Junction City to the Oregon Badlands, Rome Station. OR and then to Battle Mountain, Nevada. Sept 19th - 22nd

Tuesday, we hit the road at 8 am heading for the fuel station we scoped out, as the stations are quite small here. Diesel here is a little cheaper. I have seen it as high as $6.09 per gallon in Tacoma.

After doing some research Ray decided to take Highway 126 and hook back up with Highway 20 after going through the mountains. It's a much easier drive than the 20 all the way through. There's a few construction stoppages, but overall a smooth drive. There are lots of Fire Camps along the way and you can see that this area is burnt up, probably last year as there is quite a bit of new building going on along the McKenzie River.

Colours are starting to change.

Ski Hill on top of the mountain.

Looking smokey in the distance, we could smell it slightly.

Once we connected back onto Highway 20, it was an uneventful trip to Bend. We stopped at the IHop for lunch as Ray had a gift card to use up and we saw a Mobile Fuel Station across the street that's easily accessible for us and at a reasonable price $4.99/gal. Bonus. 

Back onto the road to the Oregon Badlands. We found a nice spot a short distance off the paved access road for the night. It was a little windy when we arrived but the flies..... were terrible so we looked at the view through our big window instead of hauling out our chairs.

All snuggled in.

Once we were all set up, it's time to relax for an hour or so before our showers. Nicer when it is warm in the rig. lol  As it's a warm afternoon, I left quite a few windows open overnight. Mistake ... it was 46F when we got up. I forgot we are so high in elevation, so it really cools down at night. We were back on the road again at 8 am heading to Rome Station, a small restaurant with an even smaller RV Park. They have 4 sites with 30 amp power and water and a sani dump, all for $15 per night. It's also a fuel station with diesel and gas, the diesel being $5.85/gal. Not bad considering we are miles from anywhere. Fortunately we were still full from Bend where we paid $4.99/gal.

We passed through a time change, mountain time, so we lost an hour arriving shortly before 1 pm. Both of us ordered the Cafe's delicious burgers with a milkshake that they are known for according to reviews (boy were they correct!). Now we are stuffed to the gills and I think that's our dinner too.

We jumped back in the car to go down the road to see the Pillars of Rome so Ray could plan out his night time and morning shots. Then across the other side of the highway to see the Owyhee River. The road going in here is dirt and more like a quad trail. I drove very careful lol Finally found a little road that took us down to the river. Most of the dirt road is on a ridge and you couldn't see the water.

Ray stepped out to take few pictures.

A long slow drive for a so so picture.

Ray left again for golden sunset pics about 6 pm.

We had a quiet evening reading, as cell service is very spotty and we still haven't got our DISH TV working. A technician is supposed to call me tomorrow at 1 pm.

Thursday morning Ray headed out first thing before sunrise for pictures, hopefully the clouds stay away. It's a cool 40F outside ... Burrrrr

Once he got back and warmed up, we started our process of getting ready to leave. Today's destination is Clark RV Park in Battle Mountain, Nevada.

It's a pretty boring drive with very few turns. We hardly saw any other traffic until we got closer to Winnemucca. 22 miles of Hwy 95 is terrible until we got to Nevada and poof the roads were excellent.

In the picture below you can see where we curve into the valley and then go up the other side.

Shortly before hitting the Nevada Border we went back to Pacific Time and gained an hour. lol At Winnemucca we stopped at the Maverick Station for fuel, the cheapest yet.

Half an hour later we were at our destination, Clark RV Park in Battle Mountain. This is a very clean park with great pull-thru spaces for $40/night. Nothing else around here but great for an overnight stop. We will stay for 2 nights as it's time for me to do a cleaning in the coach and get caught up on our laundry. Ray will also be able to take a day off and give his back a rest. The dog park is immense.

Picture from Google

Picture from Google

On the DISH TV front we finally got some calls back this afternoon. It appears that the installation back in Victoria attached the wrong cables, while they had our ceiling open .... Ray got up on the roof and manually connected a coax cable from the top of the new dish down to the inside of the MH receiver directly while talking with a technician from King One Pro Dish. We were able to get the satellite dish working. After checking out different wire connections on the roof, that run inside to the receiver, he managed to find the one from the old Dish Satellite connection and put a jumper cable from that to the new King One Pro dish we now have and it worked. 

Next up we called DISH for activation again, after about 30 minutes of downloading/ uploading/ restarting etc. we have TV. Of course a bunch of channels are not coming up in our package, but we will deal with that at our next stop in Ely. Ray was done climbing up and down the ladder for and hour or so. At least we know the equipment works, as we were starting to doubt the whole system. Ray will have to get a more permanent cable between the two so it stays water tight and rehook up the splitter for the bedroom receiver to work. Hopefully that is not a "big to do"! Nothing ever goes easy.

Not such of a "toes up" day for Ray after all. Tomorrow we have 4 hour run to Ely where we will be staying for four nights.