Bound for Bend and Brody's Birthday Bash!

While we are camped in John Day, in far eastern Oregon, for about a week, the highlight of our stay was to drive west to Bend to visit David's sister Leslie, her husband Mike, their daughter Megan and her husband Jeff, and -- most importantly -- Megan and Jeff's daughter Emerson and son Brody.  Here, Leslie caught a photo of the rest of us on our Saturday bowling adventure (more on that later):

Our trip started Friday morning, April 12, when we dropped our cats off at a pet resort in John Day.  It was based at a veterinary clinic that also specializes in equine and other large animal veterinary medicine.  We could tell that the kitties would be in good hands when we saw this large wooden sculpture in the front yard:

Our drive took us past John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, which we plan to visit later in the week.  The craggy volcanic rock formations whetted our appetite to explore the wonders of that monument.

But we had miles to go before returning to this outdoor adventure.

Before getting to Leslie's house, we had some shopping to do.  We wanted to pick up some specialty gins to share with our friends Dave and Leslie when we see them in Penticton next month as we start our long trip to Alaska.  Our stop was the Oregon Spirit Distillers in Bend, which specializes in craft whiskey and other spirits, including FOUR types of gin.

We had to taste the gins, of course!  We picked the most interesting one for our Canadian friends, and then grabbed two others we really liked for ourselves.  You have to understand that  this represented great restraint, because the selection of spirits was overwhelming:

A second stop was at REI in Bend to pick up new hiking boots.  We just keep wearing ours out, and we knew Bend would have what we wanted.  Once done shopping for the outdoors, we stopped for a quick lunch on the bank of the beautiful Deschutes River, where we spotted a random paddle-boarder socializing with the local geese as they rested on their long migratory journey:

Once we finished the logistics, we headed over to David's sister Leslie's house, where Leslie, Mike and the Welcoming Committee (viz., Gus and Millie) made us feel right at home:

Megan, Jeff and the kids popped over for dinner Friday night, but before dinner, the kids took us over to a nearby park to sample the park's recreational riches.  Here, Em and Brody show Grammie and Uncle David how to bounce with abandon.  Kathy volunteered to take the photo so that she wouldn't have to try to stay up on the bucking machine for a full 9 seconds:

The Masters golf tournament was in progress this weekend, so, after watching the end of Friday's round (Mike and Jeff led this activity) and enjoying a hearty home-cooked meal from Leslie, we retired to the cozy little guest apartment that Mike and Leslie maintain over their garage.

It seemed but a moment before the sunlight came streaming in the window, rousting us up to take our morning coffee walk on Saturday:

Leslie and Mike described a forest path down to the Deschutes River.  We decided to tackle it and soon found ourselves on a beautiful pedestrian bridge over the river.  Kathy perches on the bridge in the photo below --

-- while gazing at the high waters that have been fed by extraordinary snowmelt and rains this Spring:

Once we finished a walk with Mike, Leslie and the puppies, and digested breakfast, we met the kids and grandkids for a rousing bowl-a-thon, where Leslie took the photo at the beginning of this blog.  Kathy claimed high score, with Jeff breathing closely down her neck.  We'll just say that the rest of us finished proudly.

Saturday afternoon was more relaxed, as we ate a light lunch prepared by Megan and Jeff and watched part of the Masters round and their house.  We capped the night off with a dinner out, and then fell peacefully into bed for another good night's sleep.

The Masters was already under way when we awoke, so we hurriedly dressed, made our coffee, and joined Mike and Leslie to watch the final Sunday round before heading over to Brody's Birthday Bash at a trampoline zone in Bend.  Thanks to the masters.com phone app, we were able to keep track of Tiger Woods' amazing comeback victory while also chasing each other and a dozen of Brody's friends around the bouncing zone.

Brody set the pace with a mean session of trampoline dodge ball, where we witnessed unspeakable violence as Brody and Em overwhelmed Kathy's defenses.

While Kathy recovered from her dodge ball drubbing, David took up the gauntlet and challenged Em to a jousting match on a narrow balance beam.  Here they set up for their fierce competition:

Em took David to school, we must admit, as you can tell from this video of Emerson giving David a drubbing!

