Craig cooked us a lovely breakfast, including eggs from their own chickens, and then we had to get going as we had the whole of Washington to drive through, and a border crossing!

I resisted stopping too many times as we left Craig’s later than we should have done and we were on our way to stay with the Apperloos – Jayden and Leah’s family. For anyone who doesn’t know – Jayden and Leah are Leland and Sarah’s birth brother and sister who were adopted by the Apperloos. Unfortunately we knew that Jayden wasn’t going to be there as he had a camp already arranged for the weekend, but the twins were looking forward to spending more time getting to know Leah, who is now 9.

The journey was ok and we made up some time along the way as we got through Seattle quite quickly using their Express HOV lanes which saved us some time. We filled up the tank one last time to make use of the cheaper gas prices in Washington, and then headed for Sumas – one of the quietest border crossings in the Lower Mainland.

True to usual form, there was no wait there at all; basically 2 cars in front of us! I pulled forward, then realised just how tight the space was…. big RV’s should really go through a bus lane, but there were only car lanes open. After a bit of reversing, as I was about to hit one of the wing mirrors, I managed to make it through, but it was ridiculously tight and that made me annoyed that they didn’t have a larger lane open when they have no way of predicting the size of vehicles that will be coming through.

The customs lady let us back in (phew!), and we continued on. As the Apperloo’s live in Abbotsford, they’re only a very short distance from the border so we stuck to the back roads as we didn’t even need to get onto Highway 1, and were there pretty quickly.

Although they had already eaten, they cooked us some dinner and after that the three kids hung out while Müfit and I spent time chatting with Yolanda and Bruce. We didn’t get to bed until late as the kids didn’t want to go to bed! But I think we were all quite excited to think that this was going to be our last night in Al!

Reflecting on the trip…. it was great! It was very nice to wake up in different locations from one day to the next and to be able to work while looking at the ocean or something else, other than the usual walls around us. Müfit was successful in getting about as much work done as he had expected, and I actually ended up doing more than I had expected as I had a couple of clients contact me for work while we were away. The kids definitely didn’t do as much as they should have done – it seems they’re not as disciplined as we would have liked, as I think it felt more like a holiday for them. But, this does prove that Müfit and I can successfully work while on the road, so another trip in the future, maybe….? But perhaps not quite as long if both kids are coming with us!

We all seem ready to go home! We’ve been talking about it the last few days, and today will be the last day that we’re staying in an RV park as we head north, towards home.

The plan is to get to Portland to visit Müfit’s school friend, Craig, and his family, and to park Al outside their house for the night. We weren’t due to get there until after 4pm, so we’d found a museum to visit on the outskirts of Portland where we could kill an hour or so. It was the World of Speed Museum which has a focus on motorsports. Of course, being American, it was aimed more at American motorsport, so included Nascar and drag racing, which we’re not too interested in, but there was a feature on Mario Andretti and all the different types of cars he raced, including F1.

It was quite interesting, but not a very large museum. The highlight for Leland was getting to ride in a Nascar simulator!

After the museum we made our way to Craig’s. there are some quite tight roads around where they live so it wasn’t the easiest journey, and we were travelling in rush hour on a Friday, so not the best time to be doing it. I was worried that we wouldn’t fit outside his house but the space was almost made to measure, and being a quiet street we didn’t have to worry about Al, or anyone hitting him, even though it was a narrow street.

We last saw Craig and his wife Tania, on a different road trip, back in 2012 when their first daughter, Fiona, was only a baby and their second daughter, Harriet, wasn’t even born! Now Fiona is 8 and Harry is 5 and they were both lovely girls, happy to hang out with Leland and Sarah who seemed equally happy to hang out with them!

We had a very nice evening, with a tasty meal, and even the dogs had fun as they got to play with their dog, Coco!

Today was another work day as we’re staying at the same RV place, Sun and Sand. The weather was nice – quite sunny, but still cooler than we’d been used to the last 2 weeks, but staying in the RV and working it didn’t matter too much. Müfit and I took the dogs for a walk in the morning, and later on in the day we all went out again.

Having spent a bit more time here, Müfit decided it wasn’t amazing after all! The fact that you have to pay for showers and that the showers weren’t even all that great, put him off, but compared to other places, this was a fairly cheap RV park. It would still be a nice place to come back to to stay on the ocean side, if we do come down the Oregon coast again!

We were nowhere near highways or train lines, or anything else that made lots of noise, so had a peaceful night! It was just a shame that we had to get up and out of this campground much earlier than we would have done if we’d had an internet connection.

We packed up and drove over to the same day use area as yesterday so that Müfit could join his 10am call. We put the jacks down on the RV and extended the slide out so that we had more space in the living area, then tried to keep quiet!

