The only fly in the ointment is that I am still fighting off the lingering effects of a cold from December. The only real problem is when I try to sing I irritate my throat and suffer a setback. I can’t sit around a campfire with a guitar in my hand and not sing. So each night I promise myself I would only sing a little; yah, right…

Tonight we are getting the water tank filled back up and tomorrow we will head out into the Quartzsite desert for an Alpine Coach rally. There will be something like a hundred motor homes like ours camped together under the stars. We all get together and swap ideas on how to maintain our coaches. The company went bankrupt a couple years ago, so we no longer have a source for parts and advice.

People are starting to complain that I haven’t had a blog out in a while. The problem is I promised myself and you folks, that I wouldn’t put out a trip chronicle. I would only write when something exciting happens, like blowing up a tire or cleaning all the antenna of the top of the coach. Well I must be getting the hang of this RVing because things have gotten downright boring: Besides boring is a lot easier on the pocket book.

The exciting part is every year we have more and more friends to look up at these functions and lots of adventures to review around the campfire. Can you believe that we have been at this for over six years now?

For now we will wish all of you get to have some of this warm dry weather too, and good health to all of you.

With love, Gary and Judy

You see, classical violinists keep their instruments in spotless condition. Fiddle players feel that the haze of rosin around the bridge gives the instrument a bit of character. In fact the saying goes; “The difference between a violin and a fiddle is; it is O.K. to spill a little coffee on a fiddle.”

We arrived on Thursday and set up camp. This gave Fran and I a chance to jam a bit together. David and Adrienne showed up on Friday and we arranged our coaches with the awnings touching to maximize our picnicking and pickin’ area. Friday night was a fabulous steak dinner on David’s BBQ. After dinner we attended a showcase of new bands and then sat in on an intimate performance by a really nice band called Hardshell Harmony.

TyghValleyMountaineers Practicing, Fran sitting

The Tyghed and Dyed Scramblers Practicing

Saturday morning is the scramble band competition. It was given that I would throw my name in the jar for guitar. It took a little arm twisting but Fran finally agreed to put her name in the fiddle jar. The bands were chosen and I joined a band that decided on the name

Tygh Valley Mountaineers Perfoaming, Fran On The Right

The Tyghed and Dyed Scramblers on Stage

“The Tyghed and Dyed Scramblers.” Fran’s band became “The Tygh Valley Mountaineers.” Fran’s problem was that she had never heard either song the group chose. She stood up there like a trooper and played a solo break just like a pro. When the smoke cleared The Tygh Valley Mountaineers just aced out the Tyghed and Dyed Scramblers. I am sure it is just because they had a “cute chick” playing fiddle.

Gary, Adrienne and Fran Performing for "Open Mic"

Sunday morning, before the Gospel program they have an “Open Mic” session. Anyone can sign up and stand up on stage and perform. Fran surprised me by asking if we were going to do “Open Mic?” “Duh! Oh sure” I responded. We dusted off our songs from the church performance last summer and invited Adrienne to join us. I ran over and signed us up. An hour later we made our début. Fran performed Amelia and Waltz After Per Roos while I accompanied on the guitar. Then Adrienne and I sang “Just Over In Glory Land” with Fran fiddling on the breaks.

Gary, Adrienne and Fran, "Just Over In Gloryland"

What a wonderful time we all had. There are times when I wish I could magically whisk all of you out there reading this, to where we are and let you experience it too. The best I can do is to give you a verbal summary and some photos.

Check out last year’s open mic experience at this site. http://www.dinsmore-enterprises.com/2009/09/open-mic/

In the meantime, don’t be afraid to try something new once in a while. By the way, Fran, didn’t I see a light dusting of rosin there on your fiddle?

Love Gary and Judy

Last night we were camped alongside the Kalamath River just a couple miles up from the Pacific Ocean. After supper I was practicing the guitar in the bedroom when the neighbors knocked and invited us to join them around their campfire. A young man, Trent, was playing a flat top guitar also. Our styles were not perfectly matched, but we still made some good harmony together. It wasn’t long before the camp manager came up with his flat top guitar and a harmonica to join the group. We taught each other licks and took turns leading songs. Trent had an interesting finger picking style and the manager was into down and dirty blues. I would lead my segments with country-western, folk or bluegrass. We had an eclectic jam. Before we knew it, the time was 9:30 and the wood pile was gone.

Today we were threading our way among the little towns along highway 101 on the North California and Oregon coast. Judy kept hearing a “banging” noise on her side of the coach. We pulled off the highway in Coos Bay and I discovered the hatch that accesses the leveling and slider hydraulic system was swinging open. The key lock toggle had come off and was gone. There was no way to lock it closed. With some trepidation I taped the hatch closed with duct tape. That lasted for ten miles and I had to stop and do it again. After getting parked for the night at the Elks campground in Florence I created a new toggle with the hack saw and a file. I have included a couple photos to document the event. Yes, the duct tape made a gooey mess of the paint around the hatch, but it cleaned up nicely with a little isopropyl alcohol.

