Well that was a much-needed vacation last week. We’ve had a trip to Yosemite scheduled all year, and it finally got here. We took off in the motorhome Monday afternoon, and made it as far as Merced where we parked for the evening in a Costco lot. It was… Tolerable. Factored into that rating was the camping cost, a grand total of zero. That came with a few caveats though, mainly the issue of triple degree heat and parking on blacktop. Wow it was hot. We loitered in Costco for quite a while enjoying their air conditioning, but when they closed it was back to the hot box. We finally had to turn on the generator in the middle of the night and run the a/c, it was too hot to sleep.

Tuesday we got up early, gassed up, and headed for Yosemite. It was nice to break up the drive a bit, because once we got in the mountains it was brutally slow going. For all their conveniences, the motorhomes just ain’t no sports car on the road. We got there though, in about double the time google maps quoted. We got all set up and went to enjoying the park, and were soon joined by our friends Ed & Kim. They’d flown into southern California for a wedding earlier, then rented a motorhome and drove up to the park to join us. For the rest of the week we did the camping thing; A few hikes, a few dinners, and no small amount of swimming in the river to cool off. The campgrounds were rather… “rustic” so we didn’t have any a/c. Seems to be a thing out there I guess. The views were great though, and the price was definitely right.

Overall a great trip, we both want to return. Probably in the fall sometime, when it’s cooled off a bit and hopefully isn’t so crowded. The new vehicle performed admirably aside from a few “quirks” which I guess just come with a twenty year old motorhome. We dropped it at the shop when we got back home and hopefully some of them will get worked out. Worth the drive for sure, even at the cost it takes to fill that beast up. We watched “Free Solo” when we got back home, and it was pretty cool to see all the places we’d just been. (And also a little nauseating watching that guy climb that rock… Holy smokes. That thing was huge.) Need to be quicker with the cameras too; We saw lots of cool wildlife but missed it all. We even got to see some bear cubs, hated missing that shot!

We are out cruising around the country again. I’ll probably keep things brief for myriad reasons. For one, I’m typing on my iPad which is a pain. For another, we’re hunkered down in a Costco parking lot in our motor home and I’m afraid of missing out on some action. Not sure what action happens in a Costco parking lot but I don’t want to miss it when it does. I just hope we don’t get rousted in the middle of the night by The Man, telling us to move on. I’m not entirely clear on the rules of motorhome slumming yet.

The weekend was relatively tame. Saturday I fired up my smoker and did a few pork shoulders for the trip we’re on this week. I got a new toy for the cooker, so I was pretty excited to try it out. It’s one of those fancy temp controllers; basically a fan that hooks up to the intake of your smoker, then cycles off and on to maintain whatever temperature you program. Overall, I call it a success. Hit a few snags, but it’ll go better next time. The biggest problem was when the battery died and the fire went out. No bueno. That cost me a few hours. Note to self, make sure batteries are charged when starting.

Sunday we hosted a brunch at the house. I feel like we’re really hitting our stride on the brunch front. We had biscuits and gravy, scrambled eggs, and bacon with not much effort or mess another couple brought some great corned beef hash so we fried some more eggs for that. Way too much food as always, but it was darn tasty. If I’d have been on my game I would have thrown together some kind of green Chile with the pork I cooked Saturday but I didn’t really think of it until everybody was gone. Oh well I’ve got several pounds in the freezer, next time.

And so ends my longest hiatus ever on this site. I’m sure dozens of my readers have stopped coming by and checking. I’m OK with that. Honestly I sort of thought I was just done with it. Hey, this thing has been running a long time though, it seemed a shame. Plus I just paid for three more years of domain registration. In retrospect, maybe I should have gone with the one year option. Oh well, hind sight and all that.

It would of course be impractical, if not impossible, to cover all our amazing adventures since Float Trip. Or “both of them,” or whatever. We had a few highlights; Our annual Bottlerock music festival, a few nice camping trips in our motorhome, a big BBQ party to officially unveil my new smoker… That is what comes to mind right off. I also very nearly, and very permanently, screwed up my website. I was “fixing it,” (not that it was broken, naturally,) and all of a sudden it was just gone. Quite gone. Just a blank white page where years and years of typing had been. Luckily, I have been very good about taking backups. The problem was, I didn’t really know how the backups worked… I just turned it on and left it, several years ago. Well, after some reading, I figured out how to do a restore. I picked a date in mid-May, clicked the button, and boom it was magically back. Whew. Back until I fix it again, I imagine.

I s’pose that’s about it. Another good thing, I have a lot of pictures to post. Hey, content is content. I think I’ll post a few this week, and a few next week, until I’m all caught up. I don’t want to overwhelm everybody with information overload.

