Eighth Trip Update: April 12th - 17th

Hello all!`

Right now, Sunday, 17 May 09 at 11:30 AM we are at the KOA Campground in Cody, Wyoming, Rte 14/16/20, where we spent Saturday night following our full day at Yellowstone National Park (Old Faithful Geyser). Today our destination is South Dakota (Badlands, Crazy Horse, & Mt Rushmore. We are en route eastbound and we are homeward bound. Our planned route home is Rte 90 East to Chicago, IL; Columbus, OH; and Virginia. Our new projected arrival home to Alexandria, VA, is Thursday, 21 May 09. Our trip statistics follow to date:
* Depart Date: Sat., 4 Apr 09 (D + 47 days)
* Harvey-the-RV Silver Bullet Start Milage: 52,454
* Current RV Milage: 61,024 (D + 8, 570 miles)
** Last and best MPG to date was 9.5 mpg
** Worst MPG: 7.24 mpg
* Experience: All 4-Seasons (including a snow storm and scorching desert heat) -- "Priceless" -- Just What the doctor ordered... :-)

Blog & trip followers -- we want comments!!!! Please? :-0

Update - Tues., 12 May 09 -- California - Oregon to suburb of Seattle, Washington: On the 12th we left the Lakehead Campground in the Shasta Mountains and National Forest in California, and due north to Oregon, which we continued through nearly non-stop until Portland. We stopped in Portland around 4 pm to do a quick tour of the city. Portland is a very clean and pretty, but small city that seemed very nice. Surprisingly, Portland was empty, quiet, and devoid of the high population density and typical city hustle & bustle activity of a typical business downtown and waterfront area, especially so early in the later afternoon and early evening. However, the transportation system and small size of the downtown appeared to be designed for quickly and effectively moving commuters around and in & out of the city very effectively. From Portland we continued with a good bit of driving. We stopped and camped on the outskirts of Seattle late in the evening, and in the morning started our tour of Seattle.

Update - Wed., 13 May 09 -- Seattle to over Mt Baker and into Cheney, Washington: We started off the day (May 13th) by going straight to the icon of the city -- The Seattle Space Needle! We went to the top of the 502' spire to the observation deck. The 360% view of Seattle was incredible! We spent an hour or so before taking the elevator down 1-level below the observation deck to the 1-rotation per hour rotating restaurant for a 4-star dining experience of fresh Pacific Salmon for me (Shan) and and dungeoness crabcakes for dad (Scott). It's probably the most upscale place we've eaten the whole trip, and the food and view was great, albeit a bit pricey.

From the Space Needle we went to the adjoining Encounter Music Project museum & Science Fiction museums, both founded and owned by Co-founder of Microsoft Corporation (Paul Allen), who clearly needed a place to put all his invaluable collectibles and " priceless guitars." Moreover, the EMP museum had the most incredible historical collection of guitars that we'd ever seen!

The museums were outstanding, especially the EMP for a guitar enthusiast and "officionado" --like me! Seeing the exhibits on the history of music, guitars, and some famous artists like Jimmy Hendrix made quite an impression on me, as well as having expanded my knowledge and understanding of my primary musical instrument. Also, the EMP interactive exhibits were filled with actual instruments, and small recording booths for practicing and jamming -- dad and Icut our first CD!!! :-)

We didn't have as much time in the SciFi museum, but it had a lot of cool things to show. Namely a lot of Star Trek memorabilia. From there, we went to our final stop in Seattle. Leaving the museum in the typical rainy weather of the city, we took the monorail to a few short walking blocks to the Pike Place Public Market along the waterfront, which is famous for lots of fish, fruit, vegetables, but most known for the Pike Market "fish throwers"! We had a great conversation with some of the Pike Market Fish Vendors who tossed the purchased fish around like baseballs -- wow, what a neat, fun, and crazy place! Be sure to see the photobucket for these photos! We bought a 2 lbs fresh piece of Pacific Salmon, which we froze and transported to Cheney, Washington (suburb of Spokane) for our planned dinner the the next day during our visit the Schwalbe family.

