O' Canada!

Greetings readers. Our last chapter left us in late May in Sequim, Washington on the beautiful Olympic Peninsula of Northwest Washington. On Saturday, the 30th of May, we went to the weekly street fair in Sequim. It was not too big, only about one city block of booths, but they had some nice stuff and it was an interesting hour or so of browsing. Afterwards we went shopping. Although Sequim is a small town, they did have a Walmart, a Costco and a Safeway in town, so we were able to get all our shopping done within just a few blocks.

The next day, Sunday, we drove east to the town of Port Townsend, Washington. Port Townsend is one of the oldest towns in Washington and sits at the “corner” of the Puget Sound, the inland bay that goes down to Seattle and Olympia, and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which leads west to the Pacific Ocean. This location made the area one of the first settled by the early pioneers as they arrived by sea. The town’s late-19th century look was very charming. Most of the buildings in the downtown area dated to the 1880's. On the bluffs above the town were some very pretty Victorian homes. We spent a couple hours walking around the downtown area looking in shops. At the same time we did some caches in the town, finding five. Port Townsend is also the terminal for the ferry that runs from there to Whidbey Island, about five miles north. We will be taking that ferry when we leave Sequim next week. After spending most of the day in Port Townsend we drove back to Sequim for dinner. We went to a restaurant north of town, on theshore of the Strait, called “3 Crabs”. The place was recommended to us by two different friends who were familiar with the Sequim area. It was also recommended by the AAA book. We got there about 7:30 and found that the place closed at 8:00, however, they did take us in. The outside of place is kind of “fishing village” shabby, but the inside was nice, with big windows looking out over the water. The menu was almost exclusively seafood. We both ordered a variety platter, which you could get either steamed or fried. We both ordered steamed, but for some reason mine came fried. Since I was hungry and it was late, I ate it. The waitress did give us a free piece of pie for dessert for the mistake. Although the food was OK, neither of us thought it was worthy of the great praise we had heard. I don't think it was as good as Red Lobster. In addition, the service was only so-so. Perhaps it was because it was almost closing time on a Sunday - there was only one other customer in the place - but we wouldn’t go back and wouldn’t recommend it to anyone either.

The next day, Monday the 1st of June, we did some laundry and caching in the area. We added 10 caches to our total. Among those we found were a series of caches put out by a local Boy Scout troop which were placed in various historical locations. Each of the caches had a long story about the history of that particular site. We learned quite a bit about the early history of the area just from those caches. The next day we went to the Olympic National Park, located South of Port Angeles in the Olympic mountains. The park is very large, taking up most of the interior area of the Olympic Peninsula, however, there are only a few roads going into the park. We took the most popular route up to Hurricane Ridge. We went from sea level up to over 5,000 feet in about 25 miles. Up on the ridge there was still huge piles of snow in the parking lot. We also saw a large herd of deer grazing in a meadow right below the visitors center. Really pretty views of the Olympic mountains from the center. After visiting the park we went down into Port Angeles and visited the Elks Lodge there. The lodge was in a large beautiful old building right in the middle of downtown. The building was built in the very early 1900's and was five stories. The bottom floor was shops (providing income to the lodge) the second floor was the bar, dining room, and game rooms. The lodge room was on the third floor and the top two floors were apartments. The bartender told us that the apartments used to be for visiting Elks and for sailors who came to Port Angeles with the Pacific Fleet back in the early 1900's. It seems that the Pacific Fleet of the U.S. Navy would visit Port Angeles every summer with dozens of ships. In fact, the Lodge calls itself the “Naval Lodge” of Port Angeles. There were a lot of great old pictures in the lodge building of the fleet anchored in the Strait just off of Port Angeles. Even today the local Navy recruiter in town keeps an apartment at the Lodge. There is a surprising amount of interesting history up in this area. On our way home from Port Angeles we stopped at the Casino near Sequim for dinner and some gaming.

On Tuesday, June 3rd, we visited the Olympic Game Farm, just outside of Sequim. The farm has a whole bunch of wild animals, including buffalo, elk, deer, several varieties of bear, yaks, tigers, lions, zebras and other animals. The interesting part was that it was a drive-through type park. You drive around the park in your car and the animals wander around. Most of the hoofed animals, elk, deer, buffalo, zebras, etc., were free to roam right up to your vehicle and they let you roll your window down and feed them. In fact, they sold you a loaf of bread at the entrance for that purpose. They did require you to stay in your car. The animals are well adapted to visitors and will stick their head right in the car if you roll the window down far enough. The bears were in their own enclosures with electric fences, but you could drive to within three feet of them and they too would come right up to the fence and beg for food. The real predators, the lions, tigers and wolves, were in regular zoo-like cages. Since they never got fed, they were pretty uninterested in your passing. We had a great time. Turns out the park was founded in the 1950's by the Disney studios as a ranch for their movie animals. They also took in old carnival and circus animals. Many of the animals in the park today are relatives of these original “professional” animals. Today they are an independent zoological park. We had a great time driving through the park. Some California old-timers may remember the old Orange County Wild Animal Safari south of Santa Ana from back in the 1960's and early 1970's. That was also a drive-through type park, although much bigger and better populated with African animals than this one was. I went there a couple of times before they closed down.

After our visit to the animal park we stopped by the Sequim Elks Lodge for a cocktail. There was a gal sitting at the bar who struck up a conversation. Shirley was her name and I would guess she was in her late 60's or early 70's. She was a member of the lodge and it turns out she spent 12 years as a cook on an ocean-going tugboat up in Alaska. She told a bunch of great stories and was very entertaining.

Wednesday morning we got up very early to leave the park in Sequim for our next destination. Unlike most travel days, we were packed up and out of the park by 8:00 a.m. The reason we were out so early was that we had to catch the ferry in Port Townsend at 9:30. We wanted to take the ferry because if we took the ferry over to Whidbey Island, then drove North up the island and over to the mainland to I-5, we could get to Blaine, Washington, our next destination, in only 125 miles. The only other way was to go all the way back south to Olympia and up I-5, almost 275 miles. Plus, the longer route had us driving right through the middle of metropolitan Seattle. Because the Port Townsend ferry is relatively small in comparison to other Washington State ferries, large vehicles were required to have advance reservations. The ferry only has room for about 50 regular cars, so larger vehicles take up space and weight capacity and are therefore limited on each crossing. I called about a week before the day we wanted to cross and found that all three of the mid-day crossings were already closed to additional large heavy vehicles. We had a choice of either the 9:30 a.m. crossing or the 5:00 p.m. crossing. We didn’t want to be on the road late, so we took the early choice. Getting on and off the ferry was easy and the crossing only takes about a half hour. The trip was $55 for both the coach and the car. We would have spent more than that in fuel for the extra 150 miles of the land route, not to mention the additional three hours of driving. We arrived at the Beachwood RV Resort, just South of Blaine, by 1:00. This resort is one of our membership parks and was pretty big, although a little rustic. It is actually about 5 miles South of Blaine, Washington, and about a mile in from the coast. By the way, today, June 4, 2009, marks the 4th anniversary of our selling our house in Indio, buying the coach and living full-time on the road. Four wonderful years and looking forward to many years to come!

On Friday, the 5th of June, we took a driving tour of Blaine and the surrounding area. Blaine is a fairly small town located right on the border with Canada. I-5 goes right up to the border to the Peace Arch Park then into Canada where it turns into Hwy 99. There is also a truck crossing a mile or so East of the I-5 crossing. After driving around Blaine we drove down the coast, eventually getting to Bellingham, a large city about 20 miles South of Blaine. Bellingham is the first big city you come to us you drive South on I-5 from Canada. It was also the only town with an Elks Lodge in the area. We went by the Lodge for a visit and found a very nice, friendly lodge. We had a couple of drinks and visited with a number of the members who were in the lodge. The bartender couldn’t find a lodge pin so one of the members who was there took two off of his hat and gave them to us. Very nice people. If you are an Elk in the area, be sure to visit the Bellingham Lodge. The next day we went out to do some caching, mostly in the Blaine area. We found 14 caches. One of the caches was in the Peace Arch park and we have a picture of Jackie with one foot in Canada and one foot in the U.S.

