2026 – Page 2 – Dan Leeth

Port Townsend

Dianne began the day with another soak in the hot springs pools, which we followed with breakfast. I had what was basically an Egg McMuffin made with a croissant and American bacon. Delicious.

We packed up, departed Sol Duc and headed off for Port Townsend, the northernmost point on our three-week adventure. Our route followed U.S. 101 around the Olympic Peninsula, passing mirror-smooth Crescent Lake on the way.

In Port Angeles, we turned onto the Hurricane Ridge Road and drove a vertical mile up into Olympic National Park. We parked above the site of the former visitor center (which apparently burned down). A bit farther up road, we parked, grabbed cameras and set out on a short walk up up the hillside to where we saw The Bear, our first bruin sighting of the trip.

He (or she?) was pawing the slope below the trail, no doubt trying to unearth former hikers he (or she?) had previously dispatched and buried there. We followed the rules and kept our distance, The Bear did likewise.

Back at the old visitor center site, we looked across at what one person promised was Mt. Olympus.

At one point in my life, I really wanted to scale that peak. I’ve long since overgrown such young and foolish desires. I’m perfectly content now to just sit comfortably in my car and look across at the summit crags and glaciers.

We continued on to Port Townsend and checked into our room at the Tidewater Inn. It was a nice place with a few rough edges, which gave it a pleasant, mom-and-pop feel. What we really liked was that unlike at Sol Duc, we had cell coverage and internet connections here!

A short walk from the Inn, the ferry to Whidbey Island docked. A romantic island getaway could have been a nice diversion for us, but we’re being that romantic on this trip.

Instead of sailing away, we walked up the road along the waterfront to the Betta Bar & Seaside Grill where we had, yes, more clam chowder.

Across from our balcony dining table, a small cruise boat was docked. All of those balcony rooms onboard looked so inviting, I actually thought about actually booking a real cruise sometime in the future. After bunking in 11 separate motels so far on this trip, the ability to just pack and unpack once seemed so appealing.

We were told by the restaurant staff that this ship (name unknown) just sails around Puget Sound and southern British Columbia. It’s not the Bahamas or Tahiti, but it still could be a nice getaway.

Gig Harbor

We had only about 60 miles to cover today, so we got off to a leisurely slow start…

…with breakfast at a nearby, waterfront restaurant.

Our destination was the little town of Gig Harbor located on Puget Sound not too far from Tacoma. Our lodging would be at the Waterfront Inn, a small B&B without the breakfast. Like with Grand Central in Ely, there was no onsite management. We were simply given a code to open our door.

The room was spacious…

…and we shared an entry lobby room that featured numerous nutritional items.

A large, shared deck offered waterfront seats, tables and seagulls…

…along with splendid views of the nearby harbor. I sat there looking at the pricey watercraft and wondered just where to do these people sail?

As someone who has lived most of his life inland, I find the coast to be mesmerising. I wouldn’t want to live here (the weather sucks), but I’ve always found oceanfront destinations to be appealing places to visit.

We reserved a table at Anthony’s – an upscale, harbor-side seafood restaurant located a block or two away from the Inn.

Of course, we ordered bowls of clam chowder…

…followed by salmon and a bottle of Pacific Northwest wine.

Dinner photographed and consumed, we walked back to the Inn, gazing along the way at the bounty of boats bobbing in the bay.

Our stay at the Waterfront Inn in Gig Harbor rivaled the Cannery Pier as offering perhaps the best lodging on the trip. It’s a place to which I’d gladly come back.

Silver Falls

Sunday was largely a freeway driving day. We left the Waterfront Inn and soon drove across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Today’s bridge is a replacement for the original span, which became known as Galloping Gertie.

On November 7, 1940, just four months after it opened, the original bridge collapsed due to “aeroelastic torsional flutter” caused by wind moving across the narrow solid girders. While no human lives were lost, a black cocker spaniel named Tubby tragically died after being left behind in a stranded car.

Fortunately, little wind was blowing when we crossed on Galloping Gertie’s replacement span and we had no dog with us.

Surviving the bridge crossing, we made the largely boring drive through Tacoma and down I-5 to Portland and beyond.

Following Subie’s command, we finally escaped the interstate and took off overland…

…and into Silver Falls State Park.

…where we had a small, cabin reserved.

Yes, a small cabin.

Cute and cozy, it did have a nice bathroom, although the shower was tighter than Superman’s phone booth.

After unloading our toys, we headed over to the cafe for a bite.

While dining, we listened to music the staff played on an actual record player. Yes, a record player! [Kids, if you don’t know what a “record player” is, please Google it.]

We had two nights here, and on our layover day, we hiked the Trail of Ten Falls – a pathway that would take us past each of the park’s ten waterfalls.

