Leisure Travel Van Rally

We are in Waynesville NC attending a LTV rally. This is a first for us. This was supposed to be the last stop of our summer trip. When we start swapping war stories about our RVing adventures our experience losing the Forester seems to win the most outrageous award. There are around 55 LTVs here. This is the Carolinas Club. We are the only Beaufort attendees but Bluffton has a couple. There are a few scheduled events and breakfast and dinner get-togethers. We are here all weekend.

Tega Cay weekend

Fort Mill had a home game on Friday. We went to see the Twins perform. They were on the sidelines during the game and did a halftime routine. Fort Mill lost by a single point with just a minute remaining but the girls won halftime. Saturday we drove somewhere outside of Charlotte to watch a band competition. The Fort Mill HS Band is gigantic. There were 6 busses full of kids and an 18 wheel semi with their instruments. It was a spectical. Anyway, the Twins are on the dance team and they were part of the bands performance. Fort Mill won the overall award. That's fairly common. The Fort Mill Band has always been one of the best highschool bands in the state. 

Trip Stats

We hit the road on 5 August and returned on 21 September. We put 7,535 miles on the MP. Stayed at 6 State Parks, 17 commercial campgrounds, 1 Harvest Host and visited 5 National Parks. Fuel prices ranged from $3.30 to $6.49. Our milage shot up once we "lost" the car. Our average was 14-14.5 before "the incident" and averaged above 16 afterwards. We had one day coming out of the mountains where we hit over 17. Whoops! Actually, we shouldn't be home yet. We should still have a couple of weeks but as Forrest Gump said "Shit happens". The house is in good shape. The car's battery was dead and would barely accept a charge so I got a new battery this morning. MP oil change is scheduled for Wednesday and we have been researching replacement vehicles to tow. In other words, life goes on. I'll be signing off for a few days. We have a Leisure Travel Van rally in the NC mountains in 10 days. We signed up for it a long time ago and it was our planned last stop on this vacation. I might post from the rally. Don't hold your breath,you might pass out. Sayonara, for now.

South Point KOA Yemassee SC

This is our last stop. Tomorrow's day is only 35 miles. We have arranged to drop off the trailer before noon in Beaufort. This trip has been one for the record books. The first 5 weeks were great but the cascading series of events that occurred after that, were not. Will we be able to laugh about it in the future? Probably not but there is always dementia. The pics: Jenny took the fire pit pic yesterday. The other pic proves if anyone tries to fill my shoes it ain't gonna be easy.

Crossville KOA Tennessee

We are a little West of Knoxville. Still in the central time zone. We will lose our last hour right after we get going tomorrow. This is a nice KOA. Alot of grass, none of it smokable. I don't smoke so I suppose that's irrelevant. No excitement today except for Memphis and Nashville. Did you know that Tennessee is 440 miles across? That's further than I care to drive in one day. I think interstate 40 is still one lane in both directions West of Asheville. That should be fun. We are around 200 miles from Wild Turkey Lane. We're thinking with the time zone change we should arrive around 2 or 3ish. We'll let you know Pat, if we get rear-ended or some other calamity occurs. 

Memphis KOA

I've decided that my 3rd career is absolutely NOT going to be truck driver. Don't get me wrong, truck stops are really fun places and they are great places to buy beef jerky but there is way too much road noise. Is it normal for my feet to swell after sitting for 4 days? Today was uneventful. No periods of excitement. Flying airplanes consisted of long periods of excruciating boredom followed by brief periods of utter panic. That's what I'm used to. I need to get my heart rate and blood pressure up periodically. Truck driving is not cutting it. We are spitting distance from an interstate. When we checked in the young lady in the office offered us ear plugs at no charge. No, really, she did. We should be near Knoxville tomorrow. Pat, you can expect us to enter your driveway on Friday afternoon. No pictures were taken by me or anyone else today. I'll take a selfie so that you have something to look at.

Checotah/Lake Eufaula West KOA

Another day on I 40. This is Oklahoma. We frequently stay in KOAs because we know what we're getting. There are standards that are, for the most part, adhered to. With some of the family owned parks, booking a site is a crap shoot. This campground is a short walk from Lake Eufaula. Those weird geese have been roaming around the park all afternoon. They were acting aggressively when I tried to take their picture. This is day 4 of our driving adventure. We spent some time looking, this afternoon, at the remaining distance we need to travel. Sadly, it looks like 4 more days. Pat, there is a possibility we will spend a night with you in a few days. Tomorrow we will be near Memphis. 

