We didn’t do much yesterday.
We just hung out with Kathi and Bob. We went out for a Mexican dinner at a place in Glendale called Nano’s. It was pretty good.
Today we are leaving Glendale. We are not sure how far we will go today. Maybe only as far as O'Brian or maybe as far as Myers Flat or maybe all the way home.
I’ll let you know tomorrow.
Yesterday Patti and Kathi went to the Seven Feathers Casino.
Bob and I went to Medford to check out the Railroad Park.
Bob showed me what they have been working on to improve the layout.
Unfortunately none of the waterfalls or other water features were working and we couldn’t run any trains but all the work they have done is still pretty impressive.
They have built lots of bridges and trestles.
There are small towns,
rivers, and lakes. This one is their coy pond and the only one that has water in at all times,
and even a sea port. Visualize water.
The bridge in the background is an exact replica of a real one in New York.
The crossing in the foreground will eventually be a functioning cantilever draw bridge.
There is an electric trolley system with a scale model of the original southern Oregon Traction Company power plant
and a saw mill complete with smoking sawdust burner.
The trolley system is still under construction as well as other features.
For Harry Potter fans there is a Hogwarts Express layout. Complete with a model of Hogwarts Castel
the Quidige pitch,
train station
and even the Whomping Willow with Mr Weesley Ford Anglia, tangled in it.
There is a railroad museum, small trains that you can ride on and much , much more.
If you are in Medford, Oregon during the summer on the second or fourth Sunday of the month, take your kids to the Railroad Park, they will have a ball.
Here is a web sight with more information.
http://www.ci.medford.or.us/page.asp?navid=497
Or you can just Google,
“Medford Oregon Railroad Park”
Where we park when we are visiting with Kathi and Bob is in a cul-de-sac at the end of their road. The cul-de-sac is not large enough to turn the RV around in with the jeep attached so we had to stop halfway through the turn and disconnect the jeep. When I tried to start the RV after disconnecting the jeep the engine wouldn’t turn over. The starter solenoid just clicked.
I was surprised because we had just driven about 180 miles so the battery should have been fully charged.
Fortunately the RV has a switch that when the engine battery fails you can switch to the auxiliary batteries and start the engine. I got the engine started and we parked the RV.
Yesterday morning I cleaned the battery connections and tried to start the engine. It still wouldn’t turn over with the engine battery. I suspected that the battery was shot. I got out my meter and I had Patti try to start the engine while I monitored the battery voltage. As soon as Patti turned the ignition switch to start the engine, the battery voltage dropped from 12 volts to 4 volts. That proved to me that the battery was shot.
We drove 25 miles to the town of Canyonville where they have a NAPA store and I bought a new jell-cell battery.
I installed the battery and the engine started right up.
I am slowly changing all my vehicles over to jell-sells.
The Jeep was the first one when I had to change the battery in Blanding, Utah.
The rest of the day we spent just hanging out with Kathi and Bob and playing with their grandson, Lucas, who is a very cute little boy with a great personality.
Here are some Lucas pictures;
Lucas with Uncle Marty.
Lucas with grandma and grandpa.
Lucas and mom.
Super Lucas ready to fly.
Who, Me??
Let me think about that.
Hey, I’m cool.
Every time I see this shot I have to laugh.
I could go on but you get the idea.
Today Patti and Kathi are going to the Seven Feathers Casino.
I think Bob and I are going to the train park in Medford.
We had an easy trip to Glendale yesterday.
We left Redmond around 9:30, and drove south on 97.
View of the Three Sisters from 97.
We turned west on 138;
and drove over the mountain to Roseburg.
The drive over the mountains was very scenic. We passed lakes
and drove along the Umpqua River.
When we got to Roseburg we turned south on I-5 and drove to Glendale. We arrived at Kathi and Bob’s around 2:00.
I assume you know that if you click on the pictures you can see an enlarged picture.
I just found out from my brother-in-law Bob that if you want a further enlargement of the pictures on the blog, after you click on the picture hold down the control key and hit the (+) key. Each time you hit the (+) key the picture enlarges more. This also works to enlarge the blog page. If you enlarge the blog page then click on the picture you will get a much enlarged picture.
What this does is enlarge everything on your browser. Of course to get things back to normal you can use control (-).
In conclusion, if there are things such as small type on any web page you can enlarge them at will.
It works on Internet Explorer but I don’t know if it works on other browsers.
Happy birthday USA !!
We didn’t do much on the fourth. We just hung out at Samantha’s apartment.
In the afternoon we had a barbeque and around 10:00 we sat out on the sidewalk and watched the fireworks that were taking place at the fairgrounds.
We will be leaving here today (07-05) for Glendale, Oregon to spend a couple of days with Bob and Kathy, Patti’s sister and brother-in-law.
We are on our last leg of this adventure.
John and I have been camping for a couple of days with no internet available. That is why it has been a couple of days since the last post.
John and I head for Paulina lake.
We left Samantha’s apartment around 9:00 and drove to the public RV dump station and dumped the black and grey tanks. There wasn’t any fresh water available there and I didn’t know where else to get fresh water for the tank so we returned to the apartment and filled up from the spigot in the front yard. In order for the hose to reach the fill up port on the RV we had to park facing the wrong way on the street. Even then I had to use both my water hoses and even then just had enough hose to make it.
