6/24/2017 - A Down Day

Saturday - Finally, we took a day off!  I went down and enjoyed the view this morning before Joe got up,

and I watched one fisherman reel in a couple of trout.  He said the first one probably weighed about 4 1/2 pounds; the second one was just a little one.

None of us know how to fly-fish, but this is certainly intriguing.  We are asking questions, and I think Joe may see if he can rig our bass fishing rods to try to fish this river.  We need to drive into the next town, Chiloquin, and get fishing license if we decide to try this.  And we left our waders at home, so I guess we would be casting from the bank.

I zoomed my camera in to get a close-up of the top of the mountain we see from here.  We are loving our weather, although today it made the 90s and tomorrow is supposed to be even warmer (93).  But by Monday it's back  to 85, and 79 for a high on Wednesday.  We will take it!

Joe wanted to go out for breakfast so he and I went down the road to the Mexican restaurant we ate at the other night.  But they were closed, their walk-in cooler had gone out.  The waitress was out in the parking lot talking to someone else, and she stopped us as soon as we got out of the car.  We went back to the travel center in the other direction and shared a breakfast burrito.

When we got back to the campground, we got together with the Johnsons to decide where we were going next.  We started calling campgrounds around Bend, Redmond and Sisters, and everything was booked through the 4th of July.  So we went up to the office here to see if we could extend our stay another week to get us past the holiday, and to get a third spot for the Brundiges.  Although we will have to move to the back row (and lose our river view), she was able to accommodate all of us.  So, gratefully, we booked in here until July 5.  With all that time to spend here in this area, we just took the rest of the day off. 

After lunch, we read, rested, laid down -- a real down day.  Then we got back together and played cards.  After dinner, Joe took Mazie and me up to the little casino for a couple hours, until he couldn't stand the smoke any more.  Sunset here isn't until around 8:30, and it doesn't get dark until after 9:00, so we got back to camp before dark and watched the fishermen again, but the mosquitoes were out so we didn't stay out very long.

This is something different for us -- to kick back for 10 days.  We will check out more things to do around this area, and we still have Crater Lake to explore.  We are waiting for the Brundiges to join us for that trip, and hope that more snow will have melted and the rim road will be open.  These warmer days we are having now should help that.  Phoenix/Mesa is still sweltering, so we feel very fortunate to be in Oregon right now.

6/23/2017 - Around Klamath Falls

Friday - Happy 4th Birthday to grandson Andrew!  Today was a relatively uneventful day for us, which we were all ready for.  Did a few chores -- laundry (Dave got his done yesterday), Joe worked on the backflush line in Dave's trailer. It plugged yesterday when we left Tulelake; Joe worked on it this morning, we went to town to look for parts but didn't find what he needed (he decided he didn't need anything anyway); came home and worked on it some more.  And it's still plugged.  So that will be a continuing saga for tomorrow, but I think he has narrowed down the problem.

We drove into Klamath Falls today, went to RV service store, hardware store, visitor center, and Fred Meyers Grocery.  We didn't leave the campground until noon, so that took care of the rest of the day.  We have learned that Klamath Falls really doesn't have a falls.  It used to have a ripple in the river, but with the power plant diversion of the water flow, there's not much of a ripple left.  The visitor center was nice and had beautiful artistic scenes painted on birds.  I asked if this was part of that national movement several years ago where different cities participated in painting sculptures of their "native" animal (like the bears in Cherokee, N.C.) but she said no, Klamath Falls had done this on their own.  And there are some scattered around businesses in town (we didn't see any).

The highlight of the day was Dave fried up some crappie they had brought with them, and we had a fish dinner.  It was yummy!  We played 2 of the 4 hands of Hand and Foot, but the guys were tired and the girls were losing so badly we conceded and called it a night.

The Brundiges are on their way.  They got their refrigerator replaced yesterday and drove from Las Vegas to Gardnerville today (probably at least 11 hours) because they couldn't find a campground with any open sites.  I don't know how Collins fared with his leg and back problems -- that was a pretty tough indoctrination to the road trip.  We hope he can rest up the next couple of days in Carson City and Reno before they move forward again.  We think we are going to hang out here and wait for them.  We have a great campsite in a nice, little campground.  The weather is wonderful; 54 this morning, 84 this afternoon.  And we are waiting for them to open up more of the road around Crater Lake.  We just have to check and make sure our camp sites are available for our extra days.

6/22/2017 - On to Oregon

Thursday - Time to move again, although today is a short drive so we took our time getting out of Tulelake.  We went into town for breakfast to try Mike and Wanda's, but it was closed again.  Across the street was "Jolly Kone," which we thought was just a hamburger/ice cream shop, but Joe asked a guy crossing the street, who had just left there, and he said they had a good breakfast so that's where we ended up.  And it was good.  On our way back to the campground, we stopped at the museum here at the fairgrounds.  It was actually a very well put-together museum of the history of the area, farming, logging, war years, etc.  We learned that other crops grown here, at least in the past, included horseradish, barley, wheat and rye.  We have seen several grain elevators around, so that makes sense.   They had a really nice wall of the soldiers from the area who had lost their lives in battle, similar to the Viet Nam Wall except this one had a picture of each soldier too. 

I didn't take any pictures inside, but their outside exhibits were rusty old farm equipment from the area -- hay mowers, potato planters and diggers, and other rusty things.  The guys were interested.

They had indoor exhibits inside a building of things like a linotype, old cook stove, old washing machine, etc.  And hanging on the outside of a shed were lots of hand tools from back in the day.

We didn't find out what those blue flowers were but we did learn that different 4-H groups are responsible for the various flower gardens around the fairground/museum buildings and driveways.  I especially liked this one of the tires -- I told Eric we needed more tires (he didn't agree).

