Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired

Dave and I have been home from Astoria for over a week. The first few days I worked on piecing a new quilt top from fabric and charm squares that I bought at JoAnn Fabrics in Astoria.  I finished the quilt top, put the quilt sandwich together with batting and backing fabric, and basted it with safety pins.  Now it sits waiting for me to start quilting it.

I intended to start the quilting on Tuesday, but Monday night I developed a fever, a slight sore throat, and fatigue.  I went to bed early and was surprised when I woke up still sick.  On Monday I had gone to the doctor to have two procedures done--a pap test and a diabetic eye screening.  I began to wonder if I had picked up some germs or bacteria when I was there.

I called the doctor's office and they said to come in for a strep test, which turned out to be negative.  When I got home, I went right back to bed.

Thursday and Friday I felt slightly less tired, but I still had a fever of 101. 

Saturday I woke up without a fever, but my ears were both plugged up but not painful.  That's still the situation today, but at least I got a got night's sleep last night, so I think I'm on the mend.  I'm ready to get on with things! The upside of this illness is that I haven't been hungry and have lost 12 pounds since Monday!

Last Saturday, when I was still feeling fine, Dave had a rare day off from football, so we went for a walk at our local Fort Vancouver National Historic Site.  Like many people, we don't always take advantage of the sights that are in are backyard.  We had visited the Fort when we first moved here, and I had been there a time or two with our boys, but we were long overdue for another visit.  Now that Dave as the National Park Senior Pass, we are looking for more places to visit at no charge.

Fort Vancouver was built in 1824 by the  British Hudson's Bay Company as a western fur-trading outpost.  In 1842, the Hudson's Bay Company moved their western headquarters to what is now know as Fort Victoria in British Columbia.  

In 1849, Fort Vancouver was taken  over by the United States Army and they constructed a barracks nearby. 

A fire destroyed the fort itself in 1866, but the Army facility has continued in operation in various forms down to the present.

Fort Vancouver was separated from the Army's barracks and in 1966 was designated as a National Historic Site.  The original fort buildings have been replicated in their original positions at the fort.

The Fort's Officer's Row is worth seeing, too.  Several famous generals served at Fort Vancouver, including Ulysses S. Grant, and more recently, General George C. Marshall. 

Astoria, Oregon--August, 2012

Dave and I are visiting Astoria, Oregon for a few days.  For the first three days, our friends, Tom and Cindi, were here in their motorhome.  We saw many of the Astoria sights with them, enjoyed a few meals with them, and thoroughly enjoyed visiting with them.

Flavel House

Lace Cap Hydrangea

The Pacific Ocean as seen from the South Jetty viewing tower.

Fishing boats on the Columbia River

Fort Clatsop, where Lewis and Clark spent the rainy winter of 1805-06.

Dugout canoe

Astoria Column

View of the Columbia River from Astoria Column

From the column, the view of the Astoria-Megler Bridge which crosses over to Washington

Lewis and Clark Golf and RV Park, site A10

The 9-hole golf course

Astoria is one of those small cities that has offers much to do and see.  We'll be back again next year! 

Concerts in the Park

In the summer, Dave and I like to attend outdoor concerts. Our favorite summer orchestra is the Portland Festival Symphony. This summer marks the 32nd year that this orchestra has presented concerts in Portland's public parks.  This season's opening concert, which we attended on Saturday evening, was held at Cathedral Park in the St. John's area of Portland.  Did I mention that these concerts are presented free of charge? 

The orchestra opened with the always popular, Stars and Stripes Forever, conducted by Sean, an entertaining layman from the Oregonian newspaper, a concert sponsor.

Guest conductor, Michael Allen Harrison, conducted Dave's favorite piece of music, Victory at Sea by Richard Rodgers.

The rest of the program was conducted by Portland Festival Symphony founder and music director, Lajos Balogh.

We heard Rossini's La Gazza Ladra Overture, Beethoven's Symphony #3 (Eroica)--movements 2 and 3, Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture (minus the cannons!), America the Beautiful with the audience invited to sing along, and Haydn's Toy Symphony with children participating--a Portland Festival Orchestra tradition.

The weather was beautiful and the park's natural grassy amphitheater is a good place to gather to listen to a concert.

A small part of the crowd on Saturday night.

St. John's Bridge runs over the park, but the traffic didn't interfere with the musical performance.

Portland Festival Symphony will present five more free outdoor concerts this summer.  The programs vary at each concert, but all include fine classical music. 

Home!

We are always relieved when we arrive home from a trip and discover that the house is in the same shape as we left it.   That was the case yesterday when we arrived back home in Vancouver, Washington, after our 3 1/2 week trip to the Black Hills of South Dakota.

When we see the Columbia Gorge, we know that we are getting close to home.

And when we see the east side of Mount Hood, we are even closer to home.

The views of the mighty Columbia River are great along I-84, but hard to capture in a picture.

Ah, evergreen trees are one of my favorite sights in the Pacific Northwest.

We got home to cloudy skies and temperatures in the mid-70s.  The temps today were in the low 80s, with humidity arriving in the late afternoon.  Right now, I'm hearing a lot of thunder and seeing lightning, which is somewhat unusual for this part of the country.  Now it just started raining.

We got back in the swing of things at home with Dave playing golf with one of his usual foursomes, and I having lunch with my friend, Sandy.

Arrival in Pendleton, Oregon

As Dave said in his blog, today's drive seemed to go by quickly.  I was starting to fall asleep in the passenger seat when Dave suggested that we listen to my iPod.  I put on a podcast of the Dave Ramsey Show and the time sped by as we listened to four of his daily shows.  Dave Ramsey gives financial advice and we have listened to him ever since 2001, so we can usually predict what advice he will give to the people that call in.

