Serene Wandering

We, and my parents (Glenn and Beverly),  had a nice trip on the Oregon Coast Scenic Railroad today.  People of all ages and stages stopped and waved at our train all through the little towns of Rockaway Beach and Garibaldi.  Everybody loves a train!

Mom and Dad came down to spend a few days with us at the beach.  In addition to the train we have enjoyed the campground, our camping neighbors (Cliff and Edson from Mississippi) and spending time at the Garibaldi Mariner Museum.  We learned today that the nautical speed of “knots” was determined by throwing a “board” at the end of a rope (with knots tied at specific intervals) off the end of the boat.  After 30 seconds you count how many knots have been pulled into the water.  The number of knots is the speed.  Cool, huh!

Before they came Randy and I went to the Tillamook Cheese Factory (for cheese and ice-cream), to the Tillamook Farmer’s Market and to the Tillamook Country Smokehouse (for jerkey) twice!

We took a day trip to the Tillamook Forest Center.  It includes an interactive museum/discovery center that is very well done.   Beginning in 1933, the area had devastating forest fires every six years.  The fires in the first three cycles could not be suppressed  until nature did it with rain and snow. By 1951, firefighting skills and equipment had developed such that human efforts were successful.   Over the next many years, the area was reforested with the help of school children, prisoners, and regular folks.  It was estimated that the deer ate 2 of every 3 seedlings.  They also used the experimental technique of dropping seed by helicopter.   The forest is beautiful now, 60 years later,  so something was successful.

We also went to Cape Meares Lighthouse.  When Natasha was young we visited a lot of the Oregon and Washington lighthouses but I don’t think we have ever been here before.  On the grounds there is a tree they call the Octopus Tree – you can see why!

A very enjoyable part of our stay has been  daily (sometimes twice daily) visits to Manzanita and Rockaway Beaches.  The beaches here are beautiful and not smelly!  The sand is perfect.  Elko had a great time chasing his ball on the beach.  We just enjoyed the walks.

In an effort to keep our brains stimulated (yeah right…)we conducted a beach experiment today.  The wind creates these wonderful peaks and ridges.  We stepped on the ridge and walked down the small dune.  We waited to see how long it would take for the winds to re-create the dune.  It was almost perfect in 10-12 minutes.

Tomorrow morning my parents head back to Vancouver and we head to Bend for a week.  Boise is the week after that.  We are looking forward to seeing those of you who live in Boise!

At last post, we were headed down  I-5  towards Vancouver, Washington.  Driving through Seattle (or in my case riding) pulling our fifth-wheel was quite interesting.  The road is way crowded and very much in need of repair.   On one of the many times we were at a complete stop, I saw the University of Washington stadium and wondered how Coach Pete was adapting to Seattle traffic.  Ironically, just a few days later when he was being interviewed at the Pac-12 media days, he mentioned Seattle traffic.

We eventually did make it safely to my parent’s home in Vancouver.   We enjoyed an “Amazon Christmas” of sorts.  After many weeks on the road we knew the modifications we wanted to make to the trailer.  These included a second air-conditioner, an upgraded mattress and a variety of other miscellaneous things.  We had all those things shipped to my parent’s house and spent some time unpacking boxes and making those changes.  See Randy  getting ready to start installing our new 100 lb. air-conditioner.  Getting it up there was interesting!

While in Vancouver we also enjoyed Music in the Park and visiting.  There is a neighborhood park within walking distance of my parents’ home where Elko is able to enjoy the dog drinking fountain.  Vancouver is a nice town.

And then, Elko became the “one if by land” staying with my parents, while Randy and I became the “two if by sea”, going on an Alaskan Cruise.

We are a little bit attached to Elko and are grateful to my parents for taking him in.    My mom took good care of Elko even though spoiling dogs is not in her nature. My dad loved him and spoiled him because it is exactly in his nature.    I don’t think I knew growing up that mom didn’t really like pets because my brother and I had dogs, cats, hamsters, mice, birds and even a monkey at one time!

Leaving Elko behind, Randy and I took off on a Sunday morning to family friend Kim’s house near Seattle.  She had graciously volunteered to keep our truck and shuttle us back and forth to the Holland America Pier in Seattle.  We found Boise friends Darrell and Cindy almost immediately and  were able to board the ship together, find our cabins, have lunch and explore the ship.

