Sunday, July 4th - Happy Independence Day! In July 2005, right after we bought our coach and started our life of travel, we happened to be in Phoenix, Oregon, a little town just South of Medford, Oregon. Nearby is the small city of Ashland, Oregon, the home of Southern Oregon University. That July was our first visit to Ashland and we immediately fell in love with the town. It has a very small town feel and is very friendly. It also has a great Elks Lodge, right on Main Street in the middle of downtown. We were in Ashland on the 4th of July 2005 and had a great time watching their old time hometown parade and walking around the city fair afterwards. During that trip the Elks was a great host, allowing us to park in their private parking lot.
Remembering what a great time we had in 2005, we decided to head over to Ashland again this year for their celebration. We left the coach about 9:15 a.m. and arrived in Ashland about 10:00. The parade was scheduled to start at 10:15 a.m. We
went into the Elks Lodge to see if there was any space available on their balcony from which we could watch the parade. The lodge is a three story building right on Main Street and the club room (bar) is on the second floor with a large balcony that overlooks the
street. The bartender, Maria, told us that there was a large private party that already had the balcony occupied. We just said, OK, we’ll just go down on the street and watch. She then said, “wait a minute, come with me.” She took us up to the third floor, which was where the Lodge meeting room was located, took us into a large bathroom and told us that we could stand on the balcony outside the window in there. There was a small cast iron balcony and a large window that we could go out of. It was GREAT! We were three floors up, could see and hear everything and had private seats.The parade was a very nice hometown type parade with bands, local civic groups, marching teams and a bunch of old cars. The parade went over 90 minutes and we saw it all from our private box seats. After the parade we went into the bar and had a
couple drinks with Maria and talked to some of the other Elks members in the bar. Once again the Ashland Elks Lodge proved to be great hosts to visiting Elks. After our cocktails we went down to the street fair and spent about three hours walking around, getting lunch, and looking at booths and stuff. There were thousands of people on the streets, the temperature was a perfect 80 degrees and it was a great day. We finally headed back to the coach about 4:00 and spent the rest of the evening relaxing. We could have driven into Medford for fireworks, but they didn’t start until late and we were 25 miles away, so we decided it wasn’t worth it.Monday, July 5th we decided to just stay around the coach for the day and enjoy the park. The park is very crowded on this holiday weekend, but I suspect it will start to clear out on Tuesday when most people have to go back to work. Tuesday we went out after lunch and drove West to the Grants Pass area. Our first objective was to check out a county park that our friends the Babcock’s had told us about, Indian Mary Country Park. They told us it was a very nice park which had some full hookup sites. The park was located about 16 miles Northwest of Grants Pass, on the Merlin-Galice Road, not too far from the town of Merlin and a canyon on the Rogue River called Hellgate Canyon. Back in 2005 we had taken a jet boat tour down the Rogue from Grants Pass that went through Hellgate Canyon. The park was OK, in a wooded area. There were both hookup (water, sewer and electric) sites and primitive sites available. The park charges $22 per night as opposed to $24 at the State park we are in, however, the sites are much smaller and much closer together. To our thinking this would be a good backup park, but I don’t think I would go there as a first destination when there are much nicer State parks in the area.
After checking out the park we did some caching in the North part of Grants Pass and managed to add ten finds to our total. We also stopped for a little while at a Fred Meyers store, which is a large chain of combination department/grocery stores located in the Pacific Northwest. They are similar to Walmart Supercenters, but carry a better line of merchandise. After caching we headed home for the rest of the day, BBQ’d some burgers for dinner and relaxed.
Wednesday, July 7th we left after lunch and drove East into Medford, about 20 miles from our park. We were headed to the UPS Customer Service Center to pick up our mail delivery. Most of our readers know that our “home” address is a private mailbox in the UPS Store in Pahrump, Nevada. Every two or three weeks we have them bundle up our mail and UPS it to wherever we happen to be. After we got our package we headed back to the area of Gold Hill, a small town just off of I-5, between Medford and the Valley of the Rogue State Park, to do some caching. Because we got a late start and we were doing rural caches which are further apart and a little more difficult to find, we only got six finds. However, two of those finds had been logged as DNF’s when we were in this area last Spring! We love making up previous DNF’s. Unfortunately, we did have one new DNF on the day. Oh well. After caching we headed home for the rest of the evening.
Thursday we decided to have a stay at home day. I took care of some bill paying and other administrative stuff, but spent a big part of the afternoon and evening completing the scanning of another of my parent’s photo albums. When my mom died two years ago I took on the task of scanning all of the photo albums they had collected over the years. So far I have completed four and I have one more in my possession to complete. I think Dennis, my brother in Cottonwood, Arizona, still has a couple more for me to do.
