Memaloose State Park-Post Falls Idaho

We spent the night at Memaloose State Park, not far past Hood River. Driving through the most scenic part of the Gorge at night precluded any sightseeing (or pictures) but did alleviate that damn Gorge headwind that seems to know which way Ludwig is traveling.

The next morning after breakfast this ground squirrel made a bold move for the pantry, but was thwarted by Tater Tot. We told her, "look at the squirrel trying to get inside Ludwig!" and, hands on hips, she took a couple steps toward it and shouted "NO!" at the top of her little voice. We don't generally encourage the harassment of fauna, but it was pretty cute. She was more than a little shaken by her new-found power over nature, and ran away from the scene nearly as quickly as the squirrel.

Melissa might think that we took US 97 North toward home just because Ludwig could climb a couple new passes on the way. Well, I guess that's partly true, but I also wanted to get out of the Gorge and its incessant headwind. I didn't expect this sign or this view though, which made the shortcut more than worth it. My pictures don't do it justice, but I could see all of them listed save Mt. Rainier (last eruption in 1854; look out, Tacoma). The one in the picture is Mt. Adams. The Type III exhaust strapped up behind the wagon is courtesy tristessa (thanks, Hal).

We saw this farm along I- 82. What the heck is it, hops? Imagine the time it would take to put those fences up.

We stopped at the city park in Ritzville Washington to give Tater Tot a nice long break from her carseat. Ritzville was a the second best place (outside of Montana) we stopped on the entire trip (second to Maupin of course). The park was nice, the public bathrooms were nice, the people were nice, everything was nice. 

Luckily Tater Tot was good and tired, and slept through our completely disastrous attempt to find a campground along the lakeshore in Coeur d'Alene Idaho. We wandered all over the town in the dark for well over an hour, looking for a couple places that I'm now convinced aren't even there. Fortunately our trusty Rand McNally 2009 Road Atlas always gives the location of the nearest WalMart, the last chance campground of choice. A little backtrack on I-90 to Post Falls Idaho later, and we were nestled safely in Ludwig under the mildly annoying glow of parking lot lights.

(miles 221,116-221,523)

Pee Dee Ecks

Ludwig made it from Maupin to Portland with no trouble, not even on the "two" mountain passes (Wapinitia and Blue Box, see map at right) between. Rainy mountain weather past Mt. Hood meant we also made it without pictures either.

It had stopped by the time we drove over the Willamette, on our way to IFBWax's house, a fellow ACVWer, who'd offered us a place to stay for the night.

The next morning before we left for the zoo, Esmé's discerning eye detected an out-of-spec screw on Ludwig's AC power plug in.

Pointing out the loose screw

For good measure, she helped me tighten all of them up. Thanks, Tater Tot.

That green bus ahead of Ludwig is The Party Pickle, who the IFBWax family (blog here) clearly love and enjoy. (This is a link to Charlie Brown, their other bus I which couldn't manage to photograph well. This bus probably ranks in my top 10 all time favorite VWs I've seen in person. Hey, it is brown after all...) They let us spend the night in their guest room, where after E fell asleep we enjoyed a rare treat: cable television. Thanks for the hospitality, Party Pickle family. Incidentally, their driveway marks Ludwig's new Westernmost (known) point.

We went to Portland after the VW Jamboroo mostly because we wanted E to see the zoo (Montana doesn't have one). It was pretty decent, but then Melissa and I are spoiled by having visited the Henry-Doorly Zoo so many times, one of this country's best zoos. Ludwig waited patiently in the parking lot.

After the zoo we headed downtown to meet up with a bunch of ACVWers who regularly meet up at The Lucky Labrador on Quimby each Monday. This was just a cool bridge on the way to downtown.

A good-sized crew eventually assembled, mostly people we'd spent the weekend with. Now that he's been there, Ludwig can wear the Lucky Lab sticker Gypsie gave him last year without embarrassment.

After some pizza, we decided it was time to eat up some of the distance between Portland and Missoula, so we headed out of town.

(miles 220,991-221,116)

Deschutes River RendezVW 09, Maupin Oregon

The bus count this year at Maupin was 70+. It was nice to be one of the early families that set up, because it's fun to watch everyone roll in. This year, we sort of forgot to take pictures of anything until the last minute. So on this year's summary of the RendezVW you'll see just a sampling of the busses that stood out to us the most.

One of our neighbors was this '75  Westy from Oregon City, Jiminy Cricket. I love white, and I love Ludwig's orange, but I think this--VW called it "Bali Yellow"--might be my new favorite color for buses. The owner had sold him sometime in the 1980s, then recently found him all these years later and bought him back. Ludwig's in the back left of this photo, and you can see we weren't so conspicuously in the front after all the other 70 some busses set up camp.

This cat's name is Lucifer and he is 18. He chilled out in The Sunny Bus the whole weekend.

Totoro (right) got a roommate recently, a '87 Synchro (left) that the bean family (who blog about their Vanagon adventures here) picked up for an absurdly low price. We also got to meet the other new addition to their family, Juniper. I am as excited for them to have gotten that Synchro (yet to be named?) as we were to get our Gertie. It's sort of weird how these VWs find their people.

Given the talent present, it is amazing that I scored highest on Gypsie's Name-That-Part Quiz. First prize was a nice temperature sensor that I've already used a million times, including at every stop on the way home. Ludwig's temps seem to be pretty okay. Thanks, Gypsie.

