CXXXVIII

Oregon Hwy 138 is a scenic highway that primarily follows the course of the Umpqua River.  It runs from Diamond Lake in the Cascades, to the small town of Elkton, where Hwy. 38 can take you the rest of the way to the Oregon coast.  It joins the I-5 briefly at Sutherlin where we were staying for a week which made it easy for us to explore. 

The Rochester covered bridge

A couple of miles west of Sutherlin a short detour from Hw 138 proper will bring you to the Rochester covered bridge which crosses over the Calapooya Creek.  This 80 foot long bridge was built in 1933 and is still in daily use by the locals in the area.  Covering the bridges kept the sun and rain off the support beams and can tripel or quadruple the life of a wooden bridge.  Because of the endless rain here, covering the bridges was pretty standard and at one time there were more than 300 covered bridges in the state.  As wood has been replaced by concrete as the bridge building material of choice, that number has dwindled to about fifty.  Covering a concrete bridge is expensive and unnecessary.

In the late 1950s when urban renewal fervor hit the US, some of the powers that been in Douglas County felt that it was time to replace all the old wooden bridges with new concrete models.  Another covered span nearby got mysteriously torched one night and the locals around Sutherlin were afraid the Rochester Bridge might be the next on the list, so the community got out their hunting rifles and stood guard over the bridge at night.  The county commisioners decided modernization wasn't worth an armed stand-off and took the Rochester Bridge off the replacement list which is why we have it to admire today.  By 1969, preservation was more fashionable and the bridge got remodeled at county expense, replacing weather worn structural components to make it safe for another generation.

The Umpqua River

Beyond the bridge, Hwy 138 meanders through the hills.  We took it all the way to Elkton before we turned back.  Whenever I leave Southern California, it takes me a while to get use to how wet and green other places can be.  The road goes through a mixture of forests and farm/ranch lands that to my desert weary eyes were as beautiful as anywhere you could want to go.

The Winchester Dam with the fish ladder on the left.

At Sutherlin the 138 joins the I-5 for a few miles going south to Roseburg.  Along this short stretch it passes the Winchester Dam. This structure was built in 1890 and was originally only 4 feet high and made out of wood.  This was replaced by a 16 foot concrete dam in 1907.  The dam created a fresh water reservoir for Roseburg and was used to generate hydroelectric power until 1923.  Now it's not used for anything as far as I could find out, but it has been designated as a national historic site, so they can't just dynamite the thing. 

Ziva develops an interest in fish

In order for fish to reach their spawning grounds a fish ladder was installed at the north end of the dam.  By descending a nearly infinite number of stairs you can visit the ladder and view desperately horny salmon and steelhead trout through a couple of large plexiglass windows.  They also video the fish so some poor technician can count them and make notes about ID tags and predator scars and whatever else the fish and game biologists want to know.  I enjoyed viewing the fish for a few minutes, but being a professional fish counter sounds like possibly the most boring job on the planet.  I would think that after a month you would start talking to the fish.  After 6 months, they would start talking back.

Colliding Rivers

At Roseburg our highway leaves the I-5 going through the middle of old town  and heads toward the Cascade Mountains.  About 12 miles east a sign marks the turn off for the Colliding Rivers Visitor Center.  Here the Little River and the North Umpqua River meet head on before the now merged North Umpqua continues on toward the sea.  When there is a lot of water flowing it is apparently an impressive site but the day we were there it was pretty calm.  It is a little hard to make out from the photo but the view is from the top of the T with the North Umpqua to the left and the Little River coming in from the right.  If I had thought about it I would have taken a video instead.  I have trouble remembering all of the capabilities of my smart phone.

Lunch alone

We stopped at a roadside park to eat our picnic lunch.  It was right on the river, beautiful with grassy areas and about 9 or 10 nice picnic tables  And we were THE ONLY ONES THERE.  It's astonishing to me that places this nice get ignored, even if it is before memorial day.  Folks up here don't know how good they have it.

Hwy 138 runs on the north side of the North Umpqua River.  Immediately on the other side of the river is the North Umpqua Trail, a 79 mile trail for hiking, mountain biking and horseback riding.  Every 8 or 10 miles there is either a car or foot bridge across the river

Tioga Bridge

to provide access to the trail.  We stopped at one such, the Tioga Bridge, which was completed in 2012.  Formerly at this spot sat the Youngs Bay Bridge, but it was washed out during a flood in 1964. Given that the bridge sits about 100 ft above the current level of the river, that must have been some flood. The new bridge sits on the concrete piers left from the old one.  Interestingly, the wooden bridge was built along the side of Hwy 138, then lifted with a giant crane and set down on the concrete piers.  We crossed the span so we could say we saw the North Umpqua Trail.  We did not hike the 8 miles to the next foot bridge, though I think the dogs were up for it.