The one I did on Thursday was 1957 to 1964, which were pivotal years in my youth. My parents divorced in 1957 and my biological father left, never to be seen or heard from again. That same year Russ Disch, soon to be my stepdad, came into our lives. In 1960 mom and Russ married and we left Milwaukee, Wisconsin, my birthplace, and moved to Arizona. The album also took in the first three years of high school for me. Needless to say, looking at the pictures as I scanned them brought back a whole lot of memories.
Friday, July 9th we drove into nearby Grants Pass to meet with Russ and Nellie Riechert, a couple that we met while geocaching in Quartzsite, Arizona back in January. They are also geocachers and we ran into them at a cache out in the desert. We chatted a little bit, exchanged cards, but never got together while we were in Arizona. While we were caching here in Oregon on Wednesday, we were signing the log on a cache and Jackie noticed that the caching name of the previous signers was these folks we met in Quartzsite. Since they had signed the log only a couple of days prior, Jackie sent them an email to see if they were still in the area. Turns out they actually live in Grants Pass, only about seven miles from where we were camped! We drove to their home, a very nice place in Southeastern Grants Pass, and after a quick catchup, got in our car and drove into Grants Pass for lunch at a very nice restaurant called Tap Rock. The restaurant is only a year old and is right on the banks of the Rogue River in central Grants Pass. The restaurant is huge, and extremely well appointed. The owner is a supporter of the local artist community and the restaurant has art and sculpture all over the place. They also have a very nice park outside the place with a lot of sculpture. Russ told us that they are planning on deeding the park over to the city for public use. In addition to the nice surroundings, the food was also very good. If you get to Grants Pass, be sure to visit Tap Rock Bar and Grill. Also, try a bottle of “Dead Guy Ale” beer, if for nothing else the label which is really cute. The beer is not too bad either and is a local Oregon brew.
After lunch Russ and Nellie took us on a little combination sightseeing and caching tour of Grants Pass. One of the places they took us was to a city-sponsored sculpture event where a group bought a whole bunch of used motorcycles and then turned them over to local artists to do sculpture. The theme was animals and the results were great. A couple dozen really wild looking sculptures. When we did our caching we found six caches, but finally quit because it was getting really hot, upper 90's, so we went back to their home. We chatted with them for another hour or so before heading back to the campground. They are currently
hosting a U.S. Forest Service campground North of Grants Pass, on the way to Crater Lake National Park, only about 60 miles from where we are staying. Russ had some minor knee surgery this week, which is why they were in town when we contacted them, but they are headed back up on Saturday. We will probably take a drive up to visit them there later in the week. It should be a pretty drive and a nice day trip for us.Saturday, July 10th we had lunch and then drove into the Medford area to the Jackson County Fairgrounds for the 1st Annual Rogue Renaissance and Fantasy Faire. We had seen a poster advertising the fair when we were in Ashland for the 4th of July. We drove by the fairgrounds and saw a lot of cars in the lot, so we went in to see what the fair was all about. Unlike the “true” Renaissance fairs, which go on for weeks at a time, this was just a weekend event, however, there were a lot of people walking around in character. There wasn’t a consistent theme like there is a real renaissance fair. There were the usual knights and damsels, but also a lot of pirates and even some fantasy characters like wizards Everyone seemed to be having a pretty good time though. There were a lot of booths, mostly selling costume stuff
or jewelry, and we spent an hour walking around looking at stuff. At 2:00 we went into the arena building where they had a medieval show with a group called the Seattle Knights. I guess they are a role playing group. They had both men and women dressed as knights, with four teams differentiated by color. The MC of the event had different sections of the spectators rooting for different teams. Each team had three members, two on foot and one on horseback. The ground teams “fought” battles which were clearly choreographed, but pretty fun to watch nonetheless. The horse mounted knights actually jousted each other, and also had mock horse mounted sword fights. They put on a pretty good show for an hour or so. All in all it was pretty decent entertainment for an afternoon. After the fair we were going to do some caching, but it was still close to 100 degrees and we decided it was just too hot. We did stop for a quick visit to the Medford Elks Lodge. We have been here several times in the past, but always like to visit again when we are in the area. The lodge is in an old three story building right downtown and the barroom has a very antique feel to it. We had a couple of drinks and both dropped ten bucks in the slot machines. Nice thing about Oregon is that they allow their nonprofits, like Elks, American Legions, Etc., have state run slot machines in their bars. They are only allowed four at each location, but they are regular multi-game machines with pretty good payouts. A few years back I won $175 in the Medford Lodge. After the lodge visit we headed back to the RV park for the rest of the night. Sunday we didn’t do too much other than make a run into Medford for some groceries. Again, it was too hot here in the interior of Oregon to comfortably cache. We are