09-27-21 Sunday Mt. Rushmore Trip Day 27 Home Castro Valley CA

09-27-21

Homeward Bound

Castro Valley, CA

Jeeps at Home: 2

Drive Time: 3

Miles: 161

I woke up craving bacon so I cooked breakfast. I pulled Schwan's frozen biscuits out of the freezer along with egg patties. I put the biscuits in the oven and cooked the bacon. The egg patties I just heated in the microwave. Once everything was cooked we made our own breakfast biscuits sandwiches. They were pretty darn yummy!!!! Cleaned up the kitchen and prepared the coach for the road. 

We left Viña Castellano around noon today. It was a rough ride home. The winds on I-5 were crazy and I could see Barry was struggling and very tense. Plus the roads were really rough. We missed those nice highways we travelled across the 6 states we visited: Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska and Colorado. Other than the winds it was a boring ride, no new scenery to see which we commented on a few times. We made it home around 3:30PM. It took longer because of the winds, Barry drove slow and I'm glad he did. I thought we were going to be blown off the road a few times. 

It seems so sad to be home and kinda weird. It rained here this morning so things were still wet. We checked out our garden and we have tons of radishes to pick. As we were unpacking the coach all I could think of was the different areas we travelled to each day, the great people we met, the various campgrounds we stayed in, all the beautiful wild animals we saw and how vast our nation is. We only travelled to six states but those six states were huge for us. We had a blast and the 27 days we were gone went by so fast. 

We are already planning our next long jaunt but not until next year. Thank you to everyone that followed along with us. I hope we have inspired you to take a long road jaunt. Our country has so much see and is truly beautiful. 

Night all and Happy Jaunts!

Copyright © 2021 by Jacqueline Threet Henderson, Jacqueline's Jaunts. All rights reserved.

09-26-21 Sunday Mt. Rushmore Trip Day 26 Viña Castellano Estate Winery, Auburn CA

              

09-25-21

Viña Castellano Estate Winery

Auburn, CA

Harvest Host

Jeeps in Campground: 1 (ours)

Drive Time: --

Miles:---

 

We slept like logs last night. Had breakfast and took a great walk around the winery. The birds were active and we saw bluebirds. They were so quick I couldn't' get any pictures. We walked back toward the house to the pond area. What a great area. There are adirondack chairs and metal table and chairs all around the pond. There is also a dock and paddle boat at one end. The other end has a dock built out over the water with a bench and table. Such a great setting. I can see why it's a great wedding venue. Steve told us he would be setting up and serving sprizters, sangrias, and selling bottles and glasses of wine by the pond today. We're looking forward to that.  

You can see the cave entrance between the 2 umbrellas. 

Winery Entrance

We needed to find Tina and confirm which HH pad she wanted us in and confirm we can plug in for power. We talked about the wedding and she told us the other 2 HH guests texted her about the wedding around 11:30. They were concerned about the noise of the wedding. We didn't hear a thing. Maybe because we were further from the action. We walked back to the coach and moved it to the pad, leveled, ate something then walked back to the pond. Steve was set up and we bought a glass of wine, sat in the adirondacks and enjoyed the view. Steve brought his new puppy with him today so we got to play with her, Jema is her name. She's a 3 month old australian shepard and so fluffy. 

We decided to have sangria next and Steve added grenadine which made the drink slightly sweet. We both loved ours and sat down to enjoy the deliciousness. We decided to wander over to the cave and see if they had any trinkets we "needed." Nothing to purchase so we sat at a table on the hillside by the cave to finish our drinks. It was close to closing time so we finished our drinks and walked back to the coach. 

We decided to get the frisbee out and spent about 45 minutes throwing while the sun went down. It was so much fun. My arm will probably be a little sore tomorrow. The weather is cooling down so we went inside and got away from the bugs. What a great day. We did absolutely nothing and had a very relaxing day. Nice way to end our trip. 

Nite all!

Copyright © 2021 by Jacqueline Threet Henderson, Jacqueline's Jaunts. All rights reserved.

09-25-21 Saturday Mt. Rushmore Trip Day 25 Viña Castellano Estate Winery, Auburn CA

09-25-21

Vina Castellano Estate Winery, 

Auburn CA

Harvest Host

Jeeps in Campground: 5 from the wedding

Drive Time: 2 1/2 Hours

Miles: 161

Barry got up early this morning and helped Glen feed the alpacas. He got me up after and I dressed and went out to the corrals. Glen haltered one of the alpacas and I walked up and down one of the corrals with her. Glen likes to let people do this because this way the alpacas get use to being haltered. It prepares them for shows. The other Harvest Host couple also walked a couple of them. 

