Dodged a bullet!

We found an error in our itinerary at what could have been a bad time. We are in Crescent Lake Oregon at the start of the Memorial Day weekend. All the resorts in the area have just opened – many of them still have large mounds of snow covering much of their grounds. But it seems like anyone in Oregon with a fishing boat or an ATV has come here to kick off the season.

We pull into the RV Park at which the Woman said she had made a reservation. They don’t have any record of our reservation. I tell them the Woman said she was told we would have site 82 with a lake view when she made the reservation. They say they only have 25 sites, and they are not on the lake.  It turns out that the details the Woman had given me were for our reservation in Bend, not here, and she never actually made a reservation here.

Well, we were in luck. Somehow, they had one site open on what is probably their busiest weekend of the year, and I could just barely squeeze Colectiva into it. I guess someone was looking out for us.

Can you believe how relentless life is? Despite this being baron lava laden soil, beautiful wildflowers seem to be able to not only take hold, but to thrive. Amazing!

Talk to you soon!

Applegate Trail

We only learned about this because we found a cache near the base of a trail marker designating the path as a National Historic Trail. If not for geocaching, again we would have missed out on something quite interesting.

I didn’t remember this but folks who traveled the Oregon Trail to the coast in the 1800’s could only complete the trail by loading their wagons and all their personal goods on a raft and run down the Columbia River, a very dangerous untamed river at the time. Many settlers lost everything, including their lives, trying to make this last mad dash to the Pacific. In 1843, the Applegate family navigated the Oregon Trail, and lost two of their children while trying to navigate the Columbia River gorge.

In 1846, Jesse and Lindsay Applegate set out to find a more southerly route to Oregon that would bypass the treacherous Columbia River. To do this, Jesse and Lindsay set out from Fort Hall Idaho on what was then known as the California Trail. Heading North along the Umpqua River they eventually crossed the Calapooya Mountains and entered the Willamette Valley. While they had managed to bypass the Columbia River gorge, the trail forged by Jesse and Lindsay Applegate was far from easy, and held its own severe threats for settlers attempting to follow it.

In Sunny Valley, a small town along the Umpqua River and the historic Applegate Trail we discovered a great museum literally filled with Applegate stuff. The museum not only had movies, dioramas and signage that helped you understand what being on the trail might be like, they had lots of actual things that had actually traveled the historic trail in the mid-1800’s. For example, this is the steamer chest that Jesse Applegate used to hold his most precious personal items as they blazed the trail.

And this was the violin that Lindsay Applegate played along the Trail when he needed some cheering up. Apparently, he was a very accomplished violinist.

In 1846 Jesse convinced about 150 immigrants to follow his trail rather than the Oregon Trail. While the path had been blazed, it had not been cleared enough in many places to allow for the passage of wagons and teams. Jesse and his crew worked to clear the road as they went, allowing the 150 to pass. One day, Jesse headed out to clear the trail and was never heard from again.

Near the museum, we found this early 1900’s era covered bridge. A 16-year-old young girl who was engaged to be married once she reached the coast died of scarlet fever here while attempting to cross the Applegate Trail. While she didn’t drown in the Columbia River, she still didn’t make it.

She was buried near the later site of the covered bridge. At the time, the settlers negotiating the Applegate Trail named the creek she was buried by Grave Creek. The name of the creek remains to this day.

Talk to you soon!

Harry & David

The Company began in 1910 when Samuel Rosenberg purchased Cornice Pear Orchards in Southern Oregon after encountering the orchards pears at the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. Rosenberg renamed the farm to Bear Creek Orchards after the creek that ran through the property.

Interestingly, local activists have created a greenway that runs along the Bear Creek. We have biked the vast majority of the greenway over the last several days. The greenway connects Ashland Oregon to Central Point, with another greenway along the Rouge River to extend it all the way to Grants Pass.

In 1914, Rosenberg’s sons Harry and David took over management of the property after their father’s death. The sons came up with the idea of selling their Royal Riviera Pears by mail order, and the current Harry & David structure was started. Soon, Royal Riviera Pears were not only being consumed all over the US, but in all Europe as well.

We toured the manufacturing plant and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. We saw how Moose Munch is made, which made the Woman almost explode. The only thing that made the Woman creep out a bit was when she saw the cubic yard of butter dropped into the cement mixer that blends the Moose Munch.

We watched them make truffles. We also visited the bakery in which they were making cinnamon wraps – massive cinnamon rolls that are frozen, but heat up nicely in a micro wave.

We learned that they have cracked the code on how to store pears, chocolates and bakery items. The pears are harvested mostly in September. By allowing them to ripen slowly in refrigerated warehouses they reach their peak edibility right around the Christmas season. That’s how they are able to bulk up their emplo

yee base to 8,000 in the 4^th quarter and ship the thousands upon thousands of gifts demanded.

