Old Friends and Driveway Camping

Imagine if you could pick your next door neighbor and that person could be a best girlfriend from 35 years ago.  What a treat driveway camping is - because that's exactly what you get to do.  Melinda and I were great friends while I was going to Law school back in the 70s.  When I graduated she had moved to Tahoe and I thought that was great - so I lived with her for a season.

Now she is living just south of Reno.  She has a wonderful husband, Laird, who we've also spent a lot of time with over the years.  They live on 8 acres and have quite a menagerie of animals ... horses, llama, alpaca, donkey, ducks, dogs, and chickens!  The last time I visited her was in the winter.  It's much prettier now!

Although several days were so smokey that you couldn't even see those mountains across the way.  They weren't in danger from the fires, but the smoke from the huge Yosemite area fires was blowing right up this valley.

As neighbors for 4 days, we were able to spend quality time just sipping coffee and chatting, getting caught up on all the goings on of our lives.

Melinda has a business called EQuus Insight, and it's been on my list to help her put together a Facebook page.  I helped her put together a website (EQuusInsight.com) last time I was here, but her business has grown and I, for one wanted to see more stories about the Equine Assisted Therapy she does - I figured a Facebook page was the way to go.
While we were there, Jim also helped Laird buy a new computer and get it all set up.  We had several group sessions around the computer, and the smartphone ... SO much fun for us.

Also, as it happens, our good friend Alex (from Melrose, Florida) was nearby while we were visiting.  She had just attended Burning Man and was in Reno for a couple days to recoup.  Luckily, I was able to convince her to come visit - since she is the only other person I know who keeps donkeys - I knew Alex and Melinda would hit it off.  It was SO much fun.  She did get to meet the entire herd, but I only got a picture with the 'house horse' - actually a huge, sweet, dog named Strider.  Strider is an Anatolian Shephard - in the Irish wolfhound family but even bigger.

One day we made a special trip to Sierra Hot Springs, a place I used to frequent when I lived there in 1980.  I remember being alone out in the middle of this immense valley at a couple of holes dug in the ground for the hot springs soak.  This time, apparently, it was a popular retreat for others who just finished their sojourn to Burning Man.  We called them the After Burners!

There were a couple of pools, one indoor and one outdoor.  Clothing was clearly optional and I felt like I was back in my hippy days!  What a beautiful afternoon we had.

I'll even have a video to post soon.  We used Melinda as a 'student' and put her on a video with the green screen.  She asked a question about Facebook, so we could answer.  It was great fun.  I'll post a link here when it's done.

THANKS Melinda and Laird for your wonderful hospitality.  WE WILL RETURN!

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Sausalito, Bodega Bay, Napa Valley

The last week of August was full of new friends, old friends and California spas and wineries.  Does it get any better than that?  We had a great place to stay at the Petaluma Elks lodge in the center of all of it, so we kept extending our stay by one more day … till we were there a whole week.

After posting to the blog here that we were in Marin County, we got an email from folks we met earlier this year at the Colorado Springs rally.  We remember being intrigued back then when we learned that they live on a houseboat in Sausalito.  When they said, come on over for dinner, we thought for a split second and pulled the plug on the crock pot that we had cooking, grabbed a bottle of wine and went visiting!  After seeing their houseboat, we told Rusty and Tony that even we thought they were a little nuts to be thinking about leaving to do some extended RVing!  But, they’ve lived there for 30 years, and they won’t be selling it, just renting it out while they travel.  We hope to meet up with them on the road somewhere – maybe Florida this winter.  Here’s some photos of the houseboat:

Tony and Rusty at their houseboat in Sausalito

The view from their back deck

The living room … on the top floor of 3 floors!

The view from the kitchen

 

Kitchen at sunset time

 

Deck on second floor

Thanks for your hospitality Rusty and Tony!  We hope to see you in Florida this winter!

Next came a drive to the beach to visit our friends Melinda and Laird who were escaping the smoke from fires (they live just south of Reno.) They drove their truck camper down and parked at Wrights Beach.  We went from brand new friends of Rusty and Tony to seeing Melinda who has been a friend since around 1978!  They gave us an excuse to visit Bodega Bay – the scene of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds”.

Does this bird look scary?

Here’s Melinda, Laird and Jim at the beach in the fog.

And, the next day, Melinda and I made a decadent rendezvous at her favorite California Spa, Osmosis.  Ooooooohhhhhh Aaaaaaaahhhhh Melinda loves going to spas and I am MORE than happy to go along!

After the spa, we didn’t say goodbye, just ‘see ya later’ because we plan to do a few days of driveway camping at their home in Nevada when we leave CA.

No trip to the San Francisco Bay Area is complete with visiting some wineries in Sonoma and Napa valleys!  So, we spent the last couple days of August doing just that!

We drove the car from Petaluma to Sonoma and found a delightful winery there called Kunde.

And, surprise,surprise, we liked some of the wine enough to buy some!

The road goes north and into the hills before turning east and then back south into Calistoga and thru the Napa Valley wine region.  It’s a beautiful drive.

 

Our favorite little Napa Winery is called Folie a Deux and we’ve always loved their logo.  It’s french for crazy for two. 

They’ve grown a LOT since I was there last and their most popular wine is called Menage a Trois.  They are now part of Napa Cellars and the combined organization was having a major party on Labor Day weekend.  We stopped and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves!

 

The next day, we moved to the Napa Elks lodge and got in an appointment for a mud bath in Calistoga.  Something everyone has to do at least once!

 

Napa Valley = vineyard, winery, vineyard, vineyard, winery, winery, vineyard, spa, vineyard, winery!

Believe it or not, we have lots more pictures.  Here’s the link to our Web Album for the month of August.  What a beautiful life we have!

