Happy Holi"daze"...

I have been meaning to post something here and as we have not sent any Christmas cards this year I hope this will serve a dual purpose. Today I snapped a few pictures here in our "Christmas ready" home. 

Merry Christmas!!!

We have been home for two and a half weeks now. While home is fine I think both of us would be happy to be on the road again. We are starting to dream about 2012 and where we will go next in our house on wheels.  In the mean time we look forward giving of our time in various ways here in our community. The last few years many of our Christmas gifts were "alternative" gifts of donations to both local and international non-profits. The other day I had an idea that with retirement we should try "alternative-alternative giving"- I would challenge anyone who reads this... Is there some volunteer kind of something you would like to do with me? Let me know and let's do it together!  I already mentioned this idea to my brother in Boise. He says he is game and he will find a project we can do together sometime this year. What do you think of that idea?

Christmas cactus in full bloom for Christmas!

Here are a couple pics of Millie. She is doing well. A little unsteady on her feet but improving. You can tell in the pictures her head is still a little tilted. She is quiet and content to sleep and eat her days away. Home is easier than being lifted in and out of the camper and truck all day.

Tree 2011 only 2 stockings + Millie's

A Wallace bell and little skier dog

Little Christmas friend

We considered not putting up a tree but settled on a small one. Over the years I collected ski themed ornaments and with the little tree it worked to decorate it with all skiers plus the Wallace bells Martha received for her first 12 Christmases. Do you see our stockings hanging? Millie's is the little one, Dan & I each have one but Martha's is missing. She is enroute to Truckee to spend Christmas with a special friend. We raised a girl with wings; but it does tug the heart strings when she goes flying from the nest.

Martha 22 years ago, she was smiling at her first Christmas Bell.

Here at home we are learning what the new normal will be. It still seems weird that Dan does not go to work at a job anymore. In 30 years we have never had to share our morning time year in & year out; he always left for work about 5:30 and I had another quiet hour or so to sleep in and do my own thing. The best part about the new arrangement is he brings me coffee almost every day. Pretty nice considering he does not even drink the stuff.

Being home is allowing us to get busy volunteering again. Our first Sunday back we helped at a weekly community lunch and as Christmas falls on a Sunday we are looking forward to helping serve a big Christmas dinner to 50 to 100 folks. I am in charge of the mashed potatoes, today we bought 30 giant spuds each weighs about 1.5 lbs.  Sunday we will peel, boil and mash. Today I worked the food bank... super busy! Starting next week Dan is taking on a bread run for a few weeks while the key organizers of these projects take a much needed vacation. He will pick-up donated bread from Fred Meyer 4 days a week and deliver it 2 days a week to several non-profits. That will keep him occupied awhile in the mornings; He is also taking on a regular shift at the food bank. I will soon be heading back to tax work then maybe we will figure out the "new-normal" in 2012.

Have a Blessed Christmas where ever you are and with whom ever you are with!

jean

News from the Road, Calistoga California

Good-bye desert.

Okay, we are cheap... or thrifty... or spoiled. 

We have really kept the costs of travel down by cooking in the camper and inexpensive camp fees. California has been the roughest state for this kind of travel. On our way down we did two consecutive free nights one in a Walmart parking lot and one out in empty BLM land in the desert. We really prefer to stay in federal campgrounds because Dan has his "Access" pass that gets us in for half price. California seems to have mostly state parks and many of them are closed. It is hard to justify paying $30 for a night when you don't need or want hook-ups or showers. Last night we pulled into an empty state park at 9 and left at 4:30 this morning. We were supposed to pay $23. We didn't. Dan has been worried all day that we will somehow get caught and have to pay a big fine. Our average campground fee for the whole trip is right at $12. That includes tonight ($35). We are staying at the Napa County Fairgrounds in Calistoga. [Do you know how Calistoga got its name? The founder was drunk and tried to say, "This will be the Saratoga of California" but it came out, "This will be the Calistoga of Sarafornia"!] (The town brochure says it is a true story)

We have dined out exactly 3 times while traveling. Twice in Moab at the memorable diner, (see earlier post) and yesterday morning for breakfast in Needles, California. Nothing too mention about breakfast in Needles except the books on the table with instructions about how to be an old geezer. We went to the visitor center here in Calistoga and asked what we should see or do but it seemed like everything was costly and not what we would want to do. Wine and spas are what this town is about. They have a geyser but they even charge to see it. Dan held the picture up for me and said, "WHOOSH!" 