really looking forward to Thursday, when we head for the coast for a week or so and get into some cooler weather. One note of interest I would like to comment on is my completion of the reading of “1931, The Great Pacific War” by Hector C. Bywater. Regular readers will recall that while in Gilroy, California, last month I found this book in an antique store and purchased it for $12, later finding out that it was a first edition possibly worth a couple hundred dollars. Anyway, the reason I bought it was that it was a work of fiction written in 1925 describing a war between Japan and the United States which starts in 1931. I thought it would be interesting reading to see if he was anywhere close to being accurate in terms of what really happened in WW-II. As it turns out, he was way off in most ways, although the early capture of the Philippines and Guam by Japan were described in a way that was very close to what really happened in those campaigns. There was no prediction of the Pearl Harbor attack. In fact, Bywater did not envision the importance of aircraft and air power as pivotal factors to any extent at all. Military aviation was still in its infancy in 1925 and few believed at that time that aircraft would ever pose a serious threat to naval combat vessels. All of the important battles in the book involved epic showdowns between surface battle fleets. He also portrayed the Japanese military as very chivalrous and gallant, treating captured combatants humanely and with dignity. History, of course, tells just the opposite story, with mistreatment and cruelty the norm on the part of the Japanese forces. He also has both sides of the conflict using poison gas frequently. Gas warfare was still considered acceptable in 1925 but outlawed by the Geneva Protocol in 1929 and was not used much at all in WW-II.
Notwithstanding the inaccuracy of his predictions, I found the book to be exceptionally entertaining. Although a work of fiction, it is written as a historical text, even to the extent of having footnotes citing mythical sources. He also uses actual ships, existing at the time, in his description. It takes a couple of chapters to become accustomed to the formal language and grammar of the book, but if you have any interest at all in military history I would highly recommend you read this book. Although no longer in print, you can easily find paperback copies from the 60's on Ebay or at used book stores at very modest prices. Watch the antique stores too, you might end up with a real first edition like I did!
Monday, July 12th, was a stay at home and relax day. Tuesday we went into the nearby town of Rogue River to do our laundry. After laundry we did some caching in town and added seven caches to our finds list. One of those finds was another of the dreaded DNF’s from when we were here last year. Yea!
Wednesday we headed back into Medford after lunch to do a Costco run. We will not be close to a Costco for a couple of weeks so there were some things we needed to stock up on. We also hit a couple of other stores and basically spent the whole afternoon shopping. One place we went was Goodwill because Jackie wanted to pick up a cheap man’s white dress shirt. Our Monaco International Rally in Salem in a few weeks has a “50's” theme and one of the nights is a “dress up” night. Jackie wants to go as the “bad girl” with the jean clamdiggers and the man’s white dress shirt. We found one for the princely sum of $3.00 and it is my size, so when she’s done I could wear it - if I ever have an occasion for a white dress shirt.
Thursday, July 15th, our time on the Rogue River is complete. Time to blow this popsicle stand and move on. We packed up and got on the road about 10:15 a.m. and started North on I-5. We are headed for another Oregon State Park, on the coast near the town of Reedsport. We had 158 miles to drive, of which about half was on the I-5 and the rest on a State highway that headed West over the coastal range. There are about 10 major East-West highways in Oregon that connect the various valleys and most of them are pretty decent roads. However, they are usually pretty narrow, curvy, and hilly, so they require a lot more concentration than driving on the freeway does. We finally arrived at the Umpqua Lighthouse State Park at about 2:45 p.m. We have never been to this particular State park and didn’t know what to expect. We found our spot and noted that this campground was a lot more rugged and primitive than Rogue River, but we still had a full hookup site, meaning water, sewer and electric. Unfortunately, the park is deep in the coastal forest with very
tall, very thick trees. We found that not only didn’t the satellite dish on the roof work, I couldn’t get a signal on our portable outside dish either. We will have to go for eight days without any television shows! Eek! We haven’t been without any TV since Alaska last year. I’m sure it won’t kill us, we’ll still be able to read and play games, but it will be different. One wonderful thing about this park, it is 25 degrees cooler here than it was over towards Grants Pass. We are only a quarter mile from the coast and it is only in the high 60's. We will be here eight days and I am sure that we will have a great time, even without television. Friday, July 16th we awoke after a great night’s sleep in the cool temperatures. After lunch we went out to do a bit of exploring and caching in the area. We spent a big part of the afternoon in the Umpqua Lighthouse State Park and the adjacent Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. This is the Southern end of the Oregon sand
