Don & Anne's Excellent Adventure!

There are fish in the river!

2011-07-28T18:41:00.000-07:00

Guess I'm getting pretty excited about fishing this summer! This morning I drove over to Hood Canal to scope out the Skok, The Skokomish River, that is. Fishing for Chinooks starts August 1st and I wanted to see if there are any fish. As luck would have it I arrived at low tide and no fish were visible from the SR-106 bridge due to the shallow water and the lack of any deep holes at that particular spot so I went into Shelton to see what activity they were having at the hatchery, the destination of these beautiful fish as this is a hatchery supplemented fishery. The holding pond easily had two hundred big, bright salmon and a few trout swimming about so I am optimistic that I'm going to have an excellent couple of months on the river! This is combat fishing at it's best, or worst, depending on your point of view. The banks of the river will be crowded with eager nimrods hoping to take home a nice King Salmon (Chinook). I will be there as well! I think I'd better go tie some leaders now! Hope to see you on the river.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig!

2011-07-20T19:00:00.000-07:00

After a leisurely week on the road we have arrived in Bremerton, Washington, just a few short miles from our last home in Washington. We are camped in the Elks RV lot and we can look out and see part of Puget Sound. If we awaken early in the morning we will expect to see deer out on the lawn, It is a peaceful site. The weather is nice, cool and pleasant. Some complain that this is not really summer but it just may be summer at it's finest! There is a pleasant breeze and we may go out and throw a Frisbee back and forth once the picnickers leave the grounds. Right now rest and relaxation is the name of the game! We hope that whatever your summer is so far that you are enjoying it!

What Is That Odor?

2011-07-16T21:44:00.000-07:00

Today we had a pleasant experience as we left Corning, California and proceeded north on I-5. The road was more or less decent and the smoke detector stayed on the ceiling and the remainder of our fillings stayed in our teeth! Skies were overcast and we had an easy day until we got into the Siskiyou Mountains. Northern California and Southern Oregon have some mountains that have several mile climbs and descents of up to 6%. That doesn't sound like much but our gas burner doesn't do well going downhill. The coach wants to run and the engine and transmission don't do a good job of holding her back like a diesel would. As we descended into Ashland, Oregon we encountered a couple of runaway truck ramps, exits filled with gravel to stop vehicles with burned out brakes. We passed one sign that advised that the runaway ramp was 2 miles ahead and we discussed how it must feel to be in a vehicle that you could not stop and know you had to negotiate the s-turn downhill road and avoid the other traffic as well for another two minutes!. Then a few minutes later we came around a turn and there was an eighteen wheeler in the runaway ramp! We were really surprised, especially as we noted that the driver was still in the rig and looked like he was in a state of shock. The incident must have occurred just seconds before we arrived! The furrows in the gravel indicated that the truck had stopped in about 20 feet! It must have been like a cable arrest in a carrier landing. That truck must have reeked with the smell of burned brakes and fear! What do you think? Remember to test your brakes and shift into a lower gear! Be safe.

Central Valley

2011-07-15T19:35:00.000-07:00

We got up with the sun again and were 'merrily' on our way by 6:30 AM. It appeared to get down to about 60 F last night so we were pleased. After about 10 minutes we turned onto US-99 in Bakersfield and headed north. Central Valley here we come! Almost immediately there were green fields on both sides of us, the result of irrigation. As they say, 'food grows where water flows!. Nowhere is that more evident than in this part of California. The sun was behind us and the road was in front of us,..no, the road was under us, we could feel it! California evidently does not have an active road maintenance department. Where the road was patched it was as bad as where it was not patched. Our coach rattled and jumped from bump to bump and we were lucky that the smoke detector only fell from the ceiling once. Every once in a while we found a stretch that had been paved sometime in the past 10 years and we thought we were in heaven. Then, in a short while we were back to the bumps again, evidently we're not heaven rated! The beautiful day and the clear sky helped to make the day a little more pleasant and we took in all the various crops, the fields and orchards and tried to guess what was being grown. US-99 is mostly a divided highway and the median has been planted with thousands of oleander bushes is reds, corals, pinks, and white. There were millions of blooms and it made the drive very beautiful and enjoyable. I had the windshield fan on in the coach but we did not have the AC or vent on all morning, the most comfortable temperature we have had on the trip. We were lucky, Anne chose our departure date well! We will be out of California tomorrow and expect cooler weather in Oregon and Washington.

At Stockton we left US-99 and moved onto Inastate-5 (In a state of disrepair!). Oh, did I mention the crappy roads? Since we had such an easy day we ended up heading for Corning and Rolling Hills Casino for our days end.

We had lunch in Woodland at our favorite burger joint, IN-N-OUT! There was a new mall there and we were sure we could park the coach in those large parking lots somewhere. Sure enough, we found a spot where we took up almost an entire row but we had an easy in and an easy out and there was no one parked even close to us. OMG, walking across the lot to the restaurant I saw my first car! There it was, a white 1965 Mustang, I couldn't believe it. I still remember buying that car, it was about $1969 in 1965. Dad gave me $250 for a down payment and I got a coupon book with 36 payments of $69 and change. The license plate was a Michigan plate, SD-7084! Heck, I can't remember what any other car cost or the license plates either. How does that trivia stick with you? I had a blue interior with a bench seat and a column three speed with a six cylinder engine. I could have had four on the floor with bucket seats and a V-8 but since Dad was having to pony-up up front I went for the economy version. I still loved that car!

BTW, we made 54 cents on the slots between us. Winners!

How is your summer going? If you pass us on the road, be sure to honk!

A Trail in Two Deserts

2011-07-14T16:06:00.000-07:00

"London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down. London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady." Did you ever wonder what happened after London Bridge fell down? This particular bridge was built in 1831 and probably is not the most famous of London's Bridges but it came from London and spanned The Thames River. By 1962 it was no longer strong enough for modern traffic and was dismantled by 1967. A US land developer thought that London Bridge was just what his project needed so the pieces were catalogued and some of it was shipped to Arizona where it was rebuilt in Lake Havasu City. Lake Havasu is created by impounding water from the Colorado River and makes a beautiful oasis in Aridzona. London Bridge makes a great tourist attraction. We visited this lovely place last winter for a balloon festival, a great setting for such an activity and we hope to come again for this year's festivities.

We were on the road at 6:30 AM, awoke to a morning temperature of about 78 F. We haven't it that cool in quite some time. We had a nice drive along the river to Lake Havasu and shortly thereafter we crossed the border into California. We paid $3.40 per gallon for gas just before crossing the border and dread buying gas in CA because we expect prices much closer to $4.00.

Most of the day today and yesterday was spent crossing endless miles of desert without much inhabitation. We started in the Sonoran Desert and today we were in the Mojave Desert. Two deserts and yet each is unique.

"A desert is a landscape or region that receives an extremely low amount of precipitation, less than enough to support growth of most plants. Deserts are defined as areas with an average annual precipitation of less than 10 in per year, or as areas where more water is lost by evapotranspiration than falls as precipitation."

Some information on the Sonoran Desert can be found at http://www.art-design.umich.edu/ecoexplorers/sonorandesert/home.aboutsonoran.html. If you happen to see a tall, multi-armed cactus called a Saguaro, you are in the Sonoran Desert!

Here are some facts about the Mojave Desert: http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Mojave_Desert.aspxe . If someone says look at the Joshua Tree, you are in the Mojave, the only place they exist. The Mojave is also noted for Edwards Air Force Base where many of our Astronauts got their early training. Mojave Airport is famed for being the storage ground for many, idle commercial transport aircraft. Many of them are referred to as "white tails", they came off the line without a buyer and were placed into storage until they could be sold. What better place than a dry desert area where they can be parked outside with a minimum of maintenance!

Before we reached Mojave we passed Boron, CA, the site of the world's largest open pit borax mine. This mine produces about half of the world's supply of borates. Borax originally was found in Death Valley and some of us can remember 20 mule team wagon trains used to haul the ore. Later, larger and richer deposits were found here in Boron.

We turned north from Mojave and headed up the Tehachapi Valley. Route 58 winds through a beautiful canyon and climbs up and out of the Mojave. Tehachapi is renowned for the winds that blow constantly and this area has five thousand wind turbines located on the ridges above the road. Most were spinning briskly as we climbed our way out of the desert and down into The Central Valley of California . There are approximately 15000 wind turbines in California and together they generate just 1% of the State's electrical power needs! While on the subject of wind, we encountered a rogue gust that caused our coach to veer sharply in spite of a firm hand on the wheel and a fast reaction to the wind. It was the worst we have ever encountered. Fortunately we were all alone on the road at the time. We were tempted to get off the highway if we had any further evidence of such activity! One gust was enough!

The pictures I found on the net.

It's Time to Flog This Blog!

2011-07-13T18:49:00.000-07:00

Wow, it has been some time since our last post! Well, we are back on the road again so it is time.

We spent several months this past winter trying to buy a winter home in The Valley of The Sun, the area east of Phoenix, AZ. We have been spending some part of winter in AZ for about 10 years. It has been almost 4 years since we sold our house in WA so we decided we needed to have more space, either in summer or in winter. After about six months of trying to buy a house, we finally succeeded and now have a place in Mesa, AZ. Between trying to get the house functional and having to endure a myriad of medical tests, we finally got back on the road early this afternoon. We have wondered if we could endure AZ in summer. The longest we have been here previously was June 2 but this year we lasted to almost mid July. We had one day at 118 F and almost every day now is over 100 F. Heck, we consider 103 to be almost pleasant!

At about noon we had everything packed and the house ready to be closed for the remainder of summer so we hit the road. It was hot, 104 or thereabouts, but traffic was manageable and the AC kept the rig livable. We headed west and turned north at the Colorado River. We are in a very nice County Park on the Colorado just out of Parker, AZ. We have a good view of the river, the park is not crowded, our site is shaded and the AC is working hard. The back of the coach was 96 F when we arrived. We will have a cool, restful sleep and be on the road early to avoid the hottest weather. It will be a beautiful day! We are headed for Union, WA where we will spend a restful couple of months in a beautiful location on Hood Canal. If you are in the vicinity, give us a call.

Texas is messing with us!

2010-09-09T16:08:00.000-07:00

We have installed a 'black box' in our electrical circuit that continually tests the electrical voltage coming into our motor home. We did this because we previously had problems with a defective umbilical cord and thought we were going to have a fire. Well, the other night our power would not stay on and it surprised us as we had a 50 amp circuit available and we weren't using that much electricity. Of course, it was raining and every time the power would go out and I would go outside to check for a blown breaker, the rain would pelt down in earnest. Picture holding a test meter in one hand, a flashlight in another and trying to keep the box lid up and putting the probe wires into the outlet to test and read the voltage all at the same time AND in the rain! It was a losing proposition. The Surge Guard would sample the power for a few seconds and shut off. We spent the night using mostly battery power as the AC would not stay connected for any length of time even though it continually kept trying to connect throughout the night. We figured our expensive meter had conked out but now, two days later, it has performed flawlessly for two days at a different park and the power has not cycled off one time. We now think the Surge Guard was just doing its job and that we were getting high and low voltage fluctuations, power surges and problems with the neutral line. It wasn't fun without electrical power but no power is much better than BAD power. Fortunately it wasn't one of the hotter evenings and we didn't need the air conditioner, just fans.

Yesterday we drove about half way across Texas and are now in Wichita Falls. We had wind and rain for almost 300 miles. Somewhere out there the front brakes suddenly developed a grinding noise that we had looked into and discovered that a front brake pad had come apart and was now metal to metal on one side. Fortunately we found a shop willing to take us this morning and had our front brakes replaced and it only cost us a one day delay. We're ready to park the motor home for a few months! We'll try and get across the rest of Texas tomorrow.

Kentucky

2010-09-04T17:39:00.000-07:00

Ah, Kentucky, the home of Daniel Boone. This state is renowned for beautiful farms, white fences, the Kentucky Derby, Louisville Slugger, caves, fast women and beautiful horses! Hmmmm, maybe I got the last ones backwards.

We are staying in a nice RV park in Cave City, named for the many caves found in this area. One of them is very large, Mammoth Cave. Discovered over 4000 years ago, this cave was used by indigenous people as a burial site and also for minerals found in the cave walls. Artifacts found in the cave suggest that these people had explored as much as 10 miles of tunnels but early usage had stopped about 2000 years ago. In modern times the cave was rediscovered in 1798. We have been in other caves but none like this one. Mammoth Cave is the most extensive cave system on Earth, hence the name. Over 390 miles of tunnels have been mapped and explored and new areas are continually being discovered. The extent of this cave system will probably never be known and is twice as long as any other known cave. Some estimates say another 600 miles of tunnels may exist.

Mammoth Cave is a bit different from other caves. The area above measuring approximately 80 sq miles has thick layers of sandstone overlaying layers of limestone. The cavern is formed by ground water absorbing carbon dioxide and forming a mild acid which then dissolves the limestone. The strong sandstone layer keeps the overburden from collapsing the cavern ceiling and the cave just continues to grow. This cave does not have beautiful mineral deposits growing from roof and floor as many other cave systems do. The cave is unique in its large size. In essence a conduit for ground water, recent spring rains in the area had flooding to heights as much as 49 ft above flood level. Mammoth Cave was not spared and it flooded also and benches and other items floated all over the cave until the waters receded and the cave dried out.

Mammoth Cave has been an attraction since the early 1800s. During the War of 1812 the cave was mined for nitrates deposited on the cave floor over the years by periodic flooding. These nitrates were used as an essential ingredient in the manufacture of black gun powder. Prior to 1812, saltpeter was acquired from India at about 10 cents per pound. As a Crown Colony, exports from India ceased during the war and the price of saltpeter rose to 1$ per pound with almost 500,000 pounds produced from this cave system. In 1816 the idea of attracting tourists to this area to see the cave became popular and the National Park was authorized in 1926. The Park was not fully established until 1941 and at that time only 40 miles of passageways had been explored. Actually, there were Cave Wars in the 1920s as surrounding land owners realized that there were probably caverns beneath their property. Holes were blasted and tunnels were found but the properties that comprise the Park today were slowly being acquired and put an end to the wars.

Today, Mammoth Cave is established as a World Heritage Site

We took one of the easy tours which avoided crawling through narrow slots and ducking under 3 foot ceilings. The cave was too large to photograph as the flash was not powerful enough illumination. It was cool, dark and mammoth!

Shipshewana

2010-08-31T15:10:00.000-07:00

It is the end of August and summer must be over. When I was a lad living at Wamplers Lake, the end of summer was officially on Labor Day when most of my lake friends left to return to their homes in Detroit, Dearborn, Toledo, Cleveland and elsewhere. We have left Michigan and begun our return to the desert of Arizona. Shipshewana has been our first "port" on this part of our journey.

Located in northeast Indiana and very close to both the Michigan and Ohio borders, Shipshewana is a unique place. It is in the center of the Amish-Mennonite culture that exists here and the town is very much influenced by this. Most shops close in the evening and are not open on Sunday reflecting the strong family tradition that the Amish-Mennonites hold. Horse drawn buggies are everywhere but some have adopted modern ways. The state laws require a reflective panel on the back of the buggies so that they are easily seen at night by motorists. Some have gone beyond this basic requirement and actually have turn signals which are battery driven as I don't believe these buggies have an alternator! Some of the buggies have rubber tires instead of the plain metal rims of wagons of long ago. They are fun to watch as they trot along the shoulders and you see them in the parking lots of most businesses as these quiet folks go about their daily lives. There are lots of bicycles too and some folks just walk.

The 2000 census says the population of Shipshewana was 536. At Auction Day or Flea Market Day the number of folks in town swells to many hundreds or thousands. Shipshewana is billed as having the largest flea market in the Midwest. From May through October, Tuesday and Wednesday are the days when the flea market is on. Whatever you might be seeking, they probably have it! Today, the market also included great farmer's market produce and I got excited about the peaches. There were bushel upon bushel of tree ripened peaches. For those inclined to can their own fruit it was a veritable bonanza. The end of season for sweet corn is behind us for most places but we found some plump, fresh corn still to be had. We have limited space in our motor home so we have to limit our purchases no matter how delectable they might be.

It was a hot, dusty day but we dutifully went up one row and down another searching for those things that we do not have at our beck and call. We found enough to make it fun and are happy we made Shipshewana a stop over.

There is a large RV lot with all the amenities located on the premises so it has been convenient and our AC has run continuously struggling to keep our coach at a comfortable 74 degrees. We'd opt for cooler but it is hard to do when the outside air temperature is close to 100 degrees.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, is also Auction Day and these auctions occur year round. If you are looking for a gasoline driven Maytag washing machine, then this is a great place to look because they have not been made since about 1950. The last time I was in Shipshewana, I saw several being sold and some looked as though they were almost new. We have no room for anything in our little house on wheels so we will hit the road tomorrow. We received a coupon when we registered at the RV park. It was for a drawing of a real live pony that supposedly is broken to ride and to harness. Needless to say, we did not enter the drawing. I have no expectation of ever winning the lottery but I don't intend to enter a drawing for ponies, dogs or cats!

Oh, did I mention the food? There are some good restaurants here. Some offer Amish cooking family style, just like they serve at home. The meal is all you can eat and the portions are endless, the kind of cooking most of us associate with our grandmothers. I'm afraid all you can eat is way more than we can eat but the meals we had were excellent. Tomorrow we're back to cereal in the coach, but with fresh bananas and peaches!

The Roxy Cafe

2010-08-30T14:04:00.000-07:00

We have spent awhile in Jackson and have enjoyed the Elks RV park. We have had a full service site and a nice park with exceedingly nice hosts, John and Sandy. We have traveled up and down North West Avenue many times and at the corner of North West and Ganson is The Roxy Cafe. Each time we passed it we wondered about it and what sort of place it might be. While talking with cousin Daci over ice cream at The Parlour, we were told that The Roxy 1s a great place to have breakfast. Since I am a big breakfast fan, we headed for The Roxy at our first opportunity. Oh, I wish we had discovered it earlier in the summer!

The Roxy could be best described as eclectic. It has crowded tables and a counter with bar stools. The walls and ceilings are adorned with all sorts of posters and memorabilia. Anne pointed to one panel on the ceiling that read, "For a Good Time Call Mary or Sarah at 788-7766 After 2:00 P.M.". She wouldn't let me write down the number! One of the signs that I really enjoyed was, "You Don't Need Reservations to Eat Here. If You Have Reservations, You Should Eat Somewhere Else!". The restaurant is a great place to people watch and the clientele is a mixed group but you quickly see many of them are regulars. They know when they have found a pearl.

There are sidewalk tables with umbrellas as well as inside seating. There is a door in the back as well as the main door in the front. Some of the regulars enter though the back door, go through the kitchen into the eating area. Everyone feels right at home.