Carolyn in the turquoise shirt

Glen loving what he does

Glen showed us the different categories the animals are judged 

for at a show: the crimping of their fleece, quality of fleece, body conformation, brightness of fleece and a whole bunch of other items. Just like dog shows. Sounds so complicated to me. When you split the fleece down to the skin you can see how much crimping of the fleece is different on each breed. This is also where you can see the brightness of the fleece color. The fleece on different areas of the body are used differently. The top quality fleece is around the middle. 

He keeps the males and females in different corrals, except the crias, so that nature does not take its course. He doesn't want his heard to get out of control. One of the white males is the alpha male and he gets really excited when the girls get close. See the picture on the left. He's standing up on his hind legs. He's a very handsome male. 

One thing I found fascinating is alpacas don't have top teeth. They have a hard pallet. You can see it in the picture to the left. They crush or mash their food. Their diet consists of alfalfa, oats and beet pulp. The beet pulp is high in nutrients. Glen feeds them in the morning and evenings. They have alfalfa all day to much on. 

As you can see from this post and my last, we learned a lot about alpacas. They are very cool animals.

Our time at Sawdust came to an end and we had to get on the road. 

We headed toward California and over Donner Pass, highest climb was 7,239. Crazy climb for this 20 year old lady but she did it. This time the air quality was much better. The sky was blue instead of filled with smoke. I felt sort of sad knowing once we entered California we would be home in a few days. 

It was only 161 miles from Fallon to Auburn and about a 2 1/2 hour drive. We made it to Viña Castellano. We found Tina (the owner) and she pointed us to the area we would be for the night. The two normal Harvest Host spots were taken but we knew that. Plus a wedding was going on. We would move into one of the grassy HH spots tomorrow. 

The wedding was to take place a few weeks ago but because of the fires it was postponed. Because of this she forgot to call us but found room for us. It was OK. After parking and getting settled we headed over to "The Cave" for tasting. It's a man made cave built into the side of a hill. It was a great place to taste. They only have one white and I didn't like it much. But I did like there Rosé and Barry liked the Tempranillo. We bought a bottle of each. 

  

We got a dinner recommendation from Steve at the wine bar, and headed into Old Town Auburn for dinner. We found the restaurant, The Station House, with no problem and found parking. It was a busy place. We placed our order and sat down with our drinks. Our food came and it was delicious, a huge pretzel, caesar salad and brat corn dogs. The band playing was great and people were dancing and having a good time. I hardly remember crawling in bed. 

Good night all!

Copyright © 2021 by Jacqueline Threet Henderson, Jacqueline's Jaunts. All rights reserved.

09-24-21 Friday Mt. Rushmore Trip Day 24 Sawdust Alpaca Farm Fallon, NV

09-24-21

Sawdust Alapaca Farm Fallon, NV

Fallon, NV

Harvest Host

Jeeps in Campground: ---

Drive Time: 4 hours

Miles: 258

We left Ely before 11AM this morning. We drove the Pony Express Trail (US-50) from Ely, Nevada to Fallon. It's also known as US-50,  At times the stretch of the road is straight and goes on forever. No wonder it's also called, "The Loneliest Road in America." If you search Wikipedia for US-50 you'll see this road has quite a history. 

Barry says we passed through 6 mountain ranges today and the highest peaks ranged from 7,700 to about 4,400....up and down and up and down. 

Fallon is the home of the Naval Air Station Fallon-the Top Gun Navy Training Facility. We did see three military jets flying a formation then they each broke off as we entered the city of Fallon. The Sawdust Alpaca Farm is about 5 miles off US-50. Seemed like we were never going to get there. 

When we arrived, Glen the owner, waved us up the driveway and had us follow the gravel road around their house to the other side. They have 2 nice areas for Harvest Host guests. There was a guest in the other area. We could see the alpacas from the front window of our coach which was really cool. We parked, got settled, grab a cold beverage and met him outside. 

Our spot for the night

He gave us an awesome tour of the place. He let us into the corrals, talked about how they shear them, about the differences in their fleece, showed us each different alpaca breed and the differences in the faces. He told us they can be skittish and not to pet them on their head but they do like having their neck scratched.  We also met Abby, their Pyrenees Alpaca guard dog. She stays in the corrals with the alpacas. She loves to play with them and it was fun to see the interaction between them. 

