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For Judy and I, RV camping season is all year round.  In the summer it’s the Cascades and fishing.  In the winter it’s snow camping where we try to cross country ski.  But there are those times when the fishing is not good or the snow is not quite right and we are looking to get out of the Oregon rain.  One place we like to go is south on highways 101 and 1 to San Francisco.  We have done this several times as our youngest son Marty is in the Navy and was stationed at Monterey, CA for a couple of tours.  On the way south we would stop at a wide spot on Highway 101 near Stone Lagoon State Park.  This was one of the few places you could camp for free on the beach.  Eventually the State of California decided we were having too much fun and made it day use only.  But before that stupid decision, there were so many RV’s camped end to end that used this area to boondock that we began to call it the RV spawning grounds.  It was such a unique spot that we even used it for one of our group campouts with family and friends. On that particular campout, Marty and his wife Nikki drove up from Monterey to join us putting their tent on the sand just outside our RV’s door

During that campout, the surf perch and smelt were running.  This was an amazing and fun fishing time, well worth the cost of an out-of-state license.  A short trip to Oric, CA and we had our licenses and also got the skinny on how to catch surf perch from the lady owner of the local hardware store.  What she recommended was a perch jig which is a three foot section of leader rigged with two hooks and a pyramid weight at the end.  You bait the hooks with sand shrimp, clams or mole crabs, the latter of  which you can catch for yourself right on the beach.  These cute little guys live in the surf zone making their living by filtering sea water with specialized legs that look a little-frilly first baseman’s mitts, feeding in much the same way that barnacles do.  Unlike barnacles that are attached to rocks, mole crabs are fast little swimmers which follow the tides up and down the beach where they bury themselves tail first in the shifting sand.  They frequently get washed out by the breaking waves, after which they back stroke like crazy then dig like hell back into the sand as the wave ebbs back.  They manage to do this in an eye blink so their amazing antics are usually overlooked by the casual tourist playing tag with the same wave.  They had better be quick as a slow digger is an easy meal for a gull.  They had better be good swimmers as getting washed into deeper water means death by perch.  But as long as they stay on this precarious ledge between winged and finned death they seem to do pretty well for themselves.  As their numbers are near infinite, a minute or two of digging with my folding camp shovel in the wet sand above the surf and I was ready to fish.  

Now I am not much of a surf fisherman.  I don’t have the 9 foot long surf pole nor the waders to stay out in the splash zone and get washed away to sea never to be seen again.   What I do is wait till a wave breaks then run as fast as I can after it down the steep beach slope till I lose my courage at which time I cast my line hard over the next wave, then turn and run up the slope with my line free wheeling off the reel.  If I make it back out of the surf zone alive, I then take up the slack and try to hold the pole high up over my head so that the taut line clears the breaking waves.  If the surf is not too high and the pyramid weight is heavy enough, the weight will work its way into the sand behind the breaking waves and anchor.  When it works it is a beautiful thing.  When it does not, the line gets flattened by incoming waves, I don’t catch fish and get very wet.  

On that particular campout, conditions were perfect with my line just clearing the waves.  As each of these waves broke batches of silver smelt erupted into the air above the wave crest and fell haphazardly onto the back of the wave as it passed.  In the trough behind the breaking waves were harbor seals torpedoing parallel to the beach face, only having to keep their mouths open to fill their bellies.  It did not take long before I had my first perch, sometimes hooking two at a time.  Marty was fishing next to me having just as much fun.  Somehow he got the pole into Nikki’s hands, who being a city girl had not yet mastered the run-cast-run technique.  She soon hooked one and managed to reel it in.  Then, much to everyone’s delight, walked up and down the beach dragging the fish in the sand behind her trying to get someone to take it off the hook, which no one did as it was just too damn cute.

The spawning grounds did not have much in the way of campground amenities being essentially a wide spot on highway 101.  What it did have were portable vault toilets which Judy would use being as there were no pits underneath them.  Still I had to assure her that there were no beach snakes.  While there might be water snakes on the other side of the highway next to a small freshwater lake, the only way one was going to get into the outhouse was to slither out of the grass next to the lake, crawl across a busy highway, then after managing to trip the latch with its forked tongue to get inside it would have to intentionally crawl into a plastic vat of toxic blue chemicals.  Only a Trump voter could be that stupid.  

“Check it anyway” she ordered.  

So I, being the loving and obedient husband that I am, said “yes dear” as all husbands do who think the women ride the short bus when it comes to logical thinking.  That is why you almost never see a woman rise to a high office to become a “war president”, as they are generally incapable of understanding that sometimes it is necessary to kill innocent women and kids because some despotic leader wants the oil for himself rather than letting you have it to fuel your RV.  

