Lazy Week

We've had a lazy week. We did our usual Tuesday errands in town. That sounds so funny, like we're out in the boonies and have to hitch up the horses and go into town to get our weekly rations.

We went to the Ford dealer in town because we still haven't gotten our Sirius radio fixed. They called the dealer in Helena where we had the problem diagnosed to get the part number that they needed and were going to call back. Still haven't heard from them. Hopefully they just ordered the part and we can have it installed when it gets here.

We were going to take a drive out to Neah Bay on Wednesday but ran out of time doing our errands on Tuesday so we had to do laundry instead. We figured we could always go next week. Neah Bay is the furthest most northwest point in the U.S. We've been to Key West which is the furthest most southeastern point and being from San Diego I figured I've been to the furthest most southwestern point. Only one more to go! Who knows when we'll ever get up to the northeastern part of the country.

I don't usually write about personal things going on in my family but I just have to say we had some sad news in our family this week. My beautiful sister-in-law Michelle passed away on Wednesday after a lengthy battle with lung disease. She received a lung transplant last April and was doing really well but eventually all the medicines she was taking took a toll on the rest of her organs. We will miss her SOOOOOO much. I'm flying down to San Diego on Saturday to attend her funeral and just be there for my brother Art and the rest of our family. Rod is staying here with our rig and my other brother Donny is going to fly down with me. I hate the whole flying process and thought I was done with it but I guess things just happen.

I didn't even take any pictures this week.

More Unexpected Visitors

Friday we were sitting around doing absolutely nothing. Rod was hanging around outside and I was just doing everyday stuff inside. We were getting ready to go walk the cross country course that was set up here for a big event on Saturday. I saw this woman walking up the hill behind our rig and start talking to Rod. Then they hugged! Hmmmm, I thought, Rod's really getting friendly with our campers. LOL Turns out she was a really good friend of Rod's sister, Sue, from high school. He hasn't seen her since then probably. Turns out she's a really nice lady and was camping here after talking to Sue. Sue told her we were camphosting here and she asked her not to say anything as she wanted to surprise us. We ended up spending most of the weekend with her, her husband Paul and grandson Tristan. We really enjoyed their company.

Janet and Tristan


Rod and Paul


What a busy weekend. This place was absolutely PACKED! You would have thought it was a holiday weekend. The weather wasn't even that great. Fog all day on Saturday and it keeps coming in and out today. Most all of the campers left this morning but more people keep coming in today. Unbelievable. We had a GREAT weekend though.

There was a big high school cross country meet on Saturday. Twenty high schools were represented here at the Salt Creek Invitational. We walked the course on Friday and I was the first one to complete the course. LOL, that's the only way I would be able to beat anybody at this race.

You can see how foggy it was


Here they come!


We also went to Rod's mom's house last week and picked the rest of the apples on her tree. I told you guys I was going to have to make some strudels and pies. Well, I don't bake usually but it seems like I have baked more since we've been here than I have in the last ten years. I've made three blackberry cobblers and two strudels. I've got to make some more kinds of apple something because these are gravenstein apples and the reason you don't see them in stores is because they don't last very long. As long as I make something out of them I can then freeze it. We didn't get a chance to freeze the strudel because we ate all of it pretty quickly. Oh well, I guess I'll have to make more. I'm really getting the hang of this baking thing.

Still more apples to use up


Not a bad looking strudel, huh? I forgot to cut the steam holes though


I guess that's it for this weekend. More people are still coming in although it's definitely not going to be like the weekend was. We should have a pretty quiet week.

Visitors!!!

Holy cow, I can't believe it's been almost a week since I've updated. Nothing is going on around here so I guess one day goes into the next. We did have overnight visitors though. Our good friends from Auburn, Bruce and Marvina came to visit. We waited and waited all day for them to show up and when they finally got here we found out they had stopped at the casino on the way. Just kidding, I knew they were stopping there. We walked around the park and somehow Marvina and I got separated from the guys. Oh well, no big deal. We went back to the rig and realized we didn't have the key to get in. I had made a lasagna and needed to get it in the oven. They guys finally showed up at 5:30 so needless to say we had a late dinner of lasagna, Caesar salad and garlic bread. I also made another blackberry cobbler but everybody was too full to have any. One of the park rangers came by later that night and he had a piece so at least somebody got to enjoy it.

The lasagna is ready to go in the oven


So is the cobbler

Dig in everybody!!


I think they enjoyed it


The next day Bruce treated us to breakfast and we just hung around all day catching up on years gone by. We fixed burgers before they left so they wouldn't have to stop at the casino again for something to eat. LOL It was a FANTASTIC few days and we hope to see them again before we leave here. Thanks again guys for coming.