dunes, which stretch about 40 miles North, all the way past the town of Florence, Oregon. This is a mecca for dune buggy and ATV enthusiasts (duners), just like the desert areas in Southeastern California. Hundreds of folks with ATV’s and dune buggies camped all over the area. The dunes start right at the coast and go about a mile inland. Some of the dunes are five or six hundred feet tall. We managed to find ten caches in the park areas and in the nearby towns of Winchester Bay and Reedsport, before we called it quits for the day. We then went back to the coach and relaxed for the rest of the night. We did still have a couple of shows recorded on our DVR so we were able to watch a little recorded television.Saturday we headed into the nearby village of Winchester Bay after lunch to visit the street fair set up for their annual Ocean Fest celebration. Winchester Bay is a very small town at the mouth of the Umpqua River and exist primarily to serve as the support for Salmon Harbor, the largest recreational fishing port in Oregon. The street fair was set up on one of the streets that ran along side of the marina. The fair was the usual assortment of trinkets, collectibles, crafts and food that you find at most any street fair, but it was fun to walk along and check out all the booths. It was quite chilly, the high 50's, and the wind was blowing, so you needed to stay bundled up to be warm. After an hour or so of looking around we had gone through all the booths at the fair and we decided that this was a good day to head North up the coast highway, U.S. 101, to the much larger town of Florence, Oregon. We had been to Florence several times during our past visits to Oregon, but it has been about three years since our last stop. There is no Elks Lodge in Reedsport where we are staying, but there is a very nice lodge in Florence. A few years back we stayed for a few days in the Florence Elk’s RV park. We went into the Lodge, had a couple of drinks and a nice chat with the bartender and one of the members there, and dropped another ten bucks each in the slot machines. After the lodge we went a bunch of antique stores in downtown Florence. We bought a couple of inexpensive things, including some poker chips for our caching adventures. Many caching teams make up little trinkets with their caching name on them that they can leave in caches. One of the more popular things is poker chips with printed labels. That is what we are going to do. We have been looking for cheap poker chips for a while and we found some for five dollars in one of the stores. After antiquing we did one geocache in Florence, just so we could say we did one there, and then headed South for the twenty mile drive back to Reedsport.
Sunday, July 18th, we decided to just stay at home and relax. We played games on our computers, listened to the radio (which does work here, a nice oldies station) and watched a movie after dinner. We have a whole stock of DVD’s, many of which we haven’t taken the time to watch. When the satellite is working we watch broadcast TV shows and movies and not our DVD’s. Tonight we watched “Leatherheads” with George Clooney. Very cute romantic comedy set in the 20's and centered around the start of professional football. Enjoyed the film.
Monday we went out after lunch to do some local Reedsport caching. In a few hours we had managed to add another dozen finds to our list. Some of the caches took us a little ways out of town on some very pretty back roads. This is one of the great things about geocaching, seeing places and sights one probably wouldn’t see when visiting an area. After caching we headed home for another movie night. Tonight’s feature was “TransAmerica”, an interesting movie about a transgender guy who, just before undergoing surgery to complete the male to female change, discovers he (she) has a teenage son. The guy had one sexual experience with a female while in college and it created a son, whom he had never met. It was a very nice, touching film.
Tuesday, July 20th, we left after lunch to drive South 21 miles to the town of Coos Bay to do some caching and to visit the Elks Lodge there. Like many places in Oregon, we have been to Coos Bay before, but it has been several years. We spent several hours caching near the downtown area, right along the river front, and managed to find another twelve caches with no DNF’s. We had a couple of caches that we had a really tough time with, and were just about ready to give up looking and take the DNF, when we looked one last time and found them. Yea! Perseverance pays off.
After caching we did a little quick shopping for a couple of things and then went to the Coos Bay Elks Lodge. The Lodge is right in the center of the old downtown area, which was a thriving commercial area three years ago but is now mostly empty storefronts. The lodge opened and 4:30 p.m. and we were there when it opened. There was a couple in there visiting from Portland and we chatted with them for a little while. It seems that they were very familiar with a restaurant in Portland called “Pause” which is (was) owned by the son of Lynn Gilliam, my old boss when I worked at the Desert Princess Country Club in the California desert. We had visited Pause a couple of times in the past. Unfortunately, the couple were not familiar with Capron, the first name of our friend, so we are not sure if he still owns the place or not. It has been at least three years since we have been there. We will have to get in contact with Lynn to find out. Being Friday evening the bar filled up with local members and we had a good time chatting with everyone. This was a very friendly lodge. We had two drinks, got a new lodge pin, and then headed back North to our coach. The after dinner movie this evening was “Don’t Mess With The Zohan”, a zany, silly movie by Adam Sandler, a “Saturday Night Live” alumni. Certainly not a great movie in the sense of importance and meaning, but pretty funny. The extras on the DVD were as good as the movie itself.
