Serene Wandering

The old Platters song “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” includes the lyrics:   When a lovely flame dies, smoke gets in your eyes.   We have certainly shed tears since our lovely flame, Elko, left us.  We thank those of you who reached out with love, support and good memories of our boy.  It has helped a lot.

We have also had some real smoke in our eyes since Idaho is on fire.  Photo by our friend Pam.

The sun is often colored by smoke.

When we took a trip to Boise the normal route down Highway 55 was closed or delayed due to one fire so we went the long way around on Highway 95.

As we drove we could see a helicopter and bucket fighting a new fire.

This was my view of the fire from Highway 95.   The highway was closed shortly after we went through.  

Although we had delays we eventually did make it back to Donnelly using Highway 55 – one lane with a pilot car escort.

The closest fire to our campground is the Mesa fire.

The Mesa fire began July 26 and, as of August 5,  involves over 34,000 acres and is 42 percent contained.  We’ve heard it is about 4 miles away.

The blue dot is where we are.  The fire is coming our way but we haven’t heard anything about evacuations.

One day it snowed a lot of ash.

The fire fighting planes come right over us for hours each day.

We  know the fire is getting closer because of the frequency of the Scooper planes gathering 3000 gallons of water from Lake Cascade right in front of us.

We first noticed the scooper planes about a week ago coming through to scoop water for fire suppression.   They came in pairs on a 15-20 minute cycle.  Over the course of time, the fire grew closer, and now the planes come every 5-6 minutes for hours at a time.   See the video below.

It is very interesting to watch and would be fun if it wasn’t so sad.  We know the pilots and firefighters are working hard to protect what they can.

Unfortunately wildlife is also effected.  Twice this week we have found a weakened, disoriented bat during the daylight hours of early evening.  This one was in our campsite and rested for a time on our paddle board.

Between us and the Mesa fire is Tamarack resort.  The resort has been through a variety of bankruptcies, tax delinquencies and foreclosures since 2008.   There are still lovely homes, winter skiing and a variety of activities available at Tamarack.   One entity that did not survive the financial problems was Osprey Meadows Golf Course. 

 Randy remembers playing the course years ago and it is sad to see it now.

The former cart paths give us a terrific place to walk through rolling meadows and hills.   There are some interesting sites such as this former sand trap.

Former tee box.

A former par 3 at Osprey Meadows.

We haven’t seen as much wildlife in our walks around Tamarack as we would have thought.  We did hear and see sand hill cranes a couple times.

These were really bothered by my presence and took off – like I could bother them.  They are as big as me!

Thanks so much to my friend Jacque who braved the smoke to come up for the day.   Loved spending the time with you!

Sunset looks different when the smoke gets in your eyes.

My mom asks me to write the hard blogs, so here I am.    It is hard because I went to Rainbow Bridge this week and my people have a hole in their lives the size of a big black dog, the size of me.

I’d been having some pain in my face and at my age any little thing (or in my case the big cancer thing) can mean it’s time to take that last sleep to Rainbow Bridge and play with all the other beloved pets.  

And I am beloved – by almost everyone who knew me – but especially by my mom and dad.   My people love me – and I knew it every day.

I came to live with them in 2010.  My other people left me in Elko, Nevada and even though it was scary at the time, it worked out very well for me.

I couldn’t tell my new mom and dad my name so they named me Elko.  My mom almost always calls me Sweet Boy which fits me perfectly.   My dad has many names for me – Baby, Baby Boy, Big Brawny Boy.  I answer to all of them because my people love me – and I knew it every day.

I couldn’t tell them exactly how old I was but we decided five was a good age to begin my new life.  (That makes me thirteen now – a good long time for a big black dog – but it doesn’t feel long enough.)

I couldn’t tell my people about all the things I knew and they sure were surprised when I showed them I could herd cows!

They showed me some things too.   They showed me that hiking sand dunes could be fun.

They showed me that riding in our boat could be fun too.  I had to show them I knew how to swim but I never liked it.  

I like to wade and get my tummy cooled off, but NO SWIMMING!

When we left our house and my backyard and all of our stuff, they never considered leaving me behind. My mom and dad took me so many places.   My people love me – and I knew it every day.

And then we went even more places together!  My people love me – and I knew it every day.

