Travel - Sometimes Sweetness and Light. Other times, NOT.

This post was composed over a few days, in and out of Internet service. As I complete it, we're camped at Cottonwood Canyon Campground in the Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota.  Yesterday we left Yellowstone National Park after a quick visit and an exit via what has to be among the most spectacular drives in the world, the Beartooth Highway. 

One of way too many OMG views from the Beartooth Highway.

Cell service at our campground is 3G, so with my iPhone's Hotspot, I'm able to plug into the Internet. Hopefully the post will be done before power runs out or I get too cold sitting outside. Our campsite along the Little Missouri River lacks electrical or other services. And now on to Yellowstone highlights along with some musings about our privileged travel life.

The awesome power of Yellowstone Falls cannot be overstated. 

Lest anyone think that traveling for prolonged periods means unmitigated joy,   trust me, it's not always so.

Sometimes I feel like I'm giving the wrong impression. True. We are privileged and grateful to see and experience some of the greatest natural and cultural wonders of the USA and sometimes other countries. We're often stimulated, awe stricken, flabbergasted, wonder-besotted. But sometimes, between incredible places, we.....get homesick. Get tired of our close quarters Need our own spaces. Bicker. What I'm trying to convey.....life on the road is not perfect. Close, but not quite.

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone below the great falls. Just wonderful. I lost my sunglasses here, leaning over a barrier to take photos.

Springtime in Yellowstone. Buffalo and bears are on the move with young. The meadows are verdant. The skies are dramatic. The USA's first national park never disappoints. 

Here's another thing. We don't always stay in our camper, in case you got the mistaken impression we're hardcore.  If we have family or friends along the way, and we're invited, we gladly accept. Also, we've learned that if it's raining, snowing or otherwise stupid to hunker outside, we'll get a motel. Temperatures 20 degrees or less also drive us to places with hot showers and wide-screen TVs. We're old, but we're not stupid.

Leaving Yellowstone Park via the Lamar Valley, where numerous photo workshops were being conducted. A workshop was here, searching in vain, with cannon-sized lenses, for an osprey nest. Lacking a cannon-sized lens, I opted for wildflowers with the Lamar Valley in the background.

During numerous trips to Yellowstone, I'd never before hiked the boardwalks at Mammoth Hot Springs. Wow. Just unbelievable. 

Travertine deposits making magic at Mammoth Hot Springs.

We left Yellowstone National Park after a quick two days, one night. It was fabulous, of course.  We camped at Mammoth Hot Springs. Oddly, heavy traffic roared around the campground until well after 10 p.m. and resumed when I was jarred awake at 5 a.m. But you don't visit Yellowstone to camp. You camp in Yellowstone so you can be close to all those amazing natural wonders.

A few of the neon colors at Norris Geyser Basin created by heat-loving algae

Last night PK and I were holed up in a hotel in Billings, Montana, adjacent to a medical clinic treating cancer and other patients. How we arrived at this hotel is another story having to do with my TripAdvisor ineptitude. The clientele was mostly patients on medical journeys, and their families, not recreational travelers like us While we're in our modest room planning where to camp tomorrow and deliberating whether our butts can tolerate another bike ride, the people on either side may be in dread about medical tests, test results, or treatments.

This juxtaposition puts me in the crux of travel ambivalence. We're skimming on the top of life right now, as I see it. But one day, it could be me or PK awaiting test results or unpleasant treatments or a terminal diagnosis.  So before we're the patients and no longer the skimmers at the apex of the life-is-good chain, we're going for it.

That's me, in a photo taken by PK, proving I was on the trip, with Yellowstone Falls behind. This is one of my favorite places in the world.

FYI - I'm pushing the "publish" button at 9:28 p.m. under a full North Dakota moon and with light-seeking insects crawling on the screen with my iPhone providing wifi.  I love it. I'm also getting cold! Time to crawl into the Four Wheel Camper.

Road Tripping in the Four Wheel Camper-West to Midwest USA and Canada

Our Memorial Day campsite along Coeur d' Alene lakeshore  We're upscaling it with water
 and electricity and a million dollar view.

