Bob and Camille - US Travels, 2010.

Aug. 2010 - Jan. 2011.

In late August of 2010 Bob and Camille began a five month tour of the United States prior to their cruise to New Zealand and Australia.  Via their EMail's, here's a bit of their details discovering several States including some of the Gold they've found.

    Leaving Florida.

We'll pick this up in PA with a weeks stay at the Gettysburg Battlefield KOA.

Sep. 15th - The campground was very nice with lots of shade.  We were only a couple miles out of Gettysburg and went to the museum for a full day and the battlefield for a full day with a CD tour we rented from the campground.  The following day we drove down to Harper's Ferry and spent the day.  We intended to do Antietam but learned in H.F that the 17th was the 148th anniversary and there were special Ranger walking tours.  The Ranger walk was about 7.5 miles split between the morning and afternoon and the theme for the walk was battlefield preservation and restoration.  There were about 125 people there for the event and we got into some areas of the battlefield that are not yet (5 to 7 years away) open to the public.  During the walk the Rangers would describe the pieces of the battle that occurred at each spot.  Standing on the ground and hearing what happened there is the best way to understand how it unfolded.  You understand how everything including the terrain affected the men and the plans.  You finally get it why units that were getting shot to pieces didn�t get any help.  No one could see their position or how dire the situation was.  If you hadn't thought about it, the 150th anniversary of the Civil War is just around the corner.  For 4 years the 150th anniversary of each event will follow the colander.  If you want to be a specific battle or event anniversary it�s a good time to start planning.  June 2013 would be a bad time to look for last minute reservations at Gettysburg.  Today's drive took us out of Pennsylvania into Maryland, Virginia, back into Maryland, West Virginia, then into Pennsylvania, we plan to overnight in Pennsylvania just south of Pittsburg, then

P.S.  Blue laws still exist in PA.  Don�t plan on buying beer or wine at the grocery or 7/11.  You have to go to the beer store, and they only sell by the case.  If you want a 6 pack you have to go to a bar or Maryland.   PLAN AHEAD!!!

    Harper's Ferry - first bit of color.

Sep. 25th - We made another milestone the other day and crossed the Mississippi River from Indiana into Iowa on I-280.  West of the Mississippi is one of our favorites.  Let me catch you up, we got into Ohio with nothing on our plate to do or see.  It seemed like there had to be something or why would anyone live there?  After some research we found the Hocking Hills State Park area south of Logan.  It's a pretty cool sandstone cliff region cut by centuries of water running thru the area.  There are multiple parking areas near the specific geological formations that attract people.  The trails are set up so you can hike the entire area from one parking lot or do a series of short hikes from each parking area.  We did a combination, parking at Cedar Falls and walking to Old Man's Cave along the banks of Queer Creek (gold bearing stream we couldn�t pan because it is in the State Park) and back along the rim trail to the old mill site above the falls.  Most of the creeks and falls are dry this time of year but the rock formations and cliffs are still impressive.  We spent two nights then started west again.

Indiana - No gold here either, We stopped for the night in Remington.  Other than that we saw a lot of corn and some wheat.

Illinois - We zipped straight thru without even slowing down for gas, we couldn�t find anything anywhere close to our route that interested us.

Iowa - A repeat of Indiana but just with different crops.  We got blown around by high winds from the south on the road coming into Des Moines and decided to break off our planned route and turned north along I-35 driving with a tailwind was a welcome relief.  The decision to stop and make camp in Story City was made mostly because it was getting late and driving into the night was not part of the plan.  We ended up spending two night to avoid some fairly bad weather.  Watching the radar it was apparent we made the right choice, north of us Minnesota was getting hammered with some record rains, as much as 10 inches in 36 hours with wide spread flooding and high winds.  We did get some exorcize walking into town and back, about 4 miles round trip.  The campground was very nearly deserted but had wifi that allowed us to do some fairly in-depth planning of the next couple of states.  There is no historical report of gold in any amount being found here.  No prospecting, yet!

    Crossing the Mississippi River.