We had a great time!   This was our second cruise to Alaska and for the most part we went to different places which was nice.    On our first Sea Day, we went to the Tracy Arm Fjord where we got up close and personal with the Sawyer Glacier and saw icebergs, seals and orcas.

In Juneau, we went on a tour where we saw humpback whales “bubble netting”.  This is a technique in which Alaskan humpback whales coordinate to catch herring in a bubble circle and then feast on them.    We were fortunate to be at the right place and time when the herring and whale migrations overlap.  There is usually about a two week window of opportunity each year and we caught the end of it.  Here is a Youtube video of bubble net feeding.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxC7a3KQKpw

We enjoyed additional port days in Sitka, Ketchikan and Victoria, BC.  We were able to get our sightseeing done each day before the weather became problematic.   See Darrell and Randy on Married Man’s Trail – the back way in to Ketchikan’s Crooked Creek of brothels – turned tourist shops.  Along crooked creek we were able to see many salmon attempting to go upstream to spawn.

We also really enjoyed our ship time.  We spent time in the Piano Bar most evenings doing things like team competitions for Neal Diamond Name that Tune (we were respectable thanks to Cindy’s Neal Diamond passion) and the Beatles Name that Tune (we were not).   We watched a few shows, went to a few classes and saw a couple movies.  Our ship, The Amsterdam, was very nice,. The food was great and the ship’s crew were so gracious.  I’m already looking forward to our next cruise in a couple years– anyone interested in cruising the Mediterranean?

Back on land, Randy and I went to Safeco field.  We were there a couple of hours early for the  Mariner’s game but we enjoyed wandering around the stadium.  We went to the Mariner’s Hall of Fame and saw the induction speeches of those going into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown on Seattle’s very big video board.   The Mariners lost, but we had a good time.

Then we headed back to Vancouver and reunited with Elko and my parents.  We enjoyed a few more days there where Randy drove his old BMW again and we saw a Boise Hawks Baseball game – in Hillsboro, Oregon.

And now, we are on the road again!  Unfortunately we had to traverse more of the I-5 corridor heading south through Portland but we survived and are now on the Nehalem Bay near the Oregon coast.    More to come later in the week!

Today we initiated a crossing over, and completed a crossing over.

Application for Retirement!

I actually mailed my application for retirement to PERSI, Public Employees Retirement System of Idaho.  Randy and I had to go sign in front of a notary documenting that the choice of payment was acceptable to me as the member and to him as my husband.  Then we mailed it.   October 1st I will be crossing over from employed to retired.

Children of a Common Mother

Then we went to Peace Arch Park, a joint park between the state of Washington and the province of British Columbia, at the border.  Within this area, approximately 300 yards long, you can meander from country to country.  It was quite nice with the sentiments expressed in the arch and each country’s flag represented in flowers.

May These Gates Never Be Closed

Elko and I have three feet in the United States and three feet in Canada!  Crossing over.

Tomorrow we leave here to go to the Vancouver that is farther away, (Vancouver Washington instead of Vancouver, British Columbia) for a visit with my parents.

What is that smell!?   It was perplexing and it was unpleasant enough that we needed to figure it out!

Of course, in an RV you fear “black tank” (bathroom) odors but that wasn’t the problem as the odor was in the kitchen area.  Randy cleaned and flushed the gray tank numerous times and that didn’t solve the problem.  We thought something was rotten or dead somewhere but we couldn’t find it.  After a couple days and a couple of very thorough cleanings with vinegar, Randy decided the offending item had to be in or behind the slide out pantry located between the stove and refrigerator.  When he bent to remove everything from the pantry, he happened to notice one of the knobs on the propane stove was just slightly ajar/open.  Problem solved!   We hadn’t cooked on the stove in a couple days and the weather was nice enough to have had the windows opened all the time so there was never enough propane to set off the alarm or pose a health danger – just enough to have an odor and drive us crazy!    Randy feels like his engineering skills must be getting rusty –in hindsight he thought he should have figured that one out much sooner.  The end result is that we have a VERY clean kitchen, and finally, no odor.

UPDATE:  The “smell” has a name. Here is some information about mercaptan:

Natural gas is both odorless and colorless, so gas providers add an ingredient called mercaptan to it so you can detect its presence. If they did not add mercaptan, it would be hard for you to know that unlit natural gas was coming from your stove after you left the valve turned on. And leaks from furnaces and hot water heaters would be nearly impossible to detect without expensive equipment. So mercaptan’s smell is a very valuable safety feature.

