Sunday, August 1, 2010

We’re in Blaine, Washington

 

Sunday, August 01, 2010                                                                                                       Lorraine’s report

Hello from Blaine, WA. We’re home, and right now the temperature is in the mid 50’s. It’s so nice to be able to put on a sweater in the evening, and not be so sticky, hot from the humidity and high temperatures.

Last Sunday found us in Garryowen, MT. We were so close to Custer’s Last Stand Battlefield, and had wanted to tour it, but were told the coach was too big for the roads, with only a tiny turn around and no shoulders on the side of the road. We decided to just tour the Custer museum, and not chance the battlefield. Our car was still not running, so we were just towing it until we could get it to a Saturn dealer to fix it.

The Custer museum was small, but full of memorabilia from the battlefield and pictures. We watched the 45 minute movie on the battle; I didn’t realize there was a controversy going on over why the other troops didn’t come to Custer’s rescue when it was clearly proven that they could hear the battle going on.

Upon completing the museum, we headed out again, driving west to Anaconda, MT. There we found a nice RV Park called Fairmont RV Park. We pulled in set up and I cooked a nice dinner. After dinner, we walked over to the Fairmont Resort and checked out the swimming pools that are fed by the hot springs there. One pool was 102 degrees, another was 99 degrees and the outside pool was mid 90’s. It looked like a very nice resort, and it was very busy.

Monday morning we headed west again, making our way into Spokane, WA. The temperature was 105 degrees, very sunny, beautiful blue skies, mountains and trees. I didn’t realize I missed seeing trees.

Chuck had called the Saturn dealer in Spokane and they said to bring the Outlook in when we got to Spokane. We found the dealer to be in down town Spokane; and with their one way streets, it was challenging. Chuck managed and we arrived in time for them to look at it that afternoon. But the gal forgot to ask if we needed a rental car.

While he was dropping it off, I was calling a bunch of RV Parks to find a place for us to stay while they worked on it. I called 4-5 and they were either too small or sold out. I finally found one, Alderwood RV Park in Mead, WA, which was north of the city.

We were fortunate to get a spot, the guy there said there were only two left after the one we got.

We found the park, set up and I tried calling Enterprise for a rental car. They wanted from $69.00 to $129.00 a night for a rental. I asked about a discount for warranty work and they said the dealer usually set that up. So I hung up and called the Saturn dealer and asked why they didn’t take care of us. She said she didn’t know we needed one, but she forgot to ask. The earliest we could get a car was the next morning, since it was almost 5 o’clock.

The next morning Enterprise called and came and got Chuck to get a car. He came back and we took off to find a grocery store to restock the coach. We finished that and the Saturn dealer called and said the car was finished. They replaced the water pump, the oil needed changed, since it had gotten too hot and they checked everything else. We asked them to keep it since we still had more running to do.

When we finished our running, we went over to Northern Quest Casino. Chuck sat down by me and within five minutes, he was up. I played, but no luck for me. We stayed about another hour, then went and picked up the car. Everything was covered by warranty, except the oil change.

The next morning we left earlier, hoping to make it clear to Blaine, WA, Naco/TT. We had great weather for traveling. We made great time until we got to the mountains; where they had two Pilot cars keeping traffic slow for over ten miles where they were blasting or what ever they were doing. That slow down added an extra hour to travel time. We hit I 405 in Seattle at 3:00, I hoped it was enough time to get through before the rush hour traffic there in Seattle. It was.

We pulled into Blaine Naco/TT around 4:30, and did our usual set up routine. About 7or so, I called my sister and BIL, Thelma/John and asked them to meet us up the road for burgers. They did and then we came back to the coach for Paula Deen’s apple pie. We had a nice dinner, dessert and the start of good catching up time.

Since we have been here, we’ve been busy. We have to go through every compartment in the coach and purge. Then, we have all our doctor’s appointments, and throw in seeing all our family/friends and everything else with that, you know time will fly by.

We have seen my sister and BIL, Thelma & John, they had us for dinner Thursday; friends, Joe and Alice who had us over to their beautiful summer home, and then took us to dinner at Birch Bay. Yesterday we had Richard and Sandy, whose wedding we flew from Alaska last summer to Bellingham, to be in, over for B B Q. Two of their daughters, Crystal and her daughter Jazzy, and Kelsey came over to eat and visit with us. We’ve enjoyed seeing and catching up with everyone.

