Monday Sept 5: Day in Cody

      Cody was founded by and is best know for Buffalo Bill Cody, who romanticized the cowboy and the old west. It seems that everything in Cody is named after Buffalo Bill. There is Buffalo Bill hardware, Buffalo Bill nail salon, Buffalo Bill dam, and of course, the extra large Buffalo Bill Museum. I’ve got to say that this museum is extremely nice for a town this size. Not only did we see everything that Buffalo Bill ever owned; right down to his underwear and eye glasses, but we saw exhibits on the geology, climate, fauna and flora of the region and local Indian history, culture and art. It would take 2 full days to do the museum justice. We went through it in an afternoon.



Stagecoach in Buffalo Bill Museum



Dave in front of stuffed Buffalo

Dave in front of the "Pioneer's RV".

     One of Sarah’s friends, Libby, had lived in Cody and she told Jan via Facebook not to miss out on eating at Bubba’s barbecue as it was a good place to eat and near Wal-Mart, so we decided to try it. It must have been a family affair as we were greeted and seated by a young lady about 12 years old who seemed to be very mature for her age. We ordered the combo chicken, ribs, beef, and pork barbecue for 2. The waitress brought out one platter that was piled high with just the barbecued meat and another platter with the rest of the goodies. To say the least, Libby had been right and we had delicious leftovers for a while.

Sunday, Sept 4: From Gillette to Cody

      We left Gillette after our noon SmartWeigh appointment and headed to the Cody Wal-Mart. The drive was uneventful until we had to cross the Big Horn Mountains. When we started climbing the grade, it almost seemed that we were going straight up! The speed limit was 30 mph, but that didn’t matter because the truck couldn’t do over 30 mph anyway. The truck moaned and groaned as it pulled the 13,000 lb trailer, but it didn’t overheat as we made it to the top of Granite Pass at 9,033 feet. At 8,000+ feet, we traveled along a winding road through beautiful alpine meadows and evergreen forests and even passed a ski area. Then down we had to come, a little at first and then steeper and steeper. My truck has a tow feature on it that automatically shifts down as the brakes are applied, so the diesel engine does most of the braking, taking the strain off the brakes. The biggest principle of RV driving I learned in boot camp was to go SLOW and I’ve been applying it since in my driving habits. If you get stuck behind me on a Sunday afternoon, don’t get mad, I’m trying to be safe. The mountains gave way to more semi-arid high plains ranch land and straight roads as we made our way to Cody, Wyoming.
      We pulled into Wal-Mart and met another friendly couple about 15 years our senior who had been at the Escapade, but who couldn’t get reservations to Yellowstone, so they were going to stay at an RV park further up the road, but outside of the park. Of course, being fellow escapees, we had to hug. The lady reminded me a little bit of my Mom, as she was refined, short, and soft spoken. They pointed out to us that we were staying amongst royalty as there was one of those $1 million + RVs parked near us. I had seen these RVs being made on the Discovery Channel with their gold plated faucets and Italian marble tile floors. We were wondering why they couldn’t afford the $40 to stay in a nicer place than Wal-Mart! 
      When we hopped back in the trailer, we smelled that an awful sewer smell, but couldn’t figure out how it could be coming from us as I had drained the black tank and washed it out for a long time. I walked around the trailer sniffing, but couldn’t find the source. We opened windows, but it just got worse. Jan said that she felt ashamed as we were talking to others by our trailer and smelling the odor from our “trailer trash” trailer. It wasn’t until the next evening when I walked out of Wal-Mart way away from the trailer that I smelled the same smell. Then it hit me. We were parked on the side of Wal-Mart where there was the gardening section and the smell was from the fertilizer! I was relieved that we were not the cause.



The trailer in the Wal-Mart parking lot, Cody, WY
You can see the gap in the mountains leading to Yellowstone.



Friday, August 26 to Sunday, Sept 3: Escapees, here we come!

