Tag Archives: camping

The Peacocks of Lake Solano Campground

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A campground drive through turns into an amazing photo opportunity.

There are a few weird little things I like to do. (Actually, there are probably enough weird little things to fill a book, but we won’t go there now.) One of them is driving through public campgrounds to check out the facilities.

I don’t remember when I started doing this. It might have been way back when I first started doing road trips with my wasband in the 1980s. Or it might have been in 1995, when I began doing road trips on my own. In any case, when I’m on the road just wandering around and don’t have anyplace special to go and I see a state or county park campground that looks interesting, I detour to drive through it.

I’ve seen a lot of really neat places to go car camping this way. A lot.

Lake Solano, west of Winters, CA, was just a point on the map when I went out for a drive to Lake Berryessa midday yesterday. The satellite view on Google Maps didn’t show it to be anything special. But when I drove by it on my way up route 128 into the mountains, I noticed its calm, clear water stretching alongside the road. And after a 9-mile kayak paddle the day before that had left me very sore indeed, the calm water of the little lake looked extremely inviting for a paddle one day in the future. So on the way back, I drove slowly past the lake. And that’s when I noticed the sign for the campground.

A campground near a lake. Of course, I had to check it out.

It’s a nice campground with plenty of wooded site. I didn’t really notice whether water and electricity were available. The reason for that was the initial distraction of seeing what looked like a small person carrying some sort of netted frame along the road ahead of me. My brain asked, “What the hell is that?” I looked harder and soon realized I was seeing the side of a peacock with his fan of feathers fully extended. It was the fan that looked like a frame with a net.

I pulled over on the side of the road and grabbed my camera. I’d brought my Nikon D7000 with me, hoping to see something photographic at Lake Berryessa. (I’d been disappointed.) The bird was standing in the middle of the road, rotating slowly so all the females in the area could see him. When he faced me, I snapped a photo with the 24-70mm “everyday” lens that I keep on the camera.

Peacock

Surrounded by PeacocksAnd that’s when I realized that we were pretty much surrounded by peacocks and peahens. They were strutting through the empty campsites, along the road, and into the brush. Occasionally, one would let out a shrill call. Penny stared at them through her window. I used my phone to grab a photo of that.

I spent the next twenty minutes driving around the campground, snapping photos out the truck window of the peacocks and peahens. When I realized after a few minutes that I wasn’t scaring them off, I took a moment to put my 70-300mm stabilized lens on the camera. Then I kept shooting. Yes, every single one of the shots on this page was taken from inside a running diesel pickup truck.

Peacock

Peacock

Peacock

Peahens

Peacock

Peacock

I did get a chance to check out the boat launch, which was perfect for canoes, kayaks, and other non-motorized boats. And I looked at a bunch of campsites, trying to judge whether my mobile mansion would fit into any of them.

But mostly I looked at the peacocks. I never realized just how beautiful these birds are.

Living with Dial-Up Networking

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It really isn’t that bad.

When I left the golf course RV park in Quincy last week, I also left behind the incredibly frustrating Internet service I’d been stuck with there. I knew that wherever I camped on or near the orchard belonging to my last client of the season, WiFi access would not be an option. (Heck, I didn’t even know for sure if I’d be able to get an electric or water hookup.)

I’ve had Bluetooth tethering capabilities on my Verizon Wireless service for more than 3 years now. It costs me $15/month extra for unlimited bandwidth. (Don’t look for that plan now, folks; current plans all cap the bandwidth; I’m grandfathered in.)

Tethering, in case you’re not familiar with the term, involves introducing your computer to your Bluetooth-enabled smartphone to pair them wirelessly via Bluetooth. Your computer can then use your phone to “dial into” the cell phone provider’s Internet service. This is referred to as dial-up networking or DUN. Once connected, you can surf the Web, send and receive e-mail, and do just about anything else you could do if you were connected by WiFi. The connection isn’t fast, but it isn’t agonizingly slow, either. The only drawback is that when an incoming call connects, you can’t work online. But when you hang up, you can continue working — a feature I just discovered today.

The image below shows what the right end of my computer’s menu bar looks like when I’m connected. The modem menu shows connection time; in this example, only 12 seconds. The Bluetooth menu shows that I’m connected to a Bluetooth device (my BlackBerry). I keep AirPort turned off because there aren’t any WiFi networks around and keeping it turned off saves a tiny bit of battery life. When I want to disconnect, I choose Disconnect Bluetooth DUN from the Modem menu. After a “disconnecting” message scrolls by a few times, the connection is severed and the timer disappears. To connect, I’d choose Connect Bluetooth DUN from the same menu.

