20250411 Friday April 11, 2025 Finished our taxes. Back to Razor Clamming!

20250411 Friday April 11, 2025 Finished our taxes. Back to Razor Clamming!

We left the Gather and Feast at 8 a.m. and headed north. When we reached the Portland area yesterday, we were greeted with dark skies and rain. It rained on and off throughout the night, but when we woke up with the roosters crowing this morning, the sky was clear!

Ben checked with his accountant for the one missing tax form that was holding us up. The accountant finally got it done and sent it via email today. We were rushing back home to pick it up on Monday so we could file our taxes before the Tuesday deadline, but now that we can do things online, we decided to head back to the coast and dig some more clams.

We stopped to refuel and use the bathrooms at the Lucky Eagle Casino, where they had Sinclair fuels with good old-fashioned dinosaur diesel.

We also stopped in Elma to renew our fishing and shellfish licenses at the Dennis Ace Hardware, where we originally bought Janet’s high-tech clam gun.

Sometimes, traffic can be a nightmare in Aberdeen on a clamming weekend, but we had a smooth ride. Maybe it’s because we got a head start on people who will be clamming after work. 

When we got to Aberdeen, we parked in the Walmart parking lot where there was cell phone service. Ben finished and submitted our taxes online. We also had lunch at the Dairy Queen next to Walmart.

Now that our taxes are done, we can take our time and enjoy this weekend’s razor clam opening, which runs from Saturday, April 12, to April 18. These are AM tides starting with 0.4’ at 6:57 a.m. and getting lower and later each day. But Janet has a hearing appointment on Wednesday so we will likely head back home after Monday morning’s dig.

We set up at Twin Harbors State Park in site 211.  The sky was blue, and the breeze was gentle. There were some trees on the north side of the parking spot, but the south side was open, so our RV was charging at 11.6A on solar. Our batteries should have plenty of juice to start the night with over 95% charge.

Site 211

After setting up the RV and registering it, we took a stroll along the beach in front of the campground. Most of the beach had a lot of gravel, which would make it tough to use a clam gun. You really need fine sand to plunge the clam gun.

Ben went back to the RV and drove the Bronco south along the beach from the Bonge Rd access, which is at the southern edge of the state park. He found a spot with clam shows 1.13 miles south of the access where we can dig tomorrow.

Classic Razor Clam "Show"

Ben then headed to Westport to find some dinner. He went to Merino’s but discovered they closed at 6 p.m. He arrived around 6:50 p.m. and saw people coming downstairs from the upstairs dining area. When he went up, he found out the kitchen was closed, but he saw a family eating there that’s set up right across from us in the campground from Mt. Vernon. They were surf fishing, but they weren’t having much luck. They’re newbies to razor clams, so they might follow our lead in the morning.

Ben found a Mexican restaurant in Westport called Casa Limon. He got take-out Chile verde and Chile Colorado burritos. They came on double aluminum-wrapped paper plates along with a paper bag of crisp tortilla chips and a ramekin of salsa on a cardboard tray that made it easy enough to carry the order. The food was better tasting than the restaurant in Long Beach.

We’ll set an alarm to wake up before sunrise because the low tide is right at sunrise and is only 0.4’, so we might not have too long to find our clams before the incoming tide chases us back off the beach.  

20250410 Thursday, April 10, 2025 Rogue Valley to La Center, WA

20250410 Thursday, April 10, 2025 Rogue Valley to La Center, WA

This was another day of hard-core driving. We had pondered the possibility of visiting Crater Lake, but when we looked into it, the main roads and rim drive are still closed for the season due to snow and ice.  They will reopen in June.  So we decided to just shoot north on I-5.  

We refueled in Central Point at the Costco, which is just north of Medford.  The diesel pump there said “May Contain Up to 5% Biodiesel,” so it was no problem.  

Our next stop was at a US Chef Store in Eugene to shop for some things for Ciara’s wedding, including plastic cups and fortune cookies.  It was a good spot to stretch our legs and use the bathrooms.  

