We have never lived in a small town. Nor have we lived in a farming community. We found our rural environment exciting…for about 5 weeks. With 8 weeks left to be hosts in our beautiful campground in Bay City, we were quite challenged to find stimulation, especially after an injury benched Steven from daily tennis. We solved this by weekly trips to Portland for ethnic food, weekly women’s tennis for Sally in Portland and Vancouver, WA across the Columbia River, and wonderful visits from our Portland pals! The gals at City Hall (our bosses, too) kept us laughing.

We also started to go further away from our campground to sample fun coastal activities like…

…climbing the enormous sand dune in Pacific City (far steeper than it looks at the bottom…note people crawling up, a necessity in the areas where the steep surface is all blown sand, so fine, it is one step up, 4 steps slide back)…

…sharing the beach on a 7.2 mi walk with the Percherons on Bay Ocean Spit, sandwiched between Tillamook Bay and the Pacific Ocean…

…hanging with the “girls” in the milking barn at the biggest and best County Fair in Oregon…

…enjoying the owls living in the biggest existing wooden hanger in the world, used for blimps in WWII. There were no successful submarine attacks on Allied ships off the West Coast due to these behemoths used as spotters…

…encouraging the Rail Riders with high fives (a great use of decommissioned timber rail lines)…

…climbing Neahkahnie Mountain for a fine vista of shifting fog and wave patterns…

…visits with Angie’s calm and sweet lab puppies…

…tidepool rambling…

…shopping for the most beautiful fruit and produce (and marionberry jam!)…

…and sunsets and campfires because, it’s Summer, and the evenings are long and mild. Yet, we were antsy, sometimes bored (Sally read three Harry Potter books in Spanish and conjugated Spanish verbs for entertainment!) and needed our pals’ visits like oxygen for the brain. Next summer, we are coming back for five weeks at the end of Summer. Please visit! We need you!

 

Living in a county with more cows (25,000) than human residents guarantees a few things: 1) Ummm! That yummy grassy cow poop smell; 2) outstanding fresh cheeses, and ice cream factory tours at Tillamook Creamery…”Chocolate Mudslide” with inch thick swirls of fudge, just can’t be beat; 3) a Dairy Days Parade with free cured meat products thrown to the crowds courtesy of Tillamook Meats, and other cow, agriculture, and timber themed parade features.

 

This community is rich in resources. For a small town, one fourth the size of our home town Albany, CA, it has both a YMCA ten times the size, a Safeway three times the size, and a library 8 times the size of those at home.

The Library programming includes a concert series (this one called, “CelloBop”, an electric cello with additional sound options that would make Jimmy Hendrix envious).

The ocean views and gorgeous forests and waterfalls can ALMOST make up for the dearth of good ethnic restaurants.

The natives are friendly and welcoming. In fact Sally has a job offer to teach swimming and water aerobics this summer…just in case the biking, tennis, golf and hiking aren’t enough!

You can pedal the rails here as well, and hang out with pretty macaws in our campground…

However we appreciated one enthusiastic citizen’s boast that his home town Tillamook should be most famous for one thing, “Even when people in the bars get really drunk, nobody gets into fights!” Doesn’t that make you want to come on out to the Oregon Coast to visit us in this peaceful place? Happy 4th of July🗽🇺🇸
…now get out there and eat some ice cream…Tillamook Creamery, of course!

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Instead of driving miles to camp in Northern Alaska and Canada this summer, we are trying an experiment. As CAMPGROUND HOSTS in the small town of Bay City, Oregon (pop., 1300), we are staying put in “the pearl of Tillamook Bay”, for three months, 1000 yards from the Bay. We are camping by Patterson Creek, loving this huge public “back yard” (that doesn’t require any yard work, thanks to the Department of Public Works who also clean the bathrooms😃)…and playing tennis on the courts across the creek. Nearby golf courses are calling as well.

Across the highway is a fresh fish market and restaurant on the Bay, and a block away are a 24 hour market, funky sports bar, and organic produce market and cafe with wifi. With the help of City Hall, we obtained library cards too.

