Brewster, WA

We left the cold of the Seattle area behind and are now basking in the warmth and sunshine of Brewster, WA. What a difference. I love it.

We arrived yesterday at the home of friends Tom and Sherry. We are parked on their property and it feels like a luxury RV park. Their home is just lovely with beautiful landscaping and an amazing view of the Columbia River.

Black Diamond, WA July 2010

We finally got out of Junction City and made our way to Black Diamond, Washington for a visit with some of Tom's family.

We arrived a couple days before the 4th of July and so we were able to spend the holiday with the family. We had a lovely brunch at Mom Brickwell's place along with Tom's brother, Jim and his wife Lori and our niece and nephew Katie and Colby and family friend Larry. Then we tagged along with Jim and Lori to a party some friends of theirs had. Lots of good food and an amazing fireworks display in the evening.

Tom, Jim and Colby got in a couple rounds of golf and eight year old Colby put the men to shame.

We also went to one of Katie's riding lessons and were able to witness her growing skill on horseback.

It's been great being able to spend all this time with family, but the weather has been mostly cold and cloudy. It's green and gorgeous here, but I need some sunshine soon! We have a few more days here and then we're going up to Brewster, WA for a visit with some friends there. The forecast there is for hot temps and sunny days. Bring it on!

Junction City, Oregon

We've been at the Guaranty RV Service Center in Junction City, Oregon for almost two weeks now. We had a couple of small items we wanted taken care of with the motorhome and then we also have a foggy side window (seal went bad) that we wanted to have fixed. It turns out though that the glass in the side window will need to be replaced, which is why we've been here so long. We're waiting for the new glass to arrive. It should be here within the next day or two and then we'll be on our way again.

As in the past when we've been here for repairs, we are staying at the "camping area" for the service center, which is basically a large parking lot with electric hookups and a central water and dump station. But it's convenient when you're having work done, and it's free, so we're not complaining.

We took a drive out to the coast a couple days ago and went to Carl Washburn Beach. Oregon beaches are rugged and beautiful, but always windy and usually a bit on the cold side. Still we enjoy spending a bit of time there and the dogs love it. We spread the ashes of our dogs Roz-z and Molly there on previous visits and on this trip, Monet joined them.

Back on the Road

I know it's been too long between posts, but there wasn't a lot going on in our lives for April and most of May. My niece Kinsey had a major roll in her high school production of Guys and Dolls so we went to see that. It was fabulous and Kinsey wowed the crowd with her solo. A few weeks later, another niece, Aubrey, graduated from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. I drove up with a bunch of the family for that wonderful event. It brought tears to my eyes, I was so proud of her.

In early May, Tom's brother Jim and his family, along with Tom's mom and her friend Larry came down to Scottsdale for a vacation. They were there over my birthday and we met up with them, Shannon and Pat, and my brother and sister-in-law at the Elephant Bar Restaurant for a huge birthday dinner. Great fun.

Temperatures were starting to warm up and by mid-May we were quite often in the 90's and on May 20th it reached 100. We left Arizona on May 21st.

We stayed a couple of nights in the Palm Springs area, which is a place we really enjoy. Then the plan was to stop over for the night in Bakersfield on our way to Sacramento. One night became two when we had to find a CAT dealer to fix a bad injector in the engine. Thankfully the people at Quinn CAT were nice enough to bump us ahead of another job and got us on the road again quickly.

We hung out in Sacramento for a week, visiting with various friends we have in the area. We were a little surprised to realize how many people we know who live there. In our short week, we didn't even manage to see everyone we would have liked to.

Then it was on to Rogue River, Oregon where my mom and step-dad live. We are staying at the Valley of the Rogue State Park, which is a beautiful park with lots of gorgeous trees. It's all so green. I love it. I'd missed this in Arizona.

We'll be here for another week, then we'll head further north.

Visit from a Friend

We had our first non-family member come to stay with us this past weekend. Tom worked with Ted for over 25 years and they both retired around the same time. Ted is to blame for Tom's obsession with golf so I didn't know whether to welcome him in or kick him out. No, not really. We were happy to have him visit us for a couple of days. We played golf (of course) had cocktails on the patio and enjoyed some time by the pool.

