Our RV Adventures

After getting up way too early (7 am) and Nick and I going down to the park office to settle up, we both headed out a little after 10 am, pointing our coaches towards the Lake Minden Thousand Trails RV Resort in Nicolaus, CA, about 25 miles north of Sacramento and about 200 miles from here.

When I went to bed last night, Nick and Terry, and Jan and I, were going our separate ways for about 3 weeks before meeting up at the Pacific City Thousand Trails in Oregon for a couple of weeks.

But apparently sometime during the night Nick got cold feet, or maybe he was afraid he’d break something else in the meantime, so by this morning he and Terry were also going to Lake Minden.

We pulled out a little after 10, hooked up our toads in front of the park office, and hit the road, heading first south, and then west to meet up with SR99 which took us another 170 miles thru Sacramento to the small (almost nonexistent) town of Nicolaus, CA.

Nick and Terry did stop for diesel in Ripon at a Flying J, while Jan and I just stayed out on the highway, pulled over on the wide paved shoulder. A lot better than going through all that traffic at the Flying J when I don’t have to.

We did have a small blip in trying to actually get to the park. It turned out that a new 4 lane road had opened, replacing the old two lane. And also removing the turnoff where we were supposed to exit. But luckily our GPS systems finally figured it out and got us to the park, although from the other direction.

We were quickly checked in, given our paper work, and found our way to our side by side sites. We had picked up some rain on the way in, but it had slacked off by the time we parked, and was just a light sprinkling.

In getting set up, Nick did have to jockey his rig around so that his rooftop satellite antenna could get a lock, while my portable dish was set up with no problems. So there, Nick!

Our daughter Brandi called while we were getting parked to give us the latest Landon news. Apparently since he got his first two teeth he want’s to tried them out on new foods, especially anything that Mommy and Daddy are eating. Whatever it is, he want’s some.

Around 4:30 we headed out to get something to eat for us. We were unsure whether to drive north to Yuba City, or south to Sacramento, as they were both about 25 miles away. But the nice young lady at the gate said we would find plenty of places to eat in Yuba City without the rush hour traffic of Sacramento. She also mentioned Lumberjack’s Restaurant, where they had really big platters of really good food.

I said “Say no more. You had us at ‘really big platters’”, and after thanking her, off we went.

I took us about 45 minutes to get there due to all the traffic in Yuba City. Who knew Yuba City had a rush hour too? But when we pulled into the parking lot, Nick and I knew we were home.

The sign out front said “Lumberjack’s Restaurant – Where the BIG boys eat!

Hey, what can I say? Our kind of place.

And the platters were really big, and the food was really good. Jan and Terry had Roast Turkey and Cornbread Dressing, Nick had a Ribeye Steak, and I had the Chicken Fried Steak.

We all raved over how every thing was perfectly seasoned and perfectly cooked. The salad bar was great, the dressings homemade and delicious.

Of course, Nick wouldn’t know. He doesn’t DO salad bars. He had two menus – Meat and Potatoes, or Potatoes and Meat. That’s it.

We finally got home a little before 7, and Nick immediately broke his crank-up rooftop TV antenna.

See I told you there was a reason he followed me up here.

I’ve repost some more of our Washington State trip last year.

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Thought for the Day:

Why isn’t there mouse-flavored cat food?

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Bloody Marys and Northern Exposures

Originally posted on May 22, 2010

Also forget to mention in yesterday’s post about the Bloody Marys that Al and I had at The Half Moon Bay restaurant last night

First off, they use peppered Stoli Vodka so it’s really hot and spicy. And they also include all the 5 basic food groups. In addition to the normal stalk of celery, we got a piece of Slim Jim, a piece of cheese, two steamed green beans, a pearl onion, a green olive, a cherry tomato, a boiled shrimp, and a lemon slice. By the time you finish the drink, you’re almost too full for supper.

We left the American Sunset RV in Westport, WA about 9 am after saying our goodbyes to our good friends, Al and Adrienne Cox. We first met them in Fairbanks, AK two years ago and have kept in touch ever since.

We only went about a quarter mile down the road where we stopped and got diesel at a local Chevron station. The station canopy said the height was 12’ 4”. Since the coach is 12’ high, I didn’t want to take a chance on scrapping it, so I dumped the air bags which dropped the coach height about 6”.

The only real problem I had is one I’ve had before. Slow fuel pumps. It took about 20 minutes to take on 115 gallons.

Finally we got back on the road and headed toward Cle Elum, WA, 195 miles away, our stop for the night.

About 11:30 am we stopped for lunch at the Super Buffet Chinese Buffet in Du Pont, WA, about 15 miles west of Tacoma. We saw their sign along the Interstate and decided to give it a try. We were just hoping we would be able find a place to park the rig. And we lucked up. We found a place right beside the restaurant.

And the buffet was really good. Maybe the best one since Yuma.

About 40 miles before Cle Elum we started seeing the mountains of Snoqualmie Pass, complete with a lot of snow.

We got into Whispering Pines RV Park in Cle Elum about 2:30 pm and got set up.

Well, everything got set up, except the satellite dish. There were a lot of trees and I just couldn’t get a good sight line.

So I gave up for a while, and about 3:45 pm we headed about 5 miles away to Roslyn, WA. .

Roslyn’s claim to fame is that it was the town of Cicely, AK in TV’s Northern Exposure.

And it’s all still there.

Ruth Anne’s store is still a store.