Whatever else we need we can get on the way back from our coastal explorations. We toured the shortest lighthouse on the Oregon Coast at Cape Meares…

…enjoyed meeting these 6 older riders in our park on Day 2 of a 3 month long cross-country bicycle ride…

…took our own short rides up above the park for views of our little Bay City, below through the trees…

…and we will catch lots of haystack and ocean views, of course, as we explore up and down the Coast.

All this beauty, and our only job is to collect campers’ fees at night and hand them over to City Hall every few days. With only two groups here for an overnight in the week we’ve been here, this is an easy gig, leaving our days free to explore.

So, send us an email so we can pin down one of the 5 sites in Bay City for you, and get thee on the road to the Oregon Coast this summer!

–Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location: Bay City, Oregon

 

To celebrate Steven’s Belated Birthday, I planned a week of surprises among the Finger Lakes as we planned to attend our son Jacob’s graduation from Rensselaer in nearby Troy NY the following weekend.

Daily, near Ithaca NY, we hiked up a variety of fern filled gorges to duck under tall waterfalls…

…admiring the beautiful 1940s, WPA built masonry bridges and stairways crisscrossing the gorges. Most outstanding was Watkins Glen State Park gorge…

…followed by soaks in deep tubs en suite or out of doors, or enjoyed post-hike naps in serene surroundings.

After a visit to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown NY, Steven said he felt like a kid again visiting his childhood heroes all afternoon. He emerged as hungry as a kid exiting the ball field, so Chef Mel created a Farm-to-Table birthday repast at Mel’s 22 stopping by the table for a chat with the Birthday Boy. Never embracing the All-American Sport, I visited the Cooperstown circa 1800 graveyards…

…and created a candy wreath for our graduating computer scientist…

We got to meet the East Coast families that have hosted Jacob
for holiday meals in their homes over the years, and enjoyed a family reunion with our East Coast Martin Family, staying together in a big house in Troy for the three day Memorial Weekend.

A wonderful way to send off Steven on his 62nd year, and Jacob on his job in Seattle with Microsoft.

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Location:WATKINS GLEN STATE PARK

 

When you next head to Northern California and want a wine tasting day, the options are enormous: you can jump the Napa Wine Train for lunch and stops at local vineyards near the tracks; ride your bike on a car free trail up to the charming town of Yountville with stops for tasting en route or on the Alexander Valley backroads; and, drive to Hess and other exceptional wineries in the Valley. Now you can also stop at Cornerstone in Sonoma to sip and purchase your gourmet picnic supplies, then dash across the street to the charming gardens at the Cline Winery. Our friends with superior palates LOVED the Cline Zinfandel 2013 from their Big Break Vineyard.

Sunset Magazine just sold off their historic gardens in Menlo Park, now densely surrounded by high tech companies, investing instead in the large, central portion of a huge wine/restaurant/farmers’ market/test kitchen and gardens/high end retail outlet…complete with diverse ethnic food trucks and concert stages.

Many creative ideas for developing your garden and lots of free tastings of some really yummy wines, kept us pleasantly strolling, except for stops to learn from visiting chefs and garden experts. We hoped to catch the chef wife of our Golden State Warrior MVP Stef Curry in the test kitchen below, but she wasn’t scheduled when we were there. Go Warriors!

Instead we caught the very relaxed, young and gorgeous Chef Ny (Nyesha Arrington, Top Chef on Bravo) chilling with some tunes right before her cooking demo. She has also been selected in the “30 under 30” list recognizing young “Rising Star” chefs. Her restaurant in Los Angeles, LEONA, serves, “Progressive California Cuisine”. That likely means, with both Korean and African American grandparents, she gets to borrow from all ethnic traditions, use locally sourced fresh and diverse ingredients, and follow…her own palate and curiosity.

