I am volunteering at the Glide Community Center one day a week to serve meals to seniors and help with clean up. It’s a fun group of oldies and with my white hair, I now consider myself to be one of them. One couple just retired from traveling around the country serving as hosts for the state and national campgrounds. They are settling in Glide and come to the senior noon meal every week. We exchange horror stories, of which she has hundreds more than I. It makes for an enjoyable relaxing few hours and I get some “me” time.
Back to Millpond, 30 minutes of snaking down skinny roads shared with huge 18 wheelers hauling 60 foot long raw timbers to the mills. In the opposite direction, the trucks return with rear wheels piggy backed, up the mountain to load more timbers. Thus far, they are better drivers than our campers who dash up and down the mountain taking up the entire road as they whip around the curves.
John and I take our cart down the hiking paths when we visit our neighbors and his tendency is to drive at top speeds to get to our destination. It is something akin to Mr. Toads Wild Ride without Disney’s steel rails holding the cart onto the road and John is grinning from ear to ear as he zooms down the paths. I hold tight to KatieBug so she doesn’t bounce off and jettison into the woods. As long as John remembers he is driving LilyPad and not the cart when we are on the road again, we all should survive.
On the way to neighbor John’s, we pass another swimming hole, then stop creek side to check on our recently purchased crawdad trap for the fifth time in two days, all futile attempts. Our first bate being a can of cat food with holes punched in the top, then bacon, neither catching anything more than leaves. We yank it up out of the water with plans to return it on our next trip to the big city, pleading false advertising. A few of our campers wade into the creek with tennis shoes, pick up rocks and snatch up the crawdads with gloves. No thank you. That looks more like painful twisted ankle than dinner.
Our early evening traverse to check the grounds pauses at the largest and oldest tree at Millpond, one they didn’t cut down in the 1930’s. This is KatieBugs favorite “sniffy” place. Millpond was a logging camp and decades ago they cut most everything in sight without thought to future needs. Now you can see the multileveled green of replanted trees sprawling across the mountains. Oregon replants and thoughtfully plans all logging. What they did not plan was this years massive destruction from wild fires burning out of control throughout the National Forests. If the burn continues, there will be a scarcity of timber to harvest 20 years down the road.
Waking up to another misty morning and a visit from Kenny, our maintenance manager, stopping by to check on the bat situation in the pavilion. The new bat houses should be coming any day and they will be mounted in the pavilion’s surrounding trees. Mr. Building-A-Better-Mouse-Trap guy is a story teller of gargantuan proportions and we look forward to his humorous engaging visits. After morning comedy time with Kenny and the maintenance crew, we all return to work. Back at the home site, a few persistent hummingbirds try to sneak by “Guzzler” for a quick drink.
This morning we pull up for a quick trip. It is measure-the-shocks-on-the-rig day and we are driving LilyPad back up over the narrow zigzagging road to Roseburg for the first step. Alaska did a major job of destruction on our motorhome. It was a trip full of things falling down, snapping off, road grime everywhere and LilyPad is in need of a major clean-up ASAP. Our pocket book is in for a severe beating as well. When we arrived in Roseburg, John’s “professional” said he was not comfortable measuring the shocks and wanted John to help. Excuse me? Not when we are paying the bill! He sheepishly directed us to a professional in Eugene, 78 miles further away from Millpond. When we arrived, their shop was full of buses of all ages getting new suspension systems and I was very much at ease handing over the keys. After measuring and ordering, when the shocks arrive, they will install them. Hopefully these new shocks will soften future bumps in the road.
Nice quiet laundry day and a quick mop for the bathroom floors. Big storm headed our way with high winds, lighting and hopefully, some rain. Moved Ribbit out from under trees and moved loose things into our site storage room. I am thankful that we are under cover as there are reports in Roseburg of winds up to 45 mph bringing down huge tree limbs. Some of our campers left for home, most just shrugged their shoulders and said “with the fires, rain is a good thing”. We waited up for the wind but it never came. By 11 pm the storm still didn’t find us and only soft rain hung around.