We went on back to camp and Joe washed the dust and bugs off the car before we de-camped and got hooked up.  It was almost noon when we pulled out, and we officially crossed the Oregon state line about 12 minutes later (we were only about 5 miles south).

We saw more agriculture as we wound our way on through this valley and into Klamath Falls, Oregon.  We made a wrong turn there and had to turn around, but other than that, we drove through Klamath Falls, and fueled on the edge of town ($2.509 with Camping World discount of 5 cents at Pilot).  We only had to buy fuel twice in California, once for $2.799 (Barstow) and then in Bishop for $3.099. 

We arrived at our campground in Chiloquin (20 miles north of Klamath Falls, and right at the turn-off to Crater Lake) and were in our camp site by 2:00, only 59 mile-drive today.  We have a river-view site (Williamson River) with a nice view of the tea-colored water running past.  Saw some kids and fishermen on the water in the course of the afternoon.  Joe and I both put our foot it to confirm that the water was COLD!

We were going to eat in tonight but I couldn't come up with enough ingredients to make a meal, so we tried the Mexican restaurant just down the road.  It was very good.  We also stopped at the travel center up the road, which has a casino behind it (we didn't go in there).  We whooped the guys in cards again, then walked down by the river but the mosquitoes were out in full force so that didn't take long.

The Brundiges are finally on the road.  They made it to Las Vegas (119 degrees, Marilyn reported), and had dinner with our grandson Cody, who has a summer job in Vegas.  We will be eager to meet up with them, hopefully sometime next week, to get the latest scoop on Cody.  They are getting their refrigerator taken care of first thing in the morning in Vegas.

We need to check about the status of the rim road at Crater Lake.  We are hoping they will have it open for the weekend.  But we are going to try to find the falls in Klamath Falls tomorrow.  The weather here is lovely.  It was 60 degrees this morning (Dave and Mazie put the electric blanket back on their bed), and I think today's high was about 84.  Wouldn't be a bad place to spend a few extra days to wait on the Brundiges if that would work out.  At the least, we are here until Monday.  In Oregon, Finally!

6/21/17 - National Wildlife Refuge and Lava Beds

Wednesday - We are enjoying our quiet little campground here in Tulelake, although Joe got up sneezing and continued that all day long.  Don't know if it is the grass, the hay all around us, or a combination of everything green here, but his allergies have really kicked in.  This morning we took a drive out of town, first to the National Wildlife Refuge.  Along the way, Joe stopped to check out the crop that he couldn't identify in a field along the way.  The leaf smelled like mint, and we confirmed at the Refuge that mint was grown in the area, along with potatoes, radishes, strawberries and onions.

After a brief film in the visitor center, we headed out to the lake.  Tule Lake is huge, probably not very deep, and is home to many waterfowl.  "At least 489 species of wildlife visit or live in this volcanic wonderland," including bald eagles during their winter migration.  Before we quite reached the lake, we saw our first deer.

Once we got to the lake, we saw lots of birds, ducks, geese, seagulls, most of which we couldn't identify.

Ducks with babies.

We watched a gaggle of Canadian geese march up the road in front of us, then dive into the lake.

During most of our drive today, beautiful Mt. Shasta showed herself -- sometimes peeking over the tops of closer mountains, sometimes standing out by herself.  The mountain is so pretty it is hard not to take advantage of photo ops.

We even saw a pelican on the lake.  And some other bird that I couldn't get a photo of -- Scientific Joe named it "a black, long-neck pointy nose" bird. 

Joe scared up an owl too, right beside the road.  I didn't get a picture of that either, and he said I should have, it was practically sitting on the radiator cap!  (But I was in the back seat)  Anyhow, that was exciting, as well as several hawks we watched swooping low over the marshes.

As we left the lake area, we saw our second deer.  At first, I just saw his ears sticking up; then he moved a little and we could see all of him.

We saw one more deer along here, and it was the most cooperative.  Joe stopped the car and got drinks out of the back, and the deer stayed in our sight the whole time --  I think he liked the sound of Joe's voice because he would look up every time Joe said something.

We drove out of the Refuge and headed to the Lava Beds National Monument.  The Visitor Center was at the far end of this drive, but we stopped along the way and read some of the interpretative signs.  We stopped at one called "Hospital Rock," and Joe took a group picture, although he chopped part of his head off when he settled the camera on the Rock.

There was a nice view of the lake area from this high point.

This area has more than 200 caves and lava tubes.  We decided not to do any cave exploring, so we stopped at some of the viewpoints, checked out the visitor center and watched the film there.  It's nice to have the American the Beautiful pass, which gets us into National Parks and National Monuments free.

We drove back out of this Park and headed to Camp Tulelake, the Camp built by the CCCs and used as a War Relocation Center (like the one south of Bishop that we toured), and then as a POW camp to house workers to relieve the shortage of agricultural labor .  Unfortunately, the Camp was closed so we only got to see the barracks from the road.

We got back to our campground around 3:00 and decided to try for pizza again tonight.  We regrouped a couple of hours later and headed out, and the pizza restaurant was open tonight.  So we had dinner in Oregon (Malin, Oregon).  The state line is just south of this little town, so we weren't sure which state we were in.  On our way back to camp, we stopped to get pictures of some beautiful blue flowers at the corner of the fairgrounds where we are camped.  We do not know what kind of flowers these are, but we really liked them.  They had some other pretty flowers here at their entry.

 California poppies.

The school is right across the road, and their mascot must be a goose because they are "Home of the Honkers."

After our nightly card game (the girls won handily again), we called it a night.  This is an interesting area -- lots of history, lots of agriculture, lots of mountains.  It was worth the stop.  And the weather was beautiful -- 60s at night, 80s during the day.  Sorry, Arizona.