At Last - On the Road - April 19th, 2010

After a minor setback or three, we launched our great adventure on Monday morning.  We had spent the weekend with our daughter Michelle, her husband Mark, and their two lovely kids at their house in Mount Baker.  They patiently put up with our ferrying goods back and forth to our covered wagon, outfitting it for the long journey.  We finally cleared their house of our huge pile of boxes and bags, getting everything stowed away and , after a last visit to our little house and picking a final bit of purple broccoli out of our garden, we were ready to go.
 
 The travel on Day 1 was largely uneventful, though somewhat rainy and cold, and we arrived at our friend Ruth's house in Salem, Oregon for the first night's stayover. She lives on a fairly busy street and her driveway was just barely able to contain our rig. By parking it diagonally across the driveway space, we could just barely fit it in so that people could still use the sidewalk in front of her house. We had a very pleasant dinner and a great evening of conversation and catching up, with her and her family, Margaret, Emily and Wes. We stayed in her house rather than the RV, a gentle partial transition to RV living.

On Day 2, we headed over to the Oregon Coast, along Highway 34.   The coast is stunningly beautiful, of course, but was very windy and cold. The RV handled very well, and our little tow car tracked along nicely in spite of the wind and rain.  We saw lots of birds along the way, including this flock of Brandt's Cormorants sheltering from the wind.  We spent the night in a state park called Honeyman, nestled in among the Oregon Sand Dunes.  It was a lovely area, well protected from the wind, and our first real night of RV living, setting up all our equipment, cooking in the rig, sleeping there and feeling much more as if we were on the road.  The RV was very comfortable, though we spent a lot of time re-arranging stuff and adjusting to our new lifestyle.  

 

On Day 3, Ivy and I began to settle into a better routine.  The basic chores of RV'ing were more familiar, and the pace of our travel began to match what we were intending.  Our trip down the coast continued through the rest of Oregon.  Although we were intending to move fairly quickly to California to visit my brother, we took a more leisurely pace on this day, stopping more frequently, looking around, taking pictures and exploring a bit more.   Our lunch was particularly nice, as we stopped in a small city called Bandon along the Oregon coast, picked up some fresh local snapper from a fishing outlet, and cooked it up right there while doing a bit of birdwatching out the windows of the RV, which was parked along the shore of a bay.  I saw some turnstones, a loon, and some brants in the water, while munching on one of Ivy's characteristic one-dish salad meals.  We began to get a sense of how this adventure would unfold. 

 

We went to an elk viewing area, and got to see a few of them, though they were far away.  We stopped at several spots along the highway to walk around or take pictures.  And I had my required mid-afternoon nap parked by the side of the road while Ivy went walking. 

We settled into an RV park for the night at Crescent City California.  I wanted one with all the trimmings, to check out the wi-fi, cable TV, electric and all.  And we got one, located close in to the city.  It wasn't much to look at, on a flat plane and row on row of RVs, but everything worked and we were able to check everything out and be nearby to the Redwoods Visitor Center, for the next morning.  The raging wind rocked our RV gently all night as we snoozed and waited for the next stage of our adventure.