On December 30th of 2014 Rosemarie and I took our 1963 GM Bus down to Key West Florida to symbolically start our full time RV adventure at the southeastern most point of the continental US. A few weeks later we left the Keys to start a 15,000-mile circuit of the US, visiting 27 state and 88 RV parks. In the subsequent years we have made six more journeys around the county, now having been to all 48 CONUS states, 5 Canadian provinces, and two in Mexico.

We originally committed to two full years of RVing, after which we just kept going; we found we loved the lifestyle and there was so much more to see. As we begin our eighth year of this journey, we look forward to our winter in the US Southwest, more western exploration during the spring and summer, and then beginning a casual, meandering return to Florida in the fall.

Though we are starting another year on the road, we have started to miss having a fixed place to call our own. Not necessarily a house even; perhaps just a piece of property (in the woods, with full hook ups, on the water, near a cool town, not too close to neighbors, with temperate weather, and affordable…) to park our RV and build upon.

But not yet! So Happy New Year from the road, and we look forward to seeing as many of you as we can in the coming year.

Following our frenetic first year of full time RVing in 2015, during which we conducted a ridiculously aggressive circuit of the continental U.S., we attempted to establish a pattern whereby we would spend the winter in Florida, and then alternate our travels between the west and east halves of the country. This worked for the next three years, during which we focused on the Eastern US in 2016, the West and Midwest in 2017, and back to the East plus parts of Canada in 2018. In 2019, however, our plans to return west fell by the wayside after we prioritized an international travel opportunity to Cuba, and then COVID collapsed our western tour plans in 2020, during which we spent fare more time in Florida and a limited our exploration to the southeast.

But here it is (was), the summer of 2021, and we took our fully vaccinated selves west, exploring favorites from 2015 and 2017, and adding to them along the way. Many of the places we are hitting this year are old favorites from four or six years ago, but even among our list of western faves, Whidbey Island has a special place in our memories and was one of our top priorities for this 2021 trip.

The thing that makes this island so fantastic for us is Cliffside RV Park on the Naval Air Station. You can read our past posts about the park, the short version being that it is an astoundingly beautiful ocean front garden, lovingly cared for, with every terraced spot having a wonderful view. In addition to the ocean front setting on the sound, the property is overflowing with flowers, with beds occupying every available space.

It is not cheap, at least by military campground standards, but compared to civilian equivalents, it is a solid deal. During the summer it is also quite popular. Not “NAS Key West during the winter popular,” but enough so that the weekends are usually booked. In fact, this is one of the few places we bother to reserve a stay in advance (even weeks in advance, which is, like, years by our standards.) From past experience we knew the July 4th weekend would be booked solid, but we managed to secure four different multi-day stays over a three-week period in July.

And so Tuesday morning after the holiday weekend we caught the ferry from the Port Townsend harbor, about an hour down the road from Sequim, to Coupeville on Whidlbey Island. If my records are right this only cost us $81 for the motorhome and tow vehicle, though I think they let us get away with being a little longer than our 50′ combined length listed on our reservation. After a bit of google maps confusion relating to which of the naval station gates were actually open, we arrived at our home for the remainder of July.

At check in the office linked our multitude of reservations together, giving us a continuous 21 day stay, though, because of the different price points between front row and everything else, we had to move sites a couple of times. You would think that military base campgrounds, or at least those within the same service, would have consistent policies, but that is far from the case. The rules regarding reservations vs first come first serve sites, availability of overflow “dry camping” areas, maximum length of stay, discounted rates for long stays, and a myriad of other characteristics vary significantly base to base. Whidbey, for instance, is a bit unusual in that they offer a discount for week long stays, which means we paid $35 a day for most of our nights (down from $40) but had to pay $50 for the three nights that we had to move to a waterfront spot due to availability.

It was there in Whidbey that we finally got back into selling Ramblin’ Rose’ jewelry and accessories at local markets. We had not done an event all year, but now, fully vaccinated, we felt comfortable doing outdoor sales, with reasonable precautions. In 2017 we had great success at the annual Kiwanis Beachcombers Bazaar, but after several years of growing experience, expanded inventory, and market selection knowledge, our expectations are far higher. Would the Kiwanis event hold up? We were marginally concerned by the location change from a well-used public park to a middle school athletic field, which did not strike us as having any natural foot traffic or drive by visibility.

We need not have worried: this once-a-year event has enough local awareness and current advertising that plenty of people came out. We had a steady but not overwhelming stream of potential customers, and unlike a more publicly utilized spot, such as a park, the attendees were not looky-loos stumbling across the market whilst walking their dogs; they came for the sole purpose of checking out the wares from the thirty or so vendors. We ended up selling nearly three times as much as we did in 2017.

During our peak, pre-COVID, year we had transitioned away from all but a select few weekly markets in favor or seasonal or annual events; for less work we made more money. But beggars can’t be choosers, and out here in territory we had not explored since 2017, with some events already full and others having never recovered from cancellation in 2020, we took what we could get. That included the new Lions Club Saturday morning market situated at the Blue Fox drive in theater between Oak Harbor and Coupeville.