We're at the end of day two of a month-long road trip with our sturdy and efficient little friend, the Four Wheel Camper. We've taken numerous journeys with the camper, and I sometimes post afterwards. But what I have wanted to do is  an on-the-road  travelogue.

This is challenging, one, because we're often without wifi or cell phone service, and two, because I am lazy and undisciplined, a  person who is compelled to write but spends more time thinking about it than doing it.

And then there's the can't-make-things-work-photo-downloading issue that I'm gnashing my teeth over exactly now, as we're parked 10 feet from the shore of beautiful Coeur d Alene Lake in Harrison, Idaho, and rain is pounding the metal roof and we are discussing how to reach our rain gear in the back of the pick-up cab without getting wet, so that we can head over to a nearby restaurant/bar where they advertise $2 Jello shots and Jager Bombs, which we do not intend to order, but are nonetheless amused to see being prominently advertised. (The photo issue is solved but I"m leaving this paragraph in as it demonstrates the  frustration of computer problems and bursts of bad weather, especially at the same time, that drove me write a sentence of almost 100 words.) 

Whew. The rain has stopped. The light on the water is dramatic. I've downloaded one photo and am confident that more will appear. We're ready to see what the restaurant has to offer other than Jello shots and Jager bombs. (The burgers were authentic, smoky and good!)

En route to where are—Harrison, Idaho, which is an access point for the Trail of the Coeur d' Alenes—we had a couple of pleasant surprises. One was the proliferation of wind turbines all over the place in northeastern Oregon.

As we drove over curvy undulating country roads, hundreds and hundreds of giant turbines rose from fields of winter wheat. Often the tips of turbines would peek foot by foot (blades are about 50 feet long) from behind hills as we wound through gullies and over hillocks.

Then was the wonderful Cottonwood Canyon State Park, in its second season. We scored the last campsite on Sunday afternoon of Memorial Day weekend. Lucky us. The primitive camps - meaning we'd have to survive without electrical, water, or sewage hookups, cost $10 each. The campground is along the John Day River, which was swollen with brown water from recent  rains. A good thing to see while so much of the West is drought stricken.

Entrance to this Oregon State Park includes a museum and interpretive center.

Pinnacle Peaks trail along the John Day River out of Oregon's Cottonwood Canyon State Park in north central Oregon. If you go, bring a mountain bike to navigate the trails. Our road bikes? Not.

The John Day River was muscular, swirling with brown water on its way to the Columbia River.

That was yesterday. Our destination today was Harrison, Idaho, where we're poised to tackle a two-day bike ride up the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes tomorrow morning. Fifty miles up, 50 miles back. But we'll stay in a hotel in Wallace, Idaho, tomorrow night so we have time to gather energy for the return trip. Fifty miles isn't really that much, but neither one of us is in great bike shape. But hell. We have all day to get there. We have snacks. We have t i m e.

This is where we'll start tomorrow. Can't wait!

Four Wheel Camper About to Break Out of Slump

Where's the Four Wheel Camper? Sadly, it  is no where near Blossom Bar on Oregon's Wild and Scenic Rogue River, pictured above in late June. But the Toyota Tundra that hauls the raft also carries the Four Wheel camper, and it cannot do two things at once.  Early this summer we enjoyed several river trips in succession, and it was impractical to mount the camper on the pickup. Thus while we are rafting and having a wonderful time, the camper is home alone, sulking.

There it is, poor thing, dwarfed by landscaping and stranded on
sawhorses awaiting its next trip.

Our last Four Wheel outing was in May to visit grandchildren who live in a city. As usual, we popped the lid in the backyard and the Four Wheel became a playhouse for grandson, Noah, four, and now also little sister, Hadley,  age one. Young children LOVE campers, and ours has lots of knobs and drawers and lights and a radio/CD/iPod player that drive them insane.

We didn't buy the Four Wheel so we could camp in our son's backyard and provide a playhouse, and also endure  the cacophony of helicopters and police sirens,  barking dogs and neighbors with bad taste in music all night. But it works way better than paying buckets of money to stay in creepy casino hotels, and we kinda like the kids raising a ruckus, especially since they head inside at night, and we get our queen-sized bed to ourselves.

