Grand Junction, CO was sort of our bail out point if we decided we didn’t want to proceed to EclipseFest23 in Oregon. We could have easily turned south and headed straight to Zephyr in Benson, AZ instead.
By the time we reached it, our excitement was mounting – especially knowing how many dear friends we’d be intersecting with there and along the way. So westward we kept, following basically the Oregon Trail.
This tale follows our adventures from Oct 1 – 14, 2023 after leaving Antelope Island State Park in Utah.
Stop 1: Lava Hot Springs, ID
We didn’t exactly take the direct route into Oregon, and decided instead to optimize for visiting friends. wine and hot springs (the most important things!).
One of my dearest and oldest friends Shirley, who pre-dates my nomadic days, settled into the tiny town of Lava Hot Springs in Idaho at the start of the pandemic. Long time followers might recognize her from our many rendezvouses over the years – as she’s a digital nomad too. But one who rents places to work remotely from across the world (including Afghanistan!), instead of traveling by a mobile substrate.
We were excited to stop in and see her, as it had been a few years since our last rendezvous.
Her rental this time had a perfectly level van parking spot, and walking distance to the town’s hot springs pools – which cost just $8 for a soak. As you’ll see in our coming posts, this is just the first of many hot springs we’ll visit.
And I have to say, it’s probably one of our favorites for the sheer diversity of pools and temperatures (and cost!).
We had a great time reconnecting, and true to word – Idahoans love gifting potatoes to out of staters (it’s a thing, apparently).
Stop 2: Buhl, ID – Miracle Hot Springs
Another friend recommended Miracle Hot Springs, which had a handful of RV sites. So we booked a spot without doing much research for two nights.
We had a couple work related Zoom sessions scheduled which was the reason for the two night booking. We’ve gotten so accustomed to connectivity just working, because we carry one of everything, that we didn’t give it much thought. We assumed we’d be able to work remotely from here AND get in some hot spring awesomeness.
WRONG.
The campground for the springs is deep inside a ravine gorge surrounded by volcanic rock. And is heavily forested. So this meant no cellular signal despite fully extending our high gain antenna on a pole. And Starlink struggled to keep online due to the trees.
We were able to hike up the road to get a message out to the folks we had calls scheduled with that we wouldn’t be able to make it.. and eventually were able to get Starlink online just enough to be annoying with frequent drop outs of 30-45 seconds every few minutes.
Oh well.
So glad we are semi-retired now, and none of the calls were critical.
Our friends Marc & Julie of RV Love were also passing through the area.. so instead of work calls the next morning, we rented a private hot spring tub for four, and enjoyed a 2 hour soak with them.
Now.. that’s the life!
Stop 3: Garden City, ID – Cinder Winery
Next stop would be to visit some friends near Boise, ID – so we selected a Harvest Hosts urban winery of Cinder Winery. It was a perfect little stop with a very elegant wine tasting setup for us and our friends.
But on the way, we just had to stop at Y-Knot Winery – also a Harvest Hosts location. We’ve had so many followers send us pictures of them there, as the winery is closely named to our boat’s name of Y-Not.
They have some lovely wines, so we purchased a few bottles to become our ‘house wine’ aboard Y-Not, should the bottles actually make it back (we’ll try our best to save them!).
Cinder Winery is within close distance to the amazing greenway trails around Boise – so we set out in the morning for a short run. Well, the trail was so amazing that our short run ended up being a full 10k and us both setting personal records.
You might have noticed in our recent photos that both of us are a smidge lighter than before (ok, quite a bit – Chris is down about 40lbs and me about 30lbs since our peak pandemic weights). We’ve done it by embracing running 3 times a week (a habit we’ve kept up since our training this time last year for Chris’ first full marathon, and me my first 1/2 marathon), biking, hiking and lots of other exercise (yoga, pilates, weights) and following a Mediterranean diet.
Stop 4: Burns, OR – Crystal Hot Springs
Back in 2014, as we were making our way into Oregon to host at Cape Blanco Lighthouse – we caravanned with our friend Forrest & Mary and stopped at Crystal Crane Hot Springs outside Burns, OR.
We just had to stop in again.
It’s now called just Crane Hot Springs – and they’ve made a lot of improvements, including a new full hook-up RV park. We stayed in their overflow dry camping field – which gave us a lot of privacy and space – for just $30/night including unlimited 24/7 soaks.
Just as before, we love this place. The natural feeling hot spring pond is huge. Even over a full weekend, it didn’t feel full. Plenty of space to spread out. We even saw a full on fire ball meteor through the sky.
Stop 5: Klamath Falls KOA
We’re not normally commercial RV park folks – but there weren’t many options to provision before heading out to EclipseFest23. Our dear friends Amanda & Jesse, who we hadn’t seen since last summer when we departed after Transformus in West Virgina – had booked a spot here.
So we joined up with them pre-festival at the KOA in town.