As the new kid on the block, the Lions Club event had not yet developed much awareness among the locals, was set back a bit far from the main road to pull in much drive by traffic, and only had ten or so vendors on any given week, but it was convenient and low stress, so we gave it a go. It was a lot like our first year selling in Key West or Grand Marais, Michigan; we made a small but respectable amount that was just enough to keep us coming back for the next month, during which our sales improved pretty much each week.

In past years we enjoyed some great meals on the island, particularly the fresh caught Dungeness crab that our friends Bruce and Nancy gave us, and every meal at Jumbo Burrito. But it was not until this summer that we tucked into a well-prepared dish of one of the most significant local dishes, Penn Cove mussels. In this case, “Penn Cove” may refer to a specific species of mussels, those harvested from this location regardless of species, or the major shellfish company in the area. Regardless, though we love seafood, including shellfish, and especially locally produced options, we somehow missed them during our previous tours of the region.

We remedied that with a vengeance this last July. During a casual and loosely planned outing to Coupeville’s downtown waterfront district, we found a couple of well-reviewed places closed, and thus “settled” on whatever was open, in this case Front Street Grill. Their quite modest indoor seating was completely full with a wait list, but they offered outdoor seating at the tables on the waterside deck, though such dining would be a takeout order, i.e., no table service, silverware, etc. Fine by us! We split an entree of one of their seven mussel offerings, and it was fantastic. So much so that, though there may very well be other excellent seafood restaurants in the area, we found ourselves returning multiple times to Front Street Grill for their mussels.

We are not finished with Whidbey Island: before all is said and done we would end up staying for six weeks broken up by a few days on the mainland for a long overdue windshield repair.

Next up: the aforementioned windshield repair, and a week in a different RV park on the island.

Despite two previous years in which we explored the west coast, we had yet to visit the Olympic Peninsula. With our Key West friends Dave and Rebecca extending an open invitation to visit their home town of Sequim, this would be the year. We had several spare days before our reservation at Whidbey Island Naval Base, so we headed south and west around the bay to the coast. The plan was to spend a few days in Sequim, then take the ferry from nearby Port Townsend to Coupeville on the island.

As usual, our late planning complicated the search for accommodations; the state and municipal parks were mostly full (and pricey!) Though Dave and Rebecca were fine with us parking the rig in the street across from their seaside home, they also pointed us towards a couple of unofficial RV park options in their neighborhood: several members of the local landed gentry have installed power and water pedestals on the open portions of their lots and rent them out for RV use.

This is apparently rather contentious with regard to city approval and zoning, but so far they remain available if you can live without sewage hook ups for the duration of your stay. Be forewarned: this is an expensive area and the property owners have high expectations. We negotiated the $50 per day asking price down to $40 for our three days at one site, while another owner we talked to would not even quote as a price until we had… met some undetermined criteria? I don’t even know what he was waiting for. The whole conversation felt like we were all engaged in some vaguely illegal activity and he was scoping us out to make sure we weren’t undercover feds or wearing a wire.

I know that sounds somewhere between paranoid and contrived, but in my defense Rosemarie tends to leave the TV on true crime shows as background noise most of our waking hours. In her defense we typically only have access to “Over The Air” channels, which are a cultural wasteland, with Dateline and 48 Hours reruns being the top quality among the limited options.

Though official RV sites at any of the nearby public campgrounds might have been, if not more affordable, perhaps more attractive, none of them were within walking distance of Dave and Rebecca’s, the primary reason for our being here. They were phenomenal hosts, and Dave should be receiving some sort of stipend from the local chamber of commerce for his enthusiastic guided tours that border on sales pitches for the city. Once in real estate, always in real estate, I suppose!

Sequim is located roughly in the center of The Blue Hole, an area of very low rainfall less than 40 miles from a n actual rain forest. The Olympic Mountain Range creates a weather shadow: Pacific moisture blows inland and is pushed upward to 7,000′ during a 70-mile journey across the mountains, where it cools, condenses, and drops all the moisture as snow and rain (over 100 inches a year), while across the mountains Sequim receives only 16 inches. This makes for a beautiful, mostly rain free and relatively warm climate in a larger region known for precisely the opposite.

Rosemarie loved the area; it was all she could do to refrain from going down the local real estate rabbit hole looking at property during our short visit. The town is a bit small (not even one craft brewery!) but it has decent restaurants, the usual midsized to big chain stores and an excellent weekend market. The main draw, however, is the fantastic coast and near coast setting.

Dave and Rebecca hosted a Fourth of July party at their place, which we were quite glad to attend since that is also our anniversary date. Their house is positioned such that you can see down the coast for miles and appreciate all the private fireworks being lit off at many other shoreline homes.

We were having such a good time in Sequim that on our second day we moved our reservations for Whidbey Island back a day, giving us one more on the peninsula. For this last night we moved the rig in front of Dave and Rebecca’s, across the street where there was nothing but a fence and fields. Though it would have felt intrusive and odd for the full stay, one night of dry camping on their lightly travelled road was just fine, and free to boot.

We generally love the Pacific Northwest, particularly the coast from Norther California up through Oregon and Washington, but Sequim was particularly wonderful. We look forward to visiting the area again, perhaps during the coming summer as we work our way north.