Connected Menu Bar

(If you’re interested in how-to information about DUN, check out “Setting Up Your Mac to Use a Smartphone’s Internet Connection,” which I wrote for InformIT a while back. It should still be up-to-date enough to be useful.)

I used tethering for most of my Internet access the first season I was in Washington state. Back then, I’d arranged for Internet service but it was disconnected because an involved party had been beaten with a stupid stick. I fell back to DUN for access and was glad I had it.

Back then, however, my computer and cell phone didn’t talk to each other very well. I had a Treo 700p in those days and maybe that was part of the problem. If an incoming call disconnected me, I’d have to do a battery pull on the phone, restart the computer, and repair to get a new connection set up. It was a pain in the butt so I tended to stay online for very short periods of time, dreading the possibility of an incoming call.

The memory of that has stuck with me. But either my BlackBerry Storm (v1) is more gracious about disconnections or Apple has improved its Bluetooth connection routines in Snow Leopard because I’m not suffering the same symptoms. If I get an incoming call, I tell my computer to disconnect, talk on the phone, and then reconnect easily when done. No battery pulls, no computer restarts.

As a result, I’ve been staying connected for as long as an hour at a time.

Where I AmMind you, I’m camped on a construction site across the street from a cherry orchard 8 miles up a canyon from Wenatchee, WA. (The tiny red X on the map marks the approximate spot.) It’s amazing to me that (1) my cell phone works so well up here, usually giving me five [legitimate] bars and (2) I’m able to stay connected to the Internet for so long.

But — and I hate to rub this in for all the iPhone devotees out there — I chose Verizon and skipped the iPhone thing because I often go to places like this and I often need tethering for Internet access. Does AT&T have coverage here? Maybe. Does the iPhone offer tethering without a complex, warranty-voiding jail-break? No.

Yes, it’s a pain in the butt to have to literally dial in every time I want to connect to the Internet. But for $15/month unlimited access, I can live with it — at least until I get home.

Packing Up, Moving Out

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Moving day is upon me.

On Wednesday (yesterday), I got a call from my last client for the season. Instead of starting the contract on July 25, he wanted to start on July 22.

Thursday (today).

That seemed to work out fine for me. My previous contracts all ended on Wednesday and there was no rain in the forecast. So even through two of my clients were still picking cherries, it was unlikely that they’d need me to extend. A quick call to each of them confirmed this.

I’d been planning to move on Sunday. Or maybe Monday. Now it looked like I’d have to move on Friday.

The fifth wheel RV that I’ve been living in since the start of the season is in Quincy, WA in a campground on a golf course with a full RV hookup. My helicopter is parked across the street at an ag strip there. I need to get both of them up to Wenatchee Heights, WA, and park them on an orchard.

Today, I’m driving up to Wenatchee Heights to meet with my client and agree on a place for me to park. I have my eye on a spot, but the land doesn’t belong to my client and he’s not sure how to contact the owner. I’m hoping I don’t have to park in the orchard. The roads in there are very narrow and I’m worried about getting my 36-foot rig around the corners. I’m also thinking that there probably isn’t 36 feet of level space in the whole place.

This afternoon, I’m going to a salmon grill party at the ag strip where I’ll probably give helicopter rides to my hosts and their families.

Then I’ll come back to the RV and pack it up.

RVs are great because they’re set up for living and can be very comfortable. Mine is extremely comfortable. But when an RV is on the move, all loose items need to be stowed. When you spend weeks parked in one place, you tend to take out a lot of items. I need to put all these things away where they won’t go flying as I drive around curves and down bumpy roads. Among the larger of these things is my 24-in iMac computer, which has been sitting on my desk since I got here and unpacked. I’ll be putting it away in its box until I get home from my travels at the end of September. I have a laptop — actually, three, but who’s counting? — with me for the book project I’ll likely start on Saturday.

I expect packing and cleaning to take most of the day. By morning, I need to have it 90% done.

Tomorrow, I’ll fly the helicopter up to the orchard at about 7 AM. My client will meet me there again and drive me back to Quincy — a distance of about 40 miles. Then I’ll finish packing up, take care of all the dumping and disconnecting, get Alex out of his cage and into his travel box, close up the RV, and hook it up to the truck. With luck, all that will go smoothly and I’ll be on site at Wenatchee Heights by noon.

There’s a pretty good chance that I won’t have any hookup when I get to my next parking space. That’s three weeks without water, power, or sewer connections. Power isn’t an issue; I have a solar panel on the roof that should keep the batteries charged and a 2000 watt generator if I need more power. (I really don’t want to run the generator if I don’t have to, but with daytime temperatures getting into the 90s, it looks as if I’ll need it just to run the air conditioner.) Water could be more of a problem. I know I can’t last three weeks with 62 gallons of water. I’m hoping I can run a hose from a water source to the RV to fill its tanks occasionally. We’ll see how that works out.

