On the Road Again - 2014

It’s the end of April and we are back on the road again.  From November through the end of March we have been in the Pacific Northwest.  Yes, we were here through the winter months….something we say we won’t do again.

We did enjoy reuniting  with good friends, celebrating Jane’s 70’s birthday, seeing D’enne, Michael and Matthew at Christmas, getting caught up with our doctors and the dentist and dealing with Camping World on repairs for our RV.

With all that completed, we ended our responsibilities at Champoeg State Park March 30^th and after dropping the RV at Camping World we headed to Puerto Vallarta for  10 days for some much needed vitamin D absorption.

Sunset Plaza Resort

Beach beds around adult pool

That is exactly what we got…..10 glorious days of relaxing around the pool, taking full advantage of the all-inclusive food and drinks, reading two books and enjoying some tourist attractions. 

Swim up bar

Sunset

First touristy thing we did was take a Dune Buggy tour up into the mountains.  The ‘buggy’ we were assigned was a Volkswagen frame that had a speedometer and tachometer….neither of which worked. Thankfully we were in a line of other dune buggy’s and we followed at the lead cars speed.  They  gave us goggles, helmet and a bandanna to cover our nose and mouth from dirt.  The irony of this tour was with all of the safety equipment,  part of the tour included a stop at a tequila distillery where we were encouraged to taste to  our hearts content.  We all then piled back into the buggy’s to drive to lunch and then finish the tour and drive home!

Second tour was a heritage dinner and show called Rhythms of the Night.  An hour boat ride to an isolated cove of Las Caletas where we were treated to a story of an ancient civilization through live music and modern dance, transporting us on a magical journey through time.

Dinner on the beach

The show was followed by a authentic Mexican buffet meal on the beach as the sun was setting.

Another night was a sail on a 50ft. yacht at sunset.  A three hour cruise on the Bahia de Banderas (Bay of Flags), with wonderful hors d’ourves and an open bar.  Perfect night and we were treated to a beautiful sunset.

Our last tourist event was one we had not planned on, but other guests at the resort shared their experience with us.   A walking food tour of old town Puerto Vallarta.  Found it on line and booked the Mole, Pozole and More, Dinner Tour.  We have done similar tours in our travels and find them an enlightening way to absorb the town and experience true local cuisine.  This tour was no exception, the food was superb, the guide captivating and we visited out of the way restaurants and were given more food than we could possibly eat (but we did manage to put most of it away).  By the time we reached our sixth restaurant, we were stuffed but the specialty was Pazole, and we could not pass it up.  Only one other couple was on the tour,  a couple from Melbourne Australia.

Marlin Tostada

Atole

We tasted Chicken Enchiladas, Marlin tostada, shrimp empanadas and shrimp burritos.  Next to a taco street booth, then to where  our guide said the best Mole sauce could be found. The sauce is an old family recipe of the owner’s mother and claims the Mole sauce is made from over 100 ingredients.  We tasted both dark and green sauces…wonderful.  Last stop was El Campanario where we were served Pozole (a hominy chicken soup), another taco and a dessert called Atole….a  sweet hot drink which includes masa, (corn hominy flour), water, unrefined cane sugar, cinnamon and vanilla.

Pazole

We also took a day to walk the the town of Puerto Vallarta.  Lots of little shops, a wonderful pedestrian malecon with some great public art.  There is a great market on Caule Island,with numerous vendors hawking just about anything you could want.  Even tho it is not local food, we had to have dinner at Bubba Gumps.  We ate her the first time we came to Puerto Vallarta so it is kind of like the beginning of a tradition.

Shops on the island

On the Malecon

As we walked the town exploring the little shops, we happened into one of the many tequila shops.  We fell in love with flavored tequila's, specifically almond and coffee flavors. We bought three one liter bottles...now we had to figure out how to get them home.

Boy riding seahorse

Sand Art on the beach

Getting the tequila home did prove to be a challenge.  We were able to pack them into our one large suitcase, but it put us over the 50lb limit.  So we had a decision to make...how to unload enough clothes so the liquor would be able to travel in the case or pay the extra poundage fee. There did not seem to be anyway to get 7lbs of clothes out and into our carry ons, so we paid an outlandish fee of $115.00 to get those 3 bottles home.