Sunday, the 7th of June, we headed down to Ferndale, a small town between Blaine and Bellingham, for a Highland Games Festival. We had seen posters for the festival the first time we drove through the area on Friday. The Highland Festival is, of course, Scottish and there were bunches of people walking around in kilts and other Scottish dress. They had a big area of booths selling merchandise (a lot of kilts and tartans and the like) as well as a big food court. They had a couple of bagpipe corps, including one from the Vancouver Police Department and one from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC. They also had a number of folk dancers. In addition to the Scottish themed music and dancing they had a number of young adults participating in the traditional highland games. These included tossing large weights, either for elevation or for distance, tossing sheaves (20 lb bundles of hay) up and over a 15 foot bar, and, my favorite, tossing the caber, which is a large log. The idea is to pick up the log, which is about 15 feet long, and tossing it forward so it makes a complete flip and lands pointed at 12:00 in relation to where you were standing when you threw it. The judging is solely on the direction the log is pointed when it lands. Pretty interesting game. While at the Highland Games I also learned the Clan my Scottish heritage goes back to, and what my Clan's tartan looks like. I have postitively traced through documentation that my mother's mother was Scottish. Her maiden name was Swanson and the census records from 1910 show that both of her parents (my great-grandparents) were born in Scotland. Swanson is a family name that belongs to the Gunn Clan. The Gunn tartan is sort of blue and green, similar to the one the guy in the bright blue shirt in the photo is wearing. Fun to know one's heritage. Monday we hung out at the coach and took care of chores. On Tuesday, the 9th we went out and did some more caching, adding 16 to our total. A good afternoon of caching. Wednesday we drove back down to Bellingham to do our shopping before we head into Canada.

Thursday, June 11th - the big day. Our motor-homing becomes International! We left the park around 10:00 a.m. or so and, after a quick fuel stop so we had full tanks, we headed up to the border to enter into Canada. After about a 10 minute wait we approached the entry station and I handed the border agent our passports. He asked all the usual questions, how long would we be in Canada, when was the last time we were here, what was the purpose of our visit, how much alcohol do we have, how much tobacco, do we have a pet, does it have a rabies shot, and do we have any firearms. All the things we expected since we studied up well anticipating our entry and wanting to cover all the bases. I declared all the booze we had left, basically a couple of liters of leftover open bottles of liquor and a six-pack of beer in the fridge. No tobacco, no guns, no mace, and the cat has a recent rabies shot. There was a big fifth-wheel from Arizona in front of us. He stopped at the booth for a couple minutes and then headed off down the road into Canada. For us it was, “please pull over to side and go inside the office”. Inside the agent first had me empty my pockets on the counter. Then he asked me what I did before I retired. Since my badge case was sitting on the counter for him to look at I said I was a retired cop. That started the, “then you have a gun with you, right?” No, I don’t have a gun, I know the rules. His response, “you said this was your first time here, how do you know the rules?” I told him, I looked on the internet. Two of them then proceeded to the motorhome, sent Jackie out into the office and proceeded to go through the coach for about ten minutes. I guess they finally decided that I was either telling the truth and didn’t have a gun, or they were tired of looking. The fact is, I normally do carry a handgun, but I left it with my brother in Nevada specifically because I didn’t want any problems at the border. I know what Canada’s attitude towards firearms is. They finally let us go. At least they didn’t charge us duty for the open bottles of booze.

One thing I did find out AFTER we got the RV park was that during their search one of them took the keys out of the Jeep’s ignition - probably thinking they needed it to open the back hatch. When they put it back in the ignition they didn’t turn it to release the steering wheel lock. For the 15 mile drive from the border to the RV park the front wheels were locked and couldn’t steer. Fortunately, we didn’t go far or fast so there was no damage to the tires or the Jeep itself. Had we needed to go a hundred miles or so it could have been pretty bad. Anyway, we did get to the RV park in Surrey, BC, Canada and got settled in. Surrey is a suburb of Vancouver. After we got settled into the park we headed into town to take care of some chores. One was to get a few hundred dollars of Canadian money. The other was to get some Absolute vodka. We found a BC liquor store and found that the 1.75 liter bottles of Absolute were $56 each (Canadian of course). Two bottles were well over $100! Yikes.

On Friday we just got in the Jeep and took an all afternoon driving tour of Vancouver and the surrounding area. Vancouver and its suburbs are a huge metropolitan area and is VERY densely populated. You see dozens of huge apartment and/or condo buildings all over, especially in downtown Vancouver. The traffic is terrible - there are very few roadways with four lanes and almost none with more than four. The whole metro area is built on a series of islands and peninsulas, so there are numerous bridges - bottlenecks to traffic. However, it is also a very pretty town. We found the China Town area and walked around there for a while. We also had lunch there at a Chinese restaurant. The food was good, and plentiful, but a little different from what one gets used to in the states. Vancouver is a very international town, with a lot of Asians. Even out of the China Town area it seemed the predominant races were Asian. There are also a lot of East Indians, so much so that there is a TV station in the area that broadcasts in the Indian language. In some parts of town you see a predominance of Sikhs - all with the traditional turbans. A very cosmopolitan area. What you didn’t see much of were blacks or Hispanics. As part of our tour we went to White Rock, a suburb of Vancouver, which had a Canadian Elks Lodge with a bar. In our research we learned that, unlike in the USA, very few of the Canadian Elks lodges have lounges or bars. In the whole Vancouver area (about 7 lodges), White Rock was the only one with a bar. We found the bar open and spent about an hour chatting with the locals that were there. We had a very good time. Unfortunately, the lodge had no lodge pin, so they will go unrecognized on our banner.

Saturday, the 13th of June, we did some caching in the general area around Surrey. We found 13 caches and in the process hit our 800th find! Not too bad for a little over a year. We happened upon a caching “event” at a local park so we got to meet some of the local cachers as well. Had a nice chat with one of the guys who hid a lot of caches in the Vancouver area. On Sunday, the 14th, we decided to visit the Vancouver Aquarium. It was a nice aquarium, although a little small compared to some I have visited in the U.S. We did see a week old baby Beluga whale swimming around with mom. This was the big attraction and the place was packed. We had lunch there and spent about four hours walking around looking at the exhibits. A very fun afternoon. After the aquarium we spent another couple hours driving around Stanley Park. This is a huge urban park located just minutes from downtown Vancouver. The aquarium is in Stanley Park. The park is on a peninsula so there is water almost all the way around it. It has every variety of sports field, several large restaurants, view points, and huge areas of forested land and miles of hiking and biking trails. The park reminds one of New York’s Central Park, including the big lake in the middle of it. Stanley park is actually bigger than Central Park with 1,000 acres compared to 843. Since it was Sunday, there were thousands of people at the park. One of the nicer parks we have seen. Stanley Park is the big green area to the North of downtown Vancouver in the photo from the postcard we scanned.

Monday, the 15th of June is our last day in the Vancouver area. We decided to go caching again and managed to find eight. The numbers were sort of low because most of the caches were back in little wooded parks which are all over the Vancouver area. You look around and see a lot of houses and apartment buildings, but what you don’t see are all the little parks the cities have put in. Some can’t even be seen from the road, you have to park and walk a trail back between houses. Then you come out on this big area of woods and meadows, right in the middle of a housing area. We found it pretty amazing that there was so much open space in such a densely developed area.

Tomorrow we leave Vancouver to drive about 150 miles Northeast to a little town called Merritt. I know nothing about the town, only that it was a reasonable distance to drive and there were a couple of RV parks in the town. We will see what’s there when we get there. The big Canadian adventure continues. That concludes this episode of Travels with Roy and Jackie - until we have a chance to update you again, keep the faith and enjoy the road of life!

The Great Northwest

Greetings blog fans from the glorious Olympic peninsula of Washington. More on that later. Our last episode left us at the Valley of the Rouge State Park in Oregon on the 11th of May. The next day, Tuesday, we went out and did some local caching, finding 14. We also reached the "700 finds" mark in our caching sport! Yea us! On Wednesday we drove into Medford, Oregon, about 25 miles Southeast of the park to do some shopping. We hit the Costco there and went into the Fred Meyers store for the rest of our groceries and household stuff. After a little while we realized that everything we were buying seemed to be more expensive than we remembered from Walmart. We finally just quit and left the store buying only a couple of items that we liked that we knew Walmart didn’t carry. The next day we drove to the Walmart in Grants Pass, about 15 miles West of the park to do our shopping and found that we were correct. Most things at Walmart were five to ten percent less than the same item in Fred Meyers. A lot of folks don’t like Walmart because of the "big box store" affect it has on small communities, driving local businesses under - but you can’t deny the buying power Walmart has and the savings it can produce. I don’t always like the limited selections at Walmart, but you can’t deny the savings from shopping there.

Friday, the 15th of May, was Jackie’s birthday! Happy birthday to you, etc. etc. We went out after lunch to do some caching and found 6. Later in the afternoon we went into Medford so Jackie could have her birthday dinner at the Outback there. She loves the lamb at the Outback. I had a good time too because the Outback has King Crab, which is my favorite. We had a great birthday dinner! Saturday we drove into Ashland, Oregon, a small college town about 10 miles South of Medford. We have been to Ashland several times and love the laid back nature of the town. There are some really neat shops along the main drag and the Elks Lodge is right downtown and very friendly. We stopped in at the lodge for a couple of drinks, then went out and walked the town for a couple hours. After that we drove into Medford and went to the Elks Lodge there.

