Back in Queen Valley

I can’t believe how fast the last three weeks went. We arrived in Salem, Oregon on the evening of the 6th, and went out early on the 7th and cut down a fresh Christmas tree. Amazingly, we had it up and decorated by that night. From there on the rest of the time we were in Salem is just a blur. I did catch a bad head/chest cold, so for one week I really didn’t get much done. The rest of the time we shopped, visited with family, went out to dinner with friends a few times, and even managed to babysit our youngest great grand-daughter a couple times.

On Christmas Eve, we had two family gatherings and watched our three oldest great grandchildren go ape over all the presents Santa and family gave them. The two youngest (babies) let their parents open their gifts (much more civilized). Of course we managed to eat ourselves silly on Christmas Eve and again on Christmas Day where we gathered with our immediate family for a huge meal. Sadly our two sons live out of state, but we managed to spend some time with them on the phone.

Christmas Eve, Ken & I went to Midnight Mass to celebrate the true meaning of CHRISTmas. The congregation gathers one half hour before Mass to sing carols along with the choir. We were thrilled to hear our nephew, Brendan, playing his trumpet along with the choir. Our niece, Larysa, was also singing in the choir. It was a beautiful, meaningful Mass, and the choir were excellent!!

The day after Christmas, I had the tree down and all the decorations put away. We spent the rest of that day packing our Jeep for the trip back to Queen Valley, Arizona.

We left Salem at 6 am on December 27, and drove 743 miles to Tonapah, Nevada (one very long drive!) We hit snow on the road in Oakridge heading up over the Willamette Pass to highway 97.

Once we got on highway 97, the roads were in good shape. Yes, we did have a couple snow flurries along the way, but nothing to keep us from traveling the speed limit. We got to Tonapah at 6:30 (12 1/2 hours after leaving Salem) and it was 29 degrees. We didn’t even turn the TV on that night. Just grabbed a bite to eat and hit the sack in order to get up early the next morning.

The next morning, we ate a quick breakfast at the hotel and headed for Arizona. Even though there was a smattering of snow in the mountains, we didn’t have any on the roads. In fact, we had mostly sun until we got through Boulder City and across the Hoover Dam. Once we got into Arizona, the skies became cloudier the closer we got to Phoenix.

We had left Tonapah at 6:30 the morning of the 28th (18 degrees) and arrived in Queen Valley (550 miles later) at 5:45. Of course we had the hour time zone change, so we actually drove 9 plus hours. When we got out of the Jeep, neither of us was feeling very limber. We vowed never to do that trip that fast again. 1300 miles in two days is insane!! Yes, we did change drivers, but only stopped long enough to get fuel and hit the restrooms.

Anyhow, we are back to being settled in the coach, and unfortunately I am back down with a sore throat and a terrible cough. I hear there are several folks in the park that are also sick. Not a fun time, but I am on meds and hope to get over this crud soon. No, I am not going out this evening to bring in the New Year. Instead, I will be taking my meds and heading to bed very soon.

I hope you all have a healthy, prosperous new year!!

Home for Christmas

We are home in Salem, Oregon for the Christmas Holiday. We got here on December 6 after a very long 3 day drive from Queen Valley, Arizona.

Before we left Arizona, the night temperatures had been dropping into the low 40s. Well when we left on the 4th of December, it was actually 37 degrees at 5 am, and it didn’t get any warmer the further north we went. Our route out of Arizona was north through Kingman where we caught highway 93 towards Las Vegas. Before Vegas, we crossed the Hoover Dam and had a good look at the new bridge they are building. We could see a lot of progress since we crossed it last year.

Currently large busses and trucks are not allowed to cross the dam and are forced to bypass via highway 95. We did find out that RVs are allowed to cross the bridge, but they are subject to a thorough search before crossing. Since we were in the Jeep, they just took one look at us and waved us through. Guess we didn’t look too threatening.

Once we got through Las Vegas, we took I-15 north to highway 93 and headed west to Ely, Nevada. We were in a hurry to get to this point, so didn’t do any geocaching beforehand which would have slowed us down. On the road to Ely, we stopped to find 10 caches, but it was way too cold (high 20s) to do more than that. We made it to Ely about 4 pm and got a nice room at the La Quinta for the night. It was 17 degrees when we checked in!

The next morning, we woke to see the temperature outside was 4 degrees. We quickly got our bags in the Jeep and went for breakfast then headed out of town on highway 50 towards Fallon (one long very lonely road). There is nothing along that road but flat valleys, and some mountain passes. I think we crossed three or 4 mountain passes and only two mining towns, Eureka and Austin. I would not want to have any problems along there because there were only a few spots that we had cell service. That would not have been fun to break down out there!!

We did happen to spot some wild life at one point! There were actually two, a Doe and last year’s fawn. This is the yearling that wanted to cross road to be with mom, but didn’t like our Jeep, so stayed up on the hill. Not a good picture, but it didn’t give us a lot of time to take its picture.

We did geocache along hwy 50, but it was way too cold (10-20 degrees) to really do much, so only stopped for a few that were right on the side of the road and really quick. As we got closer to Fallon, we could see clouds building and thought we were going to get some snow.

