…and We’re Off
Sunday – August
31
Our plan has been
revised, as our plans often are. Bill
has to go to work in a few minutes, but I don’t work until 4:00, so I’m going
to start cleaning and packing today.
Kathy called on Friday to tell us that she is being treated for a
thyroid problem, as well as arthritis. I
really want to get home as soon as I can to see if there’s anything I can do to
help her.
It was very cold last night so we were, again,
stuck inside. I got on the bed at 7:00
and covered up with our big fluffy blanket and watched “Two and ½ Men” on TV in
there, while Bill watched the same thing on the main TV. We got to sleep a little after 10, but woke
to rain and voices. The people in the
next campsite were sitting out under their awning talking and laughing, with
rain pouring down next to them, at 1:30.
This morning, while I’m packing and cleaning, I think I’ll also be
blasting my Abba CD. I hope they enjoy
Mama Mia and Fernando.
We had a bit of a
treat today. Pat said that since Bill
was off work at noon, and I didn’t have to start until 4, we should go to
Peachland to the open air market. So, we
zipped up there for lunch at a cute little pub, right on the lake. Lunch was very good, and we walked around for
a while after it. We stopped at the
market on the way back to pick up our lottery winnings. Five dollars.
Woopee!
We inventoried everything left in the store
except the candy, ice cream, dairy products and drinks. We put all the inventoried stuff into two
boxes to go into Pat’s basement for next year.
The ice cream prices were mostly cut to half, but I still sold only a
few of them, so at the end of the night, when Pat came into the store, she
started giving it away. We brought home
some Dibs and we each had an ice cream while we were working. Bill didn’t need to be there, but he enjoys
it and would rather be with me than alone in the trailer.
Monday – Sept 1
We woke up this
morning around 6, freezing so Bill got up and turned the heater on so it would
warm up a bit before we got up. After
about two minutes, it went off. He got
up and did it again and this time it only lasted for a few seconds. He checked the gauge and found out we were
out of propane. We had told Leroy when
we ran out a few weeks ago, and switched over to our other tank, but we had
never seen him come over to give us a fresh tank. We talked about hooking up our barbeque tank
to the trailer so we could have heat, figuring it would be too much trouble for
Leroy to get us a tank for only one more night.
Bill braved the cold and went outside to see about doing that, and he
discovered that Leroy had already taken care of it. We should have known he would, because he
always takes care of things when he knows they need to be done.
This is Labor Day, and
I thought the campground would stay pretty full until today, but it is probably
half full, with more people pulling out all the time. It looks funny to see all the empty
sites.
The weather is
wonderful. The cleaning went pretty
quickly, but I think it’s because we kept it clean all the time. It is so
small, that it takes very little time to dust and sweep, and wipe things
down. Now that we’re done with the
cleaning and packing, we are spending the rest of the day just sitting around
and relaxing, enjoying our lake view.
This
is the first time we have had a lake view for more than a couple of hours.
We talked to Tony
yesterday and found out that they sold their house within four hours of listing
it (don’t you hate people like that?) and he got $40,000 more than they were
thinking of asking, with the help of a very good real estate agent. They have purchased a huge new house in North
Stafford, Virginia. It won’t be built
until January, so we’re going to try make plans to visit them next year. We will go to Canton, Michigan to see Scott
and Jen and our little guys, Carson and Brendan, too.
We went over to visit
Pat and Leroy around 2:30 and I just got back at 5:15. They have a wonderful
view of the lake from their house when there are no campers.
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| View from the house |
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| Pat and Leroy's house |
Right now, there are
quite a few campers here, but they can still see the lake quite well. Bill went
over with Jodi to clean the washrooms while we were there talking to Pat and
Leroy. Right now, he is still over there
loading the recycling onto Leroy’s truck.
I guess he can’t get enough of work.
Pat and I talked for a long time.
Now that the store is closed, the campers have to check in at the house,
so there were lots of interruptions. I
checked in a couple of them while Pat was busy.
It is very relaxed, ‘cause they don’t even get a parking pass for their
vehicles. The rates are a lot lower
because the season is over. While we
were there, Darren brought in a turtle he found out by the llama fence. It was a big one, about 10 inches from head
to tail, and it didn’t seem to be afraid of people, as it let us stroke it’s
neck and feet. We thought it might be
someone’s pet, but there was nobody in the field, near where it was found.
We’re preparing our
last dinner at the campground.
Hamburgers, baked beans and cole slaw salad. Gotta go.
After dinner, Pat
came over for one last visit. She stayed
for a long time, talking about the sale of the campground, which fell through
just a few months ago. They were really
bummed about that. From the campers we
heard that everyone would be very sad if they do sell, as this is the best run
campground most of them have ever been to.
