Life's a Journey

An online friend of mine, Pidge, who writes a blog called The Frugal Travelers, recently posted the following picture of a shirt that she bought in Story, Indiana.  I like this shirt!  This could be a logo for me and for my blog.

 

Dave left this morning to go home to officiate his football games.  The officials go out for pizza after their games, so he's all set for food tonight.  Congratulations are in order for Dave because he was recently re-elected by a large majority for another two-year term as secretary-treasurer of the EFOA (Evergreen Football Officials Association) board.  This position requires a big time commitment, so I didn't know whether to hope that he won or that he lost!

I don't mind spending time by myself in the motorhome as long as it's only for a couple of days.  It seems very quiet here without Dave, though!  He will be back tomorrow evening.

A Rainy Day

This morning we planned to go for a bike ride, but when we stepped outside the motorhome, it had begun raining a fine mist.  We changed our plans to a walk around the campground.  As we walked, the mist turned heavier, almost looking like snow.  It wasn't snowing and the temperature was in the high fifties but we got quite wet by the time we got back. 

We went out on a couple of errands and then came back and had a quiet afternoon inside.  Around 5 pm, the rain had stopped and the sites were starting to dry up.  The sun tried to come out but didn't quite make it.  We took advantage of the dry weather and went on the same walk we took this morning in the rain.

The Cape Disappointment campgrounds are arranged in loops, with ten sites in each loop.  This picture is looking towards the back loop.  There isn't much fall color here yet. 

Each loop has trees in the middle of the loop.  Children like to play and hide in the trees.

How would you like to tow this little Smart Car? I wonder why it carries two spare tires?  The vehicle towing it was a small Winnebago View.

Friday morning Dave will head back to Vancouver to referee a high school varsity football game and two youth football games on Saturday.  I will attend the first concert of this weekend's Water Music Festival in Ilwaco.   A chamber ensemble will perform "Mozart's Magic Flutes".

Back to the Beach

Dave was able to leave his football officiating duties for a few days in order to come with me to Cape Disappointment State Park.  We were here in August for the kite festival.  Things are cooler and quieter here this time of the year, but many of the full-hookup sites are filled even though it is midweek.

We happened to be walking at high tide.

Part of the reason that there are so many people here is that seniors (62 and over) can get an off-season pass which is good from October through most of April.  We paid $50 for the pass and can camp for free at any state park standard site and for $6 for a full or partial hookup site, which we have at this park, including 50 amp power.  Dave turned 62 last month, so this is the first time we've had a chance to use this valuable pass.

Site #1

This time we have site #1, and we can get better internet at this site than we could get in August at site 11.  Using our "Smooth Talker" cell phone signal booster, we can get 2-3 bars of Verizon signal instead of no bars without the booster.   We turned on tethering on my cell phone and Dave's phone always has tethering, so we can use both use the internet at the same time.  If a park has free wifi we use it, but this state park does not have wifi. 

We hope this bird wasn't injured, but we were able to get very close to it which was unusual.

After we arrived yesterday, we went for a long walk on the beach.  Today we went on a day trip to Ocean Shores, Washington, which is 97 miles north of here.  We are going to stay at the state park there in November and wanted to check out their sites. 

Driftwood

Footprints in the sand

A church we saw on our walk in Ocean Shores

A Land of Sheltered Promise

Books soothe my soul.  This was such a book.  

Jane Kirkpatrick is an author that I read sporadically.  She lives in central Oregon, and her books reflect the history and geography of that area.  A Land of Sheltered Promise, published in 2005, is a novel based on true stories of Big Muddy Ranch in Wasco County, Oregon.

This book contains three separate stories, which the author has subtitled "Faith, Hope, and Charity".  The three stories span one hundred years from 1897 to 1997.

In Part One, Eva Bruner gets her first glimpse of the Big Muddy Ranch when she is four years old. Eva's youthful joy is short-lived. Her father kills a man and gets a life sentence, and her mother relinquishes hers to despair. Soon Eva finds herself being raised by her aunt and uncle. But her love for them and the Big Muddy grows.  She marries at age 15, once again, her joy is snatched away when her husband Dee is accused of murder and seems destined for the same fate as her father. Eva is determined, however, not to follow the steps of her mother and is blessed with an inner strength that carries her through betrayals and the ordeals of his trial. She sets up a homestead near the Big Muddy and continues to believe that her husband is innocent of his crime.