Today is our day off so we're going over to Rod's mom's house to spend some time with her. She has an apple tree in her back yard that is loaded with fruit. She needs help getting the ones up on top that are, of course, the best ones. There's no way she's going to get up on a ladder so Rod's going up there. For our reward we get a bunch of apples! I guess I'll be making some pies and strudels.

One more cruise ship

Salt Creek Recreation Area

That's really the official name of the place we're staying at. It really is a beautiful park with million dollar views. Not so great when the fog rolls in but that hasn't happened very often since we've been here. I know when winter comes it does get really windy here but that hasn't happened yet either. The weather has been absolutely gorgeous. Mid 70's during the day and chilly (upper 40's) at night. Most days when we get up the sun is already out. That really starts my day off right. If it's cloudy or rainy when I get up it just starts my day off in a bad mood.

It's not just cruise ships that we see going by


The park has been pretty busy which I guess is kinda unusual for this time of year but I'm sure it probably has something to do with the nice weather. Also Boeing in Seattle is on strike so maybe people have more free time to camp. The staff here really does a great job in keeping the park beautiful and of course "Ranger Rod" does his part too. The park recently received a new electric truck. It's kinda funny looking but they're trying to do their part in "going green".

Here's Lori, the Park Ranger with her new truck


Rod went out the other day and picked a big bowl of blackberries. I made a cobbler for his mom and then had to make another one for him.

Here's the big bowl of blackberries


This is what I did with them but Rod has eaten half of it already


We borrowed Rod's mom's car the other day and went to Auburn (Seattle area) to visit some friends and also it's the only Sam's Club around and we needed some supplies. Using her car sure did save us A LOT of money in fuel. We spent $40 to fill up her car twice. If we had taken our truck it would have been well over $100! I don't know why we still shop there. Sometimes I think we still live like we did before with a three bedroom home and 2 bathrooms. We don't really have room to buy in bulk but we still do. Some of it goes down below, some of it goes in the back seat of the truck and some of it we do find room for inside. I did manage to convince Rod he really didn't need twelve bars of soap right now. I couldn't talk him out of the four bottles of Acai berry juice though. The price at Safeway was $5.09 for one bottle and the price at Sam's was $5.66 for two!

I didn't get any pictures of my friends Bruce & Marvina. I don't know what's up with me and the camera lately. I take it everywhere I go but I guess I'm having too much of a good time and I forget to take any pictures. We're hoping they'll come out to the park and spend some time with us out here. It's not exactly an easy drive to get here being about a two and a half hour drive from Seattle but it IS a gorgeous drive and a really nice park.

Salt Creek County Park

Well, it's been a few days since I updated so I thought I'd better let everybody know how we're doing or what we're doing. The answer is nothing. We've been here for a little over a week now and nobody has said anything about a day off. Hmmmm, gonna have to rectify that. It's not like we're overworked or anything but it would be nice to go somewhere for the day.

We met some people who were camped next to us, Alex and Lynne. They are also recent fulltimers. Last year they went to Alaska and still had fish in their freezer. We traded a package of halibut for a package of peaches that I had frozen earlier. Man oh man, was that halibut GOOD. We have been really craving fish and these people really came through. A few days later they gave us some salmon. We're having that tonight. They left a few days ago to visit their son in Wyoming. We're sure going to miss them. We shared a few campfires while they were here and just really got to know them. It's always sad when people like that leave but I know we'll keep in touch and maybe even see them down the road somewhere.

We walked around the park the other day and picked up trash. It just amazes me that people just throw their trash wherever. It's so beautiful here. I can't even tell you about all the dog doodoo. It's just so gross. Some of the places here you can't even walk across the grass because you have to watch the ground to avoid all the dog rockets (as Jolene calls them).

Yesterday we saw so many cruise ships both coming and going. It's just amazing how the cruise industry has become so big in Seattle. We saw a Norweigan ship and a Holland America ship coming in and going out we saw two Holland America ships, a Princess ship and something else that we couldn't tell what it was because it got too dark. It just looked like a big box with lights all over it. We've been seeing ships almost every day.

Holland America cruise ship


Another view of our campsite


Didn't I tell you we'd have a woodpile?


Look at these yummy blackberries


More of the blacktail deer in the park


Mount Baker in the distance


Today is Sunday and it's one of those days we love. We love it because we can sit here and watch all the camping people leave. That sounds kinda snotty but it's so nice and quiet during the week when there's nobody here.