The spawning grounds also had dumpsters.  I found this campground feature particularly useful as I had forgotten to toss shit from the previous summers camping trips which had been fermenting in the RV’s cubbies for a few months.  One of the items was our Wal-Mart BBQ, which had been sitting since the previous August hidden under a soggy Astroturf rug.  This might have been OK but I had also forgotten to clean it when I “stored” it.  The whole inside was fuzzy with green and white mold which is also, by the way, the unofficial flower of the State of Oregon.  Into the dumpster it went along with a plastic bag of cans which I had intended to recycle but was now afraid to open, a partial bag of damp cat litter, and a stack of last years Weekly World News minus the pictures of the page five girls.  I know I am pathetic but I just can’t resist headlines like “ET Endorses Bush for President” And what insidious bastards the ETs turned out to be, destroying this great nation of ours without ever having to invade. 

Into the dumpster the BBQ goes.  A few hours later as I am tossing the remains of our breakfast into the same dumpster, I am astonished to notice that the BBQ was gone.  While there is no doubt in my mind that given the amount of mold inside it that it might have been capable of some rudimentary form of locomotion, I sincerely doubt it could have managed to crawl out.  Somebody had dumpster dived and taken it!  Even the white trash of Waldport (my home town) would not have done this.  However, that evening when I returned with the dinner leavings, it was back pretty much in the same spot in the dumpster, which partially restored my faith in the intelligence of the RV community.

The next morning dawned bright and sunny.  Judy and I were up early digging at low tide for our supply of mole crabs to be used on the incoming tide to catch even more surf perch.  Judy looked up from her chore just as this large and frightening looking dog tongued her in the face.  Obviously the dog’s looks did not match its personality.  The woman with the dog immediately began to apologize.  As Judy raised her eyes to say it was all right, she found herself staring at the woman’s crotch which was inadequately covered by a leopard spot thong clearly visible and framed through a pair of see-through purple exercise shorts.  Judy quickly moved her eyes off the offending thong and up the woman’s body to find that she was now staring at what once might have been the biological versions of the Grand Tetons but had over geologic time eroded into gelatinous mounds which were barely concealed in a low cut swimsuit covered up by a see-through top.  Choking back a gasp Judy turned her face away and caught me still staring in awe.  Although this lady was well past her prime I, like most normal men are suckers for Sluts-R-Us outfits, and, being past 50, well past 50, my standards as to what fills out the outfit have slipped a bit.  Although inappropriately attired we had a pleasant conversation with her, finding out that she had just gotten the dog, a black and white purebred WTF and that she was a little worried about it as the breed has a fierce reputation.  I guess the lick sort of settled that question for her.  But all in all we had a nice conversation with her and the most recent guy she was shacking up with who was hanging on her like the stains on Monica’s blue dress.  It was going to be another  great day at the spawning grounds. 

Driving south out of Salt Lake City on I15 I discovered one more interesting tidbit about Utah.  They are terrible drivers.  Even though traffic was not heavy I was cut off numerous times for no apparent reason.  Although this happens a lot when you are driving an RV, the frequency of it on this section of road was extremely high.  Judy got on the CB and talked to some truckers who were complaining about the same thing so I don’t think it was just me.  

Since I am on the subject, a little advice to those of you who are not driving RVs.  It is not a good idea to tailgate, cut off, or hide in the blind spot of an RV.  You might get away with this with semi trucks as they are driven by professionals with years of experience and a special license to drive the big rigs.  Some of them have even gone to truck driving school.  RV drivers on the other hand have no experience.  Chances are they drive their rig just a few times a year and have learned what little they know of their craft by the seats of their zip-up-the-front jumpsuits.  Some of them are in their eighties and blind as refs at a Seahawk game.  Their left turn signal may have been blinking for the past 50 miles because they are planning on randomly turning left without looking at some time and for no particular reason. They often are driving well below the posted speed limit as their minds cannot handle speeds higher than 50 MPH.  Trust me, their rigs are faster than semi trucks, if they are going slower than the trucks it is for a reason, probably medical.  Pass with care as you cannot trust them to see you.  Their rig is five to ten times bigger than yours so if you challenge them to a highway duel, you will lose.  On two lane roads it is worse.  Sure the RV can go faster but on the curves all the canned goods fall out of the cupboards and that scares the hell out of fluffy, their little porch pisser of a dog.  And finally promise me one thing.  When one of the old farts, like myself, takes a turn out or finds a wide place in the road to stop and let you by, don’t acknowledge their courteousness by the one finger salute.  They were nice enough to let you pass safely and by doing a little wave or beep-beep you are encouraging them to pull off again when traffic backs up.  A little mental reinforcement at our age certainly can’t hurt.  