First came South Falls…

…where the trail passes behind the falls.

That was followed by Lower South Falls…

…and more…

…and more.

The autumn maples along the trail were just as appealing as the falls.

Suffering from the lingering effects of an old football injury, at about the five mile point I decided to cut my hike short and head back to civilization. At the South Falls Lodge, I boosted the Oregon economy by purchasing a delicious, locally produced, pain-mitigating, grain product. I immediately felt better.

While I was attending to my well-being, Macho Woman continued on, ultimately hiking past of all ten of Silver Falls waterfalls. Those LifeVantage activators she promotes must really work well.

After passing her tenth waterfall, Dianne met me at the South Falls Lodge, a large, CCC-built log structure worthy of a national park.

We drove back to our cabin. After showers in our micro-tiny, one person at a time shower stall, we walked over to the cafe for a delicious salad and flatbread dinner. Amazingly, we shot no photos of the food. [You’re welcome.].

Back toward Fruita

The exciting part of our trip completed, it was time to head for Salt Lake City and home. After brewing coffee and tea, we loaded the car and set off on a three-day drive towards home.

Outside of the state park, we passed Christmas tree plantations.

We drove across the Cascades, passing roadside rivers, dams, reservoirs…

…and autumn color.

With roadside rest areas rare, we drove to a small ski area…

…and a riverside lodge in pressing search for flushable facilities.

We made a few stops to photograph the scenery.

We spent the night at a Daze-in motel in Bend, Oregon.

I bought a bottle of Chardonnay and in our room we finally enjoyed the pound of shelled crab and loaf of sourdough that Dianne had purchased back in Port Townsend. Yummmm!

We get a free breakfast at Daze-In motels. At most of them, there’s a waffle-maker. This one had a pancake-maker.

We headed south out of Bend, heading for Nevada.

Back when we were crossing the Cascades, all we could see were trees. No views – just lumber. Out here, sagebrush (the Nevada state tree) covered the ground and we could look out and actually see the landscape.

We would spend the night in Winnemucca, Nevada, and on the way to our motel, we passed a Basque restaurant. We went in and enjoyed dinner in deliciously uncrowded conditions.

Of course, I started out with a Picon Punch.

The Picon Punch is made with Amer Picon liqueur, grenadine, brandy and sparkling water. The liqueur dates back to the early 1800s when it was created as a medicinal tonic and was regularly mixed into drinks for the local Basque population.

Basque food is typically served family style with shared serving bowls of soup, beans and salad brought to the table followed by each person’s individual entrée. While I opted for cow, Dianne went Basque sheepherder-style with lamb chops.

The next morning, we headed east on I-70 toward Salt Lake City. Clouds hung low on the eastern horizon.

Those clouds soon did what clouds are paid to do. They dropped water.

I was worried that we would be hit with precipitation along the coast or up in the Pacific Northwest rain forest. Instead, we experienced our rain in the Great Basin Desert.

Reaching Salt Lake City, I followed Subie’s directions to the Radisson Hotel downtown. There, Dianne would bunk for three nights as she attended a LifeVantage global convention.

I headed solo down to the Salt Lake suburb of Lehi where I had a reservation at yet another Day’s Inn. The next morning, I found that the motel’s free breakfast consisted of coffee and instant oatmeal. There was nary a traditional waffle maker to be seen. At least he coffee was good.

I continued down U.S. Highway 6 through the Utah countryside. The next few hundred miles were scary. I had only one female voice, (Subie, the GPS bimbo) telling me where to go. The other female voice (The Wife) was absent. For the final 250 miles, I would have nobody telling me what I was doing wrong.

Right or wrong, I made what I consider to be a mandatory stop in Green River…

…and had my obligatory bacon cheeseburger with fries.

Ninety or so minutes later, I reached Fruita,

…drove home, parked Subie in the driveway…

…unloaded all the crap from the car…

…and grabbed a cold brew.

There was no rush to put all our stuff away since Dianne wouldn’t be home from her Salt Lake City convention until sometime Sunday.

Across Nevada

After breakfast burritos at Riva’s Mexican Grill (which sits directly across the road from our motel), the second day of our Left Coast adventure involved a 300+ mile drive across the state of Nevada.

We were traveling on U.S. Highway 50, which decades ago Life Magazine declared to be the “Loneliest Road in America.”

It was Sunday morning and traffic was light with miles of open highway sporting nary another vehicle in front nor behind us.

The landscape offered strips of north-south running mountain ranges separated by wide-open valleys or basins.

Hillsides displayed slopes of dark barren rock occasionally blanketed with scattered patches of piñon and juniper trees.

The basins between the ranges were rife with sagebrush, rabbit brush and the occasional cow.