My dad used to say he was the pack leader because sometimes I’d follow my dad more than my mom.  But really, maybe I was the pack leader. My mom and dad followed all my routines.  My people love me – and I knew it every day.

My special time with my mom was early in the morning.  We’d go outside and then she’d make me a special breakfast because I liked variety.  She’d make sure I took my pills and then help me get on the bed for a morning nap with my dad.  My mom loves me – and I knew it every day.

My dad would sit outside with me all the time because I really liked being outside.  Sometimes it was cold and sometimes it was hot but he sat with me anyway.  My dad loves me – and I knew it every day.

I knew how to get as many treats as I wanted and as many walks as I wanted and how to make my people happy with a little bit of cuddling.  I am the sweet boy – always wanting to be close by – but cuddling was something I did only in small portions. Mostly we cuddled for a few minutes at night as we all went to bed. My dad would rub my ears and I’d do little growls to make him happy.    I love my people too.

I always like it best when the three of us are together.  I love my people and my people love me – and we all knew it every single day.

They enjoyed watching me dream and see my feet twitch and my nose move all around.  They’d imagine I was dreaming about running and playing the way I used to before the old body held me back.   They hope that life is like that for me now at Rainbow Bridge. Until we meet again…

My people love me – and I knew it every day.

We have seen many different faces of Lake Cascade over the years.

It is generally placid in the morning.

 There is usually some wave action in the afternoon and then it calms again in the evening.

We’ve seen overcast mornings and stormy nights.

When full, Lake Cascade has 23,307 surface acres of water, 86 miles of shoreline and an average depth of 26.5 feet.   

But what is under Lake Cascade?    Three towns and an old highway!

Van Wyck, established in 1882, was a bustling town.   When the Idaho Northern Railroad Depot was placed in Cascade, much of Van Wyck moved there.

Center, established in 1895, was so named because it was at the center of Long Valley.  It was small but had a store and post office.    Arling, two miles from Center, was established in 1914.   

Congress approved building the dam on the North Payette River and the remaining residents of Van Wyck, Arling and Center received eviction notices.  The Cascade Dam was built between 1946 and 1948.   The remains of Van Wyck, Center and Arling were completely submerged by 1957.

There is now a Van Wyck Campground and the former Arling school was moved to Donnelly.  It is now the Chalet RV Park Office.

And the highway?  An old section of Idaho Highway 55 goes under the lake and reappears a few hundred yards away. 

 It disappears near Kent and Pam’s cabin in Donnelly.   When the lake is low, they can walk the entire submerged route to the other side.  That sounds like something we should do!

For now,  Pam and Elko waded in just a bit!

Some osprey guard their nest at the end of the road.

We went up to Tamarack with Kent and Pam for a free summer concert.

We heard the Boise band, Voice of Reason, playing reggae.  It was quite pleasant.

Can you do more critter sightings?   This deer and I shared the road on our morning walk.

A blue heron seemed to like the morning solitude.

Not critters – Friends!   Mike and Nancy came in for a visit.    Mike is responsible for the Life is Good sand writing in the header.  Life is good!   Thanks for coming out!

You might remember our water heater drama over the last month.  Our original Suburban water heater developed a leak and needed to be replaced. Randy did the research and, with my agreement, bought and installed a Girard tankless water heater.

The advantages were that it reduced our travel weight by 100 lbs. because we wouldn’t be transporting water and a heavy tank .  It would also give us unlimited hot water while we shower and was $100 less expensive.

Almost immediately we (mostly I) had issues with the tankless hot water heater.  Our campground water pressure was so high that too much water was going by the heat source that it couldn’t be heated adequately. That could have been solved by reducing water flow but we like a lot of water pressure when we shower.  Randy fixed the problem by increasing the temperature so that the water that was heated was hotter. There was still a bit of a cold or hot flash now and then but it was working for showers.

Washing dishes was a whole other challenge because you couldn’t turn the water on and off while washing or rinsing because then you got 5-10 seconds of cold water while the heater reengaged.

Then we moved to the west side of the lake where the water pressure is pitiful.  The tankless water heater would randomly shut off because there wasn’t enough flow to recognize that it needed to heat water.

The temporary fix was to fill our fresh water tank in the trailer and use the water pump which maintains a stable flow.  We were filling our fresh water tank almost daily because we were using it for drinking, bathing, washing dishes and doing laundry.

