Big News!

Welcome to my new blog follower, Pidge, who writes a blog called The Frugal Travelers. 

Tonight I have big news to share.  Our son and daughter-in-law, Tim and Kiersten, are expecting a baby, and it's due April 10, 2011.  Actually, we've known since mid-August, but we were sworn to secrecy until the first trimester was over and until Kiersten's extended family could be told in person.

This will be Dave's and my first grandchild.  It's exciting!  We're happy that Tim and Kiersten only live 45 minutes away from us. 

You can see a link to Kiersten's blog among the links the blogs that I follow.  She has been writing blogs during each week of the pregnancy, but she saved them all to post today. 

Tim and Kiersten celebrated their sixth anniversary this summer and are both accomplished young people.  We are happy that now it's time to make us grandparents-to-be!

The proud parents-to-be

Decorah, Iowa

Decorah, Iowa

A few days ago I saw an article on Yahoo listing the “most beautiful” college campuses.  It got me thinking about my college campus, Luther College, in Decorah, Iowa.  While certainly not the “most beautiful” it is a very pretty campus.

Most people think of Iowa as being flat and boring.  Most of the state is flat, including my hometown, Osage.  But northeastern Iowa is not flat.  While there are no mountains, the hills are very pretty, especially in the fall season. 

Luther College’s fall colors

Brandt Hall, where I lived my freshman and sophomore years

Pictured below is Olson Hall, where I lived my junior and senior years, except for when I was away student-teaching.  This hall was controversial since men and women both lived there, on separate floors.  Now I understand that some colleges let men and women room together!  Not Luther College, however.

 

Two more campus photos:

Decorah is a small city with a population of less than 10,000 but there are a variety of things to do in the area besides visiting Luther College.  One of the places to visit in Decorah is Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum.  Vesterheim is America’s oldest and largest museum devoted to one immigrant group and comprises of a complex of 15 historic buildings, costumes, furniture, decorations, and fine arts reflective of Norwegian immigrant life.  

Nearby, in Burr Oak, is the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum.  Period clothing and furnishings are displayed in the former hotel and childhood home of the Little House books’ author.

Also near Decorah, in Winneshiek County, is Spillville, an old-world Czechoslovakian village.  A collection of hand-carved musical clocks made by the Bily brothers are housed in the 1893 summer home of Czech composer, Antonin Dvorak.  An organ used by Dvorak resides in St. Wenceslaus Church.

See, you don’t have to take my word for it.  In fact, just writing this blog has made me homesick for Iowa in the fall!

Trust His Remedy

“Trust God enough to accept his remedy for sin.”

- Raymond Ortlund, Jr. Supernatural Living for Natural People (Ross-shire, UK; Christian Focus, 2001), 80.

2-20-04 Maui Sunset

Bounder Back Home

Thank you very much to all who left comments wishing Dave a happy birthday.  He was touched that so many of you cared enough to leave a comment.  He won’t get that kind of attention for another whole year, so he is savoring it. 

Our motorhome is finally home from the repair shop.  We took it Junction City on August 31, and today, September 21, we went to pick it up.  The crack under the bedroom slide is all fixed, and a leak from the living room slide is fixed, we hope. 

Now we need to plan a trip for a night or two just to test things out.  We took a lot of things out of the motorhome, including food, while it was being worked on, so now we get to load everything back.  The trip of a night or two will be to test whether we’ve put back everything that we need for a trip. 

We decided not to buy an extended warranty on this motorhome, and our one-year warranty will be up on October 12.  We want to make sure there are no more problems that need to be fixed before that date.  The repair work on the crack comes with a new 1-year warranty, but hopefully we won’t need to get that repaired again.

All is well when our Bounder is back in its spot behind our house, or even better, out on the road with us inside!

Happy Birthday, Dave!

Dave turned 62 on Monday.  We celebrated with Tim, Kiersten, and Jonathan on Sunday, then Dave helped Tim install some additional electrical power in his garage.  Dave played golf on Monday morning at Camas Meadows with his friend, George, from St. George, Utah, and with two friends from Portland.  What a good way for him to celebrate his birthday, especially since the rain held off !  And oh yes, the Raiders won yesterday—a birthday gift for Dave!

Monday afternoon we did our usual walk with friends at the high school track, then the two of us went out for dinner at Applebee’s.  I intended to take the camera along, but I forgot it.  We always have good food and good conversation when we go to Applebee’s. 

