Tag Archives: snow

Mondays are for Memories, On the Road, Pictures of the Adventure, RV Life

Mondays are for Memories – Joy in the Journey

February 15, 2021 steph Leave a comment

I was talking with our kids in Waco today, and they are chilled.to.the.bone. The roads are snow and ice covered (have you ever seen a snow plow in central Texas?), the temps are barely reaching the twenties, and there are ‘rolling blackouts’ as communities try and conserve electricity. As my dear daughter-in-law (who moved to TX to escape winter) said – “Texas, you have betrayed us!” Since I am not chilled to the bone these days, I thought I’d look back to a time when we came across some crazy snow in late April, 2016.

Joy in the Journey – May 2, 2016

Sometimes we drive just to get to our destination. Sometimes it’s even a long drive. But this last week, while our drive was long (almost 1300 miles) and we were pointed at a final destination (Lake Retreat Camp in Ravensdale, WA (SE of Seattle)) we tried to take that road less traveled when it was possible and take time to stop and smell the roses (or walk in the snow as the case may be) along the way.
Want to come along?

Although we did have to hop on to Interstate 5 for a bit to get through Sacramento, we mostly drove on Route 99 and then 97. Rte 97, in fact, took us from Weed, California right through Oregon and almost up to I90 in Washington. We drove through valleys, scaled (or so it seemed) mountains, crossed rivers and drove along beautiful lakes.

Along with the gallery of pictures below, HERE is a link to the album on Flickr. (I’ve put captions on most of the pictures, but apparently unless you click on each picture, you won’t be able to see them. I’ll have to talk to Flickr about that!)

Our two main stops were –
Lava Beds National Monument

Have you ever heard of this place?

It was very interesting – lots of lava, beautiful views

and lots of caves to explore. We weren’t really expecting to go spelunking, so we stuck with the one lighted cave (Mushpot) and one other that seemed pretty easy (Skull). As in no duck-walking or crawling easy. Yeah, we’re not into that. Of course, my phone died just as we were entering the Skull cave – so you’ll have to trust me that it was pretty cool!

The caves found in this park were created by flows of smooth lava thousands upon thousands of years ago. In another part of the park was a huge rock outcrop with petroglyphs –

I’ll confess that the petroglyphs were a little disappointing, but the rock itself was fabulous!

(Full album can be seen HERE!)
and (continuing the sentence back a couple of pictures!)
Crater Lake!
We’d heard about how stunning it was – and I’m sure there is a lot more to do in the summertime when things are actually open,

but draped in the beauty of snow – this was still a crazy beautiful experience!

We are so glad we bundled up and stopped to see this amazing lake that was formed when a volcano erupted and collapsed upon itself. So beautiful!

More snowy pictures HERE!

We thoroughly enjoyed our drive from the desert to the beautiful Pacific Northwest. The scenery was varied, fuel prices were low(ish), our stops were outstanding, and arrival at Lake Retreat welcome!

We caught sight of Mt. Rainier today on our way home from church –

Looks like there will be more ‘sploring in our future!

PS – Here’s a music video of the song “Joy in the Journey” by Michael Card. It’s not so much about RV travel (not at all, actually), but about our journey with Christ. It’s worth a listen if you have a minute (or 3).

RV Life, The Adventure

That snow thing….

December 8, 2017 steph Leave a comment

We expected the cold front.

We even expected the cool (ok, cold) rainy days that would come with it.

But we didn’t expect to go to bed with this view

and wake up in the morning to this –

Guess it’s beginning to feel a bit more like Christmas here at The Christmas Train!

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Mondays are for Memories, Pictures of the Adventure, RV Life, The Adventure

Mondays are for Memories – January 2010

January 9, 2017 steph Leave a comment

Since so many of our family and friends are posting snow pictures, I checked back in the archive to January 2010 when we were working at Cherry Valley School in Beaumont, California. We might not have had a ton of snow at our location, but it wasn’t far away!