But one thing’s clear — mercaptan stinks. In a concentrated form, its smell is almost unbearable. And it takes only a few parts per million of mercaptan for the average person to wrinkle a nose and say, “What is that smell?”

Mercaptans contain sulfur. That’s what makes them smell. The kind gas providers use blends well with natural gas and, in a gaseous state, has much the same properties as natural gas, so it will also rise and dissipate with natural gas.

There are other uses for mercaptans in industry, including jet fuel, pharmaceuticals and livestock feed additives. They are used in many chemical plants. Mercaptans are less corrosive and less toxic than similar sulfur compounds found naturally in rotten eggs, onions, garlic, skunks, and of course, bad breath.

We have spent the week at one of our membership campgrounds and have enjoyed the area and our campground neighbors.  We are just a few miles from the border and many Canadians vacation here.  It has been interesting to have conversations with them about health systems, taxation levels and the number of days they are allowed to be in the US (182).  Even crossing the border to get gas, which seems to be a common event, costs them a day.

We have wonderful neighbors from Canada on both sides of us.  One retired as the director of Mission Aviation Fellowship in Canada.  (We are very familiar with Mission Aviation Fellowship as their US headquarters are in Nampa and several people we know at Cole Community Church work with MAF).  In fact, as we were leaving to go visit the Dutch community of Lyndan this morning, he and the neighbor on the other side both offered to keep Elko for us while we were gone.   Elko is such a hit with his mild manners…but, we took him with us!

We were also able to enjoy a nice afternoon with my brother, Kyle, and his girlfriend Trish.  We don’t see them often so it was great to visit.   We watched the World Cup finals together on Canadian TV.  We had our choice of an English or French broadcast.  In fact, each evening we can choose (or not) to watch the news in English, French or Mandarin Chinese.  There is a broadcast in each language.

Birch Bay, here on the Puget Sound , is nice but we don’t have the appreciation for salt water and the marine smell that many do.  We did, however, really like this boat in the meadow!

Driving here from Winthrop was stunningly beautiful.  Highway 20 across northern Washington (closed in the winter) goes through North Cascades National Park but it wasn’t just the park that was beautiful.  The whole journey was so nice that we didn’t listen to the radio or podcasts, we just enjoyed the view.

Lake Diablo was especially beautiful with its blue green color from glacial silt.

It is interesting to me that after worrying about our old truck pulling our old trailer UP the mountains, I now wonder about this truck and trailer getting DOWN them.  Our mountain grades have been so steep in several areas this summer, and this trailer is so heavy, that I worry about braking.    Randy feels like he is getting better at letting the transmission do the work instead of the brakes.  When I finally do start driving the truck and trailer together, I want flat, straight roads to learn on.  I know there is one of those coming up between Bend and Boise in mid-August!  I think I can wait until then.

In the past few days we have had expectations dashed and expectations exceeded.

We spent the weekend at Priest Lake State Park.  The lake was beautiful and the water clear.  A campground program director reminded us of a cruise director with activities at varied times of the day and evening for all age levels.  And then there was the campground….expectations dashed!

We knew this was a very popular park because reservations are hard to come by.  Given that this is a high profile park we expected a nice campground with some of the improvements we have seen at other Idaho State Parks.    But, even though I had put in our trailer length, we had the tightest, smallest site ever and Randy had to try multiple times to even get us in.  He is usually very accomplished at backing in our trailer and he was considering bailing.  When we finally got in, we had about 6 inches of clearance between our trailer and some concrete pilings.

The concrete pilings were the only demarcation between our campsite and the ones on either side.  We were right on top of each other and it wasn’t pretty!   On one side we had a couple from Washington who were very pleasant.  He and his large group had been reserving 2 weeks at Priest Lake for years.  The other side had two families that made us glad we were having a short stay.  Music, yelling at the kids, campfire smoke non-stop etc. .. better to have difficult neighbors this way than in a regular house!

We decided to leave the campground on Saturday and drove to the west side of the lake.  We visited Granite Waterfall and the Roosevelt Cedar Grove containing  large 800 year old cedars.  There were nice things about the visit!

We left Sunday morning headed to a “spot on the map” – Winthrop, Washington.   I knew little about the stop except the private campground had good ratings and we needed a stop somewhere mid-Washington.  I generally try to look for campgrounds in our membership systems and/or state parks.  As neither were available here I looked at the third option, a private park.  Oh my, expectations EXCEEDED!