Another of the fun attractions was four shiny Airstream trailers finished with expected 1950’s post-modern interiors…but high tech materials and hardware to hide every gadget you could want on your road trip, including radiant heated floors. I asked the designers what they invested AFTER the purchase of the trailer, I did not get a straight answer but it seemed as he outlined some specific project costs it had to exceed $200,000..but only because that is “what the client wanted.” It only needed Lucille Ball in her frilly apron to rock it!  It made our 19 ft. Dodge Sprinter/Mercedes Benz Diesel look like Hillbilly Haven by comparison. Oh well, we will just have to go drown our sorrows at the Tequila Tasting in 10 minutes…

 

We passed lots of legal recreational marijuana dispensaries on the way up to Rocky Mountain National Park. The business names were fun:  “Bud Depot”, “Ganja Gourmet”, “House of Kush”, and my personal favorites… “Higher Education”, and “Let Us Be Blunt”. However, our title is actually referring to the John Denver, “Get high on being a country lad singing folk songs in the mountains”,  kind of high. [Full disclosure…the last two dispensary references are made up…I just couldn’t help myself…]

Within days of Steven’s return from 2 months in Southeast Asia, I left for a pre-planned almost bi-annual, “Gals Only” hiking trip. Driving into the Colorado Rockies from Denver, a late season storm was brewing, leaving a clean carpet of snow overnight (photo below from our cabin).

That fit our plan to hike at a lower elevation the first day, to get used to the altitude and see some Colorado wildflowers and waterfalls, in this case the Cow Creek Trail below Bumpy Ridge. Although quite pretty in the Springtime melt, we could have been in the California Sierras for the terrain at that elevation. Each day thereafter it felt more like the Colorado Rockies as we set out on higher and higher elevation hikes, donning snowshoes to hike to Victoria Falls and Bear Lake on our 2nd day, and Chain of Lakes (photo below at iced over Emerald Lake) on our 3rd day.

Our highest elevation hike was surprisingly completed without snowshoes, and ended at 11,617 ft on our 4th day. We had to stop 1/4 mile short of the summit, as the wind exposure made conditions too icy, and slippery to proceed. The RMNP staff has cleared the entire Trail Ridge Road at that elevation, but the blowing snow requires daily re-plowing. It is still quite wintery at this elevation in spite of the intention to open the road before the late May, Memorial Day weekend approaching in two weeks. The road is great for hikers however, thanks to the ongoing snow plowing and car free road for two more weeks.

We played Bananagrams and card games, and made gourmet meals at night in our comfy cabin at YMCA of the Rockies near Estes Park; the resort abuts the National Park, providing great views of Long’s Peak (below), one of Colorado’s 53 peaks over 14,000 ft. Karen and I took special pleasure looking at it, recalling our climb to the summit in 1991. It requires a 3 AM start as all hikers must be off the summit by noon, due to the high risk of lightning strikes from the predictable afternoon storms in the Rocky Mountains.

This year we were all happy to be moving at a slower pace with time for lunchtime naps on warm granite…

…lots of elk with new furry antlers wandering in town and beyond…

..and lots of time on the trail to catch up on our lives in the last 2 years (left to right: Nancy, Karen, Sally).

We three old pals feel so lucky to have sufficient time, financial resources, and good health to celebrate old age and old friendships together once more on the trail. The only thing we just missed by trying to arrive closer to the start of Summer is the annual town fundraiser, The Rubber Ducky Race in the Big Thompson River flowing through the park. Thanks to Marianne, this photo shows the dumping of 7,000 sponsored ducks at the start of the race. The little town of Estes Park really knows how to have a good time!

Due to historic flooding last October 2015 in the Valley, yellow ‘California Gold’ wildflowers have covered the desert floor. “Superbloom”, at the peak of the season two weeks ago meant the park was “pretty full” according to the rangers. My chosen campgrounds were already ridiculously full but this particular National Park differs from the usual NP management policies in allowing overnight parking along any road. Who needs a campsite when I have our “tent” on wheels?

Walking out among the yellow flowers allows siting of a few others (I saw White Belly Flowers) but the palette was uniform, the diversity to an amateur seemed limited, and it was crawling with people and quite hot down on the desert floor. My smartest move was to explore the edges and approaches to the Park, with no wildflower displays. Quiet, serene, and isolated.

