Roger Engdahl and Susan Green

Into Wyoming, Gros Ventre Campground, Grand Teton NP, 9/2/2015

We left Idaho Falls by nine in the A of M. We were one day ahead of our scheduled arrival at Colter Bay which is about 45 miles north of Jackson, WY. Gros Ventre campground is the first campground into the park, about 8 miles from Jackson. RV accomodations like everything in Jackson are beyond comprehension expensive. Gros Ventre (it is the name of a Native American tribe in this area, pronounced Grow Vaan) campgound is first come first served and usually had space at noon. That was our target.

The highway from Idaho Falls across towards Jackson followed the Snake River and by the large Palisades reservoir. I was expecting more of a challenging drive but it was good roads, not big grades up or down and very little traffic.

The pictures with the dates are from our dash cam. Pretty good I think. It takes a continuous high definition movie as we drive along along with recording real time speed, direction, GPS coordinates and three axis accelerations. When we play them back we see what the camera saw and we can follow our progress on Google maps. These fill up a 32GB memory card in six hours and then start overwriting the oldest files. They are easy to save the files and get stills from the video.

We drove into Jackson. We were here in 1980. This is not the Jackson we remember.

Ranting rises up …

It is now just like every other tourist mecca. Sort of like a Cowboy Las Vegas. No grocery stores, no Target, no Walmart, some over priced gas stations, dozens of tourist related merchantile stores, many very expensive art galleries, many over priced, under quality food venues, extraordinarily pricey RV resorts, hotels, motels, lodges, (35 for a town of 9,000) condos, ski wear, cowboy wear and people comically over dressed to impress the art dealers. Another out west town gone to retail tourist trade and the over-the-top trade to the ultra rich. I guess there really isn’t much left out here other than that so milk it while you can. And then there are the multi-million dollar show homes where the dozens of private jets at the local airport have brought the art gallery shoppers for their annual one week visit. Susan says I am being a bit overdramatic. Indeed! In this small once ranch town the median home price is $749,000. Where do all of the ranch hands live? Can they?

John D Rockefeller brought his family to the Jackson Hole (Hole = Valley) area to see the Teton Range in 1926. He was so shocked by the gaudy tourist trade, the prostitutes, the bars, the gambling casinos and all that had settled in the area that he set out to buy everything in the valley that he could. Over time he bought up more than 35,000 acres. When the park was established in 1929 it only included the mountains themselves and the glacial lakes at their base to the east. Rockefeller tried to donate all that he had purchased to the park but it took until 1943 for President Roosevelt to accept the donation by making it a National Monument thus sidestepping a congress unwilling to do anything. It took until 1950 for the original National Park and the National Monument to be merged into the Grand Teton National Park as it is today. There are still small ranches and private holdings within the Park boundaries. Some of these are private homes, some are operated as Dude Ranches. Wouldn’t Jeff Bridges be proud.

So somewhere along the way a robber barron did right by us all. We should be thankful for everyone’s efforts to protect areas like this. It is just stunningly beautiful. Away from what happens in Jackson it becomes a place to enjoy what is here. In Some places there are more people trying to enjoy it than others but find that spot only a few hundred yards from everyone else and you can be alone in the quiet beauty and amazing mountains so close.

Ranting subsides …

The town square is still there with the elk antler arches.

Now, this is like many old western towns. The center of town, where people meet and gather. This one had a fence all around to keep people out except through the gates and along the diagonal sidewalks and a small place to sit in the middle. We are pretty sure there were no other benches. It was a photo opportunity. We compared it to the vibrant and full of life Plaza in Santa Fe. There is no camparison.

We drove our coach right through town. The picture above from the dash cam was while we were turning the corner. Another mile of gaudy commercialism (well, there I go again) to the park boundary past the edge of the National Elk Refuge and our first views of the Teton Range and another three miles to the turn to Gros Ventre Campground.

Check in at Gros Ventre was easy.

A nice campsite.

Color is starting in the Park.

And over the glacial moraines that formed the sides of the Gros Ventre River valley, the Tetons poked up.