He had another call at 11am as well, so around 12pm we left the day use area and joined back onto Highway 101 to make our way towards our next overnight stop.

When we came down through Oregon at the beginning of this trip, we drove all the way through Oregon in one day so didn’t really see much. I do remember that it was very windy as it was difficult driving in a straight line a lot of the time, and that wind still seemed to be present all along this stretch of the coastline. Although the California coastline is extremely scenic, especially around the Big Sur area, there are parts of Oregon that are very beautiful too, and quite similar, with cliffs, ups and downs, and winding roads.

There are also small quaint towns on the Oregon coastline, which you don’t really get in California. Yes, there are places like Carmel, but these towns in Oregon are even smaller and actually reminded more of the small fishing towns you’d expect to see on the coast of New England!

We stopped a few times, including a stop right by the ocean where we had lunch at Yachats State Recreation Area and did a little more work, then went back on the road. It was about another hour’s drive to the RV park, a place called Sea and Sand.

We had booked our spot here and opted for one of the cheaper sites that are close to the highway but have full hook-up. We could have paid a premium to have an ocean view, but we figured we’d already done that staying at Emma Wood in California, so didn’t bother. After we arrived and got everything set up, we all went for a walk.

There’s a very nice trail to the beach so there’s direct access from the RV park, and then you can walk back up some steps to the area where there are RV sites with the ocean views, so we had a look at these. All the sites, including where we are, are a bit on top of each other, but the elevated view from these sites was actually really nice, so much so that we said we might come back here one day and pay the extra to have the ocean view! The kids insisted on getting their feet wet, but Sarah – who had jeans on – got soaked, and managed to get Jasper soaked by a wave as well!

We woke to find that we were still shrouded in fog, so we had a chilly and damp start to the day. We packed up quite early (early for us anyway!) so that we could get somewhere that Müfit could do some work for an hour i.e. anywhere outside of the state park we were in.

As we were about to leave, the sun began to peak through, and by the time we drove out of the campground to Sunset Bay itself, the bay was suddenly completely clear of fog, so it was nice to get to see it properly.

We headed back to the town of North Bend (nothing to do with the more famous city of Bend, Oregon though!) which we had driven through yesterday, and parked in a Walmart. The kids and I went in to buy a few things while Müfit did a bit of work, and after an hour or so we drove further along Highway 101 so that he could join a work call in a nicer setting than a Walmart car park!

We found a county park with a massive day use parking area that was completely empty. This was great as it meant that I could have a little walk with the dogs, off leash, without having to worry about anyone. Müfit had his call and the kids did a little school work, then we had lunch.

After lunch we continued further north along the highway, stopping at Umpqua Lighthouse. There was a large enough parking area that we could pull off the road, facing the ocean, with the lighthouse behind us. This was apparently a whale viewing area and although I had my binoculars, there weren’t any visible whales!

We stayed here for an hour or so as well, again doing a little work. I got the blog up to date!

By this time it was getting close to check-in time for the state park we were heading to. It’s pretty annoying, and strange, that check-out time is 1pm and check-in time 4pm. What’s the point in them being empty for 3 hours? Do they go around cleaning each campsite every day?! Anyway, we didn’t have far to go and there was no rush, so we took a little detour off the highway and drove down into another park where there was access to the dunes, the beach and ocean. All along this section of the Oregon coastline there are massive sand dunes and it’s a popular place for dune buggying!

We took the dogs up this very steep dune and were greeted by some great views from the top. The ocean was just below so the kids ran with the dogs. Charlie made us all laugh… when he’s on snow he likes to run and roll in it, then take a mouthful. He obviously thought that the sand was going to be like the snow, and took a mouthful of it. Poor Charlie! He got quite a shock 😦

From here it wasn’t far to the state park, Jessie Honeyman State Park. We had booked a full hook-up site in advance so we knew we had a space, but as we drove off the highway and into the park, Müfit’s mobile data connection was lost again. He was mad (understatement of the year!). It’s very frustrating though – you had a good connection on the highway, but venture more than just a few metres off the highway and it’s lost.

We drove around to our site to check if we had anything, but it was very sketchy, so back out of the campground to the highway, across the highway, and into the day use area which is by a lake. Here we had a perfectly fine connection, so why couldn’t it work in the campground? 😒

We stayed here for a while as there were a few other things that Müfit had to get done. The bigger annoyance is that he has a call scheduled for 10am, so that means we have to be packed up and left our campsite and back over to the day use by 10am.

When we drove back to the campground we settled into our spot. We had an even larger site than last night which was very private as well, and there was a little trail leading out from the back of it. Müfit and I went out with the dogs, following the trail onto a bigger trail which led up onto some massive sand dunes.

