Thanks to the movie Cars, even little Sarah Michael is familiar with Route 66. If you remember the song, one of the stops along the highway was Kingman, Arizona. Good thing our path to the Grand Canyon went through Kingman, it meant a photo opportunity. Another good thing, it was dinner time which meant a visit to a roadside diner.
The place was 1950s through and through, and I had to smile at the family from England who walked in with wide eyes and wider smiles. They sat in the booth beside us and they all took pictures of each other using their phones.
Today we left Las Vegas for the Grand Canyon, which means a built-in trip to the Hoover Dam.
The dam is amazing, but right now the new bridge for Hwy 93 is being built over the gorge and it is something to see as well. The old highway winds up and down the canyon to cross over the top of the dam, and this is a real problem for large vehicles such as trucks. The new highway and bridge will make this trip much faster, easier and safer.
I hope someone is going to make a documentary about the construction of the bridge, it would be fascinating to see.
Security has really tightened since the last time I visited the dam in April of 2001. All vehicles that cross over the bridge and stopped and inspected. We had two security guys look us over, one checked the RV’s storage compartments and the other checked inside the RV.
It is so hot here in Las Vegas. At 5pm is was 107 degrees and now at nearly midnight it isn’t much cooler.
I took the soft top of the Jeep down and took the doors off to try to cool things down, but driving provides no relief, it simply moves the hot air all around us.
I remember when I was a boy taking long trips in the car and my parents taking turns to drive all night. This way us kids would awake to find ourselves already at the destination. While taxing, I’m sure it saved my parents from hours of “When are we going to be there?!”
So in an effort to pay homage to my parents’ sacrifice, as well as to take my turn continuing the proud tradition, I drove into the night.
In another homage to olden times, Jessie and I consulted our atlas and debated the various possible routes to Vegas. No matter which way we went it was too late to stop into a town for dinner, Sarah Michael was about to go to bed anyway, so we agreed to just follow the instructions from the GPS navigation system: US 395 south to Hwy 168 to Hwy 266 to US 95.
This was going fine, but I was a little bit concerned when Hwy 168 turned off from US 395 and was only two lanes, I worried it might be an old route, perhaps windy and slow. But the GPS said this was the fastest route, and the GPS knows, right?
Check this out:
You have Google Earth installed, right? If you don’t, download it from here.
Next, download this GPS track, it is essentially the trip from San Francisco to Las Vegas. Open this file in Google Earth.
Now that the track is visible, download and open this file, it will orient the camera to look into the ancient winding narrow mountain pass I was about to enjoy.
I crawled over slowly up the pass and watched as my Henderson ETA went from 2am towards 2:30 and finally past 3am. Why is this so slow I kept asking? Why is the GPS so wrong?
“Oh well” was all I could say to myself in reply.
At one point I needed to stop for a scherdling when I was on a very straight, very flat, very dark section. I got out of the car, didn’t turn off the engine just in case it wouldn’t restart (not that it wouldn’t start, but this was one of those places on earth where you wouldn’t want to take the chance) but did turn off the lights. The valley was slightly illuminated by the moon and it was beautiful. There were so many stars in the sky. It was neat. View the approximate spot by opening this file in Google Earth, rotate around so you can see all sides of the valley. Then pee. That’s the experience.
As I approached the right turn onto Hwy 266 I saw emergency lights traveling south on 266. A few miles later, around midnight, I caught up with the emergency vehicles. The highway was essentially closed by a serious accident. Apparently the driver of a south-bound car fell asleep and crossed the center line running into the trailer wheels of a north-bound semi truck.
The driver was alive, though I don’t know how injured she was. They used the jaws of life to open the vehicle up and they brought her out on a rigid board then put her in an ambulance.
Turns out this section of road had a very side shoulder so we were able to get by the accident and proceed. Though I didn’t go on much further. Perhaps partly because of seeing such dramatic evidence of what driving tired can lead to, but also I know because I was getting bored, I found a good spot beside the highway to pull over and go to sleep.