Sunday morning, the 17th of May, we left the Valley of the Rogue and drove up to the Keizer Elks Lodge. Keizer is a suburb of Salem, Oregon, the capital of Oregon. We had visited the lodge on previous trips through Oregon, but this would be the first time we stayed in their RV park. The park is great - gravel sites with paved patios, full hookups including 50 amp service and sewer. All this for $17 a night. The lodge is very friendly and active. The next day, Monday, we went out and did some caching, getting 8 finds in the local area. We also drove down to Salem and did some exploring around the capital area. Tuesday we stayed around the coach doing some chores. We headed over to the Lodge in the late afternoon for a cocktail and when we walked out of the coach we ran into Pam Matthews in the parking lot. She and her husband Glenn winter in the desert and she works part time as a bartender in the Indio Elks Lodge. We were really surprised to find them at the Keizer Elks. Turns out they have a home in King City, Oregon, a Portland suburb and they were on their way home from the desert. They stopped in Keizer for the night so they would arrive at their house early in the day to be able to have time to open the house after a long winter and unpack the RV. We had some cocktails with them in the lodge. We also arranged to have lunch with them later in the week after we arrived in the Portland area.

On Wednesday, May 20th, we left the Keizer Lodge and headed North about 20 miles to Aurora, Oregon, where there is a SpeedCo Service Center. SpeedCo is a sort of "Jiffy Lube" for large diesel trucks. It’s the same principle, drive in, get a lube, oil and filter change, and drive out. We have to get our coach serviced at least once per year. The service book also says at 15K miles, but we have never gotten that much in one year, so we usually plan on a lube - oil - filter change in late May or early June of every year. The first time we had the service, in June of 2006, we had it done at a Coach Care center in Elkhart, Indiana. Coach Care is a Cummins service center. We spent over a thousand dollars for the service. In June of 2007 we had it done at a Coach Care facility in Eugene, Oregon. This one was about $1,200. In June of 2008 we went to the Monaco factory service center in Elkhart, Indiana - again, over $1,000. Then I learned about SpeedCo Centers from reading the online chat groups for Monaco Coach owners. We went to SpeedCo and had the oil changed, the chassis lubed, new oil filter, both fuel filters, the air filter AND the oil changed in the generator (also including an oil and fuel filter) and the grand total was $355!! And this included three gallons of antifreeze and two spare fuel filters just so we would be prepared for travel in Alaska. I cannot emphasis enough that if you have a big diesel pusher - DON"T go to a dealer or to Coach Care for simple lube, oil, filter services - it is a major ripoff! SpeedCo lets you watch them work, in fact they require you to be there when they torque the drain plugs so you know that they are properly fitted. I also learned where the various filters are on my coach, which could be handy in case of emergency breakdown. SpeedCo can’t do any repairs, only the same kind of service you get in any JiffyLube type operation, but for that stuff you can’t beat it. It only took two hours for the service and we were back on the road heading the last 20 miles to an RV park in Tualatin, Oregon, a Southern suburb of Portland.

On Thursday, the 21st of May, we had lunch with the Matthews’ at a Chinese restaurant in Tualatin called Lee’s Kitchen. They had told us they eat there a lot and really like it. It was not a buffet, but rather a real restaurant. The food was wonderful and not expensive. We really enjoyed visiting with Pam and Glenn. After lunch we went down to the outlet stores in Woodburn, South of Portland and also to the Camping World store in Wilsonville. The next day we went out and did some caching after lunch, adding six finds to our list. Late in the afternoon we took Smokey the Cat to the vet! One of the things we learned about going into Canada was that if you had a pet it had to have a current rabies vaccination and a health certificate. Smokey just turned nine and hasn’t been to the vet since he was a kitten. He never goes outside and has always been healthy, so there has been no need to take him. Fortunately, there was a vet office right across the street from the RV park we were staying in, so we made an appointment for Smokey on Friday afternoon. We put him in the carrier and drove him to the vet’s office - he was not happy! Poor crying kitty, you would think he was being tortured. Surprisingly, once we got him into the exam room and out of the carrier he was a great patient. Didn’t fight the vet or try to jump off the table or anything. The vet - a very nice lady doctor - gave him a full exam and said he was very healthy except for some tarter on his teeth. He weighs in at just under 15 pounds, but the vet said he was not too much over weight, just a big cat. He also got his rabies shot and it didn’t seem to faze him a bit. He was less happy to be put back into the carrier for the trip home, but recovered quickly once we let him back out in the coach.

The next day, Saturday the 23rd, we headed into downtown Portland for the weekly street festival. There were a couple hundred vendors set up in an area along the Willamette River right in old Portland. It was mostly artisans and food vendors. We spent a couple of hours wandering through the various booths. We also had lunch at a regular restaurant in old Portland called the Thirsty Lion. It was an English Pub motif but we only had hamburgers, which were very good. We were originally going to visit a restaurant called Pause which is owned and operated by the son of my old boss at the Desert Princess, Lynn Gilliam. We have visited the restaurant on previous stops in Portland. Her son, Capron, has been very successful with the restaurant. Unfortunately, when I called to see when Capron would be in, the gal that answered the phone said he would be gone until the Tuesday after Memorial day, which was the day we were leaving Portland. So we didn’t get to visit the restaurant. Maybe next time.

Sunday, the 24th we stayed in so I could watch the Indy 500 and Coke 600 races. I got to watch the Indy race, but the NASCAR race was rained out and rescheduled for Monday. Monday was our last day in the Portland area so we went out to do some more caching and exploring. We managed to find 15caches - a pretty good afternoon. One of the more interesting things we found while caching was a Monkey Puzzle Tree. The cache was hid near the tree, which was one of the strangest looking trees I have ever seen. It was very large, with about a four foot trunk and very tall, well over 100 feet. I did some research later and found that the tree is native to the mountains of Chile and is actually a conifer, the same family as regular pine trees, firs and other evergreens. A really odd sight.

Tuesday morning we got up and packed the coach for the trip into Washington. We headed up the I-5 until Olympia, Washington, then went off onto US 101 headed North into the Olympic Peninsula of Washington. We stopped in a small town named Shelton, Washington, about 20 miles North of Olympia. Our book said the Elks Lodge there had RV parking so we decided to check it out. We found the Lodge was closed but there was an RV park in the back. The sites are on gravel and grass with only water and electric, but it was quite picturesque and we were only going to be there for two nights. Since we got there early and didn’t have to set much up for only two nights, we went out and did some afternoon caching. We found seven caches in just a couple of hours in the small town. Shelton turned out to be a very nice place to visit. One of the caches was located inside of the local history museum so we learned a lot about the history of the area, which mainly revolved around logging. The area is also known as the Christmas tree capital of the country, although we didn’t see any Christmas tree farms in our travels around the area. The lodge pin for the Shelton Elks Lodge is a Santa Claus, so they take the Christmas tree thing pretty seriously.

On Wednesday, the 27th of May we embarked on one of our famous "Elks Pub Crawls" for the South Puget Sound area. The Shelton Lodge was not open on Wednesday, however, as we were leaving for our adventures I noticed that the front door was open. I found the Secretary working inside so I was able to get a lodge pin even though we weren’t able to visit the lounge in the Lodge. We then headed South into Olympia, the capital of Washington. After some sightseeing in the area around the capital we found the Olympia Lodge - Unfortunately, they were closed until 4:00 p.m. Undaunted, we decided to drive up to Tacoma, Washington, about 30 miles North of Olympia on I-5. I had been told by a number of people that the Tacoma Lodge was one to visit because of the facilities they have. We arrived at the lodge and found that it was, indeed, a very large building with a very large parking lot. Their RV parking was in their parking lot, but they had a number of spots set up with electric service boxes. There was no water or sewer on the sites however. We went into the lodge bar and there weren’t very many other members there, but the bartender was a member of the lodge and told us a lot about it. She told us that the Tacoma Lodge has the distinction of being the largest Elks Lodge in the country as far as the physical structure, and until recently they were the largest in terms of membership as well. They have over 3,000 members! Apparently they were recently beat out in membership by a lodge in Montana which was created when three lodges merged into one.

