Yellowstone or bust!

We headed out to Yellowstone from Idaho Falls on 7/19.  We did a lot of research on the best route for a motorhome to take.  I found a website where a guy described in great detail the routes to all 5 of Yellowstone's entrances.  If you've never been to Yellowstone, you may not know the park is huge! Our campground was 2 miles south of the South entrance, so that was the way to go.  There was one road this guy and numerous people on RV forums said to stay away from (over Teton Pass), and of course our RV-specific GPS wanted us to go that way.  Well, we outsmarted it this time!  We had a beautiful drive through, Jackson, WY, and then Grand Teton NP before getting to our campground. Saw some bison near Jackson, I think, and had a deer run beside us for a few scary minutes.  It had a nice little rack started in case you like to know those things.

Oh, let me add here that everywhere you look they are talking about bears, so I was very nervous the entire time we were there about running into a bear.  The campground has rules about NOTHING being left outside, they sell and recommend bear spray everywhere, and the newsletters for both parks have all this info on what to do in different bear situations.  And by nervous, I mean I had so much anxiety I really couldn't enjoy the beautiful hikes we did.  More on those later.

We set up camp and then took the Jeep on a dirt road right outside our campground that went through National Forest.  We actually saw quite a bit more people and vehicles than I was expecting.  We saw a nice lake and then tried to find another, but ended up on a true 4-wheeler road.  We turned around before reaching the lake - not that the Jeep couldn't make it, but Chuck had just gotten an alignment in Bend and it smelled like something was burning, so I didn't relish the thought of being stuck out there. We saw a sign for some cascades, so we went to check that out.

After that adventure, I convinced them to take a ride down to Jenny Lake in Grand Teton.  We have a picture of that in our house, so I knew it would be awesome, but wow, is it even better in person!  We were always there at the wrong time of day for pics, though, so I don't have great ones.  We drove back and saw some animals from afar.  Did not get a good pic of those.  There was great debate on whether they were elk or moose.  I think we decided on elk.

Some wildflowers

Jenny Lake

String Lake - between Jenny &  Leigh Lakes

Back in civilization...

Well, almost.  Our streak of bad wi-fi continues, so I am sitting at the playground at our current campground in the middle of Nebraska cornfields (more on that several posts from now) in long pants & shirt, fending off mosquitos (not too well), so you, dear readers will no longer be in suspense.

Our story picks up when we left Bend (7/17).  We had a general idea on how to get out of town, but our GPS had a specific idea.  Of course that led to disaster.  There was a nice 2-lane road that led straight to the road out of town and it showed 8 miles on that road.  Around mile 6 or 7, I spot a sign that says, "Pavement Ends".  Well, crap.  There was a turn-around (term used very loosely), so we decided we better take the chance while we had it.  Of course we didn't make the turn and had to unhook the Jeep so we could back up.  While we had the entire road blocked, an ancient man pulled up and waited patiently.  He told me it was an easy mile on the dirt part, but after what we've been through, we just couldn't take that chance.  So, we went back a way we knew, had an easy time getting to the road we wanted, and then had a nice, scenic drive to Boise - well, a suburb called Meridian - for an overnight stop.

The next morning (7/18) we drove to Idaho Falls for another overnight.  It was a decent campground supposedly on the river, but there was a chain link fence and lots of weedery, so we couldn't really tell. We did a little sightseeing in town and then went out for pizza.

I guess these are the falls.

Chia moose

That is a dam - maybe those are the falls.

Every bench was a different animal.  This was a snake.

Bend is the hottest Pacific Northwest city right now.

At least that's what I overheard one jogger say to another.  I haven't been to any others I can think of, so I'll buy it.

Anyhoo, yesterday Chuck did a mt. bike ride, so the boys & I took Ellie to the park.  They have several parks next to the river (on both sides) and they're connected by trails, so I think technically we took her to two parks.  One of them had an off-leash park which she played in for a few minutes.  Then we noticed there was an off-leash area on the river, so we went there.  There was only one other dog there, another Golden who wasn't really swimming.

Ellie is not in this pic, but there were a lot more dogs retrieving things today!

It wasn't a beach, it was a bunch of rocks (see above).  She eased herself in immediately (for those of you who don't know, Ellie doesn't jump into water like normal dogs) and started swimming off downriver.  Well, I wasn't really dressed for going in after her, so I started calling her back.  She was just doggy paddling away against the current and finally came out so I hooked the leash on her and got out of there fast!