The ocean itself is a long way from here but the dunes spread for miles. We walked around a bit and found a trail, then followed another trail but got a bit lost! Well, we weren’t exactly lost – we knew where we wanted to go but couldn’t find a way to get there so we trampled through some shrubs and found a steep narrow trail with a broken fence. We continued down and could see that we were coming out within the campground – it’s a huge campground btw – but then saw a sign pointing outwards toward the campground saying that the trail was closed because the dune was unstable. Whoops! There was no sign at the top! Anyway, we made it back in one piece 🙂

Packing up was interesting as we’d picked an area where the mosquitos never let-up. Usually mornings aren’t too bad, but these buggers were relentless, as Müfit discovered when he took the dogs for a quick walk!

The drive this morning was very nice, through the Umpqua National Forest. This place is what you expect of a forest; lush green trees lining the highway, and there were dozens of campgrounds, as well as picnic areas and trails. Müfit and I both agreed that this was somewhere we might like to come back to some time.

Tomorrow night we have a state park booked on the Oregon Coast, so Müfit looked for a similar place. There are lots of them, all along the coast, but access to the coast isn’t easy as there are only a couple of highways linking the coast from the I5. Anyway, he earmarked a few to head for, all in the opposite direction to where we need to go for tomorrow, but not far enough to be a problem.

There’s a few different state parks or beaches which are all part of the Charleston State Beaches/Park and one of the campgrounds is called Sunset Bay. Having had some quite nice sunshine, and a good internet connection on the phone, we headed to that campground and found that they had full hook-ups for only $31 which is very reasonable for full, and we got a nice space that felt like it even had its own little yard so we let the dogs run around a bit while we got everything set up. Unfortunately, the second we had headed into this park it got horribly foggy. The temperature had already dropped by around 11C between earlier in the day and when we hit the coast, and it dropped further. We felt like we’d come to England on a cold November day! Müfit was also quite mad to discover that the internet connection had disappeared. This wasn’t a major problem for tonight, but meant that we’d have to leave earlier in the morning because he had some work to do and a call.

We had a walk to the beach but couldn’t see much due to the fog. Funny how the climate can be so different in such a short distance – we could even see our breath, it was so cool!

So, we have just one week to go and we’ll be back home. We have survived with some blow-ups between us all, but it seems with one week to go the kids are getting a bit of cabin fever and we all had a major argument and screaming at each other match this morning. The good news was that this had been a surprisingly quiet spot (until we started screaming!) – because unless they were stealth trains, no trains went by the entire time we were there, and the highway was very quiet, as expected.

We had a plan for the next two nights, but decided to change plans slightly. We were going to visit Crater Lake National Park on Monday, but figured that we could manage the drive today instead, and head towards the Oregon coast a day earlier.

The drive was perfectly manageable. We got to Crater Lake NP sometime around 3pm, I think, and once inside the park the drive was up another hill via a winding road.

Crater Lake is renowned for being set in the clouds, so we obviously had picked our days well because it was perfectly clear. There were only a few high, wispy clouds, but basically a blue sky. As we got up to the main viewing area, we were very happy to see that the small car park actually had a designated bus and RV parking area – why can’t Yosemite do that, when Yosemite is a way larger park?! There were a number of cars parked in the RV spaces, which we weren’t too happy about, but luckily two cars moved in succession and we had a place to park.

Crater Lake is somewhere we’ve never been, so it was good to visit somewhere new, and with the weather cooperating, it was great to spend an hour or so here. The northern road had apparently only opened the day before, which was lucky for us as we wanted to leave by that route. They don’t plow these roads in the winter, so they basically cut through the snow to open the road, so we were driving past accumulated snow that was higher than Al!

After Crater Lake we headed into the Umpqua National Forest. We thought we’d probably boondock here as well, but it seems that not all national forests let you do this. I can see why they don’t in Umpqua because there aren’t really any minor roads off the highway, and they do have tons of designated camping areas anyway. We found a campground with lots of empty spaces, and parked up. Müfit paid the night’s fee – only $13 – and we would have spent some time walking around but discovered that this was mosquito-city! There were thousands of them, and they were hungry!

We spent about an hour playing the age-old family bonding game of hunt and splatter the mosquito, killing a good 15 of them that had made their way into the RV in the few seconds that we had the door open! Leland enjoyed the thrill of the hunt, but Sarah thought it was gross!

We weren’t exactly in the middle of a big city, but last night was the noisiest night we’ve experienced. Well, Long Beach was noisy but ok. Staying right by the ocean was noisy, but again, it was ok, but last night we had to have the windows open but there sirens throughout the night, people revving engines and driving like idiots, the guy in the RV next to us letting his dog out at 3am, garbage trucks collecting garbage at 5am…. I could go on, but those were the biggest disturbances! Needless to say, I didn’t sleep much as I’m a very light sleeper, and Müfit didn’t have the best night either, nor did the kids.

