The Journeys of Little Dickey Carroll and Companions

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    • Wanderings and Ramblings
      • The Saga of Bob and Bubba
      • An Afternoon at Carnival – the Run-up to Mardis Gras
      • Dream Boat…
      • The Only Bite
      • Blue Creek Trout Hatchery
      • 2016 Allegro 36 LA (aka The Means): Maiden Journey – Labor Day Weekend, Sep 4-7, 2015
    • Brew Reviews
      • Brew Review – ColdFire Brewing – A Gem in Eugene!
      • Brew Review – Honolulu Beer Works (www.honolulubeerworks.com)
    • Mile Posts
  • Observations & Miscellany
    • Potpourri
      • An excuse is nothing but the skin of a reason…
      • Resistance is futile. You have been assimilated…
    • Climate Change
      • Where We’ve Been…
      • Where We’re Going – Most Likely Astray!
    • Politics, Culture Wars, and 4Gen Warfare
  • Side Trips
    • Seattle Cancer Care Alliance – SCCA
      • Abandoning Plan A
      • One of the Hardest Parts…
  • About
    • Little Dickey Carroll – The Man (LDC)
    • The Sayings of Little Dickey Carroll
    • The Nine+ Lives of Little Dickey Carroll
    • Darling-Darling
    • A Vicious Pack of Killer Maltese Terriers (aka: The Kids)
    • Site Map
  • Media Library
  • Home
  • Travel Log
    • Wanderings and Ramblings
      • The Saga of Bob and Bubba
      • An Afternoon at Carnival – the Run-up to Mardis Gras
      • Dream Boat…
      • The Only Bite
      • Blue Creek Trout Hatchery
      • 2016 Allegro 36 LA (aka The Means): Maiden Journey – Labor Day Weekend, Sep 4-7, 2015
    • Brew Reviews
      • Brew Review – ColdFire Brewing – A Gem in Eugene!
      • Brew Review – Honolulu Beer Works (www.honolulubeerworks.com)
    • Mile Posts
  • Observations & Miscellany
    • Potpourri
      • An excuse is nothing but the skin of a reason…
      • Resistance is futile. You have been assimilated…
    • Climate Change
      • Where We’ve Been…
      • Where We’re Going – Most Likely Astray!
    • Politics, Culture Wars, and 4Gen Warfare
  • Side Trips
    • Seattle Cancer Care Alliance – SCCA
      • Abandoning Plan A
      • One of the Hardest Parts…
  • About
    • Little Dickey Carroll – The Man (LDC)
    • The Sayings of Little Dickey Carroll
    • The Nine+ Lives of Little Dickey Carroll
    • Darling-Darling
    • A Vicious Pack of Killer Maltese Terriers (aka: The Kids)
    • Site Map
  • Media Library

Category: Uncategorized

The Sayings of Little Dickey Carroll

“You don’t always get what you pay for, but you very seldom get what you don’t pay for.” “People say I’m arrogant. That’s incorrect. Those who say that are just jealous because I’m better than they are!” OK, OK – I stole this one. But it’s pretty much spot on! “People say I’m sarcastic. I’m not sarcastic. I just have […]

November 20, 2019November 22, 2019 Uncategorized No Comments

An Afternoon at Carnival – the Run-up to Mardis Gras

We arrived at the Aviation Arbor RV Park on Naval Air Station/Joint Reserve Base (NAS/JRB) New Orleans, in Belle Chasse, Louisiana, about Noon on Thursday February 8th, having taken a couple of days to work our way down from Hot Springs, Arkansas. The previous evening we spent the night at the Eastbound I-10 Milepost 2 Mississippi Welcome Center, having been […]

February 18, 2018February 19, 2018 Uncategorized No Comments

Brew Review – ColdFire Brewing – A Gem in Eugene!