We’re watching Deal
Or No Deal, and getting ready for bed.
I’ll write again, about our trip home, if anything interesting occurs.
The Rest Of the Story?
Tuesday – September 2
We stopped over for five minutes to say goodbye to Pat and
Leroy as we left and we ended up staying there for a half hour. Pat kept us in stitches telling us about
taking the turtle to a pond last night, with flashlights. They pulled up a couple of hundred yards from
a nearby house, and Pat got out, took the turtle to the edge and set it at the
edge. Immediately, it swam away, dove
down, came back up and swam some more.
After it got several feet away, it stopped swimming, turned around and
swam back, sticking it’s head up to look right at Pat. She said she felt as if he was saying, “Thank
you for saving me and bringing me here.”
It wasn’t so much what Pat said, as the way she said it, imitating the
swimming and waving turtle. During all
this, a man with a flashlight was approaching from the house, and Leroy was
whisper-yelling at Pat to hurry up so they wouldn’t get arrested for
trespassing, or worse, shot by someone protecting his special crop.
So, we got on the road at about 8:30. We took the Chocahala Highway, or 97C,
towards Kamloops. After several miles,
Bill looked at the outside temperature and noticed that it said 40
degrees. We checked the elevation and
we had gone up over 1000 meters since we started the trip.
The scenery was stunning and we had a wonderful drive. We did some easy caching on the way. We knew there were going to be toll roads, so
we had brought several quarters and loonies, but as we got onto the road, there
was a sign that said that passenger cars were $10.00! That wouldn’t have been so bad, but the toll road
was terrible with ruts and bumps everywhere.
I wonder what they do with the money they collect.
We turned off the toll road to get a cache, called Cashless Cache
that was only ¼ mile in. The information
from the cache owner said that there was a cache at each end of it, and that it
was passable during the warmer months by regular cars. So, after we quickly found the first one we
decided to take it all the way, instead of taking the toll road. We would save the $10.00 and see more
beautiful scenery on the way. Well, it
was very scenic, with lovely purple, white and yellow wildflowers, wild
blackberries and gorgeous cliffs in the distance with snow still on them from
last winter. We drove almost five miles
on a very good dirt road before we discovered that the road isn’t passable in a
car, unless you don’t want any paint on that car when you get to the other
end. The road had gotten so narrow, that
the bushes were touching both sides of the car, and the potholes were coming
along more often.
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| Road to nowhere |
Finally, we got to a section where I could see about 200 feet ahead and it looked like the bushes were meeting in the middle. Bill got out and walked to that point, came back and said that we would have to turn around. Easier said than done, though. I backed up about five car lengths and told him that he was going to have to do it. He managed to back up about ¼ mile to a spot where there was shoulder enough to turn around. We hated to give up, because we could see that we were still paralleling the highway, and we knew where the road was supposed to connect with it, but we didn’t want to ruin the car. After all that, we still had to pay the toll, darn it.
As we were driving along the highway in Chilliwack, we
passed behind a Harley store, so we had to hop off the road, and weave our way
back on a frontage road to see if we could find shirts for Tony and Anais. We had no luck for Tony, but we found a very
cute shirt for Anais. We didn’t want to
stop for lunch so we snacked for 100 miles or so on cookies, apples, candy bars
and potato chips. Real healthy, eh?
In Washington, just a few miles short of where we were going
to stop for the night, we pulled up to a cache for which we had no paperwork,
so we didn’t know the exact coordinates, or any information about it. We knew it was going to be an easy one, so we
phoned Sherry in Idaho and she got online to give us the info we needed to find
the cache. Thank you, again, Sherry.
The Whispering Firs Bed and Breakfast in Mt. Vernon was only
five miles from the freeway, but it was so hidden in the forest that you’d
never know there was civilization within 20 miles. We thought about stopping for dinner before
we arrived, because by then it was almost 5:00, but we figured we could get
settled and then go back out. We drove
down a country lane, turned and saw the sign for the Whispering Firs. We followed a dirt road for a mile to the
house. What a wonderful place we
picked. As we drove up, our hostess,
Linda, pointed to a spot right in front of their driveway. We got out the delightful smell of sautéed
onions. She said that they were having a
barbeque for her son’s friends, and invited us to join them on the back patio
for hamburgers, corn on the cob, baked beans and salads. So, we didn’t have to go out after all. What a treat!
Our room has a view of the Puget Sound, Camano and Whidbey
Islands and Saratoga Passage.