I’m looking forward to the move. I was actually starting to get pretty tired of this place — especially with no work for the past four weeks. But I am nervous about it. This is a known; where I’m going is an unknown. Hopefully, later this morning I’ll have a better handle on where I’ll be parked and what’s available to me. I can take it from there.

Details to come…

Internet Frustration with a Crappy ISP

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Sometimes it’s better to have no Internet service than bad internet service.

For the past two months, I’ve been living in my RV at a golf course campground in Quincy, WA. This is my third June/July here.

Some Background

Wireless AntennaThe first year, I tried to get Internet service here using what I was told was the only local provider. The provider uses wireless Internet. It picks up a signal from a nearby tower using an antenna it placed on the golf course’s pro shop roof. The signal goes down to a router and broadcasts Internet service via WiFi to those within range.

That first year, it worked okay for the short time it was available. But the groundskeeper was convinced that its wireless signal was messing with the irrigation system’s wireless signal and had it taken down after two weeks.

The second year, the service was up and running again. My camper was parked in the second space from the pro shop (again) and I was able to connect. I paid the $40 monthly fee and had relatively decent service, although speed was often an issue, especially in the evening.

This year, I’m parked in space #5 which is long enough for my new rig. I soon discovered that although the golf course was using the same provider, that provider had changed the way it did business. Rather than one router for the pro shop and campers, they had three routers installed: one for the pro shop, one as a “hotspot” for the restaurant, and one for the campers.

The Trouble Begins

The trouble began when I first attempted to connect to the RV-dedicated router. The system they used required my MAC address. I’m using three devices — my iMac, my MacBook Pro, and my iPad. So we had to set all that up over the phone. He got the MAC address wrong for one of them, causing all kinds of problems.

By the next day, I realized that I couldn’t hold a signal with the router. My Mac was reporting 3 bars when connected, but half the time, it couldn’t even see the router. Turns out, these idiots had installed a router for a campground that didn’t have enough range to cover the whole campground. I guess if you want Internet service, you need to park next to the pro shop building.

So they switched me to the password-protected hotspot router, warning me that they’d change the password once a month. Whatever. It seemed to work so I was okay.

Seemed is the appropriate modifier here. In reality, it only worked about 80% of the time. Sometimes, the router would disappear. Other times, it would be there, but would not send an IP address. Other times, it was there and sent my devices IP addresses, but those addresses couldn’t connect to the Internet. Outages like this would be frequent on some days, lasting anywhere from 2 minutes to 2 hours. One night the Internet went offline around 7 PM and didn’t come back until 10 AM the next day. The golf course pro shop was having the same problems.

The amount of frustration this caused me cannot be measured. I’d be working on an e-mail message or blog post and not be able to send it. I’d be uploading movie files to a publisher who had me on a deadline and the upload would fail. I’d try to download updates for my computer and they’d stall and eventually fail. I’d have a client calling, asking what I saw on weather radar and I couldn’t get online to look.

And then it would just work again.

Even when it did work, the speed of the connection was sometimes agonizingly slow. I mean so slow that it caused physical pain — from pulling my hair out — to use a Web browser. I couldn’t even watch YouTube videos. Even tethering from my BlackBerry has enough bandwidth for YouTube.

Service sucked and I was paying $40/month for it.

I started seriously considering a MiFi.

The D & J Show

Then there was the surprise password change.

The company is run by two guys. One guy, D, is the money guy and knows next to nothing about technical matters. He’s the guy that answers the phone when you call for help. The other guy, J, is the tech guy and I think he probably does know what he’s doing — at least well enough to get by. When you need help, you’re directed to call his cell phone, which he never answers. He also doesn’t respond to text messages or return calls.

D decided, one day, that too many people had the password for Hotspot and it was time for a change. So he changed it to the word golf. Unfortunately, 4-character passwords were not appropriate for the type of network security they were using. So, as a result, it wouldn’t work for anyone, even if they had the password.

J, upon hearing about the problem, changed it back to the old password. That fixed things — or at least brought them back to their semi-functional service level — for a while.

Sputnik

Last week, I flew up to Chelan to spend a day with a friend. I got back around 7:30 PM, and like any other computer-dependent geek, went to check my e-mail.

Sputnik?

The typos on this login screen should give you an idea of the level of professionalism I’m dealing with here.

I couldn’t connect. The router had disappeared. Instead, there was a different router name that included the word hotspot and was not password protected. I told my computer to connect. Still no joy. I launched my Web browser. And the sign-on screen shown here is what I saw.

