April 7, 2008

Hello!

I am almost to the Holidays, I am sooo excited,
because there is so much to tell after the
holidays.

We drove up Rt 101 from Agate beach up to
Brookings, OR on Dec 13th. It is a beautiful
coastal road, very windy (long I, not short!)

Brookings is a harbor town in Oregon, about 13
miles north of the CA town of Crescent City. It
is called the Banana Belt of Oregon, because in
general the temperature is 10-15 degrees warmer
than say here in Ashland. It is also one of those
places in Oregon that you cant get to very
easily...from Ashland you have to drive 45
minutes north to Grants Pass, then go south into
California, then north from Crescent City to
Brookings, a two hour trip if you are not a crow.
Its that darn Coastal mountain range -dont ask me
if its the Siskiyou's, or the Cascade's...because
I dont remember!! They are big and they are in
the way! But oh so pretty.

And the redwoods are spectacular much of the
drive. There is a place on the way called "Trees
of Mystery". Which has all these "build-up" type
of billboards along the way..."Come to the trees
of mystery, you'll be glad you did, you'll be
sorry if you don't"....."The trees of mystery,
where you will discover the answer for
yourself"..

The billboards had pictures on them of cable car
like contraptions going up into the Redwood
forests, with question marks...spooky!

So we had to stop. I realized when we did stop
that Naomi and I had stopped there years ago when
we were driving from Acadia, CA up to northern Or
looking at colleges. I remembered this quite
clearly once we stopped because the place has one
of those giant statues of Paul Bunyon in the
front with his blue ox, whatshername, Belle?
Bluebell? Ollyollyoxenfree?

Well, I have to tell you that I leaped out of the
RV with my camera (the sun was all wrong of
course) to take a picture, because I am sure that
on the last trip Naomi refused to let me take a
picture of something so silly - and I snapped one
of Paul and then turned to take one of
Bluebell(?) and did a double-take, because her
head had turned into one of those Beetlejuice
heads, toy sized. So wrong! What the heck?
Where's her head?

I was so put off by her shrunken head that I
didnt want to take the cable cars into the
redwoods - I mean if that could happen to
Bluebell, what could happen to us? So we bought
some fudge, and a book about Paul Bunyan for "my"
first graders, and discovered that Bluebell's
head was "in the shop", and continued on our way
to Brookings.

We had a mission in Brookings, to discover how
much it might cost to live there in an RV. We
thought that a 2 hour drive to Ashland might be
the perfect thing. At that moment 3 of our
combined 6 kids lived in Ashland; Ken's daughters
Dylan, 10, and Morgan, 15, and my daughter,
Naomi, 20.

So we poked around, and discovered that we could
rent a monthly spot one block off the ocean for
$365/ month plus electricity and propane or on
the water for anywhere from $126 to $156 a week
including electricity.

We stayed on the water that night, at the Port of
Brookings Harbor RV Park. It was soooo windy we
thought Allie was going to blow away when we let
her out!

The next day we drove a couple of miles north to
Harris Beach State Park - which has to be one of
the nicest oceanfront parks ever. It was/is
$18/night and you can stay for 2 weeks at a time.
Unless you are a Park volunteer, and then you can
stay all summer or all winter!

During our travels we have discovered many of
these "workamper" possibilities....at National
Parks or State Parks or even privately owned
parks, if you are "acceptable" and your RV is
"acceptable" you can get a free site and hook-ups
if you commit to staying a certain amount of
time, ranging from 2 months to 6 months, and
perform anywhere from 10 hours a week per person
to 25 hours a week per person in labor.

Some of the positions sound like a lot of fun -
dress up as an 1800's lighthouse keeper and give
tours of a lighthouse....work in the giftshop at
Yellowstone....landscaping work....checking
people in to the parks...

anyway - it is something we had talked about a
lot. So we were keeping our eyes open for a good
place to apply....

Then we drove south to Crescent City to drive
north and west to Grants Pass then Ashland...we
arrived at dusk, and having made no prior
arrangements ended up at a place called Glenyans
RV Park. There was snow on the ground and it was
the coldest we had yet seen, 35 overnight! BRRRR!

We were parked next to this very strange, but
cool, looking truck/camper. There was no-one in
the office on our way in. We met the dog from the
truck/camper, but not ever the humans who lived
there! We stayed for a couple of nights, and then
moved to another location in Ashland!


We spent the next 10 days getting ready for the
holidays and our trip to Hawaii, where we were to
mmet up with Sarah, Zach and Courtney and Naomi
and Ross.

More soon! Love, Mindy