Maryhill State Park, Washington

We arrived early this afternoon for a stay at Maryhill State Park.  It's located across the bridge north of Biggs, OR, about 20 miles east of The Dalles. 

This is a first come, first served park during the winter months.  There were about eight rigs already here, so we had many open sites to choose from.  We picked pull-thru site #29, with a view of the Columbia River out our front window. 

We paid our nightly fee of $6 (senior off-season discount price) and plugged into the 50-amp service and the water and sewer hookups.  The downside to this park is that we are only able to get low-speed Verizon cell signal for our internet.  It's like having dial-up service, which works fine for phone calls, and for email, but not as well for reading blogs and other internet sites.

This is the view out our front window.  The I-84 interstate highway is across the river.  Freight trains run fairly frequently to the north of the park, so it's not the most tranquil park.  This part of the river does not get big ship traffic, but we saw several barges this afternoon.

One of the trees just outside our door has already dropped most of its leaves.

Fall Color in Vancouver

Welcome to two new blog followers, Amy, and Judy and John, who write a blog called Tire Swing Travels.

Vancouver, Washington does not have a lot of fall color.  After all, we are called the Evergreen State for a reason.  I was able to take a few photos of some pretty trees in our neighborhood.

  

The last two trees had more leaves on the ground than on the tree.  We have had a lot of rain the past couple of days, so even more leaves have dropped.  Now the leaves are plugging up the street drains, which makes for some very big puddles on some of the streets.

A Rainy Day

This morning we planned to go for a bike ride, but when we stepped outside the motorhome, it had begun raining a fine mist.  We changed our plans to a walk around the campground.  As we walked, the mist turned heavier, almost looking like snow.  It wasn't snowing and the temperature was in the high fifties but we got quite wet by the time we got back. 

We went out on a couple of errands and then came back and had a quiet afternoon inside.  Around 5 pm, the rain had stopped and the sites were starting to dry up.  The sun tried to come out but didn't quite make it.  We took advantage of the dry weather and went on the same walk we took this morning in the rain.

The Cape Disappointment campgrounds are arranged in loops, with ten sites in each loop.  This picture is looking towards the back loop.  There isn't much fall color here yet. 

Each loop has trees in the middle of the loop.  Children like to play and hide in the trees.

How would you like to tow this little Smart Car? I wonder why it carries two spare tires?  The vehicle towing it was a small Winnebago View.

Friday morning Dave will head back to Vancouver to referee a high school varsity football game and two youth football games on Saturday.  I will attend the first concert of this weekend's Water Music Festival in Ilwaco.   A chamber ensemble will perform "Mozart's Magic Flutes".

Rogue River Jet Boat Tour, Gold Beach, OR

I’ll post the Oregon coastline pictures eventually, but today I want to write about our jet boat tour.  We drove from North Bend to Gold Beach, leaving at 9 am in order get to Gold Beach by 11:30 to check in for our noon tour. 

We ate a quick lunch at the harbor, toured the museum and gift shops, then boarded our jet boat, The Rogue, with Captain John.  He narrated the whole trip and treated us to scenery, turns, spins, and whitewater.  I tend to get seasick easily, but I was fine on this trip.  We DID get wet, but it felt good because the temperature rose to about 90 degrees as we went east on the Rogue River.  We took the 80-mile tour, which included 8 miles of whitewater.  Captain John 

Another jet boat that left just before ours

Our boat heading up the Rogue River

We saw river turtles, an otter, several minx, a Great Blue heron, an eagle, a couple of ospreys and nests, pelicans, cormorants, harbor and California seals.  Bears are commonly seen along the river, but we didn’t see any. 

Harbor seals 

Cormorant

Osprey (click on photo to enlarge)

Forest scenery

Nest

More beautiful scenery

We saw several campgrounds and RV parks along the Rogue River

As we headed into the whitewater area we were required to put on life jackets

Turtles

As we came back downriver, the boat stopped so that we could eat a late lunch at a resort called Singing Springs in Agness.   We had stopped there earlier for a bathroom break on our way upriver.

A fun trip was had by all!  And this is our jet boat after the trip. 

Just kidding!  Neither Dave nor I could resist posting a picture of this derelict boat.  That green stuff you see is moss and grass.  The marine layer fog was coming in when we arrived back at Gold Beach at 5:15 pm. 

Thanks for reading about our adventure on the jet boat!

Montezuma Castle National Monument, Arizona

Today's excursion was to Montezuma Castle off I-17 near Camp Verde. Just to be clear, it's not a castle and has nothing to do with Montezuma. But somehow the name has stuck. It's a fascinating place, and I'm glad we got to see it since we may or may not make it to Mesa Verde National Park, which has many more cliff dwellings and ones you can actually see up close if you are able walk up and down the ladders.

Southern Sinagua farmers began building this five-story, 20-room dwelling early in the 1100s.  It stands in a cliff recess 100 feet above the valley.  Early settlers marveled at the structure and assumed that it was Aztec in origin, hence the name Montezuma Castle.

This is part of Castle A, once an imposing six-story apartment-like building with about 45 rooms.  It is now badly deteriorated.  This dwelling was built against the base of the cliff. 

An audio diorama display told us about life in the "castle".

And a picture showed more about how the people lived in the rooms.

The community got their water from nearby Beaver Creek.  The creek was a reliable source of water, and there was fertile land on the nearby terrace.  By the 1400s, the Southern Sinagua had abandoned their cliff dwellings and we'll probably never know the reason why.

Western soapberry

The trees and vegetation at the Monument were interesting and added to the peaceful, contemplative visit.

                         The Arizona Sycamore tree.  I really liked this tree!

After touring the National Monument, we took a drive to Cottonwood and Jerome and decided to go to Prescott Valley to find the place where Dave is going to get the alignment on the motorhome done.  We took 89A south.  That was a mistake, but at least we were in the car, not the motorhome.  The route was narrow, winding, and took us to over 7000 feet.  We called it the "Road to Hana".  In fact, the real road to Hana, in Maui, Hawaii, is at sea level.  I'll admit that it has more potholes than 89A, but that's the only positive thing I can say about 89A.  We won't be driving that road again, even though it did have spectacular views of the red rock, multi-colored cliffs near Sedona.