Whadda know about John Day and Les Schwab?

We discovered much of Oregon's history dates from Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery along the Columbia River and the settlers who followed in their covered wagons on the famed Oregon Trail. There were some 500,000 pioneers who braved the trip west in the 1840s. Today, RVers such as yours truly trail blaze the same route discovering historical sites and modern microbrews in the all-new for 2014 (ahead of its time) Lance 1885 travel trailer with side slide pulled through wagon ruts by the all new 2013 Toyota Prius V Hybrid averaging 57 miles to the gallon. Thank you very much. But alas, not seen in the photo above. This is some other wag's big fancy gas-guzzling 8 miles to the gallon motor coach.

Oh, how they envy us.

West of Baker City we rolled into John Day, Oregon. This old boy had two towns, a river, some mountains, valleys and a boutique beer or two named in his honor.

Here's the John Day River. When you come right down to it, this character didn't amount to much. He was born in Virginia in the late 1700s and came west to hunt and trap like so many adventure-seeking young men of the day. Sadly, he became deranged, wandered off alone in the woods and died before he was 50. You gotta love that adventure-filled trappin' life. But the point of all this is that there's really not a lot of significant history here in the western United States and especially here in Oregon. And so you'll find that small towns and rivers and mountains are named in honor of people who Back East most likely would never deserve a mention. However, having said that, the West offers expansive places and beautiful spaces that much of the East simply can't match. But again, we live in the west so we're biased.

This is one of John Day's more historic offerings, a small turn-of-the-twentieth century Chinese settlement. Chinese were brought here to provide services to local miners (many as indentured servants). But some stayed on and accomplished much, including a doctor in John Day who supplied settlers with herbal medicines, cell phones, and I-Pads.

This is the room where the herb dealer lived. Do you think medical marijuana was part of his arsenal?

And what miner, or Major, for that matter, wouldn't love this?

And here she is: Daisy. You've been wondering if we still have her in tow. Yep, we do and here we stand in front of the Crook County RV Ark, west of John Day in Prineville, Oregon.

This was one of our better two-night stopovers. Nice park in a well-kept city and hook-up worthy if you're traveling along Oregon's Highway 26.

Right across the street was the Crook River (named for the trapper/partner of John Day. Nuff said). Who knows what went on under them buffalo robes?

The fishing hole, sideways, across from the RV ark.

Most Prineville public places, including this park, have a strict no-smoking policy which most smokers thumb their nose at. See cigarette butt above.

While Prineville is known for its friendliness and cleanliness, it's also known as the home of the Tire King of the West...

named "Les Schwab".  While born in nearby Bend, Les bought his first tire shop here in Prineville in 1952 and today there are 400 Les Schwab Tire Centers across the western U.S.

You folks from the Midwest and out East will have to get your tires at Sears or WalMart or one of them other tire places.

Les Schwab is by far the best. Great service, great prices, great guarantees, and we're hoping for maybe just a little kickback for having said all these wonderful things about Les Schwab.

Old Les was born in 1917 and is buried here in Prineville and two or three hundred years down the road people will wonder who Les Schwab was and what the hell is a "tire"?

Life here in the wild, wild west is just that: wild and dangerous. Always has been and continues to this day.

Just outside Prineville we passed this burning building, a fire-fighting exercise so first responders could hone their skills.

And Prineville is a prime example of how dangerous a summer wildfire can be in the hot, dry West or anywhere for that matter.  In the summer of 1994, fourteen young "Hotshot" firefighters from Prineville were killed when a lightning-sparked forest fire changed direction and overtook them near Glenwood Springs, Colorado. A very moving memorial has been set up in Prineville's pretty city park that's worth your time and will help you appreciate what these young men and women do for us. And how well we know that because just sixty miles from where we live in Sedona, Arizona nineteen Hotshots were killed this summer fighting another lightning-sparked inferno near the city of Prescott.

Hotshot crews are the Navy Seals of the fire-fighting world: mentally focused, extremely physically fit, and able to handle the tremendous stress of battling life-threatening blazes.

While we get stressed out over something as mundane as hosting a dinner party, imagine standing toe-to-toe fighting a windswept, potentially lethal wildfire with you in its gun sights. Nuff said.

