The Jet Set Betties

Sept 21

Matthew’s astrological sign is Cancer, the crab. He was born at sea level in in Newport News Hospital in Virginia. All this galavanting above 8500 ft is not befitting his design. He has been especially slow to acclimate this time through the high country, often realizing as he has a dizzy spell that he hasn’t inhaled in a while. Maybe his lungs just don’t feel it is worth the trouble of inhaling since there just isn’t any bloody air up here.

It’s time to move on from Ouray towards Paonia, CO. It is less than a two hour drive north, through ranches and small towns, to our campground…in an orchard! We’ve booked three nights on “Peach Lane” at Big B’s Delicious Orchards, 5 miles outside of Paonia. We find our spot (in spite of vague maps and lack of check-in procedures) and get moved in. The only problem is that not long after we arrive a big storm front is moving in, so we decide the easiest way forward is to head to the Chrysalis Brewing Company in town to seek shelter and maybe a beverage.

We are the only two folks there (granted, it is only 3:00 pm). As we grab premium seats at the bar, the rain really sets in. Our bartender predicts that soon the place will fill up with folks from our campground, and sure enough soon the bar is packed with parents, babies, and dogs. Later on some folks play guitar, and just when we decided we might look for a place to eat, someone sets up a grill under a tent outside and we have hamburgers and another round. We played Chick-a-pig, chatted with locals, and had an all-around great time.

Sept 22-23

Storms have passed, and we had a lovely sleep. Big B’s is quite a place! Lots of families are passing through on these beautiful fall days for the U-pick feature of Big B’s, the fun playground they have set up, and a nice lunch at their cafe.

Sunday is our day to explore the area, so we head out to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. It takes a few dirt roads to get us to the North Rim, and WOW what a crazy place! You’re driving along what appears to be flat open land, when all of a sudden you come upon a 2,000 ft vertical drop! This canyon is remarkable, and gives both of us the heebie-jeebies for that amount of sheer drop-off. We drive the North Rim road, take a few short walks to see the views, and then enjoy a scenic drive back to Big B’s, through more unexpected (although much wider) canyons.

It’s an easy-going couple of days, mostly enjoying the quirks of Big B’s and catching up on work and puttering projects.

Sept 24

It’s time to head to Palisade, CO to visit friend and former Sitkan Carolyn Servid. It is a short drive, so we linger at the orchard. Kayla clocks some hours, and Matthew works on the vent fan to fix a squeak. The Maxxair ventilation fan is an ubiquitous ventilation solution in the camper world. In general, if it ain’t an air conditioner bolted onto the roof of a camper, then it’s a Maxxair. They are remarkably efficient and quiet – until they get a bit of dust in them. Once that happens, it sounds like a gerbil is running on a wheel while beat-squeaking a disco song. Why, Maxxair, why do you make it so hard to service these motors? Matthew would gladly spend $50 more on the fan for you all to put a few extra parts in there to make disassembly and assembly less filled with cursing.

We had Bahn Mi sandwiches for lunch, using leftover ground pork from a delicious soup we made the other night, plus made with cucumbers and jalapenos picked at Big B’s. Fantastic!

After arriving in Palisade, we had a sweet evening with Carolyn – nice walk along the river, yummy dinner, and lots of great catch-up conversation. So grateful we were able to align our schedules and get a brief time with her!

Sept 25-26

We head out to Mountain Island Ranch to catch up with our friend Kenyon (another former Sitkan) and his incredible conservation efforts on 110,000 acres of ranch land. To get to Kenyon, you first have to drive through Colorado National Monument to the unincorporated “town” of Glade Park (which is essentially a few houses, a stark trailer that serves as the Post Office, and a minimally-stocked sometimes-open “store”), then 11 miles past Glade Park, and then 4 miles of dirt road. The Monument is stunning and full of more windy cliffside roads, and then things open up a bit again … but as you drive those last four miles, you’re starting to enter more canyonlands. We were able to make a quick visit out here last year and have been itching to get back ever since — it’s such a gorgeous area, and we’re so intrigued by the work that Kenyon and his wife Mary have been doing to instill conservation and restoration practices into this traditional ranch land. During our two days here, we have the chance to ask lots of questions as we drive and hike around the ranch. If you’re curious about what they’ve been doing and have 45 minutes to learn more, Kenyon just finished a film about the work they’ve been doing over the past several years.