The menu is rather extensive for such a small place and the portions we saw were ample and the food is GOOD. I had corned beef hash, one of my favorites, and it did not come out of a can! It was full of large chucks of beef and was one of the best hashes I have had. Anne had eggs and ham and raisin toast and it was excellent. Every dish we saw served looked great. The Roxy may not be the best breakfast in Jackson but it is well ahead of which ever one is in second place!

The next time you are looking for breakfast in Jackson, remember The Roxy Cafe. Try it, you'll like it!

Jackson Cascade Falls

2010-08-18T18:51:00.000-07:00

Probably the most famous landmark in Jackson, Michigan, is the Cascades. The result of a dream by William Sparks, a British immigrant born in 1879. Sparks came to America at the age of 9 and established himself as a man of vision and determination. A successful industrialist, Sparks wanted to create something that would leave visitors to Jackson with a favorable impression of the city. He created the 465 acre Sparks Park where the Cascade Falls are the centerpiece. Built in the 1930s, the attraction consists of a series of cascading pools illuminated by colored lights and accompanied by music. For the technically inclined, the falls are 500 feet in length, 64 feet high, 60 feet wide having 6 fountains. Walkways of 126 steps go up each side of the falls. There are 16 falls, 11 of which are illuminated with 1230 colored electric lights. The water is supplied by a massive pump which outputs 2000 gallons per minute in a closed loop, after filtering, chlorinating and recycling.

The falls were donated to the City of Jackson after Sparks death. They fell into disuse and disrepair but a series of restoration campaigns during the 1980s and 1990s have restored them into an even more impressive attraction. A campaign is underway to improve them even more. They now have a high speed computer and high speed controls so that they can "keep up with the music".

They were a great place to take a date in the 1960s. They are a great place for an evenings entertainment now!

We tried to take some video of the cascades with a small handheld but so far have not been able to compress it small enough to post. Until then the two stills will have to suffice.

If You Can't Prove They're Dead, We Won't Let You Prove They Lived

2010-08-12T15:02:00.000-07:00

Frustration; today I had to deal with government and even though it was only at the county level, they won the battle! After looking at a map of the local area where we are now, I realized that we were fairly close to where my mother grew up and where she was born. Since I dabble in genealogy, I decided to get a copy of mom's birth certificate. Big mistake! I forgot to bring mom's parents with me! After a couple of inquiries, we found the county clerk's office in Mason, Ingham County, Michigan. I marched in and politely informed the help (not) of my mission and was immediately asked for a certified copy of mom's death certificate. What? Yes, one has to be proven dead or born over 100 years ago or you have to have their parents if you want to obtain a birth certificate. If mom were still alive, she'd only be 98 so my inquiry was premature! Also she died in another county so getting a death certificate wasn't going to be a quick venture. Oh, did I forget? I need to pay $20 and provide proof of who I am to obtain this document! Since I wanted the certificate to have proof of the spelling of mom's middle name I politely asked them to just tell me that. Nope! They wouldn't even confirm that they even had her birth certificate on file! I needed to have that death certificate, end of story! They did print an application for me to apply by mail. Since we're on the road and even if I eventually prevail in my quest, the certificate would have to be mailed to Washington and forwarded who knows where because we have no idea of where we're going to be until we get there. I sort of lost my cool and informed the help (not) that they obviously had no intention of trying to help those that you might think they were there for. Nope! They're there to help themselves! They blamed the rules on identity theft and Homeland Security. Janet, you've screwed this up too! BTW, Anne had to listen to this diatribe first! I suspect I've now been added to the list with the returning soldiers!

The Parlour

2010-08-12T08:01:00.000-07:00

Hmm, sounds like the title of a book by John Grisham or Anne Rice, but its not! The Parlour is an old fashioned ice cream parlour that has ties to the 1940s. Anne found this place by googling attractions for Jackson, Michigan and it was under the heading of 'Museums'. Lucky find. We suppose it was under museums because it has been a local institution for years and the age of the building makes it unique.

When I was in high school, there were a number of dairies in and around Jackson. Most, if not all, no longer exist. One, named Loud & Jackson, was famous for its ice cream and milk shakes. Ice cream was about all they sold, in fact. Lines would stretch out the door as the patrons patiently waited 30 minutes or more for their turn at the counter. In those days a chocolate shake was real chocolate. Over time, Jackson All Star Dairy absorbed all of the smaller dairies and became the milk supplier to most of Jackson County. In 1962, Loud & Jackson, was absorbed. The ice cream was made right next to where it was sold at 1401 Daniel Road.

Now, just a mere shadow of its former self, The Parlour has survived but the ghost of Loud & Jackson still lingers on the premises and with most long-time Jackson County residents and visitors. The quaint parlor has a few booths but mostly you sit on stools at a counter that has a series of horse shoe shapes so the waitresses never have to come out from behind the counter, they move back and forth between the sides of the 'shoes' since they have a counter on both sides of them!

We have enjoyed the ice cream. Even though we were warned that the servings were large, we didn't believe it. Most specialty sundaes run $5.49 for three baseball sized scoops of premium ice cream plus assorted toppings. The bargain item is the Banana Split. For $6.49 you get SIX large scoops of ice cream and all the extras, a veritable pyramid of frozen delight, all smothered in a layer of whipped cream and topped with a cherry!

We shared one of these monster sundaes and sadly, we couldn't finish it even though we tried valiantly. Dessert before dinner, actually, it was dinner. For those folks that think they have an appetite for ice cream, they serve a sundae called "Dare To Be Great". 'Twenty-one scoops of assorted flavors of ice cream, topped with strawberries, chocolate, pineapple and marshmallow toppings, chopped nuts, whipped cream and cherries $29.99. Finish this one by yourself within one hour and it's FREE!' There is a baby version, ten scoops for $16.99 but the free offer does not apply. There is a list of names of those that have 'won' a free overdose on ice cream but it is a short list.

This is one museum you don't want to miss!

The SOO - A Tale of Two Cities

2010-08-08T17:23:00.000-07:00

"The Soo" is the nickname for two cities having the same name but residing in two different countries, Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan and Sault Sainte Marie, Ontario. The sister cities are separated by the St. Marys river which connects the Great Lakes Superior and Huron. The Michigan version is actually the oldest city in Michigan and was established 1n 1668 by Pere Marquette (Father James Marquette), a Jesuit priest that had come to convert the Indians. In 1668 there were two buildings in Sault Sainte Marie, a church and a residence. Today there are about 75,000 people on the Canadian side and about 20,000 on the Michigan side. Sault is an archaic french word that means falls so Sault Sainte Marie literally means the Falls of Saint Mary.

Lake Superior is about 21 feet higher than Lake Huron and the St. Marys river cascades over rapids at Sault Sainte Marie. The St. Marys river has been an important waterway for hundreds of years but the rapids here required long portages to be made transporting canoes, goods, and even later, small ships. In 1855, the State of Michigan decided to build locks to enable river traffic to freely pass the rapids. At that time a small fee was charged per pound of goods locked up or down the river. Later the locks were expanded and made larger. As the locks became larger, so did the ships. Today there are four American locks that provide their services to any boat or ship wishing passage and there is no charge, it is courtesy of the US government. The largest lock is about 1300 feet long and 110 feet wide. It gets the heaviest usage and handles about 70% of the traffic on the river. The remainder mostly is handled by the second American lock and locks three and four are currently not being used. Plans are underway to build a new large lock where locks three and four are now. The lock is planned to be under construction in about two years. It will be the same size as lock number one so that new ships will not be built any larger than current designs and there will be a backup lock available at all times for any ships on the river.

There is a set of locks on the Canadian side of the river but these locks are currently closed for repairs and will only be used for tour boats and recreational boats when reopened.

At one time approximately 30 ships per day passed through the locks. As the ships became larger and larger the number of trips has decreased. The largest ships using the Soo Locks are referred to as "Lakers" and there have been fourteen of them built. They are about 1000 feet in length and 105 feet wide. They just fit the largest lock. Actually, the "Lakers" are restricted to the Great Lakes since they are too large to navigate the locks on the Welland Canal that goes around Niagara Falls. The "Salties" are smaller ocean going ships that are in the vicinity of 500 fett in length although they may be taller than the "Lakers". The American Locks are the worlds busiest canal in terms of tonnage passing through.

While we were in Sault Sainte Marie we took a tour boat which took us up to Lake Superior level and then we cruised across the river to a steel plant on the Canadian side. We then locked back down to Lake Huron level and cruised along the waterfront of the Ontario side before returning to the pier. It was a very interesting two hour boat ride!

While we were in Ontario we took the Agawa Canyon train which goes 114 miles north of Sault Sainte Marie along the eastern end of Lake Superior. Agawa Canyon was formed 1.2 billion years ago by a fault along the Canadian Shield. The train goes through some wonderful wild areas and past some beautiful lakes and forests. Many locations in this area are only accessible by train or hiking trails. Some of the lakes do have lodges and cottages on them and are a favorite summer retreat for those that like their solitude. Most of the lakes are easily reached by float plane and we heard tales of long ago and 30 pound plus lake trout being caught. Fishing is still good and we would have loved to have spent some time on the shores of one of those beautiful lakes. Agawa Canyon at the end of our ride (not the end of the line) was a beautiful place with steep bluffs on either side of the river and beautiful vistas. We hiked to a couple of waterfalls that were close by and thoroughly enjoyed our time in the mountains. All too soon we were back in Sault Sainte Marie, right on schedule I might add.

What is that noise?

2010-07-21T16:22:00.001-07:00

Listen...do you hear it? It stopped, no, there it is again. What is it?

Ah, one of the "hazards" of living on the road. We have had a few anxious moments during our travels. The latest is a whining that started and became more and more incessant. We extended our one night in Sudbury, Ontario and found a truck repair shop that agreed to look at our motor home.."tomorrow". Well, today was "tomorrow" and we found that our engine belt needs to be replaced and our air conditioner automatic clutch is where all the noise was coming from. The bearings are failing and it needs to be replaced. Not such a big deal except no one has the needed part. We were told it had to be ordered out of the "States" and it would take a week because it would have to go through customs. Are you kidding me? Fortunately the Parts Manager found what we needed in Montreal which means it already is in Canada. I tried to get the part air freighted overnight but they looked at me like I was from Mars. No, it will be put on a truck and might get here Friday, that is if they use the right freight company. We did get an oil change out of our time in the shop today and the old belt and the squeal are still with us as we came back to our RV park for at least two more days Don't know why these failures can't be scheduled!

Tomorrow we will explore a nickel mine or something like that. Sudbury is the largest supplier of nickel in the world. Some think it was due to the impact in this area with an asteroid at some time in our distant past. We don't want that sort of thing to happen today. It's a heck of a way to jump start the local economy!

Canada is another country!

2010-07-20T19:24:00.000-07:00

Bluewater Bridge Fries - Sarnia, Ontario

When a North American calling plan failed to connect for me on a prior trip to Canada, a quick call to customer service and I was informed that I was in another country! I was not able to convince the young woman that I was still in North America so my phone should work! My phone wouldn't work in Alaska, either! So much for truth in advertising

Canada is very much like us and very much not like us. We are having a wonderful time. The country is beautiful, the people are friendly and the pace of life seems somewhat less frenetic. Many towns here in southern Ontario still have wonderful old original buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries. We love it. There are lots of farms and lots of space. Forests, water and rocks abound.

A common sight as we travel through Ontario is the ubiquitous Chip Truck or Fries Truck or stand. Prior to this trip I have had fries with ketchup and tarter sauce but never with gravy. Actually, they are quite tasty with gravy and we have enjoyed partaking of the local cuisine and enjoying some of the culinary differences between our two countries. A popular dish here is call poutine, french fries or chips as they are called here, covered with fresh cheese curds and then covered with gravy. We first had this dish in Quebec, thanks Marcel. Today, in Sudbury, we found poutine being sold in Costco. Yes, Costco, a different menu perhaps but still Costco. Canada is still very much like us. Vive la difference!

Changing of the guard at Rideau Hall

2010-07-20T18:07:00.000-07:00

Rideau Hall - Offical residence of Canadian Governor General

Big step

Don & Anne

Sentry at ease

Sentry relief detail marching out

In 1931 England granted her colonies dominion so they became peers of England. In 1867 the Confederation of Canada was created. In 1947, an independent Canadian citizenship was created. Whenever Canada became independent, she still shares the Monarch of England with several other independent nations. Queen Elizabeth II of England is also Queen Elizabeth II of Canada. Since Queen Elizabeth II resides in England, she has the Canadian Governor General as her official representative. The Governor General is appointed by the Queen on the advice of the Canadian Prime Minister and serves at the pleasure of the Queen, normally for a period of 5 years. By tradition, the Governor General alternates between a francophone and an anglophone, i.e., a French Canadian and an English Canadian. The duties of the Governor General are essentially those duties that the Queen herself would perform if she were in Ottawa.

Rideau Hall, located at 7 Rideau Gate in Ottawa is the official residence of the Governor General. When the Governor General is in residence, a special flag of a lion on a blue background is flown. When the Governor General is not in residence, the Canadian Maple Leaf flag is flown.

Sentries wearing the uniform of the Queens Guard are posted at Rideau Hall during the summer between the hours of 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM. The sentries are changed every hour. Although the sentries are ceremonial, they are militarily trained and can act as night guards if security threats to Rideau Hall exist. During changes, the fresh sentries march out accompanied by a bagpiper and a Corporal of the Guard. Two sentries are posted at the street entrance to Rideau Hall and two sentries are posted at the main entrance to the residence.

A Canadian icon coming soon to a town near you!

2010-07-20T16:37:00.000-07:00

In Canada they love their hockey heroes, no, they actually idolize them. When a hockey great is responsible for Canada's largest restaurant chain you have a nationwide sensation. Tim's, Timmy's, Tim Horton's, no matter how it is called, it is the same place. A donut shop that turned into a nationwide bonanza.

Tim Horton was a hockey player for 24 years, playing for the Toronto Maple Leafs, the New York Rangers, the Pittsburgh Penguins, and the Buffalo Sabres. He was born Myles Gilbert Horton in 1930 but went by the nickname Tim. He was a defence man and was always cool when under pressure. He was also strong and used his strength to great advantage when necessary.

In 1964 Tim co-founded Canada's iconic coffee shop and by 1967 it had grown into a multi million dollar business. In 1974 when Tim died in a tragic auto accident on his way home after a game, there were 40 Tim Horton franchise stores. Today there are about 2700 stores in Canada and almost 600 in the US, mostly from Michigan and Ohio eastward. Look out Starbucks, Tim's has a pretty good cup of coffee at a reasonable price. Their donuts are excellent and we sure liked the sandwiches we had.

Tim was inducted into the NHL Hall of Fame in 1977, three years after his death. His memory lives on.

The Need For Speed!

2010-07-07T19:34:00.000-07:00

On June 26-27, the first Great Lakes Wine Fest was held at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Michigan. Anne and I attended and it was much more that we had ever anticipated. Michigan has several wineries located across the state and they are producing some really great wines, or at least they are producing some wines that we like! We learned that the majority of Michigan wines are made from grapes grown in Southwestern Michigan but the wines are made at wineries scattered all around the state. Since this was the first Great Lakes Wine Fest we felt it could have been better organized and better advertized but the reception from those that attended was very enthusiastic. It looks like it will be a regular event and MIS was a terrific venue.

Tickets purchased prior to the event were $25 per person for one day or $45 for both days. Your admission included 10 tokens to be used to purchase tastings of wines of your choosing. Most wines were 1 token/1 tasting but some of the premium wines cost two tokens. We signed up for two wine pairing seminars where foods were prepared especially to go with selected wines. Both of these seminars were just excellent. Needless to say we purchased several wines including one that is absolutely excellent with good chocolate. Is there such a thing as bad chocolate?

Official Pace Cars were on hand to take wine enthusiasts for a quick several laps of the race track for only $10. We jumped on that opportunity and we were given the choice of riding in a Mustang or a Dodge. I chose to ride in the Mustang since my first car was a 1965 Mustang. These pace cars are not NASCAR race vehicles and therefore are only capable of about 140 mph! MIS has a two mile track and the end turns are banked at 18 degrees. We stopped at the top of turn one and were allowed to exit the vehicle to take pictures and see what it was like to try and stand on the track. We did get up to about 120 mph in the back stretch and went into a turn at about 100 mph. We were told that the NASCAR vehicles are doing up to 200 mph in the back stretch and may go into turns around 160 mph! Even the back stretch is banked at 5 degrees to help keep the cars off the wall! The cars do not want to turn at these speeds and it takes a firm hand on the wheel to turn them. There was absolutely no signs of skidding or sliding at our lap speeds, the cars just hugged the track. We loved it and would do it again in a heartbeat!

Another event was also using MIS while we were there. Progressive Insurance is sponsoring the X-Prize, $10 million in awards to be awarded in September 2010. "Our goal is to inspire a new generation of viable, safe, affordable and super efficient vehicles that people want to buy." The target efficiency is to exceed 100 miles per gallon and the on-track competitions are all held at MIS. Over 30 teams from 8 countries had entries in this competition

Desperate People Do Desperate Things!

2010-06-17T13:20:00.000-07:00

Anne flew to Seattle to spend a week with her daughter and I brought the motor home back to the Irish Hills of Southern Michigan to spend a week of bachelor camping in a pleasant RV park we had found. Poor planning. Did anyone think to check the cell phone signal strength? What signal, that's right, no signal! When you go to the state that is 50 out of 50 in the worst economy you shouldn't expect Verizon to care where there is cellular service when they have no clients! For the past four days I haven't had cell service so I haven't had Internet service. This morning I put the lap top in the Jeep so I could try and catch up at McDonald's with their free WI-FI. Then it occurred to me, my brother (whom I am constantly bugging to take me fishing!) has cable TV with phone and Internet service and he has a wireless router so he has a wireless hotspot! Voila! I checked it out using my Android and sure enough I can connect my phone and my computer to the Internet right here in Bill's yard! The Jeep battery is powering an inverter that converts DC to AC so we can power the laptop which converts AC to DC. I bet there are losses involved with all the transformations! The lake in the background is Wamplers Lake; this is where I grew up many years ago. The lake is about 800 odd acres but it seemed much larger when I was younger. There are lots of fish out there waiting for us to feed them. Maybe I'll post a picture of the big one that didn't get away if we can find it!

The Henry Ford

2010-06-13T15:04:00.000-07:00

No trip to the Dearborn area should be considered complete without a trip to The Henry Ford, also known as The Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village and as the Edison Institute, the name that Henry Ford, himself, favored. Henry Ford greatly admired Thomas Alva Edison and the two men became great friends. The Henry Ford was created in 1929, 18 years before Henry's death. Many of the early exhibits came from Ford's own personal collection. Henry said, "I am collecting the history of our people as written into things that their hands made and used. When we are through, we shall have reproduced American life as lived, and that, I think, is the best way of preserving at least a part of our history and tradition...". Approximately 300 years are preserved in the exhibits and each is very significant to our history.