The next morning, Thursday, 9/3 we move to Coulter Bay. Internet service here is slow but I hope to show in pictures what we will see as much as words.

More to come,

Roger and Susan

Idaho Falls, 9/1/2015

We left Caldwell, Idaho about 11 AM. Took the opportunity to do some laundry. Then headed east somewhat following the Snake River on I84 then I86 and then I15. We were maybe 50 miles from where we were last month in the sand dunes. The routes east and west are limited.

This part of Idaho is big rolling hills. Mostly grass land.

We passed a major milestone, 70,000 miles. When we bought the coach in May, 2011 it had about 41,000 miles. We will pass our 30,000 mile soon.

There were some very large birds flying ahead of us. Never really figured out what they were.

One area we passed was a very jagged lava flow area sparsely covered with grasses and sagebrush.

And then we got to Idaho Falls. We saw the Snake River several times but going east it seemed like much less often than when we followed this route going west.

We had two Camp Walmart options, one right next to Interstate 15. Easy to get to but usually more noise. The other was maybe eight miles through the city to Ammon, sort of a suburb I guess. This one was nice. An older Walmart, now supercenter with a big wide open parking lot. The Walmart in Bend had a maze of narrow lanes, lots of conrete curb barriers.

So we pulled in over on the Garden Center end where they seem to usually want RVs to go. There already was another RV there. We got a nice spot next to the grass.

It was green here, lots of watering.

By the time we had gone into Walmart, walked all over and stocked up for our two week stay in the Tetons/Yellowstone there were more RVs including one from France. It seems that on every trip we go on now we see European built RVs. They seem very well built, quite compact. They must ship them over here and travel in North America for a long time. We saw one two winters ago built in France. The folks said it was shipped to Canada. They flew over and were on a world wide tour that they expected to last a year or more.

Tomorrow we head east through the pass towards Alpine, WY and then north towards the Tetons.

More later,

Roger and Susan

East Towards Wyoming 8/30 – 8/31/2015

We left the Oregon coast on Sunday. 18 days went by way too fast, next time at least a month. It rained on and off most of Saturday so we got the out door tasks done. Good thing, it rained steady all night Saturday. By Sunday morning it had stopped, we did the last few things we needed to do and were on the road by shortly after nine.

Heading south on US 101 once we got past Tillamook, was much better than the part from 26 coming west from Portland and then south on US 101. Most of this road going south from Tillamook had been repaved so the ride was better. It is still a narrow winding road with some turnouts and generally little or no shoulders. We were headed to Oregon 18 which heads east towards Salem from Otis and then connects to Oregon 22 through Salem and continues east.

Diesel in Oregon is $.30 to $.50 more than any where else we have been on this trip. Typically it ranges from $2.99 to $3.59. So we were surprised to find diesel at two stations in Salem for $2.37. Seems there was some competition going on. A third station across the street was at $3.59, not playing. Gasoline was not on sale. $3.39 for regular, $3.89 for premium. And you cannot pump your own gas here so we occupied a lot of their space while we took on 107 gallons.

Oregon 22 is a two lane road in good shape with reasonable shoulders. It heads up into the central mountains and connects to US 20 (another good two lane road) that rises through the 4700 ft McKenzie Pass just before you get to Sisters, OR and then down into Bend, OR.

Before you get to the mountains it is pretty flat, few trees, sort of like lots of places out west, dry and covered with sagebrush.

TX, AZ, NM? Hard to tell.

And then the west slope of the central mountains, big trees, lots of trees. And it rained most of the way up. They really need rain. It is very dry.

Normally this river (South Yamhill) would fill the picture side to side.

Everything that is brown here would normally be under water.

Water levels at this dam are about 50′ low.

Cloudy, misty, rain. Steep climbs, slow turns, traffic not too bad. The coach did just fine on both the uphill and down hill parts.

There are a series of dams and powerplants as well headed towards the pass.

Susan’s favorite part, nothing but nothing on the right.

And then over the pass, down hill, much drier, very few trees and grassland.

Sisters, OR looked interesting but very much manufactured for the tourist trade. It reminded us of Durango, CO. We went on to Bend and stayed at Camp Walmart.