Brody and his gang moved so fast from trampoline basketball to trampoline gymnastics to bouncing this and bouncing that, that we couldn't keep up with him.  We decided it was a little less hectic to watch Emerson demonstrate her wall climbing skills.  Here, she sets up the climb:

 Then, not once, not twice, but FOUR TIMES, Em conquered the wall.  In this video, Emerson demonstrated the expert approach.

 She paused long enough to accept Kathy's accolades before we repaired to the party room where Em and Brody and their friends ravaged innumerable pizza pies.

The kids partied on while we left with Leslie and Mike to enjoy a light lunch and a little more shopping for Oregon goodies for our Canadian friends.  Then, sadly it was time for us to leave.  We stopped back at the Crews' house to bid a teary farewell to Millie (too sad to face the camera) and Gus (who looked at us only to plead that we not leave so soon):

After many pre-byes, good-byes and bye-byes with Mike and Les, we sadly hopped in the Jeep and returned back to John Day, but not before enjoying a second trip through Picture Gorge along the John Day River:

It was hard to leave so soon, but we took heart in having already planned our next reunion, along with David's sister Maggie and nephew Tyler, and Leslie and Mike's son Sam, his wife Kim, and their two girls in October, when we return down the Oregon coast on our trip back from Alaska.

Thank you for such a wonderful visit, Leslie, Mike, Megan, Jeff, Emerson, Brody -- and, oh yes, Gus and Millie.  We'll see you soon!

History Rocks in Winnemucca

Hi Blog!

Wednesday, April 10, 2019, was our last full day in Winnemucca, Nevada. We wish we had more time to explore, but the weather just had not cooperated. The storm front that kept us inside yesterday baking bread and make sausage, had been pushed out by strong cold winds. The day dawned with glorious blue skies and temperatures in the low 30s. We decided to spend the morning at the Humboldt Museum with the hopes that it might warm up a bit before we headed out to do some rockhounding.

Here Kathy stands on the steps of St. Mary's Episcopal Church. The church was moved to the museum campus in 1976, where it served as the Museum's main building until 1985. This week, the church houses most of the art in a local school art contest exhibit.  The new main museum building stands right behind the church.

The view from the parking lot looks down on a collection of old farm wagons and mining equipment. Just below the storage yard is the transcontinental rail line and the Humboldt River. The town of Winnemucca spreads up toward the foothills of the Sonoma Mountains.

Inside the museum, we explored exhibits with the remains of a 13,000 year old Columbian Mammoth, beaded and quilled regalia from an American Indian collection, vintage automobiles, keepsakes from Winnemucca's "art Nouveau" period, and an early soda manufacturing scene. 

Mining is huge in Nevada. The exhibit on the Tommyknocker caught our eye. We've heard the word before but never understood the meaning. Tommyknockers are impish gnomes that are often compared to Irish leprechauns and English brownies. Germans called them Berggeister or Bergmännlein, meaning  “mountain ghosts” or “little miners.” Living beneath the ground, they have been “known” to have committed both good and bad deeds through the centuries, often playing practical jokes and committing random acts of mischief, such as stealing unattended tools and food.

We found the exhibit on Winnemucca's Chinatown fascinating. Out of the over 400 residents of Chinatown, only four where women. One of the myths of history is that the Chinese came to the western United States for the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad. The reality is that they arrived in California in the very early days of the gold rush, which started in 1849 and, as gold fever subsided, looked for other work in order to earn a living. When the railroad began building through the area in 1868 Chinese arrived in Winnemucca for construction jobs, and built their own neighborhood in downtown Winnemucca.

The museum has a collection of wooden Indians. Because of the general illiteracy of the populace, early store owners used descriptive emblems to advertise their shops' wares; for example, barber poles advertise barber shops, white globes advertised apothecaries, and three gold balls represented pawn shops. American Indians and tobacco had always been associated because American Indians introduced tobacco to Europeans. 

The Richardson-Saunders House is the newest addition to the Humboldt Museum's campus. This home was originally constructed in 1899 and is a rare Nevada example of Eastlake architectural style. The entire building has been restored to its original grandeur.