We spent one day at The Henry Ford and did not do it justice. We would have an annual pass if we lived close enough to use it. We entered the Village and our first encounter was with a steam locomotive, The Edison, a Baldwin 4-4-0. We were told that the Edison had been built at the Rouge Plant. We both love locomotives, especially steam. I remember them fondly from my childhood and Anne's dad was an engineer. We had to have a ride, the track goes around the Village complex which is about 200 odd acres and takes about 30 minutes, including several stops. We purchased tickets for unlimited rides! We had wide smiles as we left our coach after circuiting the grounds, thoroughly covered with fine soot particles. We could have ridden again and again but we had things to see. The Village has a roundhouse and we learned it is the only working roundhouse still in existence that is solely devoted to steam engines!

Other period rides were available and we rode them all. They have several horse drawn carriages and wagons and we rode in two different ones. It was "cool" to ride behind two giant Percherons, each one weighing about 2000 pounds. We were told that all Percherons are born black and that their color may change as they get older, some remaining black and others turning grey. Our grey team was named "Abe" and "Lincoln", not hard to remember. Another ride we thoroughly enjoyed was in vintage automobiles, ours was a 1914 Model T. Our smiles were genuine as we departed the 'depot'. We were told that we were riding in a 'new' 1914 T, not a restored or rebuilt one. Ford Motor Co. had undergone a project to build new vehicles from original drawings. Since no tooling existed, they were hand made. The project, as many do, ran into cost and schedule problems and the six cars built ended up costing about $250,000 each. The project stopped at six vehicles with Ford retaining 2 and donating 4 to Greenfield Village. Since the cars were new and manufactured by an auto manufacturing entity, they needed all the modern safety items in order for them to be licensed. That wasn't going to happen, can you image a 1914 Model T with seat and shoulder belts, air bags and a host of other required items? These cars are relegated to making the rounds in Greenfield village! We had a great ride in our authentic new old car! These cars get approximately 10,000 miles a year taking visitors around Greenfield Village.

Our next ride was on a vintage 1913 Herschell-Spillman carousel, relocated from Spokane, Washington where it had operated as recently as 1950. Herschell-Spillman carousels are noted for their giant green frogs, the only animals to be dressed in human clothes on any carousel. We loved it and one of the attendants sang the songs being played by the carousel and she had a beautiful voice!

My favorite exhibits had to be the Wright Brothers home and bicycle shop where aviation history was made. Also Thomas Edison's Menlo Park laboratory was very interesting. You have to visit the Village to see this wealth of American history exhibited there. After lunch we decided we had better move on to the Museum.

The Henry Ford Museum is about 12 acres of covered exhibits and even includes a high school, The Henry Ford Academy. The high school is open only to residents of Wayne County and boasts a 98% graduation rate. It is the nation's first charter school . We understand that applicants are selected by some sort of lottery from the application pool. Too bad more of our nation's schools don't have these results!

The car in which John Kennedy was assassinated is on display as well as the Presidental cars for Reagan, Eisenhower, FDR and the carriage that Teddy Roosevelt used (he did not want to use a car). These vehicles were provided by Ford Motor Co. and remained their property. Kennedy's vehicle was armored (look at the rear window glass thickness) but Kennedy wanted the top off so he could be closer to the crowd. I remember well where I was on November 22, 1963, in Ann Arbor, when we heard the dreadful news.

One exhibit I found especially nostalgic was a 1965 white Mustang. That was my first car but unfortunately it was not serial number 1 and it was not a convertible! No. 1 was originally purchased by a Canadian and was repurchased for the Museum at a price of $1 M with a new car thrown in, at least that was what we heard from another visitor that seemed taken by the exhibit. Since my Mustang ended up in an accident in 1968, I would have been out of luck anyway!

I could go on and on about the wonders on display at The Henry Ford. You just have to see it for yourselves!

Belle Isle

2010-06-12T15:54:00.000-07:00

Downtown Detroit from Belle Isle

The MacArthur Bridge

We left the Irish Hills and headed towards Detroit for a few days. We found a spot at the Wayne County Fairgrounds where we have water and electricity and lots of freshly mowed grass. We had mud at our last park and it was a bit of a nuisance with all the rain we have been getting. One reason for coming this direction is we wanted to see Detroit and see if it is as bad as we have heard. We headed towards downtown and the Detroit River and saw many buildings that had been abandoned and quite a number of businesses that have been closed. We sure got the impression that the area was severely depressed!

We came to Belle Isle, one of the islands in the Detroit River and decided to explore it. Belle Isle is a 982 acre park under the care of the Detroit Recreation Department. The beautiful MacArthur bridge provides access to the park. There are large expanses of grass and parking and picnic places are abundant. Wonderful views of downtown Detroit are to be had and of course, you can see Windsor, Ontario from the other side of the island. There are a number of small lakes on the island and we saw several folks trying their luck at catching some fish. We saw hundreds of Canada geese, many of them hatched this spring. Matter of fact, we don't think we've ever seen so many geese in one spot! The geese parade back and forth across the roads and fully enjoy the right of way!

Belle Isle contains several beautiful structures: the Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory, the James Scott Memorial Fountain, the Nancy Peace Brown Carillon Clock and there are two yacht clubs there, the Detroit Yacht Club and the Detroit Boat Club. The island also has a municipal golf course, a Coast Guard post and is home to the Dossin Great Lakes Museum. There are other attractions as well but we did not explore them. The park was well used and reasonably clean with the exception of the goose offerings. The adult geese are now moulting so primary wing feathers were plentiful on the lawns. It is a beautiful park in a beautiful setting and is well worth the effort to visit.

We continued along the river and crossed an intersection into one of the Grosse Pointe communities. Instantly, the community dramatically changed. The lawns were not just mowed, they were manicured! The houses were large, well maintained and most set back from the road. Many houses were large estates, some could even be described as palatial. It was obvious that this had been an upper class neighborhood for quite some time. The contrast between the previous neighborhoods was literally black and white. There are a number of nicer suburbs surrounding Detroit but the Grosse Pointes have to be among the nicest.

The Detroit River turns into Lake St. Clair, a beautiful large body of blue water. There were many mansions along this stretch as well, including the 87 acre estate of Edsel and Eleanor Ford in Grosse Pointe Shores. You may remember the Edsel, named for Henry Ford's only child and a total failure in the marketplace. This estate is now open to the public although we did not visit it: http://www.fordhouse.org/.

On our way home to our wobblebox we decided to see Fair Lane, the home of Henry and Clara Ford. Fair Lane originally included 1300 acres along the River Rouge in Dearborn. The house has 56 rooms and 31,000 sq. ft. The property had its own power plant designed by Thomas Edison and Ford even provided power to part of Dearborn. Fair Lane was named after a road in Ireland where his father was born. In 1957, the Ford Motor Company donated 196 acres of the Henry Ford Estate along with $6.5 million to the University of Michigan to create the Dearborn Campus. This gift included the Fair Lane home and other buildings which have been administered by UM for the past 53 years. In 2011 the UM is transferring Fair Lane to the non-profit organization than runs the Edsel & Eleanor Ford House so the Ford mansions will then both be administered and managed by the same organization. http://www.henryfordestate.org/.

"I Want To Go Back To Michigan"

2010-06-11T19:37:00.000-07:00

These lyrics belong to a pre-prohibition song about life on the Michigan campus and are sung to a melody written by Irving Berlin having the same title. Ohio State borrowed the tune sometime later but that is understandable!

Anne has never been in Ann Arbor so we went 'back to some of the money I spent'. We walked about the central campus and Don tried to remember where it all happened. You can't believe how much the trees can change the appearance of a campus in 45 years! We had a good time and found some places to be little changed and others no longer recognizable. The students do look appreciably younger, however! Phone booths still exist in the Michigan Union but some of them are now email booths, replete with computer terminal. Email did not exist in 1965!

We drove past the football stadium and lots of construction was underway. It has to be all completed before fall and football season! It is hard to get pictures while driving busy streets but we did get a few during our walk.

NASCAR MANIA!

2010-06-11T18:42:00.000-07:00

We finally arrived in Michigan on June1 after an uneventful drive north on US-127 into the Irish Hills of Michigan. This is home for Don, where he grew up (if that has actually occurred). The Irish Hills are so named because the area reminded Irish settlers of their homeland. The area is full of gentle rolling hills, many lakes and is a lush green at this time of year.

As we looked for a place to plug in our electrical and water supply lines, we quickly found that Memorial Day wasn't the only weekend that the RV parks in southern Michigan are booked solid! In 1968, Michigan International Speedway (MIS) came into being and Brooklyn, Michigan ended up on the NASCAR map. MIS covers 1,400 acres and has a modern 2 mile speedway. Over the years the grandstands have grown from approximately 12,000 fans and now can seat close to 120,000 fans with another 60,000 or so in the pit areas. Local farms were purchased and became parking/camping areas overnight. This year MIS has added suites to the pit area. $60,000 will get you a suite that has accommodations for up to 24 of your closest friends and covers the entire racing season, both weekends of it. There is a race in June and another in August and NASCAR is through with MIS for 2010. The speedway is available to host other functions, however, anytime other than racing week. By the way, if you drop $60,000 for a suite you'll be amazed at just how many 'friends' you have!

We found an RV park close to MIS but had to leave this morning, June 11, as the June race is June 11-13 and the park was sold out for those dates! We enjoyed the proximity to Brooklyn and Don's old friends, classmates and family. One reason for our trip east was Don's 50th high school reunion. Fun was had by all, or at least we hope so. During the week leading up to this morning we have been amazed at the influx of racing teams, vendors, fans and media types who have come to Brooklyn by the thousands for this spectacular event. Roads for miles around have hundreds of traffic control cones ready and waiting to direct the hordes of fans as they all try to leave the speedway at the same time after the race on Sunday. They say traffic moves rather smoothly for such a large crowd but it moves for several hours! We're happy we won't be part of that chaos. Check out the MIS web site as they have lots of pictures and we don't! http://www.mispeedway.com.

All the RV parks are full!

2010-06-11T17:01:00.000-07:00

We have gone out of our way to avoid traffic congestion and thunderstorms. Both have plagued us. We have stayed off of Interstate Highways and focused on other routes that have taken us through many small towns while still providing us with ample lane widths for our motor home. We feel like we have seen more more of this beautiful country this way. We avoided going near Indianapolis since we were there when racing fans were speeding in for the Indianapolis 500. Instead we took "back roads" and went to Dayton. We had tried to get camping reservations in Michigan for the Memorial Day weekend but all the RV parks we contacted were full. We thought we would have to resort to staying in a Walmart parking lot but we were able to find a spot in a KOA near Dayton so it was a good spot to rest and wait for the holiday traffic to disperse. Later we found that the only reason we found a spot was because someone had to cancel their reservation for health reasons. We parked in the middle of a three site grouping that reserves their spot a year in advance and have been going to this same place for about 30 years. Talk about habits!

The KOA was nice but crowded and the sites were too close together for our liking. Nonetheless, most folks actually appeared to be enjoying this form of camping, living in motor homes or trailers and driving their golf carts all over the park while having campfires on an all too warm evening. Wonder what they would do if they ever got out into the out-of-doors? Ah well, to each his own. We like the comforts our motor home provides but we don't call it camping.

We had time to visit the Air Force museum and also drove over towards Columbus to visit an ex colleague of Anne's time in the Seattle School system. We also visited an old Indian village on the Miami River. This village was occupied about 800 years ago by a group referred to the The Fort Ancient culture. The site was saved from modern development and archaeologists have studied the site for about 20 years. Part of the village has been reconstructed based on information learned during the study period. It is really a very interesting exhibit and well worth a visit if you ever are in the Dayton area. Check out: http://www.sunwatch.org/.

The Air Force museum is excellent and has a superb collection of aircraft including one of the planes involved in dropping atomic bombs to end Word War II. If you are an airplane buff you should put Wright-Patterson Air Force Base on your bucket list. You can spend several days there and still not see everything.

We imagine you'll be able to tell where the pictures are from.

Hoosierville

2010-05-27T16:20:00.000-07:00

We had a rest day out side of St. Louis and intended to see the sights. As luck would have it we spent our time getting our roof repaired. We were referred to a great RV repair facility in Union, Missouri and they were able to work on our rig immediately. All the fasteners making our front cap-roof splice had failed or pulled out of the structural splice member. This splice is directly over the driver and passenger seats. When it rained, it poured! We now have twice as many fasteners and they are longer so they won't easily pull out this time. The splice has been resealed and we had our first wet test as we experienced our second thunderstorm of the trip today and not a drop came inside! Thanks 3R RV!

We had a leisurely morning and left mid morning and drove from St. Louis towards Cincinnati. We have a few days before arriving in Michigan and are trying to find places that can accommodate us. Everywhere we go the parks are sold out for the Memorial Day weekend. We lucked out tonight at West Boggs Park in Loogootee, Indiana (no, I am not making this up). We can stay tonight but not tomorrow! This is a beautiful park located on a large gorgeous lake. We had dinner at the local restaurant that advertised Amish cooking. Well, the verdict was "those folks know how to cook!" Everything was a good as you can remember grandma making!

As I type the weather has caught up with us and we are experiencing yet another thunderstorm. Lightning flashes and peals of thunder are frequent and the rain is pelting our house on wheels. Hopefully we will stay warm, dry and upright! We have already had the power go off for a few minutes and expect it to do so again. Too bad I can't record the din the rain is making on our roof! Bye for now...

Thunderstorms

2010-05-25T18:55:00.000-07:00

Anne and I have smart phones and there are lots of amazing applications that run on them. Our latest uses the GPS to find our location and then checks NOAA weather for the forecast for that area. Since we have a large desire to avoid tornadoes we have been paying close attention to the weather. Mostly it has been predicting some chance of thunderstorms no matter where we go. Well, today prediction became reality. We were already looking for a spot for lunch when the first rain squall hit, shortly followed by lightning flashes. We pulled into the restaurant parking lot not long afterwards and the coach was buffeted by high winds and the rain was horizontal and relentless. We ran for the restaurant and had to cope with run off that was already shoe high in some places. Fortunately, the storm abated over lunch, fried catfish! If you're ever in Lebanon, Missouri, we recommend Dowd's Catfish and Barbecue. The entire menu looked great and the catfish sure was!

Back on the road and a few small rain squalls were encountered and then Anne noticed a drip from the ceiling. There was a lot of silence as I tried to figure how the roof could be leaking when it had just been sealed four days ago. Tonight I found out why, the splice strip is no longer attached to the roof and flexing of the front cap and roof is tearing the sealant and opening a leak path. Looks like different fasteners are needed! There is always something!

We are about 30 miles from Saint Louis in a KOA park. We are staying another day to go into town and see the arch and any other attraction that meets our fancy. We have more time to kill before we arrive in Michigan as tonight we tried to get RV reservations and found all the parks are full for Memorial Day weekend and then Michigan International Speedway has a race June 11-13 and all the parks for miles around are booked. We have a reservation after the holiday to just before the race but then we're mobile again!

We are just experiencing high humidity again and remembering that we don't like it. Our coach air conditioner has a steady stream of water coming from it as it tries to keep our coach cool. Fortunately we do have 50 amps here!

If you see us on the road be sure to wave!

Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain

2010-05-23T19:29:00.000-07:00

The above lyrics don't do justice to the wind. We have been crossing Texas and Oklahoma on I-40, mostly going west to east. The trees are permanently deformed in a northerly direction as the relentless winds scream in from the south. We have been buffeted for two days and our mileage has suffered greatly as we have endured these fierce winds. We look forward to a respite and a nice tail wind would be nice! We have tried to monitor the weather as thunder storms and flooding have already ravaged some of the areas we will pass through. We surely do not wish to be part of a tornado relocation scheme.

This land is flat! From the horizon on the left to the horizon on the right, there hardly seems to be any deviation in elevation. I wonder what sort of hole was left to get the dirt used to provide elevation at major road interchanges.

We are just east of Oklahoma City in the town of Shawnee. Anne went online and found a nice inexpensive place for us to stay this evening, The Firelake Grand Casino. We often stay at casinos in our traveling because they usually offer large parking areas where we can dry camp overnight for free, security since they are patrolled, food since most have good restaurants and a chance for us to play the slots (no, we do not gamble, we know we are going to lose our $20!) for inexpensive entertainment. Heck, some of the casinos even give us a few dollars to play with but we always give it back! The nice thing about The Firelake is that they have a free RV park for their guests that have a players card (also free). Did I say for free? The RV park is located along the edge of their property on a stream and is paved and each site is provided with running water and electrical hookups which include up to 50 amps! If you don't RV you probably don't appreciate what 50 amps means. It means you can run BOTH air conditioners and your microwave at the same time with out popping the circuit breaker and actually cool down your coach in triple digit temperatures. After a hot day on the road you have a cool place to sleep! There are picnic tables and barbecues situated down near the stream and each site is provided with a trash can. A shuttle bus regularly comes through the area to take you to the casino. You are allowed to stay in the RV park for up to 3 days and can request an extension. What a deal!

We have travelled hard for four days, trying to go approximately 300 miles each day. We would prefer to do no more than 200 and then not travel every day. We hope to find a place to rest soon and explore some area where we have never been before. The motor home has performed well and we hope that it continues to do so. We expect to make it to Geezerville and Don's reunion as scheduled.

The pictures are some flowers at a rest area in the high desert of New Mexico. Spring is popping out all over!

On The Road Again!

2010-05-20T17:52:00.000-07:00

It takes a lot of work to close up one wobble box and move into another! Finally, everything seemed to come together and we bade farewell to The Wrinkle Ranch and headed out onto the open highway at 10:30 AM. We had planned an earlier departure but a last minute roof inspection revealed some potential leak spots and we had to get them repaired. Right now our shed is stuffed with all our outside furniture, bikes, barbecue, propane heater, you name it. At least it all appears to be safe and may stay clean until we return. So far the motor home is working well and the traffic has been light and that is always welcome. The temperatures in the Phoenix area are predicted to be above 100 degrees so we got away just in time.

Tonight we have stopped at the Elks Lodge in Willcox, Arizona. The Elks have a large level RV park and water and electricity and that floats our boat. Willcox is close to the Chiricahua Mountains which are home to the Chiricahua Apaches. Some of the more famous Apaches were Cochise and Geronimo. We have been through the Chiricahuas previously and they have amazing rock formations and are a must see when you visit this area. Legend has it that when Cochise died he was buried in his stronghold in the mountains and all traces of his burial site were eradicated by running horse herds through the area. His burial site has never been found.