And check out our August Newsletter from Geeks on Tour for the rest of the story!

California, here we are

Our last rally in Oregon - the Country Coach Friends - was a pretty small affair.  I think we set a record with only two people attending one of our seminars!  But those two people are big fans :-)  Anyway, we were able to get on the road a day early which was a good thing.  We had to be in San Rafael just north of San Francisco in two days' time.

We've been hearing about fires in Oregon on the news.  And, it definitely looked a bit smokey.

We debated taking the coast road, thru the redwoods, but that just seemed like too tough a drive for the short time we had, besides both of us were struggling with a bit of a cold.  So we stuck to I-5.  I'm glad we did, if only to get a picture of our current RV with Mt. Shasta in the background.  We had a similar photo of our old rig that we used as a cover photo for lots of Geeks on Tour presentations.  Now we have a new one!

Camping anywhere near San Francisco is a pretty pricey proposition.  We were glad to find an Elks Lodge in Petaluma that suited us just fine.  Instead of the $65/night we found for a campground, we paid the Elks $25 for full hookups and a nice quiet spot.  We even got in early enough that I could squeeze in a visit with my old friend, Liz, who drove up to meet us.

Our seminar for the Golden Gate Computer Society was on Cloud Computing.  Jim brought our own screen and projector to go along with the one they had so we could project the iPad or Smartphone at the same time that we projected the computer.  I think it worked well to show how the Cloud allows you to use any device to work with your stuff.

The next day we had a hands-on Picasa class for the GGCS group.  Their classroom was packed and they had a waiting list.  I think this day went well also.

When we finished the class, we were ready for dinner.  Looking at our Google Maps we saw a place called Pizza Orgasmica and Brewery.  How can one resist!  When we finished our dinner it was about 5:30-6 and the weather was gorgeous.  We were only a half hour north of the Golden Gate Bridge, so we took a scenic drive.  OOOOOHHHHH so scenic!

I'm getting a little carried away with this HDR photo technique.  I set my camera to AEB (auto exposure bracketing) so it takes 3 exposures in a row.  Then, when I upload the 3 pictures to Google+ photos, it puts them together as one HDR (high dynamic range) picture.  That's what makes the pictures above look extra dramatic.

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Vancouver Washington ... waiting for slide service ... might as well enjoy

While we were at the FMCA NW area rally in Albany, we got a call from the RV service place making an appointment for the following Thursday.  Great, we made reservations at a Thousand Trails park at the coast for Sunday - Tuesday, then the Elks lodge in Vancouver right near the service folks for Wednesday and Thursday.  Our hope was all would be fixed and we would be on our way to visit some spots in Washington state.

The Thursday appointment came and a different service guy than the one who visited us in Seaside arrived only to remove the motor and leave.  No word on Friday.  We extend our stay thru the weekend.  On Monday we get a cheerful call that the part has been ordered and it is due to arrive the following Tuesday!  yikes!  We have a Country Coach rally back in Albany on Wednesday.  Ok, so we could just drive the car down there.  But we have a seminar scheduled for the Golden Gate Computer Society just north of San Francisco on Monday.  They agree to overnight the part and install it on Wednesday.  That just means that Jim has to stay with the RV at the Elks lodge in Vancouver while I drive the car down to Albany and do our first seminar on my own.  No biggy.

My (Chris) favorite quote is "Blessed be the Flexible for they shall not get bent out of shape."  So, we relax.  Make use of the incredibly good 4G Verizon Internet service, and explore Portland and Vancouver a little.

Here's the RV parking at the Elks lodge, look closely toward the back and you'll see why we have such good Internet!

When I say 'explore Portland' I mean that we explored the shopping available!  There is an Apple store there as well as a Microsoft store ... these are candy stores for geeks.  We bought a new little iPad mini.  It now has a big brother at home because Lynne gave us her iMac and we gave her our old iPad.

We did go a little stir crazy one day and asked the Elks staff for a recommendation of where to go for a walk.  They pointed us to McMenimans right on the Columbia River with a 2 mile walking path ... it was great!

Of course a two mile walk works up a powerful thirst!  What a beautiful day and a perfect spot.

It may not be exactly what we had planned, but we had a nice time anyway while staying in the Portland area.

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Oregon Coast and the Spruce Goose

After the NW Area rally in Albany, we took advantage of our Thousand Trails membership to stay at a park called Whaler’s Rest on the Oregon Coast.  We always love the natural surroundings of most Thousand Trails parks and this was no exception.  The sites were beautiful and it was a short walk to the beach, BUT, we had no Internet.  That’s a problem for us since we run an Internet business. 

There was good Wi-Fi at the clubhouse, so anything we had to do we schlepped our computers up there.  We only planned to stay a few days, we could make it.  And, look at this great path to the beach!

Lynne came to visit, and we spent a wonderful day together. She came bearing gifts!  She sewed us a windshield cover for our old Honda that we used from 2004 to 2013.  Then we bought a new Honda … it has a much bigger windshield!  So she sewed us a new one!  And, I thought sewing was just for hemming pants!

 

When we left the coast, we made time for a stop in McMinnville at the Evergreen Museum that houses Howard Hughes’ gigantic airplane, the Spruce Goose.

That plane is definitely impressive, but the museum has a lot more to offer.  An Imax theatre, a World War II airplane collection, and a Space museum.  It’s 3 huge buildings.  Jim has always been a big fan of planes and especially space exploration.  I just love any kind of history.  I especially liked the story about Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler – 2 pilots in WWII.  Click the picture below to read the story.

And, check out these missiles.  Can you even see Jim?

Once we left the museum we got back on the road and traveled north thru Portland and the horrible traffic there.  Our destination was the Elks Lodge, just on the north side of the Columbia river.  We’re scheduled to get our slide serviced on Thursday.  Wish us luck.