Wednesday, July 21st, we went out after lunch to do some local caching. Since we had already found most of the “urban” caches in Reedsport, we had to go out into the boonies for some of the finds. Even with this, we still found seven caches in a couple of hours. After caching we went back to the coach and, after dinner, watched “Things we lost in the Fire” with Halle Berry. It was an OK film to me, although Jackie thought it was very good. Some of the basic plot elements, nice guy heroin addict being helped to get clean by a female acquaintance, were reminiscent of “The Man With The Golden Arm” from the 50's, which featured a very young Frank Sinatra.
Thursday, July 22nd, we decided to leave the park in Reedsport a day early. We had reserved our spot until Friday, but we were planning on heading Northeast into Salem and trying to stay at the Elks Lodge in nearby Keizer, Oregon. We decided that we might have better luck getting a spot at the Lodge if we showed up on Thursday rather than Friday afternoon. We had about 160 miles to travel, much of it on two-lane roads through the coastal range, so we left about 10:15 a.m. As we were on route Jackie got a phone call from our friends, Ray and Suzie Babcock. They have been getting some work done on their coach (also a Monaco) near the Monaco factory North of Eugene, Oregon and we had been planning on meeting up with them sometime before we both went to the Monaco International Chapter rally in Salem the first week of August. Suzie told Jackie the they had also just left Junction City, where they had been, and were heading up to Salem to try and stay at the Keizer Elks. What a coincidence. Since they only had about 50 miles to go and we were still well over a hundred miles away, we told them to call us and let us know if the lodge had space available when they got there.
A little while later we got another call from Suzie telling us that the Elks Lodge was full! Yikes, time to make new plans on the run. I happened to remember that when we were through the Salem area three years ago we stayed at a nice RV park, the Silver Spur, East of Salem, in Silverton, Oregon. I also thought I remembered that it was a Passport America park, meaning that it was half price for Passport America members. Jackie got the book out and, sure enough, it was a PA park. She called and the guy told us he had a couple of spots available and he would hold one for us. Yea! Problem solved. Suzie called again a little later and said that they had talked to someone who was leaving the Elks Lodge and that they would get his spot. She asked if we should check to see if anyone else was leaving and we said no, we already made other arrangements. We will only be about 15 miles from Salem, so we can still get together with them.
We arrived at the Silver Spur and, as promised, they had a spot for us. Full hookups, 50 amp, including cable and free wifi, for $15 a night, Passport America price. This is cheaper than it would have been at the Elks. We got parked and settled in and then relaxed for the rest of the day because the drive over the mountains was pretty stressful and I was tired. We are going to be here in Silverton for six days before we begin the summer rally circuit here in Oregon. Regular readers of the blog may remember that we wrote about Silverton back in August of 2007 when we attended their annual “Davenport Days” festival. The weekend includes a craft fair, good old fashioned small town parade, and davenport races (couches on wheels) down main street. Unfortunately, Davenport Days is always the first weekend in August and we are a little early. We will be back in Salem the week prior for the Monaco International rally and will be able to come to the fair and parade on Saturday, but we will be on the road on Sunday, the day of the davenport races, headed back to Redmond for the FMCA rally. Bummer - they were a lot of fun to watch.
Friday, July 23rd, we woke up to an overcast sky, but it was still pleasantly warm. We spent most of the afternoon doing our laundry at the RV park. About 4:30 p.m. we drove over to the Keizer Elks Lodge to visit with our friends Ray and Suzie. We had a cocktail and chatted, catching up since the last time we had seen them, at Silent Valley Club in Banning back in May. After cocktails we went into the Elks Lodge for dinner. While the Lodge normally has a Friday night dinner, tonight was a special “luau night” so the regular menu wasn’t available. They did have BBQed pork and chicken, and beef kabobs, so we still had a very nice meal. We then went back to Ray and Suzie’s coach for a while before heading back to Silverton for the evening.
Saturday we went out after lunch to explore nearby Silverton. Silverton is a very nice small town, its population being slightly under 10,000. The town dates back to the 1800's and the downtown area reflects that with a lot of old buildings and narrow streets. We started to do some geocaching, but two of our first three searches came up empty - two DNF’s out of three caches is not good. We felt the heat was inhibiting our searching, so we quit for the day. We spent an hour or so walking around the downtown, checking out some of the shops, then we drove into Salem to WalMart for some shopping. After WalMart we headed back to the coach for the rest of the night.