             Let's hope she doesn't jostle the commode on her left. And yes, thank you,
she IS adorable.

Now we're talkin! The camper is snugged into the truck bed, has a new carrier up top to haul gear for the months-long all-weather trips we're plotting, plus some new hydraulic help for lifting the lid. 

PK installed the external hydraulic assists, front and back, which make it possible for one person to pop the top and bring it down unassisted. No more snarling and snapping as we occasionally do, when we jockey for position in a tight space, and 1,2, 3 LIFT!

The Four Wheel is ready, but it's still eight days before we can get away to Washington's North Cascades, San Juan islands, and the Olympic Peninsula. Other travel plans are nebulous but persistent and include taking the Four Wheel from our home on the West Coast USA to East Coast to visit family. Then to Guatemala. Why? Check this out.  We want to volunteer gardening expertise there, or anything else needed.

Traveling cross country and to Central America will require months away. We're retired! What's the problem with taking off any time we damn well please?  It has to do with family obligations, mostly, and, for the time being,  we DO have a garden that requires TLC.

PREVIOUS FOUR-WHEEL CAMPER POSTS

Oregon Coast Getaway with Four-Wheel Camper

Steens Mountain with Four-Wheel Camper

Oregon's Illinois River Getaway

Oregon's Steens Mountain with Four Wheel Camper

I'm taking a hiatus from my Africa obsession to revisit a trip to the Steens Mountain Wilderness last year. Email subscribers, if you have trouble viewing, click on the blog title. 

The road to  the Pike Creek trailhead into the east side of the Steens Mountain Wilderness. If you go, that yellow grate might help you pick the right road because there are no signs. You'll know you've arrived when you spot the juniper rock after about a mile of rough going. 

It's cold and dank in Southwestern Oregon. Our lonely Four Wheel Camper is balanced on saw horses and drained of fluids for the winter. Sigh. I am missing the freedom it provides for quick get-aways. But of course camping trips close to home are not that desirable November through February so....nostalgia. One of our best trips ever was to Oregon's Steens Mountains in September 2012. 

This camp is close to the Pike Creek trailhead on the east side of the Steens Mountain Wilderness on an unmarked 4 WD road. Perfect! You can find directions to get there, but there is no such thing as a sign. A creek flows behind the rock from which grows a juniper that apparently exists on minerals, scant moisture, and profuse admiration from occasional campers. 

A closer look at that amazing tree, which is the largest hunk of wood I ever saw rooted in rock.
The trunk actually looks like the rock. I couldn't stop admiring it. The tree seems stronger than stone, but will wither and die long before the stone disintegrates, and eons after these admiring eyes are dead and gone. Wilderness/nature is a time gauge. It isn't going to make you feel any younger, but may inspire you to treasure your remaining moments on earth and ponder the mysteries.

PK, long an enemy of invasive species, pulls the evil puncture vine weed from around the juniper tree camp and piles it into a fire pit.

In the meantime, his sandals picked up
numerous punctures.

Something pretty near the juniper tree camp.

After walking for 10 minutes from the juniper tree, we finally know we're on an official
trail into the wilderness.

Pike Creek is an up and down trail with stream crossings as well as slide crossings such as this. We walked for about 2 hours before deciding it was getting late and time to turn back.

Getting there is half the fun, of course. The Steens are an easy day's drive from our home, and a detour onto Hart Mountain to camp and soak in the hot springs was a bonus.

Here PK, lower right,  lounges with a bunch of naked strangers (me too, but I covered up to take photos, as if anyone cared) in the Hart Mountain hot springs. The younger ones were with a tour group studying medicinal high desert plants. Judging from the fun but erratic conversation, I think there had been some medicinal plant sampling before the hot spring soak. After dark, under a full moon, PK and I made our way a short distance to an undeveloped hot spring and slipped into its shallow hotness surrounded by silence. Divine. It was one of those times when I didn't really want to go because it was cold and dark, but was so glad when I was gazing at the moon through the steam and holding hands with my partner of 40+ years.