Old Faithful Geyser, Calistoga

The visitor center guy gave us several 10% discount coupons for local dining but I think I will enjoy Dan's popcorn more than I would any of the fancy meals.
It was a super windy trip across the Mojave yesterday. Just west of Needles a gust hit us broadside and took us half way across the next lane. Fortunately no one was there! The camper shifted more than an inch in the truck bed between yesterday and today. Not sure if it was the wind or California's bumpy freeways.

Hello Redwoods

I am cheating with the above picture it was taken just over a year ago. We will get to the redwoods tomorrow. We plan to stay at Humboldt Redwoods State Park. We will be back to Oregon parks the next night. They are FREE, with Dan's veteran pass. We like free!

Time for a bike ride so we have room for our popcorn dinner. Did I mention Dan cooks on popcorn night? Life is Good on the road.

jean

Travels with Millie

Millie just after we left home on October 19th.

Back 14 years ago as we contemplated getting a dog for our young daughter, we discussed the likelihood that the dog would be part of our household long after our nest was empty. So here we are -- nest is empty, husband newly retired and our 14 year old "pound puppy" has been on the road with us since October 19th. During most of her life, Millie has enjoyed time at her favorite kennel whenever we have been off on vacation. The "doggie hotel" was her happy home away from home. This time the journey was going to last too long to leave her behind and pay for care. Millie has always been a very active dog and noise and people excited her quite a bit, car rides and travel were over-stimulating. Over the past year she has become completely deaf and I think she enjoys the peace & quiet. Deafness has made her life much calmer. 

For the most part Millie has been an easy travel companion. At her age she is pretty content to sleep most of the day and walks do not need to be long to provide enough exercise. 

Millie's seat in the pick-up. The "S-biner" clip upper
 left has been handy for hooking leash
while not in use on the road.

We have a board covered in carpet the width and depth of the backseat of our crew cab pickup truck. Her bed rides on the board and she even sleeps and waits contentedly in the cab when we make short stops. For longer stops we leave her in the camper. Her bed is in the cozy space under our table. Along about Sedona she discovered there was a nice view of the outside world if she climbed up on top of the table. We came back from one bike ride to find her sleeping up there! We cured that issue by pulling the blinds when we left her. So a couple weeks ago she came up with a bigger stunt! While at Organ Pipe Cactus Nat'l Monument we thought it would be a nice evening to grill a couple pork chops. I was thawing them in the sink on the freezer paper they had been wrapped in. There must have been an inch of that paper just within a standing Millie's reach, because when we returned from a little hike there was no pork chops, no freezer paper, and no plastic wrap that had been between the chops. She didn't even ask for her next two meals. Talk about being in the dog house. 

Millie's goblin dog.

In an early post I shared Millie's adventure at Goblin Valley with her very own dog goblin that got her all excited. She met a barrel cactus in the desert which prompted a similar reaction... for some reason an 18" spikey ball inspired fear and anger.

Fresh out of the doggie beauty salon.

The state park we stayed at in Tucson was conveniently located near a large mall. Millie had a trip to the Petco store for a bath & brush.  Millie never enjoys being bathed but it seemed necessary as we would have a passenger for the trip from Tucson, plus meeting the relatives for the holiday. The groomer was somewhat unhappy with me that I had failed to warn her that Millie had had a skunk encounter in recent months. Apparently the odor was very strong once she was wet. The skunk spray happened in our yard at home in September at five in the morning. Pets do keep life interesting!

We came to Dan's mother's in Lake Havasu for Thanksgiving. His sister and his niece were here with family and family dog. Naloo is a young beautiful chocolate lab. The two dogs circled each other the first evening but then settled in to tolerating each other just fine.

Millie & Naloo, Millie's head at beginning of tilt.

Both were eternally optimistic with all of the yummy food smells of the Thanksgiving feast. Naloo and family headed home to California in the evening of Thanksgiving day. By that time we had noticed Millie walking funny. She seemed to be staggering some and her head was tilted. She got much worse overnight and I was sure by morning we were going to have to find a vet to put her down. I had no idea how much this dog means to me. I couldn't stop crying and yet I knew we would not and could not spend any crazy amounts of money on veterinary care. 

Millie is not a cuddly dog but she stayed close to me all night and through the morning. We called my daughter so she could tell Millie goodbye on the phone. At 11 we took Millie to a vet recommended by a close friend of Mom's. It turns out there is a common canine thing called Peripheral Vestibular Syndrome. Basically she was feeling like she was whirling on a very fast merry-go-round that would not stop. 