Sunday, July 25th, our friends Ray and Suzie came over to the coach about 1:00 p.m. and we all got in the car and drove to the Oregon Garden, located in nearby Silverton. The Oregon Garden is an 80 acre horticultural garden built on the site of an old horse ranch. The Garden has been around about ten years and there is a new resort just off the grounds which was built in the last two years. Although
owned and operated by a private nonprofit, the Garden receives a lot of support from State and Federal agencies. We first took the tram which drives around the entire property, just to get a perspective on what is there, and to see where we wanted to go on foot. After to tour we walked around the property for a couple of hours, looking at the various gardens. The place was not in as “full bloom” as I would have expected, but the tour guide had told us that the spring and early summer had been colder and wetter than normal and all the plants were about three to four weeks behind their normal schedule. After walking around the Garden we got back in the car and drove around Silverton a little bit to show Ray and Suzie what the town was like. We didn’t get out and walk around because it seemed that most shops were closed on Sunday. It was also pretty hot, in the high nineties. After a driving tour of the town we spent another hour just driving around the farms and fields on some of the back roads South of Silverton. We then went back to the coach so Ray and Suzie could head back to their coach at the Keizer Elks. They have a dog and he needed to be walked. We went in the coach and just stayed in and relaxed the rest of the day.
Monday, July 26th we drove into Salem to get our mail package which had been sent by UPS to the UPS Customer Service Center. We could have had it sent to the RV park if we had known we were going to be staying there, but we thought we were going to be at the Elks Lodge and we don’t like to have our mail sent there. It can be hard to get if the office isn’t open a lot of hours. When we got into town we tried to enter the address of the UPS center into the car GPS (also called Tabitha or Tabby or bitch or worse sometimes) and she wouldn’t recognize the street name. We drove around where we thought the address might be for nearly an hour before we called one of the local UPS retail stores and asked them if they could tell us where the Customer Service Center was. They gave us directions and the location turned out to be only a mile or so from the Keizer Elks Lodge. We finally got our mail, no thanks to Tabby (who was called one of the OTHER names several times during the search).
We then set out to find a local medical urgent care facility to take care of an administrative issue regarding Jackie’s CPAP machine. Several days ago she got a phone call from her doctor’s office in Palm Desert telling her that the medical equipment company which was providing the machine had faxed them a one page form which Medicare required. The form specifically required a face to face reevaluation of the patient’s need for the CPAP machine and asking the doctor to certify that the patient was benefitting from the device. The doctor would not do the interview over the phone because it required a face to face interview.
Jackie called Medicare and went back and forth with a couple of people there and was given the impression that any doctor could do the form and Medicare would pay for an office visit. We figured we would go to an urgent care, get a doctor to ask Jackie “is it working for you” and when she said yes, sign the form and we would be on our way. We found an urgent care in Keizer and they told us, no, their doctor would not do that kind of thing. They gave Jackie the number of another urgent care and when she called there they told her the same thing. She then called the Silverton Hospital, which we had noticed in a local magazine, had a sleep disorder center. This is when we learned that it was not just an interview, it also required the downloading and printing of the information stored on the CPAP machine’s memory card. It seems the machine keeps track of hours of use, number of apnea’s (when one stops breathing) and so forth. It is THIS information that is used to determine if the machine is beneficial. The doctor reviews the information, then signs off on the sheet.
No one had mentioned anything to us about the information on the machine’s card. She then called her doctor again and explained what the hospital had told her. Even the doctor’s office was not familiar with the procedure. They said they would call the medical supply company and find out what the whole story was. Supposedly, Medicare will cut off paying the medical supply company if they don’t have this 90 day evaluation report completed and submitted.
After this we went to Costco for one item, sourdough pretzels, which only Costco and Sam’s Club carry. The Costco in Salem didn’t carry them! We had checked a couple weeks ago at the Costco in Medford, and they didn’t have them either. I guess Oregonians don’t eat pretzels. As for Sam’s Club, there are none in Oregon. Guess I’ll have to go without pretzels for a while. After all this chasing around and being frustrated at every stop, we finally headed home for the rest of the day to chill.
Tuesday, July 27th I got out at 9:30 and started washing the coach. It has been a while since we had it washed and it is rare to find an RV park that will let you wash it on your own. This one did, so I decided to take advantage of the opportunity. It took me until about 2:30 p.m., with a short lunch break, to wash both the car and the coach. They do look a whole lot better now. Jackie also got a call back from her doctor regarding the evaluation. They finally figured out that the card did have to be read, but that only the medical supply company could do it. They told Jackie not to worry about it until she heard from the medical supply company because they were going to try and decide what to do. She thought they might have us mail the card to them and have them send us a new card. She also said that they were going to try to get Medicare to allow a delay until November, when we will be back in the California desert and can get it done at Jackie’s doctor. Apparently this is a new procedural requirement from Medicare and no one is exactly sure what needs to be done. Don’t you just love bureaucracy?
