets to touch it while the guy kind of manhandles it. Obviously it’s fine, or they wouldn’t keep coming back. But it felt a bit sketchy, especially since there were so many people.
After harassing the sting ray there was time to chill out on the beach or back on the boat.
The boat was surrounded by so many sting rays looking for a handout. It was pretty cool.
Back in our room we had a great view of the pier to see if any late comers were going to be dashing to try and catch the ship before it left, but everyone got back in time.
I can not get over the color of the water here!
The ship headed back to FL, with a day at sea to relax. We got in lots of wandering, lots of eating, and a fancy dinner on the last night in the steakhouse. Oh, and the towel roommates kept appearing.
Dave took a class to learn how to tie them, and did this Princess Leia thing 😀
I thought this big plaque was cool comparing the size of the original Mardi Gras with the current one. When someone says ‘cruise’, I still think of The Love Boat. That first Mardi Gras was probably Love Boat sized.
We were getting pretty travel worn by the time we got back to FL. One more day spent at Animal Kingdom
It was pretty cool. The Avatar rides were cool, the safari ride was fun, and the Everest ride were my favorites.
The only thing we didn’t see in Florida was an alligator. I expected them to be everywhere! Maybe next time. The Uber driver even saw one on his way to pick us up, and when we said we hadn’t seen one yet he looped around to see if we could spot that one, but it had already gone back into hiding.
And that was the end of our DisneyWorld, Rocketship, tropical cruise vacation!
Arriving to Port Canaveral, we only got a tiny peek at the ship we were going to be getting on. It was too big to see up close, we would have to wait until we docked along the way to really step back and appreciate how big this floating city was. So first, we had to get through customs.
It felt like quite a cattle call. Our passports were a few years old, and Dave, who always looks different depending on what plays he is in, looked really different! So we had new pics taken, and got scanned in, and although we had to have our paperwork with us all the time, we never had to show them to anyone again for the entire cruise, even coming back in – it was all facial recognition and scanning our cruise card.
We had to cool our jets for a little bit while we waited to get our room. That gave us plenty of time to go to the safety briefing, and start checking the place out. Being from the NW, we found shady spots whenever we could.
Our room was a cozy little thing, but no problem for us, who are comfortable in the Caravel for most of our travelling.
We could watch where the ship was going from bed 😀
And a private balcony, which was my favorite part. I sat out there reading and watching the flying fish sailing away from the bow of our ship. So cool!
Some of the meals were in buffets, some were in fast food type take-aways, and some were fancy sit-down meals. It was fun to try all the different places.
Nassau
The next day we got to Nassau, and finally got to get off and get a good look at the ship:
Holy smokes that thing is BIG!!!
We stopped at a museum right at the dock, neat museum, but very small.
Walked up to see the courthouse.
Took what felt like a very questionable ride on a carriage.
But overall we found Nassau to be kind of depressing. The area around the dock seemed to be very poor, and the people were all engaged in trying to scoop up cruise visitors to buy their questionable wares. It was super busy and crowded, and as we walked back to the docs we saw why – there were now several giant cruise ships here!
We went back to our ship and went and enjoyed the nearly empty pools and chit chatted with the other passengers who had chosen to skip Nassau. By afternoon we were on our way again.
As each day went by our cabin felt smaller, as we had to share it with towel animals:
They were too cute to unfold!
Amber Cove
We had booked an excursion for Amber Cove (Dominican Republic) to a dolphin experience. We tried to do a little research to ensure it was a place that took good care of their animals, and it actually looked pretty good.
I wore a cute swimsuit I bought just for the occasion, one I could feel comfortable walking around in public in all day, because we were going to get in the water and visit a dolphin!
It was a great day! Interacting with the dolphins was really cool. It was neat watching the trainers interact with them. We saw a lot of exotic birds in big aviaries. Watched a couple other demonstrations with seals and dolphins. And the whole time it was a warm tropical rainstorm. Crazy day. We were exhausted by the time we got back to the docks and onto our ship, which was really feeling like home by then.
I think we had a day of rest before the next stop. I got a lot of reading down relaxing on the balcony or down by the pool. We found the adult quiet area at the bow of the ship. Perfect!