Rarin' to go.

There are supposedly a number of nice waterfalls within reasonable walking distance of the road a bit further up the mountain and our intention was to visit a couple of them, but as we moved deeper into the Cascades the sky got progressively darker and then started to produce some serious rain.  Did we let that stop us?  You bet we did.  We tucked our tails between our legs and hightailed it back to Sutherlin.  We were due to move out for the coast the next day, so waterfalls will have to wait for another visit.

Monaco Dynasty - Our New Digs by V. Rains

Shell shocked new owners in Tuscon

I kept trying to get Roger to write this blog but he just kept putting it off, saying that he was too embarrassed about having purchased this gigantic rig we didn't really need.  When he saw me taking pictures of our motorhome interior, which I was intending to post on my Facebook page, he decided I should write the Monaco post if I wanted one.  

Separate washer and dryer instead of a combined unit

When asked why we got this monster, Roger’s answer is that we don’t know and he's sticking by that statement but these are my thoughts as to why it happened.  Unlike our usual plan of attack for getting something new and expensive, we didn’t think this through at all ahead of time.  Our Allegro Open Road was only 3 years old and this one is 5 so it wasn’t that we wanted something newer.  However, the Allegro started falling apart just after the warranty was up at one year.  By getting a used RV supposedly the major kinks have been worked out. 

My excuse is that when we took our son Chris and his dog with us last summer the Allegro was very cramped and that cramped feeling never went away.    You see, the Monaco is 45 feet long with 4 slide outs.  The Allegro was 37 feet long and only had 2 slide outs.  The Allegro could only hold about 3000 pounds of cargo weight, including the two of us which is not negligable.  The Monaco is a diesel pusher and can carry about 10,000 pounds of cargo, although where we could stuff another 7,000 pounds I don’t have a clue.  The Monaco has more living space up top but less storage space in the basement. 

One of the two couches

The Monaco is more upscale than the Allegro and it feels more like “home.”  The Monaco has lots of carved wood, about the color of our antiques back in Redlands.  The 2 couches, the 2 cab seats and dinette are covered in leather, almost the color of the leather couch and loveseat in the front room in our Redlands house (now in our Lead, SD house.)  We lost a TV (which we didn’t watch anyway) and our fake fireplace.  I kind of miss the fireplace.  And while the couches in the Monaco are pretty nice, they don't really replace the La-Z-Boy recliners we had installed in the Allegro.

Giant shower (for an RV anyway)

So you are asking, if we don’t know why it happened, we should at least know how it happened.  I don’t really know the answer to that either, but I can more or less recall what occurred.  We were at the Escapade in Tucson, AZ, the Escapees yearly RV club convention, and we ended up parked right next to the RV show.  One day when we were finished early I asked Roger if he wanted to go look at the RVs.  He said "yeah, sure" and that’s how it started.  I remember saying to the salesman that we didn’t like any of the new RVs because we like the Allegro floor plan with 1 ½ bathrooms and a large shower in the bathroom in back.  The rest is a blur.  Yes, the Monaco has sort of the same floor plan, the “rooms” are just bigger.  Way bigger.

Do we like it?  Yes.  The ride is much smoother, quieter and more stable than the Allegro.  It has a lot more bells and whistles that mostly work.  It has a 500 horsepower engine so it takes a 6% grade up a hill towing our car at 50 miles an hour.  It has electrical strips under the tiles that heat the floor and, to some extent, the room.  It also has three air conditioner/heat pumps on the roof if you want to pay for the electricity to run them all. 

Full fridge and china cabinet

No measly 6 gallon hot water heater for this baby.  It has an Aquahot system that will provide hot water for as long as you want to leave the spigot open, as well as heating the interior of the coach when it is too cold for the heat pumps to work and the system will run using either electricity or diesel fuel.  The other nice feature is the residential refrigerator which holds about three times as much food as the one in the Allegro.  It can't run on propane, but this thing has an inverter and a huge battery capacity which should provide that fridge with AC current for about three days in a pinch, although we have no current plans to test that assumption.  If the batteries run low it will also supposedly start the generator on its own and recharge them, but that's another theory we don't particularly want to test out.