From Bend going east towards Ontario there is another 4,800 ft pass. And then a long downhill winding path towards Ontario. All of this is two lane, 55 mph. Good road, not much traffic.

As you get towards Ontario the land gets very flat, mainly because they graded it that way for flood irrigation. Many years ago they grew a lot of grass seed out this way. Now it is the onion capital of the world, or so they claim. Over 1 billion pounds of onions from this area every year. Irrigation canals, pipe lines and equipment everywhere. Even the John Deere dealer had equipment that was quite odd, specialized for the onion growers.

The dirt looks like light, gray plowed up mud. It is hard to imagine anything would grow in it but with enough water onions must.

We stopped just past Ontario in an old RV park full of museum aged rvs. It is OK. Lots of folks just living here in old RVs that will likely never move again. Doing some laundry this AM.

A shorter drive to Idaho Falls today and then over another pass into the Tetons on Wednesday morning.

More later,

Roger and Susan

Foretravel Forum Folks

While we were at the coast we had a chance to meet some folks from the Foretravel Forum. It is always fun to do, we sort of know them from the Forum but getting to actually meet someone is great.

Dick S as he is known on the Forum is Dick Shanahand and his wife is Rocky. They are 14 year full timers and have a 40 ft Foretravel, a popular size for full timers. They were staying in a Thousand Trails campground up in Seaside, OR about 20 miles north of us and drove down one day for a visit and lunch. Dick agreed to bring desert and he experimented on us with his first flan baked in a silicone baking dish. It was fabulous. Dick and Rocky were very easy to get to know. It was interesting to hear about their full time life. It is mobile but almost in slow motion. There is no hurry to travel although in 14 years they have.

The Old Hippie as Rick Webster is known and his wife Debbie have a 36′ Foretravel. They also came for a visit. I first met Rick on the Forum when they were looking for a coach. They have had their coach now for two and a half years. We have missed them by one or two days this year alone in three places and so when we were both in Oregon at the same time we really made an effort to connect. They came to Oregon thinking they would be able to just go from place to place finding a spot to stay where ever they went. They found out that this is really hard on the coast in the summer. Everything is almost 100% full. They found a place in Lincoln City for a few days and then were moving down to Newport. They wanted to see more of the northern coast so they drove up for a visit. We had a great visit, a nice lunch thanks to Susan and a a lemon cake that Rick and Debbi brought. They are busy travelers, lots of shorter trips, getting longer. And still more shorter stays also getting longer. They also were nice folks, easy to talk to and fun.

So for us we got to see both ends of the spectrum. Long time full timers and fairly new owners. We are somewhere in between. We are taking longer trips, staying in place for longer and are getting comfortable moving less often, for less distance and taking more time to be where we are.

It was fun to make connections. There are many more to make. We are signed up for the Grand Vention, a gathering of Foretravels, in Indiana in October. There should be about 120 of them there, more than half are Forum members.

More later,

Roger and Susan

Eggs Mex Benny

Here is a really yummy breakfast. Eggs Mex Benny. Very much like what we have had at the Delta Diner in Wisconsin.

The biscuits are great by themselves, warm with butter or honey. An open faced biscuit topped with cheesy scrambled eggs or a poached egg and then a couple big spoons of gravy and some melty cheese, maybe a bit of salsa, a slice of ripe tomato or avacado is wonderful.

This is my adaptation of a recipie I found on-line. Thanks to the original poster.

Green Chile Cheddar Biscuits and Chorizo Gravy with Eggs

Ingredients

Biscuits

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon sugar

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

4 ounces (1 stick) chilled butter, cut into small cubes

1 1/2 cups shredded sharp Cheddar or more

3/4 cup finely diced green chiles, (mild or as hot as you want) Canned is fine.

1 cup well drained whole kernel corn (I like kernals cut from roasted corn on the cob)

3/4 cup buttermilk

1 egg, lightly beaten

Chorizo Gravy

2 ounces (1/4 cup) vegetable oil

1/2 onion, diced

3/4 cup finely diced green chiles (mild or as hot as you want) Canned is fine

3 cloves garlic, chopped

12 ounces chorizo, chopped (about 3 sausage links or bulk) We like spicy hotter chorizo.