In May Dave set up a great vacation for us – our first cruise! We’ve had friends go on cruises who really enjoyed it, so we decided to give it a shot. He got a great deal on a Bahamas cruise, and all we had to do was fly to Florida to catch the boat. And if you’re in Florida you might as well go to
-Disneyworld!
We started with what was supposed to be a day at DisneyWorld, and a day at Animal Kingdom, before heading to Cocoa Beach to catch the ship. The first afternoon in town was just spent checking out areas outside the park, riding the gondolas, stuff like that. Lots of bus-catching.
Dave has a way about visiting places like Disneyland, He has everything planned out, with the passes and the waiting queues and all that, I don’t even know, if it was just me I’d probably get through 5 rides a day. he’s got us there early and dashing from ride to ride at top speed.
This is all I need to say…
Unfortunately going from 3k steps a day in my sedentary job, to 12k steps in the longest day of my life resulted in me getting blisters on my foot, which left me feeling pretty crippled. There was no way I could do another 12k at Animal Kingdom the next day. So Dave shuffled our schedule to put off Animal Kingdom, and took me to..
Cocoa Beach
a day early. And that day was mostly spent:
With my feet up, enjoying the view from the balcony. This may be my new favorite way to spend vacation.
There were planes!
There were ships!
Endless entertainment. Seriously, I was loving it! Dave went and took a dip in the pool (I didn’t want to with the blisters on my foot, so I just stayed on the sidelines and relaxed)
Dave absolutely nailed it with his selection of this authentic mid-century hotel
Also, there was food and putt putt golf within easy walking distance.
Rockets!
The most exciting thing that happened, we did not get any decent pictures of – there was a Space X rocket launch that evening! We had stopped in a Walgreens to pick up some clip on sunglasses because I lost my sunglasses at Disney, and while chatting with the clerk she mentioned we might get to see a rocket launch that evening. So we looked it up, and sure enough, it sounded like it would be visible from our hotel room balcony! Dave went and picked up takeout so we could eat on the balcony, and wait for the rocket launch. It kept getting delayed, and we were afraid they were going to call it off, but finally it was a go. When the countdown on the Youtube feed hit zero, we saw the sky to the north light up, and this tiny bit of fire appeared above the neighboring buildings. As it climbed higher it was crackling and you could feel it in your chest, it was amazing! No video I’ve ever seen has captured how much of it you can *feel*! It disappeared off to the East over the ocean. What an awesome thing to get to see!
Kennedy Space Center
The next day’s scheduled activity was a visit to the Kennedy Space Center. I was super excited when I found out they had a Space Shuttle! That has been on my list for a long time! So we got there bright and early, and as soon as the gates opened we headed straight for the Space Shuttle – it was easy to locate.
We were among the first people there. Although the place was full of children being offloaded from school busses, the first group in to see the shuttle was almost all adults. We watched a little pre-movie, and then they opened the screen, and we were face to face with Atlantis – it was stunning!
Since our small group was the first in, we could slowly walk around and enjoy looking at it from every angle, listen to the museum guide, and just take it all in, it wasn’t crowded, it wasn’t loud, it was perfect! We had it to ourselves for about 20 minutes before the first mob of screaming children got in.
And of course, if there’s an Airstream around, we’ll find it!
There was also a really stunning memorial to the astronauts of the two lost missions, and a few pieces of the shuttle debris from each, tucked away in a quiet corner. It was a very humbling tribute to who those people were, and the cost of adventuring into space.
We went on a bus tour of the facilities, which took us out to see some of the launch sites, and along the way the road was blocked for a few minutes because they were bringing back the SpaceX booster rockets from a previous launch! I don’t know if it was last night’s launch, or if they turn them around that fast, but either way, it was cool to see.
As space geeks it was pretty cool to see all this stuff we have been seeing on TV our whole lives!
This was the Apollo/Saturn V area.
It was a great experience, I’m so glad we worked it in. Seeing a rocket launch the night before and then getting to see all this was amazing! It was hot though, and humid, and we were pretty wore out by the end of it. We were ready to go get pampered on a cruise ship.
Our last rally of the year was in Wenatchee, WA at the Wenatchee River County Park. It is a very nice clean park, trapped between a loud highway, and an active freight train line. For that reason, I would not recommend it, unless you are a very sound sleeper! But it was fine for just a few days at the rally.