We're hoping some of our friends or family in the area will come out here to either visit or camp. Rod's mom was here yesterday for dinner. Rod really wanted to go pick her up and bring her out but she was determined to drive herself. She's eighty-eight years old but has lived here in Port Angeles for sixty years. Well, she got lost and it ended up taking her two hours to drive the twenty miles to get here. Rod was beside himself with worry but there was nothing we could do. She doesn't have a cell phone so we couldn't even call her. She finally found us, had a glass of wine, ate dinner and relaxed for awhile before she had to drive back. We told her to call when she made it home. She made it home just fine in only a half an hour. Boy, were we relieved!

Salt Creek

I know, I know, I promised to write yesterday but we just had so much to do. We got it all done too. We moved just one site over but everything had to be put away, the satellite had to be stowed and the slides had to come in. Just to move three feet away. We're all set up though for our two month stay. Got the awning out, got the slides out, got my knickknacks out so everything is all set up now.

We went into the little town of Joyce to the Post Office, which is inside the General Store which is right next to the laundromat. That part of the errands was easy but the Safeway is twenty miles away. We wanted to go to Safeway because they have a gas station that sells diesel. As I mentioned before for every $100 worth of groceries that you buy you get ten cents off per gallon. Well, we spent $200 so we got twenty cents off per gallon. That made our fuel $3.85 per gallon!! Unbelievable for diesel these days.

I cheated a little bit with this picture. I didn't take a picture yesterday so this is one I took while we were here on vacation a few years ago.


We walked around the campground on Monday. It was really emptying out. The lower loop of the campground is primitive only. That means tent camping. It was even pretty empty. The upper loop where we're staying has electric and water hookups so it's mostly RV's. I found the blackberries PennYE!!! (my friend in FL) They're not ripe yet but I'll let you know when they are.

These are the REAL huckleberries


These thimble berries are delicious


These are the tide pools looking down from on top of the cliff


Another one


This is Crescent Beach which is just down the road from us


Mama deer was watching me closely


This was why


We see these deer everyday here in the park especially now that all the campers have left. They're really not very shy at all.

Today is just going to be a stay at home kind of day. It's a good day to get a lot of cleaning done while "Ranger Rod" is out doing his campground chores. If this fog ever lifts I'll go out and get some more pictures.

Happy Labor Day!

We went over to Rod's mom's (Arlene) house on Friday and had a nice visit. We had planned on taking her out to dinner because we kinda surprised her with our visit. She knew we were coming to town, she just didn't know when. Well, it was a good thing we had that planned because the power went out at her house and was out for quite some time. We had a really nice dinner at The Landing which has excellent fish and chips. We were craving fish so much. I had the waitress take our picture but it didn't come out that great because of the sun (yes, I said SUN) behind us. I'll get more pictures later since we ARE going to be here for two months. The fish was so good but they could improve on their fries. I've never heard of waffle fries for fish and chips. Rod and I had the halibut and Arlene had the cod.


Saturday Rod's niece (Debbie) and her husband (Mike) came over for a visit. I know our friends and family's visits usually revolve around food but they had already eaten at Arlene's house so no food to talk about. We had a really nice visit with them, in fact it was so nice I totally forgot to take any pictures. Oh well, Debbie, you'll just have to come back again for another visit.

Today is Labor Day. Hope everybody that has to work is enjoying their three day weekend. It's not exactly warm here for a barbecue but we'll be doing burgers anyway. It's so nice to sit here and watch all the camping people leaving. Our campground is pretty much empty now. It was packed to the gills this weekend. It wasn't rowdy at all because for one thing, the row below us was occupied by a church group and for another thing, they don't allow alcohol here in the park. It was really quiet here at night after 10:00. Before that though it was really loud with all the kids here. Good grief, just about every camper had at least three kids and two dogs with them. I'm glad they all had a good time but I'm just as glad to see them leave.

Our empty campground


We took a walk around the campground yesterday but I neglected to take my camera. (What's up with THAT???) There's a lot of wild huckleberries growing here. I had to Google it to find out if they were ripe. Rod told me they were red. Well, he obviously has never seen a huckleberry before because they look EXACTLY like a blueberry! I haven't seen any blackberries yet but I know they're here somewhere. Maybe not in this park but they used to be all over on the side of the roads.

Today starts our camphosting duties. It really doesn't take two people to do this job and Rod is so excited about having something to do that I just let him go ahead and do it. He was scrounging firewood this morning from people who had left when the other camphost told him they have wood for us behind the Ranger's house. All we have to do is go up there and split it. Rod LOVES splitting wood so I'm sure we'll have a nice pile of wood in no time. He's almost giddy about the chores he has to do.

Here'a picture of our campsite but tomorrow we'll be moving to the next one over so we can have sewer hookups.


Tomorrow we have a TON of errands to run. We need to get our mail from Arlene's house, go grocery shopping, do laundry and go to the post office. We'll take another walk around the campground today and I'll take pictures this time. Come back tomorrow for those.