We left the Oceano, Elks campground a little after 9 a.m. and headed north on U.S. Highway 101. Morning fog was lingering over the coast, and according to the dashboard thermometer in my Winnebago motorhome, the outside temperature was 60 degrees.

As we moved further inland, the fog dissipated and the temperature began to climb. 45 miles north, in Paso Robles, it was 75 degrees, and it continued to climb all day long.

Before long we were in the Salinas Valley, known as the Salad Bowl of the World due to the huge amounts of produce grown here. The climate is perfect for growing everything from strawberries, lettuce, tomatoes, and spinach to broccoli, cauliflower, and celery.

And grapes. Lots and lots of grapes. The entire central coast region of California seems to be one massive grape arbor, and wineries abound.

This is Steinbeck country, made famous by the author of such American classics as Of Mice And Men, The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and Cannery Row. I cut my reading teeth on John Steinbeck’s works, and I believe his road odyssey Travels With Charley is responsible for the wanderlust that I have carried all of my life. While we’re in the area we plan to tour the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, and I’m really looking forward to it.

Near Salinas we saw a heavy curtain of fog and low clouds, the result of rising inland temperatures drawing the marine layer in off Monterey Bay. 

Traffic picked up considerably in Salinas, and continued all the way into Morgan Hill, where we left the highway and drove about five miles on local roads to the Morgan Hill Thousand Trails preserve. When we arrived at the ranger check-in station, it was 97 degrees. We had traveled 180 miles, but it was like we were in a different world altogether. A very hot, different world.

We have never been to this Thousand Trails campground before, but it is typical of most of the Thousand Trails we have been in – gravel roads and RV sites, 30 amp water and electric, a dump station, and quite a few electrical pedestals covered up because they don’t work. At too many of the preserves we have been in, upkeep and maintenance seems to be a low priority.

We noted a sign at the campground’s entrance saying that Thousand Trails is now open to the general public, making me question why we continue to pay our annual dues. And to wonder even more, why do people continue to shell out big bucks for new memberships. We got our used nationwide Thousand Trails/NACO membership for $100, so if we ever decide to walk away from it, we won’t lose anything. It’s a subject we have to do some thinking about in the not too distant future.

This campground has a lot of trees, but a large open area as well, so we had our choice of either a shaded site or one in the open. With the holiday weekend coming, a lot of families with kids will be here, and they tend to gravitate toward the shaded areas. I’ll trade a little bit of shade for a quiet spot and a good view of the sky for TV reception any day. That’s why Winnebago includes awnings and air conditioners with their motorhomes.

The campground was pretty full, but we had no problem finding a level, pull-thru site with a good view of the sky for our roof mounted automatic Winegard TV dish. As soon as we were plugged in, we fired up our basement air conditioner to cool the interior of the motorhome down.

But first, we made a stop at the dump station. You know that old saying “sh!% happens?” Well, It happens to even the most experienced RVers. I don’t know what went wrong, but when I opened the plastic cap on our sewer connection to put the hose on, a big gush of nasty flew out. I jumped back in time to get out of the way, and quickly slapped the cap back on and secured it.

Could I have left the valve open? I doubted it, since I had dumped a week ago when we left Williams, Arizona, and I had seen no indication of a problem since then. A quick check showed the valves to both the black and gray tank were closed securely, so all I can guess is that we may have a seal leaking. I carefully removed the cap again, ready to get the sewer hose in place in a hurry, but whatever was in the short section of pipe had already spilled out. I finished dumping, cleaned up the mess, and made a note to watch the valve and see if this was a one time oddball occurrence, or a problem that must be dealt with soon.

We’ll be here a few days, maybe as much as two weeks. Definitely until after the Independence Day holiday, because we learned early in our fulltiming life that we want to be off the road and in a campsite well before any summer holiday. There are a few things we want to see and do in this area, before we head on down the road to our next adventure.

Thought For The Day – A father is a banker provided by nature.

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I spent most of yesterday working on the new issue of the Gypsy Journal, making and receiving telephone calls about our upcoming Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally, and making plans for future rallies.

I had hoped to be almost done with the new issue by now, but I got lazy and didn’t keep on top of things, so now I have to push a little harder to make our deadline. It’s no big deal, we’re not behind schedule, I just have to knuckle down for a few days.

One call I got was from the manager of the Mercer County Fairgrounds in Celina, Ohio, to discuss the dates for our 2011 Eastern rally. That’s a long time from now, but it takes a lot of planning to get things arranged, and venues large enough to handle our size group book well in advance. We didn’t lock anything in yet, but right now we’re looking at either the third or last week of September.

We don’t want to go back to the same place over and over, but it’s not easy to find a venue that has the facilities that we need and that will work within our budget. We had a commitment with the good folks in Celina for three rallies, and we are looking forward to going back to the friendly little town. It’s a very nice fairgrounds, and they really bend over backwards to accommodate our needs. We have never found anybody we can work with as easily.