The bartender asked one of the other members who happened to be there to take us on a tour. The building has the largest lodge room I have ever seen. According to the building code sign on the wall it seats just under 1,000 people in the theater style seating. The lodge also has full workout facilities, weight room, spa, Olympic size indoor pool, AND an eight lane bowling alley with commercial type auto pin setters. The restaurant and lounge are huge - the dance floor is bigger than some lodges we have been in! This was a very impressive lodge. After a couple drinks we headed Southeast to the Puyallup, Washington Lodge (pronounced Pew-allup). Puyallup is a suburb of Tacoma. We found a nice lodge, not real big, but very friendly. Almost everyone in the place - and it was pretty busy - took the time to introduce themselves and say hi. We had a couple of drinks and chatted with folks for quite a while. We then headed West to another Tacoma suburb called Lakeland. This was another medium sized lodge, but the atmosphere was just the opposite of the Puyallup Lodge. The bartender was lazy and listless and not a one of the other people in the bar bothered to even say hi. We had one quick drink, got our lodge pin and left.

Our final stop on the Pub Crawl was the Olympia, Washington Lodge. The lodge was not very big, but when we got there it was packed. It seemed that once a month a very large amateur jazz group comes into the lodge and plays a concert. They had also had a concert that afternoon from a local middle school band. The bartender was very friendly, but since there was a concert going on we didn’t get much conversation with any of the members. We finally left the Olympia Lodge and headed back up into Shelton. Since it was now close to 7:00, we went into town to find something to eat. We stumbled unknowingly into one of the nicest little steakhouses we have found. It was a place called The Strip Steak House and is located right on the main drag through Shelton, Railroad Avenue. The food was moderately priced and excellent. We both had great steaks, cooked just right. We recommend the Strip anytime you pass through this area. When we finally made it home we had five new lodge pins and nice dinner to remember the day by. Yea!

The next morning we closed up the coach and headed North on US 101 for the 80 mile drive to Sequim, Washington, on the North end of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington. We have been told for years by friends who have RV’ed in this area that Sequim and the surrounding areas are wonderful places to visit. We were fortunate to have one of our membership parks, Diamond Point RV Resort, located just a few miles from Sequim. We got settled in by late afternoon and just relaxed. The weather was clear and cool and the surrounding area is very pretty. In the late afternoon we were sitting outside the coach having our cocktail when a deer just wandered past the coach, only a few dozen feet away. Very relaxing place to stay. On Friday morning, the 29th of May, we decided to just spend the day sightseeing around the area. We first went to the Sequim Elks Lodge for lunch. It was a very nice lodge, although the folks there for lunch were not very friendly. Maybe the evening crowd is more outgoing - we will check that later in the week. After lunch we drove through Sequim, then out to the shore. The town is only a couple of miles south of the banks of the Strait of Juan De Fuca which is the primary route for shipping into the Puget Sound and Seattle. A few miles across the strait to the North is Canada, specifically, Victoria Island. We got to visit Victoria on the last day of our Alaskan Cruise two years ago. After looking around Sequim for a while we headed West 20 miles on US 101 to Port Angeles. Port Angeles is the "big" city on the Olympic Peninsula, with almost 20,000 population. Sequim has about 5,000 or so. Port Angeles is where you can catch the ferry to go over to Victoria Island. After driving around Port Angeles for a while we headed back home, stopping for a while at one of the Indian casinos. Didn’t win anything, but didn’t lose much either.

And that, loyal readers, brings up to the minute with our travels. We will be here in Sequim a week, then spending another week in Blaine, Washington, just South of the Canadian border on I-5. That will be our last stop before heading into Canada on or about the 11th of June. We hope to have at least periodic internet access during our travels through Canada and Alaska, so I hope to be able to keep the blog updated on a timely basis - but no promises. We will have our phones turned off in Canada (international cell calls are very expensive) but will be checking our voice mail from time to time, so if you call - leave a message and we’ll get back to you when we can. Until the next update, live - love - laugh, and enjoy life to the fullest!

California South to North - The Summer 09 Journey Begins

Hello to all our faithful followers. Our last chapter left us at the Elks Lodge in Chula Vista on a camping trip with the Palm Springs/Desert Hot Springs Elks camping club. Thursday evening, April 16th, the group headed over to the Galley Restaurant at the Chula Vista Marina for the all you can eat fish & chips dinner. We used to come to the Marina RV park right down the street from the restaurant with both the Palm Springs and Indio Elks Lodge RV groups back when we still lived in Indio. Every time we came down we would have at least one dinner at the Galley. They have excellent food and a nice outdoor patio area. The fish and chips was great and I ate way too much. Friday we pretty much stayed around the Elks Lodge with the group. We had a Washer’s tournament in the morning - neither of us made the finals, but we had fun. That evening we went into the Lodge for the Friday night dinner. I had the New York steak which was wonderful and Jackie had the salmon. We spent the rest of the evening playing table games with some of the group. Saturday we did some shopping and then had a pot luck with the group in the afternoon.

Sunday morning we got up early and left the Chula Vista Lodge about 9:00 in the morning - early for us. We were headed for the Santa Barbara Elks Lodge, about a 235 mile trip through the heart of the Orange & Los Angeles Counties area. Since it was Sunday the traffic wasn’t too bad, but I was still pretty beat by the time we got to the Lodge, which is actually in Goleta, the next town West. Fortunately, this lodge lets you make reservations for their RV lot, so we knew we had a spot waiting for us when we got there. The next day, Monday the 20th, we did some local caching and found 15. Tuesday we did our laundry and then some more caching. We only did 5 because it was pretty hot and humid and we didn’t get started until late afternoon. On Wednesday we departed the Santa Barbara Elks for the 130 mile drive up to the Oceano Elks Lodge, near Pismo Beach. We always stop in the Pismo Beach area when we go through California because Jackie has family there. Her aunt and uncle lived there for many years. Although her uncle Barky died a couple years ago, her aunt Donna and cousin Judy still live there. Oceano has a very nice RV lot and is only steps from the beach. After we got settled into our parking space at the Lodge we went over for dinner. Wednesday is the Lodge’s spaghetti night. Donna, Judy, and Donna’s friend Ron met us at the Lodge for dinner.

The next day, Thursday the 23rd, we went out for some early afternoon caching, finding seven. We found some interesting areas that Jackie had never seen even though she has been coming up to this area for many years. That evening we went over to Donna’s home for dinner. Judy and Jackie fixed tacos and fixings and we had a great time just visiting. Donna’s house sits way up on a hill overlooking Pismo Beach and the ocean. Great views. Friday afternoon we went out and did some more caching and then went to Ron’s (Donna’s boyfriend) house in Nipomo for cocktails. After that he took us to a local steak house called Jocko’s for dinner. This was one of the best steakhouses I have ever seen. The prices were very reasonable and the meals were huge and tasted great. I would definitely recommend Jocko’s to anyone who is in the area. Nipomo is off Highway 101 between Santa Maria and Pismo Beach. Saturday we relaxed for most of the day and then spent the evening at Donna’s home with just her. We ordered a pizza and had a wonderful evening talking and reminiscing.

Sunday morning we left Oceano and headed for the Visalia Elks Lodge. We had never been to this Lodge before but it was located about halfway between Oceano and Lodi, our next stop, so we decided to give it a try. The Elks camping book said they had an RV lot. We found they had about 15 spots with water and 50 amp electric on a paved surface, a very nice setup. We visited the lodge after getting setup and found it to a very nice, friendly lodge. On the way to the lodge we had noted highway signs which indicated that Visalia was only about 30 miles from Sequoia National Park, so we decided to visit the park the next day. Monday morning we headed East to the park. I had been to Sequoia once about 35 years ago and Jackie had never been. You enter the park at an elevation of about 1,200 feet and then climb up a 25 mile mountain road to the Lodgepole center which sets at about 8,500 feet. There was still several feet of snow on the ground at Lodgepole where we had lunch. On the way back down the hill we stopped at a couple of the natural features, including the General Sherman tree which is supposed to be the largest tree in the world in terms of volume. All of the sequoias are huge - bigger even than the Redwoods which they resemble. We spent about four hours touring the park and really enjoyed ourselves. We love going to National Parks. After leaving the park we did some geocaching on the way back to Visalia, finding five.