My gift to Dave was to get our poster of the national parks of the Grand Circle framed.  Poster: $7.95, framing, over $200!  It’s a lovely reminder of our trip to these parks last spring. 

Happy Birthday, Dave.  May we celebrate many more of your birthdays together!

Working Out

 

This is my kind of workout!  Except that maybe the rock would get uncomfortable after a while. 

Cute Cartoon

Dave and I like to do crossword puzzles, so we thought the following cartoon was especially cute.

We’ve had quite a bit of rain this week, so I don’t have any pictures to share, unless you want to see pictures of rain.  Oh, that’s right, I didn’t take any.  It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon. 

Netflix

Netflix is a great business idea which has really taken off.  I subscribe to the most basic account, which offers one DVD at a time.  My “queue” contains hundreds of titles, because every time I hear of a movie, either old or new, that I want to watch, I click on Netflix and add the movie. 

Netflix is adding more and more titles to the list that is available to watch “instantly”.  You don’t have to wait until you get the DVD in the mail.  Watching instantly is only possible if you have a fast internet connection. 

I recently learned that Netflix accounts can be put on hold indefinitely.  This spring, when we traveled for six weeks, I put my account on hold.  DVDs did not arrive in my mailbox during that time and my account was not charged during that time.  I haven’t had time to watch DVDs all summer, so I keep putting my account on hold.  In the meantime, it still keeps track of all the DVDs I want to get in the future.  It’s a handy feature!

Grounded

The following blog post was written a few days ago by a man named Dave Williams.  I don’t know anything about him except what I read on his blog.  Click on his name to read more of his thoughtful posts.  I liked this post so much that I wanted to share it.

GROUNDED—BY DAVE WILLIAMS

“I've gotten a couple of notes from people asking where I've been this past month or more. They naturally suspect I've spent all of August seeing the wonders of North America in my Sea Breeze. Alas, that is far from the fact.

The fact is, I'm grounded. My beloved motor home sits in my backyard, lonely, tethered to a 30 amp outlet. I visit nearly daily. I step inside and enjoy the smell of paneling and glue and whatever it is in motor home construction that gives me the unique thrill that says, "Packing and going!"

I sit in my captain's chair and run my hands over the wheel. Every couple of weeks I crank her up and exercise the generator. A quick trip around a few blocks keeps the moving parts movable but then she goes back into her pen. I reattach the power line, lock the door and go back into the house.

I swear I can hear her whimper as I leave.
It can't be helped. I am grounded.

You see, I am not yet of retirement age and, more to the point, I am not of retirement funding. I have not feathered my nest. I have squandered a great deal of income over the years and now find myself in a job that barely covers the anticipated monthly expenses. The unanticipated ones cause trouble. And nowhere in what I laughingly refer to as my monthly budget is there room for 75 gallons of gas. Or, insurance. The registration is coming due in a couple of weeks and $800 might as well be eight million.

I don't tell you all of this to whine or beg for sympathy. I have no regrets in my life. It was my money and I spent it happily. I'm just a little short right now, that's all.
No, I tell you all of this because I suspect some of you are in similar straits and I think we can help each other hang on.

I've also very much missed writing my weekly account of what I lovingly refer to as my "Postcards from the road and mind trips of a restless gadabout." The thing is -- when you're grounded you run out of things to say.

But I have come  up with this...

We who are feeling the squeeze of lean times still have every reason in the world to get out of bed each morning. I have my loving family, a good roof over our heads, food in the pantry and surprisingly good health for a fat man pushing 60. I can't begin to count my blessings here without sounding like a braggart.

Every morning I open my eyes around 5 a.m. in a good, warm bed, next to the wonderful sleeping woman who has been my heart and anchor for the past 22 years. Every single morning my first thought is, "Thank you, God, for the blessing of another day on your good Earth."
I make my coffee, feed the dogs and together we sit down and watch TV with one eye on the sunrise over the San Gabriel Mountains. It always makes me long to fire up the Sea Breeze and wake up on the other side of those hills tomorrow.

I'll get there. I won't always be grounded. And, neither will you.

We have hope and new opportunity given to us before each sunrise. They are waiting for us like unopened gifts on Christmas morning. They are dreams that become reality by merely opening our eyes.”