Our little campground, Pine Near RV Park, was such a nice surprise.  We have a wonderful spot with grass everywhere.  I didn’t realize how much I’d missed grass until we have it all around us again.  It is clean and cool and Elko enjoyed playing with his toys in the grass.   There are deer wandering around the park, with one even getting into the neighbor’s foodstuffs.

The town of Winthrop is an old-west tourist town complete with boardwalks  and false front  buildings.   We have wandered through town, visited their Historical Museum and walked across the river on both of their suspension bridges.  We spent a nice afternoon sipping hard cider and eating cider donuts and peanuts for lunch.  We went to the Northern Cascades Smokejumper Unit and had a tour of their facility.  Smoke jumping started in Winthrop, Washington in 1939.

Today was hot, 99 degrees, which was just tolerable in a trailer with one air conditioner.  Once we knew we were returning to Boise in August and September, Randy has spent time researching a second air conditioner.  Today validated that need!

Tomorrow we are on the road again, headed to Blaine, on the Puget Sound right up by the Canadian border.  And cooler weather!

My father is an only child yet he had 58 first cousins.   We have spent the week in Newport enjoying the company of three of his/my cousins:  Audrey, Britta and Venita.  Of course, there are third cousins (Vicki, Terri and Kim) and even a fifth cousin, Tillman.    With them, we have watched a small town rodeo parade, eaten meals in and out, and taken a tour of Diamond Lake on a pontoon boat where they live or have cabins.  It has been a pleasant week of visiting.

On our own we walked some trails and went to Church in the Park.  In our campground we have enjoyed the wild turkeys, deer, mini-golf, ping-pong, hot-tub  and fellow campers.  Because it is a membership campground, it is full of full-timers and we have gleaned some advice from their experience.

We drove almost all the way to the Canadian border to Gardener Cave in Crawford State Park.   It is the second largest limestone cave and the only publicly accessible cave in Washington.    On the way back we saw a large bald eagle on his/her nest.

The other thing we have enjoyed here in Newport is having cell service, internet and satellite TV that all work at the same time.  That hasn’t happened since we left Boise and it has been a nice reprieve.  When you are accustomed to having it all, to do without it is a struggle!

After breakfast at Britta’s we take off today for Priest Lake State Park for the Fourth of July weekend.  This will only be a two night stay, our shortest stop so far, but all I could get at Priest Lake.  It is a popular park!  Happy Fourth everyone!

This is our patio at our campsite at Farragut State Park.   It has been a great stay.  We really like this park and have discussed that this might be a good place to park host.   We asked the current hosts, who have all been doing this for years, and they agree it is the best place to be.   The park is a former WWII naval training base so there is lots of room and lots to see and do.  We would like to stay a few more days but, being summer, the campground is booked for the weekend.    It does make us look forward to other times of the year when we can presumably come and go and stay places as long as we’d like.

Plus, the good side of going is that we’ve got family and new adventures in Newport, just over the Washington border! 

We spent the last four days/nights at Dworshack State Park, somewhere we had never been before. We were again in a cyber hole with only the state park Wi-Fi to keep us semi-connected. We had satellite service by just barely having room for our “dish” in our driveway, and just barely getting around the trees for a signal. We set out our Bronco flamingos (Thanks Sheri and Chip!) to call attention to the area so a driver didn’t accidently clip it.

The satellite dish and the flamingos were conversation starters with a variety of people in the park. Fortunately for us, they started a conversation with our neighbors Dee and Fred. They are from San Jose and were at Dworshack on a fishing trip. Dee was really interested in World Cup Soccer, so we invited them over to watch the US-Portugal game and they invited us to dinner. It was a nice afternoon and evening. We hope to have many of those type of experiences with people we meet on the road.

The road going into Dworshack has 2 miles of steep grade and hairpin turns. Randy didn’t love it going in – although I liked that there wasn’t a cliff on my side like highway 64 – and we had some smokin’ brakes when we got down the hill. Randy did go back out one day with the truck to tour the Dworshack Dam, but he still didn’t like the road. Coming out was much less adventurous than going in. We had a quiet trip to Farragut State park, one of our favorite repeat stops. We are here for 4 nights and will likely take a few hikes, play disc golf and go to the Brig Museum.

