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9 July - 13 July 2010

I visited my most dear family and friends in California. A very long overdue visit. I feel much better for it, yet .... I miss them already.

Kim was surprised that the smog obscured the mountain in this photo even out in San Bernardino. It didn't look like too bad of a day in southern California to me. We are going to bypass LA. Next stop Sequoia National Park.The weather has been typical southern California weather, hot during the day, and it cools off really nicely in the evening. We find the heat in California especially in the high desert areas to be much more tolerable for the same temperature as in Florida because of the lack of humidity. We had of a high of 98 today, now it is half past 6, and the temperature had dropped to 89, the low this evening is forcasted to be 68 degrees, humidity is 26%.

You can imagine all the small towns we go through on this trip. At each one, we wonder what makes this little settlement or village tick. Sometimes it is just a crossroads, or a grain elevator, a railroad crossing or an old trading post that a town grew up around. But most of the time we have no idea why the people chose to live there. Some of the places are just so remote and desolate, it seems that it would be an extreme hardship to live there...... but many people do. At times when we do stop we ask around and sometimes we find out the history or the reason people live there. The last place we asked, there was silver mining in the area. The time before the native woman explained that the indentation on the large ceramic jars she was selling was there to make it more comfortable on their heads as they carried water from the cystern. A young man in Yermo working at a campground said he had always lived there, liked it, and thought it was a good place to raise a family. There are some little things that are nice when you are on the road. In the campgrounds, all the fellow campers always wave when you pass. Everyone we meet or talk to offer good information on things to do or see if you ask. .

14 July 2010 On the road again to Sequoia...... Well we didn't quite make it, heck I'll let Kim explain.So we made it up 99 to near Visalia, took some farm roads to the main road into the park, then about 14 miles to the main road and another 14 miles up steep roads, turns and close calls. I'm like, this road isn't for campers, what were they thinking. So we finally made it to the main gate of the national park. Oh.. you can't come in this way, there is construction and your rig is too long. You will have to go in the other gate.. Yeah.. that's about an hour and a half, two hours away. WHAT! Go up ahead and get directions and you will be able to turn around. So we go in, get directions. Have to go back the way we came and go up another road. Bob checks the transmission fluid and we are down.. a lot and it's running hot. Worried, but not too worried. I'm so mad. What, couldn't have put a sign back 14 miles ago to let us know not to go this way jackass. AND there is no good place to turn around. It's made for cars. OK.. so we go back the way we came. We are both mad, hot and tired at this point. Been driving since 10am and now it's 4pm.

Up the road we go. It's an out of the way road. No lines, lights or people for that matter. Up hill almost all the way. Then the transmission is hotter than hell and we need to turn around and go back. Well the road is made for one car going one way and there are people randomly coming in the other direction. Good thing cause if we break down there is no cell service. We are out in the middle of nowhere. I'm still cursing the girl at the park, dumb ass.. this still is not a good road for anyone but a small car. We were almost run off the road.

Now we are even more tired, it's getting even hotter out, over 100. Gypsy has no clue what's going on. So we've now gone through 3 quarts of transmission fluid and we are out. Bob is freaking out. Finally we find a small place to turn around. He does it. We pull over to let it cool off. Seconds go by and a truck pulls up. Nice man, willing to go get fluid for us and come back. We ended up following him down the hills. Transmission did great on the way down, cooler and not puking fluid. I'm like what?? We make it to the bottom and to a gas station. Oh yeah.. we are almost out of gas too.

The man, Tom a firefighter, got us directions to a car shop and told us a KOA campground was just down the road, to park it and get some rest and go get it fixed in the morning. Sigh.. Ha.. the KOA was 18 miles a way!

So we pull in get a site. Told them at the front desk, nice couple from NY who are moving to Lakeland FL for the winter that we had problems and I wasn't sure how long we would be here. He said. "wait, someone here just had there truck serviced and let me get that info for you". We are driving to our site and here comes the guy with a name, phone number and address for us. Wow, what service! Then after we pull up the guy who had his truck worked on pulls up. Hey let me look at that for you. All I work on is diesel trucks. He's from Bradenton FL. Wow.. Anyway, he got under the truck and took a look and said what the trouble was and that he could fix it. That's what he does for a living and he just moved here from FL.

15 July 2010The truck is fixed. It wound up being a cracked transmission line. Luckily I have a temperature gauge that indicated something was wrong and I was able to nurse it back out of the mountains yesterday. It sure was nice of that firefighter, Tom to offer to help go get fluid if needed, and follow us on in to town. On level flat land it did well temperature wise even hauling the trailer. The new part is a little different, it seems Chrysler improved it by adding a flexible connection on one of the ends. Vibration won't crack the line any longer. I decided to test the truck out by going back up into the park without pulling the trailer. I don't think anyone has any business pulling a camper up the grades in that park. None of the literature states this, but they do turn you around at the gate. The truck did fine, and we had a chance to see some of the most magnificent living things on earth. We saw the General Sherman Tree, the largest living tree on earth, the big boy of the Sequoias along with many of his friends. The Sequoias only live in a small range in California and only between 5000-7000 feet elevation. In one of the pictures you can see Kim leaning against one of the smaller Sequoias as a blue car passes by.

21 July 2010 We’re headed towards the Pacific Coast. There was a coastal mountain range we had to pass through, and the road was excellent and the scenery great. Most of the route was along the Umpqua River. This is one of the eight cold rivers in Oregon that salmon return to year after year. We passed through Roseberg, Winchester and Sutherlin, a few towns I’d like to know some more about. The weather in the corridor in which they all are located is just about ideal in my opinion. Low 80’s for highs during the summer, 40’s for lows in the winter. It seems that logging is a major industry in this area. We just had to stop and take some pictures of some Elk grazing in a meadow in the mountain pass.

We stopped at the Sea Lion Caves, a tourist stop for sure. Here you had a chance to walk out to some cliffs and look down on a colony of Sea Lions. A little more south along the coast and we entered the Oregon Dunes National Park. This is a haven for 4 wheelers, dune buggies, motorcycles and other sand sports like dune surfing. We headed a little bit north from there to Carl G. Washburne Memorial Park. This park is located right on US 101 with a ½ mile walk to a wind swept open beach. Kim and I took Gypsy to this beach with us; the beaches are open to all things in Oregon. We found a little shelter behind a piece of driftwood.

We stayed there for a while all bundled together; just listening to the wind, the waves and the sand, there’s nothing like it. The temperatures along the coast are controlled by the cold ocean current passing the shore. The average high along the coast in July is 67 and the low is 51. The winter months receive quite a bit of rain, an average of 10” in January. The forest just adjacent to the beach is thick luxurious pine, with green moss everywhere. I’m very impressed with Oregon. There are more parks here than in all of the other states combined. You can’t go 5 miles without seeing a scenic byway or lookout, a park, boat launch, historical marker, river or lake access. There seems to be a visitor information center at every town, not just at the border crossings. It is hard to believe that the state population is only 3.5 million with more than half of those living in the greater Portland area. Most of the people, who originally came to Oregon, came just to get to California using the Oregon Trail. We’ll see more of Oregon later; we’re heading to Silver Falls today.

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