We stopped today at a rest area about 17 miles from Willcox in Texas Canyon. When we exited the motor home we were greeted by a sign warning us of the dangers of snakes and poisonous insects. If the heat in Arizona doesn't get you, the critters will! This particular rest area has some great large granite rock formations. The best views are from I-10 as you approach the rock formations.

Tomorrow we will enter New Mexico and turn north east. Our destination is Michigan so Don can attend his 50th high school reunion. As one friend said to Don before we departed, "...you know there are just going to be a lot of old geezers there!" This old geezer can relate to that!

Travel Time Approaches

2010-05-17T21:55:00.000-07:00

This blog is not dead contrary to popular opinion. Our winter in Arizona is fast coming to an end as the hot weather is upon us. We have had a pleasant spring and the heat has not been unbearable so far. We are currently packing the motor home and preparing to be on the road in the next few days.

We purchased a new set of tires for the coach and decided to take a test ride to ensure we did not have any surprises on the road. Anne suggested that I check the pressures to make certain that everything was as it should be. Found both inside rear tires had low pressure, zero and 45 psi so had to go back to the tire shop where they discovered that the valve stem extenders on the inside tires had slow leaks. We changed the setup as the leak would not go away.

The coach has been washed and waxed and now it is plugged into shore power to cool the refrigerator and keep the interior cool enough to work inside.

We plan to head directly for Michigan when we leave here as Don has his 50th High School reunion in early June. Where has the time gone? Stay tuned...

Summer Into Fall

2009-09-28T18:59:00.000-07:00

No trip to Western Washington can be considered complete (in our opinion) with out a "cruise" on one of the Washington State Ferries. We took the ferry from Bremerton to Seattle, a trip of approximately 60 minutes. The sky was blue, the water was blue, and the scenery was magnificent. Cruise ships in Seattle were loading their last trips of the season for Alaska. Boaters were taking advantage of a glorious day on the water and seals and seagulls were everywhere. We enjoy watching the gulls riding the air currents flowing around the ferries. They swoop and dive and then climb high off to the side of the stern and seem to hang effortlessly, pulled along by the air. They are master aviators to be sure!

We left Bremerton twelve days ago and headed for the Washington Coast. There are some beautiful sights along the Olympic Peninsula of Washington and Crescent Lake is one of them. The lake is very deep and nestled in the valleys between the mountains. It was a lovely day and Don had a chance to play with a polarizing filter on his new camera and captured some great reflections in the water. It is magical to twist the filter and see into the water where before only a mirror existed. We continued on down the coast into Oregon where we stayed for a few days. Had some great local sea food and Don shopped for Myrtle Wood which is found in Southern Oregon and Northern California along the coast. It will be consumed in the wood shop this winter.

We left the coast and headed inland to Klamath Falls, Oregon. We went close to Crater Lake but did not stop. The mountains were filled with smoke hanging in the trees. There were several active forest fires in Southern Oregon, most started by lightning strikes. We proceeded into Nevada with the intent of visiting Reno and Lake Tahoe.

We arrived in Reno with a horde of motorcycles. We had seen hundreds of bikes on our trip and they all seemed to be going our way. Reno was hosting the "Street Vibrations Fall Rally" and several blocks downtown were cordoned off and a street fair was in full swing. Anything a biker could want was on display and we had a great time wandering about and people watching, a fascinating pastime. We found the celebration was not restricted to Reno as several groups were in Carson City and almost anywhere where motels, etc., were available. Those folks really know how to party!

Yesterday we were in Vegas. Don had seen a TV show featuring places to eat around the US and the buffet at the Bellagio was mentioned. It was expensive but definitely something to do once. The smoked trout was fantastic and there were so many dessert choices it was hard to choose. After dinner and losing a few dollars on the slots we had front row "seats" to watch the "Fountains of Bellagio", wonderful music accompanying lighted jets of water.

Tonight we are parked at a casino near Montezuma's Castle in Camp Verde, Arizona. It is hot and we are running the generator for the air conditioning and hot water for showers. It should cool off soon and we will have the cool desert air to sleep in. Tomorrow will be a short drive to Gold Canyon and our winter home. There will be lots to do.

We did the Puyallup!

2009-09-12T18:46:00.000-07:00

If your first response is "did what?", then you are probably not from Washington. Doing the Puyallup (pyoo-al-up) refers to going to the Western Washington State Fair in Puyallup, Washington, hence "The Puyallup". Opening day was Friday and admission was free until noon. As someone once said, "...cheap is good but free is better!" Well, a two hour drive and another two hours of sitting in a traffic jam created by "free" got us through the gate with about ten minutes to spare! We asked ourselves once again, "....why are we doing this?" Oh yeah, free!

The fair is a great place to people watch, eat fair delicacies like elephant ears, scones, curly fries, corn dogs and my favorite, roasted sweet corn slathered in butter! They had a Wine Garden where they offered tastings of many of the wines grown in Washington. It was a warm day so we went pretty easy on the wine but did visit a local wine shop after we left the fair. We picked up several bottles of Wahington wines that aren't sold in many places outside of the state. We will have our own wine tasting this winter in Arizona with friends and "Wine from Home". Hopefully we won't have to endure Dandelion Wine again! While we were perusing the many shelves of wine bottles, a wedding party came into the wine shop for a photo opportunity for the Bride & Groom's album which wasn't yet completed! They were a great looking group and we thought they all looked like they were very happy and having a great time.

This morning we fired up the motor home for the first time in a couple of months. Thankfully, everything seemed to work. We left Ned & Suzi and the rest of the folks at Robin Hood Village behind but feel like we made some great friends this summer and hope to pass that way again.
We will head for the Wahington Coast on Thursday and turn south heading for The Valley of the Sun

What a Great Summer!

2009-09-09T13:36:00.000-07:00

We have had a very nice summer here in Washington. The weather has been warm but not hot and we have had very little rain. That is we have had very little rain until quite recently. Late August and early September have seen the fall rains starting to fall and speaking of Fall, the trees are starting to turn beautiful soft pastels and we have noticed that the sun is setting earlier in the evening. Summer is over even though there may be lots of nice weather yet to come. Our stay here on Hood Canal ends on this coming Saturday. No more clams, oysters or salmon fishing for a while. We will go to Bremerton for a few days and then turn South towards the Greater Phoenix area. We expect to be in our winter home around the first of October. Once again we have survived another extended stay in our tiny wobble box. We hope all of the systems will work as well on Saturday as they did when we parked this rig, several months ago. We will have to find some warm dry weather to dry out the awnings, might find that in Arizona.

We hope you have had a great summer too and would love to hear from you. Happy Trails.

Combat Fishing!

2009-08-08T10:15:00.000-07:00

Combat fishing is a term I have heard before but until recently I have avoided it. The Skokomish River is close to us here in Union, WA. The mouth of the river empties into Hood Canal and the river is spawning ground for several species of fish. The one currently holding my interest is Chinook or King Salmon. The salmon have been in the river for about a week now and the banks and river are lined with anglers, eager to hook one of these magnificent fish. The fishermen are sometimes so close together that it is near impossible to cast your line without hooking the person next to you. If you have to repair your gear, another fisherman will quickly take your place on the river. The limit is one fish per day and they have to be hooked in the head or the mouth, no snagging is permitted. You are allowed one hook and it must be barbless. You must release a fish that has been “foul hooked" or snagged; the fines are prohibitive if you are caught with an “illegal” fish. Since salmon have stopped feeding once they start their spawning run, they must be provoked to strike at your lure; they no longer feel the pangs of hunger. They are focused on more important issues now, sex!

Anglers are lined up on both sides of the river and casting their lines upstream across towards the opposite bank. The lines are crisscrossed across the water and the current then moves the lures downstream, hopefully across the deeper holes where the fish are holding. All you have to do is avoid the other lines, snags and rocks and get in front of a big salmon. With luck your line passes in front of a salmon and the fish strikes out of irritation or habit or your line drifts into the open mouth of a salmon and then is drawn across the mouth until the hook catches the corner of the fish’s mouth. This is referred to as “flossing”. The lines are carried to the river bottom by lead weights and the weight bumps along the bottom as it is moved downstream by the current. You have to decide what the bottom bumps feel like and whether the bump may be a fish. When you decide to “set” the hook it may be a fish and it may be the bottom that you have hooked.
If you are fortunate enough to entice a large Chinook into taking your lure, the water erupts as these powerful fish react to the hook. They will race upstream or downstream, jump, twist, shake and dive deep into the holes in the river bottom. Since the hooks are barbless, constant pressure must be kept on the line to keep the hook engaged. Tackle needs to be strong enough to withstand the forces exerted by these powerful fish. Too light and the fish will run all the line off the reel and break off. If the drag on the reel is set too high, the lines will break and light weight rods may even break as I have witnessed! If the fish are able to run without being held by the rod and reel, when enough line is out they often will find logs or snags and sometimes dive deep under overhanging ledges in the river bottom. This allows them to break off since the angler’s rod is no longer a factor. Often you will see an angler moving 1-2 hundred yards up or down the river to keep the fish in check.

Access to the river is somewhat limited since there are steep banks, limited parking, private land and even an Indian reservation that fronts one side of the river. A local establishment, Hunter Farms, owns the property across from the reservation from the mouth of the river to a couple of miles upstream. They allow public access to those willing to walk in and sell annual access passes that allow passage past locked gates where there is ample parking and you are in close proximity to the river.

My own experiences have shown that I am quite adept at hooking anything but fish. I am getting lots of practice tying hooks onto leaders. Two days ago I had sacrificed all of my leaders to the river gods and was preparing to leave to resupply. A fisherman had just come to the river and began fishing next to me. On about his third cast he hooked a fine fish and then announced that he did not intend to stop fishing so soon. He asked if I wanted to play the fish and if so, I could have it. It was an easy decision. Fifteen to twenty minutes later a bright 20 pound salmon was in the net!

Where do you put 20 pounds of fresh salmon in a motor home? We had fresh salmon for lunch, less than two hours from the river to the grill! We have some fillets and steaks in our small freezer and the rest went to others here in the RV Park. I have hopes of becoming a fresh salmon supplier here the remainder of August! In order to do so I will have to master the fine art of dental hygiene on a salmon, “flossing”!

See you on the river. I’ll be the one with the bird’s nest in my reel while my leader is drifting into a bottom snag! Fish on!

Canoe Journey

2009-07-28T23:40:00.000-07:00

Today was hot, yesterday was hot and tomorrow will be hot! We left Arizona for the summer heat and found it in Washington. Go figure. Today we were in our motor home relishing the cool air from the air conditioner but we got cabin fever and decided to go out for lunch. There is a nice cafe here in Union, surprisingly named the Union Cafe. It is right on the water but everything is right on the water here on the canal. We shared an order of nachos for lunch, $14! We've noticed that this is not an inexpensive place. Anyway, the nachos were excellent and as we were getting ready to leave we noticed a "flotilla" of several Indian dugout canoes paddling down the canal. They had come from the state park about 10 miles from where we saw them and they stopped at the marina in front of the cafe. We went out to watch as the paddlers took a short break and many of them took advantage of the break to swim and get some relief from the heat. After a short while they go back in their canoes and paddled away headed for another park several miles further down the canal. We learned we were seeing several canoes participating in a canoe journey that occurs every year now, the first of these treks having been held about 1989. Participants had already been on the water for several days and the end of the trip is probably a week away. The annual event is a marine caravan as the paddlers follow traditional trading routes along the Pacific Northwest waters. Paddlers from all the local tribes are participating as well as paddlers from Canada. The fleet grows as each stopover is usually held on tribal lands and members of that tribe often join the group as it leaves, bringing their own canoes and paddlers. Over 100 canoes are expected to be involved by the end of the journey.

We left the cafe and drove around to the state park where the seafarers were to spend the night and there were lots of family and supporters awaiting them and ready to welcome them ashore in traditional form. It was quite an interesting experience to see this.

Robin Hood Village on Hood Canal

2009-07-23T22:02:00.000-07:00

Presently we are staying in Robin Hood Village, a quaint little RV park located in Union, WA on Hood Canal. The village was the creation of a famous Hollywood Set designer, Donald Beckman, and built in 1934. Four years later, after the filming of the Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn, the set crew for that movie visited Beckman at Hood Canal and the village was named in honor of the movie since the crew felt there was so much resemblance. Robin Hood Village originally consisted of a restaurant, a pub and oyster bar, an RV park and a liquor store. Those elements are still present but the property has been divided and sold to various owners.

Across the street from the Village you can see the beach side of the Alderbrook Resort and Spa. The Resort dates back to the early 1900s but about 2001 it was purchased by a Seattle based group that included Bill Gates and members of the Nordstrom family. The Resort was closed for extensive remodeling and renovation which included moving a portion of State Route-106 that runs along the South Shore of Hood Canal. Moving the highway made more acreage available to the resort and to two large walled estates that abut the resort on either side. I believe one estate belongs to Gates and the other is owned by the Nordstroms. The Alderbrook is certainly a first class resort now. I was told that to compensate some of the local property owners for the noise, dirt and inconvenience suffered during the renovation project, Gates and company paid their propery taxes one year.

Close to us there are two streets intersecting SR-106 and they have short dead ends on the water side which are technically street extensions and public property. They make easy access to the water and there are scads of clams and oysters available. The tides are exceptionally low at the moment but I can get a limit of clams and oysters in about 30 minutes within walking distance of our motor home. Yesterday we had fried oysters for lunch and homemade clam chowder for dinner. We're certainly getting fresh seafood which we both love. Yum!

We have been making short excursions from our base here to explore the area. Last weekend we went to Allyn where they were celebrating a local festival. We got to see several chainsaw carvers at work.

Go Fly A Kite!

2009-07-10T19:02:00.000-07:00

Excellent advice when you are on the Washington Coast. We spent several days, including the Fourth, at Ocean Shores. Ocean Shores hosts an annual kite festival but it is held early in June and we missed it. We have attended another such gala in Oregon and they are beautiful sights. All sorts of shapes and colors filling the sky at one time with thousands of people, cars, trucks, vans, mopeds, bikes, etc., dotting the beaches for miles. There are beach umbrellas, portable cabanas and flags flying everywhere. If you have a chance to attend sometime, don't miss it. I managed to get a couple of inexpensive kites in the air so it really isn't that difficult to heed the advice, "Go fly a kite!"

We camped in a dry RV lot at the Quinault Casino located in Ocean City, just north of Ocean Shores. We had a great spot overlooking the ancient dunes and could see the water over the rolling grassy sand hills. We saw deer grazing just about every evening and one lone eagle soared along the beach looking for dinner. The weather was reasonably warm and windy but as the Fourth approached we started to get morning fog and on the Fourth we had evening fog. Visibility went down big time!

Since the Indians sell fireworks that aren't legal anywhere else in the state there were thousands of celebrants of the Fourth that had pitched tents and made camps on the beach, well away from the high tide line. We saw at least one motor home parked on the beach for at least two days. In preparation for the big display there were many significant bonfires laid and many multiple family groups had quite the party. One group had their own version of burning man as they erected a stick figure fabricated from boards off old pallets. As the party got down this figure was ignited with the help of significant amounts of flammable liquid. It made quite a show. As the sun set we could hear all sorts of explosions but we could not see any of the show so we decided to go down on the beach to improve the view. What a show! Fires everywhere cast shadows and eerie glows with huge clouds of mist and smoke wafting across the beach. Rockets and bombs were exploding everywhere with participants pointing them any old way and lighting the fuses only to have flaming material shooting off towards another group just out of sight in the haze. It is the closest we have ever been to a war zone and that is just what it felt like. We enjoyed the show but we were happy to get back to solid ground away from the explosions. The show was still going strong at 2:00 AM!

We left the ocean and went to Woodland, WA where we had some new tile flooring installed. We had the new floor put in last summer but had some problems with a part of it and had it redone. We took advantage of our proximity to Oregon to do some shopping since they have no sales tax and spent a few days at an RV park in Vancouver, WA. We also spent one night at a great RV park located right on the banks of the Columbia River. We had major sea going vessels going past at all hours of the day, going into and out of Portland.

Today we are heading north again, albeit slowly. We stopped for the evening at Little Creek Casino located in Shelton, WA. They have a great buffet on weekends and tonight we had Alaskan king Crab as well as the local Dungeness Crab! It is always a treat. We will spend the next couple of days deciding where we will go next.

Hope you're having a great summer.

Summer in Washington

2009-06-28T15:23:00.000-07:00

We been hanging around the Kitsap Peninsula the past few weeks. We have spent most of our time in State Parks along Hood Canal but now we're at the Bremerton Elks. They have a nice RV park and a beautiful location looking west to the Olympic Mountains and a spectacular view of Dyes Inlet which runs from Bremerton to Silverdale, WA.

We have had a number of routine medical checkups here as Anne prepares to go on Medicare in July. Don has had a chance to visit some of his machine tools that are "stored" in friend's shops and has come home with aluminum chips in his hair and clothing on more than one occasion. The grand kids are getting something from the shop for Christmas!

Tomorrow we put the Jeep in tow and head for the ocean. We are going to meet Anne's daughter and son-in-law in Ocean Shores for the Fourth of July weekend at the Quinault Indian Casino. After the Fourth we have a stop to get the tile flooring replaced in the motor home before we head north again to explore the Olympic Peninsula. It is kind of nice to be able to go where we want and when we want.

Sorry we have no new pictures today but the media drivers still don't work on the computer since it crashed! We promise to fix that. Should have some great beach pictures next week!

QAJAQ USA

2009-06-12T22:36:00.000-07:00

We're now at Twanoh State Park on the North Shore of Hood Canal. We arrived mid week and the campground was quite empty but Thursday night the place quickly filled up for the weekend. We noted almost every vehicle had kayaks on roofs or trailers so we knew something was up. The South South Traditional Inuit Kayak Symposium for 2009 was being held here and at least 100 kayaks were present. We went down to the waterfront this morning and groups of kayakers were in several areas where they were receiving instruction on different aspects of kayaking like how to roll over and get back up without drowning or getting wet and freezing. QAJAQ (Kayak) USA is the American Chapter of the Qaannat Kattuffiat or Greenland Kayak Association. These folks are dedicated to keeping the Greenlandic kayaking traditions alive. The paddles that are used with these Inuit kayaks are very unusual, very narrow blades. We were told that they call them stiks. We were also told that they had a speaker here for the symposium that came here from Ililisset, Greenland.