About 5:00 p.m. we drove into Keizer to Ray and Suzie’s place and had a cocktail before heading to the local Outback for dinner. We specifically chose Outback because I wanted crab legs, as did Suzie, and Ray and Jackie wanted lamb, which is very good at Outback. When we got there we even checked the menu to make sure that this particular restaurant had them on the menu. They did. Yea! Shortly after we ordered, the waitress came back and told us “no lamb, we ran out.” We were upset, and even considered leaving, but decided we were unlikely to find lamb anywhere else anyway, so we stayed. Ray had the crab too, and Jackie had ribs, which she enjoyed. The owner of the restaurant came to the table and apologized, and they did pay for our appetizer, so it wasn’t a total loss. After dinner we headed back to the coach for the rest of the night.
Wednesday, July 28th was supposed to be a travel day. We had registered for the Elks International rally which was being held in Madras, Oregon. Madras is about 70 miles, as the crow flies, West of the Salem area, but because of the mountain range it is over 150 miles driving. And all of it is on two lane mountain roads. Nonetheless, we were ready to go until we received an email from the president of the Elks International Chapter late Tuesday evening. The email basically said he had arrived in Madras for the rally on Tuesday and found that the 30 amp full hookup sites had all been taken by early arrivals and there were only 20 amp sites now available. Like the president of the chapter, we had been told that since we registered early we would get one of the 30 amp sites, but it seems that the sites were given to the early arrivals rather than saved for the people who registered early and were told they would get them. The President’s email went on to say that they were not going to attend the rally for these reasons and were going elsewhere. This email went out to all the chapter members. The email also talked about the dissatisfaction with this same venue on a previous occasion.
The end result was that we decided that we too were going to change our plans and not go to Madras for the Elks International rally. Although we will probably lose our $210 rally fee, understandable since we cancelled at the last minute. However, we were only going to be in Madras for five days and then have to drive back to Salem for the Monaco International rally, which are always a lot of fun. This would have meant at least 340 miles or so of driving, which would have cost at least $175 in fuel. This offsets a lot of the “loss” from the rally fee. Unfortunately, when I went to the office at the RV park to extend our stay, I was told they couldn’t accommodate us because they were fully booked for the weekend! Yikes - decision time. We called Ray and Suzie and they told us that it appeared that a full hookup site at the Keizer Elks was going to open up in about an hour. Since the Elks has a first come, first served rule, we needed to get there quickly to get the site. We packed up in about an hour and I sent Jackie ahead with the car to get the spot and register. Since she is an Elk member too, she can fill out the registration and “seize” the site. I stopped for fuel and arrived about 10 minutes after the people that had been in the site left and we got our spot! Yea! We have a place to live for the next five days, until the Monaco rally starts.
We also learned that our friends Gary and Ramona were also coming to the Keizer Elks and that the people in the site right next to where we ended up were also leaving. So we grabbed that site too. Gary and Ramona came in an hour later and parked, so all three of us are here in full hookup sites. We all have Monaco coaches, so we will all go to the Monaco rally at the Salem Fairgrounds on Monday. It was a rough couple of days, but everything has worked out for the best and we are happy. After getting setup we relaxed until dinner then we and Ray and Suzie went into the lodge for a cocktail and dinner. Gary and Ramona already had dinner fixed, so they didn’t go with us. After dinner we did a little gaming at the slots in the lodge (lost!) and then went back to the coach for the rest of the evening.
Thursday, July 29th we had lunch at the coach and then went out to do some shopping. Because of our change in plans resulting in our being here in Keizer with our friends for five days prior to the Monaco rally, we have been working out dinner plans with the group for a couple of the nights. Jackie said she would make up a batch of her Halibut chowder, which this same group had in Tucson back last October and loved, but we needed some things from the store to make it. We went to Walmart and then back to the coach where Jackie made up a big mess of chowder. She always makes it the day prior so it has time to “age” before serving. We are doing dinner on Friday with the chowder, some escargot and some shrimp cocktail for those who don’t care for escargot (me included).
We then spent a little time having cocktails with the other two couples, and then the six of us went into the Elks Lodge for steak night. They had several different cuts of steak with all the fixings, all moderately priced. Jackie and I both had New York cuts, hers with potato and mushrooms, mine with fries. Both meals came with cole slaw and the total bill was under $22. Gotta love Elks Lodges for inexpensive dinners. The meals were great too, by the way. No one complained. After dinner we went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the night.