Next up: Back to Whidbey Island.

The Distance: 1,333 miles as we worked our way north into Washington. While hardly as aggressive as our 2,400 mile run from North Carolina to California in May, over thirteen hundred miles is a good chunk of RV driving, and we expect to slow things down in July. Our 2021 distance is up to 5,091.

The Places:  Four national parks and two family visits during a busy month. We started with four days near Sequoia National Park before heading to Travis Air Force Base while visiting Dolores, Josh, and Tamiry. Then it was three more national parks, Lassen Volcanic, Crater Lake, and Mount Rainier, broken up by a couple of stops in Oregon. We closed out the month with a couple of days at Joint Base Lewis McChord and nearly a week in Enumclaw while Rosemarie was in New York City for sister Melissa’s baby shower.

Cooling off in the lake at Horse Creek COE campground near Sequoia National Park.

Another month with a wide variety of campground types: 10 days at military parks, 17 at public spots (4 Corps of Engineers, 2 national forest, 9 county, 2 public utilities) and 3 at private places. We had 21 days with full hook ups, 7 with power and water, and 2 days dry camping.

Slushies for all my friends! (And nieces.)

The Money: 107% over budget. Yeah, a bad month, money-wise. The main problem was Loki. While the rebuilt engine is running great, the rest of the 24 year old little truck was due for significant work (brakes, shocks, leaks) which we got done while near Travis AFB. It was also another month of tire drama, with two new front ones for the motorhome in addition to the plugged flat on one of the rear dualies. Our 1300 miles of motorhome driving translates to a good amount of gas money as well, and our average nightly camping fee was higher than we like at $28 despite six free nights. Unfortunately, we have had additional mechanic related expenditures since then, and we are really hoping that September marks a turn around in this area.

Fumaroles at Lassen Volcanic National Park.

The Drama & Improvements:  A flat tire on the motorhome while camping near Crater Lake necessitated a plug and some backtracking, and two new front tires on the big rig have significantly improved our ride and reduced road noise.

Crater Lake National Park.

Next up: Sequim, Washington, on the Olympic Peninsula.

It’s baby season. Not for hunting, mind you; the liberals put an end to that years ago, but for birthing, rather. We have a new niece back in Asheville, and Rosemarie’s youngest sister, Melissa, was quite far along, with friends and family planning an elaborate baby shower in New York. Context for future readers: this would have been after wide spread COVID vaccine availability, but before the Delta variant wave ramped up, so this would be an in-person affair. Rosemarie had no intention of missing it, and Melissa was kind enough to share an unused JetBlue voucher for a flight from Seattle-Tacoma airport to JFK.

Melissa and Hamed

In support of that we secured two nights at Joint Base Lewis McCord’s travel camp south of Tacoma. There were options closer to the airport, but nothing nearly as affordable, and JBLM worked out quite nicely. The JBLM Travel Park is not to be confused with the other two local military parks, Camp Murray Beach and Holiday Family Camp, both just a few miles away on the same expansive base. All three have mixed reviews with lots of complaints about how they are managed and maintained, but other than some delay in getting hold of an actual person on the phone, we found the travel park quite nice, but at $29 a night just a little pricier than the typical military park.

Tamiry, Dolores, Melissa, and Rosemarie

I dropped Rosemarie at Sea-Tac the morning of our second day. While she was in NYC, the Pacific Northwest was preparing for a massive heat wave expected to break all kinds of records. With the military and state parks full for the coming weekend, I expanded the search west, and found a full week open at the Enumclaw Expo Center, which is like an overpriced county fairgrounds, but with a nicer than usual RV section. It was nothing special, but the sites were level, well maintained, and had 50 amp service for $40 a night on their mid-tier rate.

Before heading their, however, I spent part of the morning at GCR Tires. Serenity had developed a quite annoying cyclical vibration and “wah-wah-wah” noise as a result of significant cupping wear on the front left tire. After consulting with the specialists there, I opted to replace both front tires; the right one, while not as bad, had noticeable wear as well. The final tally was $565 all in, which is not bad at all for motorhome tires, and the ride is vastly improved.

The heat wave was no joke; its not simply that every town in the region set a new record, its that these record breaking triple digit temps were sustained through multiple days. To put it into perspective, during the last 76 years of tracking SeaTac had recorded temperatures of 100 degrees or higher only twice before, and yet they did so three days in a row this June. It was a good time to have uninterrupted power and fully working ACs.

Not even sure this was peak heat.

While wandering about the campground I met a surprisingly high parentage of very new full time RVers. Next door a family with young children had recently begun the adventure in a fifth wheel, directly across from me a retired couple was new to it as well, and next to them a single retired gentleman in a motorhome was in his second week of full time RVing. I enjoyed talking to them, hearing their enthusiasm and reasons for making the jump, and shared a bunch of lessons Rosemarie and I had learned during our nearly seven years on the road. The solo traveler, Don, even signed up for Passport America on my recommendation, and gave me us credit for the referral, resulting in a few months added on to our membership.

Heavily discounted sea scallops from the last commissary run. Experimenting while Rosemarie was in NYC. Fantastic.