Hatch Propped Up With My Hiking Stick

Pointing Out the Hatch Lock and the New Toggle

Notice the beautiful Rhodies in our campground. The Elks have created a rather stunning park here in Florence, Oregon. It is off the highway in a grove of trees and it is quiet. That in itself is unusual. Judy and I have determined in our travels that there are certain locations that are most suitable for RV parks. They need to have a freeway, a railroad or an industrial complex on one side of the camp; Even better if there are two of the three features available. Advertising for selling RV’s on the other hand show the coach parked on the beach just above the surf line in a secluded lagoon. The bait and the switch, right?

We are looking forward to summer in the Pacific Northwest.

Love to all,

Gary and Judy

Gary and Path on the Long Road Home

Analysis of the failure revealed a stress crack in the suspension right at the brake boss. The crack had finally grown large enough to break straight across when I dropped the front wheel off the curb. We were preparing to cross the street at a crosswalk. Path has been a faithful steed for 13,070 miles since our first ride on February 14, 2002.

I am the basket case, however. Today we are struggling with whether or not to rebuild Path or pull out all the stops on constructing Son-of-Path. Here are the competing plans:

1. I have the steel and parts to rebuild the existing suspension arm. It will take me a week or so to complete. The question is; Will Path become as good as new, or are there other stress cracks under the paint getting ready to fail?
2. I could complete the suspension arm that I have been working on for Son-of-Path and modify Path to use this suspension until we are ready to change to the new bicycle.
3. Should we get the Purple People Eater, our Co-Motion upright tandem out of retirement and use that for the next few months while I continue to build Son-of-Path?
4. We could also buy a couple of used mountain bicycles to get around on while construction continues.
5. We could walk a lot.

Judy and I will be debating these options and setting up a plan over the next few hours. You are all invited to make comments. I can’t seem to imagine life without a bicycle.

Meanwhile we are still hanging out in the state park in Lake Havasu City. We are ready for the next Bluegrass festival to start forming up on Monday. Actually all that picking and grinning cuts in to my shaping and brazing time. How on earth did I ever find time for forty some hours of work in a week.

So long for now, Gary and Judy (and poor injured Path.)

Broken Front Suspension Arm

Closeup of Brake Boss and Broken Chain Stay

Well you just invite your sister along and spend ten days showing her everything that you normally enjoy at a leisurely pace. For ten days we went Bluegrassing, mud stomping, Clydesdale spying, museum hopping, birding, caving, hiking more birding and even more hiking.

First we took in the Casa Grande Pinal County Bluegrass Festival. Many good bands and lots of parking lot picking. Gary entered the band scramble and his band, “Keeping the Faith,” won first place. Voting is done by noise level, Judy and Holly almost screamed themselves hoarse. The festival was preceded by a very heavy rainstorm, so we had to contend with a lot of mud all weekend. Several of our bluegrass friends showed up and we spent hours picking bluegrass favorites with them.

Next we moved to the Tucson, Arizona area to a state campground called Catalina State Park. We timed it perfectly and found a nice stall to stay in. The park filled to capacity every day. The had miles of hiking trails and two birding walks while we were there. We joined both walks and added 14 new species to our lifetime list of birds. Of course our list is not very long, so it is still easy to find new species.

We spent one day driving Holly’s rental car to Benson AZ, and toured the Kartchner Caverns. These are some of the best caves you will get to see. They work hard at keeping the cave pristine and unspoiled. The groups are small and the guides are excellent. Cost is about $20 and there are two separate tours to take. We took the Rotunda/Throne Room Tour. If you are in the area this is a must see: Don’t go without reservations, however. By the way, they have a nice campground on site. This time of year it was only partially full.

Harris Hawk in Free Fly Demonstration

One day we spent in the Saguaro National Park and the nearby Desert Museum. This is also a “Don’t miss” stop in the Tucson area.

Finally we spent a full day in Sabino Canyon National Recreation Area at the edge of the Tucson metropolitan area. We took the tram up the canyon and hiked the five miles back to the visitor center. The Sabino river was flowing strong so we got lots of practice doffing and donning our shoes to wade through the icy water flowing over the bridges.

Finally on Monday we sent Holly off into the morning rush hour traffic in Phoenix to catch her plane home, and we relocated to Lake Havasu on the California border to attend another bluegrass festival. Oh yes the weatherman is predicting another rain storm just before this festival starts. I hope it is not too heavy, we are camped in a dry wash.