I also talked for a bit with Daryl Lawrence from Lawrence RV Accessories, and I already have his commitment to be a vendor at the 2011 Eastern rally. We are pleased that so many of our vendors return again and again. That tells us that we must be doing something right.

Daryl and I lamented the fact that it is very hard for vendors to make long range plans, because some RV clubs and organizations don’t seem to be willing to communicate with each other about rally plans, even after they have the dates and locations locked in. I’ve never been able to figure out that thinking. If everybody knows what everybody else is planning, we can work together, rather than planning events with conflicting schedules that only reduce the numbers of attendees and vendors, who can’t be in two places at once. It’s hard enough for vendors to make a profit in this economy as it is, but having to play silly waiting games to find out where and when some of the rallies are going to be held makes it almost impossible.

I also got a telephone call from my daughter Tiffany, to tell me that she and hubby Jim had stopped to check out some Indian petroglyphs on the banks of a dry wash about halfway between Snowflake and Holbrook, some 35 miles north of Show Low. They came around a bend in the wash and spotted a mountain lion feeding on something up ahead. The cougar quickly ran off, but Tiffany said its paw prints were as big as the palm of Jim’s hand up to the second knuckle. And that young man has big hands! They took their clue from the cat and took their leave too, in the opposite direction. Yes folks, some places remain where the West is still wild!

About 4:30 I escaped from my desk long enough for us to drive to Pinetop with Greg and Jan for dinner at the Chuck Wagon Steakhouse, which was a favorite of mine when we lived here. The restaurant is very rustic looking, with an Old West theme that includes an impressive bar, saddles, mounted big game heads, and a chandelier made from elk antlers.  

Greg and I had rib eye steaks, while Miss Terry and Jan choose the petite sirloins. I was pleased to learn that the food and service were both just as good as I remembered.  Greg, Jan, and Terry were all very happy with their meals also. When the waitress came by to inquire if we wanted dessert, we were all too full to say yes.

Back at the Elks campground, I worked some more on the new issue of the paper and then just before dark we decided that dessert wasn’t such a bad idea after all. So we all piled back in Greg and Jan’s truck and went to Dairy Queen!

Thought For The Day – When you harbor bitterness, happiness will dock elsewhere.

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Yesterday Miss Terry finished installing the last of the new Levolor window blinds in our motorhome, and this last one came out just as beautifully as the others did! I am so lucky to be married to such a talented woman.

A few readers have written to ask if the blinds rattle going down the road. Since we haven’t been anywhere since Terry installed them, I can’t tell you for sure. But since they have attachments that are screwed to the wall that the bottom of the blinds slide into, they can’t move, so I don’t anticipate any noise from them.

It has gotten very warm here in Show Low, with temperatures in the low 90s predicted for the next few days. It’s even hotter down in the desert, where Phoenix is supposed to hit 110 on Sunday. Now that’s hot! People who live in the desert always say, “Yes, but it’s a dry heat.” Hey, it’s dry inside of an oven too, but I don’t want to live there either! I am a wimp when it comes to weather. I don’t like it too hot or too cold. Somewhere about 72 to 75 degrees is perfect for me.

We can tell its getting hot down in the desert, because the Elks campground is starting to fill up. There are a few RV sites left, and I hope there  is at least one still available when our friends Greg and Jan White come through early next week. Greg called to tell me they want to stop and see us as they head south to Texas for their daughter’s wedding later in the month, and we’re really looking forward to seeing them again.

I have been studying my mapping programs, trying to decide which route we will take from the Thousand Trails preserve in Morgan Hill, California to Vail, Colorado in mid-July for Terry’s son’s wedding. Morgan Hill is just south of San Jose, and I don’t see any good direct route to Colorado. It looks like we will either have to go north to Interstate 80 and take it east to Utah, then drop down to Interstate 70, or else south to Interstate 15, by way of Bakersfield and Barstow, and then Interstate 15 northeast through Nevada and Utah to pick up Interstate 70. This won’t be a sightseeing trip, we just need to get from Point A to Point B, so if anybody is familiar with that part of the country, I’m open to suggestions.

I got a lot of positive responses to Thursday’s blog on Canyon de Chelly, and I wanted to share one more photo from our trip to the canyon. I showed you a close up view of Spider Rock in that blog, but here is a wide shot of that part of the canyon, with Spider Rock near the center. This place took my breath away.

Terry’s folks, Pete and Bess Weber, are going to be up here spending the weekend in their motorhome at the Hon-Dah RV Park, so between visiting with them and working on the new issue of the Gypsy Journal, I’ll be pretty busy. We only have a little over a week left here in Show Low before we hit the road, and a lot to get done before we leave.

Thought For The Day -  Stop living in the past, it was not perfect either.

