Another week at Rock Creek and new camera

I decided to stay here for another week at Rock Creek RV Park in Twin Falls, ID.  I was in the lower site area of the campground, and when I woke up this morning, there was no one at all in my row, and only two RVs in the row behind me.  I knew one family was going to leave, and I don't like to be that "alone" in a campground.  Since today was my last day paid, I decided to move to the upper area where the camp host is.  We were the only two RVs in this area, but a couple just came in for a one-night stay and parked a few sites from me. 

When we moved from our campsite, I decided to run into town and see if Costco had the camera I wanted.  I filled up the gas tank at Costco, and then went to the camera department.  As it turned out, they had only one left of the Nikon model I wanted, and it was the floor model.  It's a Nikon Coolpix S9100, and it was on sale for $120 off.  It retails for $339, but this was $220.  Even though it's the floor model, it has the same warranty as a new camera and seems to work just fine, so I'm pretty happy.

I took a few photos this afternoon.  This is of a small tree outside my window using a setting where you can highlight just one color:

Black and white tree with red berries

This is a small branch of the same tree in full color

 Nikon Coolpix S9100

Here are Katie's toys on her quilt:

 This one picked up the orange and the red

I love that feature.  It also does panoramic photos, and has lots of other features, including an 18x zoom lens, which I'm really going to love. 

Here's another one with the green tree enhanced - the trees behind it were more of a grey-green, and the green wasn't picked up.  I put it in a little frame:

That's the start of a good Christmas Card!

View of the hill across the creek

 

Katie on our walk - ahead is a storage room made of rock

 

 Our new site-it's actually prettier in this area

And finally, some great clouds from this afternoon.  We had intermittent showers.  I love it; Katie isn't sure about the rain, but we're working on it.

 

From Me and My Dog, have a great Tuesday night, everyone!  :)

Rock Creek RV Park, Twin Falls, ID

WELCOME to our new Followers, Debbie and Duane!  I've been following your blog, too, and enjoy your beautiful photos.  I especially loved the animal shots in your blog of September 26, the moose pictures were amazing!  Thanks for following along with us, we're happy to have you along. :)

We 're still in Idaho.  We are staying at a County Park in Twin Falls, ID named Rock Creek RV Park.   It had really good reviews on-line, so I decided to check it out. For $15 a night (no discounts) it's a pretty nice place to hang out for a while.  It's bare bones as far as RV Park amenities.  It does have water and electricity, covered picnic tables, BBQs and vault toilets, and that's about it.  Although the view to the rear of The Palms is a stone wall with a rock quarry above, not very pretty, the view in front of us is lawns, the covered picnic tables, and a wide, rushing creek.

Clouds at Rock Creek RV Park

Creek at Rock Creek RV Park, ID

That's The Palms looking through the picnic table

There are easy walking trails, a nice day park with a play area, a Frisbee golf course, etc.

This RV Park is in the city of Twin Falls, which has everything close by, Costco, Best Buy, Target, all the large and small shopping stores and restaurants.

The weather here has been good, but it has been windy today.   The Palms has been rocking in the wind, which is fun.  Rain was in the forecast, but we've only had a little so far. 

Coming into the city from the freeway, you go over the I.B. Perrine Memorial Bridge which is 1,500 feet long, the longest span bridge in the west.  It's 486 feet above the river.  After leaving the bridge, if you turn right on the first street, there is an Information building where we pulled in and parked.  I couldn't believe the river and surrounding areas below us when we crossed the bridge, and I had to get a closer look.

I.B. Perrine Memorial Bridge

There is a scenic overlook at the Information area and we went there to take some photos.  The Snake River Canyon has some pretty cool history, how it was carved out by one of the world's worst floods, the Bonneville Flood.  That was 14,000 years ago.  I won't put it all down here, but it's pretty interesting.  If you want to know more, you can Google it.  :)

There are two golf courses down in the canyon, both 18 holes.  One is privately owned, but open to the public, and the other is part of a private country club.  Click on the photo to see it better, it's an amazing view in person.  You really have to be there to fully appreciate the depth of this canyon, or the fact that the floor of the canyon is used for different things.  Besides the golf  courses, there is a trout farm.  There are fresh water springs that come out of the north side of the Canyon walls, which furnish the trout farms.  Blue Lakes Trout Farm grows and sells 16,000,000 trout per year. The Snake River Canyon is home to many animals and birds.

