roadquill1

Well six weeks have flown by faster than we would have hoped, and memories of our southwest travels will have to suffice until next year – along with the slight tans from screened sun that we achieved – for a few more days before spring rains wash them away. Our journey home was remarkable in that we never saw any rain – anytime! Even I-5 – usually a sponge bath with visibility limited by the spray from the transports, was bone dry.

The first notable city after our stay just north of Lakeview on Saturday, was Bend, OR on Easter Sunday.We had been given instructions by “Pam and Bill” – a couple we met at Patagonia (and again at Tombstone), to walk along the river park near downtown Bend. Good advice! It was a very pretty park on a beautiful Easter Sunday, with a few folks strolling throughout the downtown area, and a few kids finding Easter eggs in hedges, lampstands, and so on. We encountered a young couple wearing medieval costumes with tri-pointed clownish hats on the main drag, and we said “hello”, but right behind them was a younger couple dressed in “Goth”, with one holding the other on a leash. The one on the leash suddenly stepped in front of me and hissed like an scared cat. I ignored him, but we realized afterwards that I should have growled and barked right back!

  “The Bend” in downtown Bend.

Bend is surrounded by volcanic peaks, and they are really quite spectacular!

The “Sisters” and other lesser peaks near Bend and Sisters, Oregon.

The only spray we experienced was from snow melt just west of the town of Sisters, OR when we “coasted” downhill towards Salem through what must have been a very deep snow pack. Sandy figured out that the long orange poles at the sides of the road were to show the snow plows where the edges are!

Deep snow along the highways west of Sisters. The red substance is a kind of sand.

We stayed Sunday night at Woodburn, and then stopped at the Fabric Depot in Portland before rolling right on through Seattle to join our Walnut Grove family in the evening.

I did SO stop at Fabric Depot. (I was going to “edit” the photo by adding a Red Flyer filled with quilting supplies, but…I like the Quilter’s smile better than her glare!!)

We had two days with the very busy Lindsays and then headed home, arriving in Nanaimo yesterday afternoon in the rain, and in time for the Canuck show of penalty killing. Welcome home! However, the weather cleared enough today to mow the lawn, and I guess our spring is well and truly launched. Blossoms will soon be out here.

More music at Lindsays – a lesson                A mowed lawn: The beginnings of summer labour.

I hope that our adventures have been somewhat entertaining. Thanks for all of your comments. Let me know if you preferred the blog or the emails, and…don’t forget, you can “unsubscribe” if you need a break. I will probably continue with the “Roadquill” into the future, just because I kinda like doing it. My “roads” will include sailing voyages (without the Quilter – of course!), and a European trip in the Fall (with the Quilter, and two other couples).

We are glad to be home! Love, and best wishes to all. Drop in, or drop us a line.

Tony, the Quill, and Sandy, the Quilter.

Well, here we are – back in Oregon again – just north of a town called “Lakeview” – one of the highest cities in the State. The roads to get here have been some of the most enjoyable that we have travelled in either north, or south directions. Part of this is surely because of the spectacular weather – from 20 C when we left Lake Havasu City and then steadily getting cooler as we rolled north through Nevada, and into Oregon this afternoon. The other reason is – no traffic!

So, for your “routofiles” (folks that love to hear which highways and byways you travel on) here goes:

We travelled up Highway 95 from Needles (“No stopping, Sandy…the name has nothing to do with quilting!”) north past Las Vegas and then continuing through the little gold-mining town of Goldfield, and then to Tonopah, Nevada. Diesel there cost $4.199 at a little private garage – a much better price that the bigger stations on the highway. We had originally planned on staying in Tonopah, but the only RV place was at the Casino, and so I opted to keep going for another couple of hours – to Austin, NV.

We had to backtrack a couple of miles, and then we headed due north on Highway 376 to Austin. This highway was surprisingly vacant, and just for fun, I began to check the times between passing vehicles. It was about 1 to 2 minutes on average. At 70 miles per hour, this means that usually, you can just barely see the oncoming lights of the next vehicle as one passes you on the long straight stretches.