Spiffy is a 1978 Rivi who's owners we met last year when they brought their '67 bus, Bill. Since then Spiffy has become famous for having appeared on a bunch of Dave Matthews Band concert posters. They have a good blog here.

Much to my own chagrin, I like this.

The last of these striped buses is The Green Flower Bussy, a 1976 hightop who was named by the owners' daughter. I'd never given it much thought before, but it turns out that I'm a really big fan of pinstripes. And stripes. And I have given it much thought before, and I love love love pinstripes (from the 70s)!

I've got to be honest here. Usually when I see a high top bus my knee-jerk reaction is to silently gag to myself. BUT, I totally stand corrected. The Green Flower Bussy was very cool. Not only does it have some killer pinstripes, but it has a stove in a drawer. Cool indeed. And I totally dug how there was a raised seating area. It really was a nice high top, that has forever changed my outlook that all high tops are lame.

A week is a long time from home when you're a cloth diaper family. So we hauled our laundry, and Tater Tot, into town to wash our duds. Thank goodness we had the wagon because we had to cross this bridge.

And climb this super steep hill. It was even more cumbersome taking all the wet clothes back to camp. Especially since the hill was almost harder to go down (as we're about to do above) as it was to go up.

Utilitarian clothesline. Someone said it reminded them of Tibetan prayer flags.

E really enjoyed Betty's accordion playing. She sat in rapt attention through several songs and asked for more. She also enjoyed listening to Mike (one of Spiffy's drivers) play the tuba.

On the last day, Tater Tot helped us clean up the camp. As a reward for her hard work, we let her have a cold beer. (Not really; please don't report us to CPS.)

Pendleton-Maupin

After a nice leisurely morning at the park and lunching in downtown Pendleton, we headed toward Maupin. The big RendezVW wasn't scheduled to start until Friday, but we wanted to have some down time to settle into our campsite before the festivities really got started.

On I-84 we saw a tree farm that totally took us by surprise. None of us, Esmé included, had ever seen a tree farm like this before. It was sort of eerie how the trees were so nicely growing in rows. Some plots had massive trees, and some were only saplings. They were just so...uniform. And the farms went on and on as far as we could see over the hills south of the interstate. 

Perfectly spaced, see? I wonder how those trees are planted. By hand? How big are they when they're planted? Do the saplings require a lot of care so they don't die? Do insects ever just wipe these monocultures right out? Intellectually, I know it's reasonable, it just seems so much stranger to me than food crops we grew up seeing in Nebraska. 

The Columbia River Gorge with Mount Hood as the backdrop. So so scenic. And it's nice to see river traffic. It's sort of reminiscent of the container ships I remember seeing between the Channel Islands and Ellwood Beach coast when we lived in California.

Mitch drove the gorge this year, and we had a headwind the entire time. This Bud Light truck was the only one I was able to draft to cut the edge on that damn wind. That's Mt. Hood in the distance on the right. It last erupted in 1907. Look out, Portland.

Tater Tot enjoyed listening to Here Come the ABCs by They Might Be Giants on this trip. She still sings parts of "Go for G!" even though we haven't listened to the album again since we've been back from the trip. I think we also spent a fair amount of time singing some songs from the Missoula Public Library's Tiny Tales.

Doesn't it look like Ludwig is parked way out in front of everyone else? He was. I was somewhat...encouraging...about having a perfectly level spot since I knew we'd be sleeping in Ludwig for 3 nights. 

(miles 220,824-220,991)

Missoula-Pendleton

(We're (finally?) getting around to posts about our trip to the Deschutes River RendezVW in Maupin Oregon over Father's Day weekend.)

After the success of the wagon at Beavertail Hill, we thought it'd be a good idea to take it along on our second trip to Maupin. I'll bet we lost nearly a mile per gallon with that thing up there. Maybe next year we'll tow it?

At mile 123 on US 12 in Idaho we stopped for a break and found all these butterflies (Tiger and Zebra Swallowtails) sucking water from the wet gravel. Tater Tot was kind of impressed, impressed enough to count them ("noin-ty, noin-ty", the way she counts everything). She thought it was interesting how close she could get to them, but was easily distracted by rocks and ants. She did not like it when I got the butterflies to climb onto my fingers.

Still hanging out with the butterflies and ants

We took Alpowa Summit from the West last time and I didn't think much of it. This time, from the East, Ludwig found it more laborious. A bit shy of the top Tater Tot wanted a break, and I think Ludwig was thankful.

By the time we got to Pendleton it was late late late. I guess I didn't figure in all the Tater breaks and the extreme winding-ness (sample here) of US 12 through Idaho, and it ended up taking eleven hours from Missoula. There were a couple construction delays which cost us too. It ended up being the longest travel day of TT's life, and she took it really well.

Pendleton is home to Maura and Scott, who graciously lent us their guest room for the night. The next morning Maura showed us around the town, including a really nice playground that TT went nuts for. Back at their place Maura read Tater Tot some books in Ludwig.

Mitch's birthday present to me this year was yarn shopping during our trip. (Although yarn and knitting aren't the main topics of this blog, enough knitters read this that I'm including this part of the trip here anyway.) We thought surely Pendleton Oregon, home of Pendleton Woolen Mills, was a good bet for a local yarn shop gold mine. Wrong, wrong, wrong. There were no yarn shops in Pendleton. A sad day for yarn shopping, and even more sad for Maura, knitter extroidanaire. The quest for yarn continued on...

(miles 220,455-220,824)