Abby and she loves laying in a hole. 

This is Thunder

Thunder giving Barry a look!

At one point we were in the barn and Glen was showing us the shearing equipment, bags of fleece and the genealogy book he uses to keep track of breeding. The barn has an opening on both sides and as we were standing there listening to Glen I see an alpaca stick it's head through the open door, then another and another. The next thing is they were all coming into the barn and looking to see what we were doing. It was so funny. 

An alpaca is pregnant for 11 1/2 months. Can you imagine!? The babies are called crias and they are so adorable. They way between 15 - 18 lbs when born. Their business consists of alpaca sales, breeding services, products and farm tours. You can tell that Glen loves his alpacas and he knows them all by name. They are a small farm and have about 50 at a time. 

Carolyn is in charge of their small store. She does knit some of the products but most items are directly from Peru. They mainly sell their fleece to a mill in Pennsylvania. May is shearing month and they have two travelling people that come and help with the shearing. They also have about 10 other people that come and help with the process. I would love to participate and maybe next May I can talk Barry into it. Keeping my fingers crossed. 

Did some major shopping in the store and loved all the stuff Carolyn has. The sweaters are gorgeous and all the products are so soft. The colors are beautiful. 

We had leftovers from the Jailhouse Cell Block Steakhouse that was even tastier than the night before. After dinner Barry wrote in his journal and I worked on blog postings. Good night all and sweet dreams of crias!  Web site for Sawdust Alpacas - https://www.sawdustalpacas.com/

Copyright © 2021 by Jacqueline Threet Henderson, Jacqueline's Jaunts. All rights reserved.

09-23-21 Thursday Mt. Rushmore Trip Day 23 Ely KOA Journey Ely, NV

09-23-21 Thursday Mt. Rushmore Trip Day 23       

Ely KOA Journey-Great KOA with lots of Trees and very clean camp spots

Ely, NV

Site # 20

Jeeps in Campground: 8

Drive Time: —-

Miles: —-

Today is Nevada Northern Railway Museum Day. We slept in a bit and enjoyed the nice weather this morning. 

We headed for Ace Hardware. Barry needed a bolt for the Jeep. A bracket that holds the break line to the left front tire fell off somewhere. We also were able to find a taller step for getting in and out of the coach. This Ace Hardware was awesome. It had all kinds of stuff and was a pretty large store. I wish our Ace was like this. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Next was the Railroad Museum. It was only $6 a piece. The whole rail yard and area is the museum. It was constructed between 1905-06. The railroad to Ely was built to serve the mining area. Gold, Silver and Copper was discovered around Ely. The rail yard has earned numerous TripAdvisor  awards over the years. For my dear friend Renee Toomey it was was also used for Willie Nelson’s movie "Once Upon a Texas Train." It has been featured on The History Channel shows “Modern Marvels” and “American Restorations.” During the year they offer special train rides so if your going to visit check their list of events. They often sell out. 

We started our walking tour from the ticket office. We went into the upstairs museum. It has 6 rooms that for the most part were left as is when the railroad stopped serving the public in 1983. The history of the Nevada Northern Railway in Ely is extensive. We spent a bit of time reading the information in the rooms. This Velocipede was in the downstairs museum. I loved this thing. 

Machine Shop

The cool thing about this place is that you can walk everywhere. We went through the machine shop which is still a working shop. One of the train workers was there and answered our questions. The smell of oil, solvents  and diesel was prevalent. We could hear a train off in the distance that was getting closer. Soon we were able to see black smoke shooting it’s way out of the smokestack. The train worker told us it was Engine 81 coming into the building connected to the machine shop. We were standing right next to the track and he told us we only had to move back about 6 or 9 feet. WE COULD STAY RIGHT THERE AND WATCH THE TRAIN COME IN. Talk about exciting.

