Nor-Cal Mystery Rally and Poker Run, July 10-17

Tom and Nancy Polk have developed a reputation about their Mystery Rallies. This year we signed up, eagerly anticipating the fabulous Mystery adventure that the rumor mill among previous attendees has raved about. The hosts this year were the Combs and the Polks, also known as the Devious Duo Team. They are good about keeping secrets secret. Their standard response to any trick questions about where the rally might be held is a standard "Yes!" followed by a bright smile. Hence their reputation for being the sources of non-information on mystery rallies.

June 10th, a month ahead of the July 10th rally, we were notified to meet at a specific location in Corvallis, Oregon.
Twenty two coaches (most of us Alpines) arrived at the Nazarene Church between noon and 4PM, no earlier and no later, as directed. We were all wondering where our hosts found a spot large enough to accommodate 22 coaches and tows, and thus the first mystery was solved.

22 coaches with tows - a few are POA's and a couple are SOB's

That evening there was a catered mysterious four-course dinner. There were 20 choices on the menu. We were instructed to choose five items per course. They were listed in numerical order with mysterious names like Potpourri, Irish Trees, Necker's Menace, Dental Hygienist, and Gerber's Get-up, to name a few. We had no idea what we were ordering. Each of us selected our five items and wrote down their corresponding numbers on an order form. Our servers returned with plates of our selections, one course at a time.

One of my courses consisted of Arctic Circle, Sun Valley Steamer, Flubber Blubber, Underground Icicle, and Lover's Delight. Eventually I figured out that the Arctic Circle was ice-cream, the Flubber Blubber was jello, the Sun Valley Steamer was roast potatoes, and the carrots were the Underground Icicle. But there were no utensils on the table!

Another course included a slice of Black Magic (chocolate cake), a Jack(knife), a portion of Lazy Hoofer (meatloaf), and Billy Goat (butter). You get the idea. Each course was a surprise and we all had a lot of laughs as the plates appeared.

It  was a lot of fun...despite eating our 20-item meal in whatever random order we selected the numbers, often improvising without utensils. The 20 selections included utensils and a napkin, so many of us had to become creative. I discovered that I was able to shovel my soup (Potpourri) with a celery stick (Dental Hygienist). As much as I love roast potatoes and ice-cream, I must say that eating them together was, well, strange!

The next morning, the mystery of our final destination was prolonged for a few more hours while we completed the Poker Run. We were informed that we would be picking up five envelopes in which we would find the address and directions to each successive destination. And since this was also a poker run, each envelope would have a random playing card included.  
Stop 1 was the church parking lot where we had our mystery dinner and spent the night.

lining up to collect our envelope with the directions to the next destination

Stop 2 was at the Polk County Fairgrounds 30-miles north of Corvallis, appropriately named after our hosts.
Here we picked up our next envelope with instructions for the third stop and a third playing card. This repeated twice more until we picked up our envelope with the address for our final destination and our final playing card.

And the mystery destination? 

Andersens Oceanside Big Rig Resort in Long Beach, Washington! 

For us, it ended up being a bit of wild poker run since we traveled south to Oregon from the Seattle area only to return back north to Washington again. But for many of our Californian Alpine friends, this was the farthest north they have traveled for a rally, and it was a great way to entice them to our neck of the woods. 


The drive from Corvallis to Long Beach along the back roads was particularly scenic. We have driven through this area several times at different times of the year. This time we saw the fields abundant with crops and in particular with lavender along route 99W. 

you are definitely in farm country when you share the road with combines

fields of green

fields of lavender

Eventually the road veered west toward the ocean, taking us through the scenic Tillamook & Clatsop State Forests along Route 26. 