The sun was still shining when we finished up our museum tour. We decided to head out Jungo Road to the Tenmile Hills. The other day, we had stopped at the Winnemucca BLM office and inquired about Jeep roads and rockhounding sites. There are so many in this area, it is hard to wrap your head around it. We finally asked the ranger to just pick the closest and easiest to get to. Upon her recommendation, we headed toward Tenmile Hills.  The open country spread out before us as we drove the dirt road:

Since this area is owned by BLM, we had to share the road. Much of the BLM land in Nevada is open range for cattle grazing.

About four miles from Jungo Road along a sandy dirt road, we found a likely spot. In the photo below, Kathy checks the nearby road cut to see what she can see.

Because of the unique topography and surface geology, and because we could see lots of rocks spread across the hillside, we decided to stop here to conduct our rockhounding.

Dave took his turn exploring the slopes of the near by ridges.

Nevada has a vast assortment of rocks and minerals. Dave also found this old, bleached bone:

After almost two hours of wandering up and down several drainages, and because the cold wind was beginning to chill us, it was time to call it quits.  We collected a whole bag of volunteers for our rock collection. We just need some time to go through them to see who gets a place of honor in the rock bowl.

As we made our way back toward Jungo Road, we stopped to admire these antelope that Kathy spotted in the distance:

Before becoming part of the BLM, this area was someone's ranch. While the barbed wire is gone, the old fence posts remain.

We've really enjoyed our time exploring northern Nevada. There is so much open space up here, it is hard to wrap your head around it.

Tomorrow we head north toward Oregon. We are looking forward to visiting family in Bend. It may be a few days before we get a chance to blog again. Until then, stay thirsty my friends.

Hiking Water Canyon

We're in Winnemucca, Nevada, which was the site of a crossing of the Humboldt River for those intrepid Western emigrants who braved the California Trail.  After a stormy day and getting new tires for our Jeep, we turned our attention to hiking trails in the area.  We were surprised to find how many hiking trails (and, of course, Jeep roads) there are in this area.  The basin-and-range features of northern Nevada produce an amazing number of interesting outdoor opportunities!

Rising almost 2,000 feet above the town of Winnemucca and tucked into the northern end of the Sonoma Range, secluded Water Canyon is one of the premier recreation areas in Northern Nevada.  It offers a rugged, picturesque setting along the canyon's upper reaches and a lush riparian area of cottonwood and aspen trees along White Creek, which streams down the canyon toward the Humboldt River.  The waters of White Creek provided the necessary water for the early development of the town of Winnemucca.

Managed by the Bureau of Land Management, the canyon offers sites for overnight camping, picnics, hiking, biking and limited ATV use, all at no charge to visitors. As an improvement to the trail system and other recreational opportunities, BLM has installed campfire rings, grills, trails, shelters and information kiosks at various sites along the road up into Water Canyon.

We decided that this photo would make the most appropriate trailhead photo.  One of the snowy peaks in the Sonoma Range beckons us up the canyon:

We hadn't even considered that we might encounter snow, because the area in the Humboldt River valley is so dry and the weather has been so warm recently.  We quickly discovered that the snowmelt has swelled little White Creek to the point where stream crossings needed to be approached with care:

We had several of these little wetfoot sections on our way up the trail.

The geology of Water Canyon is dominated by volcanic rocks.  Large, craggy volcanic formations loomed above us --

-- and we found a wide variety of types of rocks of igneous origin underfoot.

Of course, that wasn't all that we found underfoot.  Here, Kathy navigates one of the snowy sections we encountered as we turned uphill on the branch of the Water Canyon Trail that branched right toward an old mine:

Looking up and ahead, we began to realize that the trail would probably get more snowy before it ever cleared again:

We got a gorgeous view, straight up the trail, of Sonoma Peak, at 9,396 feet the highest peak of the Sonoma Range:

But there was snow enough for us down where we were.  We finally decided to call it a destination when we reached snow that was about 4 feet deep.  We looked for a place to have lunch, and this spot in the sun, next to the friendliest of boulders, looked perfect:

Kathy found our lunch rock and demonstrated the proper method of sitting on the rock while finding purchase for the hiking boots in the slippery snow:

Our view down the canyon toward Winnemucca was expansive, if not dramatic:

Kathy grabbed the camera and snapped this photo of David as we mushed down the trail toward solid ground:

We reached the trail junction between the Water Canyon Mine Trail, which we were on, and the main Water Canyon Trail, which leads up to a yurt that you can camp in.  As we had driven in, we think we spotted a backpacker who, with his trusty puppy, had camped at the yurt this weekend.