On Tuesday, the 28th of April, we left Visalia for the Lodi Elks Lodge. Like Oceano, we always try to stop in Lodi when heading up through California. The Lodge has a nice RV lot overlooking a golf course and we have some friends, Fern and Andy Lenardini, who live in Lodi. They own a vineyard and have a wine grape wholesale business. We actually know them from Indio because they have a winter home in Palm Desert and are good friends with our friends, Barry and Colleen Cohen. On Wednesday we went out to do some local caching and found 10 caches. Thursday we found another 10. Thursday afternoon we went in to the Elks Lodge for a couple cocktails. This is a very nice friendly lodge. Their lodge building used to be the clubhouse for the Woodridge Country Club before the club built a new facility. The bar has one wall of windows which look out over the golf club. While we were at the bar we struck up a conversation with a guy at the bar who turned out to be the owner of a local winery. His winery (and family name) was Castamagna. He knows Fern and Andy and his property is just around the corner from their’s. The bar serves his wine and he bought us a bottle of Zinfandel from his winery. We were having dinner with Fern and Andy on Friday, so we saved it for dinner. Friday we did our laundry in town and then had dinner in the Lodge that evening with Fern and Andy. The wine from Larry Castamagna was excellent - and that’s from a couple people who don’t drink much red wine. The dinner was also great. The Lodi Elks has a great chef and has always put on a good Friday night dinner. Jackie had lamb and I had a nice steak - both were wonderful. We had a great visit with Fern and Andy.

On Saturday, the 2nd of May, we left Lodi and headed for the Carmichael Elks Lodge, about 50 miles north. Carmichael is a suburb of Sacramento. We always stop here because Jackie has a old friend, Kathy Yarbrough who lives there. The Carmichael Elks has a great RV lot and a great lodge. Two years ago when we were here we helped get Kathy and her husband Bill to join the Elks. After we got settled into the lot, Kathy and Bill picked us up and took us to dinner at a local card club where Bill works in security. The food was wonderful and very inexpensive. On Sunday Kathy came over to the coach and she and Jackie visited for a while. She also took us over to her shop so we could see what it looked like. She owns a gift shop in another suburb of Sacramento.

On Monday Kathy came by and picked us up for a tour of Sacramento. We went to the State Capital and walked around for a while. We even went into Arnold’s office, however he wasn’t in. Jackie wanted to complain to him about the condition of California roads. We then spent about four hours driving all over Sacramento on the grand tour. This was the first time I had ever seen the greater Sacramento area. That night we had dinner with Kathy and her daughter Julie at the Joe’s Crab Shack in Old Sacramento. Julie also had her six month old daughter Bella with her. We had seen pictures of the baby, but this was our first visit in person. We had a very nice visit and a great meal. After dinner we went to the Sacramento Elks Lodge for a cocktail. This is Lodge 6, one of the oldest Elks Lodges still in existence. Their old building in downtown Sacramento was the largest building in the city when it was built in the late 1800's. Their “new” facility (1980's vintage) is also huge with a full gym, sauna, indoor pool, racket ball courts and banquet halls. Although there were only a couple of people there when we were, two of them took us on a tour of the building. Very impressive facility. Tuesday we did some shopping and caching in the area and not much else. Since it was Cinco De Mayo we did go out to dinner at a local Mexican Restaurant. We would have gone to the Lodge, but they were not doing Cinco De Mayo until the 15th of May! Go figure.

Wednesday, the 6th of May, we left Carmichael and headed North for the 150 mile drive to the Red Bluff Elks Lodge. There really isn’t too much in Red Bluff, but we always stop here because it is about halfway between Sacramento and Medford, Oregon, and the Elks Lodge has nice RV lot. On Thursday we drove to Anderson, about 20 miles North of Red Bluff, to the UPS facility to pick up our mail. We “had” to spend a couple hours at the outlet mall because the UPS customer service office wasn’t open when we got there and we had to wait for a couple hours. Oh well, we suffered through it! On Friday we just went out and did some local caching, finding 10. That evening we went to the Lodge for dinner. They were doing their Cinco De Mayo, so they had a wonderful Mexican buffet. We ate way too much, but it was good.

Saturday we went to a local arts festival, which turned out to be pretty small. We also went to a local park for our first Geocaching “Event”. One of the local cachers, whose cache we had found and logged on Thursday had emailed us to let us know that a bunch of the local cachers were holding an event and he invited us to stop by. An event is really just a gathering of cachers for socializing and meeting. Usually they hide a bunch of new caches in conjunction with the event. We met about a dozen of the local cachers and had a nice discussion. Afterwards we went out and found another 10 caches locally.

Sunday, the 10th of May we left Red Bluff California and headed North into Oregon. We had reservations at the Valley of the Rogue State Park, located about halfway between Medford and Grants Pass on the I-5. We have stayed at this park several times and have always enjoyed the experience. It is right on the Rogue River and is a beautiful park with lots of trees and grass. They have full hookups with 50 amps, all for $20 a night. This time the spot we picked had a clear line of sight to the TV satellite, so I didn’t have to set up the outside antenna - the dome worked perfectly. This is the first time since the 14th of April that we have parked the coach anywhere outside of an Elks Lodge. We went from far Southern California (Chula Vista, 5 miles from the Mexican border) all the way to the Northern border into Oregon staying at Elks Lodges. We spent 27 consecutive nights camped at Elks Lodges in California - a record for us.

And that dear readers brings us up to the minute. We are going to be here at the Valley of the Rogue for a week before continuing north through Oregon into Washington. The plan remains to head into Canada on the 11th of June. I will try to do an update of our little blog prior to going into Canada. Until then, have a great life! We are!!!

Winter Ends, Spring has Sprung!

Oh, hi there. Contrary to what you may have thought, we did not drive off the end of the earth. I have just been a little slow in updating our little chat. Sorry :-(

I believe our previous episode left us relaxing at the Desert Pools RV park in Desert Hot Springs, California. We had intended this two week stay to be relatively quiet, and for the most part, it was. We did some caching on Friday the 13th of March (can’t scare us!) and found seven. This also happened to be my son, Roy Jr.’s birthday. My youngest turned 35 - yikes! On Saturday Barry and Colleen came over for an early St. Patrick’s Day celebration. We had a very nice corned beef and cabbage dinner, Barry and I did some karaoke while the girls played cards. Had a very nice afternoon and evening. On Monday we went back out caching in the Desert Hot Springs area and found 12 more caches. When we talk about caching with folks who are not familiar, one of the things we mention is that it tends to take us to places we wouldn’t have gone had it not been for the search. On Monday we found an historical park in Desert Hot Springs with a 50 foot tall wooden Indian statue. We also ended up on top of hill on the North end of town with a killer view. The hill has been subdivided into house lots and the one on top of the hill is listed for $1.9 million. And this is with no paved road or utilities.

On Tuesday, the 17th we went out and found another 12 caches then went to the Desert Hot Springs Elks Lodge for a couple drinks and to meet up with our friends Jack and Gail Little. They live in DHS and belong to the RV group at the Elks Lodge. We have been camping with them on numerous occasions and really enjoy their company. The next few days were pretty quiet and we stayed around the coach. On Friday, the 20th of March, we drove down to Indio for a party at the Cohen’s. It was Barry’s birthday on Friday, and their anniversary a couple of days later. Both of Barry and Colleen’s daughters were in town along with their significant others and the Cohen’s granddaughter, Zoe. She is now 4 and this was the first time we had met Zoe in person. A very cute, very bright kid. Jackie had a lot of fun interacting with her. We had a great time at the party.

Saturday evening we went back to the DHS Elks Lodge for dinner with Gail and Jack, as well as several other members of the RV group. We also met with Tom Warren, the past president of Elks International, the FMCA Chapter for Elks. Tom and his wife Dorothy have a place in DHS, just down the street from the Western Horizon’s park we stay in. We were to meet both Tom and Dorothy for dinner, but Dorothy had to work late and couldn’t make it. We had a very nice dinner and visit with old friends.

Sunday morning, March 22nd, was our day to move from DHS up to Silent Valley, our ownership park in the mountains above Banning, California. We woke up to very dark, threatening skies and pretty high winds. We only had about 35 miles to drive, but were still a little anxious about the weather. Once I got on the freeway headed West, the wind, although strong, was blowing straight at us so it wasn’t making it too difficult to keep the coach straight. Once we reached the head of the Banning pass near Cabazon the rain started. At one point it was raining so hard you could barely see the road - thank goodness everyone on the freeway used some common sense and all traffic slowed to about 30 miles per hour or so until the rain let up. Fortunately, the weather let up for the last nine miles of the trip, which is the two-lane winding uphill run out of Banning to Silent Valley. Once we got to Silent Valley we found a nice campsite close to the village center and got set up. No rain, although it was windy and very cold. We actually thought we might wake up Monday morning to some snow, but that didn’t come to pass. The next few days we pretty much stayed in the coach because it was cold and windy in Silent Valley.