It felt like we were constantly chasing a moving target and that was likely to be true every time we moved.    While we could make it work when we had a sewer hookup, the problems would only increase if we were without hookups.   We’d be losing valuable water waiting for it to get hot, and using valuable grey tank space to store the water that went through while still cold.

Just a few days ago I said that having hot water shouldn’t be this cumbersome and I was discouraged by current and future moving targets.

Did I mention I am married to a terrific guy?   Even though Randy would have liked to make it work, he was on his phone ordering a new “old technology” water heater that same day.    When it arrived, he put it in the same night.

He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, HE LOVES ME!

Future home of 100 pounds of water…

Randy had taken pictures of connections as he took the original water heater out so that made the replacement some easier.   Did he have a premonition?

Happy Wife, Happy Life!

We thought we were going to take a financial hit on the tankless water heater, probably selling it used for a couple hundred bucks on eBay.   Randy suggested I look on Amazon to see if we could return it and we made the return date deadline by two days.    We said it “didn’t meet our expectations”.   I did my small part doing the return prep and taking it to the McCall  UPS store.   We will get a full refund.  We love Amazon Prime.

And in bizarre other stuff…

While working in the campground Randy found these labels I had written years ago.   It was easy to go back in our camping journal to find the entry.   We were here in July 2013 and the wifi was very sporadic.   The camphost at the time didn’t know how to help so Randy called the provider and together they figured out what was happening.    The wifi installer had powered the repeaters from campsite power poles and campers were turning the power off when they left – just like good campers do.  So I wrote notes so campers wouldn’t turn off those breakers and accidentally turn off the wifi.   Five years later they were still in place.    The park has recently gone to a different wifi provider with free service only near the bath house so my labels were no longer needed.

We’ve mostly enjoyed some critters in and near our campsite.  

We saw this multi-colored fox on our first night on the west side and haven’t seen  him since.   We saw a fox on our first night on the east side and never saw him again either.

This was a big beetle!

We saw this family of skunks scurrying down the road last night.   The picture is disappointing but we weren’t going to get closer and open the window just for a picture.

And of course, Elko is our favorite critter of all!   No chance we love him not! WE LOVE HIM!  Elko goes to the lake several times a day for a drink and tummy soak.  He doesn’t understand waves and why he sometimes gets a face full of water.  

I hate him, I hate him not.  I HATE HIM!

As I’ve written before, one of the perks of being volunteers at Lake Cascade is to see  friends as they come to the mountains to escape the Boise heat.   We were glad to see  Rick, Gail and Ozzie when they came through.   Thanks for spending part of your mountain time with us!

   We have also had friends come from farther afield.  We met Carl and Ruth during our first volunteer gig in Oregon in 2015 and have been able to see them several times since.  We were delighted to see them kayak in!   They truly gave us the gift of time with a ten day stay at Lake Cascade!

Carl and I are the paddle boarders.  Randy is committed to spending time on my board this summer and I hope he learns to like it.   Paddling would be fun to do together.

Ruth and I enjoyed some paddle board sit and float time.

Ruth and I went to historic Roseberry to poke around.   Roseberry formed when  homesteaders came to the area in the late 1880s and was named for the first postmaster.

By 1910, Roseberry was the largest town in Long Valley having two churches, flour and saw mills, stores, a hotel, schools, a newspaper, bank, blacksmith, doctor, veterinarian and lawyer.   It was a happening place with a sizable Finnish population.

In 1914 the railroad line located 1.5 miles west and much of Roseberry was moved to the new town of Donnelly.     Roseberry was left almost a ghost town.

The general store continued to operate until 1939 when it too finally closed.   The store is now opened for exhibits and some purchases.   It is one of the few original buildings remaining in historic Roseberry.   Notice the Finnish flag.

Other originals include the Finn House and related structures.

The Methodist-Episcopal Church was built on this Roseberry site in 1904.  It was moved to Donnelly in 1929 and moved back to Roseberry by the Long Valley Presevation Society in 1973.

The building housing the Valley County Museum used to be a schoolhouse in McCall.

The Whitney-Fairbrother School, once located near Lake Fork, was moved to Roseberry and restored.  

In my former life as teacher, I never even considered paddling a student.

I didn’t consider living within these rules either!

In between all of our visiting, Randy spent considerable time and effort on his maintenance project for the park – replacing a pole fence.

