We left Arizona the first week of June as the weather was starting to heat up (as if it had ever cooled down). The temps were already in the triple digits. Our last night was spent visiting with Brett, Callie, Eric and Rikki. Brett and Callie were so funny. They kept referring to us as their divorced friends and they were going to have to spend more time with their new friends. It’s great to have friends. Our plans were to be on the road for about 3 months and we had plenty on the calendar to stay busy.

Our first stop was in Flagstaff. Black Bart’s RV park is one of our favorites. The Steakhouse is a great place to eat. Delicious food and the serving staff are all entertainers as well. Solos, duets, groups they all take part in non-stop singing while taking excellent care of the diners. We met with my sister and brother-in-law, Mary and Bill, for dinner and had a great evening.

One of the challenges of living full-time on the road is being able to take care of the things that would be quite simple if we were stationary but create logistical challenges when traveling. In this case, the Jeep windshield had been hit with a rock on the Phoenix freeways just a day or 2 before we left. In this case, I was able to get an appointment with Safelite Auto Glass in Flagstaff and had the windshield repaired while we were there. No stopover is complete without a bike ride and hike.

Our destination at this time was Rock Springs, WY to participate in the Escapees RV Club Escapade. More about this in the next couple of paragraphs. Along the way, we stopped to take in the sights. Glendale, UT was the next stop. This town is north of Kanab, UT and west of St George, UT. We stayed at the Bauer’s Canyon Ranch RV Park. A family run RV park. Upon checking in we were greeted by a high school aged young lady and her younger brother. They provided us with all the information we required to get set up and gave us information on a hike near the area. So we loaded up in the Jeep and drove about 15 minutes south of town to the Belly of the Dragon cave. This is a short hike. It is a cave that has been worn by wind and water with the highway built above it. As you stand at the entrance to the cave, you can’t see the light from the other end and the large swirls on the walls look like you are about to go spiraling into the belly. As you walk through, you start to see light at the other end. As you exit you find yourself in a sandy wash. We continued up the wash until we reached a dry waterfall about 50 ft high. We climbed to the top of the waterfall and could have continued up the wash but decided we had seen enough.

We drove back into town to get refreshments. The main highway runs through the center of town with small businesses facing the highway. We stopped in at a small cafe to grab a bite to eat. A young man about 7 years old took our pie and ice cream order. His older brother about 12ish showed him how to ring it up on the register. The pies were homemade and delicious. While we sat and ate, I noticed a lot of paintings on the rock wall above the town. I was informed that each graduating class would paint the year of their graduation on the rock face. The numbers went back into the 60’s.

Next we stopped in at the grocery store. 2 high school aged young women checked us out and made small talk. These observations were striking to me. When I left working at the college, I was surprised that college-aged adults had trouble speaking with people (they didn’t know what to say, wouldn’t ask questions) and were afraid to work in a customer service environment without a security guard sitting next to them and certainly couldn’t handle any kind of confrontation, no matter how small. These young people were quite interactive with the customers and were problem solvers. The world needs more young people like these.

The next day we completed a workout in the motorhome and then went for a biking/hiking excursion. I had planned out a route that I could ride and Teri could hike using several mapping tools. What an adventure this turned out to be. On the maps, it looked like we were going to be on forest service type roads. Instead they were 4×4 trails that went through the cow pastures, through the trees all the while climbing up the mountain. At each crest we thought we were at the top only to see the path continuing to climb. Some of the path was so steep, I couldn’t pedal up it and walked with Teri. We finally reached the top and descended back to camp. We only covered 5.5 miles but it took us 2.5 hours to do it. Normally, this would be about an hour bike ride. We were worn out. Teri said she would never follow one of my routes again. Hahaha.

As we drove out of town, I was amazed at the valley we were driving through. The valley was formed between tall rock faces over 100 ft high and was anywhere from 1/4 mile to 1 mile wide and the road ran through the middle. The area was largely agricultural with cows grazing in fields and other fields of hay.

Our next stop was Draper, UT. This is a town/city about 1/2 way between Provo and Salt Lake City. The park is in the center of the city along the freeway. The park streets were narrow as were the spaces. The one thing we noticed as we traveled through Utah was the lack of trash along the city streets and highways. We also didn’t see any panhandlers on street corners. We didn’t sit around though. We took the time to hike up to the Bear Canyon Suspension Bridge. The bridge is located on one of the hills that overlooks Draper and spans a deep gorge that had a beautiful river running through it.