On the final stretch on Route 101, we drove through Astoria, with its iconic bridge spanning the mouth of the Columbia River. It appears that to most of the ladies, this crossing in the coach as a passenger overlooking the water turned out to be rather nerve-wracking. There was a lot of talk about "that bridge" and whether we would need to cross it again during the week!

the long road across the water

And so we entered Washington State and continued to the "world's longest beach" on Washington's Long Beach Peninsula. 

map courtesy of Long Beach visitors guide

 
We collected our final playing card for the poker hand once we arrived at Andersens Resort. That evening, in the clubhouse where we gathered for meals and the tasty Italian catered dinner, our hosts gave out prizes to the winning poker hands. 

the big winners

the losing hand that awarded me a small prize

I have never played poker, but found out that I had a losing hand. Oh well! 
I did however get a small prize for collecting bad cards. 

I may not have been a winner at the poker game, but the rest of the rally was a winner for all of us. Our hosts promised that we would have a week filled with fun and interesting events. It was certainly that and so much more. 

During the seven days, every morning at breakfast and for Happy Hour we enjoyed the convivial camaraderie of friends old and new. NorCal, SoCal and NoWACA Alpine members attended. Once again, we met several new folks. 

our extended Alpine family

We had a good chuckle when our hosts delivered a "Breakfast Surprise" to the coach the first morning. Tom handed me a 15" brown box in which we discovered a treat from the local bakery. None of us has ever seen such gigantic donuts. And they were tasty!

2 perfect donuts, at least 8" in diameter

We dined sumptuously at the catered dinners and our final pot luck evening. And we had a schedule packed with many terrific organized outings in the area highlighting the history, culture, cuisine, and rugged beauty of this coast.

On Thursday we carpooled to Fort Clatsop. This is Lewis and Clark territory and the area where the intrepid explorers arrived at the mouth of the Columbia River in their quest to discover a navigable river from the interior to the ocean. We have of course been here before, though the movie our group saw today at the Visitor Center in the Lewis and Clark National Park was the first I have seen made from the perspective of the natives who witnessed their land being discovered by Europeans and what followed. I thought it was excellent.

Sacagawea, the only female in the group with her baby

The park guide showed us around the fort, a replica rebuilt since the '06 fire that destroyed the first one. 

Next we watched the slow and tedious process of boiling fat to make candles, an important job to keep the dark and dreary evenings well lighted during the winter months that the expedition spent here. This far north, the sun stays up well past 9PM during the summer, but in winter it is already dark by 4PM.

Our hosts arranged a picnic lunch catered by a local bakery. We ate hungrily.

From Fort Clatsop we moved on to a private tour of the Coast Guard Air Base, located at Astoria Regional Airport in Warrenton. It is one of the oldest and busiest Coast Guard stations on the West Coast. The US Coast Guard uses vessels and helicopters in search and rescue missions around the mouth of the Columbia River.

The most exciting part of the tour for Michael was watching the "helos" take off and land. And when he got to climb into one for a photo.

On Friday a Prevost tour bus picked us up and took us across the "dreaded" Astoria bridge to the Columbia River Maritime Museum where we had a private guided tour. 

outside the museum with the Columbia, river and lightship, in the background

The mouth of the Columbia is known for its treacherous conditions. This river which originates in Columbia Lake, British Columbia, Canada, empties into the Pacific Ocean at the Columbia River Bar, depositing a tremendous amount of silt from the Cascade Range at the mouth of the river. Ocean currents build underwater sand bars 5 to 10 feet high in a year, resulting in a constantly changing geography. Millions of dollars are spent annually on dredging to keep the channels open to marine traffic. Each year, the US Army Corps of Engineers removes 5 to 6 million cubic yards of sand, enough to fill 500,000 dump trucks, according to one display board.
It's no surprise that the Columbia River Bar is also known as the "Graveyard of the Pacific." Since 1792, approximately 2,000 vessels (including 200 large ships) have sunk at the Columbia River Bar and over 700 people have lost their lives. The combination of high seas, a mighty river (emptying into the Pacific at 150 billion gallons of water per day), and shallow shifting sandbars make the Columbia River Bar one of the most dangerous crossings in the world. 
Today, cargo ships from different nations transport goods like cars, petroleum goods, and steel through the Bar to ports in Portland, Longview and Kalama. Bar pilots guide the vessels daily through the 17-mile danger zone over the sand bars and through the shifting channels. River pilots board the ships in Astoria to continue further safe passage up the river.