We left Sparks and continued to head north. Today was going to be basically a driving day as we had a fairly long distance to cover. We were planning to park up for the night somewhere within the Modoc National Forest, but weren’t sure exactly where. The road took us back into California, but all highways were pretty minor – usually one lane each way with passing lanes every now and then, so it was a fairly long drive as we couldn’t go too fast.

We stopped in Susanville for lunch and made it through to the Modoc National Forest in quite good time. We had pin-pointed a rough area to head for, where a dirt road goes into the ‘forest’. I say ‘forest’ because it was quite lacking in trees – it reminded me of the New Forest as there were some clumps of trees, but mostly it was quite open. So we drove along one of these for a bit and decided to turn back around and try another. We headed down for a few miles but just couldn’t find any bits where we could actually pull off the road and be out of the way. So I had to do a three-point turn on what was essentially a one lane road, but I managed!

We headed back towards the highway, and settled for a spot which was just off the highway plus there was a railway track just on the other side of the highway, so we really weren’t sure what kind of a night we were going have.

But it was quite a nice spot, and the highway was very quiet. It’s a minor highway that connects Susanville with Klamath Falls, so there’s not a lot of traffic. We took the dogs for a walk and discovered a nicer spot to stay by some trees, but got attacked by mosquitos so walked back to the RV and settled for where we were as there were far fewer mosquitos there! This is what they call ‘dispersed camping’ by the way, and it seems to be allowed in most national forests. You can park off the road, as long as you’re self contained, but if you want a fire or even to use an outside BBQ, you have o buy a permit for it, otherwise it’s free to camp. In Canada, one of the terms used for this is boondocking!

I got behind with writing and posting these again because we’ve not had good wifi connections the last few days, and we had the weekend off from working!

So, back to it! Today was just another working day. It’s pretty hot in Reno/Sparks so we had the A/C on most of the day, sitting inside Al and getting some work done. The kids didn’t venture out at all. I took the dogs out a few times as there was a smallish (though not as small as Long Beach!) dog run almost next to where we were parked, so it was good to be able to let them off for a bit, and I got some laundry done as well as we were running low on some things. All in all, an exciting day, not!!!

Although we couldn’t hear the highway traffic generally from where we were in the RV resort, we were woken by the sound of several sirens out on the highway, sometime between 7 and 7:30am, and then an emergency alert that came through on Mufit’s mobile around 7:30 telling us that the same highway (Highway 50) was closed due to an accident. We looked up where it was saying, and were very pleased to see that it was closed from the RV resort going south, not north – the direction we needed to travel. As we didn’t really get back to sleep after that, we got up after a while and took the dogs for a walk, walking down to the highway to see what was going on and to confirm what we’d heard, and sure enough, we had been very lucky as they were turning people around right at the entrance to where we were staying. It was sad to read later on that the accident resulted in a fatality, and that the person responsible for the accident was suspected of drink driving, at 7am. 😦

Müfit had a few calls for work this morning, so we didn’t rush out, and we didn’t have a long way to drive anyway, so there was no rush. We only had to go about 80kms / 50 miles, but we were planning to stop somewhere along the way and be tourists for an hour or so!

After leaving the lake behind, we headed to Carson City – the capital of Nevada – where we found much cheaper gas than we’d been experiencing in California. We filled up, bought a few groceries (again!), then found a park and parked up for lunch. After this we headed up hill to Virginia City.

Virginia City was one of several boomtowns from the gold and silver rush in the area. It was founded in 1859 and the population peaked at around 25,000 in the mid-1870s, so it was a massive place for the time. It had lots of saloons, obviously, but also churches, theatre and an opera house, so it was quite a sophisticated place! Today, there are still lots of historic homes dating from that time, and the main street has been kept pretty much as it was. We drove through the main street, looking for somewhere to park. There were signs overhead that indicated cars could go left to park, and RVs right, but whenever it said that it was pointing to an incredibly steep and quite narrow street that didn’t look at all suitable for something of Al’s size.

We eventually turned down a street further along and drove down – all the streets went down – made a few more turns, and settled for parking on the side of the road. We hadn’t realised just how far from the centre we had gone, so we had a long and seriously uphill walk with the dogs, but got there in the end!

We spent an hour or so walking around and going into some of the shops. We didn’t make it into any of the museums, because they were very unobvious, but it was fun to see the old buildings. The kids and Müfit bought a few things and then we headed back to a very hot Al, as he’d been sitting in the sun!

We didn’t have too much further to travel but did have to go down yet another steep and winding highway to get there. We’re staying in Sparks, just east of Reno for 2 nights at the Sparks Marina RV Park. It’s a nice place, similar to the one in Long Beach but bigger.