At about $56/night – our little van site wasn’t too bad – and the laundry facilities were top notch.
We were able to get all our tanks back to optimal, grocery shop near by – and do some exploring around by bike before we all headed out to the big event.
Stop 6: EclipseFest23
So here we finally are – the whole reason for driving across country from Florida to Oregon. EclipseFest23! To see the annular eclipse in one of the most predicted epic locations for seeing the event.
An area where there’s supposed to be some over 300 days a year of full sun.
Just north of Klamath Falls is a rodeo fair grounds where the RVing event is being held. We’re converging with friends from across the world.
We arrive instead to a grounds that is full of holes, very unlevel and literally covered in cow shit. It’s not overly RV welcoming.
Our friends and RV event organizers Marc & Julie secured us a nice corner spot along the aspen trees – which are blocking our only way online, Starlink (cellular is minimal here, despite signal reports on the event’s website).
All week long – the weather is a challenge. It’s cold. It’s windy. It’s rainy. And it’s cloudy. It’s pretty miserable.
Even the morning of the eclipse, our view is blocked by clouds with just brief views of the moon starting to block the sun. The very event we came for. Thakfully after the ‘ring of fire’ stage the clouds cleared enough to see the tail enough of the eclipse.
So why is this event absolutely amazing for us anyway?
People. That’s why.
We’re part of an amazing convergence of RVers – including Marc & Julie of RV Love, Amanda & Jesse and Jason. And then Brett & Danielle (who Chris knew before he hit the road from his paramotoring days) and Sandy & Mark.
And we’re also meeting up with new friends Howard & Katelyn Newstate of Newstate Nomads (filming an epic National Park series) and Tanya & Dave of Turn it up World.
But even more over the top amazing – is our dear friend Nina of WheelingIt (who we traveled with and hosted with at Cape Blanco back in 2013 & 2014) has flown over from France to join us! We hadn’t seen her and Paul since they flew away to Europe back in 2018.
The reunion was nothing short of tear filled amazing.
Yup, the people. That is what makes a shitty cloudy Eclipse event epic.
We had adventures up to Crater Lake (including snow ball fights), lots of social time (our crew won Trivia night!) and we ‘enjoyed’ the eclipse by viewing the virtual imagery on Chris’ iPhone.
And the Smash Mouth concert to cap off the event was absolutely amazing!
Oh, and it should not go unmentioned – EclipseFest23 really should have been named KikiFest23 (or at least, that’s what we told Kiki!). For it was her 15th birthday.
We found Kiki nearby in Oregon some 15 years ago when she was just 7 weeks old. She joined our journey then, and this event was really a cover event for her birthday party.
Real Time Update
Here we are, already end of the month and on the eve of Halloween when I post this. And it’s been another lifetime of adventures since Oregon!
We’ll get you caught up soon, but we are outside of Las Vegas and within a day or two’s drive of Zephyr!
We’re so excited to arrive to Benson to see our cat-sita & RV lot and get Zephyr back to being a livable space for us these next couple of months.
It’s hard to believe that we’ve only been in motion a little over 2 months – but so many miles and memories made since we departed Florida!
We’ve hardly had time for sharing on Facebook, let alone going live on YouTube – the amazing just keeps coming. So perhaps once we are settled in at Benson we’ll be able to do so?
It’s truly been an awesome trip, and we’re living our best life – no doubt. And we’re fully ready for some down time in one spot for a while before we return to Y-Not in Florida
Are those heavily-laden pizzas in 2 of those pics? Did you make them or from a restaurant? They sure looked delicious and details would be appreciated!
Happiness and safe travels.
We purchase cauliflower crusts (usually found in the freezer section) and then top them heavily with all sorts of veggies that we might have on hand and goat cheese. We then ‘bake’ them on the grill. One of our favorite meals!
Wonderful post.. You guys look great and happy. Living the life. So nice to see a reunion with Nina. Keep on trucking!
Congratulation on so many accomplishments — health and fitness, socializing, traveling, but most of all, celebrating Kiki’s birthday in such an expansive way. Safe travels!
Happy Birthday Kiki !!! You look great. Chris and Cherie you look amazing also. I am impressed with your weight loss and perseverance with the training and running that you have been doing. What a wonderful time you are having seeing friends again. So great to hear about your adventures as we travel along with you.
Looks like a great trip, we’re planning some time in Southern Idaho next year so will be checking out those hot spring recommendations. Thanks for sharing.
Looks like you had lots of fun in spite of the clouds messing with the prime event. I swear every time we have meteor showers in WI we get clouds or fog!
You both look amazing. Your weight loss is admirable. Love living vicariously through you. I’m in Oregon and knew the weather would mess with the eclipse so just saw other peoples photos from other locations. So glad you met up with Nina. I miss both of your RV adventures so it was nice to hear about your stops along the way. Thanks for sharing. It is much appreciated.
What a great adventure you are having! Thanks for sharing it with us.