Meanwhile, Rosemarie had a busy time staying with Melissa in the city. Born and raised in NYC, Rosemarie still has a lot of family in the area. She was able to reconnect with a good number of them at the baby shower and other events, some of whom she had not seen in many years.

Rosemarie with Cousin Junior (Jose) at the shower. It has been decades since she had seen him.

Rosemarie was not the only one to fly in, Dolores and Tamiry came in from California as well. They stayed in the city for three weeks (Dolores doesn’t believe in short visits or doing anything half way: “if you’re gonna go, make it worth the trip” seems to be her travel motto.) One of the highlights was a family trip to Coney Island with the sisters and niece. With such vivid and nostalgic memories of the place, Rosemarie took particular pleasure in experiencing it through Tamiry’s eyes; a child’s first time visit to this iconic New York venue.

And of course, their was the baby shower and all the associated perpetrations. The sisters coordinated a photoshoot for Melissa and Hamed at Coney Island. The shower was a big affair at a lovely downtown venue, and professionally catered within COVID limitations.

That’s it for New York City, the Seattle-Tacoma region, and June of 2021. Next up: the June Full Time RVing Report and then our visit with friends on the Olympic Peninsula.

Having visited our 34th US National Park we made plans for the 35th, but first a couple of stops in Oregon along the way. As mentioned last post, we had to backtrack at low speed into Klamath Falls to deal with a flat tire on the motorhome, and though it was taken care of rather quickly at Basin Tire, the delay put is into the afternoon before we even began our journey north. We could have pushed on all the way to Salem, but with leeway in our schedule we felt no urgency, and thus sought one night accommodations just a couple of hours down the road.

Forgot to take a picture during our one night stay at Hoodoo’s Crescent Junction, so enjoy this pic of Mount Rainier and the White River, our destination for this week’s travels.

There were a variety of low cost dry camping options at national forest spots along the route, but coming off of two nights without hook ups and headed into higher temperatures, we sought a full service park for the night, and found nice and affordable accommodations at Hoodoo’s Crescent Junction RV Park. With a modest veterans discount we had full hook ups for $33, which is certainly better than the top tier price we paid near Lassen Volcanic National Park, but noticeably higher than we had become used to during our month long streak of military, Corps of Engineers, Passport America, and free sites. We did not make down the road to Crescent Lake, an excellent fishing destination according to our two neighbors staying the entire month here specifically for the local angling. In fact, we barely left our campsite other than for laundry and an evening walk.

A gorgeous, vibrant rose flourishing in this crisp northwest air. The flowers are nice too.

The next day we continued north and west, stopping at Polk County Fairgrounds outside of Salem. The region and route left us with few discount options: no military bases or Passport America participants, and coming into a warm weather weekend most of the affordable state and county options had quite limited availability. The fairgrounds, however, were wide open. They let us pick our spot among the many still available, and we set up in the back corner under one of the few trees, looking out at the fields.

There is not a lot that the campground or the region had to entice us; the former was a gravel lot surrounded by pasture, the latter a nice but typical midsized city, so its a little odd that we chose to stay for three days. But after five days in the mountains with limited cell phone connectivity much less wifi, full civilization at $25 a night during a hot weekend just sucked us in. We caught up with some TV shows, did a bit of shopping in preparation for Rosemarie’s upcoming trip to New York, enjoyed couple of local restaurants in the “Diner’s, Drive-ins and Dives” category, and geocached, of course.

Not bad for an otherwise forgettable spot at a county fairgrounds!

After our longer than expected weekend stay, we continued north into Washington, bound for the Mt Rainier National Park area. Budget RVers are always going to have a dicey time finding affordable campgrounds near any of our national parks; they are high demand destinations for campers of all types. Sometimes you get lucky like we did near Sequoia, sometimes you rough it a bit like we did near Crater Lake, and sometimes you pay out the nose, like we did near Lassen Volcanic. Near Mt Rainier, we found Rocky Point Campground, one of four associated with Alder Lake Park four miles down the lake shore. They are operated by Tacoma Public Utility, and after nearly seven years of full time RVing this is our first utility owned campground.

I initially erred by turning into the day use area rather than the campground, which was quite tight as far as maneuvering room goes, and we had to disconnect the Tracker and make a multi-point turn around at the boat ramp to get back out. Though we were inside the reservation window there were a few first come sites available. We selected the first large one, but after pulling in but before setting up, we noted the near constant dog barking next door (with multiple adults present, none making the slightest effort to quite the beasts.) We repositioned to another, quieter spot.

Alder Lake

The Alder Lake campgrounds are not exactly cheap, but at $39 a night for power and water, they are far from the priciest we have experienced this close to other national parks. Our only concern was the ambiguous wording on the information board regarding a $15 per day fee for an extra vehicle. This would push our daily rate up to $54 a night, brought back memories of both the Texas and Michigan State Park “gotcha” charges (the former charging a day use fee in addition to the camping fee, the latter requiring a purchased access pass for each motorized vehicle, also in addition to the camping fee.)

Savvy readers will recognize the home page.

Honestly, I thought the clearest interpretation was that we would indeed have to pay the additional money for our Tracker, but decided to wait until the camp host or an employee brought it up, which they did not do during our two day stay. We did not “get away” with anything: as I prepped this post, I found the actual rule on the TPU website, which does not mandate the fee for towed vehicles, which seems quite reasonable.