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

2 cups chicken stock

1/2 cup heavy cream

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Eggs

Cheesy scrambled eggs or poached eggs

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Cotija (Monterey jack, or any melty white cheese) cheese

Salsa, ripe tomato, avacado.

What to Do

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Biscuits

Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a food processor. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Transfer to a bowl and stir in the cheese, corn and chiles. In a separate bowl, whisk together the buttermilk and beaten egg. Add the liquid mixture to the flour mixture and thoroughly combine until the dough forms a ball.

You can do all of this by hand, of course. Butter lumps in the biscuits melt while baking.

Flour a dry work surface so the dough doesn’t stick to it. Roll the dough out to 1/2-inch thickness. Using a medium round cookie cutter (3″ or so) cut out biscuits and place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake until golden, about 13 minutes.

Chorizo gravy

Heat the vegetable oil in a medium saucepan and sweat the onions until translucent. Add the chiles and garlic and cook for 3 minutes. Add the chorizo and cook until browned. Add the flour and cook for 3 minutes, stirring frequently. Stir in the chicken stock and bring to a light boil over medium to high heat. Simmer for 15 minutes to cook out the raw flour taste. Adjust the consistency with cream. Season with salt and pepper.

To serve, plate up the warm biscuits (one or two per serving) and top with eggs, chorizo gravy, cotija cheese and then salsa, tomatoes or avacado to taste.

Pretty darn good.

More from Nehalem Bay State Park, 8/17 – 8/30/2015, Part 4

Bits and Pieces

We walk through the campground every day, often after supper. There are yurts here, about 24 of them I think.

They are like tents on platforms but have a simple interior wooden structure. They have electricity, an electric heater, a table and chairs, a futon like couch/bed and a full sized/twin sized bunk bed. The outside deck is covered and has a picnic table with a ramp leading up to it. They are $15/night more than a regular campsite. There are two where you can have a pet for an extra $10/night. Every one was occupied every night we were here.

Actually, the park ranger said that every site was reserved and paid for every night we were here. A very few were vacant but that is because the reservation holder was delayed or did not show up. If a site is unoccupied for two nights they call to find out if the site can be released. Even the camping area for hikers and bikers was mostly full every night.

There are many here from British Columbia. Three of the five campground hosts are from BC. Lots from Washington.

And cats seem to get special attention.

Crabs

One day we drove down to Garibaldi at the north end of Tillamook Bay. It is a big fishing port. Lots of boats and a great restaurant for fresh fish, the Fisherman’s Corner and a good place to buy fresh fish, the Garibaldi Cannery. We stopped there to get crab, four 2 lb crabs to be exact. And it was about $80. They were cooked and on ice. The lady who was working that day had her nine year old daughter helping out. The young gal finished cleaning the crab (remove the top shell and the nasty bits inside and on a few, the nasty bits outside). We loaded it into a cooler and headed for Judy and Bruce’s place. Sorry no pictures were allowed. The table was covered in several layers of the New York Times, plates, drinks, bowls full of crabs ready to be torn asunder and bowls at the ready to receive the refuse. It was so messy that no one wanted to touch their camera. It was all fingers, fists, wrists and elbows until the poor fellows had given their all. And empty bowl on one side, shards filled the other bowl. I think they had to hose off the deck after we were done.

Eggs Mex Benny

Susan and I made Eggs Mex Benny one morning for the four of us. They are a fluffy, buttery buttermilk biscuit with sharp cheddar cheese, roasted corn and spicy chopped green chilis topped with cheesy scrambled eggs or poached eggs and a bold chorizo sausage gravy, a melty white mexican cheese and salsa.

The table (cleaned after the attack of the crab eaters) ready in full color.

And Eggs Mex Benny. Yum.

Wanda’s for Breakfast

A local favorite is Wanda’s in Nehalem mostly for breakfast but lunch too. We got there at 10:00 hoping for breakfast at 10:30. If was closer to 10:45. Which is pretty normal.

No need to be impatient. No more pictures, just eating. It was worth the wait.