I awoke about the same time as the sun and took the picture to the right. The desert is beautiful in the morning. The sky has pretty colors, it is quiet, the sun has not yet heated to air to become lethal.
Speaking of lethal, one of the things we passed was Creech Air Force Base, one of the places where pilots command drone aircraft that fly over Iraq and Afghanistan. I had the thought to stop and ask the guard at the gate if we could come have a tour, but I imagined he would not have taken kindly to the offer.
I wanted to give the Garmin GPS device a chance to redeem itself, so I when we arrived in Las Vegas asked it if there were any attractions in the area and it suggested the Neon Museum.
Turns out the Neon Museum doesn’t actually exist yet, but the boneyard is there. I peered through the fencing surrounding the old signs and snappedafewpictures.
Then we finished the drive to our friends Eric and Chrissy’s house in Henderson where we will spend the next two nights.
This morning we left the Pickwick Hotel, returned to Pacifica to get the RV, then headed east for Yosemite National Park. I felt a little weird getting back into the RV, as yesterday my mind had so disconnected from RVing and got into the family spirit at the wedding. I had to reorient myself.
The drive from out to Yosemite wasn’t very interesting, so I was glad to see a sign saying “Come and See how Cheese is Made” at the Oakdale Cheese company. Unfortunately they only make cheese on Monday and Tuesday so we were only able to look through the window into the aging room.
Most of the cheese Oakdale makes is Gouda, and they had a lot of flavors. Smoked, Jalepeno, Cumin, Garlic, Mustand, and lots more.
The roads through the park is narrow, windy and hilly. I tried really hard to not abuse the brakes, because not only was I driving a large heavy vehicle, I was also towing the Jeep. But nonetheless, after several miles the brakes became very soft, smelly and just a little smoky. At a stop sign I had to say a tiny prayer (and clench my cheeks) in order to stop and not rear-end the vehicle ahead of us.
So I pulled us over at the first opportunity and while we let the brakes cool down we did the same for our feet as we waded into the river.
Yosemite is pretty, and there are many great views from the road, however it seems that Yosemite is really a hiker’s paradise. There are trails all over and lots of people park their vehicles to take off on foot. We’re not really the hiking type, so we kept mostly to the roads. There was a neat spot, however, with a great view of Half Dome and a short trail to an overlook, so we did get some exercise and walked out to take some family pictures.
This place is also custom-made for rock climbers. One of the last domes we drove past had a couple of people at the top I could see from the road. Look closely, they’re way up there.
We left ourselves unbooked from any RV parks or resorts, we knew we wanted to get close to Las Vegas, but we didn’t know how close we’d be able to get. Upon leaving Yosemite, the GPS predicted a 2am arrival into Henderson, LV (where we were going to next stay), I decided to make a go for it and drive as long as I could.
This morning once again we left at the crack of dawn, but thankfully this time we experienced no electrical malfunctions.
Jessie received another Elk wish on the road, a herd was actually crossing the highway in front of us and we had to stop for a moment. I didn’t have the camera out, but it was more exciting the two we saw yesterday.
As you’ll learn in a later post, we had a plan for this afternoon, so I plugged the destination into our Garmin Nuvi and its estimated time of arrival meant we had some time to kill. That’s always good news when you’d like to find something interesting. So a little ways north of Eureka I asked Mr. Garmin if there were any landmark attractions nearby and we were directed to the Carson Mansion. This place is amazing! You can’t go in, but looking at it was really something.
Then we moved on and Mr. Garmin next suggested the Avenue of the Giants, a scenic alternative to Hwy 101 that drives between more of the stunningly large trees. It was beautiful.
During the drive through the forest we saw a river not too far away so I got it in my head to check it out. We navigated a road that seemed to head toward the river and then we came upon a one-lane bridge.