Traffic on I-5 was fine as we managed to maintain at least the speed limit most of the way.  It wasn’t until we got to the outskirts of Portland that things got congested.  We made a second refueling stop at the Portland Costco near the airport, which has diesel.  The pump there surprisingly said “Biodiesel Blend. Contains biomass-based diesel or biodiesel in quantities between 5-20%”.  Well, that wasn’t particularly helpful since B5 is OK, but B20 is not.  We are hoping it is closer to B5 than B20. But at only $3.599/gal, who’s to complain?  When we next fill up somewhere in Washington, it will almost certainly be well over $4/gal.

Highland Cattle

4H oinkers

Our destination for the night was The Gather and Feast Farm, in a town called La Center, WA.  We had never even heard of La Center before this trip.  It is east of Woodland and about 20 miles north of Vancouver.  The town is quite cute with some historic store fronts and a short Main Street.  The Gather and Feast Farm is a hobby farm situated among rolling hills and forests.  The owners are a professional caterer with a 4000sq ft kitchen space in Portland, and his wife is a flatbed trucking freight consolidator.  They have a large cage-free chicken enclosure, garden areas with various crops, and pastures with some highland cows, goats, and pigs. 

They had a gravel loop with 3 designated Harvest Host parking spots in a row.  The sites were all nice and level, with a nice grassy lawn and picnic table by each site.  However, because they are all in a row, everyone would have to arrive and leave in consecutive order.  Fortunately for us tonight, we were the only Harvest Host guests.  

We had picked up a Costco Pizza in Portland and had that for dinner, but bought some brats and tonkatsu ramen broth from the Gather and Feast Farm, which we will have at a later date. 

20250409 Wednesday, April 9, 2025. Rogue River Valley Vineyards

20250409 Wednesday, April 9, 2025. Rogue River Valley Vineyards

We did not experience the dreaded knock on the RV door in the middle of the night, and actually had a very comfortable night.  Xiaowen's neighborhood is very quiet and there was no traffic during the night.  Ben got the Bronco hitched back up and the RV back into driving configuration.

We bid Xiaowen farewell and headed back north.  We had thought we’d end up taking a direct north route, but it turns out that was on a toll highway, so we headed east to Stockton and then north on I-5.  According to the Siri, that added 51 minutes to our drive for the day, but we'll do just about anything to avoid paying tolls.

Hard core 6hr drive today with mountain passes.

Our RV’s trip computer said we had a 237-mile driving range while the navigation system said we had 218 miles to get to the Redding Costco where we know we can get the R99 diesel safe for the vehicle.  We drove directly to Redding, but got a bit nervous as we got closer to Redding and our driving range continued to drop.  It was with great relief when we pulled off I-5 in Redding and into the Costco.  Surprisingly, the RV took 25.5 gallons.  The RV’s spec sheet says the RV’s official fuel capacity was 24.5 gallons, so it must have really been running on fumes.  It’s not clear if the filler neck can hold a gallon of diesel, but that appears to be a secret reserve.

We had perfect weather with temperatures in the low 70s in Redding, blue skies, and no wind.  We had lunch at an In-n-Out in Redding across the freeway from Costco, and then headed up north. 

We did make a brief bathroom stop north of Shasta and when we got back on I-5, it was right behind another Winnebago View that looked like the same year and configuration as ours, only it was towing a Jeep Wrangler.  We ended up following it through the mountain passes and into Oregon until we took our exit near Ashland. 

 

Pink blossomed trees in Shasta County

Lake Shasta Full

Our destination for the night was a Harvest Host site, Paschal Winery and Vineyard, located in the Rogue River Valley.  We were the 4th rig to arrive as Harvest Host guests.  There were two large Class A’s and another Winnebago View with the same configuration of ours, only probably a year or two older since it was on the prior Sprinter chassis.  We checked in and had a flight of their red wines.  We discovered they have a dinner catered there once a week on Wednesday, and that all the other Harvest Host guests were planning on having dinner, so we got added on to the reservations at the last minute.   