      The weather was clear and sunny as we drove the road from Buffalo to Gillette for the Escapee RV Club’s annual 4 day Escapade convention. Our RV driving instructor recommended that we join the club because there were a lot of other full timers in the club and we could get a lot of advice and support. We decided to attend the pre-convention 3 day “boot camp” for newbie’s, so we had to come early for that. We passed another RV on the way to Gillette and wondered if they were Escapees too. As we passed, Jan saw the Escapees sticker in their window and gave them a “thumb’s up”.

      The convention was held the Camplex, which sits on 1100 acres and has 1,146 full hookup RV sites. Escapee members, as one person put it, “are insanely friendly” and insist that you hug them. About 95% are retired. Anyway, everyone was very helpful. In boot camp, we learned about RV driving techniques, fresh water, grey water, black water, weight, and fire and tire safety. We also learned that most RVs are overloaded and the tires are usually under inflated or overloaded. Because of our greater awareness of our own safety hazards, we bought a brand new set of tires for the trailer had the truck & trailer weighed to make sure we weren’t overloaded. We passed the weight test, so it has given us greater confidence that our truck/trailer combination is being operated safely.

      On the way to buy the new trailer tires, we went to make a left turn with the truck & trailer. A lady in another pickup truck thought we were going hit her, so she reacted by putting her pickup into reverse and promptly hit the small car behind her. Boy was that driver surprised when she backed into him! We didn't stop as we had given her plenty of room and hadn't done anything wrong.  

Gillette WY from the trailer

       After boot camp we joined in the Escapade. There were seminars on all sorts of RV related subjects from how to take & store photos to travel destinations to how to flush out our your water tanks. I attended a variety of seminars while Jan went mostly to the crafting sessions. They also had a products area with booths full of vendors showing off their wares. We bought a guide on traveling the Southwest, a CD on how to blog, a new shower head & water pressure regulator for better showers and a new mount for my Directv satellite dish. It was taking us about 2 hours to get the dish pointed to the satellites from the portable tripod mount we had. It was driving me crazy scanning the sky for a signal. The guy said with this new portable mount, I could get a signal in 6 minutes. At $250, in was pricey, but it did the trick and we’re pretty happy with it now.

      Jan wrote in her Facebook about an evening in the trailer, "This is the worst thunderstorm I have ever been in!!! The advisory said to stay away from windows and doors. Good luck when you live in a 5th wheel. This has been going on for at least an hour. Had to cook the burgers in a skillet instead of the grill but they were still good. The temp dropped 20 degrees to 58 but it is supposed to be 90 tomorrow."

Our trailer in Gillette

She

Thursday, August 25: General Custer and the gas incident

      Since we had to be in Gillette, Wyoming on Friday morning between 9 and noon for the Escapees Convention, we made reservations at an RV park in Buffalo, about an hour’s drive from Gillette, for Thursday night. We had plenty of time to get to buffalo, so when we saw a sign for the Battle of the Little Big Horn National Monument, we decided to stop. As everyone knows, this is where General Custer made his famous last stand. We gathered for a ranger talk under a canopy in back of the visitor’s center with the hill where Custer made his last stand only 100 yards in front of us. The ranger talked for about ½ hour and did an impressive job of giving us the background on the circumstances which led up to the battle, and (what I didn’t know) she told us that there were several other companies of troops not with Custer and other battles nearby. The main problem they had was communication. As the ranger explained, there were no cell phones in those days, so you didn’t know where anyone was if you couldn’t see them. Custer became isolated and had to fight hundreds of Indians with only a handful of men. As we visited the battlefield, they had meticulously placed white markers where the soldiers fell and red markers where the Indians fell. There was a stone monument for soldiers and a very interesting memorial for the fallen Indians. There was much respect given to the Indians who were defending their way of life. What would we have done in similar circumstances?