The corporate headquarters were built for the world’s fair in the 1930’s, and remain the iconic symbol of the company even today. Although the company has been owned by 5 different corporate owners since Harry and David Rosenberg passed (currently owned by 1-800 Flowers), the tradition continues.

Talk to you soon!

Other stuff in southern Oregon

OK – so I’ll admit for most of the blogs since we left Vegas, I have been complaining about all the snow and the cold. Even the last blog had me spouting off about the frigid conditions. Well, apparently, Oregon is not unlike Minnesota – if you don’t like the weather right now, wait a bit. Over the last couple days, it has gone from frigid to too dang hot! Oh well, at least I get to muddle through the emergence of hay fever season again, perhaps a few times – just in a different location!

We visited Jacksonville Oregon, a small town that had a gold strike in 1851 that put it on the map, and made it the County seat. However, the gold and other minerals eventually played out, and by the depression, there were simply no jobs in Jacksonville. People abandoned homes and basically left them as they were when they left. It essentially became a veritable ghost town.

In the 40’s and 50’s, locals saw the tourism potential of this town arrested in time. They began working to attract and artist community and opened some shops and restaurants. By the 1960’s, the influential launched a campaign aimed at Washington DC, and in 1966, the entire town of Jacksonville was added to the National Register of Historic Places, one of very few examples where an entire community has received that status.

Today it is small shops and restaurants, along with some historical touring of the town and some of its historical buildings. We grabbed lunch at the Schoolhaus Brewhaus, a very authentic German restaurant that now occupies the original Jacksonville elementary school. The Woman had a very nice cheese fondue with a variety of dipping items including worst slices, bread, veggies and some nice apple slices. I had and authentic mug of doppelbock – oh yeah, and some schweinbraten.

In Jacksonville, we found the Bozohouse. In 1892, Vance DeBar Colvig was born the youngest of 7 children of the local Judge Colvig. Always being referred to as the “clown” of the family, Lance worked in Vaudeville and joined the circus to take advantage of his personality. In 1930, he signed a contract with Walt Disney himself, writing songs for many of the early Disney animated movies. And because of his engaging personality, he became the movie voice of many of the early Disney characters, including Goofy and Pluto. In 1946, Capitol Records created the infamous Bozo the Clown character to promote its children’s record library, and hired Colvig to promote Bozo at events. His characterization was so effective that a TV series was launched in 1949, starring Vance Colvig as Bozo.

We visited the Belle Fiore Estate winery. A renowned allergy doctor in the area, Dr. Kerwin, set out to create a unique Mediterranean Estate, while dabbling in his newfound interests in wine grape horticulture. We took a special tour where we got to tour much of his home on the Estate grounds, walk through the vineyards, and get private tastings of some of their most coveted wines.

We thoroughly enjoyed the tour (despite the tastings). The home reminded us of the villas in Tuscany we had been in maybe 8 or 9 months ago. The detail in the immense home from the intricated marble floors to the frescos on the walls really made us feel we were back in Lake Como looking at Clooney’s house.

We hiked another couple miles of the PCT – the Woman just can’t get enough of that. We actually stopped in at the Callahan Lodge. Located a half mile or so from the PCT it attracts through hikers. Unlike the Camino de Santiago, there generally aren’t lodgings that are right on the PCT. However, this might be one of the closer ones, as the PCT shadows the I-5 for a bit along here.

We biked about half of the Bear Creek Greenway. The Greenway is a paved multiuse path along the Bear Creek, stretching from Ashland to Medford in Oregon. It’s a scenic route, as long as you don’t mind a little road noise from I-5. We managed to score 4 caches along our trek for the day. I also learned that despite my hip being a real problem at times when we are hiking, I can bike for tens of miles with little pain, and after the ride, I am almost pain free for quite a bit. Bonus! (This is our personal sommelier at the Belle Fiore Estate)

Talk to you soon!

Oregon Caves National Monument

FYI – Cascade Siskiyou Nation Monument was a Clinton designation – Obama increased it by 48,000 acres during his term. Oregon Caves NM was more historic (all the early Presidents got the good stuff) , being designated by Taft in 1909.

While nobody knows truly when the first people entered these caves, in 1874 Elijah Davidson discovered the cave as far as white Europeans are concerned. Over the next two decades, many private businesses failed at running successful tourist ventures at the publicly owned site. Those failures along with the majesty of the grounds likely led Taft to use the Antiquities Act to designate it as a National Monument.