It's great having a traveling partner who always wants to know

 where he is and where he's going. Then I don't have to navigate.

Where is he now? A hot springs in the Alvord Desert just down the road from our juniper tree camp. 

What the Alvord hot springs enclosure looks like from the road. It's way back at the end of the trail on the right. A private landowner has made it available to the public and even provided a changing room! Traffic is scant out here on the edge of the desert, so I don't think the "public" is much of a bother. I appreciate that rancher, nonetheless. Thank you.

Typical cattle sighting along the East Steens Road, AKA Folly Farm Road.

The blind around the pond at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge visitor's center. We saw birds on the pond, but not on the refuge, which is reportedly teeming with wildlife at other times. We visited in the fall of a dry year. A bust. Malheur borders the Steens Mountain Wilderness, and more savvy travelers might time a visit when they could enjoy the benefits of both.

Wildhorse Lake as seen from a trail dropping in from the Steens Mountain Loop Road. We walked about 1.5 miles to this point and decided against the steep descent to the lake. 

The Kiger Gorge, carved by a glacier, from the Steens Mountain Loop Road.

Looking east from atop the Steens Mountain Loop Road.

A trail out of the Page Springs Campground, where we camped for two nights, just a few miles from Frenchglen, features immense stands of cattails and teasel along the Wild and Scenic Donner und Blitzen River.  On a late afternoon hike, we met an ecstatic but exhausted trout fisherman who claimed to have just had the best day of his life fishing on this creek, which he has been visiting for 15 years This is his "life place" he tells us. He was radiant, and it wasn't all sunburn. He told of catching and releasing 18 inch to 22-inch redside trout, and taking 45 minutes to revive one trout before releasing it. He'd accomplished seven or eight river crossings in his waders. I don't know if I've ever seen a happier person, so excited to tell his stories that he gave it all up to strangers along the trail. I'm sorry I didn't get a picture. A few minutes after seeing him, we had a wonderful moment spotting a flock of cedar waxwings alighted in a snag near the river, producing at least some lower-wattage radiance on our faces. 

The Alvord Desert outside the camper window looks fine as I prepare food cooked ahead at home.

You can see that although the Four Wheel is small, it has amenities. Next to the stove is a roomy refrigerator with a freezer! Propane powered. The battery-powered electrical system is charged by driving the truck, and we can charge phones and computers, pump water from the storage tank, have lights etc. I know that veteran RVers are accustomed to far greater luxury, but it wasn't that long ago that we were tent camping. The last-straw experience was at high elevation and the low was 16 degrees. The first time we slept in the Four Wheel we about keeled over of happiness. In case you're dying to know, the camper does not have a toilet. But we use a small portable unit to prevent having to exit into the night when nature calls. We don't want a giant RV because we still want to 

use 4WD roads and get away from crowds and explore and have adventures.

I cook. PK cleans up. 

En route home, we scout a potential road biking route out of Klamath Falls. After a few hours, we decide poor road conditions, mediocre scenery, and relentless hills make this route undesirable.  

Still, we need to find a camp. But, hello! It is the night before deer hunting season opens and the campgrounds, the pullouts, the nooks and crannies, are jam-packed with everything from minimal campers to huge RVs. We're able to locate, an hour before dark, this level spot not far off the road. 

Night night in the camper. Lights off. I'm climbing into our cozy queen-sized bed soon.

Oregon Coast Getaway with Four Wheel Camper

This is what you don't want to see when you visit the Oregon coast—a band of
thick fog sitting on Highway 101. It bodes ill.

Because when you see that fog bank ahead, here's what the

usually stunning scenery looks like. 

PK and I are always ready to charge off in our little Four Wheel pop-up camper, if even for a few days. Since the Four Wheel is the self-proclaimed "only true off-road camper," and we chose it so we could go places people driving boxcar-sized RV units can't, we usually shun massive campgrounds and opt for Forest Service camps, or we tuck into undeveloped pull-outs, cliff overhangs and shorelines. We weren't entirely successful in crowd avoidance during our recent two-night trek to Oregon's southern coast, however. More on that below.