I thought I knew how to pronounce this town’s name “Ka-me-I”, but Google didn’t understand. Google Maps had no idea what I was talking about until I purposely mispronounced it, Ku-MY-uh. That wasn’t our only technological challenge…

We had quite the adventure getting from Winchester to Kamiah. I had read in our RV Resort book to avoid Highway 64, but because we were using a paper map that didn’t even show Highway 64 and a new, unfamiliar GPS, unfortunately, that was exactly where we ended up, on Highway 64 … It was a 7 mile, high mountain, switch-back, descent on a very decent gravel road. It would have been just fine in our truck, but in our truck pulling our 38 foot trailer….not so great. Randy says we were never in danger but I was definitely uncomfortable and I am not easily spooked.

Once we arrived, all has been well. We were able to get our forwarded mail for the first time. We called the UPS store that is now our mailing address and had them send it, and they did. It worked!

We are in a private campground that needs some TLC but it has a cold pool, a warm hot-tub and full hook-ups for our membership price of $10 per night. After a week of just water and electric, it is nice to have the sewer connection to be able to do laundry. We have this cute little washer/dryer combo that takes in dirty clothes and about 3 hours later produces clean, dry clothes. Somehow it dries by using hot water. I don’t get it at all, but it works.

This RV park has some large beautiful trees but we opted to be on the street side edge to be able to use our satellite TV. I am glad for the satellite since it has mostly rained since we got here. During breaks in the rain we have taken Elko across the street to walk around the “Heart of the Monster.” This is part of the Nez Perce creation story and included in the area’s Nez Perce National Historical Park.

Yesterday we took a drive up into the mountains and saw some beautiful scenery and went to Pierce “the oldest town in Idaho”. Since I had previously learned that Franklin, settled by Mormon pioneers just north of the Utah border, was the oldest town in Idaho, that took some researching. Apparently Pierce had that designation for many years but more recently, Franklin was given that distinction by a few months. Pierce hasn’t changed their signs or their visitor information.

Today we went to Faith Lutheran Church in Kamiah. It is a small congregation, maybe 30 people in attendance, but was most welcoming. They had a welcome gift, a crochet dish cloth and wooden spadel, and we were the first visitors to ever receive them. As they use the “red hymnal” instead of the “green hymnal” that we were familiar with from our Lutheran days, we were occasionally lost, but it was good worship nonetheless.

The Good – We are currently at a beautiful site on the lake at Winchester State Park.  After a walk around the lake,  I rode my bike into town for a few groceries.   This is really the first time we can see our future full-timing and it looks good!

Over the weekend we spent great time with Natasha, Seth and Archer, my parents and my aunt and cousins at Union Campground between Baker City and Sumpter.  We all love the campground.  Campers among you should check it out.  Archer was a super hit with family that hadn’t seen him in a while, or seen him yet.  OK, he was a hit with us too!That leads to the Bad, and the Dirty….One of the things we were going to do this weekend was to deliver my Audi to my mother.  I had said numerous times that I was glad she was taking it so I didn’t really have to get rid of a car I loved in this “dispose of almost everything” process.  She sold her car last week in anticipation of getting the Audi.

On Friday as we were preparing to leave town, we dropped the truck and trailer off to get new tires.  I dropped Randy off at Banbury Golf Club for a tournament with his buddies.  I had a few errands to do, including washing the car in preparation for giving it to mom.  As I drove up the hill on Eagle road the Audi lost power and had to limp into the Target parking lot.  To make a long, painful story shorter, my Audi came to a dirty (It was never dirty!) inglorious end at a salvage yard.  The timing chain blew the engine and my car was done.  I’d like to think someone will put a new engine in it and it will go on, but it wasn’t going to be cost effective or time effective for us to deal with it.

My parents, down to one car, decided they might like to try Randy’s BMW Roadster which had been for sale for several months.  We picked it up at the consignment lot and left for Sumpter Friday late afternoon.   In the end they decided they liked the idea of having a fun little yellow car and took it home to Vancouver.

So, except for my car, all is well that ends well.  We do feel very fortunate that the car gave it up while we were still in Boise, while the great folks at Boise Audi could help me trying to deal with this by myself (Randy was on the phone a jillion times) and while neighbors Gary and Judy could take Elko for the day.  It would have been far worse for the drama to have happened while we were on the road to Sumpter or while my parents were on the road to Vancouver.   Blessings can come in strange forms!