General Custer's fallen position marker

Soldier's Memorial placard

Dave at the Indian Memorial

      We were getting low on gas, but our trip computer said that we had plenty of miles left before getting to Sheridan. None the less, we decided to play it smart by stopping a couple of exits down the road to get gas. There were 3 gas stations at the exit. We drove around the back of the first one where the diesel pump was only to find out that these pumps didn’t work. Then we drove across the street and pulled up to the diesel pump only to find out that they “didn’t get their shipment that day.” The 3^rd gas station was down the street, but there was road construction between us and the station, so we decided not to get gas. As we kept driving, the trip computer started doing an alarming thing: the miles to empty went down at an increasingly faster rate as we got closer to empty and as you would know it, there wasn’t a gas station in sight, just more empty land. The next exit with gas was in range of what the trip computer said we had, but it was going down at an alarming rate. When we got off the exit with 2 miles left on the trip computer, we found out that we had to drive through town first. I thought we’d never make it, but we did with 1 mile left! I filled the tank with 39 gallons. I thought I had a 36 gallon tank, but found that it was a 40 gallon tank. Whew! After that, we vowed not to trust the trip computer, but to get gas in plenty of time.

      We arrived at the RV Park in Buffalo where they “upgraded” us to the premium site, usually $80, for the cost of a regular site. The upgraded site had a fenced in area next to it with a hot tub, picnic table, and BBQ. It was getting late and needless to say, we didn’t even go into the fenced it area.

Wednesday, August 24: Traveling in Montana

The drive to the Billings, Montana Wal-Mart was uneventful. As we drove further southeast, we could look back and see the tall mountains of Glacier fading in the distance. In front of us were the high plains of Big Sky Country Montana. The first big city we drove through was Great Falls. Sorry, we didn’t see any falls. We got into Billings a couple of hours before sunset, and found our way through town to the Wal-Mart. We had called ahead to Wal-Mart to make sure it was O.K. to spend the night, so we won’t be stuck. We saw another trailer unhitched and one with the slides out, so we thought it would be O.K. to let out our slides. We decided to park on the one side of the parking lot towards the back and try to attract as little attention as possible. We went into Wal-Mart to buy a few things. Inside was a McDonalds (not my favorite), so we decided to get a quick meal. I have never seen any restaurant with that many flies! They were everywhere, landing on both us and our food. Back in the parking lot, I wanted to turn on our air conditioner, so that meant running the generator, but with the other noises in the parking lot, one could hardly hear it. The parking lot was well lighted and there was a private security car, so we felt safe. We were awakened in the night by the sound of the street sweeper going up & down the parking lot. When he came by our trailer, what a roar! Well, what do you want for free camping, but did sweeper night have to be the on the very night we were staying?

Tuesday, August 23: Glacier from the East

      Saint Mary Lake is on the east side of Logan Pass, so we decided to drive around the mountains on an easy, but long road and enter at the Saint Mary entrance. I wanted to get a good view of this lake, but didn’t want to drive all the way to Logan Pass, so we decided to Jackson Glacier Overlook, which was about half way up. There had been some talk about the difference between a snow field and a glacier and concluded that a glacier moved but a snow field didn’t. The Glacier was viewable from the road turn out, but it was pretty far away, so I had to use the binoculars. It looked like a snow field to me, however I could see some of that blue ice that glaciers seem to have.

Saint Mary's Lake

Jackson Glacier

      We left the park again and went even further north to Many Glacier, the area I had heard was “The Heart of the Park”, but when we got to the end of the road and the Many Glacier visitor’s center, we couldn’t see much. Sure there were a lot of mountains around us, but no spectacular views. We turned around in disappointment. On the way down, we saw cars parked on the side of the road with the people out of their cars and binoculars and cameras pointed up the hill across the road. We stopped and ran up the hill to join the others to whatever there was to see. We didn’t see anything. I started asking other people what we were trying to see and every one said, “I don’t know, I came up here because everybody else was up here!” I felt like a lemming going over the cliff with the other lemmings. However, all was not lost because in the binoculars we spotted a hotel on a nearby lake and groups of people up on a hill behind the hotel. We drove up the access road to a parking lot high above the hotel and were treated to a beautiful view of the lake and surrounding mountains. The groups of people we had seen were groups of school kids getting a talk on the geology of the region and how they though it was formed. We took some pictures and headed on our long drive back to Glacier Haven.