We had a lovely drive up to Wenatchee, enjoying the fall colors in the forest.
Soon we were back up in Wenatchee, which was a place we visited somewhat frequently back when we lived in Yakima. We got the trailer settled and went exploring.
Hmmm, those brown hills sure seem familiar. I’m getting a bit tired of the gloomy/wet side of the state. Maybe we will retire to the sunny/dry side?
Our first morning there we got up and went to have breakfast at a golf course. Another camper had been telling us about it the night before, so we thought we’d give it a go. It was really nice, and had a heck of a view off the patio!
It was a lovely place to eat while watching activity going on in the hills and down on the river.
Then we headed up to Leavenworth. We stopped at a couple antique malls along the way, but didn’t find anything we couldn’t live without. Up in Leavenworth it was Octoberfest time, but the activities didn’t really start until the next day. This way we could wander around and enjoy it without the complete chaos of drunken visitors.
We stopped for lunch with balcony seating and a beautiful view of the river.
I ordered a lovely soup with clams, and there were SO MANY clams, it was like the clams were non-stop, some sort of magical bottomless clam dish!
Parade time!
After lunch we drove up in to the mountains a ways. Everything was so pretty with fall colors, and we saw a couple salmon swimming upstream.
We saw this guy rock climbing! That’s a big rock!
The next day we drove up to Pinnacles State Park. This was a neat park up on the dry hills with all sorts of rocks to climb around and on.
Rocks!
I didn’t notice that tree when we were setting up the photo!
Once we were done there, we wanted to get in one more activity so we headed over to Ohme Gardens. This is a private gardens where the paths wind around, over and through the hill, around rocks, beside man-made ponds, with gazebos and lookouts along the way. It’s really magical! And we happened to be there on the last day of the year!
There are all kinds of firepits and benches and paths all made of stone, built by the family who originally owned the land 80 years ago.
Quite a view!
There was beautiful fall color in the campground.
This is the view of the river behind the park. Unfortunately you can’t see the railroad tracks right on the other side of the river.
We swung through Yakima on our way back home so we could have lunch with our friend Gary. Then we drove up and cruised by our old house, just to see how it was doing. And we stopped at Los Hernandez Tamales in Union Gap for the best tamales in town. Then we headed home, leaving the brown hills of Eastern WA behind.
You know, maybe the dry brown hills just really aren’t our style. I think we’ll stay on the wet side after all.
This year the annual Vintage Trailer Rally for our area was held at Elkamp in Mineral, WA at the foot of Mt Rainier. (https://www.elkamp.com/) This is possibly the prettiest campground I’ve ever stayed in.
Dave was busy doing something at home for this trip, but since I had such a successful trip last summer by myself, I decided to go it alone again. Just me and my Airstream, heading up into the wilderness!
It was actually much closer to home than last summer’s solo trip, and the weather was beautiful. I had no problem at all. I did need a little help getting backed into my spot though. Luckily there are always friends around to help at a VAC rally.
What a beautiful, peaceful spot!
This spot was super secluded and peaceful!
Navi stayed home, but since Dave was busy all weekend, she stayed with Sherry, who sent me updates 😀
Navi was much happier being at home than being stuck on a trailer trip!
The next day I headed into the nearby town of Elbe to see what was up. This row of colorful Cabooses was a hotel!
And this is a cool old church. Neat history plaque included.
I headed on up to Mt Rainier National Park. Got to tick another National Park off my list since I’m so close. There were so many people there I couldn’t even get close to the visitor’s center and museum. Maybe next time. I had to settle for pretty viewpoints.
On the way back down I stopped for lunch at a Nepalese resteraunt. My coworkers are in Nepal, so I had to stop and try it. The food was delicious! The best beef stew I’ve ever had!
The owner was a Sherpa who had been to the top of Everest, set a world record for how fast he did it, and ‘retired’ to lead people up Mt Rainier instead.
Back at the rally I relaxed the rest of the afternoon until happy hour. Everything in the trailer was working, and it was such a wonderful place to crash and read a book, listening to the birds and chipmunks.