While I prefer slickrock canyons or glacier-clad mountains, I do appreciate the stark beauty to this part of the Great Basin Desert.

We stopped for photos on a hillside above Austin, Nevada. I watched as vehicles pulling travel trailers passed by.

While it’s nice to be able to sleep in our own little cabin on wheels, I was certainly enjoying not having to drag our trailer along on this trip!

We arrived in Minden, Nevada, and checked into our room at the Quality Inn motel. Unlike other Quality Inns, this one does not offer breakfast, the room lacks an in-room coffee maker, there’s no alarm clock and the shower-mounted shampoo dispenser was bone dry. Our quarters may be more spacious here, but I enjoyed the room at the Grand Central in Ely far more.

We hauled our toys out of the car, locked the room, and headed over to have dinner with the in-laws.

Some Days are Better than Others

We were meeting some of our old A-frame camper friends for a week of camping in Golden Gate Canyon State Park, which lies in the mountains above Golden, Colorado. We no longer own the A-frame, but we still love camping with our old friends.

Since we had not used the current camper for a couple of months, we arranged to take it down for a night in Robb State Park in Fruita to re-sanitize the freshwater tank.

I went out to start the truck and the starter wouldn’t crank. Dead battery. I pulled out our charger, topped up the battery and it started right up. I pulled the trailer down to the campground, filled the freshwater tank with bleach water and locked up the trailer. Back into the truck, I hit the starter and nothing happened. Battery was dead after sitting for only an hour.

Thinking there might be a problem with Tighty’s charging system, I took the truck down to the Nissan dealership. They checked it out with their state-of-the-art battery testing equipment.

and declared deader than a smelt.

So, I paid them for a nice new $500 battery. At least now, the truck worked, and I had only lost half a day of trip preparation time.

Plans were to get up with the sun, finish loading the trailer and take off for the hills by 10:00 in the morning.

We actually hit the road a bit after high noon. That’s when the next issue popped up. Our trailer tire monitors were not working.

Figuring it was just the button batteries in the tire sending units, we stopped by our neighborhood True Value hardware and bought four new batteries. I installed them all in the hardware store parking lot and the system still didn’t work.

It was now 1:00 p.m. in the afternoon…

…and we had a good five-hour drive to make it to our reserved campsite at Golden Gate Canyon State Park.

We arrived and found our campsite to be short and slanted with the starboard wheels 3½ inches lower than the port-side wheels. Adding to the problem was that the slideout had to fit into a tight space between a tree and the pole with the electrical hookup connections.

We positioned the trailer, placed stacking blocks under the low side wheels and slowly drove forward. The blocks slid, refusing to stay in place. We tried twice more with the same luck. It was now getting dark. We resorted to Plan B.

I fashioned a long ramp of blocks and drove around the block. Reentering our site, I pulled the trailer up onto the ramp. The ramp stayed in place and the trailer now sat nearly level left to right. We disconnected the truck, leveled the trailer front to back and turned in. Instead of devouring the planned bowls of chili for dinner, we decided to just nuke some popcorn and call it a night.

That’s when we discovered the microwave wasn’t working. It appeared to have no power. The trailer was plugged into 120-volt current, all of our outlets were working fine, and the microwave breaker hadn’t tripped. Threats cast and curses mumbled at the appliance did nothing to solve the problem. So, we just got out some crackers and cheese, opened a box of Argentine red wine…

…and vowed to make the best of things. Tomorrow will be repair day.

Repair Day

The first thing to fix was the microwave. I figured it was just a disconnected power cord, and after removing four screws and lifting the unit out, I discovered that was exactly the problem.

Dianne, being a member of the female persuasion, decided she needed to clean the dust off the top of the unit – the part that sits unseen inside of the cabinet.

I plugged the cord back into the outlet, lifted the now dust-free unit back up and screwed it black in place. The blue “clock” indicator light remained still lit, assuring me that it’s still plugged into the 120-volt outlet.

My next project was to see if I could fix the Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS). Our aftermarket, Tire Minder unit, is a four-part system. Sensors on the tire valve stems measure the tire pressure and broadcast the readings to a sending unit mounted near the front of the trailer. A receiving unit inside the truck receives the signal and sends it to an app on my cell phone, which screams at me if the pressure readings on any of the tires drops below a preset level.

I figured the sending unit near the front of the trailer may have had its power cord disconnected when I was working on some other electronics in the same compartment. Inspecting the wires, all seemed to be intact, but without my wiring tools and clips, there wasn’t much I could do. Repair of the TPMS will have to wait until we return home.

