A Full-time Life

FAMILY AT THE ZOO (Remember Whensday)

August 17, 2009

Our 2004 road trip took us through Louisville Kentucky, where my mother was born and raised. In 1938, she came west for a job, met my dad and never really went home again. It was interesting (and poignant) to look up the old places that Mom always talked about. Here I'm standing on the property where her childhood home used to be. (If you click on the picture, you can see a liquor store sign — I don't think it existed when she lived there!) In the 1950s, the family property was purchased by the city for use as a school, then became a media center. Now the population has shifted again and it is once more a high school.

The school was named for my great-grandmother and this is a painting of her. It is hanging in the auditorium. The other picture is my great-uncle Lydian, a bachelor who still lived on the property when it first became the school. He was able to stay in his house on the school property until he passed away.

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Many generations ago, my mother's ancestors owned a farm that was part of the land that now houses the Louisville Zoo. When the zoo was being built, they discovered some old family burial plots. So the city fenced off the tiny graveyard and a stone was erected. I guess there are about a million descendents of these Louisville pioneers by now. I hope they all know that they have family at the Zoo.

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JUST HANGING OUT IN OREGON

August 13, 2009

We're just hanging out here in beautiful Lane County, enjoying the summer. When we first got here, I wrote about how incredibly hot it was — and almost as soon as I posted that, the weather moderated. So now we're enjoying very lovely temperatures — maybe low 80s daytimes, cooler at night. Lovely.

Now if it could just stay like this for a few more months.

The fruit trees and berries are growing on our daughter and son-in-law's place.

When we first got here, you could pick a gallon of berries without moving — they were that thick. Now they're starting to fade a bit (because of that one hot week). But still so good!

All of this fruit is so easy to pick. Blueberries must be the best berry ever — no thorns.

And whoever developed dwarf fruit trees was a genius. They are loaded with fruit, most of it pickable from the ground.

So we're just hanging out in Oregon, doing our things and enjoying the fruits (literally) of others' green thumbs.
FLIGHTS OF THE GEESE

August 10, 2009

Ever since we saw the sculpture of geese in flight on North Dakota's Enchanted Highway, I've been thinking about one of our best bird watching experiences ever. In 2006, we stayed near New Mexico's Bosque Del Apache Wildlife Refuge during Fall Migration. That was our second Autum visit — it's such a beautiful time to be there. (Check out our Bosque photo album on top of the right-hand column.).

I thought it would be fun to compare the North Dakota and New Mexico flights:

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Maybe the Enchanted Highway sculpture was Art imitating Life — maybe. At the very least it was craftwork that we enjoyed both for itself and for the memories of a lovely time in New Mexico.

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The major difference between the two experiences, though, is this: We're glad we went to see Enchanted Highway and the story behind it was interesting, but having seen it once, we probably won't go again. But we'd go out of our way to go back to the beautiful Bosque — and we really hope we do someday.
SUMMER and FAMILY

August 7, 2009

We're having some great family time here in Oregon.

These are the snapshots that I'd have on our refrigerator right now if it weren't wood instead of metal. The ones right below are from somebody's big 7-0 birthday celebration. (Let's see, who's the oldest person we know here?) The family gathering was at Cyndi and Jeff's house (they're the parents of our three grownup — and farflung — grand-children). With the birthday "boy" (yeah, right!) is our grandson Ryan who is visiting all of his Oregon relatives for a while.

Lower collage: Those are our other two younger Grandkids, Sarah & Collin, and some more pictures of Ryan (and Aunt Cyndi) at the Lake.

Summertime! Kids! Gotta' love 'em! They make us feel young again (well, almost anyway).
ROADTRIP WRAP-UP, SPRING 2009

August 2, 2009

The season started late for us because we even didn't arrive at our summer destination until July 15. But we are here at Fern Ridge Shores now and, oh my goodness, it really is SUMMER now.   Last week, there was a heat wave of record proportions here in the normally mild Willamette Valley. The temperature reached 103 on a couple of days, almost unheard of in this part of the country. We are lucky to be here though. The Park is partly shaded, the Lake is inviting and cool (and our AC works).   Hot or not, it's great to be here.

It was a good roadtrip. We saw some beautiful country between Florida and Oregon. We drove 5400 trailer miles in the two and a half months (not counting miles put on the truck exploring while we were unhooked). We took the Northern route and so almost all of the time we were on roads that were new to us.