Not to pat ourselves on the back too much, but we have done a pretty good job of finding short notice and affordable sites even in high demand area. While Alder Lake is not our best deal, it was an attractive, serviced site just a dozen miles from the southwest entrance to Mt Rainier National Park. Our free veterans annual pass acquired back in Petrified Forest once again saved us the $30 vehicle fee, so we highly recommend that any of you who have served go get your free pass!

The park itself has many of the standard accessibility features found in US national parks, including a well maintained perimeter road with numerous pull offs and parking areas for trail heads and look out spots. We spent the majority of our time looking for waterfalls, of which Rainier has an abundance. We particularly enjoyed the mile hike along the White River up to Carter Falls.

When we first developed our west coast plans we had high hopes of visiting several Central California national parks, but competing demands, weather, time and distance limited us to just Sequoia. During this run through Northern California (Lassen) and Oregon (Crater Lake,) and into Washington (Mount Rainier) we have made it to all three on our list, though the might have gotten a bit of short shrift with only two day stays each. Ah, well, nevertheless, often these initial visits to such locations serve as scouting runs for future, more expansive stays, and I can easily see us returning to each of these three wonderful parks, equipped with a bit more first hand knowledge about where to stay and what to see.

There’s a geocache on this train.

Next up: Rosemarie flies to NYC while Jack seeks shelter during a record shattering heat wave.

After departing the Lassen Volcanic National Park area we backtracked 30 miles west to Redding; from there our route would take us north on I-5 then US-97 to Klamath Falls and Crater Lake, Oregon. Before leaving Redding, however, we decided to get a mechanic to take a look at an odd noise the motorhome had been making. It had started with an occasional definitive “click” near the front, left and below the driver seat. It had become more and more frequent such that now, after a few minutes on the road, it would click several times a minute. My efforts to identify the cause were in vane, nor could I correlate it to any other symptoms beyond road vibration from an oddly wearing front left tire.

After a couple of calls we were referred to R and R Auto, conveniently located a minute off our route on I-5. They could not promise to fit us in right away, but they did have space for us to stay over night if needed. Upon arrival we parked in their large repair yard and killed time until the manager came out to triage our case. After some discussion of the symptoms he had me open the front engine access and drive slowly forward while he walked alongside. He was able to very quickly pinpoint it to the exact same box of electronics containing the battery isolation solenoid switch that went bad back in 2017.

The electro-mechanical sound I had been hearing and the lack of any other symptoms suddenly made sense: when the switch had failed four years ago, Thor’s official recall “repair” was simply to “jumper” it, electrically isolating the switch by wiring around it, effectively removing its function and from having any impact on the system. After years of continued degradation, the switch finally progressed from unexpectedly, though rarely, opening under heat and stress, to the current, near continuous opening and closing once things warmed up in the engine compartment. It presented no problem, just a mildly annoying nose that could barely be heard at highway speed. Sometime down the road I hope to remove it, but until then I can live with it.

Relieved, we continued on our way towards Crater Lake, where campground options were even more limited than near Lassen Volcanic. The on premises campground within the national park had mixed reviews, with a lot of complaints about the site selection process, but the bottom line for us was that there were only a few sites with power, none available, and the dry camping spots were $31 a night. Outside the park proper there were a good number of “dispersed” campsites on public land, meaning boondocking pull offs from dirt and gravel roads similar to our spot in Sedona, but that would involve possibly hours of trial and error searching along unfamiliar mountainous roads. There was a single moderately expensive RV resort about 45 minutes from the park, and a tiny state park in the vicinity as well, but we elected to take a chance on Annie’s Creek Sno-Park.

That’s our rig up there in the Sno-Park. Photo from an Off Road Vehicle play area down below, on the path to Annie’s Creek.

The Sno-Park is a strategically placed equipment storage and prepositioning site for snow removal and other heavy equipment, which also serves as a cold weather shelter and unofficial RV campground. It consists of a modest sized paved but unlined parking lot, a log cabin style shelter, and a roughly 50′ enclosed garage. The place was well suited to our needs: a free site on level ground, surrounded by trees, a nearby mountain creek (Annie’s) and only ten miles from the national park. Damn near perfect, particularly with the beautiful weather during our stay.

Annie’s Creek. Cold, but refreshing on a warm day.

The national park has the usual hiking trails and creek side picnic areas, but the reason people visit, the reason you should visit, is the absolutely stunning namesake attraction, Crater Lake. Formed from the volcanic explosion and subsequent collapse of Mount Mazama nearly eight millennia ago, the resultant lake, at just shy of 2000′, is the deepest in the US. Fed entirely from precipitation and snow melt is is also one of the most pristine; the azure color is rather spectacular. Rosemarie had the added pleasure of no expectations before our arrival, apparently assuming that this crater would be about the same as the one we visited in Arizona back in 2015, i.e., probably fascinating to geologists, but from a visual perspective rather so-so.