The next day I took a walk around the camp. It’s really pretty. I thought I was lost for a bit, but I came right back out in the campground.
Then I grabbed my rod and headed out to find some fishing. There was a lake nearby that I heard was pretty dry, since it was the end of summer, but I heard Mineral Lake was a good choice.
When I got there I had a nice time chatting with a couple from Puyallup who were hanging out by the water. We were talking fishing, and I caught a little baby bass, but that was about all. There were a bunch of ducks getting in the way, including this one with a striking red head.
I went to grab something out of my car, and came back and there was a lady taking pictures of it. I said ‘weird looking duck, eh?’ and she said ‘yeah, I read about it in the paper and just had to come take pictures of it!’. In the paper? ‘Yeah, there was an article about it being here!’ and I thought, wow, that is some slow news day. Good for them!
After that I drove up the road a ways to get a view of Mt Rainier over the lake. You couldn’t see it from the boat launch, but it was beautiful right up the road.
So that was a really nice rally. Elkamp is beautiful, and Mt Rainier is beautiful. I’ll definitely go there again when I have a chance!
This was at the Friend’s Landing Campground in Montesano, close to the Gray’s Harbor area.
It’s a really nice handicapped accessible park, with lots of fishing docks on both the lake, and the river, and a round-the-lake accessible walking trail, which turned out to be 2 miles! I didn’t realize that when we started out, or I wouldn’t have taken Navi along. That’s a long ways for an old dog!
She was getting pretty tired by the end of it. No pics on the walk, but here’s a tired dog at the end.
From the far side of the lake we could see our trailer (behind the tree, the shiny one is Gail’s Caravel).
One nice thing was that our friends Scott & Sherry were camping right down the road, so we actually dropped Navi off with them for a day while we went to some Airstream activities. Then we came back and hung out with them in their house-sized 5th wheel and had dinner.
Airstream Happy Hour
One funny thing we did find was we stopped by the grocery store to get something to bring to dinner, and saw these on the counter. Bug suckers!
In June my company, which is entirely remote, had a get together so everyone could meet and get to know each other in Vegas. They had a bunch of fun activities arranged, I picked a couple of the tamer ones – escape room, and the Pinball Museum. I was so excited to see the three pinball machines I used to own, even though none of them were actually on to play that day.
Oh, X Files, I missed you!!
The work field trip was fun, and it was great to meet my coworkers. The last day of the work party we all went to see the Cirque du Soleil water show ‘O’ at the Belagio, which was AMAZING! After the party was over Dave and I stayed a few extra days to get in a little more touristy stuff.
I took him to the Pinball Museum so he could enjoy it too. Here he is playing Wacky Gator
We had stayed at Planet Hollywood for the work event, but switched and moved over to The Plaza on Fremont Street for the last couple days. I really enjoyed Freemont Street when we had been there about ten twenty years before. It really still had a Rat Pack vibe going on that I loved. Quiet card table games, where Dave had been able to find an empty table and a dealer who took the time to show him the ropes of how to play Blackjack at a table. But wow, Fremont Street was not like that now. Every casino had the same personality, nothing unique about any of them. You could walk from one to the next and not even know you had changed casinos.
Dave found the shortest couch ever in our hotel room.
We went and wandered through the casinos and played some slots, and watched some shows out on Fremont Street. It was just a flurry of crazy aactivity. I did like how the buskers had designated areas they had to stay in, so they weren’t getting in people’s face as you walked by.
We went and had dinner in the Stratosphere Resteraunt one night. Dave does not like heights.
The food was kind of foofy for me, and huge portions, which we had to throw away because we wouldn’t use leftovers on a trip like this. It was worth it for the view. I love rotating resteraunts!
The next morning we got up early for a bus trip to the Grand Canyon. I wanted to get in an outdoorsy adventure while we were down here. I had looked into photographing Antelope Canyon (a famous place for photographers) but after reading the stories about people basically lining up to all get the exact same shot, I passed on the idea, and boy am I glad I did – it turned out to be a crazy lightning and rain storm!