We left I15 and drove south along Utah Lake on highway 68, through some pretty pastoral country on a nice two lane.  The road connected with highway 6 then 50 as we headed east and up into the mountains.  We stopped a couple of times to view the scenery and wished we had planned for this to be a longer leg as it was an interesting country with lots of  rocks.  On any other occasion I would have stopped and enjoyed a few side trips, but we were headed to Lehman Caves which is just across the border of Nevada in the  Great Basin National Park.   Somehow I had talked Judy into having yet another cave adventure and I was afraid that she was going to figure a way out if I gave her any extra time to think about it.  The farther we drove into Nevada the more desolate the country became.  We were driving through a desert with no trees which only seemed to get worse as the darkness settled in.  Finally, well after dark, we turned off at the little berg of Baker, NV and began to climb up a narrow steep road into the hills.  It seemed to take forever and the higher we went up the cooler it got.  Exhausted, we camped for the night at a small campground well above 7000 feet in elevation and near the cave.    

The next morning we were shocked to find ourselves in a grove of aspens which had tuned golden in their fall glory.  There was a small creek running through the middle of the campground which was as cold and crisp as the morning air.  What a surprisingly beautiful little Eden after the hell of driving through the desert the evening before.  The day was stunning and the cave was a limestone wonderland.  Neither of us had been in a limestone cave before and it was quite an adventure with a tour guide who obviously enjoyed what he did.  The cave was an easy hike without the claustrophobic feel of the lava tube caves that I was used to.  Judy even enjoyed it, much to my surprise.

We reluctantly left the cave and the park before noon and began the drive back down the mountain to the desert below.  We were now on highway 50 known as the loneliest road in America.  It deserves that reputation.  We stopped for groceries and a fill up in Ely, NV and began the drive in earnest.  Mile after mile of sameness with occasional climbs up to passes over 6000 feet, a quick descent on the other side then twenty miles of straight road though the sagebrush flats below.  

Judy and I soon got bored.  We tried playing games like guessing how far it was to the next turn or pass, but you can only do that for so long.  Looking at the map we saw a “rest area” and planned a stop for lunch.  The rest area turned out to be a single picnic table without a cover and a couple of 55 gal barrels for garbage cans.  No phone, no trees, not even a vault toilet.  I guess you were supposed to do your business in the sagebrush.  We talked to a trucker who was stopped there and asked him how long he thought it would take us to get to Reno where my uncle Bob lived.   He said just a few more dreary hours of more of the same sameness. I had hoped that the “rest area” would have a phone so that we could call him to let him know that we were planning on being at his place a day earlier than we thought, but there was obviously going to be no phone for miles.  But much to my surprise the trucker said that he had cell service.

Cell service here!  No people, no trees, no water, not even a decent taco stand, but there was cell service! And this was in the old flip phone days!!  Must be something going on in this area that “they” don’t want you to know about.  Some secret military base with aliens.  They do have a road in this state called the UFO highway where there have been several “encounters” of the first and second kind.  Perhaps the name of that road was just a diversion.  This looked more like the kind of country you were likely to find aliens. Given a choice I would prefer to be abducted by the leggy Nordic blonde female type aliens but in the last few years seems like the most common alien were the grey guys with the bug eyes and anal probes.  Fuck that!  

I had recently read Steve King’s “Desolation” which was set someplace along this highway.  If the aliens didn’t get you then some possessed sheriff or something far worse would.  I motioned to Judy to get in the RV and we drove though the rest of the day and night.  Judy wanted to stop for the night a couple of times but I kept going, looking with haunted eyes in my side mirrors waiting for the funny lights to show up behind me, then raise over the MSP and suck our spines right out of our bodies though the air vents.  It was well after midnight when we pulled in and parked at Uncle Bob’s single wide, safe within the urban sanctuary of a trailer park in Reno, the biggest little city in the world.  I guess every city has to have a silly motto.

We spent a couple of nights with my Uncle Bob.  You might not think Uncle Bob much of a success in life.  He lives alone with an overly friendly pit bull in a single wide.  His marriage to Jean, who was the sweetest little old lady, ended after 30 years, producing only one offspring, a violent, drug using felon which I suspect did not help their marital situation.  After the split Bob moved to Reno and worked at a variety of low paying jobs like taxi driving, motel night manager, and casino cashier. These jobs are certainly below the dream he set for himself in his youth of being a neighborhood bakery/bread truck driver.  But WWII diverted him along a different pathway as it did with so many of that generation.  Bob served honorably in the Army as an airplane mechanic.  He had wanted to join the Navy but switched lines at the last moment when he realized that the Navy had faggoty looking uniforms that were not for him. He eventually settled down with Jean in Yoncalla, OR which you may be able to find on a map if it has not totally evaporated.  He owned and operated a gas station which had its heyday in the 50’s but went slowly down hill when the freeway bypassed the town and the saw mills closed.  

