So, on Wednesday, May 1, we headed back to Junction City, spending the first night at Woods Landing, a Coast to Coast park in Yutan, Nebraska, just west of Omaha. After setting up and unhooking, we drove into Yutan to do grocery shopping.
We arrived in Junction City on Thursday afternoon, going into town to have one of our propane tanks filled and fueling up the truck, before driving back out to the free Corps of Engineers park on Milford Lake to spend the night.
Milford Lake:
Friday morning found us at Horizons going over all the changes with Howard and Frank, the person who does all the drawings. Afterward, we went by the local Chevy dealer, Jim Clark Chevrolet, and ordered a truck -- a one-ton with the Duramax diesel engine and Allison automatic transmission. They were willing to meet the 2% over invoice of the Chevy dealer in Moab, Utah, that advertises in Highways magazine, so we decided we'd rather order from a local dealer than one where we'd probably never meet the people. After ordering the truck, we went to Cracker Barrel for lunch.
That evening, we went to the Elks Club for dinner with Dallas and Audrey Smith, also New Horizons owners who were at the factory having some work done on their fifth wheel -- they're having the inside completely redone with new carpeting and cabinets. That's one of the nice things about a custom manufacturer -- when you get tired of something, you can go back and have things changed.
Saturday, we drove 230 miles to Methodist Cove at Harlan County Lake, a Corps of Engineers park near Alma, Nebraska. We stopped in Hays, Kansas, along the way and had lunch at Carlos O'Kelly's.
The next day, we drove 158 miles to the Nebraska National Forest just west of Halsey, Nebraska, stopping in Elm Creek to fuel the truck, and at the city park in Ansley to have lunch.
The Nebraska National Forest is a 90,000-acre forest located in the Sand Hill Grasslands of north central Nebraska. It contains large areas of planted coniferous forest. In fact, the 20,000 acres of planted trees on the Bessey District (which includes the Nebraska National Forest and the Samuel R. McKelvie National Forest), is the largest man-made forest in the United States. Some natural riparian woodlands occur in both units, as do shrubs in "sand hill thickets."
Rainbow:
On Monday, April 6, we drove through the heart of the Sand Hills of Nebraska. This is interesting country -- rolling hills of grasslands growing in sand (duh!). We were surprised at how much water was in this area -- from swampy wetlands to lakes. We were also surprised to see pelicans and swans at a lake in Hiannis where we stopped for lunch. That night, we stopped at Chadron State Park south of Chadron, Nebraska. This state park is in the northwest corner of Nebraska in an area of mountains called Pine Ridge, an arch-shaped escarpment some 100 miles long and up to 20 miles wide, formed some 65 million years ago when the Rocky Mountains and Black Hills uplifts began.
The Sand Hills:
Pelican:
On Tuesday, we went into Chadron to do laundry, grocery shopping, and fuel the truck. We also stopped by the Post Office to mail the ads to Highways and Trailer Life for the truck and fifth wheel.
Landscape around Crawford in the Pine Ridge area:
Wednesday, we drove 199 miles to the South Recreation Complex in Glenrock, Wyoming. This is a free camping area that includes a picnic area and rodeo grounds. We ran into some snow on this trip -- not very much, and it didn't stick, but it was still snow!
Thursday, we drove into Casper and had breakfast at the Flying J where I also faxed an ad for the truck and fifth wheel to the Escapees magazine. We continued on to Rawlins, Wyoming where we stayed at the American President's Campground, a Happy Camper park (half price). We stopped along the way to view Independence Rock. I had never given it any thought before, but Independence Rock is just that -- a huge rock jutting up through the ground, much like an iceberg in the ocean.
View along SR-220 south of Casper:
Alcova Reservoir:
Views along SR-220:
Independence Rock:
Earl & Maxx at Independence Rock:
Friday, we drove 199 miles to the Foothills RV Park in Kemmerer, Wyoming, the home of J.C. Penney and the site of his first store. We stopped at Little America first for lunch. We drove through some more snow and it was cold! When we got to the RV park and were putting out our big slide, the pin dropped out of the gear box again and we had to hand crank the slide the rest of the way out.
Snow along the road:
We drove 164 miles on Saturday, April 11, to the Elks Club in Pocatello, Idaho (after having to hand crank the big slide back in, of course). We had dinner at the club -- shrimp and boneless barbecued pork ribs. We ate at the same table with a very "interesting" man and his sister.
View along US-30:
On Sunday, we drove 235 miles to Boise, Idaho, and parked in the Wilson's RV Repair lot so that we'd be there first thing Monday morning to get our slide fixed.