So we were outside a casino waiting for our bus, and we were already annoyed because they had said they would pick up at the Plaza, but they changed to a casino on the strip so we had to Uber over there at 5 in the morning. While waiting, and waiting, and waiting for the bus, we got to talking with some folks who were also waiting, one of who was a lady from Italy who had done the trip we were signed up for the day before and said it was not great. Primarily because this went to a view of the Canyon where there is a big glass bridge, and it costs to go on the bridge, and you can’t take your own pictures, you have to leave your stuff behind and pay for them to take a picture of you on the bridge. Plus it’s an ALL DAY trip, longer even then we were expecting. And it was raining a monsoon. These were all signs. We got another Uber back to The Plaza and went back to bed until a decent time.
We spent the day be-boping around the casinos, haveing fun losing money on slots, and playing this cool old horse racing game with mechanical ponies.
We finished off our evening by taking an Uber over to the Neon Museum. I’m sure there’s lots of pictures online, but here’s a few, because it sure was neat, and of course everything was bigger than you expect!
The guide doing the tour was funny, and sprinkled lots of history tidbits in his stories. It was great! It will be so cool someday if they get the signs all restored and lit up!
And that was the big finale for us, so we were homeward bound the next day. It was great to meet my coworkers, and Dave and I had fun on our own, but I am definitly an outdoors girl, noisy crowds and buskers and slots and confusion and activity everywhere is definitly not my gig. I was happy to get home!
We were suffering through the winter blahs, as the Pacific NW winter dragged on, grey skies, soggy days, me complaining about work, Dave complaining about the theater. One day I said ‘I think you haven’t said a thing today that wasn’t related to theater work!’, and he agreed. And then he did something about it. A couple weeks later we went to have dinner with our friends, and he surprised me with a trip to Hawaii! Leaving the next day!
I love spontaneous trips! We always have so much fun! He had even gone behind my back and asked a coworker to warn my boss I’d be taking off for a week! He had plotted with our friends to figure out where to go! So all I had to do was wrap my head around packing summer clothes:
Me: So I should take a sweater? Dave: No, it’s going to be 80 degrees! Me: But it will be cold at night right? Dave: Do you remember what 80 degrees feels like?
Narrator: She did not remember what 80 degrees felt like. Everything she packed was too warm.
So we headed to the airport, and we are sitting in the waiting area, and I can hear the neighboring gate calling out ‘First boarding special needs, families with children, veterans, first class…’ and I said to Dave ‘First class, I’d like to know what that’s like someday!’ Just then our gate called for First Class and Dave stood up and grabbed our bags and said ‘let’s go’, and I’m like ‘Whaaaa?’ He said ‘I got us first class for the flight over’!!!
Check out all that legroom! Big comfy chairs with tons of room to stretch out!
And fancy breakfast!!
What a great start!
When we got there we got a shuttle bus to take us to Waikiki, to check in at the rental which was right on the beach! Looking right down the beach you can see Diamond Head. And of course it was warm and beautiful, just like you expect Hawaii to be!
And the view from our condo 9 floors up – perfect!
Making ourselves at home
That evening there were fireworks over the beach, easily viewed while chilling on the balcony
The next morning we took a city bus to Pearl Harbor. This was one of the more confusing places I’ve visited, because you need to have tickets for all the different areas, and catch a bus to get to the other half of the displays which are on the military base. We were very confused about how to get to the Arizona, because there were reserved times, we had a ticket for the afternoon, and we were trying to determine if we could go see the Air Museum first, but when we asked a park ranger they advised us to get in line then, because the previous day high winds had cancelled all the afternoon visits to the Memorial. So we did that, and ended up going over there early.
It was a beautiful memorial, and very humbling to be standing directly over the sunken ship. It was also VERY WINDY and when we left, they got everyone on board and left the memorial empty, and I heard from someone later that they had had a power outage that afternoon, so we were lucky to get to see it when we did.
Then we caught the bus over to the Mighty Mo, and wandered around there admiring all the big guns above decks, the place where they signed the paperwork to end the war, and wandered around below decks until my claustrophobia said enough was enough of that.
Then we headed over to the Air Museum. I did not take a lot of pictures, but I did take one of the restored airfield tower, and cleaned it up for a nice peiece of art:
After a hot bus ride home we discovered Shave Ice – Dave may never be the same.
And of course every night we ate like kings. Calories don’t count on vacation!
