Super Bowl Sunday

I have to start here because of the memories of 25-30 years ago with the Steelers of old. I hung in there with them over the years, but I did get emotionally involved again this year. I am only sorry that last year’s tight end from Michigan, Jay Riemersma, was not with them this year. He ruptured his Achilles in the AFC championship game last year and is in rehab. Likely, he will not play again. Regardless, the Bus deserved to go out a champ and since we saw Antwaan play when he was at Indiana vs. Penn State, I really enjoy watching him on the reverse WR pass, which in effect, won the game. Hines Ward was super, too, but we knew that. Unfortunately, Big Ben almost cost them the game, but what a year he has had…and when the chips were down, he held them together. Enough.

We made it to Lathrop, California which is right outside of Stockton, which is about 50 miles south of Sacramento. This is the north end of the San Joaquin Valley. We left Indio (near Joshua Tree National Park and Palm Springs) at about 7:00, a.m. We made repeated stops to: one, fuel; two, exercise Rose, and then get some lunch. We got going again about noon…and tried to get someplace to stay for the night in time to see the above mentioned game.

We did 458 miles today…but it was not all quite as planned. We have a big book that tells us where the campgrounds are along our way and directions on how to get to them off the closest major highway. The book is a 2004 edition which means it is data from 2003…or older. For example, yesterday we followed the directions to a spot that we fortunately had reservations for (you usually don’t need reservations if February, unless it is in a sunny spot.) We followed the directions to a tee and discovered a different name on the front gate. Found out that the name changed 10 years ago, but the book didn’t. That was a “no problem” example.

But today, we followed the directions (without reservations) back into the pucks and ended up in a really marginal trailer park. Fortunately, the very narrow streets made a loop so we were able to turn around…and the superintendent (who defies description) came over to talk to me when I stopped to ask what happened to the RV park. “Oh, we haven’t had that for years.” He proceeded to give us directions to another location (this at 4:45 and sundown fast approaching) with the caveat question: “Do you want a good place or a bad place?” Wow….Aleene was really stressed and I was just happy to get back out to I-5 without having to unhook the Jeep and turn around.

Aleene got back into the book and found the spot the old gent gave us directions to…the good place…which was a county park. We usually do not go to state or county parks on the road because they are too far off the beaten path, but we were running against time now since the SB started at 3:30 PST.

We followed the directions, which got us to a spot close by in another community…all contiguous to I-5. We got there with “remote” sign-in instructions….which is normal…so we went in pulling the Jeep and got the third, and last, pull-through with full hook-ups. The matron on her golf cart welcomed us, told us the score of the game at the half…and made us both breath a sigh of relief. We had a good spot, at half the cost of last night, good ABC-TV and full hookups. The rest is history. Once I had electric, water and sewer up, we settled back to watch Willie Parker score his TD….whew…what a blast.

We are 635 miles from Newberg and plan to get to Roseberg, OR tomorrow, Monday, and stay at an Indian Casino RV place that we know is really there. We will run the last 200 miles to Newberg on Tuesday.

UPDATE...the above casino move did not happen. The casino RV place was full so we hung out on the South Branch of the Willamette with the river brethern. It was cold and foggy, but we got in at dusk...459 miles on Tuesday.