So is it worth the money we paid for it?  You'll never know because we aint sayin' how much we spent.  But it certainly seems like upscale living for the time being.  We'll have to wait and see what major disasters happen between now and  when we return to Jojoba in November.

Oregon SKP

Looks just like Jojoba... sort of.

The morning after Guys and Dolls, we packed up the motorhome again and drove north about 2 hours to Sutherlin, just north of Roseburg.  This is a small town with no distinctive characteristics except that it is the home of another Escapees RV park called Timber Valley that we wanted to check out.  They don't take reservations, but we had no problem pulling in and getting assigned a spot.  There was a slight problem in that when we got to said spot, someone else was parked in it.  But have no fear... there were maybe 20 or 30 vacant sites to be had, so they moved us next door to a lot that was currently unoccupied.

Timber Valley is set up similar to Jojoba Hills with members buying into the co-op and getting assigned 50 x 70 foot lots.  There is a Friendship Hall, except they call it a Clubhouse, with a library and a pool table.  They don't have some of the Jojoba amenities like a swimming pool or an auto shop.  But they do have large, lush grassy areas and the park is surrounded by forest on three sides.  Every place has its pluses and minuses I suppose.  If they had ping pong on the schedule we'd be tempted to move.

There is quite a bit of wildlife in the park.  Everyone at Jojoba is familiar with the cute little bunnies that hop around there.  Well, if you took 3 or 4 of those and squeezed them together into one animal you'd get a Timber Valley rabbit like this :

Rabbitzilla

There are also wild turkeys here to gobble-gobble-gobble you awake in the mornings, squirrels, quail and even the occasional deer passing through to munch on the greenery.  We've also seen some golden eagles in the area, but not in the park itself.  We have not seen any bobcats or rattle snakes.  But we have seen these:

Vicki wants one for a pet.

I'll take a snake any day over a 4 inch slug.

Historic Oakland - of no historic interest

About 3 miles north of Sutherlin on highway 99 is the even smaller town of Oakland with its "historic" downtown area which these days means a collection of old buildings where nothing of interest ever happened.  One such building is the old Becker Drugstore with its classic soda fountain.  The current owners bought it about 6 years ago, kept the soda fountain and turned the rest of the drugstore into a restaurant.  We stopped in one afternoon and had some ice cream.  The menu listed 20 exotic flavors but they currently had only 6 or 7 of them in stock.  I got a scoop of strawberry, Vic splurged and had a chocolate malt. The interior had really been done up nicely.  You get to eat in antique easy chairs.  That's a nice touch.  If it had been a little later in the day we might have seen what the food was like, but at this point I doubt that's going to happen.

Nine miles to the south is Roseburg, a somewhat larger town that serves as the county seat for Douglas County.  That's where you go if you want to do any serious shopping from Sutherlin.  It is the home of the Douglas County Museum where we spent a pleasant afternoon perusing exhibits of local history and natural history since Christopher isn't with us this year to whine about that sort of thing.  There were a lot interesting artifacts but they were not arranged in any particular order.  I like it when a museum has been set up to tell a progressive story as you go through.  This one was more haphazard.  The day we were there Smokey the Bear was visiting, but Vickie refused to sit on his lap, so I didn't take a picture.

Roseburg also has a rhododendron garden at a park along the South Umpqua River.  A couple of years ago we went to the one in Eugene which is quite a large showplace though the rhododendrons were rather past their prime by the time we got there.  The garden in Roseburg has much more modest aspirations, but at least the flowers were in full bloom, as you can plainly see.

Rhododendron

Rhododendron

Rhododendron

Not a Rhododendron

By the way, I forgot to mention that the Ashland post was the 100th entry for this blog.  It seems like some sort of minor celebration was called for but no one threw me a party or anything.

Bonus Pics

Wild turkeys milling about in our next door neighbor's driveway

Deer snacking at Timber Valley

Ex-drugstore in Oakland, OR

The old soda fountain, popular in the afternoon.

Interior decoration of Tolly's Grill and Soda Fountain

Portrait of Buffalo Bill Cody drawn on an unmarked piece of sheet

metal using a 22 cal rifle at about 20 feet in under 4 minutes by a

local sharp shooter in the early 1900s.

For the Jojoba Hills quilters - pioneer quilt made in the mid-19th century without any giant sewing machine