We have some very dear friends who are staying at the Birch Bay Thousand Trails for the summer. This is about a 3 hour drive from where we’re staying in Sequim, so we decided to spend a week visiting them (sadly, they left – maybe THEY weren’t as excited to see us?!?) – although Scott did hang around long enough to have dinner with us 🤣

But, we did get to spend some time with our God dogs, Sadie and Kitty.

We also spent an afternoon visiting Peace Arch Park, which is on the border between Canada and the United States.

Our good friends Scott and Chris are spending the summer north of us so we decided to meet for lunch in the middle.

We took the Port Townsend – Coupeville Ferry to Whidbey Island then drove to La Conner.

We had a great lunch at the Waterfront Cafe and then spent some time exploring this cute little town on the water. We ended the afternoon with a beer at La Conner Brewing Company.

One final stop before heading to Sequim for the summer. We stayed at Long Beach Thousand Trails park, which is actually in Seaview, Washington, a mile or two below Long Beach. The beach looked really nice (and long!) but sadly the weather was cold and rainy most of the time we were there.

We did have a great dinner at Castaways Seafood Grill.

And met up with our friends from Mesa Spirit, Bobbie and Jerry Bruner, for lunch at the Lost Roo.

We took a day trip back down to Oregon and visited the Tillamook Creamery. We really like the quality of their cheeses and were happy to learn that they are a farmers’ run co-op who believe in taking care of their cows and land as well as treating their employees well. And, if you’re in a cheese factory at lunch time, you HAVE to get a grilled cheese sandwich, right?!?

Our last day before heading north we took a drive along the coast and had lunch with a great view at Oysterville Sea Farm.

We spent several days at Whalers Rest, a Thousand Trails RV Park in South Beach, Oregon. The park was fine, but tight and muddy. At least it was a short walk to the beach. Unfortunately, it was cold and dreary most of the time we were there, so we didn’t spend a lot of time at the ocean.

Our friends Scott and Chris had been here a couple of weeks before we got there and recommended a great place for dinner called the Pacific Kitchen at Nye Beach – it was delicious! Candi got the ‘catch of the day’, Mike got their Fish and Chips – and we shared a piece of Raspberry Donut Cheesecake for dessert that was to die for!

We also had fun walking along the Newport bayfront area. It’s a quaint area combining tourist shops and restaurants along with a working commercial fishing village.

Of course we had to take a drive down 101 along the Oregon coast!

On an odd note, this is what they call a shrimp cocktail on the West Coast?!?!?!?

Mesa, Arizona is a great place to spend the winter, but definitely not the summer! We have accepted Workamping positions at a small park in Sequim, Washington and have finally started to make our way there.

The first few days were mostly driving through Nevada, which is the same drive we made last year when we landed at Lake Tahoe. Las Vegas is toward the south end of Nevada, and Reno is toward the north, and other than that, there doesn’t appear to be much in the state! We drove through about 400 miles of desert with very little urbanization. It is a beautiful drive but can get boring and monotonous.

Our first overnight in Nevada was at Artesian Cellars, a Harvest Host location in Pahrump. We parked in the area they directed us to at the back of their parking lot and went in for a wine tasting and a nice dinner.

The next day we drove about 350 miles to our next stop at Desert Rose RV Park in Fernley, Nevada. Since we have 3 days of pretty long drives we had decided to stay here 2 nights and take a day off in between to empty and refill our water tanks and relax a little.

Back on the road, we finally crossed over into Oregon and stayed overnight at Laurel Hill Golf Course, another Harvest Host. They were right off of route 5 so we got off, stayed the night and were able to get right back on 5 the next morning to head to the West Coast.

After spending a great 10 days in Puerto Penasco it was time to head back to the US. Our group once again caravaned to the border.

The Sonoran police were nice enough to provide us with an escort through town to the border, which made getting through this small busy town much less stressful! The couple below are Cheryl and David Goldstein, our Hosts for this Escapee Hangout with the Police Chief of the Sonoyta Police.

Crossing into the US was a lot less stressful than going the other way. We drove through a huge xray machine and were on our way!

We had a great time in Puerto Penasco hanging out with other RVers and exploring the area on our own. Here are a few more highlights from the trip.

We got to walk on a beach again, and found out we like Tecate Beer!

Candi finally got to do Yoga on a beach!

Of course, we ate at a lot of restaurants! We had several group dinners, this one was at Manny’s.

One of our favorites was actually a German restaurant called Kaffeehaus that had a great breakfast!

Our very favorite meal was tacos and beer (Tecate!) at Wrecked at the Reef, an outdoor bar with a great view!

We also saw some great sunsets!

This was a fun, somewhat challenging hike with incredible views of the Sea of Cortez.

Another volunteer day organized by Escapees. This was at a dog rescue and boy was our job hard – we had to play with dogs!

Most of the dogs here have been rescued from the street and are very skittish around people. We found 4 dogs that appeared to be from the same litter and spent about an hour trying to get them to trust us.

When we first got there they wouldn’t come anywhere near us, by the time we left they were eating treats from our hand, but still didn’t want to be petted.

Sadly, there are a lot of stray dogs in Mexico. Barb’s Dog Rescue generally shelters about 400 at a time. On a happy note, many of them are eventually adopted, often by families in the US!

Our group donated a large amount of food for the pups as well as cash donations. If you’d like to consider donating, they are a US recognised 501(c)(3) charity.

We love learning about the places we visit, so we were excited to go on a group tour to the El Pinacate Biosphere Reserve. The landscape was formed by volcanic activity that caused large craters to form. The craters are contrasted with the large lava flows and beautiful desert.

This is definitely a site we would only see on a tour, the long dirt road was rough and barren. The ownership of the land is disputed by ranchers who believe the land is theirs and the government who has reclaimed it. The ranchers protest by stopping visitors and making them pay a fee to travel through the land. Our group was stopped twice but luckily our guide knew how to handle the situation (and how much to pay!).

Once we got there the views were incredible, especially after we hiked up a fairly steep hill!