Finally, on Wednesday, the 25th the weather cleared up some and we were able to go out. We drove to Cathedral City to pick up our mail from Barry’s shop. We have it forwarded there when we are in Silent Valley because the park will not accept mail or packages. We also stopped at the property management company where Jackie used to work. We had a nice visit with Carol, her old boss. When we got back to the Banning area we did some caching and found 14. On Friday we went back down the hill for some more caching and found another 16 caches in the Beaumont area. That evening we went to the restaurant at Silent Valley for dinner and then to the bar for drinks and karaoke. Had a great dinner and a lot of fun in the bar. That is one of the nice things about Silent Valley, they have a good restaurant, nice bar and a little store. No need to leave the park.

On Saturday morning Jackie woke up with the beginnings of a cold, so we stayed in for a couple days. It was really too cold to do much outside anyway. I don’t think the temperature ever got above 60 for our whole stay. Last year at this time is was a little warmer and more enjoyable up there. On Monday, the 30th, Jackie was feeling a little better so we set off down the hill for some caching and found 20! This is our highest single day total ever! Yea! On Wednesday we went to Beaumont and met Marianne Conner for lunch. You may recall that her husband, our good friend David Conner, died late last year. Marianne is very upbeat and doing well - she has even learned to drive their big 40 foot coach and plans some trips this summer. After lunch we did some caching, finding 10 more. Sunday we drove down to San Diego to spend some time with Jackie’s mom. We took her to lunch and then some shopping at the mall. She is in good spirits and we had an enjoyable visit.

We spent the next few days taking care of chores, laundry and shopping, getting ready to leave Silent Valley. We were originally planning on spending 30 days in Silent Valley. However, we learned that our Indio Elks RV club was going to Borrego Springs for a three day outing and then the Palm Springs/DHS Elks RV club was going to Chula Vista, near San Diego, just a few days later on an outing. We decided that we wanted to go on these outings rather than just sit another two weeks in the cold in Silent Valley. So, on Sunday, the 5th of April, we headed down out of Silent Valley and drove to Borrego Springs, a nice little town in the Eastern foothills of the inland range. Although the town is in San Diego County, it is really a lot closer to the Salton Sea and Coachella Valley than it is to San Diego. The outing was at a very nice new resort in Borrego. We got to the park early in the afternoon and relaxed the rest of the day. There were 15 rigs on the outing so we got to spend time with a lot of our old friends from the Indio Elks Lodge. After a nice pot luck we spent several hours sitting on the patio around our portable campfire chatting with friends.

The next day, Monday, we had a “free” day (the golfers were out on the course at the resort) so we did some caching. We found 9 caches and also found a whole series of life-size metal sculptures of prehistoric animals that Ricardo Breceda, an artist from Perris, California, has placed in the desert area around Borrego Springs. There are several dozen scattered around in life-like tableaus. The animals include mammoths, saber tooth cats, and early horses and camels. If you are in the Borrego Springs area you need to go find them. More information on the art can be found at www.galletameadows.com. Monday night we had a steak BBQ with all the fixen’s at the resort. Our wagon masters, Bill and Lynette, bought huge T-bones for the group as well as some of the biggest baking potatoes I have ever seen! After dinner I set up the karaoke and we had a couple hours of great fun. A lot of the group got up to sing and everyone seemed to really enjoy the evening.

Tuesday our wagon masters had a Mexican potluck brunch which was wonderful. Jackie and I are not morning people, but this was scheduled for 10:00 which was perfect for us. We had a great meal and visited for a while. In the afternoon we went out and did some more local caching, finding another 8 in the area. That night the wagon masters had a hot dog and fixen’s dinner and a number of us sat around our little portable fire pit for a couple hours, drinking, talking and telling jokes. Wednesday morning we packed up and headed back up to Indio. We didn’t want to go all the way up to Silent Valley for just six days, so we went to our membership park in Indio, Indian Waters. We had a nice spot there and relaxed the rest of the day. On Thursday we did some caching in the Indio area and found 6.

Friday Jackie went to the doctor for some tests. In the late afternoon we headed over to the Aqua Caliente Casino in Rancho Mirage because we had tickets for the Chelsea Handler show. Chelsea is a comedian who has her own talk show on the cable network, “E” which we watch almost every night. The show was in the brand new show room at the casino which is a fabulous venue, especially compared to what they have at the two Indio casinos. We gambled for a little while (only lost about $60 between us) and then had a real nice dinner at one of the casino restaurants. The show was wonderful, and a bit raunchy, but we expected that having been exposed to here TV show, which has a lot of “bleeps” even for a cable show. We really enjoyed the evening.

On Saturday, the 11th of April, we met Tom and Lynn Gilliam for lunch. Lynn was the General Manager and my boss when I was the Association Manager at the Desert Princess Country Club. I worked for her for almost seven years. She is now the General Manager for the new Sun City Shadow Hills development in Indio. Tom has had some major health problems recently, including a spontaneous subdural hematoma which could have killed him had the doctors not diagnosed it properly. He didn’t hit his head or anything, he just had a blood vessel burst in his skull. That was a couple months ago and he is doing pretty well now. He seemed to be in good spirits, although he has not been able to return to work yet. After lunch we did some shopping for our trip to Chula Vista with the Palm Springs Elks RV group next week.

Sunday, the 12th, was Easter and we went to our old church, the Pathfinder Church of the Risen Christ. Father Ned and Rev. Kathy are long time friends and we used to be really involved with the church and their retreats when we lived and worked in Indio. I used to do all the music and sound for the retreats and Jackie was also a member of the team. Most of the people at the Easter service were new to us, but it was nice to see Ned and Kathy again. After the service we went over to the Motorcoach Country Club where Barry and Colleen Cohen live to spend the afternoon with them. This will probably be the last time we see them before we leave for our summer travels. We stopped in at the Country Club’s restaurant to see Shane Ryan, Jackie’s Godson and his family. Vicki, Shane’s mom, is the food and beverage manager at the Club and she had the family up there for Easter brunch. We got to see Shane’s mom Vicki, his dad Gary, his uncle, Larry and his grandmother, Nancy. After we visited with them for a bit, we headed over to Barry and Colleen’s for some fun. Jackie brought over some lamb chops for she and Colleen - Barry and I don’t care for lamb. We had a couple drinks and a nice boat ride on the private lake. It was a great afternoon. The girls had their lamb and Barry and I had some pasta with some of Barry’s great sauce. It was a very nice way to spend Easter.

Tuesday morning, the 14th, we packed up the coach and headed to San Diego for the outing with the Palm Springs/Desert Hot Springs Elks RV group. We arrived in the early afternoon at the Chula Vista Elks Lodge, which has a 27 space RV park in their parking lot. They have full hookup sites, including sewer and cable at each site. There are 10 rigs at this outing. Tuesday afternoon we had a nice happy hour and met a lot of newer members of the group we had not known before. They are a very friendly group and we had a nice time chatting. We had dinner in the Chula Vista lodge. It was “taco night” but the food was much more than just the crunchy hamburger tacos you get at most lodges. They had about four choices of filling along with rice and beans and it tasted great. The next day, Wednesday, we took Jackie’s mom out to lunch, then some shopping and finally to her hair and nails appointment. Normally, we don’t get to spend that much time with her because we usually visit when we are staying up in the Coachella Valley. That means we have to leave San Diego by mid afternoon to miss the rush hour traffic. This time we are staying only about six miles away so it was easy to take our time. She seemed to enjoy the visit. Wednesday evening we had a wonderful pot luck dinner with the group in the RV park. We played a couple of games after dinner and visited. This is a great group to be around. Today (April 15th) is also the day we designated as our cat Smokey’s birthday. We got him in May of 2000 and figured he was about five weeks old, so we decided that April 15th was an easy date to remember (tax day) and was probably pretty close to his real birthday. He is nine today, which is 52 in human years according to a web site we checked. Happy Birthday Smokey and welcome to middle age! Jackie said he looked depressed today, I’m not so sure.

Thursday morning we went out and did some caching in the Chula Vista area. We only got eight, but one of them was our 600th cache! Considering we have only been doing this about a year, we are doing pretty good. Tonight we have dinner at the Galley Restaurant, over at the Chula Vista Marina. We used to go to the RV park with both the Palm Springs and the Indio Elks Rv clubs. The Galley has great food and we are looking forward to dinner.

Well gang, that catches us up to the minute. We are here in Chula Vista until Sunday the 19th when we start our journey North! Our winter is almost over and our grand summer adventure to Canada and Alaska starts in just a few days. I will try to be a little more timely with my updates to our little news blog as we travel North. Until the next time, have a happy life and remember that life’s a journey, not a destination, so enjoy the trip!

