THE SMITH RIVER AND GRANTS PASS, OR

JULY 19-20, 2010

From Eureka we headed north on US-101 to Crescent City, where we gained the scenic US-199, heading northeast along the Smith River through Jedediah Smith Redwoods. It seems there are numerous State and Federal Redwood Parks as well as the National Recreation Area here leading to the border with Oregon and Grants Pass

beyond. Herding a large motorhome and tow-car through the 42 miles of woods and cliffs, ups and downs with curves and turns down to 20 mph can be quite a task and you will be on your toes the whole trip, but there is so much really beautiful scenery that it is worth the effort. (I was to learn something a bit later that was pretty scary.)


Our first stop in Grants Pass was at a well known RV shop that had installed some gadgets on our coach two years ago at Quartzsite which, although highly recommended by many reviewers on the internet, did not seem to offer much in the way of improvement on our coach; so after two years of wrangling they finally took the units off the coach and will refund our money. I was certainly impressed with the integrity of their company.

Just by chance we noticed a 1991(?) Revcon that had been bought in California by an enthusiast from the east coast and brought to the company for restoration of the chassis. We suspect this may be the coach built for George and Mary Gene Alder and stored In San Diego with Marty Moore------Could be?

But while there I noticed our LF tire looked to be very low on air. It turned out to be 40psi low, 55psi from 95psi! After negotiating the curves on US-199 I felt lucky that we arrived in one piece. Checking around in Grants Pass we could not find our tire size in anything but Nanking Tires, a Chinese brand with unknown quality, either that or a one week wait for Michelins, so we passed.

Somewhat discouraged, we headed for the local Elks Lodge where they have space for only two coaches. We lucked out and got the prime site with 30amp electric in a very nicely treed parking area. While in Grants Pass we took the opportunity to visit with Norm Balone and his wife Carol. Norm is an old friend from Bechtel Construction who worked with Fran and has retired to Ashland, OR, where we met for a very nice dinner and where we could chat and relive old times at Bechtel. It was really nice to see them again since it is so difficult to get together with them.

July 19 was the five- year anniversary of the loss our son Greg and a number of Greg’s friends and relatives gathered at the Evergreen Cemetery, Tucson, AZ, in a memoriam to him. “Hard working hands and a heart of gold” is from a poem written for him by his friend Truman. It is still my favorite remembrance of him.

Tuesday, we found that the Les Schwab Tire Shop who were the supplier of tires to the now defunct Country Coach Factory just a few doors away in Junction City would not be too far out of our way to Florence, OR. Since they specialize in RV tires and had a stock of the 275/70 X 22.5 tires in the Michelin XZA+2 Energy type we wanted for our coach so we made an appointment for 11am on Wednesday morning which meant we were in for an early start in the morning.

Meanwhile, we had an opportunity to visit with Carole and Joe Berenyi. Carole is the widow of cousin Fred Zaft who passed away in 1995. Carole married Joe and they moved to Brookings, OR, but found Brooking’s weather a bit too cold and windy so they moved up the hill to Grants Pass. This was our first opportunity to visit them in their new home where they graciously asked us to dinner where Joe cooked a tri-tip on his fancy new grill and Carole made a fantastic potato salad; that was a great dinner with old friends. It must seem that all we do is eat and talk and you are probably correct.

It looks like we forgot our camera for most of our visit so not many photos in this blog. It turns out that our LF tire was losing about 5psi per day so with the tire pumped up we would head out to Junction City in the morning.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Bye for now!