January 31, 2010 – The Round About Way

Since this was our last weekend in the â€œPassâ€ (as this area is known), we figured weâ€™d better take the advantage of a beautiful day on Saturday to take a drive to some of the nearby spots weâ€™d been wanting to check out. Big Bear Lake and ski areas were only about 45 miles away according to our GPS, but of course we wanted to stay away from major interstates and congested areas. â€œLetâ€™s go up the back way, through Oak Glen (a quaint town of orchards and all things apple only 15 miles or so up the road), maybe check out a couple of geocaches, and then make our way over to Big Bear Lake.â€ Sounded like a plan, so I grabbed the camera, a couple of bottles of water and some snacks, and off we went!
First Stop â€“ Oak Glen.
OK, so we didnâ€™t actually stop (itâ€™s not exactly prime apple harvest time), but the views were impressive as we were heading out of town â€“

And we really enjoyed the signage!

Trust me, they really know how to do â€œcurvyâ€ here in California!
Oh â€“ and I wish I knew exactly what mountain that is in the distance. It was in my viewfinder for most of the day, but the best I can do is â€œSan Bernardino Mountainâ€. And itâ€™s a guess, folks. Just a guess.
But I digress with my lack of geography knowledgeâ€¦..

See, there it is again!
Since we were headed to Big Bear we knew we would be coming into some snow. Remember last week when we had 2-4 inches of the stuff? Well, the mountains near here got 2-4 feet. Or so it seemed by the look of this car coming toward us on the highway â€“

Uh, sweetie â€“ the snow was LAST WEEK, and maybe you could have cleaned a little more off the driverâ€™s side??????
But for us, the roads were clear.

And even though the plowed piles got higher and higher, the drive was lovely!

We did take a little detour to do a geocache, and while Gary was walking around with his trusty GPS

I was busy clicking away at the beautiful snow covered landscape.

(I think this cactus was a little concerned about the blanket of snowâ€¦.)
Finding the cache with all the snow presented a little bit of a challenge (and we hadnâ€™t done much geocaching lately, so we were a little out of practice), but I finally noticed a straight edged thing under a root.

I made Gary do the groping (Iâ€™m not really fond of sticking my hand into dark â€œwhat just might be thereâ€ spaces, and we were rewarded with our first â€œfindâ€ in several months.
There were several other mountain roads that Gary had hoped to explore, but they were all closed. Such a disappointment for a guy who was really hoping for some dirt road adventures.

Anywayâ€¦.on to Big Bear Lake.

All along the way we saw cars pulled over and folks getting ready to find a sledding hill or strapping on their cross-country skis or just plain having a snowball fight. Those are some renegade snowballs on the lake ice!
And there certainly was snow enough for everyone.

Maybe they are waiting for spring?

We literally crawled through the town Big Bear Lake â€“ not only was last weekâ€™s snow the first BIG snow in a couple of years, but this was the first weekend day that the roads were open. It took us 2 Â½ hours to drive the 10 miles along the south side of the lake. (We stopped for lunch thinking that maybe we could â€œwait outâ€ the traffic. Not only was the lunch the slowest meal weâ€™ve had in a loooonnnng time (2 hrs. for a burger and a bowl of chili), but the traffic was still waiting for us when we were (finally) done.) I have to tell you, 4 Â½ hours of Big Bear Lake is just a little bit too much!
Not wanting to go back the same way we came, Gary chose to head north, pick up a cut-off road that went over to Yucca Valley, and return from the East. It was a great plan, except we never found the short cut road. Apparently the plows had never found it either. The road we thought was â€œitâ€ turned out to be a little connector road that took us back to Baldwin Lake and was only about a Â½ mile long.

But it did (almost) give him his dirt (mud) road fix.
Almost.
Enough chatter â€“ here, in the order of their appearance, is the rest of drive home.

Baldwin Lake

Down the other side of the mountain until we ended up in the â€œhigh desertâ€.

We were losing daylight fast â€“

Caught the sunset going through Yucca Valley

(sorry for the blurry sunset. Itâ€™s very tricky taking sunset shots from a moving truck!)
That trip home was definitely the â€œlong way homeâ€!
Hereâ€™s our dayâ€™s journey on the map â€“

(You can see our missing”shortcut” home – it goes east above Big Bear and heads over to Pioneertown and Yucca Valley. It would have been sweet if it had been open!)
Zoomed out a bit â€“

And hereâ€™s a zoom in –

Yeah, there were a lot of those curves!
You know, not everyone can take what should be a 100 round trip drive and turn it into a good 200 miles. And even with the crawl through Bear Lake and the incredibly slow lunch service, it was indeed a Very Good 200 miles!