The previous maintenance host had done much of the Poison Creek fence and Randy was highly motivated to get that completed.   It took him a day or two to get his flow but then just plugged along steadily.   He had help from a seasonal worker one day and a little from me another but did the vast majority of it himself.

One evening he decided to work while it was cooler.   The mosquitos were brutal.   After some Benadryl gel, Randy’s back looked normal again the next morning.

He used three different drills for different tasks.

To power them he used our Honda generator that we’ve had for 5-6 years and never used.  He was glad to see that it worked very well.

When he was done with the campground section it looked great!

We had a celebratory strawberry daiquiri! When I saw this picture I told Randy it was a good thing I loved his dad!

We concluded our time with Ruth and Carl with some more floating and boating.   We called this photo op the “walking on water” shot.  Thanks Carl!

I always make fun of feet photos and then took one myself as I was trying to get Carl and Ruth.

We were hoping to see moose on our kayak trip through “the meanders” north of McCall. We saw more dogs playing in the water than wildlife but still enjoyed the paddle and the beautiful scenery.  The reflections were so perfect.

Ruth took this one of us, perfectly reflected along with the trees.    Thanks for a great visit Carl and Ruth!  We can’t wait to see where we meet up next time.

When we arrived at Ridgeview Campground it was mid May and we had half-days of peace and quiet in our section of the campground on the east side of Lake Cascade State Park.

As May became June and then July, our site looked more like this!   Ridgeview is one of the busiest campgrounds in the park and we had neighbors coming and going all the time.  

The Fourth of July week was especially busy.   We were able to watch fireworks over the lake right from our site.   The  lights to the right of the fireworks are some of the dozens of boats on the lake with people getting the best view of all.

Randy gave his all to the east side maintenance position. He enjoyed the people and most of the projects.  He didn’t like irrigating or getting up for the 8:00 am staff meetings held on the east side.  Overall it was a very positive experience and he did a great job. 

The last project he worked on was assembling new picnic tables.   There was suppose to be a plank marked Idaho State Parks for each the 75 new tables but after unpacking several pallets of planks he found just a few so inscribed.  He hated leaving the project in limbo but until the planks are found, or replaced, that project is on hiatus and left for others to complete.

He also worked on assembling and installing some new fire pits.

The first half of the summer season comes to an end and Team Ridgeview went to dinner to celebrate.  No one covered the campground for a couple hours….oh well!   We enjoyed working with Richard and Tammy a lot!

The plan for the second half had been for us to go to West Mountain campground and be camp-hosts until the end of the season.  As the last week evolved some incoming volunteers canceled and current volunteers accommodated changing plans.  We were agreeable to letting the West Mountain camphosts stay where they were and Randy took the west side maintenance host position.  

His primary project will be to continue the previous host’s work of repairing a pole fence around campgrounds on the west side.

So, Randy will be working to put a roof over our heads for a few more months. (Or more accurately, working for the site for the roof over our heads.)  That is a family joke because we always used my paycheck to pay our mortgage.  I always teased him that I was the one who put a roof over his head. Of course the money he made did EVERYTHING else!

We are in site 250 at Poison Creek Campground on the west side of Lake Cascade State Park. The nearest town is Donnelly for anyone coming our way.  Our new site is much more spacious. I think we are going to like it!  

And if you turn around, the lake is close too.  We are looking forward to getting out the inflatable canoe and paddleboard!

For many summers,  Serene (not me) has had a clothing tent at the flea market south of Cascade.  We stopped and met her a few years ago.   We decided to stop again and took the opportunity to chat.

Serene and Serene – That sure is strange!

Serene remembered us stopping before and said she has met one other Serene in addition to me.  Randy and I saw a Serene on TV as a Jeopardy contestant years ago but it wasn’t the same one this Serene met.  So there are at least four of us.

In the last blog post, the Serene you know (me) was not impressed with our new tankless water heater.  Randy tried a few things and the change that made the best impact was increasing the temperature to 120 degrees.  The water going by the heater gets hotter so even when added to more water at higher pressure the end result is a stronger, hotter flow.   One positive of this water heater is that, once we get it set, there really is unlimited hot water.  The second person doesn’t have to wait for the water to re-heat which was normal operating procedure before.