Burritos

Cool hot poster. There was a great burrito shop. Giant two person burritos for $6.50. No sales tax in Oregon.

Stormy Weather

And the last couple days we were here it was stormy.

But the deer fawns don’t seem to mind.

We are leaving in the morning and are almost all ship shape and Bristol fashion. A couple quick things in the morning and we will be ready for a 9 ish departure. Off towards Bend, OR then Ontario, OR then Idaho Falls, ID and finally up to the Grand Tetons National Park and Yellowstone National Park. Four days on the trail, trying to avoid where we have been and the fires.

Lots more from there, I hope the internet connections and speed are better.

Roger and Susan

More from Nehalem Bay State Park, 8/17 – 8/30/2015, Part 3

Riding the Trails

Nehalem Bay State Park has lots of different parts. Camping, the beach … miles of beach, an airport, the bay, fresh water fishing, salt water fishing, a boat launch, a day use area and access to the ocean from the river mouth at the south end of the park. And then you can ride your bike or walk into Mazanita, less than two miles away. There is a nice bike trail through the park too.

Most of it is paved, the rest, gravel. It goes through the small inland sand dunes that are covered in many kinds of grasses (Scotch Broom and European beachgrass) and pine trees (Shore and Maritime).

These plants cover the low dunes between the campgrounds and the bay and the high dunes between the campground and the ocean beaches.

The trail comes out on the bay.

And the river.

And the airport runway.

And then back into the campground where everyone seems to bring everything.

Including a refrigerator.

Lots of folks have boats and crabbing equipment. The commercial season is over but not for individuals. And they are catching and cooking crab. Probably the reason for the refrigerator.

And then out to the beach for some kite flying. Very windy this evening. Cool.

And Bruce

And the string.

And the sun goes down on another day.

More later,

Roger and Susan

More from Nehalem Bay State Park, 8/17 – 8/30/2015, Part 2

Riding the Rails

There is a small railroad, The Oregon Coast Scenic Railroad, located at Garibaldi at the north end of Tillamook Bay. They have train rides that go south along the bay, north past Rockaway Beach up to Nehalem and from Wheeler on Nehalem Bay up the Salmonberry River. Some of these are just rides, some are dinner rides, some are in open cars and some in old passenger cars.

We signed up for the three hour trip from Wheeler up the Salmonberry river. You can get a box lunch provided if you want or bring your own. We brought our own. We got to Wheeler (about 5 miles from the campground) at the appointed time and the conductor told us that the trip up the Salmonberry River had been scrubbed due the the high risk of fire. But they we going to go up the Nehalem River, the route they take for their Fall color trips. We could go on that one or get our money back. Well, we were all there ready for a train adventure so all aboard!

The engine was a 1960’s Great Northern Locomotive. It got stranded on the Oregon coast twenty years ago when a landslide took out the tracks heading north, its only way out. So it was stuck down here for many years. The Scenic railroad finally had a chance to buy it and get it running again.

They also have three operating steam locomotives.

Off we went.

More exciting for some than others.

Through the woods and valleys.

Yes, that is smoke, lots of smoke, enough to make your eyes water and your throat raspy. Massive fires in Washington, more than 1/2 million acres are burning. A huge fire near Bend Oregon and the even bigger John Day fire in central Oregon. This past winter’s snow pack in the mountains was about 10% of normal, much less rain in the coastal mountains and the Willamette Valley and much warmer than normal temps.

We ate our lunch on the way up the valley. We got as far as we could and stopped. The engine disconnected and switched on to a parallel siding and backed down hill and then came up behind the train to reconnect so that they could pull us back down. That was the plan anyway.

The front of the locomotive couldn’t connect to the other end of the train. So after several tries they went back around to the front of the train, connected there and pushed us back down. Took some extra time but who was in a hurry.

When we got back to Wheeler …

Susan and I went to visit an Art Deco antique store. What a knock out! The owner claimed he had the largest collection of Art Deco collectable stuff in the US. No way to judge but there was room after room of amazing stuff. We are familiar with the style, not exactly our style or time frame of preference, but this was amazing.