Posted by Dave Williams at 9/09/2010 10:54:00 AM

Elevated Coffee

Saturday night Dave and I drove into NE Portland to listen to Tim play bass with his band, Cody Weathers and the Men Mama Warned You About.  They play at different venues around the Portland area.  This gig was held at Elevated Coffee on Martin Luther King Boulevard.  That area, which used to be kind of seedy, has been renovated during the last few years and now it’s an up and coming area with coffee shops, restaurants, and comedy clubs. 

The Men:  Tim, Cody, and Evan

A funky old bus parked outside the coffee shop

Restaurant located next to Elevated Coffee

A comedy club across the courtyard

Flame dancer outside the comedy club

Messiah’s Mansion Tour

Tonight Dave drove 80 miles each way to referee his varsity game at White Salmon, WA.  It was a crisp, fall evening.  Cheryl and I walked around the track, as usual, and didn’t have to perform any good deeds this week.

Earlier today, Dave and I toured Messiah's Mansion, a full-scale replica of the wilderness temple built by Moses and the Israelites.  The model was built to fit the description of the plans given by God to Moses after he led the Israelites out of Egypt. 

The exhibit was erected on the grounds of an Adventist school.

The temple replica has been touring the country each year since 2003, and has been in Portland, OR, for nine days.  After Portland, the exhibit moves to Florence, OR, and then on to Oroville, CA, with the last stop of the 2010 tour to be held in Larned, KS.

We arrived a half hour early for the first tour of the day at 1 pm.  There was no admission charge.  We sat in chairs while we waited, and then our group moved from station to station of the exhibit.  We sat in chairs to view each area and stayed in each for about 15 minutes.  The total tour took about 75 minutes.

Entering the exhibit

We learned about each part of the temple, including an overview diorama, the courtyard, the Holy of Holies, and the ark of the covenant.  Each area contained replica symbols of historical temples of old, and we were told about the meanings of the symbols.  The gospel message of Jesus’ death and resurrection was woven into each area. 

I am including the information about each of the stations which I found on the tabernacle website, followed by a photo that I took at each of the five stations.

 

   

The tour was well worth our time, and I’m glad we were able to see this exhibit before it leaves Portland on Sunday. 

Nine Words of Wisdom

“See yourself and weep. See your God and rejoice.”

- Paul David Tripp

 

Red Canyon, Utah

Almost Christian

I saw the following article on several blogs that I follow.  This summary from White Horse Inn briefly tells the story.  Click on their link at the end if you want to read the entire article by Kenda Creasy Dean as featured on CNN.  I have not read her book, but I found her ideas interesting.  I looked up Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, the phrase coined by Christian Smith of University of Notre Dame, and I agree with Wikipedia, which in addition to the definition, states that this term can apply to many religions, not just Christianity.

“CNN online recently featured an article on Kenda Creasy Dean’s new book Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church (Oxford University Press, 2010).  

 

Dean is a professor at Princeton Seminary who participated with Christian Smith and others in the National Study of Youth and Religion. The CNN article discusses the theme of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, a phrase used liberally by White Horse Inn hosts for the past few years and coined by Christian Smith to describe the religious and spiritual lives of today’s teenagers.

Dean discusses this problem at length in her new book, and argues that teens have received this “fake” view of Christianity from their parents. She writes, “The problem does not seem to be that churches are teaching young people badly, but that we are doing an exceedingly good job of teaching youth what we really believe, namely, that Christianity is not a big deal, that God requires little, and the church is a helpful social institution filled with nice people…”

She goes on to say that “if churches practice Moralist Therapeutic Deism (MTD) in the name of Christianity, then getting teenagers to church more often is not the solution (conceivably it could make things worse). A more faithful church is the solution….Maybe the issue is simply that the emperor has no clothes.”

Michael Horton recently interviewed Kenda Creasy Dean for the White Horse Inn, and that interview will air in early October.”

Click here to read the entire CNN article titled, “More Teens Becoming Fake Christians.”

To read three responses from Kenda Dean about her CNN article, click on the following links:

CNN Response

Almost Christian

Called into Disconnect

The End of Summer

We had good weather for Labor Day weekend, but today it feels like fall because it has been raining all day.  A couple of times the sun peeked out, but that didn’t last long.  The only thing that still feels like summer is that the temperature is still in the 50s and 60s, not the 30s or 40s.  We may still get some more warm days, but they are dwindling this time of the year.  I know we need the rain, but I need sunshine to lift my spirits!