Minnesota - After a two day break we opted to head north again with 20 mph crosswinds forecast along I-35.  The forecast winds were under the reported winds that made us turn north two days earlier and we decided to see if 20 was within our limits.  It's a good thing we had a contingency stop planned in the event 20 was too much.  We turned off at Albert Lea, Mn for the KOA campground and hunkered down along I-90.  I-35 is still closed from all the flooding north of here.  I'm not sure if the winds were higher than forecast or the report winds near Des Moines were under reported by we won't leave with that forecast again.  The farm roads here are set in a grid and we found another 4 mile walk for the afternoon, it's nice to get out and stretch the legs after all the driving.  Plans are for an early morning departure to head further west.  It was raining lightly when we broke camp and the temperature was 50.  If this keeps up, it may be time to break out some of the warm clothes.  Our favorite feature of the RV has quickly become the heated mattress.  The trip took us along a long stretch of crop land with a lot of corn and soybeans underwater.  Don�t short crop futures I think prices might be going up.

South Dakota - Ah, gold bearing state at last.  We have entered South Dakota with our eye on the Black Hills Region.  The welcome center was very helpful and we picked up a number of brochures for some pretty neat stuff to do.  We set up at the Oasis Campground in Oacoma, SD.

    Herding buffalo the modern way.

    Mt. Rushmore.

Oct. 20th - We have reached the west coast and turned left.  Yea, I know it's unusual for me to turn left but a right turn would put us in Canada and that's too French for me.  We were in Montana when we kept hearing from everyone, Yea it's nice today but tomorrow there could be a foot of snow here.  We kept seeing a bigger and bigger dusting of snow on the top of the Beartooth Range and began to worry about the trip over the Rocky and Cascade Ranges.  The trip over the passes was a couple of long days driving but not a big issue.  Once in Washington we spent a couple days with Camille's brother and sister in law and their kids.  The weather was fantastic and we got a couple days of outdoor touring of local sites.  Before we left we did get to see the Steelers beat the Browns in a local sports bar.  Getting south of Seattle is always interesting with the traffic in the area always a concern but we made it as far south as Mossyrock and set up for the last couple days to do some prospecting in the shadows of Mt St. Helen and Mt. Rainier.  No gold but some fantastic scenery.

    Mt. Rainier.

Several of you have asked about our travel trailer, so I have attached a link to the Manufacturers' Site .  We have a 19EXP (stands for expandable), I guess the 19L is the newer model.  It's not big by any stretch of the imagination but is large enough for us to have the room we need and still light enough for the Explorer to pull it.  (yes, our has the electrically heated mattress)

Tomorrow we start south again with our sights on Oregon and bunch of gold claims along I-5.  If there is ice in the water like the prospecting today we may head for the desert earlier than I thought.

Oct. 22nd - Well, there we were southbound on I-5 headed toward Portland, Oregon.  Things were going well when I noticed the little red light on the dashboard.  I know you are familiar with it, it says "check gauge".  Hummmm? What does that mean?  Checking the gauges I suddenly noticed the battery gauge was showing discharge.  That's not what it normally does.  An additional scan of the dashboard and Hmmmmm why is the temperature gauge going to the right, not that I have a problem with going to the right but my temperature gauge is supposed to go to the right.  I decided to pull off the road to the shoulder and consider the possibilities.  As I came to a stop, the strangest thing happened.  Steam started to come out from under the hood.  This lead to the inevitable, let's open the hood and see where that is coming from.  Sure enough, the steam was coming from the coolant reservoir.  Once again it dawned on me, That's not right!  A close examination of all that stuff under the hood and "Hey, isn't there supposed to be a belt on all those pulleys.  That�s right we had shed the serpentine belt that runs everything on the truck.  My next step was to extract my wallet from my back pocket and call AAA.  This is where it starts sounding like a commercial.  They answered and took my information and dispatched a tow truck, their next question, do you have a shop in mind or do you need a recommendation?  I asked for their recommendation and was given the name, address and phone number of a local AAA approved shop.  I called the shop while waiting for the tow-truck and they said they could look at the truck immediately.  The tow truck arrived in less than 30 minutes.  After we disconnected the travel trailer the faithful Ford Explorer went up on a tow truck for her first tow in her 179,000 mile life.  I rode with the driver and Camille stayed on the side of I-5 with our now immobile home.  A short drive through a rural residential area had us at the recommended shop.  The driver dropped the explorer and three mechanics swarmed her to look under the hood.  The initial evaluation was that the top pulley had sheared off and serpentine belt and pulley had fallen to the roadway while we drove.  The good news was the parts didn�t seem to do any damage as they unexpectedly departed.  Parts were ordered and work commenced, with the only concern being the condition of the threads where the top pulley bracket was supposed to attach to the engine block.  A scant two hours later the truck was repaired, test driven, and the repair bill delivered.  The total cost for the repair and tow, a mere $170.

    Bob with a different bit of Gold.