For now, approaching the trail junction, we decided to turn up the trail toward the yurt:

Shortly up the second trail, we crossed White Creek again (for the fourth time or so), and looked back across toward the volcanic formations that lined the canyon we had climbed:

Now to climb up a gentler canyon, with less snow:

We spotted a shallow cave trailside, formed by the underside of some huge volcanic formation.  It was clear that this has been a favored campsite for hundreds of years:

Don't forget to look back down the canyon as we climb!

The rocks along this branch of the trail were spectacular, including this boulder, filled with quartz and spotted with all types of colorful lichen:

As we reached the bottom on our return, back at the trailhead, we spotted this spectacular, colorful boulder that must have been formed by tremendous heat and pressure.  It typified other types of rocks that we encountered all along the second branch of the trail:

That's about it.  But we can't conclude this trail blog without commending the BLM, or the community, or some whimsical trash company, for their colorful painting of the trash dumpsters all along the road up Water Canyon.  These are, hands down, the most fun dumpsters we've ever encountered.

So, you just never know what you'll encounter on an adventure hike.  Perhaps the BLM will tell us who to thank for the carefree dumpsters when we go over to the BLM office tomorrow.

POSTSCRIPT:  We were the beneficiaries of an accidental FB group facetime call initiated by Judy, while she and Mike are on their route up US 93 toward Ely -- not so very far from us by Western standards.   We had a great ad hoc video conversation with some of our new friends from Quartzsite.  Mike and Judy, stay safe on the road.

Along the California Trail

Hi Blog!

On Monday, April 1, 2019, we left Baker, Nevada behind and drove west on Highway 50, the loneliest road in America. It was just us and cows for miles and mile and miles. The scenery was spectacular! We climbed up and over mountain range after mountain range. In between, we crossed long valleys. While there were grades of 6, 7 and 8 percent, Buster handled the ups and downs without complaint. When we reached the town of Austin, we turned north to Battle Mountain.

There's not much to report from our first full day in Battle Mountain. Steady rain kept us in all day except for some chores - grocery shopping, laundry and Jeep washing. Now, you may wonder why we washed the Jeep on a rainy day, but it really needed it after off-roading in Baker. It was scheduled for service on Wednesday, and we wanted to make Dusty less dusty.

On Tuesday, April 3rd, our day started bright and early. We had an hour's drive to get from Battle Mountain to the Jeep dealer in Elko. Once we got the Jeep settled in for service, the dealer shuttle dropped us off at Toki Ona, a Basque Restaurant in downtown Elko. Dave had Lomo and Eggs. Lomo is spanish for tenderloin. In this case, it was a pork tenderloin marinated in white wine, garlic and paprika, then grilled to perfection and smothered in roasted peppers.

After breakfast, we walked across the street to the Northeastern Nevada Museum.

Elko was established in 1868 with the arrival of the Central Pacific Railroad, the town was named after the herds of elk once common to the region. Once the transcontinental railroad was completed, a number of stage coach lines popped up to feed passengers, including the Elko-to-Tuscarora-Cope Stage. Hard to believe this small, lightweight coach could carry 13 people, plus the mail!

Pictured below, Dave bellies up to the Halleck Bar. Once a year, the museum hosts a cocktail party where members and friends, with a glass of Beefeater gin in hand, drink a toast to the acquisition of the antique bar and back bar from a saloon in the once wild and woolly nearby town of Halleck. Reflected in the back bar is an exhibit of works by Billy Schenck, one of the originators of the Western pop art movement.  (Pay no attention to that woman in the mirror.)