Jan & Dave in back of Hotel

Monday, August 22: Glacier West Entrance

            Not knowing the layout of Glacier NP, I decided that we should take the free shuttle bus and avoid driving my long truck on the narrow, curvy roads of the park. We wish we had. From the transportation center, we took a large bus along an easily drivable portion of going-to-the-sun highway, which first ran the length of Lake McDonald until we came to Lake McDonald lodge, where we had to change over to a smaller bus for the drive to Logan Pass, the highest road accessible point in the park. They said that if you were afraid of peering over a cliff, sit on the driver’s side, which Jan promptly did. At first, the road followed the river that feeds Lake McDonald, then it turned right and began to climb up the side of a very steep U shaped valley, characteristic of a glacial valley such as Yosemite. As we got higher and higher, we could see the famous glacial mountains that the park is famous for. Suddenly, the driver cried’ “Bear!” and stopped. As we looked out the front window, we could see that there was a grizzly bear in the road. I could tell it was a Grizzly and not a black bear because it had the characteristic hump on its back. It walked across the road to our side of the bus where it disappeared into the woods. As we went higher, we could see that the road was literally carved out of the rocky side of the mountain. We passed by a curious area called “The Weeping Wall” where water flowed out of that rock above and made the rock wet for several hundred yards.

There was a visitor’s center and a large parking lot at Logan Pass, so we bought some post cards and decided to hike about a mile over the ridge to view Hidden Lake. Much of the path was a boardwalk, but that gave way to a dirt trail and a few snow fields. Jan loved sloshing trough the slippery snow fields (not!), but she troopered on.


Jan ready to hike

Spectacular view from the trail; I wanted to backpack so bad!

We saw a mountain goat from a distance, but then as we crested the ridge, we saw a family of mountain goats right next to the trail. I think they were a plant by the parks department because they seemed to love poising for pictures.


View of Hidden Lake

 Hidden lake was beautiful. I had seen pictures of it many times on the internet while in “jail” at my job and vowed to visit one day. I wanted to get my backpack, hike down to that lake and spend the night. Maybe some other time, but as Robert Frost says in his poem The Road Not Taken, “Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.” The bus rides back seemed long, so we decided to drive to the east entrance the next day and see things on our own.

Sunday, August 21: Day off at Glacier

After a long night where several large trains seemed to be traveling thru our bedroom, we decided to relax that day and skip the sightseeing. We were officially in the town of Essex, which was only a couple of miles (according to the map) down good ‘ol Highway 2E, so I decided to drive down into Essex, mail some postcards, buy a Sunday paper, and do some grocery shopping. Driving down the road, I found no sign of a town anywhere! Then I came upon a small restaurant/grocery establishment called “The Halfway House”. I pulled in only to find that they are closed on Sundays. My luck was that it was Sunday. I drove further down the road until I saw a sign for a lodge, so I pulled off on a side road and came to a fine looking, large rustic lodge. Inside the lobby, I asked where the nearest place for groceries was and they said “The Halfway House”! I asked if they could mail my postcards, which they did and I was on my way back to the trailer without the Sunday paper or any groceries.

Saturday, August 20: On to Glacier NP

       I’m not sure exactly how this happened, but I thought we had made reservations at an RV park in the town of West Glacier, which is at the west entrance to Glacier NP. As we were driving between Spokane and Glacier, we discovered that this RV Park, Glacier Haven, was 20 miles south of the gate. I was a little miffed over my mistake as I knew we would have to drive an addition 20 miles down U.S. Highway 2E with the trailer to get there. To get to Glacier NP we would then have to drive back another 20 miles to get to the park entrance. When we arrived at Glacier Haven, an elderly gentleman (a few years older than me I guess), welcomed us. He was the Father of the guy who started this place and the motel & restaurant next door. We felt lucky to get the only pull-thru space and we easily parked the trailer and unhitched the truck. It was very woodsy and fairly far off a not-so-busy road, so we were feeling good.