We get to stay in their guest yurt, share dinners on the patio, and take advantage of his high-speed Starlink connection for a couple meetings. Plus, Kenyon has a really great music studio – we unpack all the Jet Set Betties gear and have an awesome night of rock ‘n roll.

Sept 27

After a slightly hungover good-bye to Kenyon (hey, this is the Rock ‘n Roll Lifestyle) we take the winding road through CO Nat’l Monument back to Palisade to pick up the camper, then over to Highline State Park (north of Fruita) to meet our Alaskan friends Becky and John!

They are on a trek to Durango (where we just were) and onwards, but we figured out how to cross paths for two nights of catching up. We’d been to this park last year, and had fond memories of the shady, grassy sites and the wonderful lake. That lake was going to come in handy because it was HOT! But of course, the Colorado State Park Service is in the process of draining the lake to combat zebra mussels. Rats.

Sept 28

We take a bike ride around the campground, and then in the full heat of the afternoon head to nearby Fruita for their Autumn Festival. At night we try to hold conversation amidst all the campers running their generators to keep their air conditioners running. Ahh – the great outdoors. No kidding – our neighbor actually ran a vacuum outside her camper for a while to get rid of the excess dirt.

Sept 29 – 30

Boulder Bound! We knuckle down and take the interstate across Colorado. Things got a little touchy around Glenwood Springs when we got boxed in at a gas station and then couldn’t find a fast food solution for breakfast. Backed up traffic in the mountains did not add to our joy, but we made it at last. We have a nice lunch with niece Kristina (she is at UC Boulder getting a grad degree in opera) then over to nearby Longmont to stay with friends for a few days. Sonja and Kayla met at Holden Village way back in the 1900’s and it was Way Past Due to spend more time with her and get to know her delightful family. We spent our first day with Sonja in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Oct 1-2

Back to Boulder to take a tour of the campus and take in a dinner on Pearl St. Next day Matthew gets the BettieMobile’s tires replaced and later we are treated to Sonja’s daughter’s high school band concert, plus a little family jam session afterwards.

Sept 7

For the first time in over three months, we point the car east. On the way out of Monte Rio we stopped at Penngrove Pub in … (wait for it) …. Penngrove! to grab a bite. That place has a cool vibe, well worth a longer visit if we are ever back in these parts. We hop on Hwy 12 to skirt Sonoma, and 121 toward Napa. So many grapes. We wind up retracing much of last year’s route. We go up a crazy high, steep, winding road into the Sierra Nevadas through Priest to find our campground in the tiny mountain town of Groveland, California. It’s a funky campground we found on Hip Camp – Farmer John fenced off a corner of his cattle pasture on top of a hill, scattered some picnic tables around, and installed a few propane-heated outdoor showers. Delightful.

Sept 8

Today was our Yosemite drive-thru. We hope for a National Forest site on the other side of the park, but they are all ridiculously small and mostly occupied. So, we head to the nearest town of Lee Vining and settle into an RV park just as the sun sets.

That’s El Capitan in the background.

Sep 9

Early rise, a mug of coffee, and a long drive into the sun across Nevada. We pass through Benton, which is not much more than a few run down ranch buildings and the old Benton Inn and Hot Springs, which has a few campsites equipped with private hot tubs. Next time!

We drive Hwy 375, the Extraterrestrial Highway as it goes through Area 51. Didn’t see any aliens but we did notice the few tourist traps capitalizing on them.

After 7 hours we pull into Snow Canyon State Park. Even at 5:00 pm it is HOT, so we drop the trailer and head immediately into town to find some AC and a cool beverage. Turns out to not be that easy to find a bar in St. George, Utah!