Paschal Winery and Vineyards, Swan

Busy Harvest Host Site

The parking lot at the winery filled up towards the 6:30 dinner time and the dining room was full.  There must be a lot of people here from hotels and Airbnbs in Ashland nearby.  

The dinner was Spanish Meatballs with potatoes and garden salad.  The food was excellent quality although because it was brought in by a catering company, the meatballs weren’t at over 140˚F.  But they were tasty, and for $15, it was a decent meal.  Of course, by the time you add the cost of the earlier wine tasting flight and a glass with dinner, it was more expensive than Dairy Queen but a bit fancier and a very pleasant evening as the sun set on the Rogue Valley.  We took a walk through the vineyard and said hello to the alpacas before calling it a night.  

Tomorrow, we will make our way to Woodland, WA to another Harvest Host site, a family farm operation.  We’ll refuel in Central Point, Salem and Portland tomorrow and check out a US Chef's Store in Eugene to see about party supplies for Ciara's wedding.  

20250408 Tuesday, April 8, 2025. China Visa Mission Accomplished

20250408 Tuesday, April 8, 2025. China Visa Mission Accomplished

We headed back into San Francisco, leaving Eileen’s place at 9:15 a.m. and got to the Chinese Embassy around 10:30.  The traffic wasn’t too bad heading into the city, but it is a bit of a drive from the Hwy 101 exit through the surface streets to get to the embassy.  

Surprisingly, as we approached the embassy, we spotted a 2-hour street parking space about a block short of the embassy and were able to actually grab it.  It’s a good thing the Bronco has a short wheelbase for parallel parking.  

As we approached the Embassy entrance, it was immediately evident that there was a big line of people outside the entrance. As we got closer, we saw there were actually 2 lines.  One for visa pickups that was only one person long, and the other for applications that was probably 30 people deep.  We were sure glad that wasn’t the situation when we arrived last Thursday at 2 p.m., just a half hour before closing.  

Once inside the building, there were 4 or 5 people in the pick-up line.  You have to present your receipt at one window where a staffer digs through all the passports and pulls them out.  They give you a ticket to present to the payment window where you confirm the passports and make payment.  For some reason, some people were taking quite a long time at that window. But when we finally got to the window, it only took a couple of minutes for the woman inside the window to match up the receipt with each passport, show us each passport photo to confirm they were ours, and then process our credit card payment.  We were heading out the door by 11 a.m. with visas in hand.  

Since we had a 2-hour parking spot, we walked around the Japan Center Mall, which had a number of shops and restaurants.  The restaurant part reminded us a lot of the restaurant malls in Tokyo.  Most of the shops were just opening, and many of the restaurants were closed until dinner time.  There were other interesting Japanese gift shops and stores as well.  

We headed back to Los Altos with our Chinese visas and celebrated with lunch at the Mountainview In-n-Out.  This time we ordered our burgers “Animal Style,” which means instead of just fresh lettuce, tomato, and onion, they fry the patty with mustard, substitute grilled onions, and add pickles.  We’d have to say the pickles were a noticeable improvement over the basic burger.  

There was a Costco just across the street from the In-n-Out, as well as a beverage and wine store, so we had a walk-through.  Since we eventually determined the cost of beer and wine in California wasn’t any less than in Washington, Ben wanted to try to return the wines so we didn’t have to drive with all that cargo weight.  So we ran back to the RV, which was only 15 minutes from this Costco, and packed up the wines, only to learn at the door that the State of California does not allow any returns on alcohol purchases.  So we ended up unloading and reloading the wines for nothing.  

We hitched up the Bronco to the RV and made our way east to San Ramon.  The traffic was quite bad approaching the turn-off for Livermore.  It had slowed to little more than a crawl for about 5 miles, which took over a half hour to get through.  Once we got past the Livermore turn-off, things opened right up.  

