Still Travelin' (Bridgeport, TX)

A lot has happened since our last post as you can see from the picture below.  Yes, we sold our Bluebird.  A shock, we know! 

Sutherlin, OR

While staying in Silver Creek, WA, Dan started talking to Foretravel owners on their on line discussion board/forum about their motorhomes (he had studied Foretravels on and off for several years).  We had also been looking at a few new motorhomes at dealerships trying to get an idea of what we would like to have in our next home.

We were planning to wait another two years to trade coaches....

Mt. St. Helens

when one of the Foretravel owners started talking about selling their 2003 with many upgrades and updates because they wanted to get a younger model.  However they were in traveling in the coach and would not return to their home base in Texas until mid November.

 That was the beginning of deciding how we were going to swing this as Full Time RVers without becoming homeless or worse having two motorhomes at the same time.  We decided to try and pre-sell our Bluebird for a November pickup in Texas.

A wee bit closer view of Mt. St. Helens

Dan generated For Sale blog with all the Bluebird's upgrades and pictures which were posted in the Bluebird Forum with hope that someone would become interested in pre buying our home early enough.  We had plenty of interested people.  One couple showed up only a day after the postings while we were still in Silver Creek.  Two more interested people lived in Colorado and California.  They wanted to know if we would be driving through their area on our way south.

old church outside of Eugene OR

The one from Colorado decided not to wait for us to be closer to his home and traveled to Sutherlin, OR.  After spending over four hours with Dan and then a long test drive, he said he wanted our motorhome when we acquired the Foretravel in Texas several months later.

Confusing?  Yea, it hasn't been an easy couple of months for Dan trying to juggle three different schedules.  He also spent a lot of time working on preparing the  Bluebird before the sale and pickup.

Low clouds in the morning - Eugene, OR

It was agreed by all three parties that we would make the trades in Texas.  This was made even smoother by our long time Bluebird friends Ernie and Brenda.  They agreed to let us use their side yard for as long as we needed to move our stuff...so much stuff to the Foretravel.  This would also give us time to clean the Bluebird and for the new owner to fly down from Colorado to spend time with his new motorhome.  Did we mention this was his first RV?  Yes, he has a little learning to do, but he seems to be a quick learner.

Williams, AZ

With all four parties in agreement for meeting in Texas, we needed to start moving south!  So we were on the road again.

This time as we headed south, we decided to drive through northern Arizona.  We spent a couple of nights in Williams, AZ at the Grand Canyon RV Park.  We had planned to ride the train to the Grand Canyon, but time got away from us.  That means we will have to go back, right?

Desert Moon

Of course, we had to stop in Albuquerque, NM.  It has been quite a few years since our last visit.  We had a great time visiting with a couple of our friends and eating green chile breakfast burritos.  No one makes them as good as Golden Pride!

New Mexico!

 You were probably beginning to wonder if you were going to get to see our new home...well, here it is!  Our new 2003 Foretravel!

Photo from previous owner

After spending the day learning all we could from the sellers, we drove our new Foretravel straight over to Ernie and Brenda's place.  A little closer to the Bluebird and we could have tossed things through the windows. 😉

Door-to-door moving day

It took us three days to move all our stuff over.  This became interesting because the Foretravel had more storage spaces, but it was more cut up.  We finally found a place for everything and we got rid of a few more things that we realized we did not need. 

 Here's a few photos of the inside.  Our slideout includes the dining booth and sofa.  Sandy is quite happy with the color scheme.  It is almost a perfect match to all our pillows, bed cover, and blankets.

We are both in love with our new 2-door residential refrigerator.  So much more room!  It is so nice to have the extra room for more food and to be able to find it once it is stored in the fridge. 

Kitchen

The bathroom is larger with three clothes closets and one laundry closet. 

The second slideout includes the desk.  The bed is a little taller and we have a ceiling fan for those hot humid nights when we are dry camping in Florida.  We thought our older cat Squirrel would need help getting on and off this bed.  As usual, he has found his own way to get on the bed without our help and yet he begs for help to get on chairs.  Maybe he wants us to feel useful.

We are still getting used to our new home.  We are quite happy with our purchase.  So far, the Texas winter has not been too cold.  We have stayed quite comfortable with the aqua hot heating from the floor registers and the ceiling heating pumps.  

That's it for now until our next post.  Yea, not sure when that will be.  Until that time....

Happy Trails and Happy Holidays!

NW Washington State (Silver Creek, WA)

We spent most of the summer exploring the Puget Sound area, so this post is going to be filled with a few more photos of all our recent activities.