Trono Pinnacles in Searles Lake’s Saline Basin was my best find. Southeast of Ridgecrest, CA, a Pleistocene era lake dried up leaving behind the largest salt deposit in the world…30 feet deep in places! At one time this was part of one extended lake running from Mono Lake in the north just outside Yosemite through Death Valley down to Searles Lake. The tufa spires, formed under water 10,000 to 100,000 years ago from the release of calcium carbonate, rise up to 140 feet and number in the 500s. A stunning and wonderful site and as it sits on BLM land (a federal agency, The Bureau of Land Management) and allows free camping among the spires. As it is a five mile entry on a funky mud road, only five rigs overnighted in the 3800 acre area. At 1800 feet, it was warm in the day and cold at night. I can’t wait to bring Steven on the next desert trip here!

I also hiked and overnighted on the Rim at Dante’s Point at 5,000+ ft, overlooking the lowest place in Death Valley, 278 feet below sea level. Down in the Valley it was hot and crowded but I had the sunset to myself… .along with the icy wind off the Sierra Nevada Range.

Also close by is the Red Rock State Park in Nevada. Great hiking was available in blonde and red bouldered washes with jackrabbits and lizards out sunning themselves. The traffic, while doing some errands in Las Vegas, was a stressful intrusion on my serene desert attitude. I would have been happier watching a gazillion Banded Woolybear Caterpillar Moths hatch from these white silky constructions decorating thousands of plants in the desert.

 

 

 

 

 

After many years of drought, with a smattering of snow even at high elevations, we happily celebrate the deep snows brought to California by the El Nino weather patterns. We keep our recent snowshoeing passion going with mid-week trips to the Sierra Nevada Range, only 3.5 hours away.

Donner Summit’s snowy conditions required tire chains on the roads, but provided great powder for ‘shoeing’. Nobody was cannibalized like the famous Donner Party, as we satisfied our hunger with our Reno NV pals Don and Paula at Moody’s Bistro in Truckee, CA.

The Tahoe Rim Trail is a bike/hike trail up on the ridge around Lake Tahoe. Snow laden in winter, it is accessible from many trailheads around the Lake. This trailhead had a snow man and snow dog (lead photo at top) to invite us onto the trail. Picnic Rock is a short but steady 3 mile uphill climb from the trailhead and provides great views (featured image) to the south. Steven lingers for a long look above. Alas, Spring is approaching and it is time for new adventures. From the snow, to the tropics, to the California Deserts, we prepare for more travel.

Steven leaves next week for a two month trip to Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines; he will be blogging with photos of his scuba and bike trips, and images from an OAT cultural adventure in Bali. I will miss him terribly and…hope he isn’t too bothered by the mosquitoes, heat and humidity. I am so happy to miss that part of his trip!

I will hold down the yoga class and cycle practice here in the S.F. Bay Area, preparing for another Metric Century (100 km=60 miles) ride in early April (only after a much needed “bike/seat fitting”). If I stay home I will have to learn how to cook on our new inversion stove top; Jacob declared, “Your kitchen sucks!” when we cooked latkes on our hot plate for Hanukkah. A generous person (and frustrated cook), he bought us new cookware and an inversion stove top. Such a thoughtful son…especially as he won’t be home to use it. He graduates from college in New York soon and will be moving to Seattle to work for Microsoft

More likely, I will skip the cooking practice and set out on a road trip for biking and hiking in the warming weather, drawing out both rattlesnakes and seasonal wildflowers, to explore a few of California’s millions of acres of desert. Three new National Monuments in our California deserts were added in early February 2016 (Castle Mountains NM, Sand to Snow NM, Mojave Trails NP) thanks to relentless effort by Sen. Diane Feinstein, and presidential executive orders. President Obama has now protected more than 265 million acres of land and water. That is more than any other U.S. administration. Yo, Prez, you da bomb!

