A Few Reflections

First of all, thank you all for the welcome home greetings!  It's been fun to have "followers" along for the journey.  I hope my blog will continue to interest you even when we are not traveling.  For the next few days, I may be writing about some reflections about the trip.

This noon we took our son, Tim, and his wife, Kiersten, out for lunch at a place of their choice.  We had our mail forwarded to their address while we were gone.  They choose Chang's, which turned out to be out of business, so we ended up at BJ's at Jantzen Beach in Portland.  We had a good lunch and a good visit. 

Not raining at the moment, but about to start again.

We hope to see our younger son, Jonathan, one of these days before he starts at the Washington State Patrol Academy in July.  He has one final step left in the hiring process, a physical exam this week.  Since we don't have grandchildren yet, we didn't have to miss anything on that front while we were traveling. 

Some thoughts about our trip:  For being non-gamblers, we spend a fair amount of time at casinos!  We like to check out the casino food, and of course, in Las Vegas, casinos are part of the whole experience.  Many casinos now have RV parks, and the quality of those parks varies as much as the food does.  Usually we are pleased with casino RV parks and they are usually reasonably priced, not counting what we spend eating at the restaurants!

I was always happy to see a Walmart.  I shop at Walmart at home, too, since there is one 1 1/2 miles from our house.  When we are traveling, Walmart is a welcome sight because I know I can usually find familiar brands and items there.  Now that most Walmarts are super-stores, it's truly one-stop shopping without having to hunt all over town for each item I need.  I also look for Safeway stores, but we didn't find many of those this trip.  I don't mind shopping at local grocery stores, but it's frustrating when I can't find the brand or item I'm looking for.  Grocery shopping is a necessary evil when traveling and I don't want to spend all my time tracking down food.  I like to experience local color and local stores, but not at the expensive of other sightseeing.

Chain stores that we are familiar with, like Les Schwab, are nice to find in other areas.  Getting repairs done while on the road is always a hassle, but it's nice when you somewhat trust the store.  Other places, like Kirby's Automotive in Prescott Valley, treated us right even though we weren't repeat customers. 

I always worry that I will run out of books to read on trips.  I loaded the motorhome with paperback books and didn't have time to read most of them!  I spent so much time loading pictures and blogging that I didn't have much time left over to read.  Also, when I'm in a new area, I like to read all about the area so that we don't miss anything.  That doesn't leave much time for escapism-type of reading.  I don't want to escape from the journey, I want to experience everything I can.  Now we need to take a "vegging" type of trip, just to relax!

As we traveled, a few new followers began reading our blog.  We don't know these people, and they don't know us.  But they are fellow travelers, most of them full-time RVers.  We very much enjoyed their comments and their interest in our blogs.  It made us aware that what we wrote about was of interest to others, either because they want to visit those areas someday, or because they already visited or lived in those areas.  I, also, am very interested when people blog about places that I've been or lived.  It makes us feel like we have a lot in common with each other. 

A side note to Ali:  We would love to meet you when you are in Portland--maybe take you out for lunch or dinner?  Click on my profile to get my email address.   If others are going to be in our area, we would love to meet you, too!