Machine Shop

Once the train was right next to us the engineer released more steam. We stayed as the engineers hooked up a caboose and pulled it out of the engine storage. What was even better was this was only the 2nd time Engine 81 was out. They have been working on her for 5 years so they could run her again. Today they were hooking her up to a few other cars and try to run her up the mountain. The first time they had her out was this past weekend. She was having trouble with slippage so they worked on her the past 4 days and now was the day for another test. We were the only people out by the tracks and felt fortunate to see this beauty at work. I’ve posted the video of her coming in and other photos. Here is the link to a video. You may have to copy and paste it into your browser. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L8OMJrhuic2oKMK1imLjEXl0ZqhAIW5P/view?usp=sharing

After Engine 81 left we walked into the building next to the machine shop. This is where they store the engines. When you stand right next to these beauties you realize how big they are. We were lucky enough to run into another gentleman and he spent about 30 minutes with us. We talked about the history of the place, the maintenance they perform on the engines. and how long it takes to tear an engine apart. Every 15 years they have to do this for safety and engine inspections. Fascinating conversation. 

Hot Day and lots of water needed

Freight unloading area

Engine 40

Snow Plow

              

We walked around a few other buildings and headed back to the ticket office where the gift shop was. Bought a few trinkets and headed out. On the way back we stopped at a store to see if they had some steps to get in and out of the RV and yes they did. 

We had dinner at the Jailhouse Steakhouse.  Our booth had jail bars in front of it, novel idea. Barry ate all his NY steak and I could only eat part of my 1/2 rack of back ribs. My ribs where so tender and Barry said his steak was very tasty. Our waiter, Roger, was excellent. The restaurant only has 11 booths and glad we came early, it’s a popular place. 

No fire tonight. We were tired and hit the bed soon after we returned. Enjoy the photos everyone. 

Copyright © 2021 by Jacqueline Threet Henderson, Jacqueline's Jaunts. All rights reserved.

09-22-21 Wednesday Mt. Rushmore Trip Day 22 Ely KOA Journey Ely, NV

09-22-21 Wednesday Mt. Rushmore Trip Day 22       

Ely KOA Journey

Ely, NV

Site # 20

Jeeps in Campground: 7

Drive Time: 4 hours

Miles: 240

Some facts we've learned on this trip:

1. Dollar stores are popular across the west, even in the smallest town: Family Dollar, Dollar General, Dollar Store
2. Bales of hay are stored round instead of rectangle. I read somewhere they wrap them in some form of plastic then the rain rolls off easier and keeps them dryer. The things you look up and learn when you're on the road. 
3. Thousands of farms across the west grow alfalfa
4. Cement trucks are built backwards
5. The stars are brighter in the desert

                

Our drive today was I-15 south then west on US-6. which took us across the flat desert. Miles of sagebrush and large areas of sand. Once in a while we would see a clump of trees and a house in the middle. It's hard to imagine what people do for a living in the tiny towns across these plains. Seems like it would be a very lonely existence. The foothill areas of the mountains are barren and 2/3rds  up the mountain is when the scrub trees start along with some kind of pine. 

The passes we travelled through took us from an elevation of 5,000 to 9,100 feet, up and down then up and down again. As US-6 took us through the flats and mountain passes the roads were excellent. We MAYBE saw 100 vehicles. So if this road is hardly travelled and is in excellent condition, I ask again, why can't CA maintain their roads. I know this part of US-6 looks like it was recently re-paved but I don't get CA. 

The drive from Payson, Utah to Ely, Nevada was actually a pretty one. There was so much to see if we had time to stop; Desert Experimental Range, Baker Archaeological Site, BLM roads, Ward Charcoal Ovens State Historic Park, Lehman Caves. I googled each of these as we were driving. 

See that road way out there? That was where we headed.

  

This is on the Utah side. 

We made it to Ely, NV around 3:30PM plus an hour difference in time. This is a nice KOA. Very clean and lots of trees. Our site is level so not much adjusting. The park is pretty full. We hooked everything up and put the slide out and took off for dinner. We went to a place in town called Rack's Bar and Gril. Barry had a Philly Cheesesteak and I had a BBQ Pork sandwich. Barry said his was excellent and the pork in mine melted in my mouth. AND --they had root beer. I was a happy camper. We went back to the campground and walked the park and counted 7 jeeps. Barry built a fire and we made S'mores and they were yummy. As I've stated before, Barry makes a great fire and we sat and warmed by the fire and talked about the Big Dipper, and stars. Love ending the day by a fire. 

                                            

There are little displays like this around this KOA. 

Tomorrow we plan to visit The Nevada Northern Railway Museum. Depending on how much time we spend there we may be able to get a bike ride in. There are trails behind the campground. 

Sweet dreams everyone!

Copyright © 2021 by Jacqueline Threet Henderson, Jacqueline's Jaunts. All rights reserved.