Every night while looking for food we wandered through this really fancy shopping area with places like Rolex and Tiffany and a Tesla store. There was this cool shopping center built around a HUGE tree with walkways for the upper floor winding between the trunks.
Dave found a shirt he really liked there on one of our evening wanders but the store was closed because it was so late.
We went to the Aquarium the next morning, which was a nice walk along the beach, counting ABC Stores every block, and watching the surfers on the beach. The Aquarium was small but they had a really cool display of Sea Dragons. Apparently this is a Common Sea Dragon! Pretty spectacular for a ‘common’!
The Zoo was pretty nice (though I’m biased because I think the Oregon Zoo has spoiled me, and is the best!) and it had a big central courtyard with a GIANT TREE in the middle of it. Me for scale.
After wandering the zoo we stopped for lunch and were harassed by peacocks.
Designer chickens!
One last bus ride, where we got to chatting with a nice older lady from Florida who said the zoo was fun, but she got lost in the winding paths. We thought it wasn’t that complicated, but then she mentioned she stopped at the convinience store and pre-gamed her visit with a little liquor! Lady, it’s barely even noon! Boy did we all have a laugh at that! I guess that’s what retirement is like!
Then we picked up our transportation for the second half of the trip. Time to explore the island!
I would have preferred a Mustang, but it was this or BWM. Oh well, convertible is convertible!
First stop was a Buddhist temple in the hills above Honolulu.
I loved this place, I thought it was beautiful, and really peaceful.
We stopped at McDonalds for a Teri-Mac burger, possibly the messiest burger ever created. I did my best not to leave any evidence in the Merc.
The balcony had a view of the beach, a museum with an attack helicopter on the roof, and pickleball courts, which were pickleballing at all hours. It was so much fun to watch the ships coming and going.
If we were awake, we were on the balcony. They could have just rented us a balcony. What a view!
The next morning, a breakfast whale-watching cruise! I was not sure about this whole concept, because I have never been on a boat bouncing around on the sea, and certainly not with a belly-full of breakfast, and neither has Dave.
The captains of all the whale watching boats worked together to spot the whales and direct each other to them. We got to see quite a few whales, including a mother and calf! Hard to get pictures of them though! I was even more surprised by the flying fish! I thought that was super cool!
And we had breakfast and nobody got seasick, even though it was like riding a roller coaster sometimes. Pretty exciting! Oh, and Dave lost his hat. So long, hat!
When we went back to our car we realized we had forgotten to pay for parking in our excitement to get to the boat, so we got to figure out how to pay a parking ticket! After that exciting morning we headed up to see the Macadamia farm, and the beaches on the north side of the island. I cannot get over how pretty it is here, every curve led us to more beautiful places!
After lunch we finally found a nearly empty beach to stretch out and enjoy the waves for a bit and have a nap.
Dave picked up a new hat to replace the one lost at sea, only to have the new one blow off out of the convertible! His third hat of the day had a chinstrap!
Man, look at this scenery!
We ended up at this beautful beach at the end of the day. Blue skies, puffy clouds, blue water. Paradise!
The next day was a short hike at Diamond Head
The Pineapple Farm, Where we stood in line for longer than a Disney ride to take a little train ride around the farm. My feet hurt so bad from walking everywhere all week I was just in incredible pain standing there, then when I finally got on the train I just dozed off for the whole ride.
and driving out to the far end of the island to see what was there (lots of homeless people living on the beaches).
Saw a Jollibee and had to try it. I feel like their mid-afternoon offerings may not have been at the peak of quality.
Also – Hawaii traffic! Well, isn’t that fun?
Feet are so very tired…
We finally spotted a break in the people on the beach below our hotel and grabbed our towels and ran down to play in the water. He did wade out into the ocean, but it was too cold for me, I stayed on the beach.
For our last day Dave went back and got that expensive shirt he liked from the shopping center with the tree in it.
We drove around and had a view of Honolulu
Back at the airport, dropped off the Mercedes, and ready to fly home
Not in first class anymore
This was a classic Dave Vacation, non stop go go go, we can sleep when we’re dead! We had a great time, and really enjoyed the break from PNW winter. It made the next 4 months of winter go by a little more tolerably.