We stayed for at least one night in fourteen different states, four of them new to us. We added a National Park to our list of those we've visited. And we explored new parts of some states where we'd spent time on earlier trips. Click on the "states where we've stayed" page on the right for a list of the RV Parks where we stayed on this trip.

We had some great visits with family this time, something that we have never been able to do on previous roadtrips (until we got back to Colorado and then Oregon).   This time, we were able to spend some time with two sets of our grown grandchildren. We parked the house for a while in Charleston, South Carolina where we had a lovely visit with our grand-daughter and grandson-in-law who had just moved there. Then, later in the trip, in a nice bit of serendipity, we crossed paths with our traveling grandson and his wife in Illinois. And we even were able to drop in on a sister and brother-in-law whom we hadn't seen in a while in Bemidji, Minnesota.

We spent three wonderful weeks near our son and daughter-in-law when we got back to Colorado (which is actually more like a home-away-from-home break during our roadtrips, because it is so familiar to us by now). This picture is Golden Pond near their house and a view of some of the many snow-capped Mountains that you can see from Longmont, where they live.

We really like having our own house when we visit people. We feel like we're neighbors for the time we're there, instead of having to impose on our hosts as houseguests.

Here are a few bits and pieces that didn't make it into the posts we did as we traveled. (If you haven't already seen those, just scroll down through the posts below — back through to the first of May — to read the major highlights.)

Most of the time on our overnight stops we were able to find RV Parks where the spaces were long enough so that we didn't have to unhook. It's a pain to have to go through that if you don't really intend to go anywhere in the truck that night.

When I opened the curtains one morning, I found myself looking at a Teton and Freightliner exactly like our own, kind of like I was seeing a reflection. These people had come in late the night before and pulled in right next to us. We're all looking for those nice long pullthrough spaces!

The other thing we like in an overnight spot is when there is something interesting to look at when we take a walk after we're parked and hooked up. It doesn't have to be anything amazing – the local wildlife will do beautifully.

For a little while, we thought our trip might be jinxed because just an hour or so into our trip — the very first day, somewhere near Ocala Florida — we were stopped in a traffic tie-up for almost three hours. We never did find out why. But people just got out of their cars, sat down in lawn chairs, played frisbee, walked their dogs, and visited. We even saw someone unload a horse from its trailer and walk it along the roadside. Nobody seemed too concerned about the delay, they just sort of turned it into a roadside party. So it turned out to be kind of interesting after all.

Road construction projects were going on everywhere, so we saw a view kind of like this one just about every day we were on the road. In Minnesota, they say there are two seasons: Winter and Road construction.  We never did have any more long delays anywhere, but sometimes it felt like we were running an obstacle course with the trailer.

We love traveling and learning — that's why we live in an RV. Here are a few extra pictures of things we learned.   (click on 'em).

A tortoise patrols at a roadside rest area near Savannah

Inside Teddy Roosevelt's N.D. cabin. It was made of railroad planks. (At TR National Park in North Dakota).

Below: Pioneer women weren't always happy with their lot (with good reason). (Somewhere between Fruita CO and Beaver Utah)

There are some great things about small towns! Donna and Sherm, friends of ours in Springfield, grew up in tiny Richardton, North Dakota. He went to high school at this Benedictine Abbey. It is a beautiful building — and the Abbot of it remembered them very well when we mentioned their name!

We always enjoy our roadtrips, but after a few months it's great to be settled down again. We're especially happy to be here at Fern Ridge Shores, where we can visit with family and old friends.   It's going to be a great summer!
BEAUTIFUL CRATER LAKE

July 24, 2009

Oregon may not have 10,000 Lakes like another state we visited on this road trip, but it has this one. It's deep, it's beautiful, it's blue, it's Oregon's only National Park. It's Crater Lake.

We hadn't been here for years and years.   We are happy we took the time to see it this time.

Enjoy our pictures and  CLICK HERE to read all about the geology and history.   I can't explain it better than the National Park Service can.

Go see it!

Wizard Island

Phantom Ship – still a trace of snow, even though it was quite warm and sunny the day we were there.

The Pinnacles (on the East Rim Drive around the Lake)

Pumice Castle

Another Lake View. Who needs Kodachrome?

Vidae Falls — another one for the Waterfall collection.

What a beautiful day. I'm so glad that our route from Colorado to Fern Ridge Shores took us through this area.
MEMORIES IN A TUMBLE-DOWN TOWN

July 20, 2009

We've been married just about forever and sometime back at the dawning of civilization*, we lived for a couple of years in New Pine Creek. We went to see it last week when we were in Southeast Oregon. It's a blink-and-you-miss-it kind of place that straddles the Oregon-California border on Highway 395.

