Pumpkins and Apples

After many days of rain, today we had sunshine and warmer daytime temperatures.  Dave didn't have to officiate any Saturday games this week, so we headed out for a drive.  As we drove north on I-5 to La Center, we noticed a sign saying that the rest area was closed.  It was another casualty of the government shutdown, I guess.  All of the national parks, rest areas, etc., could currently be open if the Senate had voted to accept that part of the budget.  But no, they would rather play the blame game.   I, for one, would like to see a smaller government but I'm not in favor of closing national parks or freeway rest areas, or the military, among other areas.  I wonder how many of those 95% of "non-essential" government employees actually are non-essential? 

We drove to a pumpkin farm south of La Center, but it was a bust, with a distinct lack of cars.  Yes, they had pumpkins in a field, but that's all they had.  We didn't bother to get out of the car.  We took back roads back to the freeway and then went to Joe's Place in Vancouver.

This place had what we were looking for.  In addition to people being there, they had several pumpkin displays and more importantly to me, apples.  I know that we can buy apples year round, but in the fall, I am always drawn to fruit stands offering apples.  

My favorite pumpkins were the Turk's turbans.  How colorful and unique!

Here is a picture of the assortment of apples that I bought, minus the one that I already ate.  Yummy!  All the apples were $1.49 per pound, so I put them all in the same bag and now I don't know which are which.  No stickers, like store-bought apples!

We had a fun afternoon while enjoying the nice weather. All three of the mountains we saw during our drive, Mount St. Helens, Mt. Adams, and Mt. Hood, all had new snow covers, so all of that rain was good for something!

My Dog Has Fleas

Well, not really--I don't have a dog.  But I DO have a new ukulele that I am learning to play, and the tuning of the four strings--G, C, E, and A is known as "My Dog Has Fleas".

After Donna and Russ of Travels in Therapy showed me their ukuleles when we camped together, I realized that I had a yen to make some music, too.  Sure, I have a piano at home, but I'm always afraid of offending the neighbors when I pound away on it.  And the piano is definitely not portable!

I had bought a ukulele years ago when we were on a trip to Hawaii, but I had sold it during one of our downsizing moves.  Donna told me that she got her ukulele at Costco, so that's where I decided to buy mine.  The two Vancouver, WA,  Costco stores didn't have them in the warehouse, but the Portland store did, so off I went to buy the Ukulele in Oregon. 

This particular model has a built-in chromatic tuner which is very handy.  Now that I have had the ukulele for three weeks, it stays in tune pretty well most of the time, with only an occasional minor tweak.

I checked out all the ukulele books that were in our library system, including "Ukulele for Dummies".  I have worked my way through all of the books, and each book has been helpful in its own way, if only to give me more chances to practice chords, note-picking, and finger-picking. 

Riding the train

On Wednesday, we spent the morning with our daughter-in-law, Kiersten, and our two granddaughters, Sophie and Anya.  We went to Oaks Park, an amusement park in Portland.  They were having their weekly pre-school special, with all the kiddy rides included for $6.50 per child, with adults free.  No other rides or concessions were open, so it was nice and quiet and the little ones didn't get inundated by older kids. 

Afterwards, we celebrated a belated birthday for Dave (his actual birthday was September 20) by having lunch at Macadam Bar and Grill in Portland.  Our son, Tim, was able to join us for lunch since his office isn't far from there. 

Carousel ride

Fort Stevens State Park, Oregon

Dave and I are here at Fort Stevens State Park in Hammond, Oregon (near Astoria) with Donna and Russ of Travels in Therapy.  They will be here a few more days, but we have to go home tomorrow morning so that Dave can continue with his football officiating season. 

Fort Stevens is a wonderful state park and many people start their journey down the Oregon coast on Highway 101 from this area.  The park has lots of camping sites and even a few with full hookups, like the site we are in.

Site #L18

A jokester named Dave with his cell phone, not an X-rated picture...

Dave and I took a walk around some of the camping loops yesterday afternoon after we got here, and we came across this skinny deer hanging out in one of the campsites.

