Day 1: 'Leaving Home - Bound for Tucson'

 

Iguana Tails

Harmon RV Trip (1/17/21 to ???)

We have finally embarked on our first big RV trip after retirement, which is planned for 2 months, but Rick insists it is only for 6 weeks. We have enough of Kitty’s food for 8 weeks, so that’s my plan and I'm sticking to it.  (We switched Kitty over to a raw diet and we have to make all her food using a heavy duty meat grinder, which we didn't want to bring on this trip.  The small freezer in the RV only holds about 2 months of her food, with barely enough room for some chicken breasts and hamburger for us.  So that's how we decided how long to make our trip.) 

Our first day, we made it almost all the way through the state of Oregon, to Ashland.  We stayed at a place we had never been to, just off the freeway, called Emigrant Lake.  It was very pretty and even had a water park, which was unexpected.  The lake is huge and looks to be manmade with two dams, but it was sad to see such an incredibly huge lake almost completely dry, especially at this time of year.

Kitty was pretty nervous in the truck and promptly zonked out on the RV bed within 5 minutes of being released from what I’m sure she thought was her prison in the truck.  Beamer made a big mess in his truck cage (of course) so he ended up having to get an outdoor shower once we got to the campground.  I think that is going to quickly become a normal ritual for the two of us.  Luckily I brought his heating pad, as the cage lights just aren’t getting him warm enough after his bath.  He finally got settled in his cage and seems happy - he keeps bobbing his head at us and then falls back asleep.  

 

We went on a little hike around a small part of the lake and accidentally got off the beaten path, which took us up the side of the lake.  I thought we could get out at the top where there was a small hole but it would have been too small for Rick to make it so we had to come back down.  But it was basically rock climbing it was so steep!  You had to plan where each hand and foot hold was.  Unfortunately I had not worn the proper shoes for this type of hiking and I ended injuring my knee a tad.  Suffice it to say, Rick was really grumbling about the mess we had gotten ourselves into on the first day and I don’t think he’ll be letting me lead our hikes any longer. J

The homeless in Medford is almost as bad as Portland.  When we stopped for lunch in Cottage Grove, we ate our sandwiches in the trailer and watched a middle aged homeless man on a bicycle, struggle for a long time to repack his stuff on the bike.  At one point his bike fell over and he had it so loaded down that he literally didn’t have the strength to lift get it back up.  He then took a junky heater that looked to weigh a lot and tossed it into the dumpster behind the gas station.  I was impressed that he carried it all the way over to a dumpster instead of just leaving it on the ground so I kind of begged Rick if we could go help him or give him something.  Rick was pretty nervous about helping him so instead, I gave him some protein bars and a little cash and told him it was for his journey.  He was quite startled by me walking up to him...kind of like PTSD startled.  But he was grateful and finally got himself loaded up and biked away.  Once we saw all the tents in Medford, we figured this must have been where he was headed.  

Right as we were passing the last of the tents in Medford, a homeless man pulling a grocery cart decided to cross I-5 at the last second and jumped out in front of us!  Rick slammed on the breaks (not hard enough to do major damage to the trailer) and the guy BARELY made it to the fast lane as we went by, all the while glaring at us!  He was still in the freeway as we went by, not even to the median!  Yeah...that scared the crap out of us and we could have had our trip completely stopped on the first day if it had been a few seconds earlier.  I can’t even imagine.  But we quickly forgot our panic because we started seeing the devastation from the fires on the south end of Medford. Complete neighborhoods were absolute rubble!  Farms destroyed with burned tractor implements being the only thing standing, other than a chimney.  It was heart breaking.  Then we passed a RV park that was bumper to bumper with RV’s and we realized that they were probably all the families that had lost their homes a few miles up the freeway. Interestingly, there were two HUGE mansions on the side of the road that were part of vineyards and the fire seemed to miraculously go around those two homes.  Hmmmm. 

Well, that’s out first day, complete with 3 popped fuses already, as we learn which outlets/circuits cannot handle Beamer’s lights and our space heaters.  No permanent damage, just needed to flip the breaker.

Off to south of Sacramento (Walnut Grove) in the morning to meet up with one of my old GE coworkers, Jen.  We are staying near where Rick's father used to live on a houseboat when we lived in Sacramento, so we are going to go try and find it.