We parked the RV on the sidewalk in front of Xiaowen’s house and unhitched the Bronco because it would have blocked a driveway.  We greeted Xiaowen, her husband Peng, and our other cousin, Xiaowen’s brother Daqing.  Xiaowen and Daqing’s mother was also there.  She is 92, but as cute as a bug and seemed very happy, despite arthritis and osteoporosis shrinking her to a tiny stature.

Ben’s nearly a year on Duolingo wasn’t nearly enough to carry a conversation, but it was enough to get a hint of the context of things Daqing wanted to say, but we really had to still rely on Xiaowen and Peng doing some translating.  The few Duolingo phrases Ben has learned seem only to be enough to instill a false impression that he can understand what is being said.  But family is family, and we did have a good time getting caught up on how Xiaowen and Daqing’s children were doing, and what our kids have been up to.  

Dave came up with Eileen and her sons Brevan and Coby to join us for dinner at a nearby Chinese restaurant.  We had a grand feast, and just when we thought we were about done, they brought out a roast duck.  We didn’t think we could eat any more, but the duck was too delicious to pass up at least a taste.  There were a couple of dishes that were a bit unusual but also Hunan specialties.  One was a clay pot fish soup with pickled vegetables.  It was very interesting because the pickled cabbage was essentially sauerkraut, which gave the soup a unique sour but savory taste.  The other was a beef with green peppers like mild jalapeños. Ben had ordered a Mongolian lamb, not knowing what to expect, but it was pretty much prepared like Mongolian beef (duh!). 

When the meal had wound down, Janet had tried to sneak up to the counter to intercept the check, but Xiaowen caught her and short of a true mud wrestling match, Xiaowen won out and refused to allow us to split the check.  We will just have to get them back on our turf.  

While we were at the restaurant, apparently someone had complained to the police that our RV’s slide was obstructing the sidewalk.  We had given Xiaowen’s family a tour of our RV, so we had the slide out and had forgotten to pull it back in before we left for dinner.  It was protruding about a foot over part of the sidewalk, but easily left over 30” unobstructed.  But after we got back to Xiaowen’s place, we repositioned the RV so that the edge of the extended slide was exactly at the curb.  We didn't think whoever had complained would be walking the sidewalk in the middle of the night, but we went to sleep hoping not to be awakened by knocking on the RV door.

20250407 Monday, April 7, 2025. Prepping for Heading Home

20250407 Monday, April 7, 2025. Prepping for Heading Home

When we were driving down to Los Altos from Chico, we had bypassed a planned refueling stop because the station we had stopped at only had what is called B20 Diesel, which contains 20% biodiesel. Our RV has a Mercedes-Benz diesel motor and there is a sticker on the fuel door saying “Use Ultra Low Sulfur Highway Diesel Only. Max B5 (Max 5% biodiesel allowed). Otherwise, the emission control system will be damaged”.  We initially thought that was a fluke and assumed we’d just get some normal #2 Diesel in the city.  We had planned filling up the RV today so we wouldn’t have to do it with the Bronco hitched when we started our return trip.  But when we got to a nearby Chevron station, the sign said #2 Diesel, but it also had a sticker on the pump saying it was also B20, or contained up to 20% biodiesel.  We then drove a bit further and found a Shell station with a high posted diesel price ($5.75/gal) and figured it was probably good old-fashioned petroleum diesel.  

The pump was also labeled #2 Diesel, but with a new twist, the pump was labeled “Renewable Diesel” and a sticker on the pump declared “95% Biomass-Based Diesel Blend- Contains more than 20% Biomass-Based Diesel or Biodiesel”.  So it appears that the State of California requires B20 or greater in its highway diesel.  So what to do?  Ben had to pull over and hit the internet.  Obviously, there are tens of thousands of Mercedes-Benz Sprinter-based commercial delivery vehicles on California’s roads, and California has the world’s most stringent vehicle emissions standards.  Where do they fill all of them up?  

