Tag: Florence

Florence, OR and Coos Bay for DRVC rally

We did find two nights at the second Elk’s Club in town, so we stayed in Florence a total of four days. That gave us some time for sightseeing in the area.

This is actually the way I know I am getting near the coast – moss everywhere on the trees! Even the stones grow heavy lichen/moss layers in this humidity and mild climate.

Lots of moss/lichen here too

One of my favorite spots is Thor’s Well. It is a circular depression that fills with water from the waves, then the water bursts up before disappearing completely. The picture below shows it in the center of the shoreline.

Thor’s Well

There is a pretty solid wind that comes in from the Pacific that has sculpted these streets so they are tilted, not straight.

Tortured trees

And then there is the marine layer that shows up most mornings.

Marine layer

And we saw a black bear! It was crossed the road without warning and we only caught a glimpse of it with our dash cam. This is a screen capture from a long distance away.

Trust me,it really is a bear!

We then got to the rally, held at the Coos Bay Mill RV Park . It is associated with a casino, but the campground is right on the bay. This bulk cargo ship was headed farther inland to fill up with wood chips. The chips are transported to Asia and made into paper. You can see one tow/tender at the stern and another small one on the starboard bow.

Ship and two tenders

A rally is always a busy time, so not really any pictures from that. We had a great time though! Very good technical presentations, fun at meals and games, and just an all-around good time getting to visit with old friends and make some new ones. We left this morning (Friday, 9 August), and decided to stay closer to the coast while we could. We find a decent spot at the downtown Elks Lodge in Florence again. It is noisy from traffic, but the sites are adequate with water and electricity. We will fill up our fresh water tank before we leave Sunday morning, and we have identified a few spots to dump the waste tanks before we get to Redmond since the Expo Center doesn’t have a dump station.

I also did get a bunch more kits cut out for my class so I will have a good collection for the students to choose from. Now I have to get serious with writing the instructions out and doing a partial construction one.

My next post will probably be from Redmond next week unless something cool happens unexpectedly.

Antelope Island views then north

I forgot to post any pictures from Antelope Island, so here you go! The bison herd on Antelope Island is famous. The bulls were looking pretty beat up since mating season was just finishing.

Nursery herd was on the east side
A standard bison jam

And no set of pictures for Antelope Island is complete without a gorgeous sunset view. The sunset was just orange/red from the smoke haze. Beautiful, but it makes it tough to breathe.

Best sunsets in the Salt Lake Valley!

We did get to Island Park, ID and found a great boondocking site on Sunday, 21 July. We stayed there through Thursday night. We obviously took some RZR rides, but we also enjoyed meeting some friends who were work camping in the area, one in West Yellowstone and one at Henry’s Lake State Park.  We discovered the osprey nest on a dead end trail we took by accident. Nice accident! There were two young birds. When I snapped this picture (from a long way away!), one adult bird had just flown off to get more food for the hungry teens.

Osprey

There was quite a bit of water, and we saw lots of lilies.

Lovely water lilies
Mariposa lilies?

We also took one day into Yellowstone. We got into the park by 7:00 am. It was cool enough some of the animals like these elk were still close to the road. The other advantage of early, cool mornings is the steam rising from the thermal features is much more visible.

These three elk were just as we got into the park
Steam from thermals

We saw a number of the primary animals – bison, bald eagle, osprey, elk, deer, and a fat, happy black bear.

More osprey!
Nursery herd
Black bear

We spent Friday, 26 July, at the Y Knot Winery campground, Glenn’s Ferry, ID. It was still smoky, something that had been increasing since the last couple of days at Island Park. The next day was a killer. We had reservations in Burns, OR, but the AQI was over 600! A lot of eastern Oregon seems to be on fire, and there was a big one just outside Burns. The haze was thick, and the air smelled of smoke. We just kept going until we got to Bend, OR where we stopped at an Elks Lodge again. The drive was mostly 2 lane roads with lots of curves. I was tired when we got set up!

The next day wasn’t any better, but we wanted to keep heading west to get out of the smoke. We drove from Bend to Springfield, OR, just outside Eugene, OR. I had a UPS delivery sent there, and I needed to pick it up before our chapter rally. The road from 5 miles south of Sisters pretty much all the way to Springfield was the slowest I have driven the motorhome. It was only 120 miles, but it took over 4 hours. The traffic was very heavy, there was lots of construction, and the mountain roads very winding. Ugh. We hadn’t started until 10:30, because we thought it wouldn’t take long. I was awfully tired when we finally got to the Elks Lodge where we stopped for the night. We have definitely gotten a lot out of our Elk’s Lodge membership! It is nice to have a safe spot to pull into while traveling. Many are dry camping for $5-$10 which is just fine for us. Some have electricity which is nice on hot days, and those are $20-$30 a night, still worthwhile.

I was so tired of the bad air quality, so we headed for the coast instead of staying in Springfield a few days like we had intended. We are currently at the Elk’s Lodge campground in Florence, OR 1 mile off Hwy 101. Beautiful place for $35 a night with electricity and water. We could only get 2 nights here, but they also have dry camping where we hope to spend the next nights before our FMCA rally in Coos Bay. I intend on hitting the local fabric shop for some more fat quarters and interfacing for class samples. I am teaching a class on collapsable fabric storage containers, and it is easier to show students some of the steps than describe them. I have the kits cut for the students, but I will partially make some more as examples.

Now to clean up!

We are ready for the road!

We finished our 2 day RV driving class today. It was very helpful. The saleswoman at the dealer had done some quick instruction, but we found out quickly that it didn’t work for all situations. The instructor (Jimmy Johnson from RVDrivingschool.com) showed us all kinds of methods to doing turns, backing, and just moving around in traffic. Both of us feel much more confident in traffic now, so I think it was well worth the money.

One nice thing about being with a local is finding all kinds of good places to eat. Yesterday at lunch we ate at Fiesta Mexican in Tuscumbia, AL which was very tasty. Last night we ate at Swamp John in Florence, AL, a hole in the wall fish place. I had a nice meal of fried catfish, fried okra, and hush puppies along with sweet tea – a truly southern meal like I grew up with. Today at lunch we ate at Smokin’ on the Boulevard in Florence, AL with the best smoked chicken I had ever had. Wow! A whole smoked chicken was $10, and it was worth every penny. Kevin got a smoked pork loin that was also good. We were disappointed they were out of brisket and ribs, but we can try them if we ever get here again. I ended up buying a second chicken that I will piece apart and freeze for later.

The motorhome is doing great. We closed the bedroom area off and ran the generator so we could have the air conditioner in the “living room”. The dahs air is cold, but there is a lot of space to cool down, so it is common for motorhomes to drive with their generators running when AC is needed. It was well into the mid 90s with a dew point of 70+, so I was quite pleased at how comfortable the coach was.

We head back to Iowa tomorrow morning. We plan on staying at a state park in Missouri tomorrow night then being home on Monday. It turns our Mississippi only gives 7 day temp tags, so we won’t be legal after that. It will be an expensive trip to the DMV!