  This little farm community is twenty miles south of Lakeview Oregon and 50 miles north of Alturas California, with nothing much else in between. It's the outback of the outback. Back then (*it really was 1959 through 1961), we thought we were so lucky to get to move there. Bill had just graduated from a two-year program at a Teacher's College in Idaho and he got a position as teacher/principal (and janitor) at New Pine Creek Elementary, a one-room school on the California side of the border. (California! It paid more than Idaho, where most of his fellow graduates went.)

We had a one-year old son and a baby on the way. (Our daughter was born in Lakeview). This is the house where we lived — as you can see, it is about a foot from the highway. The house actually looks better now than it did then; we didn't have siding or a fence. It snowed a lot in the Winters we were there. The snowplow would come past several times a day and plow the snow into drifts that blocked the house in. Those winter days were long!

This is the old school building — it was about the length of two blocks straight up the highway from our house. Someone is living in it now; the school closed years ago. It is funny to realize that the eighth-graders Bill taught were actually only six or seven years younger than he was.

It was a very small village even then. But there were a couple of grocery stores, a good butcher, a barbershop and a Grange Hall that had an active social schedule. Now the Grange Building looks like something straight out of a ghost story.

There isn't much left of the town now. Both of the grocery store buildings are still standing, but they are now "antique" stores.   Junk shops — especially when there are more than two in a three block stretch — must be the last dying gasp of a small town.

After our two years here, we moved back to Eastern Washington. LIving there again, we had two more sons, bought our first house, worked a bunch of various jobs between us, and, eventually, Bill completed his degree. (That last sentence alone would be worth a hundred posts if this were really that kind of blog!)   In 1971, we moved to Lane County, Oregon — the opposite side of the State of Oregon from NPC, in every possible definition.

Our visit last week was only the third or fourth time we've been through here since we moved and we've long since lost track of the people we knew.   But we'll always remember our two years here — we did a lot of growing up and had a lot of fun too.

I wonder if there will be anything left of the town if we ever drive through here again.
JUNIPERS RV RESORT, LAKEVIEW

July 18, 2009

Here we are driving down a road cut into the side of a canyon near the small town of Lakeview, Oregon. We almost forgot that here in Oregon's outback, nobody finds it necessary to post warning signs or put up a guardrail, even on roads like this. It would be quite a drop off down to that beautiful valley.

We stayed for three nights at an RV Resort called Junipers, ten miles out of Lakeview.  I've never written before about an RV Park when we only stay a few days, but this one was so charming and well-run that really it deserves its own post.

Some people who own a cattle ranch have taken a few acres of it and turned it into an RV resort. (It's still a working ranch.) The park is super-clean and neat, with nice wide spaces, very private. When we woke up in the morning, it was as if we were looking over acres of ranch land and our own cattle on parade.

There's a six-mile loop trail around part of the ranch. We drove the trail our last evening (mountain bikes would work for those who wanted that much exercise). We saw some pronghorns (antelope) and this herd of weed-eating goats, getting ready to settle in for the night — beats trying to mow all these acres!

The resort was totally quiet and peaceful and it had all of the facilities individual RVers or groups would ever need.   The picture below is the well-kept center building. There were lots of bird-houses and flowers and green, shady gathering spaces.

Lakeview isn't on our usual travel path back to Lane County and the 200-mile (one-way) distance makes it way too far for a sidetrip. But we were glad we picked a different route back this year and that we had a few days to spend here.   Junipers Resort would be great place to stay as part of a scenic trip through Oregon's outback.
THREE STATES AND THREE DAYS ON THE ROAD

July 14, 2009

We chose a different route than we usually take when we left Loveland last Monday. Our usual route out of Colorado involves Route 80 and 'Whyoming'. This time, we chose the more scenic I-70. And we can't remember when we've seen as much varied scenery in such a few days.

We drove past Denver and through the Eisenhower Tunnel near that mile-high city. This is the highest automobile tunnel in the world at over 11,000 feet.   It goes under the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains. Beautiful mountains and green trees lined both sides of the highway. We passed turnoffs to the famous ski resorts of Vail, Glenwood Springs, and Aspen.

On past visits to Colorado (pre-blog, even pre-camera) we made sidetrips to all those towns — even stayed overnight at Aspen (in the off-season, when it's affordable). This picture is near Glenwood Springs; the mountain scenery is typical of most of the drive on this day.   I-70 runs right through the canyon and along the Colorado River. We saw quite a few people rafting.