The Big Texan RV Ranch

We are in Amarillo Tx. We lost an hour when we entered Texas so we didn't pull in here until around 5. Big Tex is apparently a big deal. There is a Big Tex steakhouse a Big Tex Brewery and a Big Tex motel. The RV Ranch is somewhat gaudy but I suppose that's to be expected from someone named Big Tex. We drove through a virtual forest of windmills getting here. The saying in the Panhandle is: "They ain't nutten to stop the wind between here and Canda sept bobwar fences." That's pretty close to what they say. Were still on I 40 but we're going to have to turn south eventually. We do not have a plan yet for tomorrow, we haven't fixed dinner yet but I'm on my second bourbon and coke. More tomorrow.

USA RV Park Gallup NM

Needles was at 1500 Ft. We drove through Flagstaff at 7000 Ft. Not sure about Gallup. It is cool here so there is probably some elevation. Interstate 40 follows the old Route 66 in the west. There are a lot of exits off of I 40 onto 66. We should be in The Texas Panhandle tomorrow. Haven't figured out where yet. We have seen a lot of trains that appear to be miles long paralleling the road. My butt can only take 400 miles a day apparently so that's what we are shooting for. More tomorrow.

Needles CA KOA

This place is in the Mojave Desert. When we crossed over the Sierra Nevada mountains and decended there was no doubt we were in a desert. It's pretty bleak. Before we checked in here we needed fuel and a Walmart. We had to cross the river into Arizona. Diesel in Needles is $6.23. Diesel in Fort Mojave AZ was $3.43. Crazy. I didn't take any pics today but I'll try to find something interesting. I found something. The twins at a football game.

Paso Robles day 2

I've always said that memories that you don't remember aren't worth having. Jenny and I have had a truly memorable couple of days. September 11th will forever have 2 meaning for us. Today we said goodbye to the Forester. We rented a trailer, pulled it to the salvage yard and loaded it with our stuff. The new bike rack and the new rooftop cargo box were prioritys. Our plan is to head East, avoiding Atlanta at all costs. I spent a portion of this afternoon cancelling our reservations for campgrounds we will not be visiting on this trip. We hope to be home in 8 days. Tomorrow is Needles CA.

Paso Robles CA

I hope everyone on the East Coast is asleep. We are not any where near Sequoia. We were headed that way on a rural 2 lane road that was pretty bumpy. One of the particularly bad bumps rocked the MP side to side. The accident in Oregon apparently weakened the tow plate under the Forester and the twisting moment broke the tow plate. The car broke free and careened over an embankment down a 60° slope for 150 feet. It didn't roll but it is totaled. We had it winched up the slope and towed here. There are several problems that we haven't had time to address yet. Some of them might not have a solution. We are tired but unharmed. The car broke free and crossed the oncoming lane of traffic. We are lucky there was no one in that lane. We will be busy tomorrow figuring things out. No need to call I'll keep blogging our plans.

Pinnacles day 3

That pine cone comes from a Towani Pine. The only pine tree in the park seems to be that kind. That's quite a difference from

the Coastal Redwood. We did 2 hikes today, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. We especially wanted to visit Bear Gulch Cave. It's not really a cave but it's a huge rock slide with some of the rocks being as big as a house. The CCC, using a lot of imagination, constructed a trail going up down, around and through the this pile of rocks. This was done in 1930, so nearly 100 years ago. We move tomorrow to a commercial campground near Kings Canyon and Sequoia.

Pinnacles day 2

Those acorns are from a Valley Oak. Google claims it's the largest oak in North America. I'm not so sure about that. There is a woodpecker out here that eats acorns. It drills holes in dead wood and stores acorns in the holes. Unsurprisingly that bird is called an Acorn Woodpecker. We had a great hike today. Very scenic most of the time and a little sketchy some of the time. See pics. More tomorrow.

Pinnacles National Park

This is the least visited National Park in California. We drove through miles and miles of farmland to get here. Square miles of grape vines. The park is divided into East and West half's. There is no road that connects the two. We are camped on the East side and will probably stay here all three nights. There are plenty of sights to see here. Apparently this park is home to many California Condors. We will keep our eyes open for a possible sighting. We were able to find the Dish satellites so we have TV but our T-Mobile hotspot is pretty weak. I am going try to post this. We'll see.

Placerville RV Resort day 2

Another great day visiting with Rick and Chris. We drove into Folsom in their Tesla and had lunch. The Tesla appears to be a video game that you can drive. Pretty cool. Placerville was the center of the California gold rush, in fact, just a few miles from here is Sutters Mill, where gold was first discovered. That discovery was the the start of the invasion of California by the 49ers. Tomorrow we move south to Pinnacles National Park. Our route will take us back through Sacramento in order to get us back on interstate 5. It wasn't fun the first time. We will leave a little later to avoid the morning rush. 

Placerville RV Resort

We made it here unscathed. The drive through Sacramento was a white knuckle adventure. Our friends Rick and Chris Arkus served us a absolutely gourmet meal on their back patio. The Chicken was melt in your mouth tender. It was California, free range, organic, fed baby formula and gently massaged daily by specially 

 trained chicken masseuses. Yum. Thanks for the great meal.