Sept 10-12

Hot hot hot. Good news (?) is that Kayla has lots of work to do, so we shelter in the St. George Library during the heat of the afternoon, then venture back to camp for a hike and dinner as the sun sets. Even in the evening you can feel the heat radiating from the rocks and asphalt well into the night. We actually forced ourselves out of bed early on two mornings for pre-heat hikes/bike rides. It’s a gorgeous canyon, and we had a really special campsite, but so intensely hot this week.

Sept 13-15

After four nights of hot desert in St. George we find a cute little house in Orderville that will give us a window AC unit and internet. We are in! The next day we have plans, but never leave the house. Apparently we are wiped out! On our final day we head to Kanab and spend the day at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary.

Best Friends takes care of 1600+ animals on 6,000 acres of canyonland – it’s truly amazing. They have their own RV Park, which would be worth staying in the next time we are through. You can volunteer to scratch cats for the day, or even borrow a dog for a hike or to stay overnight at your camp! Their goal is to get animals very comfortable with new humans and different situations so they are adoption-ready. They have an extensive rehab program for dogs that have been so abused or neglected that they can’t handle humans.

We also four-wheel just off the property to see a pueblo ruin and a hidden lake.

Sept 16-18

To Page, Arizona to catch a glimpse of the Glen Canyon Dam (and for a conference call), and then a long push to get to Durango, Colorado. We divert around a big thunderstorm, but inevitably it finds us and we are in a full deluge for our first night at a HTR Durango, a sweet and remote-feeling RV Camp about 15 minutes out of downtown Durango. They have full-on streaming internet wired from outer space. No heat radiating from rocks here – at night the temperature is in the mid-30’s.

Sept 19-21

We drive “The Million Dollar Highway” to Ouray, CO, elevation 7792 ft. Ouray (pronounced “you-ray”) is an old mining town nestled into a narrow canyon. The crazy thing is that our Forest Service campground, which is less than 1/2 mile from downtown as the crow flies, is almost 2000 ft higher than the town itself.

This is a town built on tourism, though it ain’t easy to get to, so these tourists are a more adventuresome stock: ice climbers, mountain bikers, long-haul hikers.

We are struck with how quickly we’ve moved from hot desert (at the “I hope we aren’t cooking our musical instruments” level hot) to the deluge of rain in Durango with near-freezing in the evening, to now having warm sunny days and feeling the air temp plummet as the sun sets beyond the canyon.

Next up we’ll begin a week of visits to a procession of dear friends further north. Then we begin our “Southern Decent” from 5000 ft down to the Mississippi Delta and New Orleans! More to come!

Aug 15 – Sept 7: Monte Rio, CA

Now that we’ve finally caught up on all those overdue quarterly reports, we can bring you up to date on more recent adventures – notably, our 3-week housesitting gig in Monte Rio, CA.

Last summer, when we envisioned what our travels would look like in 2024, we figured we’d be more focused on the east coast, given that we’d spent most of 2023 in the western states. But then, sometime in September, we got a text from Karen – the owner of the beloved alpacas and porch pig (among many others!) that we cared for last April. She wanted to know if we’d have any interest in coming back for 3-4 weeks in Aug-Sept 2024. What an honor to be invited back! But, wow, what a different plan that would be for this year. We told her we’d have to give it some careful thought … so we did.

Ultimately, we realized that this would give us a great opportunity to spend more time on the actual coast (which we really didn’t do last year – we were concentrated on points more inland), have more time with our music pals in Portland, get really serious about those McMenamin’s passport stamps, and have more time with this quirky menagerie we had grown fond of last spring.

The three weeks in coastal California were central to our entire plan this year – both in terms of destination as well as timing. We’re halfway through our 6 months on the road, and this was literally our turnaround point. When we left Monte Rio on Sept 7, we pointed the Bettiemobile east and started our 3-month return journey.

Monte Rio is a cute, TINY town on the Russian River, about halfway between Santa Rosa and the Pacific coast. The title of this post comes from the fact that all the roads in this area were routed around riverways, big redwoods, or sometimes it would seem just to add more curves.

Yes, it is THE Russian River familiar to wine-lovers. Our drives to and around Monte Rio took us past several wineries of note, and let me tell ya, the grapes are in season! So many heavy-laden vines!