Dr. Joel Fleischman’s office is now a gift shop. We came here because Jan wanted to replace some of her Northern Exposure T-shirts that she wore out since we were here two years ago

And the iconic Roslyn Cafe is…still a cafe.

And of course, Chris’ KBHR studio, which still seems to be a TV show set.

And the Brick is still the Brick, although it looks completely different inside from what it did on the show.

We got back to the site about 4:45 and I started working on the satellite again. Finally I found a place about 50 feet out in front of the coach where I could get a signal through the trees.

Now Jan’s happy, so all’s right with the world.

Tomorrow we will head out for Coeur d” Alene, ID for a couple of days.

More then…

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Our heartfelt thanks go out to all our service men and women who gave their time, and in many cases their lives, to protect our country.

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Our last day here at Park of the Sierras started about 10 am with coffee and some of Miss Terry’s warm banana nut muffins, and more work on our trip schedule for the next couple of months. It looks like things are falling into place and we have a pretty good idea where we’ll be until about 21st of July. After that things become a little more foggy. But it’ll all work out. It always does.

Going outside I was able to successfully bypass the tail light converter and get the lights working. I’ll replace the converter while we’re at the Lake Minden Thousand Trails Resort north of Sacramento starting tomorrow.

About 12:45, Nick, Terry, Jan, and I drove over to the Chukchansi Casino to meet Rick Phillips for lunch at the buffet.

We first met Rick last Thursday when we visited the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad.

Rick is the conductor on the railway and we enjoyed meeting and getting to know him.

Rick and his wife Laurie have a lot here at Park of the Sierras, and have known Nick and Terry for a number of years. We met Rick’s wife Laurie at the railroad where she works in the Railroad Museum. She was suppose to meet us for lunch today, but she was feeling under the weather, so it was just Rick today.

I was looking forward to talking more with Rick about the YMSPRR’s equipment, since most readers know how much I like trains, both big and little.

Lunch took a little longer than we had planned since it was so busy due to the holiday, but it did give us more time to talk.

After a really good meal at the Casino buffet and Jan losing $20 in the slots, we said our goodbyes and drove into Oakhurst to drop off a Gypsy Journal for Terry Nevins at the Taste of China restaurant where we ate last night, and then Terry wanted to stop back by Von’s to pick up some more of the blueberries they had on sale.

Getting home, I went over to Nick’s and finished putting his water bay back together after working on his black valve leakage problem. Finishing that up I got out my air compressor and added some air to one of my tires that always seems to lose some when when we’re parked. Then it was in for the night.

Later in the evening, Jan served some of the Miss Terry’s Kringle from last night.

The perfect end to a great day.

I’ve reposted some more train stuff from our visit to Pennsylvania in July of 2009.

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Thought for the Day:

Why are they called apartments when they are all stuck together?

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Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, and more trains…

Originally posted on July 14, 2009

The indoor part of the Railroad Museum resembles a large railroad station, with multiple tracks full of trains.

This is the John Bull. It’s a replica of the first locomotive to run on a railroad in America.

In 1831 the first railroad was built between Philadelphia and New York and the John Bull was the engine. It’s hard to think now of how this revolutionized travel in the US.

It cut the travel time from Philadelphia to New York from 2 days by coach to 5 HOURS!. It’s hard to do that by car now.

I saw this same locomotive last week in the Smithsonian, but wasn’t able to get close enough to read the display due to the crowds. I was surprised to learn here that the one I had seen in the Smithsonian was the REAL John Bull, from 1831.

It ran a regular route until 1866, then traveled around the US on exhibitions until it was donated to the Smithsonian in 1884.

This beautiful example of a 2-6-0 Mogul locomotive carried silver ore on the Virginian & Truckee railroad in Nevada from 1875 to 1944.

The ’2-6-0′ type of nomenclature describes the layout of a locomotive’s wheels, and only applies to steam type locomotives.

The Mogul above has 2 small wheels up front, 6 drive wheels in the middle, and no small wheels in the rear. Thus, it is a 2-6-0.

This locomotive #7002, dates from 1902 and was the first one in regular service to exceed 100 mph.

Note that this one is a 4-4-2, although you can just barely see the 2 wheels under the tender at the far right of the photo.

Arguably the largest locomotive ever built was the ‘Big Boy’ built for the Union Pacific to pull large coal trains up and down the Rockies out West.

Note that this one is a 4-8-8-4. That’s a lot of wheels.

Below is a type of locomotive I’d never heard of.

This one is unusual in that it doesn’t have a boiler or generate its own steam. It’s basically just a big thermos bottle. It’s filled up with live steam from a stationary boiler and then operated, usually in the rail yard, until it needed to be refilled.

Outside was even better.

It was a rail yard full of more trains. And it has a real operating roundtable, used to move locomotives in and out of the yard.

Even more locomotives…

And a rail crane used to lift derailed engines and cars back on the track.

I’ve always been fascinated by the big steam engines and this was a great chance to see them up close.

Today was our last full day in Pennsylvania so we headed into Philadelphia to see some sights.

We started off with another duck tour with Ride The Ducks. Here we are hitting the Delaware River on our trip.

We saw Betsy Ross’ house, the site where William Penn first landed in Pennsylvania, and more.

After our tour, we had a Philly Cheesesteak from a street vendor before visiting Independence Hall,

And the Liberty Bell.

Finally, we headed home, stopping by Wal-mart on the way.

For dinner we did the smorgasbord at Miller’s again.

And then home to get ready to leave for NY tomorrow.