Just before Austin, we were in some very high country and the road became very twisty for the last few miles into Austin. We stayed at the Austin RV Park – a tiny little place with no one around. The office seemed to be the Baptist Church, but I guess that we were too late for Good Friday services, so we put our money in the collection envelope and stuck it in the door. For other Roadies – the place was clean, but cold, and our sink drain line frosted up overnight. It was about -4 C when we headed out at 8:30 this morning.

The best was yet to come!

I, personally, LOVE new routes, and so far this trip had been wonderful with gorgeous scenery, and little traffic on two-lane roads. Today (Saturday) topped yesterday, however.

Just outside of Austin’s western edge, we turned north up 305. We had the gorgeous Toiyabe and Snoshone Mountains lit up behind us in the early morning sunshine, and beautiful ranges on either side as we roared up the valley in the middle towards Battle Mountain, NV.

Toiyabe and Shoshone Mountains to the south of Austin           The same – in the rear-view mirror!                                     Hwy 80 – heading towards Winnemucca

At Battle Mountain, we swung west on a 4-lane freeway 80 to Winnemucca, where we turned north on 95 until we hit 140.

                                                                                  Hwy 140

On this stretch to Lakeview, OR, we passed, on average, about one vehicle every 10 minutes for the first 3 hours or so. Try to imagine that on any highway in daylight hours. At 70 mph two vehicles meet every 10 minutes. (At -4 C you could have a very cold thumb if you were hitchhiking, since you might only see a vehicle every 20 minutes, or more!) This little calculation reminded me of a very long night in the Queen Charlotte Islands when I hitch-hiked from Port Clements towards Queen Charlotte City and only saw 2 vehicles in about 2 hours! I guess we can be grateful for a full tank of fuel, and no break-downs!

At a Rest Stop at noon we saw a bare-footed family (a young mother with 5 barefooted children) with 3 dogs in a cargo trailer – a rottweiler, a bull mastiff, and a husky pup. As we got out to stretch our legs, the youngest child came running over to me and reached up to be picked up. Thumpety, thump! That was a heart-warmer in the chilly afternoon wind! The mother quickly put the Mastiff on a chain – before it became too protective of the young toddler, I guess. Mother was pretty good at getting them rounded up for departure – “I will count to two!” (No messing around with a safer three count.)

  The Rest Stop on 140

After sandwiches and a snooze, we hit the empty road again. Very shortly thereafter, we saw several wild burro herds, wild horses, and antelopes, as well as two very large golden eagles. As we climbed the pass over Antelope Butte (you can see several antelope butts in the pictures) the roadside and surrounding areas were lightly snow-covered.

Antelope butts at Antelope Butte                                                   Antelope: pee before flee                                                                  Snow above Lakeview, OR

Lakeview, Oregon, turned out to be NOT the place we wanted to stay so we continued north on 395. Tomorrow, we will turn off at Hwy 31, and follow a new route to Bend, and then on to Salem and Portland. Sandy looked online today at the Quilt Shop…”An acre and a half of supplies…”. Guess we will camp there a while.

Getting closer to you – except for Nicki, in Australia, and the Benz’s in Germany! Best wishes and love to all.

The Quill and the Quilter

On Saturday, the drive to Roper Lake (near Safford, AZ) featured a beautiful one hour drive north from Wilcox through high rolling desert with wild flowers just beginning – the bloom is a bit later than two years ago when we drove through here.

There was lots of room for us at Roper Lake State Park, and we settled into two spots with ramadas over picnic tables – a welcome shade from the direct sun! Since we were planning on two full days of boating and fishing, we immediately off-loaded the kayaks and put them on the golf carts to wheel them down to the lake. We hadn’t noticed when we came in but the lake was very different from when we were here two years ago: the reed beds are much reduced in area, the bird population is way lower, and the water level is down between 1 to 2 metes resulting in an ugly alkali mucky “beach” that we had to wheel the kayaks through to get to the water’s edge. The water has a very shallow entry also, so Sandy got in and I pushed her as far as I could before I almost lost a sandal in the gumbo. She had to push with her paddle the rest of the way to where she could float. I also struggled to get to floating, and then had to dangle my feet in the water to lose the muck before I brought my feet into the kayak.