We enjoyed many a bottle of the local juice, but we didn’t do any official “tastings.” To be honest, we didn’t do much exploring at all. Say what you will, chastise us all you want, but Karen’s house and backyard provided the respite we were craving. We did spend some time in the nearby towns of Guerneville, Duncans Mills, and Occidental, plus we made a quick day trip to the historic neighborhood of Santa Rosa. But mostly we enjoyed the animals, cooled down from the hot days in the unheated backyard pool (then warmed up again in the hot tub), made nice dinners, unpacked the camper and cleaned everything up, caught up on work and TV shows, and … just … chilled.

Labor Day marks an important anniversary for us. Three years ago on Labor Day we boarded a plane and left our home and community of Sitka to begin our current adventure. That is three years without a real mailing address or our own bed. Three years without the little things we gather and surround ourselves with that tell us we are “home.” I really miss my wok.

We have happily exchanged that life for the one we are living now – one that feels more borrowed than owned. The price of this adventure is learning to live without roots, and missing the day-to-day of Sitka and our friends and neighbors there. The rewards, as you know, are chronicled in this blog. We know we will return to our home port at some point. Yet as long the winds are favorable, we will keep sailing towards new adventures and think fondly of the things we left behind.

Hello dear readers. We need to bring you up to speed – if not up to the present day, at least to our present location! So let’s connect the dots between Portland and Monte Rio!

The series of state parks that we stayed in on the Road to Rio all had to be booked six months in advance. That took some planning, but was well worth it.

Aug 1 – 4 Nehalem Bay State Park, OR

As the rest of Oregon was heating up into the 90s and beyond, we headed coastward. We watched Twyla’s thermometer drop 30 degrees as we approached the Pacific. Wow! Our first in a series of Pacific Beach State Parks was Nehalem for four glorious days. It has a good campground with decent sites, though there isn’t much vegetation between them. Beach access was easy, and there were some nice paths and trails. This came in handy one day when the wind was severe on the beach. We just took a nice trail to the bay side of the park and nestled in.

Aug 5-7: Bullards Beach State Park; Bandon, OR

A little further south along Hwy 101, still in Oregon, we arrived at Bullard’s Beach State Park near Bandon. Here the sites were far more secluded, and the bathrooms were tidier – hats off to good camp hosts! It is a short drive to the little town of Bandon. It is a beachy-tourist town, but somehow hasn’t given itself completely over to it (I’m looking at you, Cannon Beach). One afternoon the beach was so cold and windy (this is while the rest of Oregon was suffering a heat wave) that we holed up in a few dive bars and watched the Olympics.

We happened to be in Bandon during their semi-monthly sand labyrinth – what a treat! A group of local artists create a gorgeous sand art labyrinth during low tide, and the public has a chance to walk through it for a couple of hours before the tide comes in and washes the canvas clean.

All in all: Bandon was a huge hit with us! 5 stars!

Aug 8-10: Sue-Meg State Park; Trinidad, CA

Continuing on Hwy 101 into California, you come to Sue-Meg State Park (FYI Meg is pronounced “May”). Hahaaaa wow, this campground was kinda weird. As you’ll see in the captions below, we had a really lovely short stop here last year, and it was high on our list of places to return to. We booked a site for 3 nights, but it was in a very different part of the campground, down the hill from the cliffside, and it was a completely different experience. Most of our stay was foggy and very damp and quite chilly! Not all that appealing to be outside. Plus our neighbors were super loud, and the nearby bathrooms were pretty spartan. Fortunately we could set up our tent and turn on the propane heater, and we discovered that the bathroom up the hill was MUCH nicer. And finally our last day there was sunny and gorgeous. Ultimately, I think we’d still recommend this spot, but we sure have some strong preferences on camp sites!

Aug 11 – 13 Burlington Campground, Humboldt State Park

For our final stop before Monte Rio, we decided to leave the coast and spend some time in the Redwoods. Right alongside the “Avenue of the Giants” (scenic route alongside Hwy 101) and adjacent to the Humboldt Redwoods State Park Visitor Center is this sweet campground in the midst of the trees. The Visitor Center was super-handy for Kayla to get some work done, but the rest of the time we gave ourselves neck-aches looking at these beauties.

