Harvest Hosts - Stafford Air and Space Museum

Travel planning is a real art. Where do you want to go? What do you want to see? What resources to use to discover places to see and places to stay.
We've been using RoadTrippers.com a lot this summer because it is so good at revealing cool things to see. After leaving Texas, we looked along our route using RoadTrippers and noticed an Air and Space museum called Stafford. Jim is a huge fan of the space program and we've stopped at several other space museums across the country. One of them, in Indiana, was Grissom Air Museum a HarvestHosts.com location - meaning we stayed there overnight. So, I thought - I wonder if Stafford museum is a Harvest Host location?
Yep!
It was a really nice museum, but my favorite part was the photo opps with our camper and the space stuff.

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Solar eclipse

Like after a touchdown at a football game, the crowd cheered. You could hear the applause and the hoots and hollers from across the vineyard. I added my voice with a full out scream. Woo HOOOOO! We were cheering the fact that, after an hour of watching the sun being slowly devoured, bite by bite, the moon had just silently slipped into place and completely blocked the sun.

We were at a winery in South Carolina, staying overnight night in our Roadtrek camper van. We found the location by researching on Harvest Hosts a couple of months before. The winery scheduled an event for the eclipse and they were limiting attendance to 300 people. We were the only rv there! We stayed two nights, one before and one after the eclipse. What a treat. We drove a record 600 miles on order to arrive the night before. News stories of traffic jams in the vicinity of the eclipse had us worried. We were at the Jersey shore for a close friend's birthday party on saturday night. As soon as we had a slice of cake, we made our hasty good-bye and hit the road. 

Mike Wendland, from Roadtreking.com created a one hour video all about the RVers who traveled to view the eclipse. He called it the Biggest RV Travel Weekend ever. If you follow the link and watch the video, you'll see that he starts by interviewing me about my past Eclipse experiences. 

My mom was an eclipse chaser. I went with her to see two of them. The first was in the Atacama desert of Chile in November of 1994, the second was in Turkey in 1999. Both times, I cried at the point of totality. There is something primal and disturbing about the world going silently dark in the middle of the afternoon, no matter how much you understand what is happening. It has to be experienced. It's so hard to describe the power of that experience. This TED talk does it well.

So this eclipse at the winery in South Carolina had big shoes to fill.

And fill them it did!

On August 21, the day of the eclipse, people started arriving about 11. Then two big tour buses arrived about noon. Everyone was issued a pair of eclipse glasses as well as a wine glass. The band set up and started playing. They were great ... Time pirates ... With a playlist that included Moon Dance, Aint no sunshine when she's gone, Moon Shadow, ...

This was our parking spot for the total eclipse

Here is an aerial shot of the winery taken with Jim's drone - the eclipse party was by the tasting room at the right. YOu have to look closely at the far left to see our RV.

Well - it did feel like a spacecraft-worthy event! Does that mean our RV is actually a Shuttlecraft?

How did we get that cool artwork? 

Oh .. My .. God. It was perfect. The stars came out. The clouds stayed clear. The corona was wispy strands of silk. The diamond ring blazed brightly coming out the other side. And, yes, I cried. 

Sleepy Creek Winery

The next night we had already planned to be a Harvest Hosts location, a winery. Not only did we get a nice place to park with a view of vineyards out our bedroom window and a wine tasting, but it was Saturday night and they had a musical group scheduled as entertainment that night. First, let me show you the location. The RV parking area is through the trees in the grassy field by the vineyard.

 

 

A storm rolled in during the late afternoon, making for some dramatic views over the vineyards. Tornado warnings were on the weather channel, but didn’t quite reach our location.

 

After getting parked and set up, we went to the winery for a tasting. This is Kayla – to see more from her, you gotta check out their website and watch the “Sipcom” called Up the Creek!

And, we took advantage of the beautiful grounds for a little R&R.