From La Conner, we have salmon floating in the air...

an interesting hotel on the water...

and a Totem pole in front of one of La Conner's museums.

In Anacortes, we found it interesting to see a piano overlooking the marina...

and a beautiful garden along the sidewalk also overlooking the marina.

We took our son Shaun to Washington Park in Anacortes during his visit while we were in La Conner.  We were very lucky to see a Bald Eagle fly low over our heads.  Sorry, no photo.

The weather was not cooperating and started to drizzle so we did not spend as much time walking and looking around.

Gnarly Tree

We visited Blaine quite often along with a few restaurants with good food.  Hard to say which ones we liked better.

Blaine's city park is filled with blackberries.  We left a couple of times with a small grocery bag half full of ripe berries.

From the city park, we could see the Peace Arch at the Canada/U.S. border.

We did not spend all of our time in Blaine.  We did a little exploring of the surrounding area.

overlooking Blaine's marina

We had visited Lynden once before, but it was so long ago that it was like seeing it for the first time.  It is a very quaint town with Dutch heritage influencing the architecture of the downtown area complete with windmills.

We enjoyed walking the streets, viewing the buildings, and browsing through some of the shops and bakeries.

We spent one day driving to Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.  First stop was to view the Nooksack Falls.  A little disappointing since we were fenced off from above the falls making it hard for us to see the whole waterfall.  Apparently, some people have a problem with the fence and do not heed the danger signs.  They have a list of several people dying because they wanted a closer look including a mother and her unborn child.  Such a shame.

Second stop was Heather Meadows with a spectacular view in every direction.

And filled with pink and white heathers.

We could not have picked a better day for perfect weather with plenty of sunshine, blue skies and fluffy clouds.

From Heather Meadows, we followed 542 to the end at Artist Point. 

 A very appropriate name with the breath-taking views all around us.

The day had actually become quite warm.  It was odd enough to see people walking in the snow with sandals, but watching them sledding down hills in shorts was even more odd to see.

The last place we visited was the  Historic Fairhaven area in Bellingham.  We spent the morning walking around the downtown area.  Browsed through the Farmer's Market setup in Fairhaven's Village Green and had a delicious lunch at the Colophon Cafe Restaurant.

Hmm, we did not see this one until after we had lunch.  Maybe next time we will stop here.

The downtown area had some interesting places and things to see while we walked off our lunch.

We ended up walking along the Taylor dock.  This dock curves around the point and comes back to land.  We did not go to the other end, but we read that it takes walkers to another city park and more walking trails.

Our next move was to Monroe for less than a week.  We were able to catch up with Sandy's brother and his wife Deb during their free time for lunch and an afternoon visit.  We were also able to spend one evening with Shaun at his new workplace with Kirkland City Hall in the IT office.

After having a pleasant visit with his co-workers and tour, we walked with Shaun to a downtown Turkish restaurant.

Where's the party?

Below is a photo of Shaun's "sometimes" temporary office. The WiFi is strong here, so he finds it easier to sit here when he is outside the office while solving an employee's IT problem online.  We are not sure how he gets any work done with that view, but apparently he does because we heard from a lot of his co-workers that they were grateful to have him working with them.

Now, that's an office with a view

The unique artwork scattered along the route we took to the restaurant and to the park were quite interesting.  The sidewalks were filled with people enjoying the warm evening.  There was a Farmer's Market in the park with live music.  We were beginning to wish we were able to stay longer.

We know we missed a lot of interesting sights, so you know what that means - we will have to visit Shaun and Kirkland's downtown area again.

We had to make an unscheduled stop to Camping World.  We were lucky that they were able to fit us into their busy schedule.  Our Splendide combination washer/dryer had died the week before.  A lot of people think it is easier to use the camps laundry facilities.  Even though the washer is small, we find it more convenient to wash a small load every day than to spent a couple of hours waiting on large loads of laundry.  For us, it was worth spending the day in the CW's parking lot trying to keep four cats cool and calm on one of the hottest days of this summer.  We are not so sure our cats would agree with us on that one.  They did not like sitting in our Honda Fit.  We were able to give them short breaks from the car by letting them sit on a shady grass covered medium near the car until our shade went away.  All four blew enough of their coats inside the car to start another litter of kittens!

View of  Mt. Rainier from Ft. Lewis

While we were waiting for our appointment, we were able to get some shopping done at the Joint Base Lewis McChord.  The view of Mt. Rainier from the Ft. Lewis Exchange parking lot was spectacular.  

