We are still in Quartzsite, but we will be leaving soon. The last Greater Quartzsite Ukulele Orchestra concert will be on Saturday, 7 March. We will either leave on the next day or we will wait a couple of days. I will decide when we find out if there will be a party for the ukulele group.
It got really hot in Quartzsite last week, so we chickened out of boondocking in the desert and went to a campground. This time of year places are really clearing out, but there were also a number of folks like us who came in from the heat. While we absolutely can run our AC when needed using the generator, I really dislike doing it for hours on end. But I kind of stop feeling comfortable when the temps get much over 85, so in to town we went! We stayed at Rice Ranch again, the place we will be staying seasonally next year. The temps were only high for 4-5 days, but we stayed a week on a discounted rate (7 days for the price of 6). We got all the laundry done, enjoyed having power available, ran the AC as needed, and we were able to heat the rig with the built in electric fireplace heater. Even when the desert gets to 90 degrees in the summer, it can be in the 50s at night so a bit of extra heat is needed for this temperature sensitive gal. I think I could get used to just how easy it is to stay in a real campground!
We took a side by side ride of course, even with the heat. We went out on just a semi-local around the Dome Rock area. There is still an awful lot of gold mining going on around Quartzsite, and here are some pictures of some of it.
I think this is an old head frameOverburden from some of the older minesThis is actually six active claims. You can rent If you wantA larger scale mining operation
We also took our yearly trip to Cibola National Wildlife Refuge. We usually go in late January or very early February, so it was interesting to see the differences 5-6 weeks can make. There were a lot fewer birds for sure! In a good year we can see hundreds of duck and geese of many species plus another few hundred sandhill cranes. These time of the year, not nearly as many.
Pond has 1/2 or less the number of birdsGreat White Egret in foreground with some sandhill cranes behindPonds in the main section of the refuge
We took a trip to the more remote Island section of the refuge that is located between the current Colorado River and the historic Colorado. I love the mountains contrasted with the flooded ponds.
Island section of refuge shows how important water is in the desert
And of course I will end with sunsets, these from Rice Ranch.
I am sorry my links didn’t work in the last post. Here they are for another try. Click on the highlighted link, then click again on the small text link. First, the Greater Quartzsite Ukulele Orchestra: “Under the Boardwalk” 29 January 2026 https://youtu.be/KjdSw8vy4N4
Now on to new stuff. We were so busy with everyone visiting that we took it easy for a few days. I tried a new ukulele jam group on Sunday, 1 February, but it wasn’t quite my thing. Very churchy with praise music I didn’t know. It was nice to be able to do more than just listen though I probably won’t repeat it. One Tuesday, 3 February, we took a ride with the SunRiders that was just a half day ride. We wandered around to the Quartzsite letters, a big guzzler we hadn’t seen before, and we noted a number of military-related locations from WWII. It was nice to have a relaxing ride instead of full-speed ahead!
We then headed to an Anasazi Chapter of the FRVA rally in Benson, AZ on Wednesday, 4 February going to Gila Bend the first night. The rally began on Thursday. It was really busy, but enjoyable. One of the highlights was a visit to the Mescal Movie Site. They made a lot of old Westerns there, and it is a smaller version of Old Tucson movie set. Not in great shape, but it is now being run by a non-profit with volunteer docents who give you a great tour. They are trying to keep it from further decay plus improving it where they can.
Along one side of “Main Street”Interiors were a bit roughThe “hotel” was in the best shape because it was brick on a real foundation
We headed back to Quartzsite on Sunday morning early. I wanted to get back to Quartzsite to join another ukulele virtual group. This one is run by a guy in Melbourne, Australia! It is a 3:00pm MST on Sunday in the US but 9:00am on Monday in Australia. Nice group, and I am definitely going to continue with them.