Nevada’s largest collection of wild animals from around the world is on permanent exhibit in the Wanamaker Wing.  There are more than 180 specimens displayed in habitat dioramas, as well as animal mounts and historic hunting gear. The majority of these animals were donated by the late Jack Wanamaker of Burbank, California. He made his fortune renting equipment to the movie industry and then spent it on big game safaris.

The second floor of the museum is a western art gallery. It contains the second largest Will James collection in the world. Will James (1892–1942) was a legendary western artist, author, and cowboy of the American West.  The exhibit includes drawings, watercolors, sketches, and first edition signed books. The museum also owns a rare collection - Ansel Adams: Portfolio One.  Ansel Adams (1902–1984) is widely known as the most famous American landscape photographer of all time.  Edward Weston was really no slouch himself.

There are a number of exhibits that chronicle northeastern Nevada history including exploration, railroads, mining, and ranching. There are displays of early life in Elko County featuring American Indian, Basque, Chinese, and Cowboy cultures. We noticed this winecup brand from the Winecup Ranch, once owned by Governor John Sparks. Back in 2017, we visited western Nevada and had a chance to visit the Sparks Heritage Museum.  (Oh, yes, and we have raised more than one winecup with his grandson.  You know who you are...)

On permanent exhibit is a rare collection of 2 million-year-old mastodon bones that were recovered from a construction site in nearby Spring Creek, Nevada. While the bones were interesting, we loved the mastodon and mammoth drawings the local schoolkids did.

Just as we were finishing up at the museum, we received a call that our Jeep was ready. Rather than call for the shuttle, we decided to walk back to the dealership. On the way, we passed the Elko Chamber of Commerce, located in the historic Sherman Station. In 1997, this historic limber pine ranch house and its five outbuildings were relocated to Elko from Huntington Valley (60 miles south of Elko). 

After retrieving our Jeep, we drove over to the California Trail Interpretive Center, sitting near the California Trail along the Humboldt River west of Elko. Between 1841 and 1869, up to 250,000 people sold their belongings, packed wagons, and set out for California. The California Trail Interpretive Center offers dioramas and interactive exhibits that immerse the visitor in the trail experience of those who endured the 2,000 mile trek - the most notable of which were the Bidwell-Bartelson Party and the Reed-Donner Party, each of whom followed the California Trail through northern Nevada. The route follows the Humboldt River through the Great Basin.

Being full-time RVers, we share an affinity with these travelers. After all, they traveled in America's first mobile homes.

Did you know that the pioneer wagons had odometers? They also had trail guides. So, it was important to know who far the group travels to make sure they made the correct turns to follow the trail.

The Oregon Trail and the California Trail started out along the same route. Once travelers passed Fort Bridger and got to Soda Springs (assuming they didn't the Hastings Cutoff), they had a choice. Turn right and head to Oregon or turn left and head to California.

The most common type of pioneer wagon was the “prairie schooner.” These were emigrant wagons. Prairie Schooners were larger and used for shorter distances, and to haul freight as they could carry heavier loads. Some of the emigrant wagons were modified farm wagons that the pioneers already had, while other pioneers had to purchase new wagons. These lightweight, affordable wagons were, essentially, square boxes, and had five or six curved wooden hoops attached to them and were usually covered in a white canvas to keep contents and the occasional passenger dry.

Wagons were often pulled by several oxen or mules, with a teamster who walked alongside the to direct the animals with verbal commands and an occasional whip.

Probably the most famous or infamous group to follow the California Trail would be the Donner Party. The Donner Party was a group of American pioneers that set out for California in a wagon train in May 1846. Departing from Independence, Missouri, they were delayed by a series of mishaps and mistakes, and spent the winter of 1846–47 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada near what is now called Donner Lake in Truckee, California. The party came to popular attention due to their immense hardships and because some of the pioneers resorted to cannibalism to survive.

With this history, it isn't surprising that the California Trail Interpretive Center adopted a Prairie Schooner as its logo:

We will continue to follow the California Trail, at least until we reach Winnemucca. Hopefully, the groceries we bought yesterday will sustain us!