Our trailer at Glacier Haven, not Heaven!

 Then it came. First a rumbling that got louder and louder. Then a deafening and earth shaking noise as we watched the freight train pass within a stones throw of our trailer. Why didn’t they mention this in any of the reviews? Well maybe, we thought, trains pass by here infrequently, so it won’t be much of a problem. Not so, we found out. This must be the main North/South route between Canada and the U.S. for passenger and freight trains because I think there was a train every ½ hour to 1 hour 24/7. So much for the woodsy, out-in-the-wilderness experience! We later read in the small print that all rentals were final, no refunds. I wonder why that could be?

Friday, August 19; Leaving Sequim

We wanted to get an early start from the Rainbow’s End RV Park, but first we had to dump the wastewater out of the tanks as we didn’t have a sewer hookup for 4 days. The black (toilet) take was sure full, so when I pulled the lever to dump, I expected a “whoosh” sound, but nothing. It was clogged! I had to drive the trailer around the block 4 times in order to “slosh” the tank and loosen it up. We finally got off at noon and headed to Spokane. We had to turn around at one point when we realized that the Garmin GPS was trying to take us across on a ferry, so we had to divert to a long bridge crossing. When we got on the bridge, the traffic was stopped. At first, we thought it was an accident, but after getting out of the truck with the binoculars, I looked towards the other end of the bridge and saw a draw bridge section, but no big boat. We finally realized that we were waiting for a couple of sail pleasure boats to go through. We were amazed that they stopped traffic for so long for a couple of sailboats. You would think they could have built the bridge a tad higher for small boats to get under.

View from the bridge while we were waiting for the sail boats

As we drove further and further east towards Spokane, it got more and more treeless and drier. Jan had made reservations at an RV Park and Motel. What!? When we got there, we found out that we had to drive the trailer down a narrow driveway between the 2 rows of motel rooms and then through a narrow passageway to get to the back where the RV Park was. I got through fine, but the manager’s wife pointed out some roof damage done by another RV driver who wasn’t so careful. There was a classic car show in town that weekend, so there were classic cars parked all over the place.

Thursday, August 18; Victoria, B.C. Day

            We had to get up at 6 AM as we had to be in the passenger line by 8 o’clock. Port Angeles was only a 20 minute drive from our RV Park, but we weren’t sure about the morning traffic, so we were trying to play it safe. As it turned out, we left 15 minutes later than we had planned, but there was no traffic, so we got there on time. Jan gets motion sickness, so she took her Dramamine. However, the Strait was calm that day and the Ferry, being quite large, barely rolled at all. The trip took 90 minutes as we watched the tall Olympic Mountains in Washington State on our stern give way to the rolling hills of Vancouver Island on our bow. We met another retired couple on the ferry who lived on the island and had US/Canadian dual citizenship. They owned a 42 foot power boat that they used to explore the islands and waterways. I wondered if we could have done that with Leita, which I think was 32 feet long.

Jan on the ferry with the Empress Hotel in the background

The boat made its way into the harbor and turned right as the harbor went in deeper and right up into city, with Empress Hotel right at the head of the harbor and the parliament building to the right. The harbor was a buzz of activity with small sightseeing seaplanes taking off and landing, small harbor ferries darting back & forth, bright yellow high speed power boats for whale watching and kayakers paddling along the shoreline. Jan & I managed to walk around most the harbor, passing beautiful flower gardens and expensive (I’m sure) condos looking out over the harbor. Flowers were everywhere. There were 2 hanging baskets of flowers on every light pole and planted in numerous flower beds. The architecture has that British flair and huge Canadian flags fly proudly over many of the buildings. I thought about what good friends our 2 countries have been over the years and how unusual that was seeing that people are always fighting at one time or another.