The good news is almost all dogs recover from it in a few days. Millie's case was severe enough that they kept her at the animal hospital to a couple nights. By Sunday morning they were ready to send her home. 

Recuperating on back patio with the grandma.

She was still very unsteady and they said the head tilt may last several weeks. When she had been home for over 24 hours and not eaten I was getting worried, they had told me she was eating "like a pig" at the hospital. It turns out they were feeding her canned food which we could come buy from them or they suggested I cook chicken, rice and possibly eggs for her. Yep, that worked she does eat that stuff (like a pig!). 

Here is the old girl today. She seems to be doing pretty good.

We extended our stay at Mom's a few days but we will be heading north on tomorrow morning. Being liftied up and down to truck and camper may not be very comfortable, I think Millie's world is still spinning some. Hopefully she will continue to improve. I will finish this post with a few other random Millie pics from our journey. 

jean

Millie & me at Goblin Valley

At a desert lunch stop near Quartzite

Afternoon nap time.

Lazy Blogger checking in...

Organ Pipe Cactus Nat'l Monument

I am afraid I got very lazy about this blog a few weeks ago. 

We came to visit Dan’s mom in Lake Havasu Arizona in mid November. We left for a week and returned with a friend who is a college student in Tucson who joined us for Thanksgiving. 

New Leveler

Old leveling tools

During our first visit to Lake Havasu we used our time to make a few upgrades to our home on wheels. At an RV supply store we bought some handy levelers to drive onto when a camp sight is not perfectly level. For the first nine years we have used a combination of plywood, 2 x  6’s and 4 x 6’s to drive onto to get the camper level. While back on the road we used them several times, they work great.

Old faucet

New faucet

Our next upgrade was to replace the faucet in the kitchen. The original faucet was very low profile so it was difficult to fill any tall container, even the tea kettle. The new one came with a spray nozzle which was not necessarily something we wanted but there were not too many viable (inexpensive) options at Lowe’s in Lake Havasu. We had to drill a couple new holes in the countertop. We found the right tools at grandma’s house and the project was done in no time. One morning we were getting ready to empty tanks and refill water and as there was plenty of extra hot water I indulged in shampooing my hair under the new faucet. It also worked great.

Cozy new sheets.

We have never been fans of flannel sheets but as the nights were getting cooler and cooler on the trip we decided to make that change in Havasu also. On a shopping trip to JC Pennys with Mom she treated us to some pretty new sheets. 

We also purchased a new portable vacuum. With a dog in the camper with the two of us the hair needs cleaning up often. The old Dirt Devil we had was not getting the job done. A dollar’s worth of vacuuming at a car wash in Moab worked great, but those are not always there when you need them.

New power cord from truck to back.

The last new gizmo was a power adapter that will charge two USB cords at once plus a cord that will reach through the back window of the truck and into the camper. Useful for charging the phone without going back & forth to the truck cab. 

Back Patio at Mom's...Looks rough, huh?

It was so perfectly pleasant and warm in Lake Havasu I was not sure I would like being back on the road. I got quite a bit of hand quilting done while we were there. We also played many games of three handed pinochle. Of the games we kept track of Dan won 3 and Mom & I each won two. She does pretty good for an 87 year old! 

After leaving Lake Havasu we spent a free night on BLM land south of Quartzite and had a night near some petroglyphs west of Gila Bend, at a BLM campground. While there I attempted to find a geocache but failed, oh well. I did see some petroglyphs not in the park sight. We visited with a couple there who are from Jacksonville Oregon. They travel in a truck & camper just a bit larger than ours and have even been campground hosts. On their recommendation we decided to go to Organ Pipe Cactus Nat’l Monument. It is a beautiful park! The staff were super friendly. They have a “Desert Ranger” program for the not so junior ranger wannabes. I had a booklet of activities to do and I earned a colorful badge after taking the Desert Ranger Pledge. 

Christate on and Organ Pipe Cactus.It is an unusual growth happens in 1 in 200,000 Cactus. 

We were unable to communicate with the outside world while we were in the Organ Pipe Cactus Monument because even though we had cell signal apparently AT&T thought we were in Mexico! We both received text messages warning us that international charges would apply to all phone use. We were actually about 5 miles inside Arizona. Go figure!!