Lassen Volcanic day 3

I didn't mention this yesterday but this park burned in 2021. The second largest fire in California history (The Dixie Fire) burned 963,000 acres, 74,000 of them in this park. 69% of the park burned. Miles and miles of blackened dead pine trees. We hiked today through the burn to see a waterfall. Not ideal but the burn scar is everywhere and is hard to avoid. We move tomorrow to a commercial campground near Folsom to visit with some expats from Habersham. I'm hoping they have beer.

Shingletown KOA

I'm going to start off with yesterday's fiasco. Since we no longer can use a bike rack, we have to put Jenny's unrideable bike in the car and my bike in the MP when we're moving. I took off the front wheel of both bikes to facilitate getting them loaded. When I walked out to start breaking camp my bike was gone. Some asshole stole it, without a front tire. I filled out police report but it's gone. Ok, that cost us an hour or so. The car brake is acting weird when we hook it up to the tow brake. We needed a sabaru dealer. We found one, somewhat out of the way, and they didn't believe it was possible to flat tow a Sabaru. No one had ever heard of such a thing. No can do. Long story short, they looked at the car and determined I was insane. We are now towing the car without a brake in the car. Totally illegal. Subject change: We are here to visit Lassen Volcanic National Park. We did that today. 2 excellent hikes. There is a thermal area here, kinda like Yellowstone except it only covers 25 acres. I'll post some pics. More tomorrow.

Mystic Forest day 4

Today we did 7 miles of hiking through a primeval forest. It was like Jurassic Park or some alien planet on Star Wars. In fact one of the Star Wars movies had a scene filmed in one of the groves here. The trail was somewhat gnarly. We were completely alone having our own adventure. A fantastic hike. I'd put that hike in my top 10. Tomorrow we move to a KOA near Lassen Volcanic National Park. We will be there for 3 days. I have no idea if we will have cell. A bit of trivia: The largest conifer tree on earth has the smallest pine cone. Big things sometimes come in small packages.

Mystic Forest day 3

Today we did the big trees. We drove a little south and hiked into Lady Bird Johnson Grove. Surreal! Some of those trees are taller than a football field is long. It was a spiritual experience to walk among those giants. Only 4% of the original old growth Redwoods remain. The rest were logged. 7000 acres of clear cut is now protected and in 200 years it will start to recover.

Mystic Forest day 2

Went out this morning to get something out of the car and it wouldn't unlock. Battery was dead. Apparently while loading Jenny's bike in the back of the car we hit a light switch in the ceiling that turned a ceiling light on and kept it on. I charged it back up but COME ON!!! Enough already. We visited a commercial big tree place, kind of a tree Disneyland, first. It was sort of OK. We then did a hike above a beach followed by lunch (Calamari Steaks) in Crescent City. There are appearing and disappearing patches of fog that we experienced all day. Sometimes photo ops materialize.

Mystic Forest RV Park

We are in California, right off of hwy 101. Before I delv into what has been happening I'll list some stats from our visit to Crater Lake. It is the deepest lake in N America 1943 feet. It is 6 miles wide and holds 5 trillion gallons of water. There is no watershed so it gets all its volume from the 533 inches of snow that fall on it every winter. The water is so pure the park service says you can drink it and it is so clear visibility is 143 feet, which is a world record. You might have noticed I didn't post yesterday. We spent the day visiting waterfalls and we got back late and we had no cell or wifi so that's what happened. On our drive here there was a car flashing it's lights at us on a rather twisty mountain road. Turns out one side of the bent trailer hitch broke and the bike rack was dangerously dangling to one side. We had to put one bike in the car and one bike in the MP. We are not sure if this is easily fixable and even if it is we are up against the Labor Day weekend. We are here to visit some of the remaining giant Redwood trees that have been preserved in this part of California. There is a tree behind the MP that is, without a doubt, taller than any tree in SC. More tomorrow ---maybe.

another pic

 

Crater Lake day 3

We had 2 main events today. First we did a 2 hour narrated trolley tour that covered a good chunk of the perimeter road followed by lunch in the lodge. After our lunch settled we did a couple of hikes. There is a monster fire burning North of here. That is a picture of the fire plume. Someone carved "The Lady of the woods" into that rock for reasons that are lost to time but the trail to her is through an old growth forest. We might go look at some waterfalls tomorrow.

Crater Lake day 2

Today was devoted to finding a solution. We had the car checked out in Klamath Falls (80 miles). Couldn't find a bike rack there so drove to REI at Medford (80 miles) and drove back to Diamond Lake, where we are camped, through the park (another 80 miles). Our situation is not back to normal but things are workable. Find some wood and knock on it. Hopefully we'll spend the next 2 days in the park. From what we saw today, it is spectacular. More tomorrow.