Holly and Judy Fording the Sabino

Bare Feet Across the Sabino River

Clydesdale and Handler, Stepping Proud

Actually there are eight, but two of them are still here at the Pinal County Fairgrounds taking the day off. Of course you guessed the Budweiser Clydesdales. Actually one of the four teams spread around the country and they will be right here for the Bluegrass Festival. While we watched, the handlers, about one per horse, braided their manes and tails then loaded them in the 18 wheelers and headed out for Surprise Arizona.

We have just set up camp here at the fairgrounds for the weekend festival. We are in Casa Grande, Arizona.

Loading a Clydesdale in the Trailer

We have never come to this festival so it will be a new one to us. One of the bands, however, we are familiar with. A favorite called the Bost Family Tradition. I joined a scramble band with their young son, Micah. See the blog from Feb 28, 2005.

In addition to the Bluegrass, my sister, Holly, is coming for a ten day visit. We will want to show her some of the special sights here in southern Arizona. We have met her before in the Northwest and done some great fishing at the Potholes Reservoir and Lake Roosevelt. This time we can show her what she is missing by staying in Spokane in the snow all winter. I expect we will have some exciting adventures to write about, so stay tuned.

Love to all from Casa Grande, a little south of Phoenix.

Gary and Judy

Here are some more photos of the Clydesdales as they prepare to parade around the Pinal County Fairgrounds. Click on the thumbnail photos to see the full size photos.

Duck Please

Dressed to the Nines

Wheel Horse Hitched, Seven to Go

Parading Through Pinal County Fairgrounds

We had delightful weather in Indeo. In Blythe we survived a dust storm but by the actual festival time the weather was again delightful. In fact we were feeling just a little smug about it, because we kept hearing about how bad the weather was in the rest of the country. Just about the time the rest of the country warmed up, we have started to feel your pain. We did get a little sprinkle the last night of jamming in the Blythe camping area. We all quickly got our instruments under cover. We later resumed a limited jam inside our coach.

Tuesday started out a nice sunny day with no clouds. We pulled up stakes and drove to Quartzsite where we were to pick up our mail. We parked at the east end of town and made quick work of the one mile walk to the post office. Whoa; a few hundred people had the same idea so we stood in line for about an hour. We then crossed over I-10, again on foot, and visited the “Big RV Sales Tent.” We picked up a couple presents for Arcturus and then we noticed there were big black clouds to our west. As we hurried back to Arcturus the nearby hills grew indistinct and then disappeared before our very eyes. Soon came the spattering of a few raindrops and we redoubled our efforts to get back to the coach. We were about 200 feet away when it cut loose.

We drove about six miles out of town in a driving rain and at the designated point we bravely turned off into the desert. We joined about 50 Alpine coaches parked in a naturally gravely area of the desert.

Once again today, Wednesday, January 20^th the Sonoran Desert is sunny and warm. Alpine coaches have been streaming in all day long. The weatherman is promising us an even more spectacular rain storm for tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Heavy Rain Turns Camp Area into a Lake

Wow! With the Thursday sunrise there came the rain. The rugged hills bordering this sector of the desert have all disappeared from view and the rain marches through driven by a southwest wind. Most of the group activities have been cancelled or postponed and all of the participants are holed up in their coaches. We pulled in the big slider to keep the wind from damaging the rollout canopy and I note that several of the neighbors have done the same.

Photos of the wet desert. Click to enlarge>

Note Tent Beyond Second Coach

Judy is busy baking an apple flake and pear scones. Running the oven is helping warm the coach. The solar panels are only delivering 0.3 amps, so we are relying on the big Onan generator for power. You can see from the photos that the desert is awash. There ought to be a beautiful spring blooming around here with all of this water. The wind gusts probably reached the predicted 50 mph between 4 and 5 pm and the activities tent had to be struck. The gusts are coming broad on our side and we are just rocking and rolling.

Tent Was Struck Due to Wind

I have been practicing the fiddle this afternoon. I bought a new lesson book at the Blythe Bluegrass Festival from Jay Buckey. I am dedicating myself to learn the fiddle enough that I can debut at a jam session in one of the next festivals. Meanwhile I am still practicing in the bedroom behind closed doors. If you check out Jay’s web site you can get a bit of an idea what his program is all about. Jay Buckey.  You get to download music (.mp3) files of each lesson and that way you have something to practice against.

Meanwhile we are counting on the weatherman’s prediction of warm sunny weather after today. I am sure L.A. will breathe a sigh of relief also.

We are in a small town, Wickenburg, Arizona, attending the Four Corner States Bluegrass Festival and Fiddle Championships. Now there were three top bluegrass bands entertaining us, and they were wonderful. The point of my blog, however, is the young contestants in the contests and championships conducted in between the professional bands gigs. These youngsters ranged from ten or so to young adults. There were adults and even seniors sprinkled in too, but I am focusing on the young players.