The 33 mile perimeter road, or rim drive, circles the entire crater, but the northeast portion of it was closed due to snow, even in mid June. We greatly enjoyed the sections we could drive and the numerous overlook pull offs. The one thing I would have liked to do that we missed was hike the single approved trail down to the lake’s edge, but it was closed as well, though for safety reconstruction rather than weather.

Lady of the Forest, a well known local rock carving, and part of a geocache.

Though only there for two days, they were fantastic in nearly every regard, and I hope we can return sometime when the rest of the rim drive and trails are open. Our only negative for the visit was discovering a flat (another one!) on the motorhome the morning of our second day. We picked up a road nail somewhere, and the leak was slow enough that we did not notice until it deflated overnight. I was able to plug it with a tire repair kit, but with a tire this size getting it to take air is quite difficult without special equipment; I could not get the edge of the tire to seat against the wheel rim (or whatever the correct terminology is) and thus air just kept escaping out the gap.

It was the outside tire of our left pair of duallys, and we have been in this position before, and chose to nurse the rig back to Klamath Falls at low speed to get it fixed. An expert at the very large and quite active Basin Tire Center inspected my plug, found it sufficient, and with the assistance of a specialized tool or two managed to get the tire seated and filled. We were on our way in less than an hour, headed north.

Next up: Two more stops in Oregon before hitting our next “destination spot” in Washington. (It’s another national park.)

Since our first year full time RVing we have made it an unofficial goal to see as many national parks as we can. At first it was less of a goal and more of an aspect of our route planning, i.e., defaulting to include any unvisited national parks on our itinerary as we passed through various states and regions. Not all of them have been home runs; I can think of two off the top of my head that did not seem to deserve the exalted status of being a national park, and I’m not even counting the truly weird Hot Springs in Arkansas. But far more of them either lived up to the hype or knocked our socks off off despite having barely heard of it before visiting.

Can you smell what we are cooking? Sulpherous Mudpots!

We have been so rewarded by this process that it continues strong here in our seventh year on the road, having already hit Sequoia National Park last month, with several more lined up for June starting with Lassen Volcanic, located deep inland in Northern California, about 150 miles north of Sacramento. We made the nearly four hour run from Travis AFB to our chosen campground in the park area, Living Springs RV and Cabin Resort.

The campgrounds within the park itself were either for smaller rigs or full up, and the options on the private market were limited and pricey. We paid $68 a night, and that’s with a 10% veterans discount, which is a much higher rate than our usual and surprising given my impression that Lassen is not exactly one of the big destination national parks. Aside from the sticker shock, the place was quite nice. The sites in our section were oddly laid out, but we had a full hook up, pull through site under a nice tree canopy in a well maintained campground that even had an on premises geocache. The place had a “living in nature but not roughing it” ambience.

The northern park entrance was conveniently located about 15 miles up the road from Living Springs. During pre-pandemic times we had a bit of a routine for new national parks that included an early stop at the information center for brochures and maps and to see the park movie, a staple at nearly every one we have visited. With COVID restrictions the visitor centers are limiting indoor numbers, and all their theaters are closed. This was fine for Lassen since the main info center was at the opposite end of the park, so we just grabbed the park map at the gate and followed along the numbered and clearly described points of interest on the park road.

Neither of us knew much of anything about the place before going, and so it exceeded our practically nonexistent expectations. Lassen is a beautiful park and we had a lovely day touring it using one of the better constructed park guide maps and roadside information markers that we have seen. Each stop gave you a piece of the geologic history and its impact on the flora, fauna, and sparse local population. The short version is that Lassen Peak, after decades of observed sporadic activity, exploded big time in 1915, causing a massive lava/mud slide and ejecting large rocks that ended up miles from the peak.

One of the big rocks ejected from Lassen Peak during the 1915 explosion.

The area remains volcanically active; many mud pots and fumaroles are quite visible, particular near the old Sulphur works. We appreciated the variation within the park, the harshly beautiful blasted areas still recovering from volcanic devastation, the idyllic meadow streams, clear mountain lakes, and snow on the western slopes. Upon reaching the southern entrance we stopped at the gift shop for coffee and a park patch to add to my growing collection.

The park road is not a full circle, but rather a zigzagging crescent, and once reaching the southern end, we were left with the choice of backtracking to the northern entrance, or taking a scenic tour east and then north back to our campground. We chose the latter, and had a great drive through further interesting and varied scenery, particularly once we took to the back roads to work our way across a valley before reemerging in the small town near our resort.

Aside from the interesting geology and history, the area is stunningly beautiful; the 30 mile park road comes highly recommended by travel connoisseurs at Shell On Wheels. Don’t miss it if you are in the area, and it is well worth a day trip as well. We enjoyed our short stay, and considered remaining another day, but other adventures called.

So that is 33 out of 63 US national parks we have had the pleasure to visit. Those numbers do not include the 18 other categories of properties managed by the national park service such as national monuments, recreation areas, lakeshores, seashores, historic sites, parkways, preserves, reserves, trails, etc. (which currently totals 423 places); just the official national parks. In fact, when we first started this full time RV adventure there were only 59 of them; with Gateway Arch, Indiana Dunes, White Sands, and New River Gorge added since 2018. We don’t expect to hit all of them; some require a lot of effort (i.e., money) such as the Gates of the Arctic national park in Alaska, accessible by air taxi, but we do plan on hitting as many as our travels allow.