 

Training for 100K (60 miles) of cycling coming up in April (Steven in Indonesia, Sally in CA), we decided to test out our tolerance for such a long ride on the “3F ROUTE: Fast, Flat, Fun”. The route circles the base of the Sutter Buttes through the wetlands, sloughs and Sacramento River Delta. The only elevation change was riding up and over sloughs and levees. Really flat. We picked a perfect Spring day, our road bikes were in perfect condition, and we had on our diaper seated bike shorts for protection of our tender buttocks…our previous long rides were half that distance.

The Sutter Buttes are eroded lava domes arrayed in a circle, rising 2,122 ft. above the flat plains of the Sacramento River Valley. They are referred to as the world’s smallest mountain range. They are named for Captain John Sutter, who received them in a Mexican land grant. The lower reaches support grassland (and thus, livestock: lots of goats, sheep, and cattle) and oak woodland. For two years until decommissioned in 1965, 3 Titan I Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles were in place at the Buttes. Although the State of California purchased 1800 acres on the north side of the Buttes for a State Park, they have been unable to purchase an easement so there is no legal access to the area, and it remains unuseable (and protected) for the unforeseeable future.

The Native American Maidu and Patwin cultures are not in evidence other than a casino (with free parking and good security for RVs) near our ride start in Colusa, CA.  The local culture seems to be touting the, “Good Life on the Delta”, evidenced by the unique billboards noted above and below.

Local culture includes humorous (we hope), “No Trespassing” signs, including the one below that gives a two-for-one: violent death and burial services included. Such a deal!

Wonderful birding (Snow Geese, White Chested Geese and below, the Sandhill Cranes, we last saw stopping traffic in Homer, Alaska) due to multiple migrations in progress…

…almond (pronounced like “salmon” by the farmers) trees in full bloom surrounding the Buttes…

…and flooded wetlands filled with happy ducks.

Notice how we haven’t mentioned much about the ride itself? Owwwwwwww! Oooooooow! Eeeeeeeeeh! After one pleasant hour, four hours of torture ensued. How many ways can you change your posture on a bike to relieve the pressure on your pudendum? Not so many, it turns out. How many stops (to lay down in olive groves, almond orchards, and bridge abutments) does it take to finish a 100K? How much Ibuprofen effectively treats inflamed genitals, knees, shoulders, necks? I have to ask, “Just what is the point of a nice bike ride in such a pretty place when 4/5 of the ride is focused on pain management?” Maybe those recumbent bikers have figured out the answer…

 

What a weird treat. The day after we played 18 holes of Golf with our buddies that ‘winter over’ like Canadian Snowbirds in the Palm Springs area, we play tennis in the morning….and snowshoe in the afternoon! How is that possible?

The Palm Springs Aerial Tramway lifts you to 8,000 feet and 3 feet of snow at Mt. San Jacinto…in 20 minutes. No chains, no winter driving, no traffic. So easy to bring your small light weight snow shoes…but don’t forget gloves, hats, and parkas because it is Winter at the top. They built this transportation system using heliopads atop each tower to ferry equipment and staff for each successive tower build. Great engineering.

Then come back to your RV park’s hot tub for a soak, and a walk around the corner to the local desert botanical garden in Palm Springs.

Photos above and below document a few of the amazing shapes that low desert plants take to survive intense heat and aridity.

I especially like this bulbous plant that looks remarkably like my fat be-hind and belly!

We then drove east to a desert bluegrass music festival at the Arizona border. We caught 3 days of great sets with the Gibson Brothers from upstate NY. Their mandolin player won the International Mandolin Player of the Year award in 2015, and one of the brothers won the International Bluegrass Songwriter of the Year award. They were weaving beautiful harmonies and picking like demons, and not even repeating songs! Lots of nice old white people tapping their feet near their giant motor coaches. Unfortunately, no young musicians or nightly musical jams in the campground were evident as is usual at these festivals. Then again, it was cold and windy as soon as the sun set at 4:30 PM in Blythe, CA in early January.