Some of the mountain passes were very slow driving, low gear. We stayed that night at Fruita (still in Colorado).

Tuesday, still on I-70, we crossed into Utah where we drove through some beautiful scenery that was in total contrast to the previous day. This was all moonscape-like rocky scenery, granite reefs and uplifts. Also in contrast to the day before — and to add to the surreal feeling — there were no services for over 100 miles of the Highway — no signs, no old towns, no nothing, but the amazing scenery.

There wasn't even much traffic, although we passed turnoff roads that led to several National Parks (Arches and Canyonlands, Bryce, Zion, Grand Canyon, Capital Reef). We've been to those parks on earlier trips, most of them before we started to blog.

Wednesday morning we left I-70 and hopped on to Utah State Highway 21, which has to be the longest, loneliest road ever. Straight as a die for miles and miles. Scrub desert scenery all the way.

We had to stop a couple of times to wait for large dust devils (or small tornados) to cross the road.

Into Nevada, we got on Highway 50, which we have seen billed as "the loneliest road", but it definitely isn't if you've just come off of SH 21.

Since our Winter in Florida and the Low Country, we had almost forgotten how much space there is in the West. Mountains and lots of flat land under them.

If only there were water!

The differences between these three neighboring states reminded us yet again of how varied and beautiful this country is.

The actual on-the-road portion of our trips is not always this interesting . Sometimes the road is just a way to get where we're going. But for these three days at least, life was about the journey and not the destination.

We were happy that we chose this route.
(Flashback Friday) BEMIDJI, MINNESOTA

July 10, 2009

On our current roadtrip timeline, this post actually belongs somewhere between Duluth Minnesota (click on blue ) and Dickenson, North Dakota ( here ).

We had a lovely four days in Bemedji, visiting with Sandra and Joe, our sister and brother-in-law. (She's Bill's baby sister, but I've known her since she was three, so it all kind of blends together sometimes.) We hadn't seen them for almost four years, since they moved there from the Northwest to be closer to their kids and grandkids.   We stayed at the Bemedji KOA, which was within a mile of their house. Couldn't have been a better location for a visit.

One evening, Sandra and Joe had a family barbeque so that we could visit with both of their kids and spouses and grandkids.    We hadn't seen our niece since she was a teenager and now she has teenagers of her own. Our nephew is proud father to a three-year old son who is a bundle of energy.   Wish I'd gotten more family pictures. As often at family gatherings, I was too busy listening and talking to even remember I owned a camera.

Sandra is a birdwatcher, as am I, so one afternoon we just sat and visited and enjoyed watching the activity at her feeders. (That's one thing I miss that we had at our stick house.) I didn't expect to see the variety of birds that were there — orioles and some other species I had only seen in Texas up until then.

Sandra and Joe took us around to see a few of Minnesota's 10,000 Lakes. I used to think that the State's slogan was probably an exaggeration, but after looking around Bemedji and Duluth and in between, now I think it's probably either accurate or understated. There is water everywhere! There are almost that many Lake resorts in the Bemedji area alone.

Minnesota is Paul Bunyan country and the Bemedji Chamber of Commerce claims that he was born here. Would they lie?   This statue of Paul and Babe the Blue Ox is world famous. Again according to the Chamber, every other statue of the two is a copy.

We ate two of the local delicacies — grilled Walleye (it's a Lake fish) and Wild Rice soup. Both delicious. We saw some of the places where the rice comes from (but it wasn't growing season). It's a different grain from ordinary rice.

We saw some ice fishing shacks (stored behind buildings for the summer) and thought it would be interesting to see those being used out on the frozen lakes, except BRRR. In the Winter, Bemedji often tops the list of coldest places in the nation. So on second thought, ice fishing will probably be one of those things we won't ever see.

We had a lovely few days and were happy that we had decided to take the Northern route back to Oregon, so that we could drop in on family.    Sandra and Joe said they enjoyed it too — all of the rest of their families live in the Northwest or Arizona, so they don't get a lot of drive-by company.

But when we were a couple of days down the road after our visit, we got a call that Sandra had been taken to the hospital at Fargo, ND (the nearest big hospital to Bemedji) and was scheduled for heart surgery. She was a pretty sick lady. Since we were still within a few hours drive of Fargo (from the other way — we had driven past it when we left Bemedji), we went back to wait through her surgery. When we knew she had come through it well, we continued on our trip.

It was a scary time for everybody. Thankfully she continues to recover and get back to normal. Life is good.