Phoenix "Good Guys" Car Show

It's been awhile since I've taken over a post in the blog from my good wife Jo. I'm the one who experienced this bit-"o"-blogorama.
We've made good friends with our Canadian neighbors next door and "Jerry" saw that there was going to be a big carshow in Phoenix, Arizona. He wanted to go but his wife was uninterested. He asked me and I jumped at the chance. It was nice going with someone who was interested in good old fashioned American muscle car iron from the past. I used to be heavily involved in cars, namely drag racing and am in love with all of that shiny chrome and paint. I've never been to a big carshow outside of Fairbanks, Alaska and have only seen that type of show in "Hot Rod Magazine".

We got there and I was bedazzled with all of the gorgeous cars shining in the Arizona sun. The weather couldn't have been finer for a car show. I took tons of pictures but have limited them for the slideshow. Jerry and I only made it through three quarters of the show before we had to go. There were over two thousand cars there and most were "to die for". I hope you enjoy these pictures. I'm warning you though, put on a bib because you'll drool over these cars. My shirt was drenched by the time I got out of the show.

Catching Up

I haven't been posting since we've settled down to a fairly normal routine here in Arizona for the winter. I figure you're all just not that interested in hearing about us visiting with friends and family in this area or going to movies or playing golf or hanging out reading books or having the occassional happy hour with some of the neighbors. But still, it's probably time to make an entry to keep things up to date.

I crocheted a blanket for my great-nephew Matthew for Christmas. I hadn't crocheted anything in a long time and I forgot how much I enjoy it. I just picked up a pattern book for crocheting stuffed animals, so I'll try my hand at that next.

In late January, our niece Lorrie Grace came to Arizona to visit her friend Kim who lives in Flagstaff. She had to fly out of the Phoenix airport, so we met up with her and Kim for lunch before Lorrie's flight. We loved seeing her again, even for such a short time. And it was fun visiting with Kim who we hadn't seen since before we left Alaska.

Shortly after that, Tom's brother Bill came to visit us for 5 days. He and Tom had a great time playing golf almost every day.

Yesterday we spent the day at a dog show in Scottsdale. We didn't enter either of our dogs, we just went up to socialize with friends we generally only see at dog shows.

So, that's more or less the highlights of the last couple months. I'll try to be better about posting updates every couple weeks even when nothing overly exciting is going on.

Christmas Greetings

Dog Beds

Dash liked the cats' beds at Doug & Karen's so much, we had to get them for our house. Spoiled? No, our dogs aren't spoiled.

Friends in Deed

Our motorhome went into the shop on Monday to get some work done. We had to move out for the week and our friends Doug and Karen came to our rescue. Tom worked with Doug at the power plant in Fairbanks. When Doug retired a few years before Tom, he and Karen became full-time RVers for awhile. They just had a house built in Green Valley, Arizona, about 15 miles south of Tucson. We have the honor of being their first house-guests this week. Thank you Doug and Karen!!!

They have two cats, but luckily our dogs are pretty mellow around kittys. Dash would like to play with them, but they generally don't want to play with him. Thankfully he gets the hint quickly and leaves them alone. Gracie pretty much ignores them completely.

Dash decided he'd take over one of the cat beds and Gracie makes herself at home on Karen's recliner every evening. We're going to have to get a couple of these beds for the kiddies once we get our house back.

Clifton's Wedding

Last weekend, my nephew, Clifton got married to his lovely bride Sylvia. My mom flew down for the event and it was a very fun mini family reunion.

My mom (Fran), my brother (Mark) and me

My mom, Tom, me, our great-nephew Matthew and my sister-in-law Laura
My mom, Clifton and Sylvia

Arizona Sunset

We love the sunsets here.

Winter Home

Yesterday we arrived at the Palm Creek Golf & RV resort in Casa Grande, Arizona. We've stayed here twice before, for one month each time, and we so enjoyed this place we decided we'd spend the majority of our winter here this year. We still have a couple of things we need to get taken care of on the motorhome before we can really settle in for the winter (we need new tires and we need to have the back end aligned - which is why we need new tires) but we're still very happy to be "home."

Staying Ahead of the Storm

I checked the weather report this morning and learned there is a strong wind storm forecast for tomorrow - which was when we had planned to go to Yuma. As you can imagine, driving the motorhome in high winds is not the best idea. So we decided to come to Yuma today to stay ahead of the storm. We are now parked at the Pilot Knob RV Park in Winterhaven, CA (about 5 miles outside of Yuma).