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We spent the day yesterday with our friends Jim and Shar Lewis, who had invited us to their beautiful home in Pinetop for dinner and a visit. It was a great day, with the comfort that old friends of many years just naturally share.

There are two or three men in this world that I consider to be my true brothers, and Jim is one of them. We’ve shared a lot of good times and bad over the decades, and I know there is nothing he wouldn’t do for me, or I for him.

Today Jim owns a small used book store here in the mountains, but when I met him a lifetime ago he was a guard at the Arizona State Prison. His resume also includes being a decorated Vietnam med-evac helicopter pilot, aerial surveyor, pilot for logging operations in the Pacific Northwest, fighting forest fires by helicopter, and massage therapist, of all things. Besides that, he’s a fine guitarist and cowboy singer! So he always has a lot of great tales to tell.

Jim and Shar have been talking about hitting the road, either as fulltime or extended travel RVers, so they had a lot of questions about our travels and RVing in general. We love sharing all of the great things about fulltime RVing, and they seemed to love hearing about it. Do we have some new converts to the RV lifestyle? I guess only time will tell.

We had planned on a two or three hour visit, but the time went by so fast that eight hours had passed before we finally said our goodbyes and headed home. When we arrived back at the Elks campground in Show Low, we noticed a couple more RVs had arrived in our absence.

Today we are going to spend some time with daughter Tiffany and her family, and maybe throw some steaks on the grill. I also hope to get some more work done on the schedule for our upcoming Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally.

I hope that whatever you are doing today, you take a few moments to remember the reason for this holiday, and the men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice so that you and I can live in peace and enjoy the freedoms we have.  Our country has a lot of problems, but it’s still the greatest place on earth to live, and we can thank our veterans and those who died for all of us for that.

Thought For The Day – A veteran, whether active duty, retired, National Guard, or Reserve, is someone who, at one point in his or her life wrote a blank check made payable to The United States of America for an amount of ‘up to and including my life.’

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We can tell it’s a holiday weekend, because the traffic is terrible in this little mountain community as people escape the heat of the desert and come up here to cool off. Up until now, besides the campground host, we have usually been sharing the Elks campground with only  one or two other RVs.

But beginning yesterday, we have seen one RV after another pulling into the campground. We have a Class C Grayhawk parked two sites over from us, a beautiful new Newmar diesel pusher is behind us, another motorhome and a big fifth wheel are a few sites down on the other side, and there are a few others scattered around.

Compared to commercial RV parks, we still have lots of room and privacy, but it has been interesting to see so many new arrivals. I don’t know how many are here for extended stays, and how many are just here for the holiday weekend, but since they all seem to be retired, I don’t think they have to be anywhere in a hurry.

I seem to find a way to get into mischief everywhere I go. Case in point, Friday I went up to the Elks lodge to extend our stay. As with every other lodge we have been to, registration is done at the bar, and there was an older lady there registering for a campsite at the same time. I have never met a stranger, so while they were completing our paperwork, I said hello and asked where she was coming in from. She said Tucson, and I mentioned that it must be getting pretty hot down there by now. She must have thought I was trying to pick her up, despite the 15 or 20 year age difference between us, because she said “Look, I’m married, okay?”

Ouch! And here I thought I had my very own cougar! When I got back to our Winnebago and told Terry and my daughter about the incident, they both had a good laugh at my expense.

Hoping to avoid all of the holiday traffic, yesterday we hung around the motorhome all day. I dumped our black tank, and spent most of the day doing genealogical research online. I was surprised to learn about a daredevil in my family tree. On the Genealogy Bank website, I discovered an 1889 newspaper article reporting that my grandfather, Joseph Russell, then a 16 year old boy, had jumped 110 feet into the Ohio River from a railroad bridge in Cincinnati, on a bet. The story said he was uninjured, and I had to laugh as I remembered my mom saying things like “If so and so jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?” If I had known this back then, I could have shot back “Why not, Grandpa did!” On second thought, maybe not. My mom was little, but she was feisty. She may have thrown me off a bridge for smarting off to her!

While I was goofing off, Miss Terry was hard at work, hanging this Levolor blind in the window over her workstation. The three windows in the front of the motorhome are much larger than the ones she already did in the bedroom and bathroom, and the first one was a learning experience. Hanging the blinds is not as easy as the folks at Lowes would have you believe.

But Terry loves a challenge, and she’s so darned stubborn that she never gives up. So even though she had to do some physical contortions to get to everything, and she had to back up and attack the problem from a different angle a time or two, the result came out great, don’t you think?

We are really pleased with the new look they give our Winnebago. Terry has two more windows to go, and she said the lessons she learned on this one will make those a little easier. 

I may not have accomplished much yesterday, but Bad Nick was working just as hard as Terry, pounding out a new Bad Nick Blog titled It Wasn’t About Slavery. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Rehab is for quitters!

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