We arrived back in Portland, rested, tanned and ready to take on Camping World since they had not finished working on our RV.  The final fixes happened the next day and after a shopping trip to replenish the fridge, we were on our way to John Day in Eastern Oregon.  

Tree Shoe

John Day is no shopping mecca….we have counted 7 churches, no theater (within 75 miles), one grocery store, 2 hardware stores, one drug store and a fair number of restaurants. If you're camping, there is a great state park, Clyde Holliday just outside John Day.  It was not open yet, but the Grant Country fairgrounds right in John Day has a very nice RV park.  One interesting thing we saw on our way into town was the "Shoe Tree".  When we asked about it, there is no real story except someone started it, others added to it.  Highway 26 is a coast to coast road that many bikers ride, and a number of the shoes on the tree have been contributed by them.

One of the things we really wanted to visit right in John Day was the Kam Wa Chung museum.  We were two weeks early....museum does not open until May 1st.

This structure was built as a trading post on The Dalles Military Road in the mid-1800′s. Chinese businessman Lung On and herbal doctor Ing Hay worked out of this building. Dr. Hay administered care to the Chinese gold-mine workers, pioneers, and others from the John Day area and beyond by using traditional Chinese remedies. 

After he died in 1952, the place was boarded over and forgotten for about 15 years. Doc Hay, in his will deeded it to the City of John Day with the provision it be made into a museum.  When the city opened it up, they discovered everything as it was when the Doctor had died.  We hope at some point to return here to actually visit the museum.

We've never been to this part of Oregon and our objective was to visit the Fossil beds. The fossils discovered here are up to 55 million years old.  At that time, Eastern Oregon was like a jungle similar to Panama’s jungles today.

There are three parts to the fossil area that covers 20,000 square miles.  We visited two of the three the day we took our ride.

We first stopped at the beautiful Thomas Candon Paleontology Center.  A wonderful interpretive center complete with working paleontologists you can observe working.

Painted Hills

From there we drove to the Painted Hills, where erosion is displaying the many layers of geological events over the past 55 million years.  We walked 5 of the 6 trails, getting up close to the soil and beauty of the area.  

The black soil is lignite, a vegetative matter that grew along the floodplain.  The grey coloring is mudstone, siltstone and shale.  The red coloring is laterite soil that formed by floodplain deposits when the area was warm and humid.

Painted Hills

From here we drove north on highway 207 and turned east on 19 to enjoy the beauty of the countryside.  This is open range area, and it is not unusual to see cattle on or near the roads

.  We encountered three separate herds of cattle being guided to somewhere else.  At the third and biggest drive, we decided to help move them along.  The cowgirl on the horse said to just honk our horn and move through them.  We honked and moved slowly, each time encountering a new mother trying to protect her calf by turning and 'honking' back at us.  What was remarkable to watch at all three drives, were the dogs.  They were in continuous movement making sure no cow or calf lagged behind or strayed away.  Just a whistle or word from the guy on the horse and the dog knew exactly where to go and what to do.

We followed 19 south back towards the interpretive center to the Blue Basin area, passing Cathedral Rock.




Last stop was at Blue Basin to walk the one mile hike back into the canyon of green-blue banded layers, over 29 million years old.

Easter Sunday was a warm sunny day and we headed to Sumpter Oregon, a historic gold mining town back in 1862.

Dredge State Park is located here and  has on display the last dredge used to mine gold from the river.  There are numerous trails you can walk and view all of the tailings produced by the dredges.  We hiked for bits of gold without success.

Sumpter today is a skeleton of what it was during its heyday of the gold rush, boasting a population of 191 people, 190 nice people and one old grouch...so they say.

Another piece of history from the gold rush era is a place called the Ah Hee Diggings or Chinese Wall, about 15 miles north of Sumpter.  We hiked into the tailings over a precarious couple precarious bridges to tour the rock walls.

There are sixty acres of hand-stacked, winding rock walls constructed of placer mine tailings.  The walls were built by hand by Chinese miners who worked gold-mining claims fro the Ah Hee Placer Mining Company along a five-mile strectch of Granite Creek from 1867 to 1891.  The U.S. census records list 337 Chinese miners on the site in 1870, the height of Chinese habitation.

The area also had an intricate ditches that supplied water for ground sluicing, hydraulic, and box sluicing.  All of this was done by hand.


We are heading north next to see grandsons Alex and Austin in Spokane.