The call to AAA was at around 12:30 and by 3PM we were hooking the repaired truck back up to the travel trailer and we were again southbound on I-5.  OK, I know.  I tend to be a little critical, especially when it comes customer service.  But this was one of the very best experiences I have had in a long time.  So, if you don�t have AAA you may want to consider it.

We have arrived in Sweet Home, Oregon.  We are in the Foster Lake RV Campground and did a little prospecting today.  GOLD, there's GOLD in them thar hills.  Not a lot, but color in every pan.  Not everything you find is what you are looking for.  We are hanging out for a few days and watching the approaching weather fronts.  We are expecting a fair amount of rain over the next few days and are planning to stay put.  If the weather permits we will do some more prospecting and a few chores.  The big item on the agenda is the Steelers' game on Sunday.

Oct. 30th - We have left Oregon and are in California.  Prospecting in Oregon went well, we worked several claims finding gold in nearly every pan on both claims.  Now when I say gold in every pan I'm talking about a speck or more, up to a flake and a few specks in each pan. Although it doesn�t add up to being independently wealthy it's exciting to see a little "color" when you are panning.  If we had setup some equipment at either claim and worked a volume of dirt it would have been pretty exciting to see what we would have gotten.  We sat out some fairly heavy rain for a couple days then ran further south into California and setup the RV in Redding.  The weather still didn't cooperate with off and on rain keeping us close to the campground.  Finally over the rain, we ventured out to a claim with our rain jackets and went to work.  We did better cleaning out the cracks in bedrock in one day then we did in the two days in Oregon.  If I ever get a sunny day I'll try to get some photos of some gold to include.  The attached photo is one of the Oregon claims, even if we didn�t find any gold here (we did find a little), I think you can understand why we would drive way out in the middle of the National Forest to prospect.

    The views are wonderful.

Nov. 5th - Ok, I know I keep sending you places to add to your bucket list but trust me you need this one on your list.  It is Calaveras Big Tree Park outside of Arnold, Ca.  This places is amazing, I ran out of "Wows".  The trees here are truly something you have to see to appreciate.  I am hesitant to even include a picture because it does not do justice to a trees that are the largest living things on the planet, trees that have been growing since before Christ was born.  Trees that weigh more than 16 blue whales (largest living mammal).  I tried to photograph just the tree but with no scale you don't realize it's close to 300' high.  I tried standing in the picture but just disappeared if the whole tree was in the frame.  When I stand in the frame enough to be seen you only get to see the truck of the tree.  It is truly hard to fathom until you stand beside the end of a fallen branch from that tree that has been the end sawed flat and is taller than you are.  These are giant Sequoias.  There are some in other parks in California but most of those parks are so developed and busy that you don't get a real chance to walk up to them and touch a 2000 year old tree.  This park is under visited and allows you to spend the time you want to spend with these magnificent trees.  The north grove is near the visitor's center and is a short, very flat developed mile and a half trail that has both history and botany well documented and described.  The south grove is natural and has a 3.5 mile loop and a 5 mile loop that take you into the wilderness where these trees can be experienced the way they appeared to the first Europeans that discovered them in the 1850's.

    A little scale of just the root system.

Nov 6th - No, I didn�t find it.  It came out of a local gold mine near Murphys, Ca.  But when have you seen a 44lb, YES I SAID POUND, nugget?  This is the largest existing crystalline gold nugget.  When found gold was at $600 an ounce and the nugget was valued at $3,500,000.00.  It is on permanent display at Ironstone Winery.  It is the only thing in their museum you are allowed to photograph.  The first time I saw it was on "Gold Fever" hosted by Tom Massey.  The winery has a very nice tasting room and we bought 3 bottles of wine and then walked the winery looking at all the gold mining antiques scattered around the manicured grounds.

The history is well preserved in Calaveras County, we went hiking this morning to a natural bridge with a creek running thru it.  Then we toured Columbia, a historic mining town that has been nicely preserved and restored.  The blacksmith was in the shop making shelf brackets out of horseshoes.  A period stagecoach waited in the street hitched to a four horse team waiting for paying customers that wanted to jar their teeth in a very realistic trip back in time, at least from a transportation stand point.  The shop keepers all dress in period clothing and you can learn to pan from a local prospector at a trough full of water. We had lunch in Sonora at Outlaws BBQ (only mention it because they make one of the best BLTs, called Big Nose Kate).  On the way to Murphys we spotted a sign to a historic landmark, Mark Twain's cabin.  A short detour had us at the site of the cabin where he wrote the Jumping Frog of Calaveras County after hearing stories of the event at a local bar in Angels Camp.  This area was frequented by him, Bret Harte and John Muir.