This tree in our site had a hole in it that reminded me of a deer's eye.  It also reminds me of a giraffe's eye.  Do you see the resemblance?

Last night, we sat around a cozy campfire with Donna and Russ and we all roasted hot dogs and marshmallows over the fire.  Some rain has been predicted, but so far we've had good weather and we're planning on getting together around the fire pit again tonight.

Today we all drove across the Astoria Bridge to the Washington side of the Columbia River.  We drove all around Cape Disappointment State Park, Ilwaco, and Long Beach, and even drove on the beach for a bit.  Fun times!  We had lunch together at Dave's and my favorite Long Beach eatery, Hungry Harbor Grille.  Thanks so much for treating us to lunch, Donna and Russ!

View from the pull-out

Waikiki Beach--Cape Disappointment version! Driftwood on Waikiki Beach 

A view of Cape D Lighthouse from North Jetty

We've had a fun couple of days with the Russ and Donna! 

A Day Trip to Long Beach, WA

A week ago, we drove to Long Beach for the day.  The kite festival started the next day, and the set-ups were just beginning.  I love going to the kite festival, but due to Dave's football schedule, we weren't able to attend this year, so this was the next best thing.

World's largest chopsticks

Tree of flowers outside a restaurant

We walked along the boardwalk, which was almost empty today but will be crowded later in the week.

Children playing on a buoy.

Porta-potties ready for the big crowds.

Any day at the beach is a fun day, even when we just go for a walk and lunch!

We Interrupt This Walk...

Dave and I have been hanging around home since we got back from our trip to Yakima.  We like to take walks every day and we usually just walk in all directions around our neighborhood.  Once in a while, though, we decide to walk elsewhere.  Lately, we've been on a couple of city walks in downtown Vancouver USA.  The new public library makes a good base for our walk because it has free two-hour parking and the all important restrooms.

Vancouver Library

We walked from the library to Main Street and then north to 4th Plain, then back to the library on Broadway, then Evergreen.  It's so much easier to see all the buildings and stores when we're walking rather than driving. 

Yesterday we decided to take a walk on some other city streets.  This time we started the walk at Marshall Center, a community and senior center near Clark College.  I have fond memories of Marshall Center, because when our boys were growing up, we went to Marshall Center once a week with a bunch of other homeschoolers so that they could all play pool together.  Before playing pool, the kids were all in a bowling league together, so it was a fun afternoon for them.   Ah, the memories!

Marshall Center

We headed west on McLoughlin Blvd and walked under the I-5 bridge and we kept walking west until we reached Kauffman Ave.  We usually walk for a half hour and then turn around, and that's what we did today.  When we were almost back to the I-5 underpass, a truck stopped to let us cross the road.  How nice, we thought. 

But less than a minute later, that same truck hit the overhead wires on the street.  Crunch, pop--I can't really describe the noise that it made.  The truck proceeded to go around the corner, strip off the wires that had gotten caught on the truck and left the scene.

Using his cell phone, Dave immediately called the police and began directing traffic around the downed wires.  One lane of the two-lane street remained open.  After about ten minutes, which felt like a half hour on this hot, humid day, a policeman arrived, and shortly after that, a city utility truck.  It was determined that the lines were phone lines, not electrical.  Whew!

It was also determined that the phone lines that were hit by the truck were placed too low.  If we had been driving through there in our tall motorhome, we would have hit the lines, too.  It was also determined that the local phone company, who shall remain nameless, had just repaired that line the day before.  Not a very good job, I would say.

Five minutes later, we finished up our interrupted walk and drove home.  And that was the extent of our excitement on Friday!

I wish I had pictures of Dave directing traffic, but just when I would start to take a picture with my phone, other cars would come along and it just wasn't possible to take pictures, so you will have to take my word for it that he did an excellent job! 

Highway 12 West--Mount Rainier, WA

The update about the fall with my bike is that my bruises are fading, and the pain along my left side ribs is abating, except for during the night when it's hard to find a comfortable position while attempting to sleep.  It reminds me of when I was recovery from open-heart surgery in May, 2009. 