On Tuesday, 10 February we drove to Phoenix to visit Costco for a hearing aid test for Kevin. Turns out that even though he has significant high frequency hearing loss, it isn’t bad enough for a hearing aid to really help. Good to hear that from a professional who was paid to sell hearing aids! We also went to the Guitar Center to look for a ukulele for Kevin. I have been having so much fun, he decided he needed to get one too. They had a very limited selection, and we didn’t end up buying one there. But he was able to try the difference between a tenor and a concert, and he decided the larger tenor worked best for him. We eventually found a barely used one in Quartzsite at a good price, so he has joined my new obsession. He is still working on getting his fingers limbered up though.
On Thursday, 12 February, we took a tough ride with the SunRiders. It was labeled “moderate, 3/5” and it probably was for wider rigs than ours. For our little 50” it was difficult. Then again, this is why you can safely ride harder trails when you are with a group; if something happens, you have a set of experienced folks who can get you out of trouble. One spot we visited is called the “Movie Set.” This isn’t a real movie set, but is a tourist spot built by the nearby town of Bouse.
On Sunday, 15 Feb, we went to Lake Havasu for a SewCation with their quilt guild (I’m a member). Had a fun time as usual. I finally finished my 2025 Kona Block of the Month with the last two blocks, sashing, cornerstones and borders. Originally I was going to add another piano key boarder, but this thing is big enough already!
Finished Kona BOM 2025
I had so many of the Kona charm squares left! I cut a bunch of triangle blocks for another donation a quilt, and I started sewing the piano keys I cut into strips for the binding of the BOM. This is going to be a massive lap quilt for Kevin. He always says he is cold, and the other quilts are too small. He will be able to wrap up in this one pretty well!
We are now back in Quartzsite in a wind strong enough to keep us settled inside the MH. Minnie seems to be quite happy to cuddle on my lap. One last video of the laziest playing by a pair of cats. Silly kids. It’s a long one, so if cat videos aren’t your thing, feel free to skip it.
[I somehow didn’t publish this on, just left it in draft. Not sure why, but here it is.]
We have just been doing normal Quartzsite stuff. Kevin has been doing some 3D printing too. I now have a nice setup to keep my new jewelry box on the shelf while traveling instead of having to put it on the bed. He’s also made a some small fit samples for some more things he wants to print. He really loves his printer!! And the one we have with us is just his original Ender 3 printer, not one of his newer and nice ones which are at home.
After the “design choices” I made in the October Block of the Month (code name for “mistakes”), I figured it couldn’t get much worse. It did. First, I seem to have lost the pattern for November. I cut pieces for it a week ago and sewed a few components, but now I can’t find the card with the design. Oh well, I’ll just work on December. December did not like me! I can’t tell you how many components I sewed wrong. I ended up putting the block into time out for a couple of days before finally finishing it. I’ll get a picture of it and the November one together later. I have arranged for my two king sized quilt tops to be based with water soluble thread by the quilt shop in Havasu I like, Fabrics Unlimited. She is going to use a wool batting for them. One is for our bed at home and the other is for the bed in the motorhome. I have them carefully folded up, so no pictures of those either.
And for yet more disasters, the surface of my ukulele had a rather rough feel, and I realized it was getting really dry. Duh! Humidity has been running around 15-20%, so of course it is dry! I put the humidifiers I bought at the guitar shop before we left Iowa in the case, but they are really too big to fit in the sound hole. I ordered a new one which shows temperature and relative humidity too. But it was too late! The day after I added the humidifiers I found I had a tiny crack in the front of the ukulele! It runs from the bottom of the guitar to the bridge. I am heart broken. I am looking up luthiers now, and I will be calling one in Yuma tomorrow morning. The ukulele orchestra is going well, and I am even going to lead one song – “Down on the Boardwalk>” Turns out the leader didn’t know it very well, and I started singing out on it. That was enough to get me to lead that song LOL! Our concert is in 9 days, and I am hoping to get the ukulele fixed right after that.
One of the interesting things that we have seen here is a Vandenberg AFB satellite launch. Interesting views of the first stage coming back into the lower atmosphere for recovery. It took a 2 second capture to get this view, but wow! There are two other launches this week. I am hoping they have a better launch angle.