Floor of Snake River Canyon - two golf courses

Snake River Canyon

 On-line photo of the floor of the Canon.
It's like a small city down there.

Down the canyon on the right and past the curve, there is a mound of dirt, which is where Evel Kneivel's jump ramp was when he attempted his jump across the Snake River in 1974.  I remember that.  His motorcycle was rocket propelled, but unfortunately there was a malfunction after he took off, and he ended up parachuting down into the canyon 485 feet, landing safely just on the south edge of the water below.

The mound from which Evel Kneivel attempted

his jump across the Snake River Canyon 

Lots of people "base jump" off the bridge.  There were 5 or 6 young people preparing their chutes to jump when we were there.  They had already jumped and were going again in about 45 minutes, but I didn't want to wait to see them jump.

 

Getting ready for base jumps

The Information Center volunteer suggested going to see the Shoshone Falls, which is only five miles outside town.  I don't know if we will or not.  It's called the Niagara of the West because it's 212 feet tall, higher than Niagara Falls.  Usually there isn't water at this time of year, but apparently it's flowing now.

 Shoshone Falls (on-line photo)

I think we might stay here for a bit.  They are supposed to have a storm coming in, and I want to be here for it.   Also, I want to pick up my General Delivery mail at the post office, and it will take a few days for my daughter to pack it up, mail it, and have it reach me here.  Apparently I can stay until October 31 when the park closes.  The Camp Host is leaving on the 15th, though, so I may leave before then.

Katie is doing well here. She didn't have any motion sickness on the drive down, but we weren't on the road for long.  I'm going to try to drive shorter distances from now on.

Sleep tight, little Katie

From Me and Katie, have a good night, everyone!  :)

Leaving tomorrow - Heading toward Utah

WELCOME to two new followers!  First, Peter, who is at the end of my followers list because he doesn't have a photo.  I was checking to make sure I wasn't missing anyone, and there he was!  I'm guessing you don't have a blog because nothing is listed.  Welcome Peter, I'm glad you are following along with us! :)

Also welcome to Mark who has a blog called, "The world according to Mark and Amos" (his dog).  Mark doesn't say much about himself, and he doesn't say anything about being an RVer.  Maybe he has a plan???  Welcome, Mark, we're happy to have you along. :)

Yesterday during a walk, Katie started running onto the lawn after this little guy, who ran up a tree:

 Isn't he darling?

 

Idaho Squirrel

There is a river nearby, and last evening Katie and I finally walked over to it.  It was a much easier walk than I thought it would be.  We didn't actually walk to the water, though.  I originally went that way trying to get a good sunset photo (didn't happen), and just kept walking.  One of my fellow campers said there are deer in the fields behind the RVs, he saw a big buck, so I was hoping to see some and get photos, but there weren't any there when we walked that way.

It was starting to get dark, and night comes really fast here - all of a sudden it's dark.  I didn't want to get caught out on a path going through brush in the dark with no flashlight, so we turned around and headed back to camp before we made it to the river.  I am still kind of creeped out about snakes after seeing that snake sign in the Rest Area we stopped at on the way here.  So, we're walking along and I'm thinking about snakes, and as I look down I see this:

 It's a twig, doesn't it look like a snake? See the head?

Scared the heck out of me! I almost stepped on it.

A couple of these trucks have dropped off sod this week. They're adding lawn to the area in front of the cabins.  The work is almost done, and it looks really  nice.  There are duck hunters renting the cabins during the season, so they are getting the cabins ready.

 Katie can curl up into a pretty small ball.  :)

This is Katie snuggled up ready for sleep. 
It's been getting cold during the night.

