Brief trip north

Tom,

Sounds like a nice spot. Will have to keep that in mind for our next trip to the northwest.

Tom,

When do you go back to Shauns to get your caninets installed?  Looking forward to some photos.

Ron

Shaun does the installation this coming Thursday. We have the 'before" pics, just waiting for the finished product to take the "after" pics.

Tom,

Looking forward to the photos.

I'm looking forward to the product  ;D

Had a couple of mornings fishing the Deschutes river near Bend, OR. This stretch of the river gets a lot of fishing pressure and it's also late in the season. The combination of these two means that the big fish are spooked and the only fish that can be easily enticed to grab a fly are relatively small. But the scenery and the ability to "wet a line" made this worthwhile.

Probably the best way to fish the Deschutes is via a float boat. However, you're not allowed to fish the Deschutes while floating, and have to pull over and get out of the boat when you're ready to cast a fly or lure.

This morning we visited a Beaver dealership in Bend and checked out the 40 and 42 foot Patriot Thunder and Marquis. The Marquis wins hands down and we took a test drive. We're going to check out the 45 foot at the factory in Coburg. The salesman was quite unique - he used to be the warranty and service manager for Beaver in Bend for 19 years before Monaco moved manufacturing to Coburg. This guy was very knowledgeable and not full of the usual salesman useless "tell 'em what they want to hear".

We then headed over the Cascades, planning to stop at either McKenzie Bridge or Blue River so I could fish the McKenzie River. It turns out that the river flows quite fast in these areas, and was not conducive to wading. So we kept going and are now back at Premier RV Resort near Coburg, OR.

The trip over the mountain was uneventful but spectacular. There was still snow on some of the peaks, as you can see from the photo I took from the navigator's seat.

When we stopped at Blue River I talked with a lady who was born there, but now lives in southern Arizona. She was taking photos of her birthplace. Interestingly, she was of Scottish descent and a couple of years ago had taken a trip to Scotland, Wales and Ireland. She'd been to the small North Wales town that has the second longest place name in the world (I used to think it was the longest, but found out a couple of years ago that a town in New Zealand has a name that's a couple of characters longer): Llanffairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwindrorbethllandysiliogogogoch and she was quite excited that I could pronounce it. She'd also visited actor Richard Burton's birthplace, a half mile from where I grew up.

Tom,

Llanffairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwindrorbethllandysiliogogogoch

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Does that have a translation of sorts??

Great picture, but doesn't the 'pilot' know you're not supposed to drink and drive?? ;D

Howdy, Tom.

Thanks for sharing your trip. The photos are gorgeous and Jack is drooling!! 

Marathon does a good Prevost conversion. I was told that they will build a double sidewall coach if desired. We looked at Royale, Country Coach and Liberty conversions. But I didn't like the CC's cabinets.

Thanks again,
Jack and Liz in HOT HOT  Houston, TX!

Karl said:

Does that have a translation of sorts??

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Yes it does. All place names in Wales are descriptive and typically have several words strung together. Another clue - the grammar is similar to French e.g. noun first, followed by adjective. The first word is "llan", which translates to church. The last word is "goch", which translates to red. Oh, I forgot, the first letter of some Welsh words mutate under certain circumatances. The Welsh word for red is "coch", which in this case mutates to "goch". Now you can figure the rest out  ;D

I wonder why the name is often abbreviated to "Llanffair P G" 

doesn't the 'pilot' know you're not supposed to drink and drive??

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LOL Karl. After posting that, I just knew someone would comment. Was going to go back and crop the photo, but was too tired.

Hi Liz,

Glad you like the photos. Tell Jack I'm sorry if they make him drool. I'm wishing our trip was much longer (so I could do more fishing), but it was planned around friends' schedules and some appointments we made for work on the coach were driving our return to Coburg.

Didn't realize Marathon would build a double walled coach. The sales guy might have mentioned it, but I was too busy drooling 

Well, Tom, You didn't come far enough north .  Also, this is not fly fishing.

We just spent a weekend (family reunion--sons, their families and our grandchildren) in Porpoise Bay campground, about 5km away from where we live.

Less than 100 yards to the right of the boat is a salmon spawning river.  They tell me, me not being a fisherman, that the salmon fishing from a boat such as that in the picture can be quite good.

Ciao,

Doug

PS:  The picture resized with the XP resizer didn't come down under the 256K limit, so in the end it's not attached.

Doug

We had hoped to come further north, but had to eliminate that part of the trip when our visitors extended their vacation by a week (so we left home a week later than planned).

Sorry about the size limit. Your resizer whould be able to make it fit.

OK, here's another try on the pic--used photoshop to save it as a JPEG--I think the resizer didn't work because I was applying it to my hardcopy TIFF version of the file.

Yes, You had explained earlier why you had to turn around before hitting the 49th--I was just intending to rag on you in a friendly manner .

Ciao,

Doug

Thanks for the photo Doug.

DougJ said:

I was just intending to rag on you in a friendly manner

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I know  ;D  and I was just lamenting the fact that we had an involuntary late start to the trip.

Tom:

Too bad you couldn't get further north in WA. This is the only place we have been in the past 7 weeks that the temps have stayed in the 70's most of the time, a couple of days in the low eighties and one day Seattle broke another record at 90. 8) 8) 8)

I checked out access to the Mckenzie and Willamette rivers in and around Coburg, OR. The Lane County park provides a convenient place to park and easy access to the Mckenzie, although I suspect it gets a lot of pressure on weekends. The park charges $3 for day use. Several other river access routes listed in guide books appear to have been blocked by new development/construction.

Following a couple of nights at Premier RV Resort in Coburg and a night of dry camping at Camp Davis in Junction City, today was installation day for our new desk and cabinets. Click here for details and photos.

While in Junction City we checked out the Country Coach Magna and Affinity models. They're nice coaches, with Affinity probably on a par with Newmar's Essex and Monaco's Signature. In this price range, the Beaver Marquis is still our favorite, second only to the Marathon Prevost of course  ;D

We're staying the night at Diamond Hill RV Park in Harrisburg, down the road from the Monaco service center. Not the best park we've stayed at, but it's close to Monaco and the price was right ($20/night). Their only discount is Good Sam, but I don't think several years of continuous junk mail is worth the GS discount.

We'll move to Camp Monaco tomorrow to await our Monday appointment for warranty work on the coach.

Tom,

I feel the same way as you about the GS mail but we rejoined and have not received any junk mail. Pat had an 800 number which she called a few years ago. We have not received any mail since then. Seems they even forgot to send us the renewal application! ;D

I am so impressed with Good Sam since Affinity took them over that if we were not already  lifetime members we wouldn't be members at all.  We became Lifetime members before Affinity got in the mix.

We started getting some VIP junk mail here in MT this year but haven't had any since I called Sue Bray again.

We could sign up for Good Sam's mail forwarding and tell them to NOT forward anything from Affinity. :