Blown up a LOT
Kevin and I took a ride northeast of Quartzsite to a mining area north of I-10 that was quite nice. I prefer mountains to dust, and this trip delivered.
Just nice rocky scenery.A saguaro being very classically “saguaro!”Cabin ruins. Note the little side rooms on the right.
We went on a UTV ride the SunRiders today after I went to quilt guild. We took a very round about route to the Cyprus Mine then drove around it. It is a big mostly open pit gold mine that is still actively being worked. It was HUGE! It was 2-3 miles to drive around the pile of overburden they had piled up. Sadly you can’t see the pit; that would have been nice. There were a few nice flowers like the sand verbena below, but it was mostly driving on sand/dust that wasn’t my favorite locale. Oh well, the mine was nice.
Water is pumped from the tunnels to here.Sand verbena
And I will end with a classic Arizona sunrise. Absolutely stunning.
It has been a really beautiful fall season in Iowa, at least so far. Yesterday it was in the upper 60s, and we decided to take the RZR to Wisconsin for a ride. Kevin has added all sorts of things to the RZR – new lighted whip lights, a new winch to replace the less capable one we had, and an emergency brake. Did you know emergency brakes don’t come standard on most sUTVs? I didn’t! This one just holds down the brake pedal when activated. Hopefully it will keep the RZR from moving around so much when Kevin loads it in the truck. Regarding the trip, no pictures because we road only 7 miles! Turns out the power steering is screwed up again/still. Luckily we can now reproduce the problem easily for the service shop, and Kevin had already made an appointment with them for yearly maintenance. Sigh. This was the reason we had decided to take the ride, just to make sure everything works well before our winter sojourns. Better to wait for service and parts now than when we are in Arizona!
I actually have been piecing quite a bit, but I didn’t take pictures. I added 72 piece border blocks to what will become our RV bed quilt, then I added an additional 4” border all around those. Now I have to add enough borders to get it to an RV king bed size with a 10” drop. I even planned for 5% shrinkage, just to make sure it fit. I will probably get those borders on tomorrow. Then back to the Block of the Month!
I do have some nice pictures though. The first two are a follow-up to my last post which shows the development behind our house. The first one shows our house and how it sits now, while the second shows the new lot lines. They are priced outrageously in my opinion. I live in a nice neighborhood in what is considered a LOCL area, and the lots are going to $110,000-$140,000 for a 1/4 or 1/3 acre lot! No scenery, just previously fallow Iowa farm land. No wonder young people can’t buy houses!
My house circled in blueThe new lot lines. Arrow points to a newer elementary school.
We also had some real excitement with the recent solar storm that lit up the sky with auroras. We could see them with the naked eye, but the photo sensor on my iPhone caught them even better. These photos are not processed at all, as should be obvious from the dust and the porch light flare. I think they are still pretty impressive though.
Green barsRed flares
My ukulele playing is definitely improving. I remember the chords pretty well, and I am moving between them fairly quickly. The chord transition is what I am concentrating on now. I have a book of mostly old folk songs, and I am just working through the ones in the key of G and C. Once I get these in good shape, I’ll work at some others.
I have a birthday coming up, and Kevin has already gotten me a present – a new GoPro remote control that charges with a USB C plug. My previous one had a weird custom plug that was always getting mis-placed. Since we now have 20-30 USB C cords around, I doubt that will be an issue with this one!.
We had one of the loveliest Goldilocks-type days on today’s ride. We carried the RZR to Bradfield Recreation Area (a parking area next to the Dolores River near the Bradfield Campground). We off-loaded it (oh I mean Kevin off-loaded it), and we headed across the river and up the mountains. The temps were in the 70s, there was just a puff of breeze, the sky was brilliant blue with a few puffy clouds, the mostly BLM roads were easy, and the scenery was spectacular.
Here’s what it looks like as we leave the truck. The landscape was sage with some nice pines. It was just us as we left. There were 3 others here when we got back. And the correct comment on the ramp length is “My what long ramps you have!” Yup. Makes it easier to get the rig on and off. The brand name is actually “Long Ramps.:
Those ramps …
We were in mostly a sagebrush area as we headed up the mountain and towards McPhee Reservoir. As usual, click on the link to see the video. And sorry for the edit; I accidentally deleted the first video.