Our trip home from Yakima, WA was uneventful.  We enjoyed the drive along scenic Highway 12 west to I-5 south.  We even found a spot to park at the only rest area along Highway 12. 

Rimrock Lake/Clear Lake

White Pass Summit (elevation 4500) is a ski area in the winter, and connects Yakima County with Lewis County.

Our first view of the elusive Mount Rainier.  Good thing I wasn't asleep during this part of the drive!

We stayed on US Highway 12 West while talking about memories of past trips to Mount Rainier National Park and camping at the PUD parks Alder Lake and Taidnapam. 

Now we're home for a while.  Two of the motorhome's hydraulic jacks need to be repaired (seals?).  We discovered a while ago that the jacks had never been lubricated when the motorhome was built.  Dave's been lubricating them ever since we found out, but some damage was already done to the rear jacks. 

Another Fall? :(

This time I didn't fall off my bicycle, I fell on to my bike.  Doesn't sound possible, does it?  I was trying to get my bike and myself down off the dike path and back to our campsite at Yakima Sportsman State Park, and the bike fell, and I fell on top of it.  I am bruised, scraped and very sore on my left side, but I'm still here to tell the tale!

The infamous Dike Path, as seen from our campsite, which is NOT where my accident occurred!

I limped back to the campsite and nursed my wounded body and my wounded pride.  Dave and I are in Yakima for the weekend so that he could attend the WOA (Washington Officials Association) summer conference and golf tournament.  His foursome tied for first place and ended up with third place after the ties were all broken.  The conference speaker this year was Mike Pereira, former vice-president of officiating for the NFL and current on-screen rules analyst for FOX Sports.  That's what Dave was doing on Friday while I was recuperating from my fall.

Yakima can get very hot during the summer, but the weather this time has been great.  The temperature has been in the 70s and 80s, with lows in the mid-50s.  I've been enjoying the blue skies! 

We started this leg of the trip by driving to the Seattle area to see our younger son's new house.  It is, indeed, a very nice house, and we were happy to have a chance to see it and visit with Jonathan.  Seattle traffic was quite bothersome, and we found out that it's even more crowded there in the summer.  Thus, we had to stay at an RV park in Everett that was less then ideal (Maple Grove), even though it looked like the nicest one on the rvparkreviews.com site.  The sites were tiny, unlevel, and the promised WIFI only worked sporadically.  To us, the whole Seattle area seems almost as bad, traffic-wise, as Los Angeles.  Perhaps in a car it wouldn't have been as stressful. 

We knew we were in for a long day when the last rest area  on I-5 before Seattle, at Federal Way, was full, and a car was parked in the last RV spot.  That's one of our pet peeves when we're traveling in the motorhome--cars taking up the RV spots!  Dave was able to carefully back out of that spot, not an easy task while towing a car.

Seattle, as seen while our motorhome was traveling north on I-5.  It's a beautiful city, but this trip we appreciated it more in our rearview mirror!

Both I-5 and I-405 reported accidents when we left Everett on Thursday morning, so we took Highway 202 through Renton.  That route was slow, with lots of signals, and lots of roadwork.  We finally made it to I-90 near Fall City, only to find that there was lots of road construction on I-90.  We stopped for gas in Cle Elum, and discovered that we could only go west on I-90.  Of course, we were headed east to Yakima.  We planned to have lunch at the rest area just down the road, but it was full (summertime, remember?), so we munched on some pretzels and waited to have lunch after we got to the state park in Yakima. 

We have a beautiful site (#26) at Yakima Sportsman State Park, however the trees block our satellite dish, and we discovered this trip that our new DVR, purchased after our old one got stolen last summer, does not let us watch our recorded programs if the recorder can't get a signal.  Bummer, but we survived not being able to watch more Duck Dynasty episodes! 

This guy visited one of our campground neighbors this morning.

Tomorrow we head for home and we are going to avoid US 97 outside of Yakima which has been closed because of fires in the area.  We are also going to avoid I-84 near Portland as they are doing roadwork.  Thus, we'll take the scenic, but longer Highway 12 route west to I-5 south.  Wish us luck!