Friday morning we were able to have a nice Skype visit with John's parents. Now that we are back in civilization we are in 3G country both our cell phone and T-Mobile hotspot work perfectly. We packed our lunch and headed to Napa Valley to do a scenic drive with instructions for a tour and a map put together by the owner of this RV park. What beautiful country, green hills, miles and miles of vines, starting to leaf out for the year. Apple trees are in bloom. We stopped at Mumm's winery, a recommended stop for the views across the valley from its deck. We only took about 2 1/2 hours rather than the 3 1/2 recommended, getting back to the trailer to eat the lunch we had packed.
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| Darioush Winery |
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| Napa Hills behind a winery |
Saturday morning, we decided that we had finished with the area for this
trip, and packed up to head north. We stopped at the office to let the
kind gentleman know that we would in fact be leaving 2 days early. He
actually gave us refund for the 2 unused nights. We were amazed and very
impressed. No other RV park would ever give you a refund. In fact most
of them have big signs at the front desk saying no refunds for any
reason. We recommend the Midway RV Park at Vacaville. It is a perfect
park from which to visit Napa Valley, the Jelly Bean Factory and
numerous other funky places in the area. We hit the road by 10:00 AM
travelling north on I-505 to I-5. Easy driving as we could follow the
speed limit, stop at rest areas and enjoy the scenery, and what
spectacular scenery we had. We passed by the Lassen Volcanic National Park, Shasta Lake. The best was Mount Shasta. The perfect
mountain, 14,000 + feet, with a beautiful white top. We did not have to
get close enough to the snow to touch it and in fact the temp cooled
down to 17 C, but generally the temp is in the low 20's C. Much cooler
than our temp at Indio, but tolerable.
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| Lassen Volcano |
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| Shasta Lake |
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| Mt Shasta |
By 5:00 we arrived in Medford Oregon. We figured that we would stay overnight in a hotel. The advantage of the T-Mobile hotspot became apparant, while John drove, Joan surfed the net to find a list of hotels, near the Interstate, with parking sufficient for our rig. We checked into the Motel 6.
Sunday morning we decided to go back to our orignal plan.we stopped at Black Bear Diner for breakfast. The Black Bear Diner was started by a couple of guys at the foot of California’s majestic Mt. Shasta. It is now a chain that covers most of California and Oregon. The food was good and they had a great picture on the wall of a couple of black bears with Mt Shasta in the background. By 7:30 we were on the road, in the rain. We decided our plan to go to Valley of Rogue River State park was out as hiking in the rain (according to accuweather for the next 3 days) was not in the cards. As we continued on highway 99 we passed a huge field of tulips, which turned out to be a u-pick tulip farm. A few miles down the road the little town was having its tulip festive. Spring is here in southern Oregon. We targeted for Olde Stone Village RV Resort in McMinnville. We had driven by this park on our way from Portland to Lincoln City area in the fall. We gave them a call and were informed by an answering service that the office is closed at this time of year on Sundays, but we could choose one of the sites marked as available at the office. We were able to get washroom codes from a fellow rv'er. We then watched the final 100 or so laps of the Nascar race. This is a very nice park.
Monday morning it was still showering. After a stop at the office to pay we discovered we had chosen wisely and the site we were in was available for the rest of the week. We paid for a few more nights, then took advantage of the nice laundry facilities.
Tuesday we walked next door to the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum. They have an interesting aviation museum, the heart which is the original Spruce Goose built of birch plywood by Howard Hughes. We hadn't realized the plane was bigger than a football field. It had been built of wood during the WW II, when all metal was reserved for the war effort. We then wandered through the Space museum. They have an extensive display and after 3 hours we had reached information overload.
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| Spruce Goose |
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| Space Shuttle |
We packed up Wednesday and headed up the Columbia River valley. Our chosen site was Moon River RV park in Richland, Washington, an obvious choice since we had stayed in a Moon River RV park in Arizona. Even though we had a rainy travel day we had a beautiful drive down the Columbia River gore and could see the wonderful waterfalls. When we drove the gorge in the fall the waterfalls did not have as much water in them. By lunch John was craving a good old fashioned hamburger. We stopped at C&D's in Boardman, a little town on the Columbia river, where John had their trademark Bozo Burger (bacon and cheese). By 2:30 we arrived at the RV park, were assigned a reasonably level large pull through sight, with clear site lines for our satellite dish. This is primarily a permament resident park, with 8 pull-thrus at the back for over-nighters. The permanent area is fairly unique. The trailers are parked parallel to the drives, and each site has a small fenced yard with a tree in the corner. We aren't sure how they manage to park the trailers next to the sites. It would take parallel parking to whole new level.
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