Yeah, I’m really behind on my blogging. Must be because I’ve been distracted with SO MUCH COOL STUFF! No, It’s because winter has been really boring and I’ve spent so much time playing video games. It’s like spring will never come! But that’s a perfect time to look back at our last trip of last season, to Ashland Oregon, where we had tickets to see a few plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
We used to go to Ashland every year, sometimes in the spring and again in the fall, so we could see all the plays. Plus, it was a great vacation, we can drive there in a day without rushing, we camp at a nice county park, and it’s just an easy drive into town to see the plays, and then drive back out to our quiet park on the lake and our cozy trailer. Before we had the trailer we would go down and stay in a hotel, and it was so expensive to stay in a hotel and eat out the whole time, staying in the trailer is a big cost savings! Still, we went through some tight times after the 2008 recession and weren’t able to go for a while. Then they had focused more on musicals, which weren’t our thing, then we had the pandemic. We decided this was the year to get back down there.
The trailer had it’s new tires, and since I wanted to tighten the lug nuts a couple times during this first trip, I just ditched the hub caps entirely. Looking good! The Flex tows it like it’s not even there. Here we were stopping at Roth’s for some doughnuts for the road. Gotta have road trip snacks!
We got our trailer all settled into its spot at Emmigrant Lake, and headed down to the hardware store in town to find a few parts I needed. Because we switched to a composting toilet, I was happy to leave the black tank supplies like gloves out of the trailer, and I had fixed the trailer side connection for the grey water drain, but forgot to put a matching connector on the slinky – and this was the first time we had had a hookup this summer and needed to use it! So we headed down to the hardware store, following Google Maps, and it took us on a strange roundabout path into a part of town we were not familiar with, then around behind an apartment complex, then just stopped, leaving us looking across a field and railroad tracks at the back of the hardware store.
Google: Nailed it! You’re welcome!
So we drove around the block and found our way to the actual parking lot of the hardware store. Luckily we found what we needed so we could go back and finish hooking up the slinky.
The water in the lake was low – really LOW, here is a side by side comparison from almost the same camp spots, the left side is the mid-2000’s – definitly before 2013. The right side is now. You can see that’s the same mountain in the distance. Wow, that lake water was way way down there. We used to like to sit in our lawn chairs and watch the antics as the boaters put their boats in at the ramp. None of that now. There no water at the ramps!
That first night we went and saw a Shakespeare play that was very good, as always, they always put on quite a show there. We decided to spend the next day on a little road trip out to the Lave Beds National Monument in Northern California. We used to spend time there when we were in college at Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls, OR. So we thought it would be fun to cruise by the campus and see what had changed, and then go poke our head in a few caves.
On the drive from Ashland to Klamath Falls we took a backroad to enjoy a bit of scenery, and we not only got to see some roadside history, but we saw a flock of wild turkeys, and COWS! Yes, it’s open rangeland out there, so the cows have right of way, and you need to keep your eyes out for them.
We got to the campus and boy had it changed a lot. It was barely recognizable. We went down and took a picture at the fountain, definitly remembered that.
Walked by the dorms, they looked the same, but they had added more. Wandered through the student union until we were about to have cafeteria flashbacks. Decided we didn’t need that kind of trauma. Stopped in the bookstore for a souvineer for the trailer’s sticker wall.
Hustlin’ Owls!
We headed over to Abbys Pizza which was the hangout in college, it looked just the same, had some pizza and nostalgia before doing a quick tour of downtown and heading for the caves.
The drive out to the lava bades was down a dry and lonely road. It’s pretty amazing out there, it’s very very quiet. There isn’t much going on anywhere near there. It’s just wind and birds and the sound of tourists cars.
We went to the visitors center and checked out a couple flashlights, picked up a map, and went for a wander in a few of the easier caves. The caves here are from an ancient lava flow, which left tubes of lava as it flowed away. So many of them are big enough to stand up in, some are big enough to fit a house in, some you would need to crawl through.
One of the big ones
BIG entrance to this cave! See me in there?!
We should definitely come back and camp here and take our time poking around. We only had so much time before we had to get the flashlights back and head back to see the evening play in Ashland. The drive back was long and uneventful, except Google took us over a different highway that had a bit of snow at the top. No issues, but it was worrying us for a bit.