But, we were lucky and didn’t get anything but a couple flakes in the higher spots.  We got to Fallon about 3 then Reno at 4 where we went to Ken’s aunt and uncles’ place to visit and spend the night.

We were really hoping to spend a couple nights with them, but there was a severe winter weather alert in effect for most of Northern Nevada, so we decided to stay just one night and leave Reno before the storm hit. We did have a very nice visit with Francis and Velma, but sadly missed seeing some of the cousins we were hoping to see. Hopefully, when we head back to Arizona, we can stop by again.

Sunday morning, we woke to an outside temperature of 11 degrees (brrr). After having some wonderful waffles that Velma made for breakfast, we left Reno at 8:30 and took highway 395 north through Alturas and Klamath Falls towards Salem.

As we passed Border Town west of Reno, we could see the snow clouds building.

The snow hit shortly after crossing the CA/NV border.

From there all the way to Alturas we were in and out of snow flurries. The temps were in the low teens all the way so the snow was very dry and powdery. It was kind’a mesmerizing as we watched it swirl around on the road. The only time it really was dangerous was when we were being passed by trucks or larger cars which would swirl the snow up in front of us and cause zero visibility. We just made sure we didn’t have anyone close in front of us, so we didn’t have problems.

This picture is of where we like to park for the night when we are heading south to Arizona in the motorhome.  It is the volunteer fire station's parking lot in Likely, CA and normally, there is no snow there.....but this is what it looked like when we passed on the 6th.

I didn’t get any pictures of it, but as we went through Klamath Falls, the lake was totally white. The lake was frozen and the snow on top of it caused an eerie effect. We did stop in Klamath Falls and have a late lunch early dinner so we wouldn’t have to stop again until we were home.

When we got to the highway 97/58 junction, we took highway 58 west to Willamette Pass.  Of course, there was snow, but not as bad as we thought it was going to be.

Once we got beyond the pass, the snow disappeared and we were happy to see the temperature warming up in the 30s.  Actually hit 35 when we got to Eugene, Oregon.

We got home at 6 pm on Dec 6 to a nice warm house. Thanks go out to LeighAnn and Tim for turning our thermostat up!!

It stayed very cold until December 11 when the temps finally went above freezing. We were supposed to be having rain for the next week or so, but so far, it is sunny and in the high 30s. Hooray, sure hope it stays this way for a while.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

Thanksgiving & Beyond

Last Summer, I was pretty lazy about blogging, but I plan to do much better this winter.  My last post was only six days ago and we were getting ready for Thanksgiving.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, we hope you all had as great a Thanksgiving as we did. On Thanksgiving Day, we had a very nice dinner here in the park’s main activity hall. There were seven tables set up with 12 people signed up per table.

Each table was treated as a separate dinner/meal, and each person at the table brought an item to share. Of course we had to have a taste of everything that was brought at our table, and even though we thought we were just taking a small amount, we were stuffed.  The picture below is just a small amount of what was brought for our table.

The photo below is my dinner.  Notice that gorgeous bottle of red wine!  That's from my brother-in-law's vineyard "Terra Nativa" in Boise, Idaho.  Oh so good!!!

We ate at 1 pm and thankfully had the rest of the afternoon to wear it off. We missed being with our kids, but were very happy to have had a quality phone call with each of them before we headed off to eat. We couldn't have asked for a better day!  It was sunny and topped off at 81 degrees.

On Friday, we took the Wrangler out Jeeping with the same group we were out with last week. This time, we drove close to an old mine called "The Golden Bell," but the road ended before we got there. We did get within .17 mile of it and could see the mine tailings, but since the road was blocked and washed out, we couldn’t get closer.  You can see some of the mine tailings in the photo below.  Ken took this picture with his iPhone and I zoomed in on it, so the quality is not the best.

These next two photos show some of us heading back out to the main road.

What was I saying in my last post about Arizona having no rain?  Well Arizona is still way behind in its annual rainfall, but some parts of the state got rain this weekend (they had snow in Flagstaff). Queen Valley got a bunch of rain on Sunday, and we even had thunder and lightning. Ken & I were south of Queen Valley picking up some Cholla stalks earlier in the day and noticed some heavy clouds over the mountains. It was nice and sunny where we were at, so really didn’t pay much attention to it.  See, it looks like some rain, but nothing to really worry about....

After getting the Cholla stalks, we decided to drive back into Apache Junction to put fuel in the Wrangler and give it a good wash. Big mistake!  We really should have know better.....everytime we wash one of the Jeeps, it rains.  Sunday was no different!!  On our way back to Queen Valley, this is what we saw.  Those previous dull gray clouds had turned much darker!!  See the darkest part?  That is where we were heading (yikes).

As we got closer we started feeling the wind (lots of it) then we saw the lightning and heard the thunder. By the time we were at the coach, it was raining hard.  It was very dark out, but it was only 2 pm.  Thankfully, the heaviest wind and rain didn’t last long.  But it did drizzle on for a while.

At 4:15 we headed out to dinner with friends and drove 18 miles east to the town of Superior for pizza.  When we got back home. the only sign of the rain was a few puddles in the road.