I thought the best way to see the city was to buy a ticket on a hop-on, hop-off tour bus, but as it turned out, the city is small enough to walk around, but we took the whole tour none the less. We walked thru China Town and the famous Fan Tan Alley, which I guess was the scene of prostitution and gambling back in the 1800s and where Mel Gibson rode his motorcycle in the movie “Bird on a Wire”.

Dave at the the entrance to Fan Tan Alley

We brought sack lunches and found a picnic table in Market Square, which was surrounded by old brick buildings and reminded me of The Cannery in San Francisco. Hardly anybody was there; we didn’t know why, but we guessed because it was mid week.



Jan in Market Square amoungst the flowers

We got back on the bus and got off at fisherman’s wharf and the famed (so it was hyped) Barb’s Fish & Chips. This fisherman’s wharf was tiny compared to San Francisco, consisting of 2 docks lined with colorful floating homes, Barbs Fish & Chips, an ice cream shop, and a few souvenir shops. I waited in line in front of the Barb’s Fish & Chips order window for at least a half an hour while Jan secured a table under the awning outside. While in line, there were some British young people in front of me in the line. One of the blokes marveled that “Their Queen” was on the Canadian currency as if Canada had stolen something from them! The fish & chips were good, but not worth the wait.

We walked up and down the 2 docks and admired the houseboats, some of which were for sale. I guess the housing crisis has even hit houseboats in Victoria. One of the homeowners was a diver and had attached to the side of the house various goodies that he had found on the bottom, including cell phones, pagers, and even other scuba gear.

Houseboat with items found on the harbor bottom

Really liked this houseboat



What is the message here!?

The bus then took us up into the hills where we saw the estate homes of some of the city’s early citizens and then out by the beaches. We would have liked have to walked along the beach, but it was getting late and the wind off the strait was blowing hard. As we got back into the city, we decided to have dinner early so we could relax and not be pressed for time to catch the ferry at 7 PM.

Dave outside one of the pubs (flowers everywhere)

We found a nice restaurant overlooking the harbor and took a table outside on the patio. It was shielded with plexi-glass, but we were still a little chilly. Jan ate her dinner with her sweater hood up as her head & neck were cold. The sun was getting low in the sky and reflection off the water was blinding me as I was the one facing the water, so I wore my sunglasses throughout the dinner. We decided to be good, so we each had salads. Mine had a piece of grilled wild salmon in it, which was delicious. (At this point, am I sounding like Aunt Charlotte with the meal to meal descriptions of the trip?)

Here comes our boat!

Anyway, we made it back to the ferry on time. As we sailed out of the harbor, the sun was just setting and the fog started to surround us. We were in the observation deck, so we could see that the bow of the boat (outside) was full of people. Suddenly, as the fog closed in, the passengers were all gone and replaced by a single sailor, who stood right at the very tip of the bow and peering out into the darkness. With all the electronic sensors & radar on board, just what was he looking for?! As we approached the dock in Port Angeles, we watched the Capitan maneuver the big boat up to its mooring. I remembered the days when my brother Rick & I practiced maneuvering our Dad’s 32 foot boat into Charlie’s dock and smashed into it a few times.

Wednesday, August 17: Touring Port Townsend

The couple in the Montana next door told us they had gone to Port Townsend the day before and had enjoyed the town there with its seaside shops and restaurants, so we decided to take the truck and go there as it was less than ½ hour away. The main street, with its shops and restaurants, is on the waterfront and there are a couple of small parks where you can walk out onto beach areas. As you look up on the bluffs, you can see interesting old Victorian style buildings. The day was sunny and cool as Jan and I walked out onto a small beach and collected some rocks and shells for Owen.