Oregon Caves are distinguished by the fact they are carved out of marble. Originally limestone, Oregon Caves metamorphosed into marble as part of the formation of the Siskiyou Mountains a few million years ago. By cave standards, these caves, at a few million years, are relatively young.

At some point, Congress deemed this Monument a worthier site, giving it a budget and putting it under the management of the National Park Service rather than the BLM or the Forest Service. As a result, it has a visitor center as well as other amenities not always associated with National Monuments.

We toured the cave and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. While the features were not particularly unique from other caves we’ve visited, the unique characteristics of the marble and its surface features were compelling. Also, it was clearly the tightest cave we’ve toured, requiring the “duck walk” much of the time – bent at the knees to lower yourself to under 4 feet, yet still allowing you to look ahead for the imminent head fractures from the low rocks that you would surely encounter.

We also stumbled on more wildlife here than anywhere on our path so far. While squirrels, chipmunks and mountain bluebirds were prolific, we also saw lots of deer looking for a morsel. Many of the mommy deer had their young closely at their sides.

Talk to you soon!

Cascade Siskiyou National Monument

We dodged a bullet! We had reservations at Hyatt Lake Recreation Area, a US Forest Service campground inside the Cascade Siskiyou National Monument. Sadly, we got an e: mail a couple weeks ago that they cancelled our reservation as the campground was opening late due to snow. When we drove up there today, we learned that vehicle length is restricted on the entrance road, and also that the road is quite unstable. For example, this washed-out section of highway would not have been fun to navigate with Colectiva – not even remotely! Lucky us we got water, power, cable and internet instead in Ashland Oregon, and still got to drive here!

Cascade Siskiyou is another National Monument managed by the BLM. As such, it has no visitor center or infrastructure of any significance. However, it is in a lovely section of Southern Oregon, worth a visit if you find yourself in the area. In fact, this area is a treasure trove of reservoirs created from dams built in the Depression era to create water resources to fuel the population explosion. The scenery is spectacular!

The Pacific Crest Trail runs right through the middle of the Monument. As you know, the Woman loves the PCT and takes every opportunity to hike sections of it whenever we are in the area. However, those sections of the PCT that summit nearby are so deeply snowed in that there is no way for us to hike.

So, we head to some lower levels to try again. Once below the snow line we manage to find where the PCT crosses Historic Highway 99. Not only do we find a section of the PCT, we also manage to find the path of the Historic Applegate Trail. This trail was blazed by the Applegate family in 1843, attempting to find a less dangerous way into the Oregon Territory. We even found a cache here, which thanks to the cache owner, is the only reason we discovered this hidden gem.

Another cache led us to a section of the PCT that we hiked for a couple of miles. Oddly enough, we were able to use the Geocaching app I had on my phone to see where the PCT was in relation to Historic Highway 99. Then, finding a cache that was listed as being on the PCT, we used the mapping function of the Geocaching app to follow along the PCT – of course using the occasional blazes to confirm we were in the right place.

All in all, the Monument was a good visit. While there is not a visitor center or other such infrastructure, there is hiking galore all over the Monument. And the scenery is to die for.

Talk to you soon!

Hat Creek California

Despite the fact that we think we have anticipated well, we still occasionally find ourselves driving Colectiva through a snow storm. Northeastern California turned out to be no exception. As we neared Hat Creek we entered a full-fledged blizzard – yipppppppeeeeeeee!

Hat Creek was just a point on the map to turn a marathon drive day into two more leisurely drive days. Given the blizzard I appreciated that. However, we managed to find some gems here as well. A Mother’s Day visit to McArthur Burney Falls Memorial State Park turned out quite nicely. The Woman loves her waterfalls, so a visit on her day seemed really appropriate.

Back at the turn of the century locals

had discovered these amazing falls. The State of California was accelerating the damming of rivers in the area to create reservoirs for its exploding population. Fearing the States actions would eventually destroy the falls, the McArthur family bought up a few hundred acres around the falls, and began the process of trying to transfer ownership to the State, however with the caveat that it would be preserved for future generations.

While we are told that we saw it with more water spilling than has happened in a century or so because of the heavy winter snows melting off, we’re also told that are impressive even in August. In August, the Burney Creek that appears to provide the water for the falls actually dries up a mile above the falls. However, the porous volcanic rock that is permeated by the high water table here continues to provide a constant source of water to the falls, even when Burney Creek runs dry.

We were told by multiple people in the area that the falls were the source of water used originally in the bottling of Hamm’s Beer, a brand originally bottled in St. Paul Minnesota. When I was a kid, my family only drank Hamm’s Beer, and my brothers would roam the house the morning after a family gathering to see if they could find a swig or two remaining in any of the empties. The park ranger didn’t believe that was true, but so many locals seem to carry the tale that I wonder if it might actually have some truth to it.