If you have been to Seattle you may have encountered the Pike Place Market on the Seattle Water Front located on Pike Street, where else? This market has long been known for the Pike Place Fish Market where you get to see the fish you just bought get caught. When a customer picks out a salmon one of the fishmongers behind the counter picks the fish out of the ice and throws it several yards to another guy who catches it right in front of the customer. Some pretty good sized fish fly across this seafood market! It is quite a show. Then they wrap and package the fish to travel, even packing it on dry ice to fly home with you and stay fresh. If it comes from the sea they probably have it. Well, PETA has spoken out on this and are complaining that the fish are not being treated respectfully. Like a local writer put it, these fish need to be treated with a little lemon and butter and put on the barbecue, but feelings, they don't have, they're dead. An article in the paper also indicated that PETA may have suggested drinking beer, not milk, because the cows were being exploited. We think PETA needs a dictionary with the word "silly" highlighted.

Today we drove around The Great Bend of the canal to Potlatch State Park where they have an expansive beach front and it is open to gathering oysters and clams. We went for the clams. Don spent much time at the waters edge and found two clams. Fortunately some other clam diggers arrived and were digging at higher ground levels in the gravel so a little snooping paid off with how to find clams. You find a spot that has not been disturbed for some time and remove the rocks and oyster shells from the surface. Then you dig a couple of shovel fulls of gravel, making a shallow hole. Using a garden hand rake you then work around the edges of your hole to find the clams which will then fall into the hole. When you have finished digging you are supposed to fill in your holes. The steamer clams have to be at least 1-1/2" long and you can collect 40 of them per licensee. We had clams again for dinner. Yum! There were oysters there and we got a few but we are getting tired of oysters. If they were lobster would we be saying that?

The Scotch Broom Is In Bloom

2009-06-08T19:11:00.000-07:00

Yellow blooms are everywhere, along the highways, fields, woods, you name it. Scotch Broom came from Europe and was introduced to the Pacific Northwest by Captain Colquhoun Grant of Sooke, Vancouver Island, around 1850. Since then it can only be described as an invasion as the plant has spread throughout the area and in many areas has choked out native plants. Some varieties have been intentionally planted along freeways because it is pretty and can exist in hostile environments, poor soil and hot weather conditions. Why it is named for the Scots is a mystery. The blossoms are certainly brilliant and beautiful. The blooms have a distinct aroma and certainly must trigger some folks allergies. It can grow in nitrogen poor soil as it makes its own nitrogen. Even though many consider it a pest it does enrich the soil.

We have been in Washington since May 20th. We spent a week at Gig Harbor RV Park, they had one open space. Lucky us! We have been in Belfair for the past week at Belfair State Park. The park is located on the Hood Canal. Hood Canal was named by Royal Navy Captain George Vancouver for Admiral Lord Samuel Hood in 1792. What one won't do to please the boss! The experts say that the canal is not a canal but a fjord. Who knew? Hood Canal stretches about 50 miles from its mouth where it takes a sharp turn at the The Great Bend and doubles back about 15 miles, ending in shallow tide flats in Lynch Cove. Belfair State Park is situated very close to the end on Lynch Cove and has great beaches and tide flats. Hood Canal is renowned for its oysters and the tide flats adjacent to the Park are teeming with them. There have been a number of minus tides since we have been here and we have been out gathering oysters several times. The limit is 18 oysters over 2-1/2" long, per person. There are thousands of oysters and the flats exposed at minus tides are so rife with them that it is difficult to walk on the beds. We found the tastiest ones to be 3-4" in length and it usually takes about an hour to walk down to the end of the beach, gather a limit, shuck them and return to the motor home. On public beaches the shells have to be left on the beach because smaller oysters are often growing on them. It is easy to find find clusters of 5-6 large oysters growing in a clump with many smaller ones also attached. Taking the shells off the beach can result in a $200 fine, no excuses accepted! Clams can be found here also but are not as plentiful. We dug them once and found them hard to find but delicious!

Our summers seem to find excitement and this one has been no exception. On several occasions we have had a motor home dash warning light illuminate showing a problem with the ABS system and the message "brake failure"! That will get your attention! We didn't see any degradation of our braking ability but still, it made us nervous. Then we received a recall in the mail on our brake system so off we went to the nearest dealer. We're getting the brakes repaired on Wednesday!

We barbecued on Memorial Day. We had a nice roast on the grill and Suzy and Hal, Anne's daughter and son-in-law came over from Kirkland to spend the day with us. We saw a little smoke from the grill but grease fires are common and we didn't pay much attention. Shortly there were flames all over the back of the grill so we quickly doused the flames with a water hose. Hot, flaming grease had dripped into the grease pan (plastic) below the unit. The plastic ignited and the flames spread to the plastic end tables which is when we noticed the problem. I think a plastic drip pan in a metal grill is a design flaw! We have repair parts now but the grill will forever have its scars to remind of what happened.

We have determined that there are no geeks in the squad. We expect that you are familiar with the Geek Squad from Best Buy. Computer experts that buzz around in little cars to solve your technical problems. Just before Memorial Day Don's computer crashed. Dead, no life, no boot, no options, just dead! Finding Best Buy open on a holiday seemed like a blessing but an ill wind was blowing. A very patient and courteous clerk (they have no technicians) took my laptop and over $200 and promised that they would check all the hardware and then identify and fix the problem. Be patient, we'll call you. Almost a week later they called and told me that the hardware was fine but that they could not repair the Operating System so it would have to be completely rewritten, completely destroying everything else on the disk. They gave me several options on backing up my data before they completely restored my computer to its state when purchased. I was assured that I could retrieve the data off the "defective" drive once it was out of the PC and so I chose to have a new hard drive installed because that option didn't cost much more than the other options given me for backup to DVDs. Several days later I got my "new" computer back with about a $300 charge for parts and labor and headed home, only to find that my old drive was unreadable. I quickly returned to Best Buy to be told that it would cost another $500-700 to send the drive out to recover the data. They assured me that they could not read the disk. I declined and left in extreme frustration, now having spent close to $500 and NOT having any of my data. The moral here is make backups NOW! On the way back to the park I stopped at a local computer repair hole-in-the-wall shop in Gorst. This was about 5:00 PM. The PC guru was on a house call but I was promised he would look at my disk drive as soon as he returned. In less than two hours I received a call and was told that my disk had a couple of file errors but they were easily repaired and that they were able to read the disk, my data was still intact and recoverable. Come pick it up in the morning after 10! I was told that in addition to fixing the file errors, all it would have needed was a Windows repair and I would have been back in business! BTW, these folks that truly fixed my PC charged me nada, zip, zilch, nothing, zero! They told me they had lots of Best Buy stories, none of them good.

There are lots of birds on the beach and every time we walk along the beach path one bird in particular gets a little frantic. We think she is a sandpiper and her behavior alerted us that she probably had a nest nearby. We found it, three spotted eggs, really out in the open, but well camouflaged. Whenever we approach mom makes lots of noise and flutters away acting injured so that we will chase her and move away from her nest. We hope the eggs hatch.

Out of the Mist

2009-05-19T21:31:00.000-07:00

How quickly we forget! We're back in the Pacific Northwest and it rains! We had a constant slow drizzle last night and this morning awoke to fog. We had a pleasant drive, however, and still saw magnificent views along the Oregon Coast. US-101 is an OK drive but it is narrow, winds like a snake and goes up and down so we were constantly trying to get over to let faster, more daring vehicles go by. There are numerous pullouts but most seemed to be on the wrong side of the road and just before a curve with extremely limited sight distance. Most photo ops just didn't happen, either because someone else was already parked where we needed to be or that we decided the picture wasn't worth having an accident. We did enjoy the rocks, cliffs, light houses, beaches, etc. Tonight we are in Newport at an Oregon State Park called South Beach. It is right on the ocean but our parking spot is about one half mile from the water. We did have a great walk on the beach this evening.

After finding a camping spot we drove into Newport to find food. We stopped at a seafood place and bought razor clams, clam chowder and dungeness crab and brought it back to our camping site. It was great! Tomorrow we will go through Tillamook and want to tour the cheese factory there. Tillamook cheddar is one of our favorites.

After experiencing suffocating heat for several days we are now experiencing temperatures below 60 F., quite a change. We will be in Washington in a day or so and expect similar weather there. We have gotten out the long sleeves and long pants !

Wii Play!

We have our Wii with us and it provides amusement and exercise of sorts with the Wii Fit. Our coach is crowded but we are managing. We hope we will see some benefit by the end of the summer.

We're Road Warriors Again!

2009-05-18T17:48:00.000-07:00

Thursday morning we FINALLY got the Gold Canyon "house" closed and our motor home packed and we left the park about 10 am. It was hot and was going to remain that way for several months so it was time to go. We were delayed by over a week due to Don breaking a tooth and we weren't going to Mexico for any dental work with the Swine Flu scare. Fortunately we found a Mesa dentist that could get a crown made in a weeks time. But we are on the road now and gasoline is definitely cheaper than last summer!

We spent our first night at La Paz County Park, about 8 miles from Parker, AZ on the Colorado River. It was a very nice park at an inexpensive rate and we will consider going back. The river is narrow and you could throw a rock across to California if you had a really good arm. Boats, large and small, raced back and forth. It seemed insane watching a high powered "Cigarette" boat race up and down a stretch of water only 100 yards or so wide! One bozo decided to rev up his engine for about 10 minutes at around 10 PM but finally he (we assume a woman wouldn't have been that stupid) raced away not to return, at least until we were sound asleep. It was 103 F when we arrived but it seemed more pleasant than that near the water.

We purchased new sunscreens for our motor home windshield. These are used when we are parked. They work great. About 90-95% of the sun's rays are blocked and the front of the coach is much cooler now and we can see out! They act like a one way mirror, we can see out and you can't see in! We also put a solar mylar film on the front side windows and it is much more comfortable now, driving when the sun isn't burning in from the side. We have had a hot trip so far. The coach temperatures have gotten up to 90 F at times and we have had to run the coach air conditioner as well as the engine air. That has made the trip much more comfortable but at the expense of the amount of gasoline we have burned! We finally turned towards the coast at Lodi, CA and are taking US-101 north. Today is our fifth day on the road. We have spent the past three nights in CA. Last night we stayed at an RV park in the redwoods. The park was covered with stumps from old growth redwood trees, harvested who knows when. Every stump had become a nurse tree to one or more, even several, new trees, some of them quite large themselves. We saw lots of big trees!

Winnebago-B-gone!

Yesterday while winding our way through one of the mountainous stretches of US-101, we met a motorcyclist who motioned for us to slow down. We did so expecting to find a radar trap but as we rounded the next curve all we could see was black smoke billowing up from the roadside and all traffic had come to a complete stop. We had barely stopped our coach when the first first fire truck appeared and others came a few minutes later. An older Winnebago motor home had caught on fire and had stopped in the outside lane, no shoulder available. The fire had quite a foothold on the road side vegetation but the firemen had it under control in short order. It was impressive to see the fire fighters going right into the smoke and flames to do their work. The motor home was totally destroyed but we believe the occupants got out, we saw no ambulances. That sure ruined someones day!

This afternoon we crossed into Oregon and we started getting some lifting of the fog. The Oregon Coast is beautiful and we are looking forward to the remainder of the trip to Washington, hoping for sunshine but cooler temperatures than we have had. We are in an older RV park tonight. They had one spot available which has all the amenities we need, water, sewer, electric and cable and it is cheap. We won't be taking any pictures of the place, however, as it is memorable in the way that you would like to forget. We are in Port Orford, Oregon. Among other things, this area is renowned for Port Orford Cedar, really a cypress. It is an unusually straight grained wood and has long been used for the manufacture of wooden arrows, among other things. It was originally only found in a rather narrow area along the coast in Oregon and California although it is now grown some other places.

We had to ensure we had TV cable tonight as it is the season finale for 24 and we have to see how Jack manages to survive again, especially after being exposed to the bio-toxin for which there is no cure. Are the good guys really good and whose side are the bad guys really on?

The motor home has performed well so far. We hope it continues. It is good to be on the road again.

Back in the Valley of the Sun

2008-12-06T20:05:00.000-08:00

We have been back in Arizona since mid October. There has been much to do here so the blog has suffered. We are in the midst of adding some room--we have a new shed/laundry and are getting a roof extension so we will have a covered patio with a view where we can enjoy our coffee and crosswords. We are in the midst of doing the electrical and plumbing of the new shed followed by insulation and drywall. There is always something to keep us busy. We have been able to go dancing a few times and Don is spending time in the wood shop. We hope to get into the desert with friends on some of the four wheel drive trails. We are looking forward to a great winter here in the desert sun.

Who Let The Squirrels Out?

2008-10-15T15:00:00.000-07:00

Last evening we drove right up to dusk and then ended up in a truck stop parking lot. We needed gas and air and this would be a good place to start out from the following morning. After dinner we returned to the motor home and turned on the heat. There was a loud noise and then the sound of the heater blower, a little noisier than usual. The next time the heater came on there was way too much noise and the third time it came on it sounded like it was going to fly apart. Needless to say it was quickly turned off in spite of the near freezing weather. A quick review of the ridiculously poor documentation that came with the motor home revealed that the blower was powered by a couple of squirrel cage fans. Squirrel cage...what's a squirrel cage? You may know the little circular treadmill that is in a hamster cage? Instead of wires, put fan blades on the side rails and spin it fast inside a shroud and it delivers prodigious amounts of air. Well, it was obvious that the squirrels were out of the cage!

We spent a cold night with no heat, waking up at dawn and walking to the local diner for breakfast. We ate, then got our air, fuel and off we went waiting for the sun to warm the air so the heater problem could be more comfortably investigated. Isn't this interesting? After having watched a You Tube video on heaters I took the cover off the heater and probed around finding a loose plastic ring in the air shroud making intimate contact with the squirrel cage. That wasn't right. I fished the sucker out and started the heater and the noise was gone. A call to the manufacturer trying to locate a replacement part resulted in "...oh, we don't use that part anymore. Throw it away." I love jobs that are fixed before they ever get on the TO DO list. The squirrels are safely back in the cage and there will be heat tonight.

Today we drove about 170 miles south on I-15 in Utah. We are not too far from Zion National Park but we stopped early. After shivering all last night we need our sleep! It's a beautiful sunshiny day and the mountains are spectacular scenery. We have a nice spot in a KOA park with 50 amps, water and sewer. Life doesn't get better than this when you live in a wobble box!

This Must Have Been Our Lucky Day

2008-10-14T19:57:00.000-07:00

We left Catfish Junction this morning with beautiful clear fall weather. We will go back, we like that spot. We headed east into Idaho via route I-84. The traffic was light, the weather was clear and sunny and we were enjoying the scenery. What could be wrong with this picture? About 14 miles from Boise in the middle of a serious construction zone with barriers, narrow lanes and congested traffic we were passed by a pickup with the driver beeping his horn and pointing at our rig. This was a clear sign to pull off now and we did. I pulled as far off the steeply sloped shoulder as I dared and got out walking around the RV wondering what I would find. Well, I only found three tires on the Jeep! We had a blowout and didn't feel a thing. ALL the tread was missing and we are hoping we did not ruin the rim. A few silent expletives and then I pulled the RV even further off the highway as I was sure someone was going to run over my sorry butt once I started to change the tire. The slope was so steep Anne had difficulty walking the aisle of the motor home and I was thinking a good stiff wind would blow it over. After listening to the roar of the traffic and watching how close they were I decided to call AAA and let them change the tire. And they did! We were there waiting for almost an hour before the repair truck arrived and it took less than 10 minutes to have the spare mounted and get us back on the road. We have wondered where all the tire carcasses come from on the highway. We now know personally where one of them originated.

We encountered lots of snow in Southern Idaho. The Sawtooth Mountains were covered as were the fields on both sides of the freeway. There were some piles showing where plows had recently been hard at work. It is only October 14th! We made it into Utah where we are spending the night at a truck stop. Hopefully the trucks parked closest to us won't idle their engines all night. While having dinner at the local diner we learned that the Interstate had been closed from 10:00 PM Saturday to 7:00 PM Sunday due to snow! Evidently some of the area we had passed through had received as much as 2' in a very short period. It is cold enough that two days later the snow persists, the sun has not prevailed to melt it away. We are happy to be headed for warmer climes. We think the forecast will get us home before the next rogue storm.

Arcs and Sparks!

2008-10-13T20:29:00.001-07:00

We are being besieged with electrical problems. We spent three great days at the Pacific while our coach was getting new carpeting and tile. We received a call from the re-modelers that they had experienced an electrical problem with the coach and the lights, refrigerator, etc no longer worked. They wondered if we had this problem previously. Well, no! We arranged for a mobile RV repairman to meet us when we picked up the coach and in about five minutes he found the problem. A metal piece had fallen into the electrical compartment when the old carpet was being removed. This piece landed smack dab on top of the heart of the 12 volt electrical system and shorted out one of the components. Well, it sort of melted one of the components! This now defunct control circuit controlled the 12 volt disconnect to the coach. Our RV guy found us a work around, the relay still was operative, just the switching circuit was inoperative. He showed us how to turn the circuit back on and, voila, the lights worked again!.

Shortly after getting back on the road our leveling jack system decided to show our jacks still extended when an outside inspection showed them to be retracted in the up position. Doesn't seem like much of a problem except that when you ignore the sensor it starts flashing warning lights and sounding an annoying beeper. The first day we tried to ignore the beeping and it eventually got tired and stopped but we still got the occasional beeps out of it. The second day on the road the sensor was much more persistent and refused to stop beeping. A quick "repair" consisting of removing the control panel and unplugging one of the wire harnesses solved the problem. The system is now quiet! Guess there will be lots of repairs to accomplish by the time we get back to Arizona.

We had a lovely drive along the Columbia River and picked up I-84 headed for Boise. We had an unexpected sighting of several Bighorn Sheep right off the Interstate as we sped along the River. We have spent the past two days at Catfish Junction, a quiet RV park nestled along the Snake River. Got a couple of days of fishing in but the catfish are playing hard to get, caught one. We had catfish fillets for dinner tonight cooked on the barbecue, yum.

We have encountered traces of snow along the highway as we passed through the Blue Mountains and there is lots of new snow on the higher mountains. The past two days have been clear and crisp with sunshine warming up the afternoons but the overnight temperatures are down around freezing. It is time to get out of the mountains. We will head for Boise tomorrow and then turn south into Utah. If the weather holds we may try to visit one or more of Utah's National Parks. We expect to get to Las Vegas before we turn east to Arizona. Our days on the road are numbered but we still have adventures in front of us.

On the Road Again!

2008-10-04T16:32:00.000-07:00

It is October. The trees are turning beautiful colors and the rain is upon us. It was time to leave. After spending five weeks as guests of the Elk lodge in Bremerton we headed south yesterday but we didn't get very far. We encountered a 13 mile backup on I-5 south of Olympia and it took at least three hours to travel those 13 miles. A horrible accident involving two fatalities was the cause of the delay. Evidently the heavy rain we encountered caused one vehicle to lose control during sudden braking. Such a tragedy. Monday morning we will leave our motor home while new carpet is installed. We will spend three days at the ocean while that work is being done. We will be back in the Valley of the sun before long.