I have found that I’m becoming a “treatoholic” as we now pass by ice cream and fudge stores quite often. Consequently, we stopped in for a treat of ice cream cone. I had Swiss Orange Chocolate Chip, an old favorite from Swensen’s. We walked down to the marina and watched the boats, wondering about the lives of the people sailing them, how they made enough money to be able to afford their boats, and how much the boats must have cost. I used to love sailing in Cohasset Bay with our little Trist 14 and wondered if I will ever sail again. I whimsically mentioned to Jan that I’d like to sign up for a crew sailing to Tahiti.

Dave at Port Townsend

Jan at the Port Townsend Harbor

To our surprise, here was an RV park right there on the water. We were jealous of these guys as they were looking out over the water while we were looking out on highway 101! We decided that in the future to pick our RV parks more carefully. We have stayed away from state parks because they usually can’t handle big rigs, but as we have seen, that might not be the case. The down side of state parks is that they either take reservations 2 weeks before hand or on a first-come, first-serve basis.

We drove a few miles out to another state park where there was a beach and a light house. The light house area was fenced in and closed, but there was a lot of beach area. We noticed that only the kids would go in the water, so I’m sure the water was quite cold. There was also another RV park there with ocean views. This was too much as I thought about the 101 traffic. Since the views of the water and islands were so spectacular, I got out my small telescope to have a look around. We saw a huge volcano-like mountain across the way with tons of snow on it and wondered what it was. Jan thought it might be Mount Rainer. I said that Mount Rainer didn’t have a double dip peak, so having the 3G Ipad, Jan Googled it, got a picture, and sure enough it was Mount Baker in the northernmost part of Washington State.

Mount Baker in the distance

Looking out over the bay

Dave looking through his telescope at the boats

On our way to Port Townsend, we passed an Indian Casino, so I suggested to Jan that we stop off to see if they had a buffet, which is my main attraction to casinos, not the gambling. Sure enough they had one, so we had steak and seafood stuffed chicken.

That evening, we drove to Port Angeles to check out the ferry parking, so there were no surprises the next morning. On the way, we stopped at the Walmart Super Center there to get some Dramamine for Jan and more food items.

Tuesday, August 16 Shopping day at Sequim

The last thing we wanted to do that day was travel, so went out to do our shopping. Sequim has 2 of our favorite stores, Costco and Walmart. At Costco, we had our favorite lunch of polish dogs and unlimited soft drink, still only $1.50, and brought back our favorite roast chicken for dinner, still only $4.99.

We drove out to the coast to Dungesnes State Park in Sequim as I wanted to use my telescope to peer across the water, but the fog was rolling in and you couldn’t see much. We did have a nice walk though along the bluffs at the park. On our way back to the RV Park in the truck, we turned at the intersection of Woodcock and Kitchendick roads and got quite a laugh.


Dave looking out over the windy Straight of Juan de Fuca



What Dave was looking at

Funny street signs in Sequim

Monday, August 15 Going to Sequim

The next morning, I went to the RV office and found out that the best RV repair place was right next door! Being a Monday morning, they had just opened, so I went over there and the guy said that he’d have a man over there in ½ hour. The repair man came over and fixed it in ½ hour and only charged us $45. We then left shortly before noon, which wasn’t bad considering the predicament we were in the night before. Our destination was Sequim, Washington. We had traveled there before in 2006 in our truck camper while getting Rachel & Nick settled in Tacoma. We had enjoyed the cool weather and scenery there, but missed taking the ferry to Victoria. We got to Rainbow’s End RV Park shortly before sunset. They had a back-in place for us next to another Montana, but it had no sewer hookup, which caused us problems later. The manager helped me to back the rig in. The spot had lots of maneuvering room, so it wasn’t too bad. On the phone, the manager described the parking spot as a nice quiet spot in the back, that is, except for the fact that busy highway 101 was a few hundred feet away! It was not my kind of quiet. But, after traveling for 3 days, we were ready to relax.