Next project will be repairing the large window blind in the dining room. These accordion blinds have been something of a hemorrhoid. I’d love to replace them with something different, but the wife seems to be not fond of that idea. We’ll see…

Done. Blind now stays up. At least it does right now. The strings on these accordion blinds break with regularity, so I suspect it won’t be long and I’ll be doing some more blind repairing.

Now, time to finish my coffee and contemplate what to fix next.

Hiking Day

It was Wednesday, our third full day in camp. Anything needing repairing today will just have to wait until tomorrow. Today, we were going for a hike.

Our destination was the remains of the Tallman Ranch, built in the 1870s by Swedish immigrant Anders Tallman. The total hike down the Buffalo Trail would be around four miles with 600-feet of vertical.

We drove Gap Road to the trailhead where road crews were out installing new washboard ridges in the gravel roadway.

The hike to the ranch was mostly downhill on what was once a road. Along the roadway, we saw gilded aspen and passed the unnamed remains of a former homestead.

A fork in the trail led to the Tallman Ranch, whose buildings are still remarkably well preserved.

The home was locked, but we tested the front porch swing…

…and walked down to a small dam-built pond that covers the Tallmans’ old potato patch.

We followed the Mountain Lion Trail back to the Buffalo Trail and began retracing our steps back to the trailhead. We tried to spot the Phillips Homestead which the Park’s Historic Places brochure indicated was in the area, but no luck.

We took it slow and easy on the walk back to the car. The foliage and the terrain provided a glorious setting for ogling the beauty of nature. I’ve often wondered if the pioneers who lived out here appreciated the setting’s beauty or did they only see the landscape as an array of obstacles to overcome.

A word of warning to anyone following in our footsteps. The park’s trail names are lies. Approaching the trailhead, we spotted a few rabbits…

but on the entire length of the Buffalo Trail, we spotted nary a single bison. We also failed to see a cougar on the Mountain Lion Trail, which was fine. Maybe tomorrow we’ll head down to the park’s visitor center and file a complaint.

Or maybe we won’t.

Rain Day

We woke up to the sound of rain.

In the olden days, we camped in our old pickup. It had a shell over the bed with a carpeted platform from side to side mounted over the top of the wheel wells. We slept on the platform, which with the help of Thermarest pads was comfortable enough, but we didn’t have enough room to sit up in the bed. Cooking was done on the truck’s tailgate. It was miserable in rainy weather.

Many’s the time in rainy conditions, we’d abandon our camping plans and head to the nearest motel.

But not this time. We’re planning to stay right here, snug and dry in our little trailer. We’ve got one bar of LTE cell coverage and plenty of beer, wine…

…and food to consume. My only worry is that at some time today, we may need to get Bob (our portable wastewater tote) down and drain our gray and black water tanks. That will come later this afternoon, after the dishes are done.

Oops

Friday was getaway day. We had a dinner to attend back in the Grand Valley, so we got up early, packed things away, hooked up the trailer and headed down the road to the dump station where we would drain our wastewater tanks.

We pulled in and lined up the wastewater outlet on the trailer with the sewer opening on the ground. We got out our flexible Rhino hose from the trailer and were ready to dump.

For those of you who have never had the “pleasure” of dumping sewage from a recreational vehicle, let me explain how it works:

In addition to a 50-gallon freshwater holding tank, our trailer has two 30-gallon wastewater tanks. One, designated the “black water” tank, holds water flushed down the toilet. The other, designated the “gray water” tank, holds water washed down the kitchen and bathroom sinks. Pipes from both meet at the sewer orifice, which is covered with a twist-off drain cap.

Pull-handle slice valves keep the wastewater from entering the sewer drain until the drain hose is connected. The procedure is to twist off the drain cap, hook the inlet side of drain hose to the sewer drain pipe, place the outlet end in the dump station sewer pipe and then open one of the slice valves. Properly done, it’s a clean, painless procedure. Of course, we failed do it properly.

For some reason, the black water slice valve on our trailer had somehow been left in the open position, which I failed to notice. As soon as I removed the cap to attach the drain hose, there was nothing to stop 30 gallons of black (mostly yellow) water from gushing out with force, which it did.

Uttering every four letter word I knew (and some I didn’t), I immediately tried to screw the drain cap back on. When that failed, I implemented Plan B and reached around to push in the handle to close the slice valve. That worked and the outflow finally stopped.

I could finally hook up the drain hose and properly drain the remainder of our wastewater. We hosed down the area as best we could, put everything away and headed for home with the odor from my sopping wet shoes making the truck cab smell like the back alley behind a homeless camp.

I’m very much looking forward to our next trip, which will be taken in the Subaru, not the truck.

Instead of bunking in a trailer or tent, we will be “camping” in rooms we’ve reserved in motels and hotels along the way.

No trailer leveling, no microwave repairing and no dump stations. I am so looking forward to the next trip.