There is a lot of confusion and contradictory pronouncements on the several internet Sprinter forums.  Now looking back at our refueling stop in Redding, all I saw was Top Tier approved Diesel, but now looking back at the pictures I took of the pump, there was a sticker saying “99% Biomass-Based Diesel Blend- Contains more than 20% biomass-based diesel or biodiesel” but another sticker immediately below that saying “Biomass-Based Diesel Blend Is Renewable Diesel- NOT BIODIESEL. Meets ASTM D975 and CARB ULSD Specifications for Diesel Fuel.”

As if things couldn’t be more confusing.  So a search on Renewable Diesel and Shell Renewable Diesel turned up more information about the differences between biodiesel and renewable diesel.  Biodiesel is essentially vegetable oil.  Renewable diesel starts with vegetable oil and hydrotreats it so that it has the same chemical and mechanical qualities as petroleum-derived diesel.  

B20 Biodiesel meets ASTM D7467.  Mercedes-Benz says it should only be used if you have no other alternatives, and regular use will increase maintenance requirements.  Anything higher than B20 will violate warranty coverage.  But B5 is allowable.

Now to make things even more confusing, Chevron is selling a renewable diesel blend that is 80% renewable and 20% biodiesel.  The 20% biodiesel content restricts it to the ASTM D7467 specification.  Shell, however, is selling a 95% renewable, 5% biodiesel blend, as well as a 99% renewable, which is what Costco was probably selling.  

So we got lucky when we filled up at the Costco in Redding, which was selling R99 (Renewable 99%), which is chemically identical to old-school petroleum diesel.  But the Shell R95 (95% renewable, 5% biodiesel blend) is allowable.  So we just have to be careful to read the specs on the pump, and not just the posted prices.  After all the teeth gnashing, we went back to the Shell and filled up with R95B5 diesel.  Since Shell is selling both R99 and R95 in California, we’ll try to stick to Shell stations.  It did help that Shell’s Fuel Rewards membership program dropped our cost from the $5.75 on the street side sign to $5.16/gal.  

After getting that done, we set back up in Eileen’s driveway and then got in a walk around Eileen’s neighborhood.  There are lots of interesting plants growing here, including several we have seen in places like Bottle Brush trees we have seen in New Zealand and Australia, and Bird of Paradise plants in full bloom, which we have seen throughout the tropics.  And, of course, there are plenty of citrus trees full of lemons, oranges, and even kumquats.  Janet had her eyes on several large fig trees.  

While Bay Area residents were worried about the overcast weather forecast, we thought conditions were perfect for walking.  

Teslas are now by far the most common vehicle on the roads here, outnumbering even Toyotas, Hondas, Kias, and Hyundais.  Because of that, the anti-Musk backlash has been tempered by a majority of car owners having one in their driveway.  But perhaps, more Rivians will be showing up in more driveways now that they are an alternative to Tesla.

Another noticeable phenomenon is that housekeepers, landscapers, and construction workers encountered all over the neighborhood all look like immigrant laborers.  It’s no wonder California is a blue state.  It is highly dependent on immigrant labor.  

We had earlier reached out to a cousin, Xiaowen, whose brother, Daqing, had met us in China in 2006.  We had invited her to the dinner at Chef Chu’s but hadn’t checked the email until just yesterday.  Ironically, she said Daqing was flying in from China this evening.  So we are modifying our return plans to make a stop in San Ramon, where she lives, to visit and spend Tuesday night after we pick up our China visas in the morning.  We will see about arranging a dinner near San Ramon for a mini reunion with Eileen and Dave if possible.

We did get through our last Costco rotisserie chicken breast cooking it with Mac and Cheese and green beans.  More camp cuisine.  We capped off the night watching The Matrix, from Eileen and Tony's DVD collection.