After the last picture we took a series of sharp switchbacks down to the edge of the reservoir. There was a pickup of men heading out to fish, and there was a couple on a canoe trip. The boat was pulled up on the shore, and they were walking around the rocky shore many feet below us. The water is very low.
We then decided to head to the Benchmark fire tower aka Benchmark Lookout. Absolutely beautiful ride there. As we took the last turn to the lookout, the trail became dirt and a bit more rutted. However the oak scrub (Gambel oak maybe?) was in glorious shades of orange to red. Sadly the GoPro didn’t capture the colors well, and I didn’t realize it until I downloaded them. Kevin got a couple of good iPhone shots though.
And then the lookout itself showed up. If we had been a week earlier we could have visited it, but it is closed to visitors now. We did have a lovely lunch break where the final few hundred feet of road was closed.
It was a total of about 60 miles over 4 hours, including a long break. You can put a lot of miles in when you are driving good gravel roads. However the RZR is so much more comfortable for driving gravel than the truck. Something about 10-12 pounds of air in the tires!
The drive from Delta to Lake City was truly awful. Colorado Hwy 149 was so wiggly I got seasick – really! Slow speeds of 30-40 mph with lots of up and down hills made it a miserable drive in the motorhome. I was not in a happy mode when we finally got to Lake City, and our campsite was so small we had to really wiggle around to get in. The owner tried to direct me, and he ran me into tree limbs. I stopped and said the only one who could back me in was Kevin. Owner seemed kind of perturbed, but I was pissed. Luckily the tree branches only rubbed the chrome outside of my mirrors, but that was only because I stopped. Sigh. Once we got in the site and I was able to calm down, I could appreciate the long but narrow site. It has a lot of trees, but luckily an open space for the Starlink. They have a spring that has its own little waterfall along the road. I loved the lush moss.
Silly rocks but cute waterfall
Monday we discovered our 7 year old Dyson stick vacuum had died. Sigh. And of course there isn’t a good place to get one in Lake City, so we had to head to Gunnison. The road is much easier in a truck, especially with Kevin driving. We picked up the new vacuum, did some other miscellaneous shopping, and drove a bit of the road we will take to on our way from Blue Mesa Reservoir where we will be staying next. The trip here is still heavy on my mind! We had dinner at a fabulous place called Breakfast Hangout and Euphoria. Weird name, but really good food. I had salmon with baked sweet potatoes and a piece of hazelnut crepe cake. Delicious.
Tuesday we did the famous Alpine Loop trail. Yup, it is worth everything you have ever heard about it. If you have a slow internet connection, come back later! I have lots of videos and pictures.
We left about 8:30 and returned around 2:30 with lots of stops for pictures and a long lunch. Our campground, Highlander RV Park, is right on the trail so we took off from there. We had a nice ride around Lake San Cristobal. There are a lot of dry camping available, but it would have been challenging to get the motorhome in the sites.
The first big pass was Cinnamon Pass. The trail gets considerably rougher, though still a relatively easy ride for the RZR. Can you see the trail switch backing up the mountain?
I wish I could say I took a video at the top of the pass, but I didn’t. I did take lots of miscellaneous pictures though.
Even in mid August there were flowers in the meadowsSage meadowsStunning mountains
Animas Forks is a state supported ghost town along the Alpine Loop. Lots of pictures from here too.
Houses and businessesThe big mill ruins is for sale!Old mines and mills were all over the place
Then we headed to Engineer Pass, a more challenging road. There was about a half mile of really rough road with big holes intermixed with ledges. Our little RZR was capable of it, but it was hard driving.
I didn’t get any pictures of the shelf roads we drove or the really rough areas. During those areas I was holding onto my “Oh Shit” handle! Handy gadget found on the passenger side of all SxSs.