Ashland was pretty in its fall colors.
We saw three plays, they were all excellent. We spent a little time exploring. Had some nice dinners, and had some easy meals in the trailer. All in all, a good time was had. It was nice to get back to our old stomping grounds. Maybe we will get back to doing this more often again.
For my next trip of the season, I headed out all by myself for the first time ever! Dave was doing a play, and I already had this club rally scheduled, and I wanted to go. I feel like it’s not fair to make Dave feel bad because I have to just sit home when he’s in a play, and it’s not fair for me to have to skip doing things I want to do while he does his stuff. So he gave me some lessons on backing up the little beast, and I packed up and headed out on my own.
First stop was in Newport, Oregon for lunch where it was so foggy I couldn’t even see the sea!
I had planned my trip to take this little break, stretch my legs and have lunch at our favorite spot at Nye Beach. I was a little nervous leaving the trailer parked over by the performing arts center, but it looked like the easiest place to park a trailer. Luckily it was still there when I got back.
I got to the park in Florence, OR, and the hosts had warned us all the night before that a scheduling mix up had changed us from each having our own spot, to sharing a big parking lot. This actually worked really well. All the tow vehicles were parked over in a corner, and we got to camp in a semi-wagon-wheel formation. It was great! The host helped me back into my spot, and we were all set!
I was the oldest trailer there by far that weekend. The whole point was to be a boondocking rally, which was more nerve wracking for some of the campers with new trailers who were used to having hookups. I was used to boondocking anyway, and have very simple needs, so it was no biggie for me. It got a little warm one day, but I popped open the windows and put on the awnings, and it was cool and comfy inside.
I went South on the first day and explored the dunes a little bit. I huffed and puffed my way to the top of a dune for a view up and down the coast, and even saw whales spouting not too far out to sea!
Then I headed down to the marina for lunch at a chowder shack on the marina, which was delicious, and walked around on the docks looking at the cool boats.
Also watched this bird successfully catching it’s lunch.
I have this plan in the back of my head that someday I am going to do a photography project where I go photograph all the arch bridges in Oregon, particularly up and down the coast.
I finished up my day at an overlook near my campground, and you can just see the dunes stretching off into the distance. What a unique part of the beach! This is very different from the Northern Oregon beaches that I am used to!
The next morning I headed out early to visit Heceta Head Lighthouse. I wanted to beat the weekend crowds, and it worked, there were very few people at the beach. I wasn’t expecting this, but there were tidepools to visit, and a couple volunteer rangers hanging out to answer questions.
A few years ago we heard a lot about the starfish suffering from a wasting disease that was destroying the populations off the Oregon coast, so it was nice to see these big healthy specimens. These were quite large, bigger than my hand! The rangers said they are recovering nicely.
I think they are really cool looking!
I hiked up the short path to the lighthouse. First you come to the old keepers house, which is run as a B & B now. It was a really cute house.
And then finally to the lighthouse, which wasn’t open yet because I was too early! I saw the ranger going up the hill as I was going back down!
I headed up to Yachats to visit a popular bakery (the line was out to the street!), had lunch in a historic pub, and then drove back towards camp, stopping at every wayside along the way. The clouds parted and it was beautiful! Also, the crowds weren’t nearly as bad here as they are on the Northern beaches. I think it’s worth the extra drive to have a little more solitude! This was on a beautiful summer Saturday!
Almost back to camp, I parked on this overlook and just relaxed in the car watching for whales. It was really peaceful.
That was the whole adventure. Every evening we had Happy Hour back at camp, played some cornhole, and sat around the fire after dinner chatting. The next morning folks started heading out and I headed out fairly early too, just so I wouldn’t feel like I had to rush. I stopped at a rest stop along the way, and another random Airstreamer pulled in after me and just waved to check and make sure I was ok with my little vintage trailer! Very kind! Later I stopped at another rest stop to cook some lunch in the trailer, and one of my fellow campers stopped right after me and said hello.
Finally I made it home and backed the trailer into the driveway all by myself, and it only took 3 tries! My first solo trip was over. It’s always more fun if Dave comes along, but it’s nice to know I can go out on my own if I have to also!
Steff Does Stuff! 