Today, conditions are a lot more sophisticated than in years gone by. Very little was known about the northwest area in general until adventurers of the 17th and 18th centuries explored the Pacific Northwest coastline to create maps and scout for safe harbors. 
Our docent explained about several instruments available to mariners back then. Michael demonstrated the then state-of-the-art equivalent to today's GPS, the Back-Staff, which saved mariners from looking directly into the sun with a previous instrument, the Cross-Staff. 
The museum offered displays about the first explorers, including Captain Robert Gray who sailed into the "great river of the west" in 1792 and named it for his ship, the Columbia Rediviva. 
We also learned about the fur-skin, whaling and fishing trade that developed in the area.

the "lighthouse" Columbia

The Lightship Columbia is docked at the museum. We toured the inside and learned how this vessel served as a floating lighthouse and remained anchored at its appointed station to warn incoming vessels about the hazardous reef. This is the last lightship on the west coast. Built in Maine in 1952, she served faithfully until she was retired in November, 1979 when an automated navigational buoy was installed.

After the museum we boarded the bus for the next stop, the Astor Street Playhouse. Here we first enjoyed a catered Fish 'n Chips dinner from Dooger's Seafood and Grill, followed by the vaudeville-style musical melodrama, Shanghaied in Astoria.
The play was quite entertaining in itself, though probably the most memorable instance was when the voluptuous proprietress of the saloon (where the males imbibed in liquor and more!) came down from the stage and sang to the males in the audience, giving one in particular her special attention:

Oh, Jerryyyyyyy!

After the play, our entire group continued the attention with cries of "Oh, Jerry!" echoing on the bus on the return trip to the RV Park, and then again the next morning. Jerry was a good sport.

Over the weekend, we had the choice of touring the Columbia Pacific heritage Museum in Ilwaco, and Sandsations, the 33rd annual sand-sculpting event in Long Beach. Both were interesting. 
The Museum was celebrating Clamshell Railroad days and several model train enthusiasts set up their trains. It's the first time I saw Z-gauge trains. They were tiny.

One couple who are Lego enthusiasts set up an entire town with Lego buildings and trains. I was fascinated.

The main attraction of the museum is the 1889 passenger coach, the Nahcotta, owned by the Ilwaco Railroad and Navigation Co (IR&N) to transport vacationers from the port of Ilwaco to various towns along the peninsula. It is the only Pullman coach owned by the IR&N, built to run on a narrow gauge 3-ft track. At 42 feet long, it is close to the size of many RV coaches. After the railroad closed in 1930, the Nahcotta became a cottage for 30 years until a railroad enthusiast in Fife, Washington bought the pullman and worked on restoring it for the next 30 years. The Nahcotta returned to Ilwaco in 2003.

Sandsations drew quite a crowd. There was a wide range of talent but it was evident that everyone was having fun building their sand creations on the beach. Sand castles definitely took on a new meaning and dimension this weekend.

Strolling through the town of Long Beach, we came across the Lewis and Clark Park commemorating Michael's heroes and featuring a sculpture of the tree on which Clark carved his name in 1805 when he was in the area.

Long Beach is the western most point reached by the expedition. Captain Clark's diary entry on November 19, 1805 states that he "proceeded on a small sandy coast 4 miles and marked my name on a small pine, the day of the month and year..." 

Trite but true: all good things come to an end. Folks started to leave the morning of the 17th. We said our adieus and waved as the coaches drove off. It was a full and wonderful week. The weather was good, considering this is the Washington coast. The RV park is a great location with easy beach access, and quiet yet close to everything. The beach extends for miles, perfect for long walks and stunning sunsets.
Our hosts did a marvelous job planning their 7th mystery rally at an interesting location with lots to discover and learn. Every last detail was carefully organized and executed. I'm hooked! And look forward to the next Mystery Rally. Thanks Tom, Nancy, Judy and Kelly for a wonderful, mystery-filled adventure. Yours is a rally I definitely recommend.