Next up: Into Oregon and Crater Lake National Park.

We had set aside five days near Sequoia National Park, but we didn’t feel like we were really enjoying ourselves with the heat and potentially overheating car concerns. So we packed up and headed out after four days, bound for Travis Air Force Base where we had a week long reservation, and Rosemarie’s sister’s town of Concord, nearby. We made the decision to head for the base a little too late to adjust the reservation for our early arrival; their office was closed for the weekend, but prior experience and online research suggested there were likely a few walk up sites available.

Our drive would take us quite close to sister Dolores’s house, which is why I did not realize until I was practically in her neighborhood that I had plugged in her address rather than Travis AFB into the GPS! Ah well, the suburban roads were plenty wide for the motorhome, so we pressed on and ended up dropping Rosemarie off at the house while I continued half an hour up the road to check in at the base and set up camp. Travis’ Family Camp did indeed have a couple of open spots for the night, though the next day I would have to move to the site assigned for our original one week stay. This was no problem since it was a pull through site and I did a minimum set up.

The FamCamp is a decent place in a convenient location near the San Francisco Bay area. It provides full service sites at a typical AFB campground price of $25 a day, which seems so much more of a subsidized bargain in this high demand area than that same price in some of the out of the way bases at which we have stayed. The park is decent, though unremarkable by AFB standards, and there is a noticeable difference between the front and rear halves of the RV loop, with the former significantly better landscaped than the sparse back section. This disparity has been quite apparent since at least as far back as far back as our first visit hear in 2017, and the word appears to be out among the California military RV community, and so it was unsurprising that both our one night stay and our week long reservation were in the back forty.

We have stayed at over 25 different military campgrounds, enough to know and appreciate the significant variation in services, maintenance, and amenities. This one, located as it is on a full size Air Force facility, is pretty well maintained and has the full range of traditional base services, including a large commissary and exchange, on base gas station, thrift store, playgrounds, and in different times, a gym and pool. However limited the views and campground décor from the RV sites, Travis FamCamp is in an expensive, touristy area and yet provides all the amenities you could expect from a military base at a market crushing $25 a night. We have stopped even looking at private or state park options when in the area.

Over the course of the next week we spent most days enjoying company, catching up, and making a few outings to local fun spots. Rose spent probably half the nights at Dolores’, while I kept the cat company on the base. Since both Josh and Dolores are quite allergic to cats, we make whatever adjustments are necessary when we visit.

We had timed our stay to overlap Rosemarie’s birthday, on which Dori took us to Mount Diablo State Park, a nice place for day hiking and picnics about 15 miles southeast of Concord, though the drive takes an hour due to the moderate, zig-zagging climb into the hills. We had a great day on a couple of the short trails, scrambling on the interesting sandstone formations and admiring the views from the lookouts. Tamiry helped me find a local geocache near Elephant Rock, an unusual formation with an obvious entomology (though it looks more like a bison to me.)

We finished the day with a nice celebration with just the five of us. I made pasta and clams, and after some negotiation, ended up with one of Whole Foods’ famous Chantilly cakes for the traditional candles, singing, and dessert. Those are some top notch cakes, but I don’t think anything will top the strawberry shortcake we got for her birthday back in Maine two years ago.

While in town Josh took us to his Mom’s house in Oakland for a late lunch along with two of his brothers and their kids; a small portion of the Foster clan’s local extended family. We had great food, a bit of wine, and conversation: I don’t get a lot of opportunities for “sports talk” outside of our Key West winters, so it was cool to have enthusiastic discussions and debate, particularly since this was during the NBA playoffs, with the LA Clippers looking to end their status as NBA perennial post season losers. We also visited the nearby Lake Merritt Saturday open market, a frenetic event that combines the vendors options of a farmers market, the pop up casualness of a swap meet, and the energy of a block party. We loved it.

Since Rosemarie was spending a lot of time and nights with Dolores and Tamiry, I occupied myself with geocaching in Fairfield and a couple of the other towns near Travis. Even without getting into the more esoteric aspects of the hobby, geocaching tends to take you to places you might never have known existed, like the Cold War missile bunkers some of us cached near in the Lower Keys. But if using multi-billion dollar satellite networks to find Tupperware in the woods is not sufficiently interesting to you, the hobby provides many options for increasing the challenge, adventure, and fun. Enjoy puzzles? There is an entire cache type just for that. Into geology, history, or earth sciences? Try doing some Earth Caches.

One of many historical plaques I have run across during geocaching. This one was part of a mystery puzzle cache requiring the use of information on the plaque to solve for the final coordinates.

I have been working on my “Jasmer Challenge,” which involves finding a geocache placed in every month of every year since the hobby started back in 2000. I started casually working on this and my “Difficulty-Terrain Matrix” two years ago in Florida, and now I am in the habit of checking for qualifying caches in each new area we visit. This is what led me to the decades old “Lifesaver” cache near our campground in Sedona, and half a dozen back in the Asheville area. Here in California, I filled in several holes on my Jasmer list during a couple of days of local caching, including one in which I did 23 caches in one day.

A modest hike up to the top of a hill and along the ridge in a county park took me to this cache location.