Location:  263 Mill Street, Eugene, OR 97401 Date of Visit:  Sunday, March 5, 2017 http://(http://coldfirebrewing.com/) As noted elsewhere, we started off TJLDC Journey #2 (off to Arizona in search of Snowbird Properties) with a stop at our younger boy’s house in Eugene, Oregon to visit David, Janet, Olivia, and Carter Wichman.  I’d asked David to suggest a local craft brewery […]

May 11, 2017February 19, 2018 Uncategorized No Comments

Mea Culpa – Scriptum est opus proxime…

So I’m nine (nein?  That sounds too much like denial!) and a half weeks into Journey #1 – aka TJLDC1 on my Good Sam Club Trip Planner – and I have only written two sentences of the first paragraph of my blog about the first stop East of Vancouver, BC.  Bad LDC!  Bad Boy!  As the heading says:  It’s my […]

October 29, 2016 Uncategorized 1 Comment

Dream Boat…

Well, I went and did it! I pulled the trigger on my dream boat! Since I blew the last of the kids’ inheritance on the Tiffin Allegro 36LA, I’ve now indebted them to the hilt if I don’t get this sucker paid off prior to my demise! The means of returning it to the Pacific Northwest are under review. Should […]

July 1, 2016July 1, 2016 Uncategorized 2 Comments

The Only Bite

Big Brother Mitch Carroll, who is one of the top guides at Waterfall, THE premier Alaska fishing resort, owns a very nice 27′ SeaSport Pilot named Bleu Belle that he fishes out of Puget Sound and surrounding waters.  He was kind enough to invite me, along with friend Jim Hay and Jim’s nephew Jay, who recently retired from the Navy, […]

May 25, 2016May 26, 2016 Uncategorized 4 Comments

One of the Hardest Parts…

One of the hardest parts of visiting the treatment center every day is watching the kids, who are at much greater risk than I, and who have a whole life ahead of them that might be cut short. Seeing a 4-year old who doesn’t want to go through “those doors” but then sucks it up and dashes through, or the […]

May 24, 2016May 25, 2016 Uncategorized 2 Comments

“An excuse is nothing but the skin of a reason…”

March 22, 2016 Just a note on the photo:  Christmas Day, 2015, looking North from the entrance to Ocean City State Park.  Shot with the camera on my Samsung Note4 – not a bad pic for a cell phone, if ya’ don’t mind my sayin’ so! My apologies to my readers – no excuse the for lack of posts!  (Actually, […]

March 22, 2016May 17, 2016 Uncategorized 1 Comment

Brew Review – Honolulu Beer Works (www.honolulubeerworks.com)

www.honolulubeerworks.com Location:  328 Cooke St., Honolulu HI, 96813 Date of Visit:  Thursday, November 12, 2015 With the limited time available for my visit to Oahu, I only had an opportunity to visit one craft brewery during the tour.  I’d received recommendations for three venues from Oahu natives in my workplace, so I elected to start at the top of the […]

November 21, 2015November 22, 2015 Uncategorized 2 Comments

2016 Allegro 36 LA (aka The Means): Maiden Journey – Labor Day Weekend, Sep 4-7, 2015

Over the years I’ve had several smaller RV ranging from a 17’ travel trailer back in the day, thru some fondly remembered years with a ‘74 Volkswagen Bus Westphalia camper, a late ‘70’s 22’ Coachmen Class C whose little freezer preserved a bunch of Kenai Peninsula salmon filets, a 2006 30’ Monaco McKenzie POS (and no, POS is NOT the Monaco-approved model name, and yes, POS in fact DOES mean what you think it might) travel trailer (they wuz’ goin’ bankrupt when they built it, and their QC was non-existent! I’llever buy a Monaco again!), to a 2006 Coachmen Epic 33’ Class A.  I liked the Coachmen Class C enough that I jumped on the Class A with the McKenzie as a trade-in – and the Epic was a great rig, with a couple of feature deficiencies for our long term needs.

