Nice. We’re in Texas, where we’re having a great, albeit strenuous, time with grandchildren. But we missed this year’s Enjoying your new stories. I’m not quite understanding the itinerary. I saw Beeeeeaaauutifuul pics from Crater Lake. Did you love it so much you’re going back?In any car, Enjoy!
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Carol Chock
"This may be only a dream of mine, but I think it can be made real." ~ Ella Baker
On Thu, Jun 7, 2018, 7:40 PM Brian <bjcarlin71> wrote:
Easy drive up 101 on Thursday, May 24. We had to make a stop about forty minutes into the drive – The Loleta Cheese Factory, in, no surprise, Loleta. We both love cheese. I had checked Google maps ahead of time to see if the Odyssey and attached Jeep would have a place to park – and then be able to get out. The satellite view showed a large area right across the street in this tiny town, and big enough side streets to get back to the highway. I love Google maps. Our Odyssey is actually in the Google satellite view of our "home" park, Colorado Heights Camping Resort, in Monument, CO.
Back to Loleta. It looked like the cheese operation and a school were the only things going on in town. A long ago abandoned factory building across the street from the cheese place was a real eyesore but provided ample parking. Well, they weren’t making cheese that day but a greeter, whom we assumed was the owner, cheerily welcomed us and introduced us to the cheese store and grilled cheese bar. We sampled several cheeses, bought a couple, and then had a delicious grilled ham and sharp cheddar.
They also had a large garden full of flowers and an area big enough for a wedding, for one in Loreta. Speaking of flowers, the ride up 101 was sprinkled with rhododendron bushes all blooming, some mature ones maybe fifty feet long and twenty feet high. That was the highlight of the day.
It was cool and overcast on arrival on the Klamath River and then it started raining overnight and it rained until 7pm on Friday. It was our first do-nothing day in quite awhile. My back needed a day off.
I was really looking forward to the Klamath River RV Park and the location doesn’t disappoint, but it was dreary.
We we about a mile downstream of the 101 bridge.
The clouds kept settling lower. It started to look like Kong’s Island:
It started to clear up Saturday morning:
This is supposed to be a big habitat for Bald Eagles. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen, or identified one in the wild. We’ve got tonight, sorry, who needs tomorrow?
Ok, got the tune in your head? Ear worm?
So now I got a bird thing in my head.
When we moved back to COS from Texas in 2012, the rental house was across from a field where red-tailed hawks prowled. Here’s one, dated 7/25/12:
I sat out on our deck and loved to watch them patrol overhead. Here’s five of them headed over I-25 toward the Air Force Academy (that’s Pike’s Peak in the middle):
That little blurry dot, lower right, was something on the camera lens.
We had a bird feeder and attracted various locals out of the scrub oak:
Still looking for some eagles here.
Moving on – there was an event in Eureka, sixty miles south, that sounded a siren call:
The literature provided absolutely no information about what the race entailed except that they started six miles up the road and that the teams had to go down a huge sand dune with much of the race on sand. We think. Andrea had seen a few photos of previous years’ contestants and had come to understand that unusual transportation machines were part of the deal.
We arrived a bit early (the plan was to be there at the finish line) so we could put a little gas in the Jeep first. Right next to the gas station was Joe’s Smoke Shop.
A lot of the town looked like that. Could you expect less from a town promoting the Kinetic Grand Championship? A short distance away was a small, really beat-up looking storefront, Tiffany’s Treasure Trove, with some cool, psychedelic patterns in stained glass covering the front which was, at best, 12 feet across, including the door. I tried to get a picture but there were at least a half dozen homeless dudes in various forms of awareness, or perhaps stupor, covering most of the frontage. It wouldn’t have been proper to post their pictures…..unless they were famous. I was rather curious about that store.
We got to Halverson Park early enough to plant our lounge chairs near the finish line and were entertained by several local Kinetic enthusiasts. Colorful attire seemed to be the thing:
Every so often, a local radio station provided updates, most of it live reports from Dead Man’s Hill, the big sand dune where half the participants crashed. Not sure if the station pronounces their call letters as "K" "Hum" or an alternate method, you know, the happy way:
Finally, the first team, TriloBike Diner, crossed the finish line:
OK. Genuinely odd. That thing made it down a huge sand dune without crashing?
Ten minutes later, the next team, Super Moi’, took second place.
A crashed team was towed by, outside the park.
Then, without fanfare or any announcement, the number three finisher crossed the line:
You starting to see a pattern here? A bunch of bicycles with some serious gearing mods. It was getting a little late in the afternoon and after the next finisher was announced, crossing the (highway) 230 bridge, we left.
From pictures we saw later, the really whacked-out contestants had no hope of finishing first. Next time we’ll plan to spend the late afternoon there.
We needed a few groceries and wanted to get back before sunset. The day turned out to be beautiful and I still had hope of seeing a Bald Eagle.
Eureka! Very trippy town, except for some old dude in the parking lot of the Safeway who was blasting his radio. Andrea went in for a few things and this guy pulls in next to me with his windows open cranking out The Lord’s Prayer? WTF? Don’t you know the words by now? I blasted Def Leppard back and he closed his window. Lots of off-the-tracks types here.
Back at the ranch, the sun is already behind the mountains around us but it’s still pretty nice.
Before leaving in the morning, our last in California, I got one more shot of the morning mist, with the horseshoe pits not cropped out.
However, no Bald Eagles. How about a belk? What else do you call a bear with horns?
If you like your adult beverage a bit on the malty side, how could you not fall for this description?
But no eagles.
Onto Oregon and Diamond Lake RV Park, just north of Crater Lake National Park.
Carlin RV Odyssey 