We spent two nights at Catalina State Park on the north side of Tuscan. We made brief visits to both the east and west sections of the Saguaro Nat’l Park. We also did a little more of that rocky bike riding. It was quite disconcerting going down rocky trails with huge cactus close on both sides of the trail! 

Biking in Tucson

We came back to Lake Havasu the day before Thanksgiving. I will write more about that time later. We spent some good times with family and had some trauma time with Millie.

Bye for now   jean

News from Sedona

Roadside snow south of Flagstaff, AZ

We drove through some very snowy country to get here on Monday and we are here for our third night. The first two nights we stayed at a quiet campground on Wet Beaver Creek. Yes, there is a Dry Beaver Creek a few miles away AND Wet Beaver Creek did have flowing water. After the weather last week things are quite moist everywhere in the area. Tonight and tomorrow night we are staying at a private RV park right in town. The park name is Rancho Sedona. Hot showers in the morning;o)

Bike ride near Courthouse Rock

We have ridden our bikes about 10 miles both yesterday and today. More of those bumpy rocks I love. I even managed to ride without falling off. Today we rode to the Palatki Cultural Site. We got there just before closing and just in time to see and learn about some pictographs but not in time to go to the cliff dwellings.

Unusual black pictographs at Palatki

We have found the little indoor/outdoor thermometer we have to be very useful on the trip. We have the outdoor part mounted on the camper between the camper and the back of the truck cab. and we have a place on the inside of the camper for the indoor part as well as a place in the cab of the truck. We used sticky back velcro to hold the parts in place. Our other cars have the outdoor temp displayed in the dash but our truck does not have that feature. It seems like a silly little thing but we seem to like to know just how cold (or hot) it is.

Eventually the stars and circles will be connected by neutral shaded hexagons

I have finished a second hexagon star. I only work on them while we are driving. I tell my daughter I will probably not have this quilt finished until her daughter (or son) is ready to get married... in other words not for a very long time. 

Dan & I play games most evenings. We take turns choosing the games. So far “Five Crowns” is our favorite. Next best is the card game “oh Fritz”. “oh Fritz” is a game we learned from friends of my brother last summer. I believe they invented it. Here is how to play:

Deal 6 cards each. Leave cards face down. Each player arranges their cards in two rows of three. You look at the three cards closest to you and try to remember them. It is allowed to arrange these cards in any order. The undealt cards are the stock pile and the top card is turned up to begin the discard pile. The goal is to get your six cards to total the least. Fives and Kings are special... fives are negative 5 and kings are zero. Other face cards are 10 and the rest count the number on them (aces one). The numbered cards zero each other out if they are pairs or triples. During each turn the player takes either the top card from the discard pile or draw the top card from the stock. The drawn card may replace any one of the player’s face down cards and placed face up OR just discarded and one card turned face up. EACH TURN ONE CARD IS TURNED FACE UP. During each hand each player gets exactly 6 turns, at which time all cards are face up. Each player’s cards are added up and scores recorded. Examples: 6,6,5,K,8, 4 would make a score of 7; A, A,K,5,Q,A would make 5; J,5,5,J,3,A would score -6. A game consists of ten hands and the player with the lowest score wins. It is a fun game, a good mixture of luck and skill. If you try it with my directions and it doesn’t work let me know where I went wrong and I will try to clarify. Attempting to write game directions is a good challenge. 

Good night from Sedona, greetings to all.  

jean

The Raven, the Burger & the Ride

Greetings from Utah, but we are almost to Arizona.... 

We arrived at Gouldings Campground at Monument Valley about 4:30 and are spending the big bucks for hookups, showers, wifi, etc. Up to & including tonight our average cost per night is $11.06. We will visit the Navajo Tribal Visitor Center tomorrow and look into a tour -vs- us driving ourselves through Monument Valley.

 I don’t want this to be too much blah blah blah about where we went and what we saw. Never the less, we are seeing some beautiful scenery. And Delicate Arch at Arches NP was truly a WOW experience.