A Time of Sadness

We are now back in the California desert in beautiful Desert Hot Springs, North of Palm Springs. At the end of our last chapter we were in Salome, Arizona, halfway through our two week stay there. On Saturday, the 21st of February we went to the chili cook-off and celebration in Salome. They held it at one of the two airparks in town. Both of these airparks have large home sites located adjacent to a runway suitable for most small private aircraft. Most of the houses have hangers as well as garages so the folks can taxi from their driveway to the runway and take off. Pretty cool setup if you can afford the hobby of flying or have a serious business need to fly around in a small plane. The celebration had contests for both chili and salsa. We didn’t sign up for the tasting because it has been my experience that most of these contests have the contestants working to make the product as hot ast they can. While I like spicy foods, super hot chili’s and salsa’s I don’t need. One of the food booths did have some locals cooking up beef chili verde with beans and rice. Both Jackie and I had that for lunch and it was great. They had a few art vendors and a real nice car show considering we were 150 miles from any major town. There were probably three dozen cars including some very nice street rods. They also had some local bands playing and a motorcycle drill team. All and all not a bad festival for a small desert town. We had a good time. Couldn't resist taking the picture shown here. This propane business was just down the road from our RV park. The Passmore Gas Company! Too Funny!

Other than doing some more caching and playing poker one more time, we didn’t do too much more while at Salome. We were originally scheduled to leave Salome on Tuesday and go directly to Yucaipa, California, about 50 miles West of Indio. However, we found out that a friend of ours, Lynette Bollier was doing a Cajun party at the Indio Elks Lodge on Tuesday night, which also happens to be Fat Tuesday, the start of Mardi Gras. In addition, our Elks RV club, the Indio Desert Drifters, were holding their monthly meeting right after the party. Since we had decided that we wanted to go with the Drifters on their April outing to Borrego Springs, we thought we needed to attend the meeting to be sure we got signed up for the outing. With all these considerations, we decided to leave Salome one day early, on Monday, and delay our arrival in Yucaipa until Wednesday, and stay two nights at the Indio Elks Lodge’s RV park. So that’s what we did - we left Salome on Monday, the 23rd and drove the 150 miles to Indio and settled into the park early in the afternoon. That gave us time to do some shopping at Costco and Wally World since we had been out in the boonies away from large stores for the last two weeks. We also got to visit with our friends Barry and Colleen that evening. The next night we went to the party and had some great gumbo, met all our old Elks RV friends and had a great time.

That Tuesday night we went to bed knowing that we had to get up the next morning for the long 50 mile drive from Indio to Yucaipa. At one in the morning my phone rang and it was my brother Dennis letting me know that my mother had just passed away back in Phoenix. He told me that he had been with her at the end and that she went quietly and peacefully. While sad, I knew in my heart that she was now in a better place having seen how she had to spend the last six years wasting away. Alzheimer’s is a horrible disease that robs you of your loved ones while still leaving the shell. I certainly hope that they find a cure for it soon. My mother came from a family of 12, of which eight were girls. To the best of my knowledge, all of the girls in the family who lived past 60 developed Alzheimer’s. My mother was the youngest of the family, so my memories of my older aunts is fuzzy, but I do remember as a very small child hearing talk about my older aunts being talked about as "senile" or even crazy. I remember very clearly my aunt Betty and aunt Bernice going into homes and suffering just as my mother did later. None of the men in the family seemed to develop the condition, so I am not as frightened of what may come in my later years as I know my mother was. I know she knew what was coming and had to be scared, but she never let it show. She just drifted into it, slowing losing everything that was mom, leaving us many years before she actually died. Rest in peace Mom, we love you.

The next morning, Wednesday, we sadly packed up and headed to Yucaipa Regional Park. We have stayed here and written about this facility before. It is a very nice San Bernardino County park with full 50 amp hookups. The sites are widely spaced and there is a lot of green. Our reservation at the park was for 12 days, although we had already given up one day by coming in a day late. Since we had no clear idea as to when my mother’s funeral in Phoenix would be, we checked in and paid for the entire reservation. The next day, Thursday we did some chores and laundry and just hung around the coach. On Friday we spent several hours caching in the area and ended up doing about 15 caches, one of our more productive days. We also got a call from Dennis that the viewing for my mother would be on Tuesday, March 3rd in the evening and the memorial service would be the next morning. With that information we made reservations at an RV park in Goodyear, Arizona, very close to where my brother Ken lives. We decided to drive over to Phoenix on Monday and leave on Friday. Fortunately, Jackie contacted the County Park Headquarters and explained our situation and they gave us a credit for the six days we weren’t going to use at Yucaipa. While not a refund, it is good for a future stay and we will probably come back here for at least a week in the Fall after our trip north. Kudos to the San Bernardino County Park folks for being understanding and reasonable.

On Saturday morning, the 28th, we headed out early for San Diego to spend some time with Jackie’s mom. We got there in time to take her out to lunch and then some shopping at the local mall in National City, South of San Diego. We took her back to her group home and chatted for a while before heading back up to Yucaipa. Beverly just turned 90 and is doing pretty well. She has a little trouble walking and uses a walker, but she still wants to get up and out from time to time. While she has some memory issues, they are typical age losses and nothing even close to Alzheimer’s or dementia. The next day we stayed around the coach getting ready for heading to Phoenix on Monday morning. We normally don’t drive over 200 miles with the coach in one day, but we knew that we needed to do the nearly 300 miles to Phoenix in one hop, so we planned to leave about 9 in the morning, which is VERY early for us! Not only was it a six hour drive, but we lost an hour going from Pacific time to Mountain time. The drive went well and we checked into the RV park, Cotton Lane RV Resort, in Goodyear about 4:30 local time. We didn’t visit with any family because we found out after we got there that all of my brothers and their kids and grandkids had driven up to Cottonwood, North of Phoenix about a 100 miles, to spend the day with my brother Dennis who lives there. My brother David and his family, who live in Virginia Beach, Virginia, had driven in for the funeral and were staying with Dennis. Russ, my brother in Vegas had driven down with his daughter and had been staying with Ken in Goodyear, but they had all driven up to Cottonwood that morning. It was far too late for us to drive up there, so we missed the early family reunion.

The next day was very difficult. We went to the funeral home for the viewing at about 3:00 pm. The viewing was scheduled to last until 8:00. Mom looked at peace for the first time in many years, but it was still very emotional and difficult to say goodbye. Over the course of the next couple hours almost all of the immediate family came for the viewing. Mom had five sons, twelve grandchildren, thirteen great grandchildren, and two great great grandchildren. Of these 32 immediate descendants, only two of the grandchildren and one of the great great grandkids were not at the viewing. In addition, there were the various spouses and significant others of the family. Since mom had been pretty much isolated by her condition since my dad died in 2002, we didn’t expect too many others besides family. The man who ran the hospice in which she spent her last five years and took care of her, did come to the viewing and brought his entire family to the memorial. While these viewings are very difficult emotionally, it was also a time for reunion for our family because we are very widespread and don’t get together very often. In fact, the last time all five sons and their families were together was in November of 2002 when my dad died. One very nice touch that made the viewing easier was a video slide show Dennis had put together from mom’s old photo albums. He had over 200 pictures from 1920's, when mom was born, all the way up to 2002 when dad died. Having this program run gave everyone a natural outlet for conversation and reminiscing about the happy times. I am very grateful to Dennis for all the work he did in putting this nice presentation together. It allowed people to focus on the good times rather than the immediate loss. Among the pictures were the portrait of mom from the mid-1950's above and the picture of mom and me from 1954 shown here. Thank you Dennis, for this and everything else you have done the last seven years for mom and the family.

The next morning, 10:00 a.m. was the memorial service. The entire family, as well as a number of other friends and acquaintances, gathered to say goodbye to LaVerne Disch, matriarch of the Holt/Disch clan. The pastor of the Lutheran Church in Phoenix they used to attend officiated at the memorial. Although he never met my mom, he did a great job on the memorial. Dennis and Ken picked out some good music and it was a very moving service. Mom will be cremated and ashes buried at sea in the same area as dad was seven years ago. After the memorial everyone gathered the flowers and headed to Goodyear and Ken’s house for the wake.

Ken and his wife, Susan, did a great job with the wake. Like most wakes, this one became a celebration of mom’s life and a grand reunion of the family. Hundreds of pictures were taken of the various permutations that come with four generations gathering together. Although Ken and Susan don’t have any kids of their own, they went out and got some stuff to keep the little ones busy and also put on some great food and drink. At one point we all (adults anyway) had a final toast to mom to help her on her way to heaven. Finally, around dark, the family and friends who had gathered started to disburse. We went back to our coach to relax after two very difficult days.