From Seattle, we headed out of the city en route to Cheney and Spokane., Washington, on Rte 90 over Mount Baker (elevation 6,278' / Snoqualmie Pass elevation 3,022'), where the rain turned to sleet and then to a full-fledge snow storm. At the Snoqualmie Pass Summit, the temp dropped to a low of 33.6 degrees F, which wasn't cold enough for an accumulation or black ice on the road, but it definitely slowed us down to a crawl -- especially on the back-side of the summit. As we went down the back-side of the summit the weather returned to temperate -- 60 degrees F, clear skies, and dry -- very wierd! It was an experience to remember. We drove several hours more until we reached Cheney, Washington, where we stayed at the Peaceful Pines campground on Rte 904.

In the morning(May 14th), we met up with Scott's old buddy Professor Dr Steve Schwalbe, COL, USAF (Ret), who showed us around Cheney, central Spokane, and gave us a tour of Eastern Washington University, where he works on staff as the Study Abroad Manager. We headed back to the Schwalbe household in the late afternoon, had dinner -- the Salmon we bought at the Pike Place Market in Seattle -- and learned and played the Air Force renowed billiard/pool game "Crud".

We departed the Schwalbes and Cheney, Washington by about 10:30 AM on Friday, 15 May and drove to the Airstream of Spokane Dealership to pick up a few "Airstream-specific related parts" needed for maintenance, and some airtream memorabilia, hats, and stuff...and then took a "Airstream Promotion Photo"! :-) We then continued our eastward trek along Rte 90 through Idaho and into Montana. We drove all day and then diverted southerly along Rte 191 en route to Yellowstone National Park. At about 10:00 PM we stopped at the KOA and camped in
Bozeman, Montana.

On the 16th we departed the Bozeman KOA and went on our way to Yellowstone National Park. About 2 hours and more than a hundred miles later along Rtes 191; 287; and 20; we arrived and entered Yellowstone from the west entrance. We drove along the southern road to Old Faithful. The road twisted and turned as it paralleled the Gallatin and Madison Rivers. We stopped often along the Upper, Mid, and Lower Geyser Basins en route to Old Faithful to see, photograph, and hike to the hot springs, geysers, mudpots, and fumeroles along the way, which were simply beautiful. Along the way we also saw and had to stop for buffalo in the road, as well as to photgraph the herds of buffalo raoming freely in theri natural habitat. We also stopped to see a very large Black Bear that was about 50 yards from the road and giving everyone a great show. We also saw many other herds of elk and gazelle that seemed to follow the herds of buffalo. One of the hot springs - "Saphire Pool", was incredible. The water in the pool was the most pure brilliant shade of saphire blue that we'd ever seen. Also, the runoffs of hot water through the sandstone and sulfer around it created a barage of colors, from yellow to purple.

Around 4:30 we arrived at the highlight of the park -- "Old Faith Geyser". The next predicted geyser eruption was at 5:30 pm, so we did looked around the park center for a while before nature's show. The Geyser was really awesome, and went on for a good 5 minutes and it spewed an estimated 100 feet into the air. It was really spectacular and we got lots of video and photographs of the entire event that reoccurs on a regular cylce every 90 minutes or so.

After seeing Old Faithful, we headed out of the park and begain heading east towards the badlands. We drove until around 10 PM until stopping at the KOA campground in Cody, Wyoming, for the night.

From here we'll continue on east to South Dakota to visit our next destinations of the Badlands; Crazy Horse; and Mt Rushmore, which we expect to reach on Moday, 18 May.

Stay tuned for more.

New Pictures up on our Photobucket:

http://photobucket.com/airstreamadventurers

'Till next time,

Scott & Shan
PS: Leave us a comment to let us know you're there!