Today we went back to the river (sans Ellie) to do some floatin'.  Chuck & Zack decided they wanted to do standup paddleboards and Ben & I rented tubes.  We had to split up because they want the paddleboarders to go upriver first and then back.  People float on all kinds of stuff here.  I saw more than one air mattress, which probably would've been pretty comfy.

Pretty sure he chose this so as not to have to get in the cold, cold water

Chillaxin'

There is a spillway in the river that you have to get out and go around or you might die.  I was definitely worried about getting us out.  Especially since the last time Ben was on a tube in a river with his friend Hudson, they missed the take out spot and had to be rescued (thanks again, John Rigsbee!) So, even before we reached the warning buoys, I started paddling as hard as I could to the left.  After 3 boys literally ran across in front of us, I realized the water was about a foot deep.  We kept ending up in the vegetation (I didn't mean us to be THAT far left), so I would jump off and walk us over.  Well, Ben got stuck on a log and we got separated just before the take out, so I jumped off my tube and went in up to my hat before I grabbed onto my tube!  How did it get so deep all of a sudden? I then had to swim back holding my tube to free him and then swim all the way to the takeout spot.  Did I mention the water was really, really cold?

Certain death

Lava Lands

Today we started out slow.  Chuck did some Jeep work, and I did some laundry. There are people here that don't understand laundromat ettiquette, so my loads ended up staggered.  One guy said, "are you spending all day doing laundry?"  Um, maybe if you hadn't left your stuff in the washer for 20 min. after it was done and then the dryer for 15, I wouldn't be.  But I digress.

In the afternoon we headed down to Lava Lands.  It's about 8 miles south of Bend.  The Lava Flow is right next to the highway.  We took a red cinder road up to the Lava Butte Cinder Cone.

That's it

Lava, lava everywhere

We went back down to the visitor center, which was supposed to be open to 5, but it was about 4:40 and they were having a cow that we came in.  We talked to a young ranger or whatever they're called in the US Forest Service in the parking lot, and she told us about these falls just a few miles away.  She explained they were caused by lava flowing into the riverbed and were not like typical waterfalls we were probably used to.  We found a parking area and then the trail to the falls and got to witness the rescue squad bringing a pregnant lady out on a stretcher.  

The falls were really cool, and you could walk right up to the river, which made me nervous about the boys.  We took the trail a little farther and realized mt. bikes could use the trail, too.  So, we may check that out tomorrow on our bikes.  They also have a one-mile cave there which is a lava tube, and I really want to check that out, but it was closed by the time we got there today.  

Yes, that's Chuck standing down there.

The Falls were more like crazy rapids.

We got a selfie with our faces in the pic!

Aw, hail.

Our last night at Redwoods, Chuck decided it would be a good outdoor movie night.  Yes, we brought our portable screen and projector with us.  Ben picked The Lego Movie, which was a good idea since our site was next to the playground and kids were sure to stop by.  There was a family of 6 (in a pop-up!) next to us, and they stayed and watched, as did a couple of other kids.  It was a big hit.  I did not get a picture.  :-)

Yesterday we woke up to more clouds and cool weather and drizzling rain.  We were mostly ready to leave, but we had been stressing over the route to our destination, Bend, OR.  Most of the way was red in our atlas, which is the next step below interstate, but there were a couple of smaller roads.  Chuck ended up driving one right outside our campground for several miles.  It ended up being a beautiful, uneventful trip on very nice roads.  The route took us right by Crater Lake NP, but the pop-up family had told us the parking lot was full when they went and cars had parked in the RV spots, so we were afraid to go in there.

Luckily our campground in Bend had directions on their website to avoid a low clearance overpass, because of course our GPS sent us that way!  Chuck is making a list of things to call Rand McNally about.

We sadly missed the World Cup Final.  I did see some of it on my cell phone and plugged that in to our speakers so we could all hear, but we ran out of cell service about halftime.

We arrived at our RV Resort (this one really is very, very nice) and got set up by about 4:30.  This is considered the High Desert and gets 12" rain per year, but it was thundering when we checked in. Could our rain curse be returning?

Before we could even sit down for a snack, we heard a weird noise, kinda like the pop in that song, Lollipop.  I was like, Zack, how did you do that?  As he was saying it, we heard it again.  One more time and we realized something was hitting the roof.  Looked out and there was like golf-ball sized hail coming down.

We didn't have any damage, but I talked to a man at the laundry room who said all 3 of his vent covers were cracked.  He had gone to a local RV place and said people were lined up outside the door before it opened.  There is a sweet orange Corvette a few spots away from us, and I haven't seen any dents on it, so that's good. ;-)







The weather was beautiful after the storm.  We went to the Old Mill District and had dinner outside.  Then we took a stroll by the river.