Preparing for retirement, we made the transition to our brand new 2016 Tiffin Allegro 36LA (for full details, see our “Means” page!)– 37’ 6” in length, 1.5 baths, and a washer-dryer among other amenities. Time to check her out!
Our first trip in the new rig was a “getting to know, know, know you” journey a relatively short distance from home to Potlatch State Park at the south end of Hood Canal, in the Puget Sound basin of Washington State. “Getting to know, know, know you” definitely being the operative phrase here!
With the heavy-duty Sumo suspension package, I-5 beat me to death bringing the 36LA home empty when I picked it up from the dealer. After I got all the stuff from the Epic loaded, added some new “necessities” (“necessities,” of course, referring to anything that you think you might conceivably ever need and that you have room to squeeze in!) and filling the consumable tanks (fresh water and propane, and gasoline), I’m pleased to report that the rig rides and handles great when fully loaded and towing my 5000 lb Grand Cherokee.
The Kenwood Navigation and Sound System that comes with the 36LA is, I’m sure, a really great system. But Kenwood-intuitive and Little-Dickey-Carroll (LDC)-intuitive are not necessarily equivalent. Since many of the issues I have with it are the same types of issues I have with my Mickey Mouse iPhone (literally Mickey Mouse – and not in a pejorative way – it’s a company cell phone and Mickey’s paying my salary at the moment and is a major reason I’ll actualize my retirement vision! iPhone? Now THAT’s pejorative!) and it appears to be iPhone friendly but not so much Android, so perhaps there’s a reason…
After an “interesting” experience getting the destination programmed (street address of the Park since it didn’t recognize the name!) we were off. Nav display and verbal directions worked well for the first half of the journey. Then Miz Kenwood (that’s what I call her, as contrasted with Miz Google, who narrates Nav for Google Maps) invited me to make a 150-degree right hand turn at a stop sign from one two-lane road to another out on the Central Kitsap Peninsula north of Shelton. Bad Idea! REALLY BAD IDEA! The intersection was in the middle of a fairly sharp curve of the road I was joining and in a 50mph zone! Cleared both ways as far as I could see and started the turn. Not enough room with this rig to keep it all in the right hand lane – gotta hit the oncoming traffic lane to clear the corner! And, of course, here comes a car heading right toward me in the oncoming lane at 50+ mph, hittin’ the brakes and flippin’ me off. Stopped and backed – which is a no-no with the Stowmaster 5000 tow bar on the jeep, but no choice! Of course, by that time, traffic was approaching, brakin’, and flippin’ from the other direction. Not to mention the folks behind me who are all frantically trying to get out of my way! Finally got clear enough to make a left turn and proceeded on into Shelton, disregarding the instructions of Miz Kenwood ‘cause once I got there, I knew how to get to my destination.
We’d never camped at that State Park before, ‘tho we’d dug hard-shell clams and gathered oysters there many times in the past. We arrived a bit later than I’d hoped because of the detour, but still had plenty of daylight. I dropped the Jeep and headed for the camp-site. Found it and prepared to park. I love the rear cameras on the rig: Very clear, color picture, and you can scroll between the straight back view from the middle of the coach and the cameras mounted in the left and right rear-view mirrors to see what you’re about to run over that you can’t see in the mirrors. Tried backing into the site and was reminded very quickly that the site was rated for large trailers and motorhomes up to 32 feet in length. NOT rated for “Extra-Large” rigs like my new 37’ baby! That was when I remembered that when I’d made the reservations, we’d still had the 33’ Epic. Ah, well. That’s probably the last time we’ll camp at that park simply because they don’t have any sites rated “X-large.” I ended up coming back the other way and the folks in the camp site across and up one had to move their truck so I had room to maneuver my front end, but I squeezed it in and we were good to go.
I’d really hoped to get some time in over the long weekend digging some clams, gathering oysters, and hitting the late-summer King Salmon run on the Skokomish River that flows into Hood Canal a few miles southeast of the park. Alas – low-cycle low tides were in the 3:30 – 5:00 AM-ish time frame over that weekend so we never made the digs with the heavy downpours early in the AM, and I never broke from new systems orientation for long enough to grab waders and gear and head for the river. But due to the long-awaited precip that weekend, the Parks Department did lift the burn ban that had been in effect all summer so we could have a camp-fire and barbecue with charcoal rather than propane. And I did develop a healthy punch list of opportunities for the dealer to address (perhaps unreasonably healthy by some measures!) and did learn a bunch about the rig!
A description of Potlatch State Park and its amenities and recreational opportunities can be found on our “Opportunity” page. At the time of our Inaugural Journey, I wasn’t loggin’ and bloggin’, so a very rough reconstruction of the travel log can be found on the Travel Log page.

May you never stop learning and may your journeys always lead to new and exciting destinations!

LDC

November 6, 2015December 1, 2015 Uncategorized 7 Comments

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