We were sitting toward one end of the stage in the front row this weekend and I was observing the activity behind the stage. The contestants gathered there while the professionals played. Many nervously tuned and retuned their instruments. Others played through their contest selections. I could tell the difference. One boy I observed instead was quietly playing his mandolin in tempo with the performers on stage. I decided that this boy was going to be one of the top contenders because of what I perceived as confidence and passion for his instrument. I discreetly took his photo.

Sure enough when his turn came on stage he played extremely well and turned in a top performance. The judges selected him as Arizona State Mandolin Champion. I photographed him again accepting his prize. He had some stiff competition and the second and third place contestants had to do a play off to break a tie. Take a look on the web site for photos of Tristan.

We saw the same thing play out over and over again in the fiddle, guitar and banjo championships. Many of these kids play more than one instrument, and well too. Indeed, Bluegrass is alive and well in the southwest. I admit I am biased because I enjoy Bluegrass Music myself, but I worry that we are loosing our music performance cultural heritage because we are becoming simply consumers of prepackaged music played by the select few with big recording contracts.

I hope that this will inspire you all to pick up an instrument and learn to play. Encourage your children and grandchildren to learn an instrument. Get together with friends and passionately play the music that moves you. I believe our world will be better for it.

Now, my apologies to Sophia, whom I introduced last time as a resident of Santa Clara. She assures me that she lives in…”the much more amenable location twixt mountain and sea, the charming town of Santa Cruz.”

And now from frosty Wickenburg where the days are in the 70′s and the nights are in the 30′s we wish you well and hope you all pick up a passion to follow.

Gary and Judy

Mandolin Contestant Playing Along With Performing Band

The Three Champion Mandolin Contestants

Never heard of Tygh Valley? Well go to The Dalles and head south on US 197 and way before you get to Bend Oregon you will zip through the city of Tygh Valley, all 200 or so residents. What they have is a really nice fairgrounds and an annual Bluegrass Festival. This festival is really fantastic for its local talent and parking lot pickers. I have nearly worn the tips of my fingers off playing my guitar and now the fiddle too. But that is another story.
As usual we have gone around the picking tents before the festival on Thursday and Friday and then in the evenings too. The rules are generators off by 9:00 pm but the music can go on all night. Also as usual I joined a scramble band. It is a wonderful way to meet new people. We get selected at random. Today there were five bands of about eight people each and we all made up a name for our band and had 45 minutes to practice two songs. Then we all took our turn on stage and performed for the audience. By now that is getting to be old hat for me, but the stage is still a strange place and a whole flock of butterflies take wing as soon as you look out over that mic. at the audience. I was leading one of the songs so I had to really concentrate so to not forget the lyrics and the chords.

That was early in the day. At supper we got to talking about the “Open Mic.” session that was coming up as a prelude to the evening professional band performances. I have a song that is considered a “jam buster.” It’s a song that is tricky enough you have to teach it to the group or people get lost and the group grinds to a halt. It is one of my favorites, “Whiskey in the Jar.” I had mentioned that this would be a good place to show-case the song and my mate gently shoved me along. I finally got up courage and asked a new friend and professional mandolin player, Brian Oberlin, to back me up if I could get signed up for “Open Mic.”

We entered the stage and my butterflies reared up and all took flight in different directions. My knees were wobbly and my fingers started trembling when I gazed out over the expectant faces of two hundred or so Bluegrassers. Brian warmed them up for me with a fast moving instrumental, I haven’t the foggiest notion which one. Just a straight I-IV-V Bluegrass standard that I could follow mindlessly. Now I was as ready as I ever would be. I cut loose and let-er-fly. Everything went according to plan and I didn’t forget the lyrics. However I did screw up while Brian was playing the break. Love this guy, without a flinch Brian brought us back to the correct chord progression and lined me up for the next verse. I am not sure that any but the savviest musicians even caught the error.

If any of my readers are in the Portland area and get a chance to sit in on a gig by a group called Ida Viper, go for it. They are fantastic and be sure and tell them I sent you.

We have no internet here in the heartland of Oregon, but as soon and Judy and I get back in range of our connection we will send this out with all our love.

From Tygh Valley Oregon,
Gary and Judy

P.S. Don’t follow this link unless you are able to handle a bunch of narcissistic, self serving photos of Gary on stage.

Brian wrote to say it was the “Red Apple Rag” that he led us off with.

Thanks, Brian

Blue Sky Bluegrass Scramble Band at Tygh Valley, 2009

Brian Oberlin and Gary at 'Open Mic' Tygh Valley

Gary, Belting out 'Whisky in the Jar' at Open Mic Session