Just as I was writing this, a friend, Sondi, from the Lewis and Clark Chapter of Family Motor Coach Association, whose group that we joined last summer in Seaside, Oregon, recognized our coach and stopped by for a visit. We had a nice time talking and hopefully we will be able to go to the next Lewis and Clark rally in Chehalis, WA in September.

I would like to wish my sister, Thelma a very Happy Birthday on August 4th. My birthday is the 6th. Wow! time is sure flying by for us. It sure is nice to be back in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Until next time…………Lorraine

 

8/1/10                                                                                                                                    Chuck’s report

We finished our long trip West and are now settled in here at 1000 Trails (NACO) campground in Blaine.  We did a lot of miles in a short time at it was sure good to get back here. 

Last Sunday we traveled from Garryowen, Montana to Anaconda.  We found a nice campground and Lorraine fixed a nice fried chicken dinner, very good.  Later we walked (our car still wasn’t running) about 1/2 mile down the road to a Hot Springs.  Boy they have that place fixed up nice, a big resort with indoor hot water pools, three swimming pools inside and one outside.  We didn’t go swimming but walked in and checked the place out and didn’t smell any sulfur but did notice a chlorine smell.  Lorraine is very allergic to sulfur so this may be some hot spring water she could have gotten into, maybe next time. 

Next day we continued heading West.  I had done a bit of investigating and found there was still a Saturn dealer in Spokane.  So we called and made an appointment to have our car looked at there.  The dealer is in the middle of town so we found a place in front of them to park and disconnected the car.  They said they thought they might get a chance to check it out that afternoon and let us know what they found. 

We continued on to a campground North of town and got settled in for a couple of days.  We got a call from the Saturn dealer and they had already determined we in fact did have a bad water pump and they would order one to be delivered the next day.  Lorraine started working on getting a rental car for us and found out we should be able to get one covered under our car warranty but they didn’t have any Chevrolet cars left and that’s all the warranty would cover.  But they thought they might have one the next morning so we decided to wait and see. 

Next morning we worked out the details and got a rental car from Enterprise once again.  It sure is nice that they will pick you up and drop you off.  We took off to do some resupplying at a nearby Super Wal-Mart.  We got back and put stuff away before we decided to head out for some exploring and dinner. 

Lorraine found an Indian Casino we’ve visited before and plugged it into the GPS.  Just before we got there, we got a call from the Saturn dealer telling us our car was finished and we could pick it up.  YEA, some good news!  And I actually won at the Casino too.

We stopped to get our car and left our rental car at their lot, Enterprise would pick it up there, saving us from having to drive across town with two cars.  We got back to the coach and called some friends to see if we could meet with them for dinner, now that we had a car.  Unfortunately, they were busy and couldn’t see us with such a short notice, maybe next time Bill and Michele.

After driving our car around a bit and never seeing the temperature get hot, we agreed that we should hook it up to the motor home and continue on.  So next morning we did just that, heading West.  We had made reservations at 1000 Trails here in Blaine starting Thursday but we decided to make a longer drive and get in on Wednesday instead.  We hit the Seattle area at a pretty good time, not too much traffic.  We got here, got set up in one of the few sites they have that has 50 amp, water, sewer and a Southern exposure for our TV satellite antenna. 

Once we got set up, Lorraine called her sister and invited them to meet us for dinner at a local hamburger place.  They had already eaten but agreed to meet us for a visit anyway.  Lorraine usually calls her sister whenever we move so she has kept up with them pretty well but it was nice to have a good visit with Thelma and John.  After our dinner, they come by the coach for some apple pie we had picked up in Spokane and we continued our visit with them. 

One of the chores we have while we are here is to go through each compartment, cabinet and cubby hole and get rid of stuff we don’t need to be carrying with us.  So next morning, Lorraine started with the storage area under the bed.  She managed to weed out a few things and found some things we had forgotten we had, just like when we lived in a sticks and brick home.  We still have a lot more of that to do, hope to lighten up the load we carry with us.  But it seems every time we clean up a space, we manage to just fill it up with something else, just like in our sticks and brick. 