We crossed the first section of the bridge then parked on the rocks and disconnected the Jeep. It was fun to drive on the beach and through the water, and Sarah Michael loved it. In fact, Sarah Michael had been wathing videos on the iPod on the RV and decided she didn’t want to stop yet, so despite my counsel to the contrary she brought the iPod into the Jeep.
We were cruising down the rocks and sand and I decided it would be fun to splash into the shallow water. As we hit the water it splashed high all around us and covered the windshield, I couldn’t see a thing! But my hands couldn’t find the wiper controls quickly so I didn’t see the larger rocks coming.
The rocks we had been driving on ranged in size from sand to golf balls, like you can see in the picture above, but the rocks we found ourselves on after the soaking were probably more like melon or canteloupe-sized. They didn’t break anything but they were a surprise!
We continued on a little ways down the river then turned back, we had places to be.
This morning we left the Maple Lane RV Park and Marina to head for Crescent City, CA and the California Redwoods. My alarm went off at 6am so we could get an early start.
We’d packed up last night so all I had to do this morning was disconnect the hoses and electric, connect the Jeep and pull away.
This went well until after hitching up the Jeep I went back to check the tail lights that they were working, and they weren’t. ARGH! I spend 30 minutes testing connections with my voltmeter and basically decided I was not going to be able to fix it myself. So we hit the road.
Two hours later we arrived in Coos Bay, Oregon and found Bayshore Auto RV Repair. These guys were really friendly, got us in right away with a mechanic who quickly got us up and running and back on the road.
Apparently something went wrong with the wires in the connector for the magnetic lights that caused them to disconnect and then short, breaking the fuse for the trailer tail lights.
I was just so pleased that they were able to get us going so fast.
Our second day in the RV world was a success! We had no trouble flushing the sewer pipe and disconnecting this morning, that was really my biggest worry.
We went to the beach and walked down to Haystack Rock. The beach of Cannon Beach is always fun to walk on and since the tide was out we got to look at beautiful starfish in the tide pools. I took several pictures of some of the life attached to the rocks, so be sure to see our pics up at Flickr.
Unfortunately as we we were starting south down 101 out of Cannon Beach we had a bit of a mishap. Sarah Michael was sitting behind the passenger seat in the chair beneath where I have the wireless internet router gear setup when I took one of the windy turns a little too fast and all the stuff fell down right onto SM’s head! She started bawling and we quickly pulled over to fix her up and better-secure the equipment. Later we got some velcro from Fred Meyer to hold things down and that worked well the rest of the day.
Traveling even on the windy roads was fine, I really like driving. Our jobs today were that I drove, Jessie passengered and Sarah Michael alternated between playing and singing along with her iPod. She loves the songs she learned at Vacation Bible School a couple weeks ago and so we loaded the CD onto the iPod. Jessie and I got quite a laugh out of hearing her mis-sing the God of Wonders song, instead of singing “You are Holy” she would belt out “You are Hoe-y”.
When it was dinner time we were driving through Newport, so we decided to find a place to eat. We parked the RV and drove the Jeep down to the historic bayfront area to find some seafood. Parking was a bit of a problem, we saw lots and lots of restaurants, with lots and lots of cars filling every spot. So we kept driving until we were nearly at the end of the strip when parking started coming available. At that same time we spied a restaurant called Local Ocean Seafoods that had that level of busy-ness that suggested we were at the right place. Jessie and SM shared some crab, I had fish tacos. The food was great.
More driving after dinner and then we finally we ended up in our new location. We’ll reveal all tomorrow.
I woke this morning at 6:30 filled with excitement. We were up late last night packing the RV, pretty much all we had to do this morning was shower and pack our toiletries, most of our stuff was waiting for us in our 25-foot 2005 Ambient. My excitement was mixed with a little bit of worry, because yesterday’s test connection of the Jeep to the RV for brake lights and turn signals revealed it didn’t work right. This was totally not my fault, but still not good to learn at 6pm when the wiring place closed at 5:30.