And there was a fantastic fabric shop where Susan spied some old style heavy oil cloth that she figured would make a great picnic table cloth. The store was mostly about quilting, hundreds and hundreds of bolts of beautiful quilting fabrics, lots of quilts hanging on the walls, a sewing machine near the front window busy sewing. They had some silky soft faux-leather upholstery fabric that caught my eye.

So another adventure. It makes us want to take the train from Duluth up the North Shore, something on our list for a long time, something we will do sooner than later now.

More later,

Roger and Susan

More from Nehalem Bay State Park, 8/17 – 8/30/2015

Wow, almost two weeks here at the Oregon coast have flown by. It seems like we have been busy all day, every day.

I am going to try to catch up. Judy and Bruce left yesterday. They have a big wedding to go to. We spent most of yesterday on the beach. Internet access and speed here is not great especially uploading so I am goimg to try to do a few shorter blog entries (what I was planning on doing all along but busy got in the way).

Hug Point

One day we drove up to Hug Point. Parking was very limited and we were there at low tide, a popular time. When the tide is out you can walk around two points to the north, each revealing another beach and one to the south. Many years ago before there were roads along the coast and travel was mainly along the beaches a road was blasted through one of the points to let wagons through. You can still see where the road went.

Well sort of. On the left you can see the notch where the road went through the rocks. Big high cliffs here and lots of caves.

There is a waterfalls here too but it has been so dry around here that the little dribble hardly made the rocks wet.

Most of this coastline is volcanic in history. The Pacific tectonic plate is pushing under the coast line, push it up, bending it, folding it and forcing the coastal mountain range up. Mount St Helens is maybe 100 miles from here.

We brought a picnic and our kites. Not much wind though.

Hunter (12) needed something other than his phone to do. So I took the two walking sticks and stuck them in the sand about 30 ft apart and said “Lets play horseshoes!”. Hunter says we don’t have horse shoes so I say lets use sandals. OK. After some negotiation about how many points we were going to play to we got started. It took several tosses before we started to get the hang of it, how to hold the sandal, how much oomph it needed. The game was on. We were almost to the end of the first game and I said this is just the first round, wait until you see the second one. So after round one, round two was the same game but we had to face the other way and toss the sandals backwards and over our heads. Why not? Nothing beats fun for having a good time.

See the flying sandal? That is a round with Bruce. It was fun and different. Maybe a bit goofy but just what two people whose average age is 39 needed to do.

More later,

Roger and Susan

Nehalem Bay State Park, 8/17 – 8/30/2015

We made the long drive (35 miles) from Netarts Bay north up to Nehalem Bay State Park. This park is right on the ocean (a dune between the campground and the beach) and has 307 campsites, a large horse camp, a small airport and airport camping and many miles of ocean beach. Nehalem Bay is where the Nehalem River flows into the ocean. There is fresh water fishing in that part of the bay.

Right near the park is the small town of Manzanita and the smaller town of Nehalem and the even smaller area called Neahkahnie. My sister, Judy, and her husband, Bruce, own a quarter share of a beach house in Neahkahnie. They are here now while we are at the State Park and their son Eric’s family (Cyndi, Victoria and Hunter) are with them through this weekend.

At the beach house it is a lot of interaction with mobile devices.

I did manage to get Hunter and Bruce to fly kites.

The campsites are reasonbly well spaced and have trees. Our site has shade almost all day long.

The beach is just over the dune on a path that starts out in the trees, climbs over the dune and then out on to the beach.

The beach here is several miles long and very wide and flat. Even with the dune between us and the surf we can hear it all night long. Nice.

Judy and Bruce’s place is up towards the far end of the beach in Neahkahnie. They are one street up from the beach and have a great view.

The other end is a long way away.

We walked almost to their place along the beach and back one day. That was a 14,000 step day. The next day we walked out from the State Park and into Manzanita and then to their place all along the bike route so we knew where that went. That was a 15,000 step day.

We saw deer along the way on a watered lawn. They seem completely unconcerned with people.

We had a campfire and a weenie roast the day before the state wide burning ban went into effect. I baked home made hot dog buns as an experiment. They were good.

More to do, more to come, Later.

Roger and Susan