Tonight I had to walk on my treadmill instead of walking around the track outside.  The only advantage of walking inside is that I can catch up on Tivo shows while I exercise,but  I would rather be exercising out in the fresh air.  I COULD walk in the rain, but I decided not to tonight.

Dave had to referee a junior varsity football game tonight in the rain.  He was soaked when he arrived home around 8:30.  His knicker pants were wet but surprisingly clean.  He said it was because the grass field hadn’t been torn up yet by games and weather (until tonight, that is).  We are supposed to have another day of rain tomorrow and then better weather. 

It’s time to dig out my crocheting projects again and bring back all those oven recipes that I don’t make in the summer!

Wildwood Recreation Area, Oregon

On our way to Mount Hood, we stopped at Wildwood Recreation Area.  Wildwood is a day-use area managed by the Bureau of Land Management, which meant that we were able to get in free using our national park pass. 

This 550-acre forest park is located 40 miles east of Portland, off U.S. Highway 26.  The park features Cascade Streamwatch and Wetland Boardwalk interpretive trails.  The Salmon River, which runs through the park, is the only waterway in the lower 48 states for which the free-flowing nature and resources are protected for the entire length of the river.  The Salmon River is part of the Sandy River Watershed. 

The Salmon River

    A new sign on Highway 26 points the way to Timberline Lodge

A view of the Cascades from Mount Hood

Timberline Ski Area, Oregon

Our motorhome is still in the shop in Junction City, so we went on a day trip in the car up to Mount Hood.  When we were at the Grand Canyon at the end of April, Dave discovered, as you may remember, that he couldn’t sleep at that altitude.  We cut that part of the trip short and moved south to a lower altitude at Camp Verde, AZ for a few days, and Dave made a quick recovery. 

After talking to a couple of doctors, Dave recently purchased a pulse-oxygen monitor.  It’s small and fits on the tip of your finger, like the ones they use at a doctor’s office or when you are in the hospital.

We drove up to Timberline Lodge at Mount Hood, which is at an elevation of 6000 feet.  It’s the highest place we could think of that is near home (about 1.5 hours each way).  We sat in the parking lot for about a half hour while Dave monitored his oxygen level, which went as low as 93 or 94%.  Interestingly, my oxygen level was 93% also, and I have all the lobes of my lung.  Dave is missing one lobe due to lung cancer surgery. 

When we got back to Government Camp, which is at an elevation of 4000 feet, his oxygen level went back to normal.   Dave will continue to monitor his oxygen level but the true test will be when we can travel to 6000 feet or higher and sleep there. 

Waterfall along the road up to Timberline

The Timberline parking lots were full, and we were surprised to see that some people were snowboarding or skiing.  After we got home, I read on Wikipedia and that Timberline is the only ski area in North America to offer year-round skiing.  Can that be true?

During the half hour we were at Mount Hood, the clouds moved in quickly and this first picture was our best.

In the picture it doesn’t look like there is enough snow for skiing, but (from Wikipedia) skiers, snowboarders, and sightseers ride up the Magic Mile chairlift to the Palmer Glacier and its lift, where most of the summer skiing takes place, particularly later in the season. In contrast to winter operations, the lifts are the busiest during the summer ski season Monday through Friday, mostly due to ski and snowboard camps. Besides organized clinics and camps, any intermediate or more advanced member of the public is welcome to ski or snowboard.

The front entrance of Timberline Lodge

There always seems to be scaffolding at Timberline

Summer ski hours are 7 am to 1:30 pm. During summer ski season, there is no novice or beginner terrain; low-intermediate terrain is available along the Mile. After approximately mid-June, it is necessary to walk at least part of the way to reload the Magic Mile, and feasible to ski to within a few hundred feet of the parking lot until mid-August. On warm days, most skiers leave by late morning due to soft and wet snow conditions. Public skiing is available, but rental gear may be limited. The Palmer lift is limited to skiers and snowboarders only (no foot passengers), with intermediate or greater skills.

The temperature at Timberline was 42 degrees and the wind was strong, which made it feel even colder.  A few people were walking on the trails at the mountain, but we pretty much stayed in the car except to take pictures!