August 14: Monte Rio

We drove a few more hours south on Hwy 101; just north of Santa Rosa we veered west and followed the Russian River to the little hamlet of Monte Rio, where we’ve been ever since. Coming soon in a future post: more photos of this glorious area and the “geriatric zoo” we’re caring for, but here’s a bit of evidence that we’re in wine country:

Traveling back in time: July 15-31
Portland, OR: land of bikes, bridges, boats, bars, (rose)buds, books, bands, and baseball. Plus mermaids and other plenty of other quirks.

A thousand thank yous to our lovely friends Bill and Poppy for once again sharing their spaces with us, and for squeezing some time with us in the midst of their busy summer schedule. Always wonderful to be with them, to chat, enjoy food & drink, and play music! Over these two weeks, we went back and forth between the Sellwood-Moreland neighborhood on the south side of Portland and Bill & Poppy’s home in the hills further south of Portland near Sherwood. This gave us the opportunity to enjoy urban life a bit, plus we could leave the Bettiemobile and most of our stuff in a safe spot outside the city. It was fantastic to have some time to spread out, clean everything up a bit, and take a break from moving around so much.

We also had the chance to catch up briefly with some other terrific people – we’re grateful for every moment we spent with these folks:
+ Kayla’s cousin Jon (and Tenley!)
+ Kayla’s college pal Jamie (and John!)
+ an evening of darts with our piano-tuning, punk-rocker pal Spencer
+ a lovely lunch with sweet Sitka friends Dan & Karen.

Biking (plus bridges and boats):
+ all over the Sellwood-Moreland neighborhood
+ along the Willamette River from Sellwood all the way to the steel bridge on the north side of downtown Portland
+ around the St Johns neighborhood in far north Portland

Bars/Restaurants/Etc (plus bands and books):
+ LOTS of McMenamins, full of whimsical art and good food/drink as always. Especially neat was going to the White Eagle Saloon, where our pal Bill used to play gigs – we got to hear great stories about the characters who ran the saloon and played in the bands. (Side note for those in the know: we’re happy to report that the only stamps now missing from our McM’s passports are from Bend and Tacoma!)
+ Favorite non-McM’s bars/restaurants: Muddy Rudder, Yukon Tavern, Gino’s, Tacovore, Bahn Mi Up, the Meating Place
+ Shopping for Matthew/Bill’s birthday dinner at Providore Fine Foods and Flying Fish Company – both are pretty fancy but very fun! We especially need to get back to the Flying Fish Company – they have a cool set-up for oysters and bubbly.

Botanical Gardens, Downtown Festivals, and Other Highlights:
+ Portland is the City of Roses – not as native plants, but through decades of cultivation.
+ Oregon City, south of Portland, is a really interesting town, complete with river rapids and an extensive abandoned industrial zone built up on the river that once produced a lot of lumber and shipped it out via boat and rail. Plus they have a “vertical street” downtown.
+ While biking around downtown Portland we happened upon the Saturday market, a big outdoor music festival, and the aftermath of the mermaid parade

And Baseball!
Turns out Portland has a quirky baseball team also! What a hoot. We went there on Mascot Olympics night. Looks like they took whatever mascot costumes they could find and set them up for goofy competitions – there was Smokey the Bear, an alligator, a germ, the world, and a wolf, plus the home team mascot Dillon T. Pickle (the T stands for “The”). But the one that stole the show was “Out of Work Mascot” (aka Geoffery Giraffe, formerly from Toys R Us). They also had food/drink specials: giant pickle on a stick and Pickle-tinis.

What a run we’ve had. From our last post, at the end of July, we went from fun times in Portland to a two-week camping run down the Pacific Coast. Staying present through all those adventures kept us away from doing any blogging, though. The good news is that we have settled in for three solid weeks alpaca, goat, and pig sitting nestled in the redwoods of Monte Rio California. The rest and staying-put is much needed, and we will be able to focus on a the backlog of dispatches to post in the next week – get ready for a flood of pictures and stories!