All that being said, if we had it to do over again I’d vote against the tankless water heater.  We have found a way to make it work for now, but it is unclear whether it will be easily manageable with varying water pressures and filters as we travel.   The current plan is to live with it through the summer in Cascade and see how it goes during our travels in the fall.

If we decide to replace it, Randy will do that during our extended volunteer stay in Arizona this winter.  We’ll be at Kartchner Caverns State Park near Benson from late December to the end of April.  We visited Kartchner Caverns State Park last year and thought it might be a good place to volunteer.  (Here is the link to that visit.) Randy really likes the idea of driving the tram and we’d like to support the caverns.  It will also give us the opportunity to further explore that part of Arizona.    

Getting back to our Cascade activities,  I have been taking ukelele lessons.   We’ve been carting around my ukelele for years and this is the first place we’ve stayed long enough to seek out lessons.

This is my teacher Steve (left) and fellow student George.  George is not a beginner and they were providing music for Alpha Nursery’s Open House.   Randy and I went to enjoy the music, the free food, and to get my ukelele re-strung.

Steve had suggested my instrument might stay tuned better if I upgraded my tuners.  Of course that meant if Randy upgraded my tuners!    Things went fine on Randy’s end of the project but when I tried to re-string it, I broke one.   And of course it happened on a late Friday afternoon in a small town in central Idaho.  No music store here.
Steve to the rescue!  He brought strings to the nursery and got my ukelele back into practicing condition.

Beginner student and patient teacher!  And the teacher’s wife (also patient).

We go down the road to Boise now and then.  A couple weeks ago I was happy to join my church choir friends one more time.  Singing at church was a joy when we lived in Boise and the worship pastor, Adrianne,  welcomed me back anytime we were in town.    She invited all past choir members to join her for her final Sunday leading worship before retirement.   Adrianne is well loved by the worship team and people came from all over.   

On another trek to Boise Randy volunteered to drive one of the park trucks to take another of their trucks to the body shop.  The park’s newest truck, a 2018 model with only 6300 miles, was hit by an elk.  The ranger was fine, the truck needs a lot of work and the elk perished. 

Elk hair embedded in the tire.

There seems to be a lot of road kill on these curvy mountain roads.   Roadkill salvage is legal in Idaho and people are able to take animals that are accidentally killed by collision and use the meat and/or body parts.   Recently it became legal to put injured animals out of their misery.  It is a sad tale but good that some use be made of the poor animals.

Missing Cindy – she took the picture!  Thanks for dinner John!

We enjoy seeing friends on our trips to Boise.  This was a wonderful evening spent with friends John, Deb, Darrell and Cindy.   It is nice to be near the old home town.

Time is flying by in Cascade!  We have been here for six weeks and move to the west side in less than two.   We are pleased and surprised at how social we have been.  

We continue to enjoy time with Kent and Pam at their cabin and were glad that friends Darrell and Cindy came to camp nearby.  I met Sally, one of my former principals, for lunch in McCall and Randy started his golf league with former co-worker Rodger.

We were happy that family members from Vancouver, the Tri-Cities and Boise joined us for a family camping reunion.   Thanks to my mom, my aunt and cousins for making the longer than usual trek to Cascade.

Our grandson experienced fishing for the first time.  He caught four fish in about 10 minutes.  It will never be that easy again! 

Connie and Michael, cousins from Portland, came through for an afternoon visit.

Randy’s former co-worker Bryan and family came from Boise to enjoy the lake for a few days.  We joined them at our “go to” place, the Lake Front restaurant at the Cascade golf course, within walking distance of our campsite.

My former teaching partner Connie and her husband camped nearby for a few days.  Connie and I worked very closely together for 9 years across two schools and two principals.  We knew each other’s hopes, dreams and foibles quite well.  It was nice to catch up.

And then there are our jobs… I am the substitute camp host at Ridgeview when the regular host is gone.  Mostly that is a matter of checking in campers and cleaning sites. It also involves redirecting campers who get here by mistake because their GPS doesn’t know Lake Cascade State Park has 11 different campgrounds.

Occasionally I have to give rule reminders.  When I let a man know that drones weren’t allowed in the park he told me that his drone wasn’t in the park, it was over the lake.   The life of a camp host….

Randy has done a huge variety of maintenance activities for the park.  He has worked on docks, fences, hoses, signs and bikes.  He has painted, mowed, trimmed and hauled yard waste.   I’m sure if he were here, he could name many other tasks he has done.

