May 26-Wells, NV

Here we are in beautiful Wells, NV. Just kidding of course, there really isn’t much here but we are spending the night at the Flying J Truck Stop for free. Our view is a distant mountain that has snow but the close up view is sage brush and tumble weeds. We could choose to stay in a small RV park nearby for $28+ but we are fine here as all we want to do is stay over night. The driving today was uneventful, the best sort of driving day. As we left Donner we noticed there is a Visitor’s Center now, in addition to the museum. It is closed for cleaning but looked pretty modern. We aren’t sure if it was there when we stayed in Oct. 2013 due to the snow. There were three deer by Hwy 80, one still in velvet. I hope they scamper back into the woods, they won’t last long there. Anglers were all along the Truckee River, made me think of Jeff’s love of fishing and how I myself caught trout in the river long ago. We ate at a Rest Stop about 40 miles south of Elko. The salmon we got pre-grilled at Safeway yesterday was very good. It’s early but saying goodnight from Wells, NV before we run low on power.

May 25, 2014–Donner Lake

We left Janice’s house at 8:15am and headed out with the destination in our minds of Winnemucca, NV or beyond if we felt like driving farther. We got to Donner Summit and began to admire the lake and how nice it would be to spend the night there. I was pretty sure there would be no campsites available on this Memorial Day weekend but John figured we would just take a look anyway. To our surprise there were openings in first come, first served Creek Campground. This is where we stayed in the snow last October! Ridge is full as they take reservations and Split Rock is not open yet. We were told to take any empty site so we chose the exact same campsite we had last October…funny. After unhooking we took a drive around the State Park side of the lake. What amazing improvements have been made. There is the boat rental area, which was there before, which I don’t really care for. All along the lakeside they have made a gray, paved walking path with a log boarder. It’s not wide but very nice. They have added a few restrooms and many picnic tables, fire pits, and barbeques from the lagoon area all along the lake to the China Cove area. It is a great improvement to the day use area and makes lakeside access so much more convenient. The tables and such are well spaced to maintain some privacy. I might add the paved walking path appears to go from the campgrounds to the lake and also to the Visitor’s Center. After taking a look there we drove into Truckee and Old Town to see what changes we could find there. The big Safeway on the East side of Hwy 80 is now a Save Mart and there is a new and even larger Safeway on the West side of Hwy 80. The town has built up some and looks like most “old towns” with the older store fronts and quaint shops and eateries. We stopped at Safeway and bought deli things for a couple meals and headed back to camp for our lunch. After lunch we did a lot of walking all around the different campground areas. I think there are more campgrounds than there used to be but I am not sure. They have certainly updated the restroom facilities, including the showers, laundry wash tubs, and little foot washing spigots in the larger restrooms. It’s .50 for a 5 minute shower, which is a good deal! We played cards when we were tired of walking and then had a salad for dinner. It is cooling off fast once the sun started to dip down behind the trees.

Our Campsite #52

Old Town Truckee

The Eash Factor

We call it the Eash Factor. This time as we pulled out for the beginning of our travels we noticed the speedometer was not working. It’s always good to know your speed, especially in CA where you are not to exceed 55 MPH when pulling a trailer. Plus there is the minor details that it is illegal to drive without it working. This has happened before on this older van. We swung by our mechanic who could not recall what he did to fix it before, he had called Chrysler to get the instructions so he suggested we just zip by there on our way out of town. That worked after a fashion. Two nice mechanics were able to push the right buttons as the right time and zap, it recalibrated – no charge. While there we were drooling over a very nice Jeep Cherokee. They even offered to help us move all our camping gear from our van to the new vehicle. Sure would have been nice but the reality is we want to finish out this season in the van. We just had a once-over on it and had the bearings replaced. Anyway, just an hour or so after our first departure we were on the road again!

We made it to my sister’s house in Folsom just in time to head out to the Happy Hour at Ruth Chris with her. We ended up just a little bit late for opening and had to wait for a seat but that was fine, enjoyed that immensely. I had these grilled mushrooms, teriyaki skewers, and a little salad smothered in bleu cheese…YUM! Nice to visit with her and spend the night on the way toward our next destination. We will spend Saturday visiting with her and then head out Sunday morning planning Winnemucca as our first stop.

Leaving Tomorrow…

Several little changes in our plans but we are still leaving tomorrow and will head to Janice’s house overnight for at least one night, if not two. From there it will be the Grand Teton’s followed by Yellowstone. Our timing is good and we are eager to leave since the report is a wave of hot weather is heading to the Central Valley.  This is no surprise! 

Yellowstone

Three weeks from today we will leave for Yellowstone. We will stop at Janice’s on the way out of CA, then stop to see Tara and Joseph in Idaho, then heading on to Yellowstone from there arriving June 5th. We will spend four nights in Madison Campground to begin with. We have reservations at Fishing Bridge and Canyon as well for a total of ten days in the park. We are pretty sure we will head east from there and go through North Dakota on our way to Michigan. We will enjoy Yellowstone and feel excited to complete our total of 50 states as we pick up ND and MI. John likes the idea but it has been a dream of mine for some time. 

Yellowstone Nat’l Park

Leaving Napa

Easter morning we are now leaving Napa after a few days with Mom. We did several things around her house, along with a doctor visit, grocery shopping, hair appointment, etc. The highlight was a nice trip to Janice’s house in Folsom yesterday to enjoy an early Easter celebration.

It’s always good to be home…Time to clean up our Casita for the NEXT TRIP!

Tony and Kitty Boy rekindle their “Friendship”

Leaving Sunset Beach

We were up, packed and out of our campsite by 11:30am. There was stop and go traffic heading into Santa Cruz. Maybe because of Easter (Spring) break or is it always this way? We stopped at Seacliff State Beach where they would not allow us to drive through and look and then at New Brighton State Beach where we used the dump station (for free) and perused the campsites there. They have hookups in some of them to our surprise. Then on the far side by the cliffs there are “premium campsites” for an extra charge. These sites have an ocean view but I don’t think they would be good if you had small children. We could not see how steep the drop was after the quaint wooden fence. We headed inland on Hwy 17 and into Santa Clara County where Jeff (our oldest son) was born. It’s been years since I have been in this area. It has grown a lot but still woodsy and lovely along that portion of the narrow Hwy 17. By the time we got to the area around Pleasanton we were hungry and stopped for a Habit Burger. It was around 80 degrees in the parking lot where we stopped. It cooled down quickly after crossing the Martinez Bridge and as we headed toward Napa it was very enjoyable. There was a lot of traffic heading out of Napa Valley but not heading in so we were good. Always good to see Mom. We had a dinner of leftovers but she didn’t mind that. We will sleep well tonight, we are tired even though we didn’t do anything today.