We have a sliding glass door entrance onto the patio, facing
the view. They have a hot tub, which we thought
might use after dark but we were so
tired that we went to bed at 9:00 and slept straight through to 6:30. There are stars on the ceiling just like we
had for Tony and Scott when they were little, except, these are arranged
exactly to match the August 3 sky. Linda
showed us the black light to turn on to see them after dark. But, we only had to leave the light on for a
few minutes so they could absorb the light.
It was really neat to fall asleep with the night sky above us. I woke up once during the night, around 4:00,
and they were still glowing faintly.
Wednesday – September 3
Breakfast was exactly as delicious as we were hoping it
would be. Fresh strawberry tart, baked
Dutch pancakes, pork and potato hash, and a special dish, made only for us, and
never to be made again – flourless Dutch pancakes. Linda had forgotten to put in the flour, but
she served it for us to try while we were waiting for the real ones to come out
of the oven. They had the taste and
texture of quiche, and we all enjoyed them.
The other couple who had spent the night, Mannah and John are architects
from Manhattan. We had a good time
visiting with them.
We did a little bit of caching in the Mt. Vernon area, and
got back on the road at 10:30. The
Seattle traffic began 30 miles from Seattle and lasted well past, so that part
of the drive wasn’t too good. I drove
all the way, so Bill’s shoulder can start to get better.
We got to Craig and Jackie’s home at 5:00. They live on five acres in La Center,
Washington, pretty close to Mt. St. Helen’s in Oregon. They served us a delicious dinner of steak,
garlicy mashed potatoes, grilled pineapple, baked green beans, and home baked
bread with garlicy balsamic vinegar and oil for a dip. After dinner we spent the evening talking
around the fire pit, with our bare feet up next to the fire to keep warm. We are such party animals that we didn’t get
to bed until after 9:00.
We Make It Home
Thursday – September 4 to Saturday - September 6
The sun woke us at 6:30, and it is a beautiful day. They said it is going to be hot and we are
looking forward to spending more time with Craig and Jackie in the beauty of
their huge yard. We need to get home as
soon as we can, but Bill’s shoulder is hurting and my right ankle is very sore
from driving yesterday, so we are going to spend the day here head for home
tomorrow.
We went out to breakfast with Craig and Jackie and after
that, we went home for a tour of their yard.
What a beautiful place they have!
They let the two goats out to wander around with us, and they are just
like dogs, very docile.
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| Multnomah Falls |
They weren’t interested in letting us pet them, but they did
enjoy being with us. The yard is five
acres of uneven ground, so there are hills and valleys with lush vegetation and
there is a stream running through it.
The dogs ran down to the stream and jumped in for a quick swim while we
were walking above it.
After the grand tour of the yard, they took us for a drive
to see the area, and as we went, we introduced them to geocaching. We had a lot of fun hiking and discovering
places they hadn’t ever seen. At one of
the caches, the guys found the treasure while Jackie and I picked wild plums
from trees in the park where the cache was hidden.
They took us to Multmonah Falls and to Edgewood Winery in
Troutdale, Oregon, both beautiful places.
Unfortunately, Bill was feeling a bit sick so he didn’t
enjoy the trip as much as I did. When we
got home, he went to bed and spent the rest of the day and the next one
there. We had been planning to leave for
home on Friday, but we didn’t leave until Saturday morning, when he woke up
feeling fine.
Other than Bill being sick, we had a really good time with
Craig and Jackie. They made wonderful
meals, which, unfortunately, is the focus of many of our good times. We even had fish tacos, something we had
never even wanted to try, and they were delicious.
We found out about Kathy’s Rhuematoid Arthritis while we
were there, and we were shocked. All I
could think of was how much pain Ann, another friend of mine from 7th
grade, has been in since her diagnosis about 30 years ago. Craig made us feel so much better, though,
because he has done extensive research on RA, due to his father and son having
it. He made several suggestions about
dietary changes, vitamins and supplements that can help Kathy.
So, we left La Center, Washington at 9:30 on Saturday
morning, intending to stop just south of the California border for the night,
because it is about 620 miles from La Center to Reno. But, we made it to Mt. Shasta, with several
hours of daylight left, so we decided to try to make it home. We could have stopped in Susanville, because
we were getting pretty tired, and the light was almost gone, but by that time
we were like horses who are coming close to the stable, so we drove all the way
on Saturday. We got home after 8:30, too
late to go over to see Kathy and Rommie and pick up the dogs. We got everything unpacked and a lot of it
put away. We had stopped at Safeway, so
we had soup and a bagel for dinner and hit the bed at 11:00.
Will we do it again, next year? We are 90% sure we will. We just have to work out some details, such
as what to do with the dogs, and we have a few months to do that before we need
to let Pat know for sure. It was a great
summer. We learned a lot and had a lot
of fun. But, it’s always good to be
home.
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