I didn't take any pictures along I-84 in Idaho.  We were pleased to see that the Boise road work is finally done--until they begin again, of course.  We traveled this same route in 2011 and in 2010 and there was road work both trips. 

Soon we were back in Oregon and back into Pacific Time.  Yay, we gained back the hour that we lost when we entered Montana in June.

The Snake River that we saw in Glenns Ferry was very visible along I-84 west of Ontario, Oregon.

The Blue Mountains in eastern Oregon made us think we were back in the Black Hills of South Dakota. 

Soon after we drove through the mountains, the fields outside of Pendleton began to appear.

We are staying at our usual place in Pendleton, the Wildhorse Casino RV Park.

They've finished the new hotel addition at the casino.  The RV park looked the same except that they no longer give free vouchers for a continental breakfast.  We paid $27 for one of the full-hookup 50 amp sites with excellent wifi and good satellite signal.  We are right on the edge of being able to pick up our local satellite stations. 

Site #70.  Yes!  We are back on a paved site...finally!

As Dave mentioned, we had hoped to stay another night at this park so that we could go on the famous Pendleton Underground tour and take a walk along the River Walk.  But it's hot and humid here and even a thunderstorm this afternoon didn't cool things off, so we'll head for home tomorrow as we originally planned. 

Tomorrow's destination is Vancouver, Washington--home!

Traveling from Evanston, Wyoming, to Glenns Ferry, Idaho

Dave and I left Phillips RV Park at 8:30 am as planned.  We pulled out of our site and then found out that a car blocking the road.  We honked our horn several times.  No one appeared.  Dave got out to see if the keys were in the car.  Nope.  Dave called the RV Park office and they didn't seem to know what to do.  Dave suggested that the car should be towed.  The park owner didn't even come out to investigate.  There was no other way to go to get out, so finally Dave backed up a few feet (not an easy task with the car hitched up behind us) and was able to very carefully go through one of the empty sites.  There wasn't much room, and now our motorhome has a big scratch on the passenger side because it hit the hookups in that site.

I have to say that I would not recommend Phillips RV Park in Evanston, Wyoming, unless one has a very small RV with no slides.  Big rigs don't fit here!  For one thing, the park had many low branches that could potentially damage the roof of the RV, and the sites are very small with trees on both side.  And then there are those rocks that I wrote about in yesterday's blog.

Our other gripe with this park is that when we arrived, there was no one at the office.  Another motorhome had arrived before we did, and they were waiting, too.  With both of us waiting, we pretty much blocked the entrance to the park.  Finally after about 20 minutes of waiting, a teenager came and unlocked the office and registered us.  We suggested to him that when the office is closed, they need some system, a white board for example, that instructs customers about which sites are available.   He didn't seem too concerned, so I doubt he passed on the message to his parents, the owners.

The other thing that happened today was that a bird flew into our motorhome as we were driving.  The only damage seems to be that our radio antenna is bent.  We were lucky that the air conditioner wasn't damaged.  The bird, of course, is history. 

Despite the morning problems, we had an enjoyable drive to Glenns Ferry, Idaho.  We left Wyoming and entered Utah.  We weren't in Utah for too long, but wow, that state has some great scenery.  We hadn't been on this leg of I-84 before.

We saw a long train that was carrying army supply vehicles.  We guessed that they were headed for shipment overseas.

My welcome to Idaho sign got clipped.  I really am not good at taking pictures of welcome signs as we barrel down the road!

After Utah, the Idaho scenery was humdrum.  We had some excitement, though, when we drove under a large rain cloud.  These bugs on the windshield were gone by the time we drove out from under the rain!

We are all tucked into site #7 at Trails End RV Park in Glenns Ferry, Idaho.  It's kind of a funky little park, but it'll do for our one-night stay.  The price is right at $23.76.  The wifi works well, but we can't get satellite from this site. 

The end of the trail for this wagon?

Still gravel, but at least we have a bit of grass here.

We are too tired today to unhook the car and go exploring, so for information on Glenns Ferry, click on my blog entry from May, 2010.

Tomorrow, it's on to Pendleton, Oregon!

Evanston, Wyoming

As we left Rawlins, WY, we continued to drive west on I-80.  We hit a stretch of road construction right after leaving the KOA.  Today--and probably every day on this interstate--was truck day!

One thing we noticed was many miles of snow fences.  We had seen them in Montana, but not as many as we have seen in Wyoming.  Presumably, the snow fences help to keep the drifting snow off the interstate.

We also say several pumping/heating stations for the underground petroleum.  We also saw several flares where they were burning off the natural gas from the petroleum.  There were no farms or towns to take pictures of, so the pumping stations caught my attention.

We crossed the continental divide.

Then, west of Rock Springs, the scenery started getting interesting.

We are spending the night at Phillips RV Park in Evanston.  These sites are close together!  There was a big rock marking our site that ended up being right outside our door.  Somehow we managed not to trip over it.  The tree on the left was so close that we couldn't put out our awning.  The good news about Evanston was that the temperature was not hot.  Highs were in the 70s, which was a welcome relief.

Site 17 

Dave unhitched the car and we went to explore the town.  We walked up and down Main Street where everything was closed except for Domino's Pizza.  That was okay, we were just window shopping anyway. 

Building built in 1887: 

Evanston began as a railroad town.  Here's a view of the restored depot and part of Historic Depot Square.  There was a huge  train roundhouse at the end of town, so big that I couldn't take a picture of it!

You know that I like to take pictures of churches.  This is is St. Mary Magdalen Catholic Church.

This garden memorial on the church property caught my eye.

As we finished up our walk, the church's carillon began playing some music.  This small city seems like a very nice place to live.