Today I spent time with my sewing materials. I haven’t gotten much time for a long time, and I deliberately said I would stay put all day today to sew. I managed to cut and sew the August block for my Kona Block of the Month. I like the colorway we got for this month.
I like the pinks and reds
I also cut a few hundred pieces that I need for a random border for a quilt that will be going into the motorhome when I get it finished. It is much easier to sew the little pieces when they are already cut out. I can do it in small segments of time, but cutting is best done all at one time.
I also experimented with a new fusible for appliqué. I bought this adorable Accuquilt cactus die this winter, and this is the first time I have played with it. After using a few sample pieces to experiment with thread and fabric, I put this adorable design on one of the canvas bags we use for groceries. We wash them regularly, and it will be interesting to see how the appliqué holds up. I used an invisible thread on top with a blind hem stitch with 3 and length 1. I like it!
Cute appliqué
Tomorrow we head to Elk Creek campground on Blue Mesa Reservoir in Curecanti National Recreation Area. We will have electricity, an unusual thing for a National Park Service campground.
From Antelope Island we spent the night in Green River, Utah at Green River State Park. Lovely, big sites! We spent the next night at Valley Sunset RV Ranch in Delta, CO. Not bad for a very small campground, and it was inexpensive to boot! We then arrived into the Taylor Park area, our destination until tomorrow.
We are attending the Taylor Park UTV Rally, an annual get-together that has been going on since 2010 or so with a hiatus during COVID. It is a very casual affair. The rally provides access to a dry camping area (for a fee), an evening program with lots of door prizes, a few vendors of SxS specialties, and lots of people knowledgeable about the area. As usual, we chose to go out by ourselves after picking the brains of some of the experienced folks. We just drive a lot slower than most of the enthusiasts who have big, fast machines.
Thursday we drove to Tincup and then to Pitkin via the Cumberland Pass at over 12,000’. Fun little almost mining ghost towns with a few hearty residents. The pass had incredible views. There was so much dust though! It hasn’t rained, really rained, for a long time.
The day started with a lovely sunrise.
Thursday sunrise
Tincup is only 6 miles from the campsite. They have had some bad experiences with OHVs I guess.
Tincup takes speed limits seriously
All the buildings I noted were out of log construction. Some were new, some very old, and some in-between. It was a busy mining town many, many years ago.
Almost everything built out of logs
We left Tincup to head up a mountain valley. Beaver sign was everywhere. There are two dams in this picture.
Beautiful beaver meadows along every stream
Cumberland Pass is a famous trail. It can be driven in passenger vehicles, but it is probably best in an OHV. We climbed and climbed.
See that road on the hillside? That’s where we go
The sign said 12,015’ but my GPS said 11,980. Either way it was really hard to breath.
Cumberland PassViews for milesLots of old cabins and mines around
Pitkin is also an old mining town with only a few residents plus some rental cabins. Like Tincup it was mostly vintage log buildings, but it is larger than Tincup and more prosperous. There were two restaurants. We went to one with green chili burgers and huckleberry margaritas.
Pitkin log buildingsMore views
We came by via the Slaughterhouse Gulch trail. It was a bit rougher, but quite doable. Didn’t get many pictures because we were mostly just in the trees.
By Friday my sinus problems were getting serious. We left at 8:00 am and went to Tincup for breakfast at French’s. Lovely meal. We then headed up to the Texas Lakes trail. We had a bit of a false start when we encountered a water crossing we just didn’t think we were big enough for. We ended up taking an alternate but longer route. The pictures got fewer and fewer as I was feeling worse and worse. The combination of dust and no air was really getting to me. We did see a lot of mule deer this day though. It helps to be the first folks out and about. We saw 12 different deer in various little groups. I am going to post a really bad picture of one that was bedded down maybe 10 yards from the road. Please forgive how bad it is. By this time I just couldn’t get out of the rig, and the RZR vibrates whenever the motor is on.
Bad deer picture
Luckily I did get some GoPro footage. This is looking at the reservoir from near where we are camped.