It has been like pulling teeth!

2008-09-14T15:50:00.000-07:00

Being back in Washington has been interesting for us. It has been a time to get some things repaired in the motor home. We have a new faucet in the kitchen that does not leak like the old one. We have new fire alarms. A long blown fuse has been repaired on the Jeep. The towing gear for the Jeep has been repaired and rebuilt after a ground strike coming out of a parking lot. There is always something that needs fixing!

We both have had medical and dental appointments. My dentist has been after me for years to have my wisdom teeth pulled. This time I decided to comply. The oral surgeon removed four wisdom teeth in about one hours time. I now have a sore mouth but healing is underway. I decided it was time as wisdom seems to have moved on or it bypassed me completely. In only two years time I should be completely healed!

We have made several trips into the big city, Seattle that is. We have usually driven one way and returned via ferry. I think we have been on six trips across the Sound now. It takes us an hour to get home (remember home is where we park the motor home!) and it is a chance to relax and enjoy the lights.

One evening while waiting for our ferry to arrive we saw a flock of sea gulls in a feeding frenzy near the ferry dock. On closer inspection they were attracted to at least two harbor seals that had a school of fairly good sized fish around them and every few seconds a seal would appear on the surface with a fish. The seal would then violently swing its head from side to side slapping the water with the fish, stunning it. Then the seal would release the fish and come at it head on and swallow it head first. I must have seen fifteen or so fish go down this way before the seals abruptly broke off and swam away. The gulls apparently were getting lots of scraps. The water front is an interesting place!

Final Cruise

2008-09-04T00:18:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, about 9 AM, the USS Kitty Hawk, CV-63, completed what may have been her final voyage. There are now five carriers docked at Bremerton, three of them are inactive and awaiting their fates, becoming a museum at some port city or going to the scrapyard. The Kitty Hawk will become the fourth sometime after January 2009 when she is scheduled to be decommissioned. It has been reported that there is interest in this grand ship going to North Carolina after the Navy has determined that her career is indeed over. Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the birthplace of aviation!

The Kitty Hawk is the last non-nuclear carrier in the US Fleet. She was first commissioned in 1961 and has had a proud career spanning 47 years. Her last 10 years spent in Japan as the only US carrier to be forward deployed. One of the pleasures we had living here on the Kitsap Peninsula was watching the ships coming and going from the Puget Sound Shipyard. We are happy we were here in Bremerton when she arrived.

The Pacific Northwest

2008-08-25T21:55:00.000-07:00

After leaving Washington in May we didn't expect to be back here as soon as August! We decided to "detour" through our old neighborhood to take care of some medical tests, dental checkups and actually play the tourist in Washington. It is a good time to visit friends and family before we return to our nomadic life. We have visited several Washington RV Parks and are currently guests of the Elks in Bremerton. We plan to visit a number of places we didn't have time to see when we lived here and will have the motor home interior "redone" before leaving for warmer climes in October. This is also a chance to review some of the things placed in storage that could have been used on our summer trip, like fishing gear!

Canyons of the Ancients

2008-08-18T19:54:00.000-07:00

We have been near Four Corners, the only place in the United States where four states meet at a common point, Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. This area is known for the archeological sites that have been found, more than in any other area. Mesa Verde may be the most famous of all of these areas. Mesa Verde has been named a World Heritage Site and is one of our National Parks. It is located just a few miles east of Cortez, Colorado. The entire region has been populated for several thousand years and probably the most well known group used to be referred to as Anasazi. The politically correct term for these people is now Ancestral Puebloan. This group has lived in Mesa Verde Country from about AD 1 to AD 1300. The last 100-200 years of this period are probably the most famous, the era of the cliff dwellings. The majority of time these people lived in this area they lived on the mesa tops, predominantly in pit houses. A pit house is a large hole dug into the earth with posts to support roof beams and small logs and brush which are then covered with mud. You have an effective dwelling that remains relatively cool in the hot summers and is easily warmed with a small fire in the winters. The cliff dwellings get all the attention however. These people moved away from this area and went south. The reasons for the migration are not well understood but it is known that there was a protracted period of drought and the ability to raise crops was greatly diminished. It is possible that the land had become exhausted by the increased populations and it was becoming increasingly more difficult to find game as well.

The canyons have huge sandstone layers running through the canyon walls and in places the sandstone has eroded leaving a large overhanging roof area and a natural cave like depression. In these depressions on steep canyon walls is where the cliff dwellings were built. The largest of the dwellings have as many as 150 rooms and were remarkably well built. Stones were fitted together and mortared into place and in the dry protected caves the edifices have lasted about 800 years. After hiking down to one of these dwellings on paved trails and concrete stair steps you have to wonder how these people ever managed to live there when all they had were chiseled out toe and finger holds to climb up and down these walls. It is no wonder that the child mortality is estimated to be 50% prior to age 5! The stone overhangs still have soot stains from ancient fires and in places you can see hand prints and traces of prehistoric art. Many of the rooms were interconnected with tunnels. While the large cliff dwellings get all of the attention, the vast majority of these dwellings consisted of one to five rooms. The large complexes were rare.

While driving to the Mesa Verde visitor center we were struck by the number of dead trees all over the mesa. During the past 12 years there have been at least three major fires, all started by lightning which is very common here in Colorado. Approximately 50% of the park has burned in this time period. While fire is not new to this area, these fires were unique, they were hot fires! The National Park Service has had a fire policy that emphasized control and fire retardation. This policy was selected to protect and preserve the archeological treasures that exist in this region. Consequently, many areas of the park have or had an abundance of growth which translates to a fuel rich region. Instead of smaller fires that quickly burn themselves out, these fires did not want to quit. We were told that in one area that burned the trees would take 200-400 years to grow back. One positive aspect of the fires is that the archeologists are out while the ground is still hot searching for as yet undiscovered sites. The absence of foliage makes many minor sites easier to find!

Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railway

2008-08-11T20:28:00.000-07:00

A narrow gauge rail line has the rails three feet apart. A standard gauge rail line has the rails 4 feet eight and one half inches apart. Some say that dimension was picked by the width of two Roman chariot horses. Apparently a horse's ass has been responsible for something! Narrow gauge makes a lot of sense when you have to carve a ledge through steep, rocky mountain terrain. They can make tighter corners and climb steeper inclines and a narrower road bed is signifcantly less work to build.

Today we took the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge (D&SNG) from Durango, Colorado to Silverton, Colorado and back. It is about a 40 mile trip and takes three and a half hours each way. Durango is at 6520 feet elevation and Silverton is at 9288 feet elevation. Three different trains made the trip today, last week there were four. Shortly there will be two and then in October there will be none. The tourist season is already waning in this part of Colorado. We learned that they do offer a train around Christmas that goes from Durango to Cascade Canyon, a distance of about 24 miles or a little over half the distance to Silverton. The snowfall is much deeper the closer you get to Silverton and it is too difficult to keep the line open. Cascade Canyon is at 7696 feet elevation. We are already talking about coming back for a ride into the snowy mountains. Pictures will be more difficult to obtain because we sure won't be sitting in open cars or with open windows! Guess someone else will have to take the pictures next time.

Steam locomotives take you back to another era. These are coal burners and the coal smoke was dense and acrid. Small cinders are included in the exhaust smoke and soot collects everywhere the wind takes it. The trip up to Silverton took five times as much coal or energy as the trip back. The fireman was quite busy with his shovel, putting large chunks of coal into the burner which produced vast amounts of steam to power the engine..

Two water stops were scheduled on the trip up, only one for the return trip as not as much water was converted to steam. There are large storage tanks situated on the route where pipe streams provide the water to fill them. A pipe is placed in the stream uphill from the storage tank and this takes water from the stream to fill the tank. An overflow located on the top of the storage tank carries excess water back into the stream where it flows into the Animas River. The train stops at the storage tank and a large fill spout is lowered over the locomotive water tank. A valve is opened and the water pours into the locomotive. It only takes a few minutes to tank up. They raise the fill spout and turn off the valve and within another minute or so the whistle blows and they resume the trip. We were told that the locomotives could go about thirty miles on a tank of water.

We traveled through the outskirts of Durango and followed the Animas River into the mountains. We soon left the suburbs and all housing behind as we got into the San Juan mountains and had a narrow ledge at times with sheer rock walls down to the raging white water below, way below. The line twists and turns as it follows the river and crosses the river at least five times. We had beautiful scenery and a wonderful day for the trip as it was sunny and warm all the way up and back. At times the route is between opposing rock walls, easily within arms reach.

We had a quick lunch in Silverton, at an old bordello, no less. They advertise they no longer offer that service but they do sell food! Silverton has a colorful history as there were several of these establishments back in the 1880s.

We learned that a steam locomotive can not be easily shut off at night. The engines are left idling all night. It is difficult to start and stop the boiler fires so they are left burning. The fuel is changed at night from coal to compressed sawdust pellets and special exhaust scrubbers are placed over the stacks to reduce the emissions of the idling engines. This cuts the emissions by about ten percent.

The D&SNG has been featured in several movies. Remember when Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid leapt from a train into the river far below? They did jump from the train but into a net about six feet below! They leaped a second time from about six feet above the river!

Slumgullion Earthflow

2008-08-05T18:41:00.000-07:00

Imagine, it has been an extremely wet period and suddenly millions of tons of rock, earth and mud start a slow slide from a mountain peak and travel over four miles damming a river and creating a lake! Such an event happened about 850 years ago. The soils of Mesa Saco were super saturated from heavy rains. When the earth flow began it was like a dirty raging river of mud and rock! The second largest natural lake in Colorado. Lake San Cristobal, was formed by the damning of the Gunnison River. Approximately 350 years ago a second, slow moving mudslide began on top of the previous slide. This latest slide is still moving at the rate of about 21 feet per year!

Yesterday we drove from Creede to Lake City, Colorado. Lake City is located on Lake San Cristobal on Colorado Highway 149. CO 149 continues on to Gunnison. When we traveled to Creede we came from Gunnison but we elected to bypass route 149 because of Slumgullion Pass, 11,361 feet, and the long steep approaches to the Pass, inclines exceeding 7% for several miles. Although our Jeep has brakes that can be applied when the motor home is braked, its extra weight has the effect of pushing the motor home down the hill. We downshift the motor home and use the transmission and engine for braking but it still requires a lot of brake application to keep our speed under control. Diesels with exhaust brakes have an advantage here! After driving CO 149 in our Jeep we are glad we avoided this route. It is beautiful but it is narrow, winding and steep!

Slumgullion is a mining word that refers to the muddy deposit left in mining sluice boxes. The miners also prepared a stew that they called slumgullion because of its multi-colors of meat and vegetables. Evidently the multi-colored rock and soils exposed by the earth flow caused it to be named Slumgullion as well as the nearby Pass.

Lake City is a very picturesque town and well worth the 52 mile drive over to see it. It has a large historic district and many buildings of Victorian architecture still remain. We had lunch at Poker Alice's, a quaint restaurant named for a Colorado gambling legend, "Poker Alice Tubbs". This old gal "broke the bank" most places she played!

We encountered a group of Bighorn sheep rams on our way to Lake City. They were about 100 yards away from the highway and oblivious to our presence. Evidently they prefer bachelor groups in the summer. The head butting comes later in the fall when they begin to pursue the ewes.

Today we took our Jeep into the hills once again and toured the "Bachelor Loop", a loop road that takes you through the heart of the old Creede mine fields. Many old buildings are still partially intact and it is hard to imagine the work required to build these structures on the incredibly steep hillsides. Most of the mines closed in the late 1800s when the government removed the price guarantees on silver and the value of silver then plummeted, making mining prohibitive in this area. There still appears to be lots of ore so some of the mines may reopen at some future date when the price of silver warrants it.

Don tried once again to fish the waters of the Rio Grande with his fly rod. The Rio Grande is fast moving and has a rocky, uneven bottom and it is taking some time to learn to wade in this swift water. No fish yet but lots of fun. He is learning how to leave his flies in the trees, however.

Wheeler Geological Area

2008-07-31T18:36:00.000-07:00

Thirty million years ago Creede was a hot spot. There were several volcanoes in the area and the area was covered with hot ash, about 1500 degrees hot. Lava and ash covered the entire area. After the eruptions ceased the empty magma chamber collapsed under the weight of the crust above forming the 10 mile wide Creede Caldera. There were other major calderas formed in the area, Bachelor, San Luis, all part of the much larger La Garita Calder. The La Garita Caldera is about 1000 square miles, one of the largest in the world. These calderas and adjacent areas formed the San Juan Volcanic Field. Eruptions of these volcanoes would have dwarfed the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980. Approximately one million years ago arctic glaciers moved into the Northern United States. New glaciers were formed as the snow fell faster than it melted. Between the volcanic activity, glaciation and subsequent erosion, the area around Creede was shaped to look like it does today. Today we set out to see one of the wonders created by these forces, The Wheeler Geological Area.

We had a 5 mile drive on pavement before we turned onto a good gravel Forest Service Road. The next 10 miles was pretty smooth until we turned onto a more remote road that consisted of 14 miles of rocks, ruts, mud puddles, tree roots and stream crossings. Needless to say we had a rough ride. Our little Jeep was up to the job, however, and we made it in and back safely. The road terminated at a trail at the boundary of the Wheeler Geological Area. The trail was only about .6 miles long but it was rough, steep, slow and about 11,000 feet above sea level. The hike was worth the effort though as we got to see the wondrous formations.

Wheeler Geologic Area is a landscape that was created from volcanic tuff created from ash and larger blocks of volcanic material blown into the atmosphere by eruptions of the La Garita Volcanos. This material was compacted but not cemented together so it readily erodes. The result is reminiscent of the Badlands, an impassable area of peaks and steep slopes.

The area was named in honor of Capt. George Wheeler who was in charge of the War Department exploration and surveying done in this part of Colorado in 1874. Teddy Roosevelt named it a National Monument in 1908 and it passed back and forth between the Forest Service and The National Park system until finally it was made part of the La Garita Wilderness Area 1n 1993.

Tomorrow is our last day of scheduled Jeep runs. We will have a rest from the rough roads but maybe next week we will make some trips alone now that we have some experience. We will relax here for another week before we resume our travels.

The Continent Divided

2008-07-29T20:07:00.000-07:00

Today we had a great trip. We drove though Creede between two sheer cliffs and up a canyon full of old mine structures and equipment. It was cloudy when we left but the sun quickly warmed everything up and it turned out to be a beautiful day. The trip was a little more challenging for the 4 wheeling impaired. On a scale of 1-10, trails are rated by their difficulty. A 10 should only be attempted by the most experienced drivers and they should expect vehicle damage! Well, we are not at that level! We don't expect to damage our Jeep or ourselves. The trail today might be a 5. We drove through beautiful valleys and climbed up to the top of a mountain on the Continental Divide. We had views where we could see as far as tomorrow! We were very close to 13,000 feet above sea level. There were scattered patches of snow, wild flowers and beautiful skies. It was a little windy on top so we decided to go down to a more sheltered area for lunch. We pulled out our picnics, opened our folding chairs and basked in the sun and the mountain air. What a great day!

Today's trip was steeper and rockier than we had experienced. We forded several streams but the water was very shallow and the bottoms were rocky. We encountered mud puddles but they were mostly water, not so much mud so they did not present a problem. The rocks in the road were the biggest hazard as there were many places that we could have hit bottom had we chosen a poor path through them. Fortunately our Jeep has protective plates on the underside to protect vulnerable running gear like the engine, transmission and gas tank. We weren't anxious to test how well these plates work. Several folks had minor scrapes on rocks but nothing serious enough to break anything.

Tomorrow we have a respite from the trails and will probably go prospecting or rock hounding to see if we can find any unusual rocks like we don't have enough weight in our home on wheels already! I did find a few leaf fossils in some sandstone near the park. Hopefully we will find a better specimen if we spend more time with our hammers and chisels.

We have met lots of new folks and expect we will encounter some of them again in our travels. One couple knows a couple at our resort in Arizona, what a small world!

Creede, Colorado

2008-07-28T19:06:00.000-07:00

Nestled in the San Juan Mountains at 8,852 feet above sea level, Creede is a picturesque old mining town located in a canyon surrounded by towering peaks. This is Mineral County and true to its name, minerals abound. The drop in the price of silver closed the mines, the last one about 1985. The recent rise in silver prices may have some of the mines reopening in the near future.

Creede is the county seat of Mineral County. It also is the only city in Mineral County. That is one way to win the election! Mineral County is 95% public land so there are many places to enjoy without fear of trespassing.

We are staying at a beautiful RV park, Mountains Views RV Park. It is situated along the banks of the Rio Grande River which has its headwaters here in Mineral County. The landscaping is great, the lots are large, fenced and the views are magnificent. We are enjoying our stay here immensely. We went to Creede for lunch yesterday and encountered a most unusual motorcycle. It certainly got a lot of attention.

We came to Creede for an Escapees HOP (Head Out Program), mountain four wheeling. Today was our first outing. Three groups went out, 14 jeeps in one group, 13 jeeps in our group and several ATVs in another group. We lowered our tire pressure to 22 psi to give us increased traction, a softer ride over the rocks and to lessen the chance of a puncture from the sharp rocks. It worked well. We followed forest service roads into the high country and then we encountered potholes which then deteriorated into narrow, twisting scab rock, deeply rutted in places. We had no problems although we were in low range 4WD, low gear much of the time to stay under control on the descents. We had two runs planned for the day. As we began our climb on the second run, a thunderstorm descended on the peak we were to climb and we were drenched with a tremendous shower which quickly turned to hail about .25 inch in diameter. The ground quickly became covered with a white coat that looked a lot like winter! Our windshield was covered with ice, snow and rain. The ditches along the road became choked with runoff that began carving ruts across the road. Needless to say, the group leader decided to call it a day since most folks did not have mud tires. Friends of ours on another run were caught on one of the neighboring peaks when the deluge began. They quickly headed out but encountered extreme puddles and mud and found themselves going sideways several times during their descent. The slides were described to us as "controlled slides" by the men and "out of control" by the women. We were glad to have missed that excitement. We plan to make that same run later in the week and hope that the mud has dried up before we go.

We will stay here in Creede until August 10, a full week after our 4WD friends have gone on. We have heard of numerous places where we can go rock hounding for some interesting fossils and gems. That will be fun. Also, I have not had my fill of river fishing yet and hope to ply the rivers and streams for some of the trophy trout that abound in these waters. We had fish for dinner that I had caught previously. It was great.