We had to get some computer work done, so we went back to the RV to find that there was NO Verizon signal here. They did have Wi-Fi inside the winery, so Jim put up the WiFIRanger external antenna to see if we could get it out in the RV. Yes! It still wasn’t great, but we had nothing without it.

After a salad dinner, we walked back to the winery to get a bottle of wine and some cheese and crackers to go along with the entertainment.  Victor & Penny and the Loose Change Orchestra (the clarinet and stand-up bass.) Be sure to check out their Facebook page and make it a point to go see them if you ever notice them nearby.

 

That’s “Victor & Penny” … actually Erin and Jeff. Their music is unique – they call it “Antique Pop.” Music from the 30s and 40s like “Side by Side” but with their own high-energy, upbeat take on it. We thoroughly enjoyed it. They were also accompanied by the “Loose Change Orchestra” which included a clarinet and stand up bass. Excellent musicians all.

 

As much as we enjoyed their music, we enjoyed meeting them and chatting the following morning even more. Here we are taking a little tour of the winery. Notice that Jeff is using a GoPro to film it. They live a lot like us because they are on the road all the time, but they travel by car and stay in hotels. We made them come out to the RV and contemplate living with a home on wheels.

Check out this little video they took in the car – I assume using the GoPro camera:

I hope our paths cross again someday.

More pictures on our June Web Album.

Harvest Hosts: Grissom Air Museum

So, the plan was to leave Saturday and drive our normal 200 miles to a winery on the Harvest Host list just east of Champaign Illinois.  But, when the service guys came up to us on Friday in the early afternoon and said, you’re all done! We decided to leave then and go to a closer Harvest Host destination … the Grissom Air Museum.  And, we’re so glad we did. We got there in the early evening, parked in the lot, turned on the generator and worked on our computers for a little bit. There was no Verizon signal there, so we took advantage of the AT&T connection on our iPad and turned that into a hotspot for our computers. We’re happy to report that this worked well!  Often, when there’s no Verizon signal, there isn’t any AT&T either, but luckily, that wasn’t the case here.

By sunset time, we were ready to go outside and walk around.  Such cool photo opportunities!

The next morning, we were ready to take a look around after they opened the doors at 9am. Luckily, it was Saturday, so they were fully staffed and offering tours. Lots of exhibits inside where you could climb on the old planes.

Then we took the tour around the grounds. I really liked the way it was laid out with planes everywhere, and a nice winding sidewalk that took you around to all of them. (Click on pictures to enlarge, then click Back)

Then we climbed the tower to get a birds-eye view and used the Panorama feature on our Samsung phones to take it all in. If you look closely, in the upper left, you’ll see our RV parked in the lot.

Later, inside the museum, we met Roland Douglas. He’s a native of Peru, Indiana where the museum is located and he is a veteran of WWII. Here he is standing in front of the display that tells his story. He was a gunner in a B17 that was destroyed over Germany in 1944. He parachuted and was captured as a prisoner of war. He told us all about it.

Lots more pictures in our June Web Photo Album.

Oregon Maritime and Harvest Host Farm

Our two weeks at the Seaside Thousand Trails park was almost over and we hadn’t been up to Astoria and the Maritime museum.  On our last afternoon, we decided to fix that.  We lucked out and had gorgeous weather.

We thoroughly enjoyed the Maritime Museum, even though we only had one hour to see it since it was so late in the day.  Both Jim and I love history – so this is our kind of place.  I had a vague idea that there was a place called the Graveyard of the Pacific, but I thought it referred to the Japanese boats sunk at Truk lagoon.  Turns out it refers to this area of coastline in the Pacific Northwest, including the mouth of the Columbia river.  The area where the massive water flow of the Columbia River meets the unyielding power of the Pacific Ocean is referred to as a Bar.  The waves in the Columbia River Bar can reach 40 feet, and according to the Columbia River Bar Pilots Ass’n, it is one of the most dangerous and challenging navigated stretches of water in the world.  The video they show of big ships being battered by the waves, leaves no doubt why there are over 2,000 wrecks in this area!