Now, on a more positive note, Prineville is looking forward to a solid economic shot in the arm as Facebook and Apple build two massive data management centers on a bluff overlooking the city. Each building, at more than 300,000 square feet, will be twice the size of the average Costco (I should know). Of course, the liberal, humorless greenies were at odds with the project because of the clean coal that would supply the energy to make it all happen. But happen it will.


Next up, Welches (we refer to it as "Belches"), down the road from Mt. Hood.

Bye-bye. Buy Starbucks. Best damn coffee in the world.

Bad Water in Baker City

 

 

Historic RV in Baker City, Oregon

 

Many of you have asked "Where the hell has the blog gone? What happened? Did you fall into a hole?"  Well, yes, we very nearly did at Crater Lake, Ore-eh-gone on a narrow road without guard rails with a steep drop of a thousand feet or more and heavy monsoon-like rains coming at you from all directions. To say nothing of lead-footed Euros barreling about in rented RVs.  More about our death-defying encounter at Crater Lake in a future post.

For the past week or more we have been without internet and cell service so today, August 9, we are down and locked for a couple of days in Susanville, California in a very nice RV park with wifi, cable, and a WalMart and Safeway right across the street. Only thing missing is Costco. More about Susanville later.

Let's back up a week to an overnight stay in Baker City in eastern Oregon. Pulled into a historic RV park with everything from covered wagons (America's first RVs) that broke down on the Oregon Trail...

to this general store stocked with foods like fat back, salt pork,
saltpeter and for me, Jujubes, Neccos, and Red Vines.

We got settled in, started to hook up the park's water supply and a wild mountain man screamed "Whoa, pardner. Don't hook up. It's pie-sunned!!!"
Baker City's water supply was contaminated by something called "crystosporidium", a parasite or bacteria brought about by animal feces. In this case, the local reservoir had a herd of goats pooping in it. At least that's what I read on the internet when the story made national news. The federal EPA has become involved as people all across the city are retching and vomiting on the streets, just like the olden days. So far no deaths reported. Fortunately for us, we had plenty of stored water in the trailer and fellow campers were begging us for just a sip. We told them we couldn't spare a drop.

So park management, angered by our stinginess, made us move the rig and Prius to another spot, next to this fully-loaded hissing propane tank. And if you've ever parked five feet away from a five-thousand gallon hissing propane tank, you know the feeling.

In the middle of the night someone placed these three omens of death in front of our rig: ravens made from shovels. Oh...I'm so scared.

We knew these folks were serious about stealing our sweet water when they huddled in this trailer to conspire against us.

So early in the morning we hooked up and sneaked away, leaving Baker City to deal with its misery (the water issue was quickly cleared up and a couple of Baker Cityzens said the government overreacted). Now aren't you sorry you wondered what happened to our blog?

Next stop, where it all started and ended for Tire King, Les Schwab.

Bye-bye. Buy Starbucks.

Guns, God, Old Glory and Wendell

 

 

We just had to stay in this small Idaho town called "Wendell" in deference to Paul's conservative, tea-baggin', Fox News viewin', Glenn Beck listenin' ex-Marine buddy Wendell. While Wendell was a mere lowly lance corporal, Paul went on to command the troops as the Assistant Commandant of the United States Marine Corps. But we digress.

Now back to Wendell.

This is a statue of Wendell (the Idaho version) holding a whip since it seems the whole town is into San Francisco-style bondage.

Note this bear with a rope around its neck.

You'll see plenty of signs like this which begs the question does the Constitution protect bondage? We say "yes". That's what freedom is all about.

Who wants to know?  Remember, this is the land of Old Glory, God, and ...

Guns.  Like Obama noted, so many small town Americans cling to their religion and guns. But we love 'em anyway. They are solid. They are red, white and blue. And you won't find MSNBC on the local cable system.

With tensions building between Russia and the U.S. over some snotty little leaker/traitor, Wendell will become ground zero in the new Cold War. This is the first of twenty missile silos that will be buried in the ground here in southwest Idaho's high desert.

But seriously, folks, we were having brake problems with the all-new for 2014 1885 Lance travel trailer and this guy, owner of the local "Intermountain RV Park" jumped to the fore and expertly made repairs and at no charge. Are these solid, middle Americans great or what?

If you're cruising along I-84 we highly recommend Intermountain RV Park* in the town of Wendell. Quiet, well kept, shady large pull-thrus and only twenty big ones a night if you're a Good Sam member.