Did not get to see one Pacific Ocean sunset, but this river one was nice.

Seriously, not what I expected summer in Cali to be like.

So, on 7/10 we arrived at our next campground in the Redwoods of Northern CA.  We are about 11 miles south of the OR border.  We got here about 7pm.  Chuck went to check in and no one was there. They had a bunch of packets with names taped to the door but ours wasn't one of them.  I was checking my iPad for other campgrounds nearby while he was trying to call them.  From somewhere a woman showed up with a key to the office and got it sorted out.  The campsites are pretty roomy here, but as always the wi-fi could be better. This place bills itself as a "resort" but I'm not sure what the qualifications are for that.

There is a fog over the whole area all the time.  I think it got up to 62 (that is F for my one international reader) yesterday and has been 57-59 today.  Anything left outside is soaked in the morning.  Finally we're at a place we could give Ellie a bath (which I did this morning because she was really dusty) but there was no sun to dry her quickly.

We have some Redwoods here in the campground, but yesterday we did a drive through a big area of some.  I'm not sure we've actually made it into Redwoods NP.  There are 2 state parks here, too, and the lady at the visitor center told us they are run cooperatively.  She also said the state parks have better trees because they opened first and were able to preserve more.  We went on a dirt road (just in the Jeep!) through Jedidiah Smith State Park.  I have literally never seen anything like what we saw here. Huge, tall trees everywhere.  We did several walking trails and went through one grove that had fallen trees all over the place.  We also found a river that had a very wide bed, but is at a low stage right now. Zack is all about the wading in freezing water.

Ellie says hey.

Zack immediately taking his shoes off for wading. 

We decided it was very squatchy here.

Hard to see in this pic, but these leave very large holes when they fall.

Yep, that's the bottom.

Today we had a little trouble getting motivated.  We ended up driving to a beach a couple of miles from the campground that we had found yesterday.  You could drive onto the beach, so of course we did. There still wasn't any sunshine, though the sun broke through for a few minutes after we'd been there a while.  There were a lot of rocks, but we cleared out most from a small section so we could play beach soccer.  Keeping my soccer injury streak alive (that is an injury for every single time I play), I kicked a rock and sliced a dime-sized piece of skin off my big toe.  Well, it didn't come completely off, it glued itself back over some sand and blood.  I got it cleaned off as best I could, but I will spare y'all a picture.

The coldest winter I ever had...

...was a summer I spent in San Francisco.  No, not really, but it was chilly enough there that Chuck told us that incorrectly-attributed-to-Mark-Twain witticism twice in 5 minutes without realizing it.  For real. I will say the two other times I've been to SF were in Oct., and it was way warmer then.

Anyhoo, we got to SF on July 8.  We stayed at an RV Park in Pacifica, just south of SF, and right on the coast.  There wasn't a beach there, though, and there was a double fence so you couldn't even get close to the edge to take a good pic.  The pull-through sites were just as tight as the place in Carson City, but there was a little more room between the rows, and they had people alternating direction.   So, we got in, even though the camper next to us had their 2 sets of steps over the line.

After settling in, we drove the Jeep to Muir Woods (what a hurl-inducing road) to get a look at the redwoods there.  Ben spotted a deer hiding in the flora while we were looking at one tree.  It was about 15 ft. away, right where we were looking and nobody had noticed it.

On the way back we stopped at Sausalito for dinner on the bay.  We tried to eat outside, we really did, but the overhead heaters weren't enough.  Plus, I think they forgot they put us out there. So, we moved in and quickly got waited on.

The next day we did the tourist thing on Fisherman's Wharf, but not without a drive down the world's crookedest street, Lombard, on the way.  We parked right near a store with soccer jerseys, so the boys had to get one.  We walked around a little and found a sports bar to watch the World Cup Argentina v. Netherlands game and ended up there for 3 hours.  After the game was finally over, we wasted our time & money at the Aquarium of the Bay.  Then we walked down to Ghirardelli Square for the Soda Fountain/Ice Cream Shop.  There's a "historic" pier and an aquatic park across the street we went to, and there were people actually swimming for exercise there in the bay.  Brrr.

The next day we packed up and headed north.  We all loved SF.

Kinda hard to get the full effect of the crookedness from the car

There was one sea lion left!

This could've been a cool shot for a real photographer

Very foggy