Wilson's was able to get our slide fixed on Monday morning and we were back out on the road by about 10:30. We stopped at Costco to do shopping and then drove the 68 miles to the Simpson RV Park in Nyssa, Oregon. We had lunch at A & W, did grocery shopping, and stopped at the Post Office to pick up our mail. That afternoon, we visited with my Aunt Ilene and had dinner at her place. The next day I did laundry while Earl washed the truck and then we were back at Ilene's place for more visiting and dinner.
After driving by Ilene's place to say goodbye, we left Nyssa on Wednesday and drove 167 miles to the BLM campground at Chickahominy Reservoir west of Burns, stopping in Burns to fill up the truck with diesel and do grocery shopping. We took a walk around the campground after setting up...Maxx had fun trying to dig out a ground squirrel and chase rabbits (of course, he can't get very far on a lead!).
Sunset at Chickahominy Reservoir:
On Thursday, May 16, we drove 99 miles to Sundance Meadows, a Coast to Coast park just east of Bend, Oregon. This is a very nice park...we parked backed up to a pond and had fun watching a mama and papa goose with little ones swimming around. We also saw a Golden Eagle soaring high above, Osprey, and deer. We drove into Bend to check out a camper manufacturer, have lunch, and do some errands. We were really impressed with the campers manufactured by Host -- they have two slides and are quite spacious inside...we might have to rethink getting a travel trailer and a smaller camper and go with one of the larger campers instead.
The Three Sisters:
Mama & Papa with babies:
Deer:
Osprey:
On Saturday, May 18, we drove 40 miles to the Indian Ford Campground, a Forest Service campground, west of Sisters, Oregon. On Sunday, we drove into town for breakfast and to do grocery shopping.
We were going to go over the mountains to Eugene, but Greg Holder, who is going to do some work on our solar, couldn't get to us until the 30th, so we decided to go back to Bend and do some more exploring on the eastern side of the mountains. Therefore, on Monday we drove back to Bend and stayed at Sundance Meadows again, parking in the same spot as before. We drove into town to take another look at the Host campers and also stopped and checked out the Alpenlite and Northern Lite campers.
On Tuesday we left Bend and headed south, stopping and spending a couple of hours at the High Desert Museum. The museum has many exhibits on the region's people, cultures, animals, science, art, and history. It includes a 1/4-mile trail leading to animal habitats...porcupines, birds of prey (where we stopped to hear a talk about these birds), and an otter exhibit. Because we'd taken so long at the museum, we decided to stay overnight at Cascade Meadows RV Resort, a Coast to Coast park, north of La Pine...a trip of only 29 miles.
Wednesday we drove 103 miles to Hagelstein Park, a small park along US-97 about 11 miles north of Klamath Falls. It's located near a pond that was teeming with wildlife... while we were there, we saw several Double-Crested Cormorants and Forster's Terns. There were also Yellow-Headed Blackbirds, Northern "Bullock's" Orioles (we watched the female gathering nesting material), and a muskrat. All this and only $5 per night!
Pond at Hagelstein Park:
Yellow-headed Blackbirds:
On Thursday, we drove 89 miles to the Elks Club campground near Medford, Oregon. Warm weather at last! This is a really nice campground...just water and 20-amp electric hookups, but it's out in the country, quiet, lots of places to walk Maxx (although we learned to keep him out of the high grass or he'd come back with ticks), and a great view of Mt. McLaughlin.
Pelicans on Upper Klamath Lake:
Mt. McLaughlin:
Rouge River at Elks Club Campground:
Lizard on bench overlooking Rouge River:
While we were in Medford, we did shopping at Costco and the grocery store, did our laundry at a laundromat (since we didn't have full hookups at the Elks Club campground, we couldn't use our washer and dryer), picked up a pair of Levi's for me and a couple of t-shirts for Earl at Old Navy, and did other miscellaneous shopping. Earl golfed on Sunday at Eagle Point...the first golfing he'd done since we'd left Mission.
On Tuesday, May 28, we drove 121 miles to the SKP park in Sutherlin, Oregon, and spent the night boondocking (just $2.50). On our way out of Medford, we first stopped at Triple A RV Center to look at more Host campers (they had the large one in stock, which we hadn't been able to see at the factory) and also the Arctic Fox campers.
Wednesday night we stayed at Cascara Campground, an Oregon State campground (which one brochure we had said was a Corps of Engineers park) located on Fall Creek Reservoir east of Eugene. On Thursday, we drove into Eugene to have our solar updated and, since it was after 2:00 PM when we were finished, we spent the night at the Elks Club in Springfield. Since some of our mail didn't arrive by Friday, we decided to spend another night at the Springfield Elks Club and did shopping at Costco. We're probably going to have to find an RV repair center soon to have our refrigerator looked at...it's not working properly on propane (it keeps going to "check"). It's acting like it did when we had the board replaced a couple of years ago, so I don't know if it's a board problem again, or something else. Guess we'll find out soon enough.