*I was walking through the park and met a couple sipping wine outside their RV. My kind of folks. They live in central Utah and drive over the border to buy cheap, plentiful wine in hard-drinking Idaho. Their rig was filled with wine (18 bottles at last count) that they were taking back to LDS country.

And speaking of Good Sam, just down the road Sam Walton's homage to our insatiable appetite for cheap stuff from China: WalMart. Good Sam, incidentally, was started by Sam Walton, who was John Boy's* sibling on Walton's mountain.

*Remember the classic "Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson? One night Carson promoted the latest episode of "The Waltons" where "John Boy discovers his lap". Ed McMahon laughed so hard I thought he was going to have a stroke.

After buying $87 worth of Chinese-made junk we towed through the city of Boise. Paul said he did a story here about twenty years ago and kept referring to the city as "Boy-zee". He got a call from some clown who said he was tired of these idiot newscasters calling the town "Boy-zee" when it's actually pronounced "Boy-see".  Paul said, "Look, when you command the microphone you can call it 'peanut butter' for all I care. But as long as I command the mic it is what I say it is." End of conversation.

Traveling along the freeway through Boy-zee, you see nothing but a sound wall. Looks like the city is one big correctional facility. As Ronald Reagan said, "Hey Boy-zee, tear down this wall."

Here's yet another hoarder moving their hoard into Boy-zee.

Crossing over into Or-eh-gone, we gave the Prius and rig a rest and stumbled upon something RVers might find useful. If you're stuck without a place to sack out for a night, Oregon allows you to stay for up to 24 hours in a parking space at official rest stops (your rig must be "self-contained"). You can do the same at many WalMart parking lots.

From here it's onto bad water in Baker City.

Bye bye. Buy Starbucks.  Another shameless plug.

Middle of Nowhere

Where does America's best tasting water come from?

A beaver. Make of that what you will. Believe me, you see all kinds of signs marring our nation's highways. More about water and beavers on down the road. The snapping of this particular photo turned out to be prescient (look that up, teabaggers, if you even know what a dictionary are).

Roaring through Utah, just short of Provo, we saw this huge grain elevator going up only to find out it was yet another Mormon Moroni monument*. An LDS church rising out of a hay field and into the heavens to the tune of about half a billion dollars. Oh yeah, Mitt would have straightened America out.

*Not be outdone, Cardinal Roger Mahoney (rhymes more or less with "Moroni") tore down L.A.'s historic Catholic cathedral and built a massive new "Our Lady of the Angels" mother church dubbed the "Rog (raj) Mahal", which he'd fly to in his private helicopter. What would Pope Francis say about that?

Even Provo's local Elks Lodge, of which we are members, is rather stately, rising like a Mormon temple. We didn't go in but there's was no reason since they probably don't serve booze anyway.

By the way, a great RV and tent campground is found at Utah Lake State Park in west Provo. Utah Lake is the third largest lake west of the Mississippi and it's what remains of ancient, huge Bonneville Lake for which the Bonneville Salt Flats are named. Wow. Fascinating.

Next day we shoot through Salt Lake City like poop through a goose, grabbing a quick freeway sign of Temple Square which is to Mormonism what Mecca is to Islam, the liquor store to Catholicism, Fox News to teabaggers, and bird watching to wimpy liberals.

Then it's off to the middle of nowhere on I-84 from Utah into Idaho. No one told us (and there's no highway signage) that there would be no gas for about 100 miles. And when you're towing a 12,000-pound trailer with a four-cylinder Prius you're only getting about nine miles to the gallon and frequent gas stations are much appreciated. So Utah or Idaho or Obama, how about a simple sign that says "Next gas, 87 miles."

 

And, running on fumes, here's where you finally find that next gas...

literally in the middle of nowhere.

"Middle of Nowhere" is a gas station with a curio shop, a café, a cool little donkey, a llama, with regular unleaded for a whopping

$4.65 a gallon. The place was packed. This guy has a gold mine here in the middle of nowhere.

This spot in the road is also called "Sublett, Idaho" named after Mountain Man William Sublette who stopped here to gas up in 1843.

We probably didn't piss off nearly enough people with this abbreviated blog post or did we? We cut it short because Paul is off to a clinic for stage three of his sex change surgery in downtown Wendell, Idaho, our next stop. This is for all you Wendells out there.

Bye bye. Buy Starbucks.