Jim has a friend who was in the Coast Guard, so he knew about there being a training school here for rescue.  Jim loves to drive boats, but when I asked if he’d like to drive this one he said, “NO WAY!”

 

Outside of the museum we could see several different types of boats.  Coast Guard, a LightBoat, and even a Paddlewheeler that takes passengers on a 7 night Columbia River Cruise.

 

Just thinking about the people working those rescue missions wore us out and gave us a mighty thirst.  Luckily, the Fort George Brewery was an easy 2 block walk from the museum!

 

Such beautiful views along the Oregon Coast!

 

When we left Thousand Trails, we checked our Harvest Hosts listing hoping to find a farm to visit this time (we’re well stocked for wine at the moment.)  We found one just south of Portland – less than a 2 hour drive away – perfect!  That even gave us time to have one more soak in the hot tub before we left

Here’s what our parking spot looked like.

And, there were plenty of driveways to take a nice walk in the evening - past the Christmas Tree part of the farm.  We also enjoyed getting to know the locals!

There’s no hookups when we’ve stayed at wineries and farms.  We figure it’s good practice to be sure our generator is still working, and we understand our 12 volt system.  Everything worked great.  Since it was just south of Portland, we even had good 4G internet, and even broadcast TV.  We did have a problem with the hotspot feature on our phones however, I sure hope it’s not permanent, but we’re worried that FoxFi may have been banned by Verizon.  Here’s the message we’re getting:

Ruh-Roh

Luckily we have good Wi-Fi in this park, so we’re not worrying about it … yet.  We’re staying at Phoenix RV park tonight in Salem, Oregon.  We also stayed here 9 years ago when we worked for Coach Connect and Jim helped install the Wi-Fi here.  It’s been thru several re-installations since.  Here’s the post from 2004: first post, second post, third post.

Harvest Hosts and Cold Springs Winery

We met the folks from Harvest Hosts a couple years ago, and thought they had a great concept.  They contact wineries, farms and other unique locations that are ready, willing, and able to host RVs parking on their property.  Then they promote these places to RVers and ask that they become members of Harvest Hosts in order to find out about all the great places to stop.  It’s a small yearly fee, currently $40.  The RVers get a cool place to stay for a night at no charge, and the Host gets some exposure to their facility and/or product.  As lovers of wine, we felt this would be a perfect thing for us, but we just now got around to signing up for a membership.  We spoke with Don and Kim, from Harvest Hosts at the Escapade and told them our upcoming route.  We looked at the options and figured that Cold Springs Winery, in Idaho might just work out as a perfect night stop.

When we got close, we started looking around.  I said, “I’ll bet that’s it up on the hill.”  It looked like a little piece of Italy with the tall poplar trees.  The description said there would be about a mile of dirt road, but it was well-marked and wide.  Not a problem at all.

 

As we got closer, we passed by lots of vineyards – covering the hill.  When we got up the hill, the first building was the tasting room.  We found Bill, the owner and he directed us where to park then said to come back to the tasting room to … taste!

 

Here’s our parking spot!

 

And, here’s the view of the valley below.

 

We had a delightful time with Bill chatting, and tasting his wine. 

 

Here’s the thing about wine … we had an even better time as the afternoon went on!  It was quite hot – around 100 – but we didn’t care!  After our tasting, we had to run the generator in the RV so we could have air conditioning.  There are no hookups here.  The heat was even too much for our A/C and we basically just napped the rest of the afternoon.  It did cool down into the 60s come dark, so sleeping was fine.

 

I’d say our first stop with Harvest Host was a roaring success!  We knew we would enjoy staying at a winery, we figured it would be picturesque, we knew we would enjoy a tasting and probably buy a bottle of wine to keep.  But, we didn’t count on liking every wine we tasted so much that we had to buy a whole case!