We are unsure of our route from Creede. We want to go to the Four Corners area to see ancient Indian dwellings but we want to do so later in the summer or early fall to escape the heat and the crowds. There is so much to see here in Colorado and we have barely scratched the surface. We have survived the steep, narrow, twisting mountain pass routes that we have taken BUT there are some routes that we refuse to take with the motor home, they are plenty scary enough in our little Jeep. We are enjoying spending more time in one place and getting an opportunity to relax without the pressure of having to be some place at some time. The remainder of the trip should have less schedule demands. Fish On!

Black Canyon of the Gunnison

2008-07-22T19:28:00.000-07:00

Until Anne suggested that we visit the Black Canyon I had never heard of it. It has been a National Park since 1999. It is called "Black" not because of the rock but because it is so narrow and so deep that the bottom is often in the shadows. The Canyon has formed in the last 2,000,000 years. The Gunnison River has cut through the soft volcanic rock towards the top of the Canyon and is now cutting the hard older rock about 2,000 feet below the rim. We learned that water does have tremendous erosive power but this rock is eroded about 1 inch every 100 years or about the thickness of a human hair every year. We wonder what it will look like 2,000,000 years from now!

The Canyon is so deep and so steep that there has been no evidence found of any pre-history human habitation although such evidence has been found on the rims.

The Canyon is 48 miles long and the first 14 miles are the National Park. Lands beyond the Park boundary have been designated a wilderness area so it, too, will be preserved. There are 11 designated viewing locations on the South Rim where we visited. Each has a unique view of the Canyon. It was hot up there so we didn't stop at every one. In cooler weather we would like to visit the North Rim as it is supposed to be marvelous also. The Black Canyon escaped glaciation during the last ice age which is one reason it still is so steep and narrow.

Yesterday we arrived at Montrose where we still are today. We are in a lovely RV park that is quiet and not terribly crowded. Wonderful mountain vistas are all around us in the distance. We are enjoying it. After setting up camp we got in the Jeep and headed for Ouray (U-ray), a quaint little mining town nested in the San Juan mountains. Many of the original buildings dating back as far as 1876 are still in use although there has been some maintenance. The town is nestled in mountains rising as high as 13,000 feet and Ouray is sometimes compared to the Swiss Alps.

To get to Ouray we had to drive over Red Mountain Pass on the Million Dollar Highway, 11,018 feet above sea level! We're not sure whether the million dollars refers to the cost of the highway or the value of the vehicles that have gone over the side! Anne has told me that she knows where she is going to die. When I asked what she meant she replied, "right here in this seat with you driving!" Yesterday, Anne was driving the Jeep. It was payback time! Highway 550 is narrow, steep, with twisting and turning and 15 mph hairpin turns. Semis greet you roaring down the mountain with their wheels often in your lane. We followed a motor home up the mountain and its tires were constantly going from the shoulder to across the yellow line. There was some paving work being done and this motor home was hitting and knocking over the safety cones as often as a slalom skier hits the gates. It was frightful and we were glad we were not there in our motor home.

From Ouray we drove on to Silverton, another mining community but in a more open environment. We bought gas at a local station and were asked where we had been 4-wheeling when they noticed our little Jeep. I replied that we had just driven up from Montrose and the young lady responded, "my mom says that is 4-wheeling!" We agree. I tried to sleep on the return trip but the constant squealing of tires kept me wide awake. Robert, Suzy, can you remember those trips? I have a new respect for Anne's driving AND her responses from the right seat. I, too, know where I'm going to die!

We have more to see in Colorado but so far we both are enamoured with the wonderful scenery and the plentiful animals. Tomorrow we go to Del Norte where we will rest for three days before going to Creede for our four wheeling adventure. We expect to see the Rockies up close and personal and we are sure our little Jeep will begin to feel its purpose. We hope we do not reach its limitations!

The Rio Grande runs through Colorado and I hope to do some fly fishing while we are in Del Norte. The adventure continues!

Grand Mesa, Colorado

2008-07-20T18:36:00.000-07:00

We awoke this morning and after a leisurely breakfast we headed for Palisade, a little town east of Grand Junction. There is a farmers market on Sunday morning and we wanted to get some fresh fruit; there is a lot of fruit in this part of Colorado, the Grand Valley. After finding our fruit and some tasty cookies we then toured several of the area wineries. We tasted wine until we found several we liked. We'll be taking a few bottles back to Arizona in the late fall to share with our wine tasting party friends!

Before getting too light headed on the wine we headed for Grand Mesa. Grand Mesa is billed as the "largest flattop mountain in the world". We can't confirm that but it is large. Grand Mesa provides a lot of water for Western Colorado. We had great views overlooking forests and lakes. The scenic road across the mesa climbs about 6,000 feet above the surrounding area; we were close to 11,000 feet above sea level at one point. The Scenic Byway is 63 miles in length so we had a nice drive through a magical alpine area. We saw lots of beautiful flowers, lakes, rocks, and trees. The panoramas were magnificent. We could see forever! Today was one of the few days that we didn't see any animals but the habitat was there and the animals were out of the heat as it was another warm day.

In the morning we will head for Montrose, Colorado, and The Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.

Colorado National Monument

2008-07-20T08:01:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Grand Junction, Colorado yesterday. We are parked at the Elks Lodge here where we have electrical power but are using "our" water and bathroom. No long showers but we do have all the amenities. It was hot, possibly 100, yesterday. Our air conditioner worked hard but by bedtime we were comfortable and slept well.

We drove out to Colorado National Monument. It is a spectacular place and we thoroughly enjoyed our 23 mile drive along the rim rock. The sandstone cliffs are incredible. We had a video presentation of the geologic history of the area and the immense forces and incredible time span that it took to create what we see today. It started in the Pre-Cambrian era and the last major force was glaciers about 10,000 years ago. It is hard to comprehend what changes will occur in the future to areas we now know. Man has been around such a short while in geologic terms, will we last 100,000 years? This area had oceans rising and falling for a period of 10,000,000 years and that was a short period in the area's development.

The road we took south through Colorado, CO13, has two towns, Craig and Rifle, about 100 miles apart. There was little else on that highway expect for oil exploration activities. The only homes we saw were close to the two towns. Traffic was light, a mixture of tourists and semis hauling pipe, pumps, and whatever else the drillers needed. There were a number of trailer camps along the route. It looks like the oil companies are providing housing for the workers since the area is so remote. We saw lots of deer in the morning hours but were fortunate to have them run off the road.

Jackson Hole, Wyoming

2008-07-18T19:49:00.000-07:00

Jackson is a great place. We didn't have much choice in the RV park department, there is ONE! It is close in and right next to a rafting company, Teton Expeditions. We quickly decided to float the Snake River but opted for the quiet ride and left the white water to the more adventurous. We were taken about seven miles north of town where we boarded two rafts, six people to a raft. Fortunately we had a group larger than 10 because we would have all been packed into one raft!

The Snake was close to high water from the late spring runoff and the current was close to 7 mph. It took us about two hours to float 13 miles! We were told that Harrison Ford owned a large portion of land along the river where we were. We were also told that he volunteers and flies his own helicopter for search and rescue operations when he is in residence in Jackson.

The float trip was great, we saw lots of animals and birds. We happened upon a cow moose with a little fuzz ball calf that disappeared almost fast as they appeared (blow up that picture). Eagles were plentiful and we saw one pair in a tree watching their fledgling who was sitting on a sand bar chirping something like, "I can't get up!" According to our guide, eaglets aren't allowed back in the nest after their first flight but the parents do watch them for some period before leaving them to their own devices. We were also told that the young are larger than their parents due to a large amount of body fat in the young birds and that their feathers are longer and larger than the adult birds, training wings so to speak.

The river made a sound similar to frying bacon as we raced along. We were hearing the sand, pebbles and small rocks bouncing along the bottom. It was a great trip and we will do it again!

We left Jackson this morning after a late start. After announcing that we had no problems with the motor home so far, last night the water heater refused to work on gas or electricity. A call to the factory this morning didn't help much so we awakened the local RV repair guy to come look at our water heater. Meanwhile I unplugged and replugged some wires and tested the fuse but couldn't find anything to identify as the problem. Then the repair guy showed up and said we should turn the heater on in the gas mode. The sucker lit right up! Go figure. We then headed out for an oil change and got on the road about 11:00 am.

We drove hard today and tonight we are in a KOA in Craig, Colorado. Craig bills itself as the elk hunting capital of the US. Tomorrow we head for Grand Junction and maybe we will stay there a couple of days. We plan to be in Creede, Colorado a week from today where we will go 4 wheeling in the heart of the Rockies.

Les Trois Tetons

2008-07-16T13:04:00.000-07:00

Grand Teton National Park, no foothills, the Tetons just thrust up from the surface. The range is only about fifty-five miles in length but it is impressive. There are twelve peaks above 12,000 feet and Grand Teton is 13,770 feet. These peaks absolutely dominate the landscape. This picture is taken from the banks of the Snake River, no fish but what a place to fish! The bears like this spot, too, or so the signs advertise.

We had two days in the Tetons and had a chance to see the park and lots of animals. We left there this morning after stopping at the launderette to take care of necessities. Now we are in Jackson for two days before we head for Creede, Colorado.

Jackson, Wyoming is a very picturesque town, very much tourist oriented. We are taking a raft trip this evening but it is not supposed to be white water. We will float about 13 miles of river and then have a steak dinner, really roughing it. There is much to see here and tomorrow we will try and see all we can. It is also a chance to get the motor home serviced. Speaking of motor home, everything seems to working well, we have had no problems. We hope that continues.

Yellowstone National Park

2008-07-13T16:31:00.000-07:00

Today is Sunday, July 12. We arrived in Yellowstone National Park Thursday afternoon. We are staying in a nice campground with bear warnings posted everywhere. If anything is left outside that has any odor attached to it the bears will find it. The campground furnishes secure steel lock boxes to put food in if campers do not have hard sided camping units. Garbage cans have heavy steel lids that can not be removed by the bears and the dumpsters provided are bear proof.

We took a drive to Old Faithful on our first afternoon and also got a chance to see part of Yellowstone Lake. There are lots of wild flowers and the scenery is beautiful. There was a large crowd at the geyser waiting to see the show and Old Faithful performed as expected. The time between eruptions has been increasing and there is some speculation that it is caused by tourists throwing coins and other debris into the geyser and blocking and changing the vents. Friday, we drove east around the park to Mammoth Hot Springs. There you are only five miles from Gardiner, Montana. The Hot Springs are beautiful but if my memory serves there is a greatly diminished wet area from the Hot Springs I first saw in 1965. They say that the amount of thermal activity has remained rather constant but that it does change from place to place where the springs are currently flowing.

Animals are not as plentiful as they have been in the past, most are just farther from the roads. We did get to see some unusual sights however. On our way past Tower Canyon we saw a grizzly bear feeding on an elk that it had recently killed. It was about 200 yards from the road behind a pond and on a steep hillside. The rangers had marked the area off limits and were not allowing any cars to stop. I set the camera on zoom and snapped one picture and the elk is visible but the bear is mostly behind a tree. We also saw a black bear cooling off in a pond and on our way back to the campground we saw many cars stopped to take a picture of two bull elk. We also stopped when we saw a coyote trotting towards the road and all the tourists lined up there. It seemed unusual that a coyote would approach so near. Suddenly the coyote made an abrupt turn running and leaping as a bird tried to fly but the coyote had it and immediately turned and ran away into the trees. We saw it again several minutes later after the snack was consumed, trotting away from the crowds. We are enjoying the park immensely! It is hot during the day and cold at night, we need to break out our down comforter. It was 48 in our motor home Saturday morning. Right now the heater is running and so is the generator, replenishing the batteries. We have cell service here and since we use our cell service to access the Internet we are wired!

Yesterday, Saturday, we drove westward around the Yellowstone loop to Madison and then on to Mammoth. That took us through much of the geyser basins and other thermal areas. From Mammoth we continued on the same route we had been on the day before. When we arrived at the site where the bear had killed the elk the previous day, we saw many cars parked and lots of cameras and glasses out. We also stopped. We were told that the bear was still there feeding and that earlier it had come down the hill to drink, take a soak in the pond and then had gone back up on the hill. We watched for awhile when a small grizzly appeared, ambling along towards us at the base of the hill. The smaller bear stopped just below the elk which was not visible to it and we were sure the bear smelled the kill because it turned and slowly climbed the steep slope. We could all predict what happened next. After a short period the smaller bear came racing down the hill towards the pond with the larger bear hot on it's heels. The chase probably only took 150 yards but the smaller bear got the message to leave. The larger bear went back up the hill, checking over its shoulder occasionally and disappeared into the trees. The smaller bear then decided to take a swim. The bear entered the water and swam across the pond towards the road which made the rangers very nervous. One ranger was on foot directing traffic to keep moving and she started to retreat as the bear climbed the bank towards the road. Another ranger had a rifle slung over his shoulder and a pistol on his belt and he headed towards the bear but then the bear turned back down the bank and ambled away. Every time we have seen a bear the park rangers have quickly appeared and closed the area to hiking, stopping and parking. Evidently they are enforcing a minimum people/bear contact policy. Quite a show we had!

Hope you all are having a great summer. We are enjoying living and traveling in our “wobble box”!

Grandmother, what big teeth you have!

2008-07-09T20:07:00.000-07:00

We went to the Wyoming Dinosaur Center yesterday just before leaving Thermopolis. They have a great exhibit and you can even take a tour of the site where they are currently digging. They have a 116 foot Supersaurus on display, one of only two that have been discovered and the most complete. One of the volunteers gave us a brief description of how the fossils are removed from the field and processed in the laboratory. She explained that the Supersaurus display was made using lightweight castings of the real fossils since one vertebrae alone weighed 300 pounds and the building was not designed to support that kind of loading. The Center is a must see!

On to Cody where we now are. Anne discovered that our refrigerator had a critical recall and we were advised not to use it until we had it repaired! Hmmmm...what do you do with all that food? Apparently some of the units can and have released dangerous chemicals which burn, especially when powering the unit with propane so we turned it off at night and back on in the daytime. Fortunately we were able to get it repaired on short notice here in Cody and now we feel safer.

Cody is home to the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. That is another must see. The Center has the Buffalo Bill Museum which interprets the life and times of William F. Cody; the Whitney Gallery of Western Art which presents works of C.M Russell, Frederic Remington, Albert Bierstadt and others; the Plains Indian Museum which illustrates the art, cultures, and lives of Plains Indian peoples; the Cody Firearms Museum which features a comprehensive collection of American and European firearms dating back to the sixteenth century; the Draper Museum of Natural History which explores the diversity of the Greater Yellowstone Region; and the McCracken Research Library which contains a wealth of information on topics related to the Center. The firearms collection has over 7000 pieces, of which about 2700 are currently being displayed.

Tomorrow we go to Yellowstone. Fishing Bridge is the only campground at Yellowstone that has RV hookups and we had hoped to stay there. We were informed that there were NO reservations being taken for that campground in July due to a sewer line break in the campground. We will go to Grants Village where we will dry camp which means we exist without an electrical, water and sewer hookup. Hopefully we will be able to run our generator to recharge out batteries and we will have a full fresh water tank and empty used water tanks. Short showers will be the order of the day.

We found ourselves in hot water up to our necks!

2008-07-07T19:26:00.000-07:00

We left Gillette this morning with about 800 other RVS and we headed west to Buffalo and then southwest to Thermopolis. This was the first real mountain driving this trip with the motor home. We got as high as 9700 ft above sea level and had grades of 6-7 percent with hair pin turns where speeds of 25 mph or less were required. Took a lot of engine braking to keep from having white knuckle descents but we made it OK and our brakes never got too hot! We should be able to handle the Rockies later this month.

Highway 16 from Buffalo to Thermopolis is spectacular. We had great vistas and saw lots of animals: deer, buffalo, antelope and a Stegosaurus (we have pictures). We saw rocks from many different eras: Cambrian, Pre-Cambrian, Pennsylvanian, Mississippian, Ordovician, Paleozoic, Jurassic, Triassic and Permian. There may have been others but my memory was taxed to remember this many. Wyoming is certainly a geologist's laboratory, there is so much rock history to see and study.

Thermopolis is home to the world's largest mineral hot spring. We had a 20 minute soak and really enjoyed it. The water comes up about 127 degrees but it is cooled in the public pools to 104 degrees. The Wyoming Dinosaur Center is here and we are going to try and visit there tomorrow morning before we leave for Cody.

After getting set up in the RV park we drove out of town through the Wind River Canyon. What a beautiful place. A deep rugged canyon with the Wind River raging northward, appearing to flow uphill as we descended through the canyon to the south. There are Big Horn sheep in the area and we were fortunate to see a group of seven, three ewes and four lambs. They are extremely agile. We watched a lamb run at a rock wall about six feet high. The lamb jumped at the rock face and struck it about half way up and then bounded over the top making it look very easy.

The Wind River is unusual. It is also called the Big Horn River until you come to a place named "Wedding of the Waters". There the Big Horn becomes the Wind River. Don't believe many rivers change their name mid stream.

Independence Day

2008-07-04T22:32:00.001-07:00

Escapade is over and now we can relax for a couple of days before we get back on the road. Gillette has a great fireworks show and the Cam-Plex center where we are is a good spot to see the show. We had friends over and sat out in front of our motor home and watched the pyrotechnics. Too much fun!

Tomorrow many rigs will be leaving although some will stay another two days as we will. The two days will give us a chance to do laundry, some grocery shopping and get an oil change for our Jeep. Maybe there will also be time to go fishing if all the errands are done first. Our next destination will be Yellowstone although it will take a few days to get there as we have some stops planned, Thermopolis and Cody. We will probably be in Yellowstone for a week before we turn south.

We have connected with a group of Escapees called the Mexican Connection. They do a lot of traveling in Mexico. We are planning on going there for a few weeks in February. We expect that we may have as many as 100 rigs making the trek.

Hope you're having a great summer.

Escapade & Boot Camp

2008-07-02T21:15:00.000-07:00

We have been very busy here in Gillette. We arrived a day before Boot Camp began. Boot Camp consisted of 2 days of seminars covering about every aspect of maintaining an RV. It also included a session on safe driving where we learned how to deal with a front tire blowout. It isn’t obvious. Almost everyone wanted to immediately brake the coach which is the worst thing you can do. The coach will pull to the side of the flat tire and braking will cause that pull to be increased, possibly causing total loss of control. We were taught to immediately accelerate using the inertia of the coach to keep it in the lane. Then we were told to turn the steering wheel against the pull and only when complete control was reestablished should you take your foot off the gas pedal and let the coach slow down, again without using brakes. The flat tire produces a lot of braking force all by itself. We need to go over this procedure many times to ensure that we do it right if we ever have a blowout.

Escapade has been very much like going to school. There have been a series of seminars every day and we have to go from room to room to soak up all the good information that is available. Of course there are a number of vendors here selling almost everything an RVer needs or thinks he/she needs or wants. We have dropped a few dollars on safety related items as well as a new towing package for our little Jeep. We expect it will make our travels both easier and safer.