The original plan was to try to leave between 8 and 9 so we could get to Portland to enjoy the Red Bull Flugtag Event, but now we had to detour to Advanced Trucks for Toys in South Everett to get the wiring sorted out. We arrived there at about 9:15. Doug, the only employee working Saturday morning, was super helpful and tested the connections many ways and basically determined the wiring inside the Jeep is messed up and for some reason their tech didn’t fix this when they had my Jeep weeks back and instead performed an unsuccessful workaround. This wasn’t what I wanted to learn. If we hurried we could still make the Flugtag!
10am When it became apparent that the Jeep’s wiring was just messed up, I suggested to Doug that we’d best call it off and go with one of them nice magnetic tail light things I’d seen before, like what tow truck drivers use. We could solve the Jeep’s wiring when I got back from this trip. Doug helped me locate a set of lights nearby and I went to sort it out.
Meanwhile Jessie and Sarah Michael were so great. While I was playing auto shop with Doug they waited in the RV, and when I went to update them on my mess, I found them playing Go Fish. I thanked them profusely for being so patient.
11am Nothing is easy. The place that had the magnetic lights didn’t have in stock any wiring adapters or pieces that could get the lights’ connector to the wiring of the RV. So I had to run to another store to buy the wiring connector and a tiny screwdriver to put everything together with. But it was ok, I wasn’t stressed, I remained pleasantly calm. But we did get going, somewhere around 11am. This picture was taken at 11:47 in SeaTac as I was filling up.
Hey, this reminds me. I’m trying to geotag our photos, so when you see them on Flickr you can further immerse yourself in the experience by clicking on the map link next to each picture to see where it was taken. Also check out the link on the right side of this page, it goes to a nice map on Flickr where you can see all of the photos from our trip identified on a map.
Once we were on the road it was smooth. The RV handles fine. I can’t even see the Jeep when I’m towing it unless I’m taking a fairly sharp turn, enough to move the Jeep into the view of the side view mirrors. You can hear plenty of rattling of our dishes and whatever else is packed into our home on wheels as we plow along, but it is comfortable. Sarah Michael kept busy playing and listening to and singing along with music on an iPod. Jessie relaxed, played with SM, tried to sleep, hung out. I drove and drove and drank energy drinks.
It all went well, but it became clear we weren’t going to make it to the Flugtag. So we decided to head straight toward Cannon Beach.
We stopped at a viewpoint-pullout-beside-the-road-thing just over the Oregon border to survey the Columbia River, that was nice.
We weren’t in Oregon long before we stopped again. As we drove thought the community of Clatskanie OR Jessie noticed out her window a Bluegrass Festival. That was all the motivation I needed. We parked the RV and went to see what was going on. You can imagine our delight to find that there wasn’t just music being played, there was a quilt show going on too!
The music we heard was actually quite lovely. We only stayed for a few songs from the band you see you see in the short video and this picture, but I did enjoy them. They had about zero stage presence though, they looked nearly bored as they played, and their costumes made them look like regular heavy-set country folk. Maybe they weren’t costumes? A true mystery.
Anyway, it was a worthy stop. SM had a hot dog and Jessie made friends with old men in the concessions line. I just smiled, I was happy.
Just before Astoria we stopped by a roadside glass blowing studio that we’ve passed many times before and I’d always wanted to stop at. Well, we’re in no hurry today! We watched the artist work on a wine goblet. Even SM enjoyed it.
We checked in to the RV Resort in Cannon Beach at around 5:30pm, and it was easy to get everything connected. It is kinda fun to see all of the other RVs and how people had their gear set up. The bigger RVs have fancy hydraulic leveling systems, there are ingenious sewer pipe supports and all kinds of other goodies. I see a trip to the RV supply store in our future.
Dinner, SM and Jessie went swimming, then relaxing, me working for hours on this post, that’s how we spent the evening.
Tomorrow we’ll visit the beach, go shopping, maybe find something to explore in the Jeep.