When we left for the coast a couple weeks ago, we were fleeing the heat. We'd endured triple-digit temps alternating with high-nineties for what seemed like forever, but was really only most of July.  (Now we're living in smoke from numerous forest fires. See previous post if you like depressing stuff.)

This beach is in Northern California just a few miles from the Oregon border. We considered camping in the deserted nearby parking area in the spirit of our dear little camper, but dang, it was chilly, windy, and smelled of rotting fish. Also, fog was rolling in. Sometimes we have to practice tough love with the camper.

The Southern Oregon/Northern California coast is famously cool when the inland valleys are roasting. We left the ranch sweltering in 100+ temps and two hours later were shivering on the beach (alone, of course) with stiff winds challenging the worthiness of our wind jackets. We wanted out of the valley heat, but not in to coastal chill, wind, and fog.

 We ended up about 12 miles inland on the Chetco River just outside of Brookings, Oregon, completely out of the fog and into perfect weather. This is a Forest Service camping area, but without formal sites. There may have been as many as 50 people around, but we couldn't hear them.

We couldn't see them, either. We like this. (It looks like PK is
staring at the trees, but the Chetco River is the blackness beneath the trees.)

We weren't offended when a sweet little family used the swimming hole in front of our camp. 

Camping is a "special occasion" offering an excuse for drinking wine. I don't need much of an excuse, of course, but there are worse things. The slanted light did wonders for our plastic glasses. 

Easy dinner, mostly from the garden. Simple cucumber salad,

fried spuds with zucchini, onions, chard and basil, and Trader Joe's
hot Italian sausage.  

Next day we were ready for another go at the coast, but alas, the fog persisted and, for the most part, hid the Oregon coast's spectacular beauty.

This was the view from atop Cape Sebastian, which is usually mind-blowing. 

We stopped for lunch at the picturesque Griff's restaurant on the dock at Port Orford, having read positive reviews on Yelp! PK gave thumbs up to his fish and chips. My crab Louis ($17!!) was dinner-salad sized, came with a packet of Ritz crackers (!!) and left me hungry and crabby (hahaha). 

Here we are at the second-night camp, cheek to jowl with cold grumpy campers on both sides, at Bullard's Beach State Park. Oregon has a great state parks system, but our camper does not like super developed and crowded campgrounds.Bullard's Beach has more than 300 sites plus a bunch of yurts and an equestrian camp. Sites are neatly divided by vegetation, but it didn't work for us. 

The indignities! The Four Wheel camper (she needs a name!) gets embarrassed when out of her element. We can get by without power and water hook-ups for several days, but we use them when available, especially when we've paid for them. The white bucket catches sink water. Having campers directly across the way and on either side is, well, just not fun.

PK on the last steps of a mile+ trail from camp to the beach. 

Another beach to ourselves! At least 600 people, probably more like 1,000, were in the campground, but truthfully, this beautiful beach wasn't that inviting and I don't blame them for sticking close to their RVs. The temperature differential between camp and the beach was probably 20+ degrees, so people we saw along the trail were mostly underdressed. A tee shirt is not going to do the trick here. That's grey fog blowing in on a stiff ocean breeze. Sand is skittering across the beach, and I guess we gave it five minutes. Or less. The Oregon coast isn't like California with nearly naked people frolicking in the surf (Here you could die! And you would most assuredly need a wetsuit.) The Oregon coast in July .... unknown to tourists who have not visited during summer months.... is often chilly, windy, and foggy. My sister came all the way from Minnesota one summer, traveled the Oregon coastline from north to south, and didn't see the ocean for more than a few minutes. Best time to visit? Late August and September. Then you can get by with shorts and tee shirts and the Oregon coast will blow your mind and make your eyes and your heart ache at the beauty of it all.

More posts about Southern Oregon/Northern California

Bear Trip on the Rogue River

There You Have - The Mighty Rogue!

Camping and Cooking on the Rogue

Quick Getaway - Crater Lake

Oregon's Illinois River with Four-Wheel Camper