The Ravens: We were told by our Fiery Furnace Ranger at Arches that Ravens are extremely intelligent birds. They rank up there with dolphins and golden retrievers in the brains department. They can imitate many sounds and are very clever at opening things. When we pulled into our campsite at Dead Horse State Park I thought I heard a frog across the road and followed the sound to see what I would find And there was a raven making croaking sounds! At the Needles area of Canyonlands they had signs posted to keep all food containers in locked cars because the ravens can open many boxes and zippers such as on coolers. They stated further that you can get a citation if you fail to keep your food secure from the birds. So our raven encounter came when we went for a 2.4 mile hike this morning at the Needles area of Canyonlands. When we parked the camper we noticed a couple birds flying right over to us kind of like begging chipmunks. We did not think too much about it at the time then when we returned from out hike there was a raven up on the camper roof and he seemed to be picking at something. Dan climbed up to chase him away (he ignored my clapping) and we found he had removed all of the caulking around the running lights near the camper top!

The Burger: Moab, Utah seems like a cool little town. Mountain bike shops on every other corner and all kinds of “happenings” going on. Folk Festival and marathon this past few days. They have a funky volunteer run radio station and instead of a Goodwill store they have WabiSabi. When you make a purchase you get to vote for which local nonprofit organization you want them to support. Across the street from WabiSabi is Milt’s Stop & Eat. We were past there on a Sunday afternoon and the parking lot was packed. Almost a week later we were back in town and Dan offered to buy me my first meal out since we left home... I knew just where I wanted to go and we were not disappointed! Milt’s is local owned. They use local fresh ingredients; we shared a burger, fries and a chocolate shake. MMMM Good! in fact it was so good we went back the next day when we passed back through town.

The Ride: I am no dare devil and I am too old to do too many new crazy things but riding just little bit of slick rock trails is really really fun, We rode the Great Pyramid trail at Dead Horse Point State Park. It was only 4.2 miles and only rated Easy-Moderate, but it was enough thrill and fun for me. I spilled once and had to walk a few places. It was as exciting was skiing but with rocks & trees as obstacles instead of snow. Very fun. 

The weather has turned very wintery so we are going to keep moving south looking for some warmer temperatures and who knows what adventures.

that's all for now... jean

Just a quick note

We are down from Arches spent two nights there. The second night quite a storm brewed in just about sunset time. The wind whipped through our hilltop campsite. We saw a bit of lightning over towards Delicate Arch where we had hiked a few hours earlier. We spent last night along the Colorado River just north of Moab. After a little restocking we are heading to Dead Horse Point and Canyonlands for a day or two.
I will try to upload another pic or two before Dan drives me out of town...

Delicate Arch

Well that's all for now...

greetings from the wilds of Utah!

jean

Sweet Surprise at Capital Reef + A Doggie Goblin

At least four kinds of apples.

We picked 5 lbs of apples cost $5

Dan in Fruita orchard

 

We arrived at Capital Reef in the morning after driving from a little out of the way campground called Calf Creek. An interesting aspect about this campground is we had to ford the creek to get to our campsite. There are falls nearby but we did not take time in the frosty morning to go see them. One of the many things to come back to this country for. We drove to the end of the scenic drive (in Capital Reef) and had lunch then headed for the popular hike to see the Hickman Natural Bridge. 

After we settled in to a camp spot in Capital Reef Nat'l Park, Dan went for a walk with Millie and discovered an apple orchard all set up for U-pick. He came to get me and we went picking. There were ladders and picking poles and plenty of apples up fairly high. So what to do with an abundance of apples? Bake an apple crisp of course. I had all the ingredients I usually use. Flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, butter, oatmeal... No ice cream so I had mine with a little sweetened plain yogurt. Yummmm!

Apple crisp in DeMarle baking pan.

Now on to the doggie story... Millie is doing pretty well on this trip. We actually think she is able to stay calm with it because she is deaf and all of the noise stimuli that used to excite her is no longer there. But she ran into some excitement in the Goblin Valley State Park. Goblin Valley is this surprising little park that feels like it is the middle of no where. 

Dan & Millie by a goblin

This place is where you really need to get in touch with your inner child, there is no end to the photo opportunities. Of course I had to at least plank a time or two...

So Millie was trooping and sniffing along as usual until we came around a rock and she suddenly went crazy. Growling, barking, the hackles stood on the back of her neck were up. We couldn't figure out what was going on until we bent down to her level and looked up at the goblin silhouetted in front of her. Here is what she saw.

Millie's Dog Goblin, do you see it?

Today we drove to Moab and spent our Sunday working... Laundry, vacuuming, grocery shopping, charging electronics... tomorrow (Halloween) we get to hike the "Fiery Furnace" of Arches.

greetings to all

jean

postscript... used some more of the apples to make a glaze with the pork chops I cooked for dinner. Dan is begging for another crisp.