Escapade is being held at a huge Civic arena called Cam-Plex here in Gillette that covers 1100 acres. We have not heard any “official” announcement but we suspect that there are well over 1000 motor homes here, including 5th wheels, trailers, and yes, even some tents. The Escapees RV Club is holding this Escapade, an annual event for them. The Escapees are a group of folks that live full time in their RVs, or a majority of their time.

Wyoming is the nation’s largest producer of coal and about 90% of that coal comes from the Gillette area, a whopping 4,000,000 tons per year. It takes 85 trains a day of 150 cars each to move that much coal. Wow!

Escapade ends tomorrow but we will stay for another three days. There will be a Fourth of July celebration here and we will have front row seats for the fireworks. It should be fun.

Big Horn Mountains

2008-06-25T16:01:00.000-07:00

Today we are in Buffalo, Wyoming. The landscape has changed and we have come closer to the mountains. The snow capped peaks west of us are the Big Horns, we will get closer when we go to Yellowstone in July. We drove several miles into the mountains this afternoon and saw beautiful wild flowers, deer, moose and pronghorn antelope in addition to some very old rocks. Road signs announced that rocks by the road were Pre-Cambrian, or only 3 billion years old!

We are in a very nice campground today with level gravel sites, grass, huge cottonwood trees (cotton everywhere!) and one of the best we have been in. Don tried to stream fish at the back of the camp but the four foot wide stream was full of run off, heavily treed and there was no way to present a fly even if there were fish there. Fishing will have to wait for Yellowstone.

We have had a great trip through Colorado. We had several days at Estes Park and loved it there. Saw several cottages by rivers that looked like a great place to spend the summer. We then went to Fort Collins and visited cousins of Don and had a really great time.

We have seen countless antelope in our drive across Wyoming as well as several deer. They are fun to watch.

Tomorrow we head east to Gillette where we will attend an Escapees Escapade, a get together of RVers who live in their motor homes. We hope to make some new friends and learn more about the ins and outs and roundabouts of living on the road.

The TOP of the world!

2008-06-18T20:58:00.000-07:00

We are in Estes Park, CO, just a short distance from Rocky Mountain National Park. It is a gorgeous spot. Yesterday (6/17) we drove Trail Ridge Road, a 48 mile stretch to Grand Lake, the highest continuous paved highway in America. Eleven miles of the road are above tree line with the highest elevation of 12,183 feet above sea level. You climb so quickly that we both were literally breathless as we were exposed to the thin air at the higher elevations. The road offers magnificent views of the Rocky Mountains. There are rest stops along the route and plenty of places to take a trail for those so inclined. The Alpine Visitor Center is the highest visitor center in any of the National Parks. There is no electricity, water, or waste treatment available so they have a diesel generator, store and process melt water and pump and truck waste daily to treatment facilities. One of the buildings still had its plumbing frozen and unusable. You really are in the heart of the Rockies here and it is magnificent. Our little Jeep performed well and we had no problems. We took a picnic with us and stopped on the east end of the Ridge Road. A couple of elk were just over the bank near a fast flowing stream. We saw lots of elk on our drive, several large bulls in velvet and a couple of herds that had to have at least a hundred animals. We also saw two moose. If more than one car was stopped along the road you knew somebody had seen something! We returned to our RV Park and Don spent the late afternoon trout fishing in a stocked pond here at the park. Don was only able to land one fish so it will take more effort before we have a fish dinner. Three elk ambled through the park during this time, coming within 50 yards of our motor home. In Colorado the animals come to you!

Old friends are the best friends!

2008-06-15T20:01:00.000-07:00

We are now in Estes Park, the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park. We arrived this evening and are all settled in with our motor home connected to all the needed services. Tomorrow we will begin to explore the park and the beautiful town of Estes Park. The busy season has not quite arrived but there are still lots of people here. The RV park does have some empty spaces and that will change later in the summer.

We have just left Littleton, Co where we spent the weekend with some very dear friends of Anne, Dave & Rosanne Minson. We had a glorious visit and we're sure we'll pass that way again. Good friends, good wine, good food, good conversation, good times...it just doesn't get any better than that! Thanks, dear friends!

Tuesday was a quiet day for us, laundry day. Doesn't sound very exciting but after we left the laundromat Anne & I got manicures and pedicures. The women reading this will understand, the guys won't. Such a pity.

Wednesday we drove to Cañon City, CO where we boarded the Royal Gorge Train for a 2 hour, 24 mile trip along a stretch of the Arkansas River. The Arkansas has carved a magnificent gorge in the last three million years. Now the walls of the gorge tower 1178 feet above the water at the highest point. We had seats in a Vista Dome car and enjoyed the trip alongside the river. The canyon walls were magnificent and we saw a deer and Bighorn ewe as well as several dozen rafters floating the turbulent river waters.

After the train ride we drove to Royal Gorge Bridge and Park which is at the top of the gorge. A suspension bridge crosses the gorge at it's deepest point and is undoubtedly one of the highest suspension bridges in the world. We first crossed the Gorge in an Aerial Tramway which danced around a little in the wind. We were told it was safe in winds in excess of 50 mph. We crossed back by walking the Royal Gorge Bridge. It, too, was "wind sensitive" but we had a great time and the views from the top were spectacular. We then took the Incline Railway which takes you down to the train tracks below. We saw the Gorge from top to bottom, a wonderful experience.

Thursday we visited the museum at Petersen Air Force Base. Petersen is dedicated to the Defense of North America. There is a beautiful air park displaying a number of aircraft that played a significant role in air defense. We were able to go through a training module for the Peacekeeper missiles that were the mainstay of our defense during the Cold War. The module included the control room where two airmen would have had the tools to launch up to ten Peacekeeper missiles should the situation ever have warranted it. Fortunately they were never fired. The Peacekeepers have since been decommissioned due to Nuclear Disarmament Treaties. The museum is on the grounds of the Colorado Springs Airport terminal from the 1940s. We would recommend the museum to all who pass this way.

Pike's Peak or Bust!

2008-06-09T19:51:00.000-07:00

The photo is Pike's Peak taken from the visitor center of Garden of the Gods.

Today's plan was to climb Pike's Peak, all 14,110 feet of it. We elected to do it via the cog railway that takes you to the top. The railway has been in existence since 1891. The train travels about 8 mph and portions of the grade are 25%, a 25 foot rise every 100 feet! It is an impressive ride. We did not have reservations and were surprised to find that all trips were booked solid. Fortunately they had sufficient demand to add an extra car and we were able to take the trip. The depot is around 6500 feet above sea level so you experience about a 7600 foot climb to the summit. We traveled through four distinct life zones, saw numerous aspen groves and pine forests, huge granite boulders strewn all about. We were fortunate to see some Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep near the summit. We were informed that one Bristlecone Pine we saw was 2400 years old! We had a fabulous day, weather wise, and could see Denver, Colorado Springs, Manitou Springs, The Continental Divide, and The Sangre de Cristo Mountains. We could also see the gold mining region of Cripple Creek and Victor where we had been yesterday.

Colorado is windy!

2008-06-08T21:50:00.000-07:00

We have encountered lots of wind since we arrived in Colorado. While still on the road it was bad enough to pummel our motor home and unfurl our slide out cover. It then snapped back with a load noise making us think we'd hit something. It was bad enough we expected to lose our awning so we stopped and tried to restrain the awning with cable ties. Fortunately, it worked. We need to get a proper tie down installed for this awning! We have continued to have windy days since but we're still enjoying and loving our time here in Colorado.

We arrived in Colorado Springs yesterday and are staying at the Elks Lodge where they have accommodations for up to 12 motor homes with power, water and a dump station. We have been the consummate tourists since we arrived. Yesterday we visited Manitou Springs Cliff Dwellings, Wind Cave and Garden of the Gods. Today we went to Cripple Creek where we rode a narrow gage train and then to the Florissant Fossil Beds. They all were great. Tomorrow we hope to take the cog train to the top of Pike's Peak. Did you know that Colorado has over 50 peaks above 14000 feet? They really get up there. We're rather partial to Washington's 14,410 foot peak, Mt. Rainier. Pike's Peak is only about 300 feet lower in elevation.

Cripple Creek was an interesting drive. It is in the heart of mining country and we saw much evidence of gold mines, both new and old. Cripple Creek, the town, is at an elevation of 9494 feet. Our GPS showed us around 10,300 feet on our drive there. Our little Jeep did a great job so we think we'll be able to handle the elevation here and later when we go four wheeling into the heart of the Rockies. We expect to be here in Colorado Springs for three more days before we head towards Denver and then Estes Park. We will continue to add photos to our Picassa album as we have time. Double click on our little slide show to see larger captioned images of our photos.

We're Getting High Now!

2008-06-06T20:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we crossed from New Mexico into Colorado and reached the highest elevation so far on this trip, approximately 7840 feet. Our Workhorse did the job for us although it will be called on for more arduous tasks later when we really get high in the Rockies. We currently are in Walsenburg, CO. Anne wanted to visit an area she lived in briefly in another life. We unhooked the toad and spent the day exploring in our Wrangler, driving up into the hills to a ski lodge where we saw an elk herd grazing on one of the runs. Colorado is beautiful BUT we found some mosquitoes this evening while hitching up the Jeep for tomorrow's departure. There are two magnificent peaks near here, The Spanish Peaks. We will see many mountains during our time in Colorado!

We've been told that Arizona has the lowest priced gas in the nation but since we left we have found gas to be less than in Gold Canyon. Gas was $3.89 when we left and our last fill up here in Colorado was $3.73. Some stations here in Colorado are charging $4.09 but so far we have been able to avoid them.

Indian Territory

2008-06-05T07:02:00.000-07:00

We finally got the motor home on the road about 6:00 PM on June 2nd. We headed for the San Carlos Apache Reservation where we had stayed previously at the Apache Gold Casino RV Park. Our previous visit 3-4 years ago was very favorable with a new, clean RV park with all the amenities and inexpensive too! This trip was a bit of a surprise. The RV park was full, most of the sites occupied by long term campers and construction workers with lots of extra stuff sitting on the sites, pretty junky to put it nicely. Since we had to "dry camp", we paid $2 each to use the showers and filthy would be a mild description. They obviously hadn't had a lot of maintenance or cleaning since our last visit. At least there was lots of hot water and we wore our Crocs to stay out of the mud. We felt like we still needed a shower after we finished!

It seems we have been going from one reservation to another in our drive from Gold Canyon to Santa Fe where we are this morning. Yesterday, we were in Gallup and we visited the oldest continuously inhabited city in North America. It is called Sky City and resides on top of a mesa on the Acoma Indian Reservation. The city was founded about 1100 AD and when hostile tribes began entering the area the city moved to the top of a mesa that could only be accessed by steep trails and toeholds carved in the rock which made it extremely defensible. The Spaniards were able to defeat them with their technology advantage but the city has been inhabited continuously. There are about 3800 Acomans today. There is no electricity, running water or waste treatment on the mesa. In 1959 a road was built allowing vehicles access to the top so getting water and supplies up is much easier than carrying the goods on ones back and hiking the 360 feet up. Most of the cooking is still done with wood although there was some evidence of propane. Dry farming is still being done in the fields below. It was a real interesting snapshot of a lifestyle from long ago.

It's time to pack!

2008-05-31T17:21:00.000-07:00

Last night was a beautiful sunset. This picture does not do it justice. We washed our motor home just before sunset and it worked out fairly well. We found a new device from Mr. Clean that has a filter that removes the minerals from the water, leaving no water spots as it dries. The final rinse is essentially spotless. It actually worked! We have the motor home parked in front of our Arizona abode where we have access to limited shore power and the convenience to make loading it easier. Tomorrow we will start cooling the refrigerator and packing in earnest. We hope to be on the road by Monday afternoon, June 2. Monday will be a busy day!

Cactus Flowers

2008-05-31T16:24:00.000-07:00

We have been amazed at how beautiful the blooms are on the various cacti around the area. We try to walk just before dusk when the heat begins to subside and we have hundreds of cacti to look at in many different stages of blooming. They are all different and gorgeous. How does such a stark and hostile plant come up with such beautiful flowers? Some bloom over a fairly long time period, others seem to have the blooms for only one day. We have had some very pleasant weather for about a week, highs in the 80s or low 90s. The temperatures are starting to creep up now into the 100s and we are getting the urge to travel. We hope you enjoy the flowers.

I think the thermostat is broken!

2008-05-22T19:40:00.000-07:00

Day before yesterday the temperature got to 110. Yesterday was a bit milder, BUT today it got down to 55! That is a 55 degree drop in two days! Tomorrow it is supposed to be cool also but then it is expected to head back towards 100. We're adapting to the heat, we "work" outside for a couple of hours in the morning and then retreat to air conditioned spaces for the remainder of the day. We are able to enjoy sitting under our awning and enjoying the evenings. The sunsets are gorgeous and the flowers are spectacular. Yesterday we awoke to find a small cactus in our back yard covered in beautiful white flowers tinged with violet. By evening the blossoms had closed up and this morning those blooms are gone, their stalks bent over and withering away. A few new blooms had appeared but they too will be gone by tomorrow. The desert produces some interesting survival challenges! The saguaros are in bloom now, the tips of their arms are covered with stalks having a beautiful white flower. They remind me of Bart Simpson's haircut.

The motor home is now parked out in front, ready to go in for service tomorrow morning. It is time to start packing for a summer away from here

If you can't stand the heat, get out of Phoenix!

2008-05-18T12:35:00.000-07:00

Temperatures now seem to be consistently in the high 90s and low 100s. Our days in the desert are numbered. We have been lazily adapting to a post move life and are constantly trying to get 7 pounds in a 5 pound sack. Our space is limited. New batteries for the motorhome are the order of the day as we expect to do some boondocking this summer and a shortage of power is not a good thing. We are enjoying ourselves and deciding where and when to go. We will go to an Escapees RV Club Escapade in Gillette, Wyoming in late June and early July. The Escapees are a group that espouses living in a motorhome and going where the road and their will takes them. We are technically not "full timers" since we intend to return to the desert for the winters and will be more like "half timers". This summer will probably find us prowling the Rockies and hopefully some good spots to flyfish. Our community here in Gold Canyon is becoming a virtual ghost town. A few folks spend the summer here but most of the snow birds have flown away to their summer homes. There are still a few cars in driveways but that is misleading as most are left here year round. It is quiet here and we are enjoying the serenity and the wonderful explosions of blooms. The cacti are gorgeous, hard to believe such stark, hostile plants can have such beautiful flowers. Time for my afternoon siesta....

Back in the valley of the sun!

2008-05-10T21:14:00.000-07:00

We arrived at our Arizona home today. Our Honda was reporting the outside temperature in the 90s while in Southern California but as we neared Phoenix we got a reading of 98. It didn't seem that bad when we stopped for gas or a chance to stretch our legs. We have had the house air conditioner running on high so we will be able to sleep tonight. This move has been strenuous and hectic and we are looking forward to a slower paced life. Tomorrow we will charge the batteries in the motorhome and see what else needs to be done to take it on the road when we are ready. We have many ideas about where to go but haven't selected a destination yet. There is so much to do and so little time!

On the road again!

2008-05-06T15:19:00.000-07:00

We finished our chores in Port Orchard yesterday and hit the road. We had a last run to the dump and used that opportunity to have our rig weighed. Needless to say we were about 100 lbs. overweight so a quick trip from the dump to our storage locker where we left at least 200 lbs. of stuff we feel we don't have to have in Arizona. A quick trip to Seattle to take care of finances and we hit the road at 3:15 PM. Our goal was to get south of Portland and we did before darkness set in. Today we got as far as Canyonville, Oregon, Seven Feathers Casino. We are spending the night here and getting a good rest before we head out tomorrow for Northern California. The Ridgeline has been doing fine but we know we have a load in tow. Our mileage is suffering but it is lots better than we will get when we get back to Arizona and take our motorhome out of storage. Our adventure is underway and we are trying hard to avoid schedules of where we have to be and when. After just two days it feels great. We are looking forward to just sitting some place and resting for a while while we decide where to spend our summer. Stay tuned...

The fat lady Sang!

2008-05-01T14:40:00.000-07:00

Its over! We were out with 3 hours to spare! After a solid month of hard work we're now "Houseless in Seattle". We met our buyers yesterday and told them what we could about the house they had just purchased and handed over the keys. What a relief to finally have it all behind us. Today we have spent making phone calls, changing addresses and cancelling utilities. Now we're trying to find insurance for our personal property as that went with the house insurance! We're trying to establish ourselves as Washington residents taking an extended trip in our motorhome.

We just watched CVN 74, the John C. Stennis, leave port. It is a sight we have enjoyed during our time here in Port Orchard. We will miss the comings and goings of the carriers and submarines.

Could the "SOLD" be any larger?

2008-04-24T18:18:00.000-07:00

We're getting there. The garage is still a mess but I think we're going to get it all cleaned out before closing. By Wednesday, the 30th, we plan to be out of here.

I think I had a good shot at winning!

2008-04-20T15:37:00.000-07:00

You've heard the adage: "He/she who dies with the most toys (stuff, junk, etc.) wins." Well I think it could have been me! It is getting close to the wire. Tomorrow I start loading a trailer with "stuff" from my garage and heading for Goodwill. Then some trips to the dump. I just wish the weather would make up its mind whether to be warm, cold or wet! We've had rain, snow, sleet and sunshine! I hope to have some clear weather to keep things dry as I haul it away to its new home. Anne has just about got the household goods under control. We still have plenty of storage since so much has been given a new home. Today someone comes for my extension ladder and the sofa, yesterday it was my gargantuan air compressor. It all has to go if it won't fit in the motorhome!

How do you accumulate so much stuff?

2008-04-18T20:26:00.000-07:00

We're trying to get rid of a lifetime's worth of accumulations in just under a month so we can live in a motorhome for a few years. Daily trips to storage, recycle, the dump, Goodwill, Craigslist, give it away, please take it! We have 10 days to closing and the clock keeps ticking. We're both anxious to have this ordeal end so we can return to Arizona and pick up our motorhome and figure where to head. About to be homeless in Seattle! We aren't going to miss this cold weather!

We've Sold Our House!

2008-04-14T06:07:00.000-07:00

After seven months on the market we appear to have sold our Port Orchard house. We expect to close in just about two weeks so right now we're in the midst of a crash course in disposing of seldom used items and preparing to live in a motorhome until we tire of travel and find a place where we want to establish roots. Anne is a tosser, Don is a saver. You can't believe just how much stuff you can accumulate! Right now our task is deciding whether the next trip is to recycle, the dump, Goodwill, or the storage locker. It all has to go somewhere! Stay tuned....