I was paid up for another three weeks, but I had never been given login information. All I had was a password. I tried all different combinations of my name with the password to connect. No joy.

I got pissed off. I called the number on the screen and got an answering machine telling me that D was on the phone. Not likely. He was more likely gone for the day. J didn’t answer his phone. I started leaving messages, and they were not friendly. I was pissed off.

In the morning, nothing had changed. No one returned my calls — as if I had reason to expect that they might. I started calling again and still not getting through. I had to connect via BlackBerry Bluetooth tethering just to check the weather and my e-mail.

At 10 AM, when I called J again, he answered the phone. (I heard that hell froze over that day, too.)

“We upgraded the service yesterday and put in a new router,” he told me, as if I had no reason to be angry. “It should work a lot better now.”

He was full of crap but I believed him for about 10 minutes. That’s how long it took to set up an account for me and get me connected. He’d already hung up when I realized I had the same crappy service I’d had for the past month and a half.

And now I had the extra bonus of having to log in several times a day.

The login process is especially frustrating on my iPad, which won’t remember my user ID or password and must be prompted to connect by trying to access a simple Web page (I use Google.com) rather than refreshing whatever was last viewed.

Sputnik. That’s a good name for this service. It’s 1950s technology.

I’m outta here in less than a week, so the frustration will end.

And the folks at the golf course have already told me that they’re thinking of switching to another service.

All I know is that I’m not giving another dime to these clowns again.

Update: 10 minutes after posting

It Never EndsYou want irony? Here’s the message I got in my Web browser only 10 minutes after posting this whine. These guys don’t even know how to configure the obsolete software they use.

Just Because It’s Free Doesn’t Mean You Should Waste It

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I’ve become the power police.

My Neighbor's TrailerThis photo shows the trailer parked in the spot next to mine. It’s been here longer than me and I suspect it isn’t going anywhere soon.

For a while, a family of four and dog lived in it. They kept weird hours. They’d come home between 9 PM and 11 PM, make a bunch of noise, and then go inside and (I assume) sleep. Occasionally, before turning in, one of them would do something in the car with the key in the ignition and the door open so it would beep-beep-beep for 20 minutes at a time. In the morning, around 10 AM to 11 AM, the door would open and they’d begin spilling out in their pajamas. After screwing around at the trailer for a while, they’d leave. The whole process would start again that night.

About a month ago, they started leaving the “porch” light on. This makes sense when you know you’re going to get in late, but what bugged me is that they never turned it off. And while this isn’t a huge deal if they’re parked all by themselves, their porch light is about 10 feet from one of my bedroom windows. It’s so bright outside at night that I actually woke up in the middle of the night last week and thought it was morning.

It was morning. One o’clock in the morning.

I considered asking them to turn if off at night when they got in, but I was too embarrassed. They were a family of four in a 20-year-old 22-foot travel trailer with a dog. I was a family of one in a brand new 36-foot fifth wheel trailer with a parrot. I had no right to whine.

About two weeks ago, they started leaving the air conditioning on all day long, even when they — and their little dog — were out. They also left the two top vents and one of the windows open. Air conditioning on, windows closed isn’t bad. Air conditioning off, windows open is good. But air conditioning on, windows open is wasteful — especially when no one is home.

The campground we’re in is dirt cheap: $200 per month for a full hookup! There’s no electric meter, so you can suck as much power as you want. But that doesn’t mean you should suck power when you don’t need to. Or blatantly waste it.

About a week ago, they stopped coming home. I don’t know where the hell they are. For all I know, they’ve been deported.

So now there’s a vacant trailer next door with its porch light on, shining into my bedroom window, and the air conditioning blowing cold air out the open vents and windows. 24/7.

It gets cool here at night — in the 60s most nights. The kind of night you want to leave your windows open to feel the fresh breeze and hear the wind in the trees.

Of course, with windows and blinds open, I get to hear the air conditioning from next door and have that damn light shining on me.

I mentioned the light to some folks I had dinner with last night. They all told me to pull the bulb out.

But last night, I did something better. I snuck around to their electrical box and turned off their circuit breaker. Instant silence, instant dark.

I slept very well last night.

They didn’t come home. Although I was tempted to leave everything turned off, I know they have an electric refrigerator — the kind you buy for a dorm room; I saw them bring it in the day I moved in — and I was worried that the food inside it (if there was any) would spoil. So before taking my walk this morning, I flicked everything back on.

Tonight, I’ll flick it off again.

I figure that if they show up, they’ll just assume the circuit breaker popped. Maybe they’ll even get the idea that they shouldn’t leave the air conditioning on when they’re not around.