We finally arrived in Rock Springs, WY where we intended to spend the week. The Escapade event was being held at the Sweetwater Events Complex and RV park. The complex is the county fairgrounds, rodeo arena, auto racing, jamborees and any number of other events that might be held in the area. It was huge. We checked in and were escorted to our parking site. We had plenty of room for the RV and Jeep and we watched as other attendees parked their rigs as well. We made our way to the Hospitality Room to obtain our goody bags and confirm our reservations for the Flaming Gorge tour at the end of the week. As we walked into the room we were greeted by a number of vendor tables all designed to entice us to be involved with other events. Next we stopped in at the Marketplace. This was a room filled with vendors selling everything from kitchen utensils to Alaska RV trips to coach cleaning supplies. It was an RV festival. As we checked the schedule of events, we noticed that each day was filled with seminars about RVing. Topics included washing your RV, maintaining, repairing the RV, necessities and gadgets for an RV, cruises and tours. There were pickleball lessons each day for an hour that they had to expand the time for the lessons which reduced the amount of court time for free play. We were unable to take advantage of this. Of course, the majority of the seminars were being presented by the vendors. (You can make your own conclusions from here). Of course throughout the day on the schedule were social times as well. Each of these were focused on food, drinks, alcohol and evening music. Nowhere in the schedule were there events for doing things fun and exciting. We felt very out of our element. We had hoped there would be time for fising, biking, hiking, exploring, etc with others. All we saw were people sitting around talking about things that could be done, but no one was doing anything. Travel around the event center was conducted by walking (very few people were doing this), hopping on the golf cart shuttles or riding bicycles. Of course they were eBikes and nobody was pedaling. The throttles got plenty of use. We arrived on Saturday and planned to stay until the following Sunday. I got out for 2 bike rides and we got in a workout. Then we decided this just wasn’t fun for us and we checked out. The Flaming Gorge tour that we signed up for? They were going to load us all onto tour buses, drive us to the Flaming Gorge, let us off to eat our sack lunch and look into a large canyon and drive us back. It had the feel of a high school field trip. We decided if we wanted to see the Flaming Gorge we could do it at our leisure at another time. This decision made room for 2 others from the waiting list to attend.
One of the things we noted about this area was that it was windy and cold. The winds were 20-40 mph on Tuesday and the morning temp was 34 degrees. Quite a change from Arizona and even Utah. We were on the road on Wednesday morning at 7am with 43 degrees.

However, even though the event wasn’t our style, we didn’t sit around while there and made the most of our personal time. While driving through the town of Rock Springs, we stumbled on a car show. There were cars of all shapes, styles, colors and one car could be heard for blocks. And he liked to rev the engine! The street had been closed for 2 blocks for the cars to be lined up on either side of the street. Oh, and I can’t forget to mention the food trucks.
On one of my rides, I discovered a very unhappy red tailed hawk sitting in her nest. She was very unhappy with my proximity. I also noticed couple other hawks flying overhead as though they were ready to strafe me. The folks in Rock Springs are very daring in their bike route designs as one of the trails I was on was precariously close to the edge of a 75 ft drop off. It was so narrow, I didn’t even try to ride it. As I walked it, the right side of the handlebars were hanging over air.

**** We later learned that the whole purpose of the Escapade is about education, networking and socializing and not about activities. There is a different program for activities called the Escapees Hangouts. See the upcoming August Blog *****

Throughout our travels we like to take our time while driving and stop and smell the roses, so to speak. In this case after we left Rock Springs we stopped at the Echo Canyon Rest Area in northern Utah. There is a tribute to President Dwight D Eisenhower for his foresight in developing a freeway system. There is also a nice tribute to the settlers and developers of the area. The folks who built the roads, the railroad, the telegraph and even the oxen that carried them. As we wandered the rest area, we found it was littered with ground squirrels who were eager to grab up any food lying on the ground. They wouldn’t eat from our hands (how did we figure that out?) but they weren’t afraid of humans.