Friday we went caching in the afternoon, adding ten new finds to our tally. Unfortunately, we also had two DNF’s as well. Caching in the Northwest can be a little tougher because the cachers up here have a tendency to hide the caches in the abundant greenery and looking for very small caches in bushes is tough. The wild blackberries that grow everywhere with their nasty thorns are also an impediment. After caching we made a quick stop at the local Goodwill store. The Monaco International Rally next week has one night which is going to be a 50's sock up costume night. We needed to get a few costume items for Jackie. She found a great pair of pink Ked-type sneakers and a pink and black purse, both very inexpensive. Later on in the evening we had our four friends over for dinner. Jackie had her great Halibut chowder, which everyone loved, along with some escargots, which Jackie, Ray and Gary ate. I fixed some shrimp cocktail for us non-snail eaters. The dinner was wonderful, despite a little early evening thunderstorm that drove us into the coach briefly. We ended up being able to eat outside though, and it was great. After dinner we relaxed the rest of the night.
Saturday, July 31st we left the coach around noon and headed in downtown Salem with our friends to visit “Bite and Brew”, an annual event at one of the local parks. It was advertised as having many food booths sponsored by local restaurants, a beer garden with numerous local micro brews, and craft booths. They also had musical entertainment all day along with a big show at night. We went in our own car while Ray and Suzie went with Gary and Ramona in their car. We went separately because we had been thinking we might want to attend the evening entertainment, which started
at 9:00 p.m., because it was a Neil Diamond tribute group called “Super Diamond.” When we got to the park we found that they didn’t have any on-site parking and we just had to find a spot on the adjacent downtown streets. We managed to find a free city-run parking garage just a couple of blocks from the park, walked over and joined up with our friends, who got to park on-site in handicap parking. We found that there were, indeed, over a dozen restaurants represented in the food booth area. Unfortunately, there were exactly three vendors, one selling sweaters, one selling bubble makers, and one selling stickers. Not exactly a shoppers paradise. The entertainment during the time we were there were local high school or college techno bands that were awful. I suppose the kids like them, but I thought they sounded very bad. The food was good. Jackie and I had ribs from a restaurant in Silverton called Mac’s and they were very good. We also had some Cold Stone ice cream, which was wonderful. They did have a beer garden with a wide variety of brews, along with some commercial and community service type booths. Nonetheless, after we ate, there wasn’t much left for us to do, so we all left after being there an hour and a half. We decided since we were there anyway we would walk around downtown for a while. There were a lot of antique stores and shops around. We spent a couple of hours walking around shops and visiting the large downtown mall, which had all the usual mall stores. We also did a little geocaching downtown using the geocache feature on Jackie’s smart phone. We found one cache and would have found another except that it was on the top of the mall’s parking garage and when we got there we found that the roof was closed for repairs. Oh well. After shopping we did a few more caches on the way back to the coach. We wanted to get at least five finds for the day because it would get us to the next milestone, 1,700 finds! We managed to get our five finds so we logged our 1,700 cache today. Yea us! We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening relaxing around the coach.
Sunday, August 1st, we went out after lunch to do our laundry. We will be starting the rally circuit tomorrow and don’t want to have to stop to do laundry. I also took a few minutes to remove the steel scissors assembly which holds the front door of the coach open and stops it from opening too far. There is a common problem with these devices where the rivets holding the two arms together and the mounting brackets to the arms, come loose and then the bars sag. They will no longer lock the door open so the slightest wind will blow the door shut. Also, the bar hangs down when the main door is open and the top of the screen door hits it every time you open the screen. The only solution is to take the whole assembly off, take it to a machine shop, and have the rivets replaced. Or you can buy a new one from Monaco for $170, but putting in new rivets is a whole lot cheaper. Ray had located a machine shop just a few blocks from the Elks Lodge in Keizer and had taken his locking arm in for repairs. They told him it would be $27. I decided this was a good time to stop putting off repairing mine and get it off and fixed. I will take it in on Monday and it should be fixed in a day or two.
Later in the afternoon the six of us met at Ray and Suzie’s coach for dinner. Ray made up a batch of his tasty taco salad and we pigged out, or at least I did. It’s great stuff. Ray is a retired firefighter so he has some cooking experience. He told us that the taco salad was a firehouse favorite. We had last had this while in Tucson last April with Ray and Suzie. After dinner and some drinks and chat we headed back to our coach for the rest of the night.
Monday, July 2nd, we got up early and packed up the coach for our next move. We went a whole three miles from the Keizer Elks Lodge to the Oregon State Fairgrounds in Salem where the Monaco International rally will take place. We got out of the
Elks about 9:15 or so and were parked and set up by 11:00 a.m. We will be here at this rally for six days before moving over to Redmond, Oregon for the big FMCA rally. And with that, I will
close this chapter and get it published. It’s hard to believe that it has been nearly a month since I last posted an episode. Until next time, keep the faith and make sure you always “Haz a Happy!”