Hoarders

Ho-Made Pie Gal

 

 

Today, August 2nd, we're spending two days relaxing in a county RV park in Prineville, Oregon. This after an 1100-mile journey from Sedona through the Grand Canyon to Utah and Idaho. Now we're just 100 miles from our goal destination near Mt. Hood, Oregon. More on that later if you really give a damn.  But back to that Utah thing.

We crossed into Utah on Highway 89 through the northern Arizona Navajo Nation (always an eye-opener) and into the town of Kanab, a well-kept, tidy little place you expect in Mormon-dominated Utah. But not so fast. First thing you see is a roadside restaurant selling pies made by hos (pronounced "hoes"). A neon sign of a pie-making presumably Mormon gal showing plenty of cleavage. Never did find out what this was all about but it's what makes a road trip worth taking.

We mushed north on Highway 89, a designated Scenic Byway.

Scenic, yes, but we see the start of ominous weather building in the distance.

Before you know it, thunder, lightning, heavy rains and mudslides cover the scenic byway. Serious enough to bring in the law. We were lucky to get through because just behind us the hill gave way and traffic was stopped for hours. Ah yes, a road trip.

Stayed two nights at a very nice RV park called "Bauer's Canyon Ranch" in the small town of Glendale, Utah. It's actually part of a working ranch and except for a few flies it was a delightful place to park the all-new for 2014 Lance 1885 travel trailer with side slide pulled by our 2013 Toyota Prius V hybrid. (I'm getting on average 50 miles to the gallon but my all time best was 64.7. That's no joke.)

RV park signs.

The rig.



The rain caught up with us and our fellow campers including a rabbi and his family from Israel. They pitched a tent, were flooded overnight and had to dry things out before moving on to Tel Aviv.

This little Utah town like every town you pass through has its Latter Day Saints church, or two or three or four. This is the centerpiece of everything that is Utah.

And when it's your time for the dirt nap they'll even customize your casket or if you're still breathing outfit your kitchen with cabinets and a place to store your weapons. 

The most well kept sites in these small Utah towns are churches and bury patches. Most graves are marked with the nearest large LDS temple. Ours will most likely be marked with our places of worship: the neck of a jug of vino and an open bag of Fritos.

Here's a guy who's going to spend a few millennia in Mormon hell because he broke federal law and stole a scenic byway highway sign. Couldn't even nail the damn thing straight.

And speaking of scenic byway, right here in the middle of little Glendale, right on the main drag as you come into town is more crap than you'd find on a dairy farm. Some yards are nothing but a collection of unwanted, used up, dilapidated "stuff".  This trailer's actually for sale.

If you sneak around and peek in the windows, you'll see that everyone has satellite TV, watching Fox News. Now, what does that say? By the way, wasn't that Mitt what's his name that Obama beat the magic garments off of, wasn't he a Mormon?  Hmmm.....

You really have to ask why the hell can't everyone in a small town like this get on the same page and keep their communities clean. We refer back to much larger places like Fairhope, Alabama, Fredericksburg, Texas, Sedona, Arizona and most places in Oregon such as where we are now, Prineville, as examples of communities that really do care and are proud to put themselves on show. We add that Kanab, Utah is also one of those places. It actually takes very little to keep up with the garbage but once it starts collecting it tends to overwhelm the collector and you're liable to wind up on one of the Discovery Channels as part of  its "Hoarding: Buried Alive" series.  

More crap right on the main highway. But I suppose if you're a fan of another TV show like "American Pickers" these places are ripe for one of their so-called "Archeological Antique" picks which really are nothing but people buying other people's junk that they sell to themed restaurants like "Fridays", "Texas Roadhouse" and the like. But those two guys on "Pickers" did outfit William Shatner's house with somebody's else's crap that he most likely paid for with his Priceline wealth. Wish I had Priceline stock.

So to escape all that junk we repair to our lair and do what we do best: eat then pay homage to Anthony Weiner (note beer bottle) while Daisy wonders what the hell is goin' on.

Here's Paul polishing off his second six pack.

And Daisy with her new squeaky rubber toy cabernet bottle (we're starting her off young) wearing her Mormon sister wife bandana and licking her chops after eating a candy bar.  Soon after this picture was taken she went into toxic shock but recovered overnight and we were told it was the two-pound Almond Joy she ate. But we think that's B.S.

With Daisy back in the pink we're off  to what's literally called "the middle of nowhere" and the most expensive gas found on the planet. So down the road we go.

Bye bye. Buy Starbucks.