He has had home maintenance to do too.   He discovered our water heater had rusted through and needed to be replaced.   We identified three options – the first was to work through the extended warranty and have our water heater replaced with an identical unit.  That would cost roughly $100 in deductible fees, probably two trips to Boise with the trailer, and significant delay.  We never considered that option seriously.   

Option 2 was to order the same Suburban 12 gallon water heater from Amazon for about $600 and Randy complete the install.

Option 3 was to order a tankless water heater for $550.   Randy liked this option because it would lighten the load by about 100 pounds when we travel.   After talking through the pros and cons, we decided on the tankless water heater.  Although it said professional installation was recommended,  Handy Randy is just as good (or better) and we weren’t worried.  Amazon Prime delivered it in two days and Randy went to work.   

He removed the old unit and could see how wet the area had become.

The new water heater is quite a bit smaller so Handy Randy had to build a brace.

 He verified it worked and finished the install.   Randy’s first hot shower was deemed a success.

That first shower was one of only a few fully successful uses of the tankless hot water heater.   We knew there would be a learning curve and I am TRYING to be patient but it has been frustrating.  

Our campground has high water pressure and if you use anything approaching maximum volume there is too much water going past the heat source to heat it adequately.  You have to find the sweet spot for pressure and temperature and waste water and time in the process.   It is impossible to get really hot water in the kitchen sink because that faucet automatically mixes hot and cold water.

I want to emphasize that this isn’t a fail on Handy Randy’s part.  He did lots of research, read lots of reviews and successfully installed the unit.  I agreed with the choice.

However,  I think it is entirely likely he will be buying me a new old technology water heater for my birthday in September.   It might even be an early birthday present!

We have been to beautiful Lake Cascade State Park a dozen (or more) times.  It was a nice comfortable distance for a weekend trip from Boise – usually with our friends Darrell and Cindy.    During years of Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends, we were all about relaxing with our friends.

Being here for the entire summer season means there is more time to explore the area.   I was surprised to find reference to the Long Valley Massacre memorial within walking distance of our site.

We almost always prepare to pick up trash when we walk.

The Long Valley Massacre happened on August 20, 1878 following a horse theft.   Four local men believed a small band of Indians were responsible and followed the Indians’ trail.  The men were ambushed at this place.   

Three of the four locals were killed.   The fourth man hid in a log jam in the river and escaped after dark.

The bodies were found by soldiers and buried in the area.   The graves were found and marked in 1929 but we were not able to see any remains of the marking.

We did see these bones nearby! 

And on a happier note…

Randy and I have been exploring the idea of joining the Elks for a few months.  Being Elks is a common thing with full time RVers both for social connections and for member only campgrounds.

Our efforts came to fruition this week when Randy was initiated into Boise Elks Lodge #310.  Although women are welcome to be members, we didn’t want to pay the annual fee for both of us when I can do everything but attend meetings as a member spouse.

I was able to attend the orientation prior to initiation and learned a few interesting things. The group that became the Elks started with a collection of actors in New York City in 1867.  They gathered together on Sundays when they could not work because of Blue Laws. They called themselves the Jolly Corks.   

When one of their group died, the remaining Jolly Corks assisted the man’s family.  That began the  hallmark of service to others.   Wanting to become an even more substantive benevolent group, they formalized and became The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks in 1868.

The Elk was chosen as their symbol because it is distinctively American and fleet of foot.   Elks live in herds and are gentle and peaceful.  Yet, they are strong and valiant in defense of self and others.

As the original actor Elks moved about, other lodges were established and denoted by number.   The Boise Lodge came into being in 1896 and was number 310.  Of the fifty two charter members in Boise, six became Governor and five became US Senators from Idaho.

All Elks lodges continue to have benevolence as a cardinal principle.  This principle is joined by justice for all, brotherly love and fidelity.     The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks just celebrated their 150th Anniversary.  

Randy was impressed with the sincerity and authenticity of the eight members who came out on a Sunday afternoon to orient and install three new members – two men and one woman.

I stayed in the lounge while the members and initiates went through the formalized process of becoming an Elk.    When it was over one of the members said she was leaving “with Enrique.”   Enrique appeared to be the statue she was carrying,  so I had to ask.