So it is understandable that you might think of Uncle Bob as a loser, but you would be so wrong.  When he moved to Reno in his late 60’s he had nothing.  He lived in the back of his pickup for a while but managed to find work and put a roof over his head.  He rediscovered his love of music picking up the sax after 50 years and ended up playing in a couple of swing bands and traveling with them to Europe and Australia.  Now well into his eighties he is about to give that up not because he can’t play, but because he has problems driving at night to band practice.  

Bob has always been a character.  His visits to us are entertaining and embarrassing.  He has a self deprecating type of humor, making himself the butt of most of his stories.  He regales us for hours with what happened in his youth, the time he owned an airplane, or when he passed out driving and woke up in the ditch, but managed to get himself out of it and back home. He has no sense of class structure.  He would shoot the same shit with a senator or an itinerant roofer and not know or particularly care about the difference.  

In a lot of respects he reminds me of his father, Clark, who I knew as Pappy.  Same kind of humor and careless hygiene.  Pappy, in his eighties at the time bragged to my mother that he was saving lots of money by not laundering his clothes or dishes with detergent, 

“Hot water works just as well as soap.”  

That was definitely the wrong thing to say to mom.  Bob’s trailer was a lot cleaner than Pappy’s digs but he could have done a lot better.  

We were taking him out to eat at a nice restaurant when the incident occurred.  He had a coughing fit on our way out the door, wet himself pretty good and did not tell us about it till we arrived at the eatery.  We offered to drive home and let him change but he insisted that we go in as he would hide it with his hand till we got in and the restaurant would likely be dark enough so that no one would notice and it would dry quickly because he was not wearing any underwear.  Now there is an image I could have done without.  Somehow he managed to pull it off, but I was a little disconcerted when he seemed to be wearing the same pants the next morning.  Yep, he’s Pappy’s son all right.  But all in all he’s happy, busy, active, knows no strangers, and thoroughly enjoys life.  Although I don’t see him a lot, I will miss him when he is gone as I suspect most of the people he knows will.  If that is not a success in life then what is?

After leaving Bob, we headed north though California and into Oregon on highway 395.  Turned west on highway 30 and spent the night in a little RV park outside of Paisley, OR.  Paisley is not much of a town but has a yearly mosquito festival that brings in the tourists from as far away as Valley Falls and Summer Lake.  The RV park was cheap at $10 a night, had full hookups and a turn of the century (20^th not 21^st) hot spring swimming pool.  It had seen better days but was reasonably clean and being it was late October we had the place to ourselves.  In the pool that evening one thing led to another so that both Judy and I will always think of that place with fond memories.  The next AM just before sun up and outside having a morning cigar, I was serenaded by coyotes which invisibly surrounded the park.  Each was letting their cohorts know where and who they were as each had a different howl.  After breakfast we went in for a final dip in the pool but found, unfortunately, that we did not have it to ourselves.  We put on our swimsuits in disappointed silence which did not last long as we had left them out to dry the previous night and the temperature had been in the teens.  We have driven by the same RV park several times since that initial trip.  RV park has upgraded since our $10 a night visit.  It’s now $50 a night and they have cabins for rent at $125 a night.  Time marches on, but not always for the better.

We were nearing the end of our vacation trek and the MSP seemed to still be running well.   Judy, on the other hand, almost got me killed.  We were just north of Paisley near Summer Lake.  It was deer hunting season and we had seen deer everywhere.  Even saw a few bedded down with a herd of cattle probably for camouflage.  Just past the Summer Lake Forest Service Ranger station was a car pulled off to the side of the highway with the door open.  Three intrepid hunters were stalking through the sage bush just a few yards off the highway.  Half squatted down with their guns swinging in arcs from side to side.  Just then one of them stopped and popped his head up over the top of the sage bush like a prairie dog peeking out of his hole to see if the hawk had left.  Judy riding shotgun started to giggle at these Rambo’s then yells 

“Run! Bambi Run!”  

She had forgotten her window was open.  Three guns swung 180 degrees all pointing at the MSP as I floored the gas in the ol’ gal.  To this day Judy loves to tell that story complete with the crouching and gun swinging visuals.  Personally I think having three high powered rifles pointed at you simultaneously by three novice and probably hung over idiots is not that funny.  Fortunately I had underwear on so that my Uncle Bob impersonation went unnoticed and I would appreciate it if you would not tell her about that part of the adventure.