The weather prognosticators are calling for 100% chance of rain for Sunday, so it looks like we may be doing some planning for our next move.  Pouring over maps and plotting the next set of GPAA claims to see if we can find a RV campground centrally located in the middle of a group of claims.  The storm that is going to keep us indoors is supposed to bring snow down to the 6,000' level here in the Motherload Gold County.  That will close most of the passes to Nevada at least until they can be cleared.  Southbound is starting to have a real appeal but not until after Monday night.  We found a sports bar to watch the Steelers on Monday, in Murphys.  It's in the Murphys Inn.  The Inn has been serving the public since 1856 and receives pretty good reviews.

    A bit of California Gold.

Nov 19th - We made it to southern California staying ahead of the bad weather. Seems like every time we are ready to pull up stakes and move the local weatherman starts talking about rain at our altitude and snow down to 4,000' or so.  We just left Lake Isabella after several days of prospecting the Kern River and a good bit of sightseeing.  It continues to amaze me that gold lives in such beautiful areas.  The prospecting was fairly productive, we spent two days crevassing and found a nice bit of color.

    A bit of California Gold.

    Here's the Kern River where the gold lived.

    It's not all hard work...

Nov 25th - We arrived in Las Vegas yesterday and will be here tomorrow for the brunch buffet at Bellagio.  Today we went to the Hoover Dam and took the tour down inside the dam to the power plant.  Vegas has so many things to do outside of the casinos in the Colorado River basin you could spend years here and never lay a single cent at risk on the tables.  I continue to marvel at the wild undeveloped areas of the west and encourage you all to travel.  Explore out of your comfort zone, see the country.

          Hover Dam.

Nov 29th - Even around a metro area like Las Vegas you can find wild places to go this is Red Rock Canyon.  We climbed Turtleback Peak and the spot is from the top.  It was a real climb 2 hours and 10 minutes up and hour and 50 minutes down.  Panoramic views of the National Wilderness area and Vegas in the distance.  There is so much to see here between the petro glyphs and sandstone monoliths that I cannot even begin to describe them.  The geological formations here defy reason.  The combinations of colors in the sandstone deposited here are as varied as an artist's palette.

    Fire Canyon State Park.

Dec 3rd - We rescued a few wild nuggets from a cold Arizona stream.  Sure we had to break thru an inch of ice to get to enough water to pan.  We worked the public panning area at ???? ????? Area near ???????? and had a little luck.  The attached photo is a look at what we collected from a couple days of crevassing.

Dec 7th - We made it to Tombstone and the Gunfight at the OK Corral.  Tombstone is a historic site with a real flair for keeping the history alive.  Most everyone working in town is dressed in period western wear, the main street thru the historic district is closed to motor vehicles and a stagecoach takes passengers around town.  The reenactment of the gunfight happens 4 times a day in the same alleyway where the OK corral was.  There are mannequins representing each of the participants standing in the exact spots where they were when the gunfight started.

Boot Hill is pretty interesting to with tombstones that read things like, "Here lies Les Moore, Shot 4 times with a 44, No Les No More".  We were only in Tombstone from about lunch time until they rolled up the wooden sidewalks at 5PM.  You could easily spend the full day there and not see everything.  We have added it to our return list with the intention to stay in the Wells Fargo RV Park right in town so we can do one of the ghost walks after dark.

Dec 9th - Today we went to the Queen Mine in Bisbee, Az.  The mine is a played out copper mine that produced copper, gold, silver and zinc for nearly a century before the valuable minerals were exhausted.  I'm curious if anyone can identify the use of this indispensable piece of mining history.   -------->

Dec 11th - Did you ever start a memorable time with the phrase, " Uh oh, what was that noise?? ".  Well, we have a few times on this trip and I am beginning to feel like they need to be told.

The first time: uh oh, what was that noise?  It was high pitched RRRRRRR!  Hmmm, a quick check of the gauges and I noticed the tachometer had risen to a very high 4,500 rpm.  That was quickly followed by one of my other favorite phrases: That's not right!  The longer we drove and the more often it occurred I knew something had to be fixed.  After taking it easy into Billings, MT and $2,400.00 later and three days in the Aamco repair shop and we were on our way, again.  Oh well, that�s the cost of doing business.