Today (Saturday) I am even worse so no RZR riding for us! We took a big pickup truck trip up and past the reservoir then backdown the opposite side and into Gunnison on gravel roads. Really nice.
Lakes and mountainsThis was about 10,000’More mountain lakesA view from near the outlet at Taylor Reservoir.
We leave tomorrow morning. My sinuses aren’t getting much better, but I am dosing myself with every type of allergy relief and cough medicine I can manage. I do fine if I don’t move, but walking around every a little bit starts me coughing again. We will be heading to Lake City to do the famous Alpine Loop, so I am working hard on getting better.
After the night in Burns, we spent one night (again) in the Mountain Home Elks Lodge lot followed by three nights in the Jerome Elks Lodge lot. We planned the time in Jerome to do some RZR riding in the Sawtooth Mountains near Magic Mountain Ski Resort, and it was a fabulous ride.
There was a variety of road/trails in the area. One type is called a shelf road. They are basically just a bulldozed trail in the side of a steep hillside that drops off steeply on one side. This one was pretty mild, but it does show how they work.
Interestingly enough we also saw this occupied, but quite rustic, cabin. We didn’t see anyone around, and of course we didn’t get too close, but the flag in front was new and waving.
Note the flag
We saw hundreds of animals! Well they weren’t too wild, but we did encounter a large herd of sheep being moved. We never saw the shepherd, but we saw a guardian dog and a sheep dog. Note in the video how the sheep split around an obstacle then come right back together.
The trip was around 40 miles, and we took 4.5 hours to do it. That included lunch at a lovely shady spot that I didn’t get a good picture of.
I thought I would add a picture of what the parking lot looked like. In the winter I bet it is MUCH busier with skiers! You can also see the ramps Kevin uses to put the RZR back in the truck.
Empty
On Thursday we visited the Minidoka National Historic Site. It is the location of what is more appropriately called a “concentration camp” rather than the innocuous term of “internment camp.” May we never forget the stain on our nation when we rounded up people based only on their ethnicity and locked them away for years. Oh, wait, doesn’t that sound much more current than WWII? The camp was huge, with thousands of people and probably around 100 housing units. Each of the buildings like the white one below held 6 families of between 3 and 8 members.
A sad reminder
We would have done more, but we ended up having to take Minnie to the vet. She has obviously not feeling well, and she had lot a lot of weight. After a few hundred dollars of blood work and an ultrasound, she was diagnosed with probable pancreatitis. Lots of meds over the next few weeks, then a revisiting of her blood work.
Today we are at Antelope Island State Park in Utah. Gorgeous, and hardly anyone here! The water is turned off to the entire island, so only the hardy folks are camping.
Oregon has a number of Sno-Parks designed for cross country skiing and snowmobiling, even dogsledding! Some are open for other uses in the summer. Ray Benson is very popular with both the OHV crowd and the water sports crowds who can’t get a reservation at the nearby lakes. We arrived on Thursday afternoon, and it was beautiful. Here is the view from under our awning.You can barely see the Hoodoo Ski Area to the right.
Lots of flowers
And there were butterflies! Thousands and thousands of California Tortoiseshell butterflies had recently hatched, and they were busy feeding, or at least according to Oregon websites. The first picture is of a few hundred hanging out in a damp tire track. The video is from under my awning again. Click it to watch in full screen mode.
Friday we took a 24 mile RZR trip. I must say I am not impressed with Oregon as a UTV location. The rules are onerous; for example, a narrow UTV like ours (50” wide) is allowed on ATV (50”) trails in other states, but not in OR. No driving even on many USFS double digit numbered roads is another example. And then the riders! Very poor trail behavior – driving too fast, blasting around blind turns, etc. We enjoyed the ride, but decided that would be it in Oregon. I will give you a couple of pictures and a video though. The video was taken on the way to the top of Cache Mountain where there used to be an old USFS fire watch tour. Of course it was burned by vandals a number of years ago.😢
Burn scars still have beauty with Mt. Washington behind themSome nice little hidden lakes
Since we had plenty of water and the RZR was SO dirty, Kevin used his handy dandy electric power washer on it. This was the real deal job – he completely unloaded everything and washed it all. Sorry for the fuzzy picture.