We paddled around the perimeter of the small man-made lake, but it didn’t feel as “alive” as we had remembered. Sandy soon had had enough, and headed back so that Mike and I could use the kayaks for some fishing late in the afternoon and evening. Mike also lost a shoe (and recovered) in the muck getting onto the shore later, and the fishing efforts were in vain – well, Mike actually had a couple of strikes. I had baseball’s “three strikes”! At dusk, the clouds of bugs got in our ears, eyes, and noses. So, overall, the whole project was quite unpleasant! However, later, coyotes serenaded us in the night, and the star viewing was excellent!

April Fools Day came early in Truck House. On Saturday night while the coyotes sang, we decided that my Happy Helium Birthday Balloon had been hanging around long enough. Sandy asked if helium really changed someone’s voice, so I cut a tiny hole in the balloon, breathed in deeply, and joined the coyote chorus by singing her a couple of lines from “I’m forever blowing bubbles.” – Alvin and the Chipmunk style. She laughed so hard, she almost fell off the bunk.

On Sunday, we awoke to the chore of cleaning the dried muck off of our kayaks, but we decided to postpone that in favour of a 28 km return ride into Safford. The temperatures were beautiful in the morning, and the streets on Palm Sunday were pretty quiet so it was a great ride.

The plan in the afternoon was for more fishing, so we returned to Roper Lake – to find our kayaks completely clean – thanks to the efforts of Mike and Marlene. Given the struggles with the shore muck we abandoned ideas of further boating. Good plan! For later, the wind kept getting stronger (as forecast), and about 2:30 in the afternoon, all of a sudden we saw a cloud of black smoke quickly growing upwind from us. Within minutes, we could see flames leaping above the level of the dike road that runs around Roper Lake, so we jumped on our bikes to see what was going on. Apparently, a “controlled burn” had become NOT, and the fire had jumped boundaries of safety and was racing through scrub desert brushes – towards Roper Lake! We watched from the safety of the dike road until the fire jumped a road just parallel to us about a quarter mile away, then we decided that, for security sake, we should maybe consider packing up our stuff. The wind didn’t really seem to be pushing it towards us, but we didn’t want to be caught short. So, we loaded up the kayaks and bikes, and got ready to leave within a few minutes of warning.  Meanwhile, the fire jumped the dike road, and began burning some of the dry reeds along the shoreline. Finally, a pumper truck showed up, and managed to control the fire from spreading along the shoreline. A wind shift also turned the fire so that it was able to be controlled – as originally planned! We aborted our plan to camp in WalMart’s parking lot that night.

“Controlled burn” at Roper Lake

Monday’s drive into Phoenix was pleasant but surprisingly cold as temperatures on the high road through San Carlos Reservation dipped to 11 C. By the time we got to Phoenix (isn’t that a line in a song by Glen Campbell?) we were able to be back into shorts for our evening with the Hendersons at their golf mobile home park in El Mirage.

Tuesday was lounging at poolside at Hendersons, followed by a dinner with the younger generation Judd family. And we capped the day off with watching the Canucks beat Anaheim in a shoot-out! Perfect day – and a very Happy 93^rd Birthday to my mother in Langford!

Wednesday is another travel day, though we decided to keep it short – to Lake Havasu City via Wickenburg. A site at the State Park was almost not available as the Easter Weekend is almost upon us, and there is a Spring Break for some college crowd. However, the “overflow” parking is beautiful, and in some shade. Lucky for that, as the temps today reached into the low 90’s – and humid with high overcast.

Thursday April 5^th. This is our last day in Arizona as tomorrow we begin our trek north, and Mike and Marlene head west to Bakersfield. We are planning on being back in Walnut Grove on Monday night or Tuesday, however, the quilt shop in Portland still beckons one of us. (I have spent my allowance at Cabela’s! BUT…my birthday present awaits me at the Outlet Store in Winterburn in Oregon!) Today is again overcast and humid, and the forecast is for high winds later. So…we are sending out our last AZ Road Note from McDonald’s WiFi by the London Bridge! I will try to find at least one more connection before we find our Grand Family in Walnut Grove. Until then… Much love to all, and be safe!

Tony, the Quill, and Sandy, the Quilter