We also stumbled on the Hat Creek Observatory, a SETI installation. This nonprofit research organization is constantly Searching for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. SETI uses radio telescopes to continuously scan the skies in search for radio signals that could not be of a natural origin, indicating intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

The Hat Creek facility is state of the art. Rather than using a large telescopic dish, the facility uses small networked dishes – the dishes being not much larger than an In a

nd Out Burger franchise building. Scientists have concluded that smaller networked dishes provide more capacity than an immense dish. Eventually this facility will house 350 networked dishes, always scanning the heavens for any indications of other intelligent life (if you agree that is what we are!)

We also managed to stumble on the Pacific Crest Trail in our ventures in the area.

Unlike Tahoe, the trail here was not snowed in, and we were able to trek a small section, and take in the fun we experience every time we encounter part of it. We learned that Hat Creek is pretty near the center of the trail. It turns out we were somewhere around 1,400 miles from Mexico and about 1,200 miles from Canada.

Talk to you soon!

Moving on

I encountered an unexpected obstacle. Suddenly I literally could not walk even 50 feet without crippling pain in my right hip. At first it felt like muscle pain, but after a while I became convinced that Dr. Baldauf’s prediction that I would eventually have to replace my right hip had come true.

After several days of not even being able to even venture to the dumpster without a walking stick, we headed to the local urgent care. Fortunately, Dr. Winter was both highly communicative and interested in what I was experiencing. He was pretty certain that what I was experiencing was a severe muscle strain, and not the result of bone rubbing on bone – I have very little cartilage remaining in my hip. I told him I hadn’t fallen or twisted or anything to trigger a severe strain, but he told me at 64 such an event wasn’t necessary. He said I might be surprised by a severe muscle strain with no apparent event to trigger it, but he said in his experience with those 60 plus in years, he was not surprised in the least.

So, hopefully I can nurse may way back to an acceptable level of hiking prowess with some ibuprofen and some gingerly care of my hip. In the meantime, I will watch the Tour de California as it passes by Zephyr Cove RV Resort on its way around Lake Tahoe. Pretty impressive!

We start making our way toward Oregon. Hopefully we can soon lose the snow!

Talk to you soon!

Tahoe

We started our new life alongside Lake Tahoe. Not too bad, eh!

It’s lovely here, but the area just got dumped on a few days ago. Hopefully it is the last snowfall of the season, but the locals tell me you just can’t be sure. Fortunately, when we crossed the mountains to get into Reno and then the Tahoe basin, the “chains required” lights had been turned off, so we were able to push Colectiva on through.

However, when we struck out to hike parts of the Pacific Crest Trail and the Tahoe Rim Trail circles the lake for about 165 miles, we found that the conditions at the trail heads left a bit to be desired. We can’t imagine what the conditions might have looked like out on the trails themselves!

We were able to find some lower trails, closer to the lake, that were passable, even though they were pretty waterlogged. We hiked all over Emerald Bay, and managed to make it down to Vikingsholm. Built just before the Great Depression by Mrs. Laura Josephine Knight, the 38-room mansion was constructed to look like a Scandinavian Palace.

The only upside we found for the heavy snow cover was that waterfall basins that would likely be totally dry in August were literally gushing with water. We found a trail that took us from Vikingsholm to Eagle Falls. In addition to these spectacular falls, on the Vikingsholm and Eagle trails we found at least a dozen waterfalls, most of which I am sure are just seasonal.

Talk to you soon!

Starting our homeless life!

Our Wentworth home is in the escrow process, and so while we are not yet technically homeless, we are clearly in the throes. Given that status, we are heading north to escape the Las Vegas oppressive desert heat.

Setting out we made our way to Tonopah. While not our first visit, we managed to scour up some fun gems. We managed to watch the Kentucky Derby win by Always Dreaming, the winner of the 143^rd fastest mile in racing in the lobby of the iconic Mizpah Hotel, built in 1907.

We visited the iconic Clown Motel. In an attempt to create an attraction luring tourists, the owner of this small roadside motel has decorated it with literally thousands of clowns. Each guest room door has a clown on it, and clown images adorn pretty much all open areas.

While I agree, it could feel a bit creepy after seeing all the bad clown horror movies, the lobby has several dozen clown dolls covering all shelves and counter tops. I looked specifically for Chucky, but luckily did not spot him, unless he was hiding.

We snagged a cache at the entrance to the original Tonopah Cemetery. Opened at the turn of the century, the grounds contain the remains of the infamous 1902 Tonopah plague. The grounds also hole the remains of 14 fallen miners in the 1911 Tonopah-Bellmont mine fire.

While a short drive, we feel like we have literally started another chapter.

Talk to you soon!