I'm expecting a phone call tomorrow morning from the library people again to help me download audio books - the last time it didn't work.  Since I'm leaving tomorrow, I decided to go into town today to do laundry, and then drove up to Meadow Home, backtracking about a half hour, to the nearest Walmart.  It's the biggest grocery store I could find, so I drove back there and was able to get everything I needed.

We have a full tank, clean clothes, clean sheets, and stocked cupboards, fridge and freezer - so after my phone call I'll be ready to go.  Check out time here is 1:00, which is really nice, and I'm getting excited about moving on.

I've had really nice neighbors all week, Tom and Maurene.  I was telling Tom about my water pressure regulator going out, and he said he noticed that morning that I didn't have one and was worried about it, so he gave me one of his extras.  That was so nice of him, I was worried about it, too, after reading some of the stories about pipes breaking and causing damage inside RVs with water pressure surges, especially during the night.  So now I'm back in business, and I'm going to get a spare to keep on board just in case.  Thanks, Tom!  I hope you guys had a good trip home!

This week I backed my blog up on WordPress.  I'm thinking seriously about moving it over, using my own domain name and paying for a hosting site.  From what I have been reading bluehost seems to be a recommended company, and it is only $5.95 a month.  To have more control over my blog, it would be worth it to pay that little bit each month. I have step by step instructions that tell you how to move a Blogger account over to WordPress, moving posts, comments, blogroll and Followers.  I like the little Gadgets I have on my blog, and I don't know if they would work on WordPress, but if I can't bring them along, it would be okay.  I would at least be able to control my blog without all the issues I'm having with Blogger.  I still can't get into my dashboard with IE or Chrome, and can't use some things in Firefox. This has been going on for more than a month.

Anyway, at least I have it backed up now, so if Blogger loses it, it won't be gone forever.  I'll let you know if I decide to move it, but you won't have to do anything.

Moving on down the road tomorrow.  Where will we end up???  I'll let you know when I find out.

From Me and My Dog, have a great Thursday evening, everyone!  :)

RAIN - finally!

WELCOME to our new followers, Trent and Teresa!  They are new Canadian Snowbirds who just downsized, started their blog, and will be scraping the snow off their Tioga RV(love that photo!)  and snow birding this winter. (They bought FroggiDonna's rig - from the photos in their blog, it looks brand new.)  Trent and Teresa, it will be fun following along with you on your adventures - have a great time on the road!


RAIN!  Look at the grey skies and wet roads.  The sprinklers are on in the center grassy area, but the wet roads are not from the sprinklers - it's from the rain.  It's really coming down hard.  When it rained on The Palms briefly before, I was disappointed that it didn't sound louder on the roof, but now I know it wasn't raining very hard then, because it's LOUD today!

Katie was acting a little scared, so I picked her up and brought her to the open door and talked in a happy voice about how good and nice the rain was.  She buried her head in my neck.  :(  She's curled up in a ball in her pillow right now.  I think she's okay though, she will get used to the noise.

 This is behind The Palms

 This is on the other side of the park.

 What tree is this?

I don't know what kind of tree this is, there are a lot of them in the park. When the wind blows, each leaf blows and makes noise.  Together they make a wonderful sound; it sounds like it's much windier than it it really is.

So...  all day long I kept hearing this music, the bass was low and it was really annoying.  I could hear it over my TV.   There is a rig next to me, and one next to him on the other side, and I figured that's where the music was coming from.  I took Katie out for a walk on a recon mission to find out how long these noisy neighbors were going to be here. I didn't want to have to hear their music for another four days.

So I walk past their driveway,where his truck was sitting with all the doors open.  Great!  He's got it blasting from his truck so he can hear it at his picnic table behind his RV, I thought.  I checked his post, and the reservation ticket said he's staying all week.  Rats!  I decided I'd ask him if he could lower the music a little, and down the walk comes a man my age.  ???  I was expecting someone in his 20s.  I mentioned something about the music, and it turns out there has been an event much larger than the car show at the golf course all weekend, and today they had bands playing all day.  NO WONDER IT WAS SO LOUD!  He said he and his wife walked up there earlier to watch the football game on their large screen TV, there were over 100 people watching it.  