The baby got washed
We take a lot of gear with us since we ride by ourselves a lot. Extra gas, extra water, food, clothing, repair kit and tools, an InReach emergency notification system, even gear to stay the night if we get stuck. Once a Girl Scout, always a Girl Scout!
All clean and equipment rearranged
Saturday we decided to join the crowds sightseeing, but in the pickup. I didn’t take many pictures, but we had a nice ride. We drove through a bunch of heavily forested areas before reaching the Columbia River. We drove along it quite a ways, and we tried to see some waterfalls, but it was not to be. It is prime tourist season, and everything was so crowded we didn’t get to see the falls. I did get one drive-by photo, but that was it. Note to self: Stay away from popular tourist areas on absolutely beautiful Saturdays! We had done the waterfall drive a few years back though, so it wasn’t a critical miss.
To summarize about the Sno-Park, it was fine until Friday when multiple large groups of people came in. The groups were noisy by themselves, and then the OHVs they brought with them were worse. I wouldn’t have minded noise before 9 or 10pm, but we had motorcycles roaring until 11pm on Friday and a generator that ran until well after midnight. There was also a lot of yelling from the groups. It wasn’t like this the last time we were here, probably because the weather was so hot. This weekend the highs were 80 or less, so no need for AC. Yet another lesson learned.
We packed up this morning and drove to Burns, OR where we are spending the night at a small place called Cindi’s RV Park. It has 6 sites, FHU, and costs the princely sum of $35! We are catching up on laundry and some cleaning. We have pretty much planned the rest of the trip until we go to the ayatollah Park UTV Rally beginning 13 August. More on that as it happens.
We arrived in Crescent at the Big Pines RV Park. Nice place. It is older and obviously family run. The sites are spotless, nicely separated (for an RV park), and they have their own entrance to the UTV trails in the area! It was obvious who was here from the Central Oregon club, and we managed to connect with one of the group’s leaders easily. On the 4th, we went on a group ride to Ft. Rock and back. It was 115 miles (!!!) on mostly gravel roads ridden at pretty high speeds. We took a long lunch break at a bar and grill in town, and then a thunderstorm came in. We just put on ponchos to keep our legs dry and took off on a fast, more direct route to the campground. I only got a few pictures because my GoPro got knocked down and I didn’t notice it until we finished the trip! But here is the little bit I did get.
The first one shows what most of the roads were like – wide graded gravel with minimal bumps.
And this is the result of passing too close to a tree! The GoPro stayed attached, but it decided to point straight up to the sky. Nice view of the clouds though LOL!
While the club had nice people, it just isn’t our type of riding. We decided to head out on our own on Saturday. We ended up riding about 60 miles to the town of Odette and had lunch at Manley’s Restaurant. Very nice burgers! Here are some pictures along the way.
Nice roads to start withThen got a bit narrower
And then we got to this:
BTW, I have no idea why this video is in a totally different format than the others! But take a look at just how narrow the trail got to be. Good thing we had a narrow rig!
One of the interesting sites we saw on the way back was this cinder mine. Many of the roads in the National Forest are improved using this red cinder. There were lots of volcanic escarpments and lava flows in the area.
We took off for Sisters, OR this morning. I had reserved a 50’ site at Cold Springs Campground (USFS), but when Kevin took the truck over to check it out, we couldn’t have gotten in the site due to trees on the entrance. Sigh. We found a boondock site even closer to town though, so I am not too worried. It is going to be in the mid-90s the first part of the week, so having the ability to turn on the generator as much as we want for AC is not a bad trade off.
This afternoon I picked up my credentials for the classes I will be taking this week, and we had dinner at a Himalayan restaurant called High Camp Taphouse. The food was well flavored, but I was expecting a bit spicier. We didn’t regret the stop though.
Tomorrow morning I start classes. We will be here until the Monday after the quilt show. We plan on visiting Bend for some truck work and shopping, plus we will do some riding a few days.