Though we paid for a complete engine rebuild and installation earlier this year, our drive across the country had made clear that we needed to put some additional work and money into both the 24 year old tow behind vehicle and our 14 year old motorhome. We decided that the rest of the summer we would pay for whatever needed doing on both vehicles, even if it busted the budget for a couple of months, and come fall we would start making up for it, financially.

A hawk on Dori’s roof.

Our eight day stay in Concord allowed the time for a couple of appointments, and in the process of getting the smoky smell from the Geo’s catalytic convertor area looked at, the mechanic pointed out that our shocks were completely dead and rusting through, the rear brakes were overdue for new pads, and one of the front axle components needed replacing. We settled on a critical work plan that accomplished most of his recommendations, though kept a couple off the list so that I could explore my options.

Near the end of our stay Tamiry stayed the night with us in the camper on base, which involved having to find all the parts for and install the rear seat to the Geo Tracker, which had been in deep storage under the RV for two years or more. Honestly, I can’t recall the last time we had it installed. In any case, it was good to find all the parts and do a little maintenance on them as part of the installation process. Tamiry enjoyed staying with us despite so man of the cool things on base (swimming pool, splash pad) being close for COVID.

Yes, it’s an old and very basic car.

This was a fantastic stop. We had the joy of family, a full service and affordable place to stay while there, plenty of things to do in a modern and energetic metropolitan area, and time enough in one place to take care of a few important repairs. Next up, we begin a series of National Park visits on our way north.

The Distance: 2,406 miles while traversing the country from Southern Appalachia to Southern California, our biggest travel month in a long time. And since we did not leave North Carolina until the 19th of the month, we did al of that in less than two weeks. This nearly tripled our 2021 total so far, bringing us to 3,758 miles.

Look at that nearly dead straight shot! When we say we are headed west, we mean it.

The Places:  So many places! We finished our slightly more than two month stay at Lake Powhatan, then sprinted across the country with mostly one day stops all the way to Arizona. This included a COE campground (Seven Points in Tennessee,) two Air Force Base Family Camps (Little Rock and Tinker,) and two spots in New Mexico (Blaze-In-Saddles and Red Rock Park.) We then had two “destination” stops at Petrified Forest and Sedona. After that we finished the month with a modest sprint to California, stopping for a night each at two inexpensive sites near I-40 (Route 66 Golden Shores and Arabian Oasis.)

But making such a journey means exchanging the leisurely life of camp hosting in Asheville…

Breaking it down by campground category and services: we stayed 23 nights in public spots (18 national rec area, 1 COE, 1 municipal, and 3 BLM,) 3 in military Family Camps, and 5 in private parks. We had full hook ups for 24 days, partial for 4, and dry camped for 3.

The Money: May was a month of financial contradictions. On the one hand, we received our last 2 1/2 weeks of camp host pay, enjoyed heavily discounted camping fees, and did not have anything break on the motorhome requiring significant expenditure. On the other hand we drove over 2,400 miles (with the associated gas expenditures for our 7 miles per gallon motorhome,) paid a modest sum to the IRS, purchased an eye exam and prescription glasses, made our annual $84 WordPress blog hosting fee, and had a $446 mechanic bill for Loki. That all balanced out to a modest 9.5% over budget.

…for an arduous life on the road.

A few of those points deserve clarification, You would think after the ordeal we went through to replace the entire engine on our Geo Tracker that we would not have anything significant to repair for some time, but this latest bill was for a transmission seal replacement and AC troubleshooting. The WordPress bill increased significantly this year due to our reaching the maximum picture and media storage limit for the cheap plan. You don’t think this level of online literary and photographic entertainment comes without a cost, do you? Rose had not had an eye exam and real prescription glasses in years, for the first time in four years our federal tax bill was more than $2, and we spent $986 on gas just for the motorhome this month.

And also swapping the wet mountain forests…

That is probably a bit more than you cared to know about our monthly finances, but since I have already delved this deep, why not a bit more? Our campground fees for the month averaged just under $14 a day, which is quite good and well under our loosely applied goal of $30 or less. When we first started full timing back in 2015 we aimed for closer to $20, but its been nearly seven years and both inflation and realistic expectations have affected our assumptions. Our campground fee while working at Lake Powhatan was heavily discounted ($450 a month) but we also benefitted from the nearly defunct Air Force Frequent Camper Program (which provided us one night free at Tinker AFB), three nights on the Passport America 50% discount rate, three nights boondocking for free in Sedona, and otherwise quite cheap rates at military, COE, city park, and gift shop parks. That’s about as cheap a month as we can do without settling in for a seasonal rate in one place or cranking up the boondocking ratio. We aren’t for staying in place that long yet, but nor are we living like Nomadland.

…for the deserts of New Mexico and beyond.

The Drama & Improvements: As our time at Lake Powhatan ended, we made preps for an aggressive year of travel. That included the aforementioned eyeglasses and Tracker repairs, but also standard things like oil changes for both the Serenity and Loki, generator checks, storage compartment reorganization inside and out, and the resulting trips to donation centers to drop off all the things found during the reorganization.

Next up: Travis Air Force Base and Concorde, CA.