The event is called "Between the Vines," and it's an annual event with a car show, music, helicopter rides, etc.  From their website:  CAR SHOW! WINE TASTING, TOURS, GRAPE STOMP COMPETITIONS, ALL DAY RAFFLE, KIDS EVENTS, HELICOPTER RIDES W SILVERHAWK AVIATION, HORSE DRAWN CARRIAGE RIDES, LIVE MUSIC THROUGH THE DAY!

The music ended at 5:00, which was good since the clouds started coming in around that time, and they had a beautiful weekend up until then for the outside event.  Considering it was just up the hill from me, I'm amazed it wasn't louder.  

And that's why you always approach these things with a nice attitude. :)   I was able to meet a very nice neighbor who lives close by.  He was funny.  He said his truck doors were open because his wife's clothes took up the closets in the trailer and his stuff was basically in the truck.  So whenever he needed anything, he went out to the truck and just left the doors open. 

And here's why I always keep my camera strap around my wrist:

My camera would have landed right on the road.   Speaking of cameras, I've decided on my next camera, and they have it at Costco.  It's a Nikon Coolpixi S9100.  If I buy it on their website I also get a 4GB SD card and a Nikon leather case.  I don't know if it comes with those at the store site.  It looks like exactly what I've been looking for and has very high ratings.  My current cameras has a 10x optical zoom, and this Nikon has an 18x wide angle optical zoom lens.  Do any of you have this camera...  any reviews?

Monday morning:

Last night my water stopped.  It was dark outside, so I used my flashlight to check the hose and hookups through the window and it all looked okay, so I just used my on-board water tank for the little bit of water I needed for the rest of the night.

This morning I went outside and checked everything I could, and it seemed the water in the park wasn't working, except the sprinklers were on and working fine.  I checked my hose and filter and they seemed okay, but when I hooked them up to the faucet, the water would flow, then stop.

Luckily, as I was finishing my testing, a volunteer came by and I asked him about the water.  He re-checked everything I did and had the same results, then he screwed just my water regulator into the faucet by itself, which I didn't do, and it turns out that was the problem.  The water flowed out, then stopped.  My water regular is bad.  So we took that off the hose and everything is working fine.  I'll have to get a new one when I'm in town.

Another thing he told me is that I'm doing my water filter wrong.  I recently got one, and someone told me it didn't matter which end of the hose I screwed it onto, so I've been screwing it into the rig with the hose on the other end, and then the other end of the hose goes directly into the campground faucet.  When I told him that, his wife said that's the wrong way.  I should screw the water filter into the campground faucet, then the hose into it, and the other end of the hose directly into the rig.  They said they used to put the filter on the rig side of the hose, and the weight of the filter, over time,  pulled the fittings out of the rig.  That was really good information.

Which end of your hose do you put your water filter on?  The rig side, or the campground faucet side?

Then she said to make sure I have the anode rod for the hot water heater changed out every year.  I've never heard of an anode rod, but she related a story of theirs' almost completely deteriorating, and their RV repair shop said to replace it every year.  So now that's on my list for next summer.

Do you replace your hot water heater anode rod every year?

There is so much to learn, I'm glad all this information is coming slowly, one bit at a time.  I can't imagine having a crash course in RV Maintenance and Information, and having to remember everything.  Do you have a good chart/list of things that have to be done on a regular basis so you don't forget anything important?  I'm going to have to do a search on the forums to see if one is available.

This morning the rain is gone, the sun is out, the sky is blue and it looks like a beautiful day.  I want MORE rain, but I'll take the beautiful day, too. 

From Me and My Dog, have a great Monday, everyone!  :)

Four more days in Glenns Ferry, ID

I decided to pay for four more days here at Three Island Crossing State Park in Glenns Ferry, Idaho.  A lot of people are leaving today, so it will be a quiet week and the cost will be half price from Monday through Thursday, and then we'll leave on Friday around 1:00 - the check-out time.  I'll do some laundry and shopping somewhere along the way,  and then drive to the nearest Walmart or Rest Area on Friday evening to spend the night.