I have been quite busy, so if this is a typically brief entry it is not for a lack of subject matter. My adventures kicked off a few weeks ago with a flight to KC. I tend to divide all my trips up into segments, so the first leg was a full day of travel to Kansas City, where I then picked up a rental car and headed over to pick up some camping gear from Donette’s mom, who was nice enough to fix me up. One of the things preventing my Float Trip attendance the last several years is the sheer logistical aspect; How do you take a bunch of camping gear on a six hour flight? Well, after evaluating my last two dozen floats, I decided I could survive with a few blankets and a cooler. Todd had rented a cabin, so that took care of lodging. After picking all that up, I headed over to Munkirs house to spend the night. We enjoyed a late dinner, then headed out to experience the Johnson County club scene. I had no idea there were so many all-night dance clubs in OP, it was quite a time. Or, we may have watched SportsCenter in silence… I can’t remember.

The next day, I got up ready to roll down south to the Float. Due to a minor miscommunication or a total lack of attention, it turned out Munkirs wasn’t actually leaving until Thursday. Huh, interesting. This was a small setback; I had my own car, so I just headed off by myself after first having breakfast at First Watch. I only mention breakfast because of my menu choice. I was dead set on biscuits & gravy, as they just don’t do it right in CA. Imagine my surprise (shock? horror? disappointment?) to find that all they had was gravy made with turkey sausage. Well, that’s what I wanted so that’s what I ordered. Please, midwesterners, never make fun of the admittedly sketchy NorCal food again. All my bragging about how superior the food back home is, all my whining about “this was so much better in KC,” the 1,000’s of statements about “If you want some REAL food…” undone with one unfortunate menu entry.

OK I’m tired of typing, let’s wrap this up. Float Trip was good, if a little muddy and cold. After that I got to spend a few days with my mom, including a road-trip to my sister’s house in Emporia for a fantastic Easter dinner. I considered that “leg two” of the journey, then after that I headed back to my old midtown stomping grounds to see my buddies around there. Our friend Susan was nice enough to get everybody together so I got to see them all in one fun evening. My closing leg was Tuesday, when for some reason I had scheduled a 7:30 PM flight back to Sacramento. I really have no recollection of why I made my flight so late. Historically I am more than ready to get back home after a week of traveling, so I know I wasn’t trying to stretch things out. It must have been $10 cheaper or something, who knows. At any rate, Brice came through with an offer to throw some ribs on his smoker and kill the day. That ended my trip on a high note, not to mention the ribs came out fantastic.

Well we have a new toy out west. Just what I didn’t need. We partnered up with another couple and went in on a ’98 motorhome. Our friends are the James, we are the Kenagys… Hence Janagy. Clever huh. Personally, I have never had much use for a motorhome, but I finally caved to the peer pressure. And, if I’m going to be stuck with one, this was as good as any. Let’s just say, it was not a major investment by any stretch. With that low upfront cost comes a few caveats though, as I’m sure anyone who has ever owned one can attest. All-in-all it is a good deal so far; Let’s hope it stays that way.

So, we picked up this 31′ beast a few weeks ago, then took a little time to find a storage spot ($$) and take care of banalities such as taxes, license, registration, ($) and new tires all around ($$$). We then spent a little coin outfitting it. It came with a pretty solid assortment of necessities, but we picked up a coffee maker, cleaning supplies, linens, area rugs, etc. Not too bad. Then, this past weekend, we declared it ready for the maiden voyage. We studied on the US map for a few days, researching road conditions, traffic studies, bridge heights, and mountain passes. Based on all this input, we selected a fine campground in Coloma CA. It really is a very nice campground; Lots of amenities, very clean shower houses, and great camping spots right next to the American River. And the real selling point for me, it’s about 18 miles from our house. Yeah, didn’t have to burn a lot of gas on this trip.

I’m going to declare the weekend a success. Granted, that’s without soliciting input from anybody else in the group, but this is my website and they don’t read it anyway. Another bonus of the campground, it was within walking distance of a few restaurants so we just went out to eat for the most part. We fired up a grill and did some chicken Saturday night, and reheated some biscuits and gravy in the motorhome, but the rest of the meals we headed “into town.” Had some really good food as it happens, too. The motorhome performed admirably. We had a little trouble figuring out the heat the first night, but that was a minor setback as it wasn’t cold anyway. As far as mechanicals, the only problem happened Sunday. We were sitting around enjoying the fine afternoon, when the springs on one of the leveling jacks broke with a bang that had me grabbing my chest like Fred Sanford. Luckily with my extensive military background in wrenchin’, I was able to diagnose the problem and provide a temporary fix. OK, full disclosure, a friend of ours who was also staying in the campground, and is a seasoned RV’er, crawled under it and zip-tied it up. Thanks Cindy. For the record, I was about to do the same thing.