Eventually we got on the road and headed south on 97 through Bend, OR and turned left on FR 21 to Newberry Crater and Paulina Lake.
I was a little concerned that there would be a lot of people already there but the campground was almost empty. We had no problem getting a spot large enough for Plan “B”. There were several long spots. We took one that was a pull through and were setup by 11:00.
The lake is at over 6,000 feet so it is a little cooler here than in Redmond.
After we set up we had lunch out on the picnic table in our site. Right away we noticed we had a problem as we were swarmed by mosquitoes. I realized that we had no bug repellant with us.
Bummer!!
We decides to take a ride further up the road in the jeep to look at the other campgrounds around the two lakes, Paulina and East Lake. The main campground around East Lake was much fuller than the Paulina Lake campground although it also had several spots that were large enough for a 30 foot RV to fit into.
At the end of FR21 on the shore of East Lake is Cinder Hill campground but all the sights we saw there were to small for a large RV.
We stopped at a day use area on East Lake so I could get a couple of pictures.
I think that is Newberry Crater behind John.
Here is another interesting mountain in the background, I don’t know the name of it but maybe after being here a couple more days I will find out.
Both these lakes we formed after a volcano erupted and rain water and snow melt filled in the caldera. There are still hot springs in parts of the lakes.
After visiting the two lakes I decided that we had to do something about the bug situation. We drove down off the mountain to highway 97 and drove south to the town of La Pine where we went to the local market and bought some bug repellant. I had been told by several people that Bounce dryer sheets worked good for repelling mosquitoes so I picked up a pox. I don’t like the smell of them but I figured that if they worked to keep away mosquitoes it might be worth a try. Just to be on the safe side I also bought some “OFF Towelettes”.
I was told that all you have to do with the Bounce sheets is place them around where you will be sitting or eating and the Mosquitoes would stay away.
When we got back to the RV, I took the bag chairs out of the jeep and set them up in the shade, then with a cloths pin I attached the sheet to the back of the chairs. We sat down in the chairs for a little relaxation and immediately were attacked by hungry mosquitoes. I got out the “Off Towellettes”, we rubbed them on our bare skin and the mosquitoes went away.
I guess the Bounce works as long as you have a back up. :O) John went swimming later in the afternoon. He reported that the water was freezing cold.
We had left over rib’s and corn for dinner.
Tomorrow (07-02) I am thinking of taking a road that goes into Newberry Crater and maybe we can find a road to that interesting mountain. It may be called Paulina Peak.
That won’t take up the whole day so maybe we can find some other roads to check out. A lot of the roads around here are restricted so we will just have to see how it works out.
O7-02-13
John fell asleep around 6:00 last night right after dinner.
I went to bed around 10:00 and as it was a cool night I got the best sleep I have had in a while. I got out of bed around 7:00. John was still copping zees so I let him sleep. I was wondering how long he could sleep.
By 10:30 I got bored and woke him up. I don’t think I have ever seen anyone sleep for that long, something like 16 hours straight.
Around 11:00 we took of for a ride.
The first place I wanted to checkout was the Newberry Volcano. We drove east for a couple miles and found the road that goes up to the crater. The road was a little rutted and climbed the side of the mountain. Eventually we entered the south side of the crater. Unfortunately the road petered out not far into the bowl and became a bike trail.
We stopped for a picture.
Much of the rock is obsidian.
After taking the pictures we headed back down to the pavement and turned right. We followed the highway until we came to a side road with a sign that read Big Lava Flow. The road ended at a trailhead.
Back to the highway we went. We turned west and drove until we came to the road that went up to Paulina Peak. We turned onto the road and climbed the the mountain. The road started out paved but changed to gravel with a lot of real deep washboard.
Eventually we got to the lookout at the top of Paulina Peak and
took some more pictures.
Behind John you can see Paulina Lake, Newberry Volcano and East Lake.
You can see the Three Sisters in the background.
After getting back to the highway we turned east and followed the road to until we got to road 2127 where we turned west and followed this road to road 2125. We turned onto this road and followed it for a while until we got to Road 2121. There is supposed to be some ice caves somewhere on this road but we never found them. Road 2121 took us back to the highway and we returned to the campground.
We will be leaving here tomorrow and going back to Redmond. We had a nice relaxing time here and enjoyed the cooler temperatures.
07-03-13
John and I left Paulina Lake around 10:00 this morning and were back in Redmond by 11:15.
It was a fun trip and we had a good time.
Well, here it is 4:00 am on July first and I can’t sleep so I am writing in the blog.
Yesterday was about the same as the day before.
It was hot, Patti, Becki and John took Samantha to work around 10:30 while they were gone I went to Wal-Mart to see if I could find a new lunch cooler. I wandered around the store for a while but didn’t find what I wanted.
Patti came home around noon and we went to Fred Meyers to se what we could find. We bought a soft cooler that looks like it will work. It isn’t exactly what I wanted but it will have to do.
It was too hot to cook so we had Pizza for dinner.
Around 9:00 in the morning (07-01) John and I are taking off for a couple of days in the RV. The plan is to go to Paulina lake which is about 45 miles south of here.
I hope we can get a spot in the campground for Monday and Tuesday night. It being the week of July fourth that might be a problem.
I don’t know the area very well so I don’t know any where else to go.
With a 30 foot Motor-home it’s hard to just go camp any where.
There are times when I really miss my van.
We will see what happens.