Katie is back to normal.  Thank you for the nice comments hoping she's better soon.  It took a while this time, she hasn't been eating much, but did have some food yesterday and today she is hungry and full of energy, so I think she's feeling fine.  Next time we're near a PetSmart, I'm going to see if their vet can give me something for motion sickness for her and we'll see if that takes care of the problem.  She's been pretty mopey, looks at me with such sad eyes, I knew her tummy wasn't feeling good.  Thank goodness she's her old self again!

Yeaaa, she's eating again.

When my neighbor in the next site was packing up to leave, Katie and I were just getting back from our walk, and he came over and knocked on my door.  He's from California, too, the Stockton/Lodi area, but he moved his family to Idaho and they love it here.  

He told me he and his wife were talking about how much they admire my courage, being able to drive an RV and traveling by myself.  That was really nice of him to say, and I realized I don't even think about it as having courage anymore.  In the beginning I did, I tried really hard not to have any fear about this adventure I was undertaking, just to go with the flow and enjoy it.  Now, after four months, it feels pretty normal, and that's a good thing.  And since I have Katie with me, I don't feel like I'm traveling alone. 

This is a tree outside the restroom/shower building - isn't it pretty?  It has long vines instead of branches.  I looked at it up close and inside the vines, and it looked kind of like grape vines.  Very different and pretty.

Katie and I took a longer than usual walk today, since she's feeling good again.  We went up the hill to the upper loop of RV sites.  It was an easier walk than I thought it would be.  Losing 25 pounds in the last few years and walking so much every day since we've been on the road is making a big difference in my stamina.

There is a golf course next door to the RV park, and they were having some sort of car show today.

 

A helicopter buzzed over us and landed at the golf course, then buzzed over us again.   It looks like a private helicopter - I wondered if a rich and famous person was attending their function.  But now, a couple of hours later, it's back and making many trips around the area and landing again.  They must be giving helicopter rides today.

While taking our walk, this guy had Katie's attention.  She sniffed it, and I got close to snap a photo, but he just kept walking.  He has wings, but just kept walking.  He's pretty big, some kind of beetle.  Can you see him in the rocks?  When Katie notices a bug, she gets really close to it, probably to see if it's edible, and usually jumps back quickly when it moves. 

I know they have deer here because some of the younger trees are wrapped in wire, but I sure haven't seen any.  That beetle and swarms of little flying gnats are about all I've seen since we've been here.  A few birds, there were some doves yesterday cooing nearby.

 Rate Page

 Companion Site

 Another companion site

I haven't seen this kind of site in the other parks we've stayed in.  It's a double site with two tables, two water faucets and two electrical hook-ups.  It works out to only $20 per rig if you have two people paying for it.  There are quite a few of them, and when I came in I asked if people can reserve a companion site and just pay half, and have someone else come in an pay for the other half.  He said no, if I reserved it, I would pay the entire $40.28. 

It doesn't seem like a good plan to me.  How many people travel in pairs or groups?  I know some do, but you can reserve sites in advance that are next to each other.  Having companion sites eliminates them for single RVers, unless you want to pay the premium.  Surprisingly, there were quite a few occupied while I've been here.  A 1965 High School Reunion was going on when I got here and they had a few of them next to each other.  A couple of families have reserved a few. But for the most part, the single sites are being used, and many of the companion sites are not.

There are also some cabins:

I peeked into the windows when they were empty, and they are pretty bare.  Bunk beds, a couch, table and chairs and not much else. I guess when a camper moves in, though, they look more homey, and they'd be a good thing for people who don't RV and don't want to tent camp.  They have A/C and heat, no water.  They have picnic tables and water hook-ups that are the same as the RV sites. Nice looking little cabins.

It's going to be a quiet Sunday for me and Katie, other than taking some good walks.  Most of the RVs on this lower loop are gone, only a few are still here.


From Me and My Dog, have a great Sunday, everyone!  :)