The next day, Thursday, we invited Ken, David and Russ and their families to come over to our coach for snacks and drinks. Dennis had gone back up to Cottonwood, but the rest of us spent another several enjoyable hours talking about our childhoods, mom, families and all the stuff that brothers and their families discuss. Finally it was time to say goodbye for now. David and his family started the long drive back to Virginia on Friday, we headed back to California Friday morning, and Russ and his daughter went back to Las Vegas on Saturday. We all vowed to try to get together more often and no only when someone dies. I hope that it works out and we can stay in closer touch with each other. We have a great family and need to celebrate that as often as we can.

Our drive back to Indio was uneventful and, since we had given up our spot in Yucaipa and received a credit, we went back to the Indio Elks Lodge for another couple of nights. Friday night we met with Bill and Lynette for drinks and dinner at Cactus Jacks. Saturday afternoon we went over to Barry and Colleen’s place. The gals played cards, Barry and Roy talked and drank, and we went for a nice boat ride on their little private lake. A very pleasant evening after a tough week.

Sunday morning we headed for Desert Hot Springs and Western Horizon’s Desert Pools RV Resort. It was a long 25 mile trip, but we made it! We got settled into a nice spot right near the clubhouse. We will be here for two weeks before heading up to Silent Valley, our park in the mountains above Banning. Things have been pretty quiet for us here for the first part of our stay. The first four days we only left to run a few errands, do laundry and some shopping at Costco and Wally World. (We ran out of Absolute and THAT absolutely cannot be allowed!!) Thursday I took the car down into Cathedral City to Barry’s shop to have the front wheel bearings replaced. They have been making a terrible racket and I wanted to get them fixed before the big summer trip. After I got back we went out and did some local geocaching. We found 11 caches all within a few miles of the park. Had to do some desert driving, but we have started to enjoy that.

Well that brings us up to date gang. I will probably post again in a few weeks while we are up in Silent Valley. Until then - happy life!

Arizona Travels

Greetings friends from beautiful Salome, Arizona. In our last episode we had just arrived in Casa Grande, Arizona for a two-week stay at Western Horizon’s resort. Casa Grande is located near the junction of Interstate’s 8 and 10 and is half way between Phoenix, 50 miles to the North and Tucson 50 miles to the South. Although we stayed at this particular resort for a couple of days back in 2005, this would be our first extended stay here. It is a quite large resort with nice facilities. Paved roads, 50 amp full hookup gravel sites and concrete patios at all sites. Not many trees, but then it is in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. The clubhouse facilities are very nice. Our first few days there were pretty routine, taking care of some chores (like laundry which we hadn’t done in about two weeks) and doing some local urban geocaching. All tolled, we did about 30 caches or so in the Casa Grande area during the two-week period.

On Saturday, the 31st of January, we drove up to Phoenix (actually Glendale, a Western suburb) to visit my daughter, Tye and her family. We got there in time for lunch and had a nice visit with Tye and her three daughters, as well as three of my granddaughters from my other daughter, Tracie. I also got to see, for the first time, Tyrell, my first great-grandson. Tyrell is the son of my granddaughter Crystal, Tye’s first child. Crystal and her husband, also named Tyrell but with a different middle name, have another child, a girl named Cristin. Unfortunately, they were living in Texas at the time they had her and were having problems, so Tyrell’s parents took custody of her. They have not relinquished custody back to the kids yet, although Tye seems to think they are working on it. I have not yet seen my great-granddaughter, who is four, except in pictures, but hope to soon. At least Crystal and Tyrell are living in Arizona now. We also got to visit briefly with my son, Roy Jr. after he got off of work. Because of our traveling lifestyle we only get to visit the family about once a year, but it was good seeing most of the kids again. The middle daughter, Tracie, is living back in Illinois.

Of course, on Sunday, the First of February, we watched the Super Bowl! Since I grew up in Arizona, and we were IN Arizona, we were rooting for the Cardinals. We watched the game with several dozen other residents in the park’s recreation room. They had a nice big screen TV and snacks. It sure was a good, exciting game. We actually thought the Cards were going to pull it off - but, alas, it was not to be. Maybe next year.

On Monday, the second, we headed up to the Phoenix area again, this time to Goodyear, located on the far West edge of the Valley. We were up here to visit with my youngest brother, Ken, and his wife Susan. Ken works for the City of Avondale and Susan works for Southwest Airlines. Ken is 20 years younger than I am. In fact, he is only about six months older than Tye, my oldest. We spent a very nice afternoon visiting with Ken and Susan and went out to an early dinner with them before heading back to Casa Grande. The 5th of February was my 62nd birthday! Yippee! Lest you believe me crazy for such celebration of 62, it means that I can now start drawing my Social Security checks. An increase in our annual income of about 25 percent!! I applied several months ago, have already been approved and my first check arrives in the bank the second week in April. HOORAY! Jackie and I went out the Olive Garden for dinner to celebrate.

The next Saturday, the 7th, we headed up to Sun City, Northwest of Phoenix, to visit with my brother Dennis and to see my mom. Mom, who has late stage Alzheimer’s, had some recent health issues and had been hospitalized in Boswell Hospital, up in Sun City. We first met Dennis for Lunch in Sun City, near the hospital to visit. Dennis is the next youngest after me - he is eight years younger than I. We had a good visit during lunch and caught up a little. After lunch we all went to the hospital to visit mom. She is much the same as she was the last time we saw her, about nine months ago. She is nearly totally nonresponsive and contracted into a fetal position. We didn’t stay too long since she can’t really respond and it is very difficult to see her that way. One tries to remember the good times, and seeing her in this condition is very sad. After our visit with Dennis and mom, we headed back to Casa Grande to celebrate our wedding anniversary which is the 7th of February. This was our fifth wedding anniversary! Five wonderful years. After we got back to Casa Grande we went to a local Mexican restaurant for a great dinner to celebrate.

On Monday, the 9th, we left Casa Grande and started toward our next stop, Salome, Arizona. Salome is located in Western Arizona, on Highway 60, about 35 miles from Quartzsite. We have never been to this resort, Desert Vistas, which is one of our Resorts of Distinction affiliated parks. Since our reservation at Desert Vistas didn’t start until Tuesday, we stopped for the night in Tonopah, Arizona. Tonopah, about 50 miles West of Phoenix on I-10, isn’t so much a town as a wide spot with a couple gas stations. However, it is "famous" as the closest community to the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station. Palo Verde is the largest nuclear power plant in North America. It has three nuclear reactors and produces a total of 1.25 Gigawatts of power when all three plants are fully operational. They were building the plant during the last 10 years that I was with the Sheriff’s Office in Phoenix, so I was able to visit the plant several times during construction, even going into the containment buildings, prior to the introduction of nuclear material of course! We (the Sheriff’s Office) also had to participate in annual emergency drills required by the Federal Government. We would practice isolating and evacuating the area in case of an emergency. The last couple of years I was with the Office I served as an evaluator for the exercise.

The next morning we finished the trip to Salome and checked into the Desert Vistas RV Resort. For those with a map, we are 35 miles Northeast of Quartzsite and 45 miles Southwest of Wickenburg on Highway 60. It is quite literally out in the middle of nowhere and very pretty. We are surrounded by the Sonoran Desert and several mountain ranges. The weather since we got here on the 10th has been spotty, pretty cool with some rain and windy days, but the weatherman says it should get better. We haven’t done too much since we have been here except cache and be lazy around the house. We did play Texas Hold’em on Friday night. Saturday they had a little Valentine’s dinner party. Some of the residents and employees put on a really funny skit. It was a very nice, sociable get together. On Sunday, the 15th of February we drove up to Wickenburg for the day. Wickenburg is a very western type town 50 miles Northwest of Phoenix. When I was a kid Wickenburg was a very small town known mainly as the dude ranch capital of the west. Now it has grown into a small city, but it still has a distinctly western atmosphere. We discovered after our arrival that we were there during Rodeo Week, so we spent several hours visiting the arts and crafts fair set up downtown. We also did some local caching prior to heading back to Salome.

On Wednesday, the 18th, we drove to Quartzsite, just to have something to do. It is amazing the difference between now and three weeks ago when the RV show was in town. We went to the area where all the vendors set up and found only about 10 percent were still there. Everyone else had packed up and left town. After a nice lunch, some shopping and a couple of caches, we headed back to Salome. One of the caches we did was really cute. It was a large plastic dinosaur hidden in a tree.

We will be here in Salome until next Tuesday, the 24th, when we will head back into California. We will be going to the Yucaipa Regional Park again, located about 50 miles West of Indio on Interstate 10. We will be there for 12 days and then up to Desert Hot Springs, North of Palm Springs, for two weeks.

I will probably update our little chat site sometime after we get to Desert Hot Springs. Until then, stay safe, enjoy life and keep happy thoughts!!