Part Two brings Cora Swenson to the Big Muddy Ranch. The year is now 1984 and the Muddy,along with the nearby town of Antelope, Oregon, has been taken over by the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his followers, a cult designed by shrewd lawyers to bilk the rich and foolish out of enough money to support the Bhagwan, his 90 Rolls-Royces, and his team.  Ultimately, a scandal caused by cult members who engineered a bio-terrorist attack ends the Bhagwan's reign, but many of the Sannyasins stay on and await his return, a testimony to the thoroughness of his indoctrination. 

Part Three returns to the Big Muddy Ranch in 1997 after it has been abandoned by the last of the Sannyasins and is now part of a land parcel that the Washington family wants to donate to Young Life, a non-denominational youth organization that serves teens. The conversion of this rugged, untamed land into a camp for kids celebrates the redemption of this land.

This book of historical fiction was a great read!  I enjoyed parts 2 and 3 the most.  See the author's website (and blog), Weaving the Stories of Our Lives, for more information about her books.

A Two-Day Trip

We finally went on a short shake-down trip after getting the repairs done to our motorhome.  We went back to Silver Cove RV Resort east of Castle Rock, WA, on the road to Mount St. Helens.  That's a Camp Club USA park, so we got 1/2 off the price for the first night, but had to pay full price, minus our Good Sam discount, for the second night.  We stayed there last Wednesday and Thursday nights and the discount is only good Sunday through Wednesday.  The park was quite empty except for the full-timers section which is somewhat isolated from the rest of the park.

Site #4 was very spacious.

The first day we explored the small town of Castle Rock.  They have a new two-mile paved walking path that follows the river.  We also rode our bikes around the RV park, but the road outside the park soon became too steep for us.

We saw a great blue heron behind our motorhome along the bank of  an inlet to Silver Lake.

The next day we drove up to Mount St. Helens.  The weather was misty and overcast in the morning, so we waited until almost noon to leave the motorhome.  After just a few miles, the sun came out, and we ate a picnic lunch at the Forest Learning Center along Highway 504.

The view from our lunch spot. The mountain was visible without clouds in the way, but almost all of the snow has melted, so the view wasn't as impressive as sometimes.

Mount St. Helens

While at the visitor's center, Dave paid $10 and purchased his lifetime Senior Pass to all the national parks and federal agency parks.  What a bargain! 

We stopped at Coldwater Lake to take a walk and some photos.

Hofstadt Bridge

The motorhome was fine--we didn't have to start a new list of problems.  We had managed to load everything back into the motorhome that we needed for the two nights.  The shakedown trip was successful!

Comments Mystery

Sometimes things happen in cyberspace that I don't understand.  Yesterday I reposted the news about Tim and Kiersten because I didn't get any comments about it the day before.  I thought that was strange, and I even had Dave check and see if the blog post appeared on his computer.  I thought that maybe since I had published the post at 11 pm, nobody saw it. 

This morning I got an email from Mike and Gerri (Happytrails) telling me that they had sent two comments, neither of which I received.  At that point, I went directly to my blog and looked under comments. Sure enough, there were a whole bunch of comments waiting to be moderated.  I was surprised to see that because comments usually come to my email.

I don't know what happened this time.  And of all the times for it to happen, when I had such "big news" to share!   I hope it doesn't happen again, but now I'll periodically check the "comments" section at the top of my blog.

Thank you all for your nice comments, and thank you for your patience when I blogged the same news again the next day!  We are definitely looking forward to becoming grandparents!

Grandparents-To-Be!

Our son, Tim, and daughter-in-law, Kiersten, have officially announced that they are expecting a baby on April 10, 2011!  This will be our first grandchild.  Dave and I are very excited and happy for Tim and Kiersten.

Tim and Kiersten have been married for six years, and we have all gotten accustomed to coming and going as we please.  A new family member will change things tremendously, but it is a change that we are all looking forward to!

Last year we left for our six-week trip on April 13.  Not this year!  We need to stay at home and be available to meet our new grandchild.  We may take an extended trip in January and February of 2011 of instead of April and May.  There aren't too many places to choose from when you travel in the winter, so we are thinking of going to California with possibly a side trip to St. George, Utah.