Snowville, UT is the last town before the Idaho border. No stoplights, 2 stop signs (1 north, 1 south) at Main St along with a truck stop, gas station, 2 diners and an RV park. The area was primarily rolling hills with hay fields, cattle and horses spotting the hillsides. This is also the home of the Golden Spike Historical Park. This is where the Central Pacific RR from Sacramento,CA met up with the Union Pacific RR from Omaha, NE. There is an interpretive trail that allows you to walk along the rail beds where trains once traveled that are now just walking trails. They story of the RR in this area is one of a waste of resources, time and money. There had not been any oversight of the project and each of the RR had surveyed their own route toward the meeting point only to learn they had overlapped each other by a lot of miles. Then they had to decide which route to eventually complete in order to complete the RR. I learned that the federal mandate is that no RR grade can exceed 2%. Along the walk we saw the Big Fill and the remains of the Trestle. The Trestle was built by the Central Pacific RR to span a wide gorge. The story is that it was so hastily built and not the most secure that the trestle would sway when the train crossed over. The Big Fill was the Union Pacific RR’s answer to the same gorge. They brought in loads of dirt to fill the gorge. The Big Fill was the eventual winner and where the RR tracks were run. We also came across a shelter cave. This is a cave where men might have sheltered during a storm, spent the night, and/or supplies were stored to include dynamite.

This area is also the home of the Northrop Grumman Space Rocket facility. We did not tour this facility, but did stop at the entrance to view and photograph the rockets on display. Driving along the highway it is possible to see all the bunkers littering the hill landscape.

Mountain Home, ID was a bike ride through the rolling hills. Man, was it hot.

If Pendleton strikes a bell with you, you are probably familiar with the Pendleton Wool products. Pendleton, OR is the home of Pendleton Woolen Mills. We stopped to walk through the store with all the intricately designed and woven products and even bought some clothes. We were unable to schedule a tour. Our stay at the KOA was pleasant but found the sites were a bit on the small size for our outfit. The grass at the site was watered every afternoon so we couldn’t leave the chairs out but we had a wonderful view of the valley.
We spent some time in town even embarking on the Underground Tour. We have done other underground tours of other cities and found this one as interesting in comparison. It was an interesting history lesson. The underground had served as a place for folks to play cards and drink and socialize, especially during prohibition. It was also used to house Chinese laborers, a Chinese laundry and Speakeasy’s. Dinner that night was at a newly opened Flying X Speakeasy Lounge. The owners had built part of the underground into a very luxurious looking restaurant and the food was delicious. We also learned that every year the City will contract with local ranchers to graze their goats along the river bank to they keep the grass mowed.

We took a short drive to La Grande where we hiked biked. The area was amazing with green grass, trees, and steep fun trails. While I had been riding in the area, I came across a gentleman who was doing trail maintenance. He suggested I stop in and see Marc, so we did. We stopped in at Mountain Works bicyles where we met the manager Marc and had a great visit discussing mountain biking in Oregon and Arizona. On the way back to Pendleton we came across an historic bridge, the Upper Perry Bridge. The architecture was one of the more innovative designs of the era and spans the river and the railroad.

This summer trip had a few priorities. One priority was to ride all the race courses I plan to race next spring. The first race course was in Echo, OR, a small, historical town along the OR trail located in rolling hills of grass. Much of the trail had not been maintained recently so it was overgrown with grass 3+ ft high. The trail was barely visible through the grass. Then the trail led up onto the ridge lines with views of grass for miles. The trail builders had seen it prudent to build a crossover bridge where 2 of the trails intersected.

Next stop was Redmond, OR. There’s not much in Redmond, but it was close to Bend and Sisters where I rode 2 race courses. One was a 50 miler and it took me all day to complete and yes, the white stuff is snow. Sisters is a very welcoming community with lots of small diners, bar & grills and places to just hang out and socialize with friends. On one of our travels we stopped off at the Peter Skeen Ogden Viewpoint which had a spectacular view of the canyon and the bridges that span the gorge.

Our next stop was Westfir, OR near Oakridge, and yes, another race venue. We stayed at Caseys Riverside RV Park and it was excellent. We were camped right on the rivers edge. We had a chance to do some fishing but didn’t land anything. I had 1 on the line that got off and another nibble.
The race venue starts at an historic covered bridge and the course climbs the service road to the top of the mountain where you can then ‘bomb’ down the singetrack. I met up with John from California on the trail and we rode down the mountain together. A fun time. I forgot to mention that although we were headed down the mountain, there was still 1000 ft of climbing while descending. Go figure.

This brings us to the end of the month. So much going on and next month is no different that I don’t know where the time went. Stay tuned!
You may be aware that we started our full-time adventure 2 1/2 years ago with goals of seeing the country but also identifying where we might want to relocate. Oregon has always been at the top of the list and the first part of this trip has not changed that priority. So, here we are at the end of June and reminiscing as to where we were a year ago (Georgia with Mike and Marie) and still contemplating where to set roots. Thanks for traveling with us. We hope you’ve enjoyed the journey. Next month is just around the corner.

Stay Safe.