Later, we went over to John/Thelma’s house for a Bar-B-Q.  We were able to visit with their sons, John and Carl and their daughter Ashley too.  Another nice visit with them.

Friday morning we headed out for our blood draws in prep for our upcoming doctor visits.  Lorraine got hers done but I had forgotten that I needed to fast before giving blood so I will have to do mine on a later date.  Later we stopped at Fred Meyer, the bank and a furniture store.  We have been looking to replace the chair in our motor home with a recliner chair, probably a Lazy Boy.  So we checked out what was available and brought home some leather and cloth swatches to see what matches.  We will probably order one for pick up in Oregon later next month.  That will give them time to find or make one and have it ready for us to pick up on our way South.  And there is no sales tax in Oregon, another good reason to pick it up there. 

Afterwards, we went over to visit with Joe/Alice at their house.  We’ve known Joe/Alice for almost 40 years and have met with them in Arizona the last three winters.  Even thought they live here in the summer and we’ve been back here each summer since we started fulltiming, we just couldn’t work out a visit with them when we are here.  But this time we were able to have a very nice visit with them at their house.  We continued our visit over dinner at a restaurant at the beach and then back to our coach after dinner for some desert. 

Friday we called our friends Richard/Sandy to see what they had going this weekend.  This is the couple we stood up for at their wedding last year.  They were available to come by and see us on Saturday so Lorraine planned for their visit.  She fixed some snacks and got everything ready for a hamburger/hot dog Bar-B-Q.  They got here about 3:00 and two of their daughters and one of their grand daughters also were able to get here about 5:00.  So we had a time and good visit with these fine friends too. 

I think this is what Lorraine was wanting, visiting with family and friends.  She really has enjoyed our time here even though we’ve been pretty busy.  We have some doctor appointments this week, need to get our eye exams and order glasses.  We have many more friends in the area we need to contact and visit.  The refinery where I worked had their annual picnic in a couple of week and we may try to attend that to see some of my prior co-workers and their families.  So it will continue to be busy for us but a good kind of busy. 

The past few weeks have been pretty hot and humid during our travels.  We had a number of days that the humidity matched the temperature, 95 and 95.  There were lots of thunder storms in the afternoon/evenings too.  On Wednesday when we got here, the temperature was about 80 and it cooled off to the high 50s at night.  The last two days have been cloudy in the morning, this morning it’s pretty cool, almost need to wear long pants vs shorts but I’m not ready to give in to that. 

We are able to stay at this park for two weeks, then we will move over to Beachwood, a campground about 3 miles away.  We have some friends from Canada that will hopefully be there too and we will be able to visit with them too.  We will stay there two weeks then move back here to 1000 Trails for another two weeks before heading South once again.  That puts us back on the road after Labor day, a long stay in one area for us.  I’m sure by then we will be ready to get the wheels rolling again and move on to different places.

So for now, that’s it.  I’ll add some pictures and get this posted.  Oh, oh, after looking at our pictures, I see we didn’t get any pictures of John/Thelma and their family or of Joe/Alice.  I guess we were just too busy visiting to take pictures.  But we will be seeing them again while we are here so maybe I’ll have pictures of them later.  

Some pictures while traveling in South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming.  Lots of open land in the West. 

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The picture on the right is a good sized strip mine. 

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Lots of classic car shows across America, we see lots of cars being towed.  That’s the Rockies on the right.

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Notice the snow fence on the right.

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Coeur D’Alene Lake in Idaho. 

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This is Spokane, Washington, hot and dry.  Yea, it reads 105F, way too hot for us but at least the humidity is low.

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Back on the road in Eastern Washington, they don’t get much rain here. 

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The Columbia River in Eastern Washington. 

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Ok. starting to see some trees in the Cascade Mountains, and the temperature is cooling off too. 

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Jasmine, Crystal and Kelsey. 

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Lorraine and Jazzy, Sandy (who hates having her picture taken) and Richard. 

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Think I’ll close out now and get this posted.  Hope you had a good week and were able to see your family and friends too. 

Thanks   Chuck

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