We were able to make dentist appointments in Algodones for tomorrow and we'll have the roof repair touch up done on Wednesday. If all goes well, we'll be back in Casa Grande and settled in at Palm Creek RV park by Halloween.

Long Drive, Long Day

Wow! We covered about 500 miles today in about 9 hours. We haven't gone that far in one day in a looooooong time. Usually we try to limit our travel to about 4 hours a day or less.

We originally figured we'd only go about 280 miles today and get to Lordsburg, New Mexico. But when we got close to Lordsburg at around 2:00, we were both feeling pretty fresh and alert and decided to just keep on going all the way to Casa Grande, AZ. We'll spend the next three nights here, then go to Yuma for a touch up on the roof repairs they did last year.

We'll also try to fit in a quick visit to the dentist we saw in Algodones, Mexico last year. Then it will be back to Casa Grande where we plan to spend the majority of this winter.

On the Road Again

After a month of enjoying the peaceful atmosphere and wonderful weather in Kerrville, Texas we are on the road again making our way toward Arizona where we plan to spend most of the winter.

Tom drove about 350 miles today to get us to Van Horn, Texas; the first stopover on our journey west. We'd been a little nervous about today because of all the problems we had with the motorhome just before we got to Kerrville. But all went smoothly and the motorhome ran perfectly. Praise God! We both feel like a huge weight has lifted off our shoulders and we can relax and enjoy the next few days of travel.

Being Lazy

Our time here in Kerrville has been very uneventful, and that's just what we were hoping for. We were both pretty burned out from all the touring we did this summer, so we needed this down time. We've been here for three weeks so far and most of our days have been spent just relaxing. Tom is spending a lot of time fishing in the stream that runs through the park and I've managed to read 5 or 6 books already. We did visit our friends Roland and Elizabeth for a couple of days. And today we took a drive to Medina to the Love Creek Orchard Bakery to get one oftheir fabulous (and huge) apple pies.


We have one more week here, then we head to Arizona where we plan to spend the next five months.

Coast to Coast

On Jan 1, 2009 we were in Palm Springs, California. Late April found us in Florida and by mid August, we were in Belfast, Maine. Wow! We really put on the miles this year. All in all, we covered over 7000 miles in the motorhome and visited (or at least drove through) 28 states.

I keep a map in the "Where are We Now" block on the side bar of this blog showing the routes we've taken and where we've stayed along the way. I had to start a new map since we are now overlapping the route from earlier this year. But here is the map from January through now. You can zoom in on the map amd drag it around to see more detail if you are interested.



View January '09 to September '09 in a larger map

Fixed!

I think the engine is actually fixed! The CAT repair shop ended up putting in a whole new brain (computer). They drove it a couple of times without any problems before they called us on Friday morning to come get it. Once we got there yesterday afternoon, we drove it another 40 miles or so before we parked it for the night. Today we drove about 230 miles, still no problems. I think I can finally breathe again.

We made it to the Buckhorn Lake RV Resort in Kerrville where we'd wanted to spend a month. Not sure if we'll get to stay a whole month after all these delays, but we should be good for at least 3 weeks. I'm soooooooooo ready to just sit and relax!

And this is a good place for relaxing. We spent three days at this RV park this past spring and enjoyed it so much, we've really been looking forward to coming back. Our site is right on the bend of a stream that runs through the park so we have a lovely view.

Engine Trouble

One of my worst fears about living in the motorhome has come to pass. We are having engine trouble and for the moment, our motorhome is stuck in Waco, TX while the mechanics try to figure out what is wrong. The diagnostic computer is logging a fault with the speed sensors. The mechanics have changed out the speed sensors and the wiring to the speed sensors, but the engine is still running rough. When they started talking about tearing into the engine and needing us to move into a hotel for a couple of days, we decided to just throw some things in the car and drive the 130 miles down to Kingsbury, TX to stay with our friends Roland and Elizabeth. We are so blessed to have such wonderful friends, willing to take us in on a moment's notice.

We have been in Kingsbury for the past three days while the motorhome remains in the shop in Waco. When Tom talked to the service manager this afternoon, he was cautiously optomistic that they may have solved the problem.

It's been a pretty stressful few days for us, not knowing what the problem is or when it might be fixed, but we are making the best of it and enjoying our time with Elizabeth and Roland.