She told me that Enrique, or “Kiki”, was murdered in Mexico because of the drug trade and that his death resulted in the drug awareness effort called Red Ribbon Week.   I was a teacher – of course I knew about Red Ribbon Week.  We participated every October in this drug awareness campaign but I didn’t know it had a tragic beginning.

Google research revealed that Enrique Camarena was a US Drug Enforcement Agency undercover agent in Guadalajara, Mexico.  He was kidnapped, tortured and killed in 1985.   The Boise Elks Lodge was awarded this bust of Enrique Camarena for their nation leading efforts in drug prevention.   As I said, you can learn unexpected lessons in unexpected places.

Not unexpected was our truck odometer going over 100,000 miles.   We have always had low mileage on our vehicles but not this one.   We bought our 2012 Ford SuperDuty truck new and it has been our only vehicle since June, 2014.  Low mileage doesn’t apply.

Even though Randy has driven approximately 98,000 of those 100,000 miles, he was not in the truck when it rolled over to 100,000.   I was driving to McCall and briefly went down a side road to be out of traffic to take the pictures.     I wonder where we’ll be when it goes over 200,000?

Since we arrived at  Lake Cascade State Park in mid May we have had two anniversaries.  On May 19th we forgot to celebrate four years of living full time in our fifth-wheel.   We did remember to celebrate our 38th wedding anniversary on May 23rd.   We went to a local pizza joint with Jack, our first friend to visit us here at the park.

Jack camped two spots down for a few days – that was fun!

We spent a little time with the neighbors who came into the site between us.   En-route from Florida to Alaska, these fans were trying to watch Tampa Bay’s hockey playoff game on their cell-phones.    We were able to get the game on our satellite and invited them in to watch.  That was probably the first hockey game Randy and I have ever watched.   Jack got us to watch, and care a little bit, about the NBA playoffs too.   It’s good for friends to expand our horizons!

We have had several other visitors too!   Rodger and Donna came through for a visit on their way to McCall.   Rodger and Randy are planning to play golf in a Monday night league this summer.

We were delighted to reconnect with Judy and Steve when they came to the park for an overnight stay.  Judy even brought us yummy banana bread.

We met Sharon and Stu last May when we were volunteering at Umpqua Lighthouse State Park.  They have taken to volunteering at the actual Umpqua Lighthouse.  We were glad to see them when they came by for a visit.  We will be glad to spend more time with Sharon and Stu when they move their RV onto their Lake Cascade property later in the summer.

And since friends Kent and Pam have a cabin in the area we’ve seen them several times already.  We have been playing a card game called Golf and having a ball.  We look forward to spending lots of time with Kent and Pam this summer!

Randy and camp-host Richard repairing some fencing.

We are delighted with all of our visitors, yet Randy is here to be the maintenance host.  His obligation is 20 – 25 hours per week but he’s working a lot more than that.    I  have helped with projects for the park office  and am the substitute camp-host when Richard is off.   It has been really busy!   

Randy especially will need to find a better balance by working shorter days or fewer days.

We have had quite a few thunderstorms in the last two weeks.  There was an especially bad one over Memorial Day Weekend.   The winds were raging and the lake was rolling white-caps.

These campers waited too long to decide to get their boat out of the water and back onto the trailer.   It was pretty scary to watch them try repeatedly to push the boat out far enough to start the engine and get moving before the waves pushed them back again.  Then we watched them almost capsize as they worked their way across the waves.  We had anxiety that their adventure was going to end in significant peril for them (no lifejackets) or the boat, but it all worked out.

Due to the rain and snow melt, the lake is very high.  The water cascades abundantly through the dam.

That didn’t stop this dad and his kids from fishing 50 feet from the intake.  I wish I could say the dad was being careful with his sons in this danger zone, but I can’t.  I had to go away.

Even with the occasional aggravation, we are glad to be here.   We are enjoying our fellow volunteers, the park staff and the work.  Elko doesn’t like it because he has to be on his chain when he is outside.   That is a rule almost everywhere we go, but one we usually ignore.   Unfortunately for him,  we can’t ignore it when we are camp volunteers. We try to make it up to Elko with many walks and a couple wades in the lake each day.

Thanks so much to our visitors and please know, we are selfishly hoping for more of you.  We used to laugh at people who volunteered so close to home and now we are loving being close enough to connect with so many people from our old home town of Boise.

Site 197, Ridgeview Campground, Lake Cascade State Park.