Warmth and sunshine in Southern California

Hooray!

We made it down to Petaluma - sun.  Then across the Sacramento Delta on a very bumpy road.  Knocked all my pals down  (AZ: coyote, kokopeli, TX: ladybug, armadello, FL: manatee.  And Mr Green Million Mile frog - just wore him out).

 

Kind of how I felt after taking on that road

As we headed south, we traveled a bunch of farm roads trying to guess what was or had been  growing in the fields.  One area it looked like many mini watermellons were laying just off the fields - just left there.  Maybe they grew too small?  No place to stop our rig and run to pick one up.  

Wagons like this had dirt lifted and run on a conveyor through the wagon.  There were 6 to 8 pickers per wagon picking the "crop" and the dirt goes out the back.  Whatever they were "picking" it was an underground crop (onions?)  We didn't want to stop their work but thought it was a wonderful way of getting the job done out of the hot sun.

Aren't we glad we have a Tire Pressure Monitor System (TPMS).  We don't get this low tire picture in the RV like the car but we certainly know when the TPMS activates: the system starts beeping.  Yup, we're losing air.

Apparently while watching the farms we picked up a brand new screw in our 6 month-old tires.  Oh, great.  Our very nice camper neighbor with a compressor added air to that mostly flat tire and we headed for Les Schwab.  

They found the nice screw.  Fixed the tire rapidly and we were on our way.

Still heading south.  We stayed at a few more of our favorite Elks Lodge campgrounds before heading over Tehachapi Pass (3770').  We had a wonderful nice and warm day - no snow - no wind.  And for the first time on the pass we saw a train going over the Tehachapi Loop (spiral) .  

Scooted around the northern hills of LA .... and we didn't learn our lesson still heading on lesser roads past Lake Los Angeles (didn' t see the lake) made our way to the mile upon mile backup of Interstate 15.  Geez, this is why we go back roads to avoid this.

Popped down to Indio in the Palm Springs area.  Beautiful area, safe, secure at the Elks Lodge and we enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner and stayed long enough to get their famous Sunday breakfast.  Took care of laundry and groceries.  

The Elks has a small park in the campground with citrus fruit (limes, lemons, grapefruit AND one kind I didn't recognize.  The Rough Lemon.  Very ugly.  

ROUGH LEMON

cross between mandarin orange and a lemon

Brought a few along with us to share.  Hope it's yummy.

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Headed south again but stayed on paved government roads.  Wasn't much to see along the Salton Sea but the road was nice and not too busy.  Was getting a little perturbed that I was getting odd elevation readings from my GPS.  Showing us hundred's of feet below sea level.  That is until we went past this building:

Sea level way up there.  Yep.  

This building is in the town of Brawley - elevation minus112 feet

Tonight we are at -179 below sea level.  Just think of all the water that could flood this direction. The Salton Sea is -264' .  Oh good, we are higher than the sea. 

But just in case

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Made it through CA and didn't pay for gas over $4.99 - that was enough but not $5 or $6 as we feared.  We are a gas RV now but if we were still fueling with diesel, we would have paid over $6/gallon.

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This worked: Beautiful Oregon Coast and the California Redwoods - no snow!

Southern Oregon / Northern CA Hwy 101 hangs on along the coast.  The highway frequently many times has lost lanes (slid away down to the ocean) requiring temporary solar-powered street lights to allow one way traffic.  A lot of maintenance.  Nothing has changed.  Thankfully there were no bikers pedalling along the narrow road in the winter.

There are many Elks lodges with campsites along this route.  Nice places to stay but there are always places to peek.  

We visited Boice-Cope County Park for the first time.  Very pretty place and campsites with power.  Known for kiteboarding and windsurfing in the summer.  No one practicing that now - because it is cold?  Or because there was no wind?  

Fun learning about the almost successful and beautiful town of Lakeport 1910.  Looks like somebody should have done some researching BEFORE building the town. 

          Sometimes we see odd things and we need to do a double take.  

Here are 3 dumpsters in the small park.  Ok.

But the middle dumpster is labeled

DUMPSTER DIVING.

Perfect!! 

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As we entered California, we gained some elevation and carefully traveled through the Redwoods.  "Carefully"  We mean not hitting a redwood.  They can handle a bump better than the RV can.  More sun but cool nights.  Heavy dew in the mornings and lots of wet mud and tree needles all over the vehicles.  We've traveled through the Redwoods many times.  All looked well.

Must Be About Time To Head South

 Ok, we're excited and ready to head on the road.  

Go and visit son's new home in Idaho and as long as we have gone that far, we bought new Gazateers for Idaho, Montana and Utah.  We have lots of places in those three states to explore.  We've always gone straight through.  

Ok, we planned places to see and explore.  Knew we'd probably have to hurry through as winter was coming.  

And it did.  We didn't get out of town before Idaho had snow.  We thought maybe we could go mid Oregon or the eastern part of Idaho.  Guess what?  It's snowing.  

How about through Boise and then head down through Utah.  Dang it - we missed the Museum of Clean in Pocatello.  No snow at that time just 17 degrees overnight and many campgrounds shut for the season. 

Well heck all of this looks a bit problematic so ok we'll head down I-5.  Still dry from the summer but it's getting cooler.

First night we made it to Kelso in Washington.  Not too far but within an hour the rain started and it rained for 2 full days.  4" of rainfall.  Glad we weren't traveling in it.

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So the next time it quit storming off to Oregon we went.  Got cheaper fuel and stopped in Keizer.  No rain forecast - hooray.  Next day we took the old 99 route through Corvalis at about 230' elevation and it started raining.      That is rain, isn't it?       Exploring grapes and winery areas and the rain is turning white.  Isn't that funny, ha ha.  Not!      A few miles farther the grapevines are getting white, a few miles later the trees, and then the road and slush!  Well heck we don't want to travel with the RV and tow car.  So we headed back to the more traveled roads - less snow - but no campgrounds.  Around the town of Eugene to find a county park - nice - where we sat for two days awaiting the snow to go away on I-5.  It didn't.  

The next day the weather folks tried to come out with excuses for their non-accurate forecast:

"Yesterday was a strange weather day, nestled in a chilly & wet weekend.  I want to recap the surprise snow to some lower elevation spots during the daytime Sunday. To get snow to the valley floor on November 6th? Everything has to be exactly right for that to happen.

You may recall we had the atmospheric river and initial cold front pass through Friday and Friday night, models just nailed that one with about 2″ rain in the center of the metro area and 8-10″ in the wettest parts of the Coast & Cascade ranges. Then we were in the scattered showers behind the front Saturday; an uneventful weather day.

A cold front was forecast to move onshore Sunday morning and this would be the leading edge of cooler air. Snow levels would come down to around 2,000′ at times Sunday (the forecast), and 5-10″ would fall in the Cascades. That DID happen. Models were also forecasting very heavy rain to fall south of the Portland area down into SW Oregon with yesterday’s system. Note the rainfall forecast with very heavy rain south of Salem and down to about Roseburg. This is from the WRF-GFS model. That DID happen."

Excuses Excuses Excuses

There is more snow on the freeway to the south.  Then how about we head for the ocean.  Ok, but we had to wait for the snow to go away on the highway to the ocean. (We saw 780' elevation.)  Low snow there also.