Here’s a link to the original post – The Round About Way

The Adventure

And it came to pass

January 23, 2010 steph 5 Comments

The rain has stopped. We have not floated away. But the weather certainly got more interesting before the sun returned. I think it was Wednesday that I was alarmed to see “white stuff” on the truck –

So imagine our surprise when we woke up to this on Friday morning –

Now THAT’S some “white stuff”!

It continued to snow and rain for the rest of the day

and I just kept repeating to myself – Southern California….Southern California….

But Saturday dawned bright and clear. Ah, sunshine! Even though the temps were still in the low 40’s it still seemed like a beautiful day! I took an early morning drive to check out the snow in the area. I drove just a couple of blocks south to get a clear view of the mountains to the north (does that make any sense?). And it was quite a view!

Those mountains look like they’ve been covered with powdered sugar, don’t they.
I drove back to the school, but continued north for just a little bit. Seems where we are parked was right on the snow/rain “line”, since just up the road a piece the scenery was quite wintery!

I think those palm trees were also saying …Southern California….Southern California……
This shot is looking south again – no snow on those mountains!

So it was quite a week, weather-wise. The coming week looks much calmer. Not a whole lot warmer, but temps in the 50’s and more sun than rain. Sounds good to me!

Pictures of the Adventure, The Adventure

New Road! Snow Road!

October 28, 2009 steph Leave a comment

We’re on the road again, after a delayed departure from Nampa as we waited (and waited) for the return of my computer. Getting on the road at 5PM is not really our idea of a good start, but start we did. We are headed to Southern California – Jordan Outreach Ministries in Coachella, CA. (I understand it was 75 there today. It’s going to be 14 here tonight.)

Since we wanted to stop and see my niece near Salt Lake City, we were heading SE across the lower part of Idaho. I gotta tell you – there is not much to see!

We obviously didn’t get too far (trying to find a place to park in the dark is really not fun), but we were on our way bright and early the next morning. We were hoping to get to Salt Lake City by noon.

We did finally hit some traffic just as we were coming to the The Great Salt Lake –

And this is pretty much all we saw of the lake (as we sat in traffic!)

We did manage to hook up with Bethany just after noon, and she and I took a tour of Salt Lake City (while Gary kicked back, took a nap and did some reading.). She was a great tour guide – and I’ll do a separate post of that! (I promise!).

This morning we were on the road a little after 6AM – hoping to beat some of the Salt Lake City traffic (we were pretty much driving from one side of the city to the other on the interstate). Pretty much all we managed to do is join in all the traffic in the dark. We made it through and eventually left the traffic behind us.

What we didn’t leave behind us was the snow, and although there were stretches without any of the white stuff,

we could tell by the white stuff hanging on the distant mountains, that there was indeed more snow in dem dar mountains.
When we stopped for fuel at around 9AM we learned that the mountain passes (our route) were requiring chains so we figured we better stay put. As the day wore on we kept seeing lots of other RVs and trucks heading south on I15 and we finally decided that we would give it a shot. We had a full tank of diesel and a full tank of propane, so we figured we were set. Oh, and we also talked with someone who had come from that direction and he said the roads weren’t too bad. The sky even seemed to be clearing some, so off we went.

Looks OK so far…..

Alright, so it’s starting to snow pretty good, but the road is still pretty clear.

Hmmmmm…the mountains are beginning to disappear in the snow…….

Oh, man, I AM NOT feeling good about this. Slow down!!!!!!

The lanes are getting pretty narrow, and now everyone is going at a snails pace as we climb to the final (I hope) summit.

It was bumper to bumper all the way to the top (apparently a LOT of folks paid no attention to the winter weather warning!), things lightened up a little as we crawled down that “hill”, and after another couple of hours of off and on again snow, we did finally make it to the Walmart in Cedar City. It’s still snowing lightly, and it really is going to be in the mid-high teens tonight, but we made it over the pass and we are VERY THANKFUL!