Escape Pod Rambles

May 5 - 15 - Holland, Michigan, and Huron-Manistee National Forests

After a chaotic few days involving selling the beloved Sportsmobile camper van, dealing with my car in the shop, getting it back the day before we left, driving up to Liberty to get kayak racks put on it and then having said car die in the Costco parking lot, swapping the racks onto Matthew's car and having my car towed back to the mechanic, it's a wonder that we got packed up and on the road close to our timeline. A drive through the rain and construction and we finally arrived at cousin Carolyn's in St Louis. We had a lovely visit with the family before driving north on Thursday.

Our first night's stop was south of Chicago at a Harvest Host that was a breakfast/lunch restaurant in farm country. They offered free full hookups, which is unheard of. Then they invited us to a free baked potato bar dinner, along with the other two solo women campers staying for the night. It was yummy and the conversation was fun. After a bit, the hosts went across the lot to their home and told us all to stay chatting in the restaurant as long as we wanted, just turn off the lights and shut the back door (don't lock it) when we left! Small town life! We did pay to have breakfast the next day; it was reasonable and delicious.

Friday we drove to Holland and left the camper at our host's spot before driving into downtown to watch the Dutch dancers in traditional dress dance and wander around town a bit. Unfortunately, Mother Nature doesn't pay attention to festival calendars and most of the tulips were either already gone or on their way out. The locals call the Tulip Time festival the buds and stems festival, with abundant blossoms being an elusive hope this year.

There was this weird fountain in the main square park - no explanation what or why it is. A local told us the youth call it the moldy penis fountain.

Frank Baum's family had a vacation home in Holland so the library had this display of characters from the original illustrations.

Matthew and his childhood nightmare of the flying monkeys

On Saturday, we went early and staked out our spot to watch the parade. Evidently, people did this before 6am, but we lucked out at our 11am arrival and found a spot on the street behind a blanket. Leaving our chairs, we wandered through the stores lining the street and people watched.

Kansas City has this same sculpture

Street performer playing a barrel organ

Nearing the parade start, we returned to our chairs and the folks next to us offered the blanket in front since their other party wasn't going to show. We had our chairs, so we offered it to two families with little kids. People here are so frigging nice! The parade was fun with the best being an ice cream company celebrating its 100th anniversary. They had a whole bunch of employees doing a synchronized percussive performance and dance using aluminum ice cream scoops as the instruments.

A car wash float bubbled the crowd

The evening entertainment was a fireworks and drone show so we walked down to the waterside park to claim a perfect spot. We saw more tulips on this walk than we had in the town center.

Yard sign about their dog testing in the shade - could have been written about me

That ice cream company from the parade was celebrating its 100-year anniversary by handing out free ice cream bars. The cherry fudge was yummy. The fireworks were great and the drone show was so impressive.

Mother's Day I spoke to my kids and my mother, packed up and drove back into town to walk along the river, see the only authentic Dutch windmill in the US, and enjoyed the warmth of a fire in their (empty) ice rink park.

Reminiscent of Zaanse Schans and its crowds

Ended the night boondocking at a yummy brewery in Muskogen.

Monday we drove to a National Forest outside of Ludington to boondock for a few days. It's been rainy and then chilly so we haven't taken advantage of the nearby state park or the trails here. It's a beautiful place but we've mostly been hunkered down reading and rearranging things. The downtime has been nice.

Love the mossy path

Sept 2 - 14, 2025

As our time runs out, we took note of things we would miss

The view of Paulina Peak on the drive up to the Caldera

Paulina Creek Falls

Drove out to Fort Rock, the area where the oldest shoes were found. Took the back road, the dirt road we are to take if we had to evacuate because of fire. Part of the road was roadblocked because of a fire last year but we ran into a Forest Service employee who said the dangerous trees should have been removed by now and gave us his tacit approval for driving down it, although he did say we never saw him.

Logging of salvageable trees and discard pile

The bullet holes might have you think twice, but what was funny to us was the rough condition of the road we had been on versus this nice one we were about to embark on

Fort Rock is an old tuff ring that was once in a lake

Glad we weren't volunteering here - so desolate!

The rain is moving off

Matthew went for a hike and came across this little graveyard below the raptors' hangout. Still recovering from COVID, I just hung out on the lower elevations

Area homes and buildings from the land grant days were collected and placed in this museum

Back at the Caldera...

Thatching ants nest

Marbled obsidian

Lightning triggered a small fire on the backside of the caldera so this tanker helicopter came to Paulina Lake, just across the street from us, to gather water

If you'd like to see it in action here is the video I took

On my last days off we drove west to have lunch with Sarah and Alan, and to visit with Nate, Rux, and Cessna one last time. The next morning we drove to the coast for one last ocean view. Met with Andrew to explore the Yahats beach looking for agates (no luck) and have lunch.

Walked down to the lighthouse at Yaquina Head for the sunset

Had an eventful night as we drove around looking for a place to boondock. Matthew didn't like the place I chose and I didn't want to encroach on others already occupying the sites he chose, so neither of us were happy and we ended up at the Walmart parking lot in Newport. No sooner had we fallen into a deep sleep than we were awakedned by a knock on the door and a very nice security guards informed us that parking was no longer allowed there since covid. But they directed us just down the road to a beach site that was fine.

Next morning we returned to Yaquina Head to explore the tidepools and say hello to all our former co-workers.