Sunday, August 14 On to Salem

We got out of Redding quickly and headed for Yreka to meet with Kim, our real estate lady, who had listed our 2 ½ acres in Fort Jones. She did not know where the property lines were, so we meet her in the Wal-Mart parking lot at around 11:30 A.M. and she drove us out to the property, where we walked the property lines. We got back to the trailer, popped out the pop-outs and had lunch there in the parking lot before heading north.

Our Fort Jones property. Anyone want to buy it!

We have at our disposal the Trailer Life RV Parks and Campground Directory, The Next Exit book, which tells you about all the amenities at every freeway exit, a cell phone, a GPS Navigation unit, and a 3G Apple Ipad 2, which connects to the internet any time there is a Verizon cell signal. With this array of goodies, Jan can Google the various prospects for RV parks, read the reviews, call the RV parks for availability, pay by credit card over the phone, punch the address into the Nav unit, which plots our course, gives voice commands for every turn, and tells us our arrival time. We also monitor the outside temperature from the Truck’s overhead instrument panel and our altitude from the GPS unit. We can also email, post on Facebook, text and talk on the phone, all while rolling down the road. Need entertainment? No problem. With DirectTv, we can get 200 channels and movies from Showtime, HBO, and Encore, all in High Def and even 3D on some channels. This is not your father’s RV trip!

Anyway, we found an RV park in Salem, Oregon, and spent the night there. While popping out our living/dining room slide, one side of the slide wouldn’t move, so it was stuck partially out. Uh-O! Can’t go anywhere with that! I had visions of having to replace the hydraulic pump or worse $$. Being an (ex) engineer, I went down under the slide to have a look and figured out that a bolt attaching the shaft which drove the one side of the slide had sheered off and needed to be replaced. Not so bad.

Saturday, August 13, 2011 Leaving Hollister

Everybody at Sarah's the day Ryan left for Afganistan

We left Sarah’s about 1 P.M. and took Ryan’s care package to the Hollister P.O. only to find out that it had closed at 1 o’clock. Ryan has called us 2 or 3 times via satellite phone to tell us of his activities in Afghanistan. He is based on a hilltop or ridge that is heavily guarded and fortified, but goes out on “missions” for a few days at a time. It’s the “missions” part that makes me and his Mom nervous.

We had been waiting for almost 2 weeks for Greg at Mickey’s RV to finish the entertainment center cabinetry in our trailer that would accommodate our new 42” T.V., our sound system, and the DirecTv box. I had gone over to Mickey’s in Gilroy on Tuesday to give him Sarah’s old white bathroom cabinet to install over the potty and discovered that the TV & stereo components would not fit on the 1 shelf because it was not wide enough. That got Jan and me really upset, so we went over to Mickey’s the next day to find a solution, which we did, and that cleared the way to have the DirectTv guy come over on Friday to install the satellite dish.



Our truck & trailer take up the front of Sarah's house.

Our trailer was parked in front of Sarah’s house when the DirectTV guy got there on Friday morning. He did not have a tripod for the dish as he said that it was not part of the order. I had remembered that George, a friend of Sarah & Joe, told me that he had an extra tripod at his place, so we quickly got it from him. As it turned out, the tripod was for a regular dish and ours was a larger HDTV dish, so it didn’t fit. However, being the handy guy I am from the training grounds of the 1847 Warwick Place 100 year project, I did some modifications and got it to work. So now we could finally leave! We got as far as Redding that day right after sunset and began to do our hookups in the fading twilight. Unfortunately, the lawn sprinklers were going off at the time, so we got a little wet in the process.

Prolog

I am happy we’re doing this now. As a fledgling unprofessional financial advisor, I would not recommend this to anyone in my situation because working longer and saving more would have been the smarter thing to do. On the other hand, I have found that as we grow older, time becomes more precious that money, and at 63, how many good healthy years are there left? In my twilight years, I don’t want to say, knowing that the clock cannot be turned back, “I had the chance to do it then, but I didn’t”.