We are settled in Silver Creek, WA until after Labor Day.  Hopefully, the crowds will start to slow down after the holiday weekend.  We are not too far from Mt. Rainier and Mt. St. Helens National Parks, so we might try to see one or both before we move south to Oregon.

Happy Trails!  

Travel Log Pacific NW (Mount Vernon, WA)

Rest stop in Colorado

A lot of miles traveled and a lot has happened since our last blog.  We made it to Washington State in one piece, but not without adventures.  We would have posted earlier, but our WiFi has been weak.  We are happy to say that we are connected once again.....well, sort of.  It is still slow, but the campground's lodge WiFi is decent for bulk software updates.

Back to our cross-country travel:   We managed to miss the worst flooding and hail storms in Texas by a couple of weeks.  We kept our visit short with our daughter in OK to get to Spokane WA to see Dan's ailing parents.

We enjoyed a great meal and an interesting one night stay at Terry Bison Ranch in Wyoming.  So many animals to see and not all of them are the typical ranch animal.  A great place for families to visit.

'Give us a kiss!' - Terry Bison Ranch

The next day, our luck with decent early spring weather ended when we ran into heavy snow fall and closed roads while still in Wyoming.  The following morning looked quite a bit better and we left with hopes of finishing our trip to Spokane uneventfully.

Kaycee, WY

But uneventful - NOT!  The motorhome had a few problems. Two major ones were the exhaust brake was not working and a hose burst to our air system which is used for suspension and brakes. Dan was able to fix the exhaust brake problem. The air line leak was more major and we were lucky the line burst while we were parked at a truck stop. Dan called it our lucky breakdown because if it had happened on the mountain passes in a construction zone we would have been blocking the pass for hours (as the rear brakes lock when air pressure is lost). When air does not build up, the motorhome does not move. Dan was able to get a mobile RV/Truck service to source and replace the burst hose within a couple of hours.

Good Morning Colorado!
Lowered our blood pressure with this peaceful view for a few days.

We made good time through the rest of the states and spent a couple of weeks visiting Dan's family in Spokane.  When we left, we knew it would be the last time we would talk to Dan's Mom.  She passed away during the night on 3 July.  

Vivien Weaver May 1927 - July 2016

She will be missed not only by family, but by a great many Wenatchee HS graduates from her 19 years of service in our high school's Social Studies and English Resource Center along with coaching and taking the Knowledge Bowl and Academic Decathlon teams to State Competitions.

Weavers 1995

 After our goodbyes, we moved on to Crescent Bar in central Washington.

We were finally able to enjoy some sunshine since leaving Florida.  A little dry, but a pleasant change from a winter of humidity.

 We visited our old homes in Wenatchee and in Manson.  Wenatchee has changed and grown so big that the roads can no longer keep up with the traffic.

Lake Chelan, Manson, WA

 Manson, on the other hand, has done some growing, but not to the point that it has ruined the small lakeside town feel.

Manson's old library

We drove over the North Cascades highway to Concrete, WA.  The views never gets tiresome.  Of course, we have only gone through this pass a few times.

The road is a little narrow for our extra wide motorhome, but the views are spectacular.

The cats agreed that the campground in Concrete was wonderful with plenty of trees to climb, grass to roll in, and bushes to explore.

Hitch surveying his new surroundings.

They were in kitty heaven!  They actually protested when they realized we were getting ready to move.  Squirrel, Dusty, and Max all sat at the door howling as we packed.

Max and Squirrel relaxing in the shade.

We could not blame them.  We also enjoyed our time in Concrete filled with friendly people, good food, and very scenic surroundings.

Concrete named after the business the town produced

Since June, we have been bouncing around the Thousand Trails campground system in the Puget Sound area.  After Concrete, we moved to Blaine 

Across Blaine's marina, we can see Canada

Blaine

to La Conner

to Mount Vernon, and now we are back in Blaine for the next three weeks.  It is great to be back.   To be able to visit our favorite spots, to catch up with friends we have not heard from in years, and to visit with family as well.  It does feel like coming home. We were able to get together with Sandy's brother Steve and his wife Deb while our son Shaun was staying with us during the 4th of July weekend.

Shaun and Dan enjoying the view in Washington Park, Anacortes

One thing that is different for us is the legalization of recreational marijuana, but we are getting use to seeing the Marijuana shops throughout the state and smelling the smoke once in awhile.  (No, we are not partaking).

Blaine WA

Well, the sun is out and it is calling to us.  It is going to be a perfect day of 75 degrees and we should not waste a minute of it.  Until next time....

Happy Trails!