Uh oh, what was that noise??  A metallic sound followed by a slap and then nothing!!  A quick check of the gauges and check gauges light was on.  I continued my scan and I noticed the battery gauge was bottomed out, and the temperature gauge was quickly rising. Pulling to the shoulder and shutting down we immediately noticed the steam coming from under the hood.  I opened the hood and immediately followed with my other favorite phrase:  That�s not right.  The serpentine belt was gone - but I've already told you the rest of that story

Uh oh, what was that noise???  Honk Honk Honk!!!  It was a lot of honking and people pointing at the back of our RV.  We pulled over to the shoulder and walked to the back of the RV, only to find our bike rack had suffered metal fatigue and broken leaving the bikes dragging down the road behind our RV grinding the tires and rims down.  Again, I stated the obvious, That's not right!  A few minutes later we had untied our bikes, stowed them in the RV and removed the broken rack from its holder.  The next exit off the highway we located a charitable foundation and donated the bikes that had been on the back of the RV unused for a couple thousand miles.  And there was a dumpster that received the broken carrier.

Uh oh, what was that noise???? It was high pitched RRRRRRR!!!!  Hmmm, a quick check of the gauges and I noticed the tachometer had risen to a very high 4,500 rpm.  That was quickly followed by one of my other favorite phrases:  That's not right, again!  After taking it easy into Santa Clarita, Ca and three days later we had our truck back with the missing bolts from our transmission replaced and the fluids changed.  We were on our way again at no cost, gotta love nationwide chains and warranties.

Uh oh, what was that noise????? It was a rather loud Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!  No, really. A very loud BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!  We were hiking in the Saguaro National Park outside Tucson, Az.  I thought for a moment and you guessed it, That�s not right!  A quick look around, we were in an arroyo (dry wash for you non-international types) and upstream was a high cliff with a deep vertical crevasse. At the top of the cliff face I saw a very interesting swarming group of insects.  Lets reach deep into our metal resources, buzzing, flying, insects in Arizona?  Ah yes, Africanized honey bees. Lovely.  A short hike down the trail later we crossed the warning sign left by the national park service, "Warning, Africanized Bee colony removal in progress.  Stay clear."  We moved quietly and quickly down the trail surviving our first encounter with Africanized bees.

Uh oh, what was that noise?????? It was a strange humming sound coming from the RV as we set up in Benson, Az.  I thought for a moment yet again, That�s not right!  I began my inspection of the RV looking for the source of the offending noise.  I search low - nothing.  I searched high - wait its coming from the roof. I went inside to check with Camille.  Wait what is that blast of cold air?  Oh, air conditioning.  We haven't needed that in several months, you gotta love late fall in the desert.  Not every time Uh Oh is a bad thing.

Dec 21st - No that not Snow...

The white sand dunes of White Sands National Monument.

New Mexico is awesome, we found so much to do that it was hard to move on.  Happiness was not New Mexico in our rear view mirror.  We saw a very small swath through southern New Mexico along I-10 and had places to be that motivates us to move on.  But as we have found just about everywhere along our path we will be back to explore when we do not have a departure date looming.  Another truly unique and breathtaking landscape.

We have moved into Texas and are nearing the Houston area for Christmas with family, just two more days in Austin then eastbound again.  We have located a used RV consignment dealership in Houston that will be handling the sale of our RV for us after Christmas.  As it gets closer I am having mixed emotions about selling our new home.  It was a little hard selling the house in Orlando but already having the RV and knowing where we were going to be laying our heads at night made it easier.  But as with any adventure the unknown that lies ahead is a large part of what defines the adventure.  We will travel by car, driving our trusty Ford Explorer sans RV west to San Francisco for that looming departure on the cruise ship January 14th.  If I don�t get another email out before then Merry Christmas.

P.S. Uh oh, what was that noise?  It was the service guy at Jiffy Lube saying our coolant reservoir was empty.  I heard myself again, "That's not right!"  And of course it wasn't.  A quick trip to Pepboys for a gallon of antifreeze and a short drive down the interstate to build a little heat and pressure revealed pretty green fluid dripping from multiple surfaces under the hood.  Unable to find the leak and in short supply of a good work area led me back to the Pepboys service department.  3 hours and $280 later we were back on our way with the $6 hose installed way back underneath all that unknown but I'm sure very necessary stuff under the hood.  Well at least we weren't on the side of I10 somewhere between ??? and nowhere.

January, 2011

With the wave of a Humpback's tail, we're off on the cruise.

But thats another story...