Sunday, October 31, 2010

Headed Out On The Road Again

WOW, I can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve written a blog!!  We’ve spent the last month and a half in Washington State visiting friends and family.  While it’s been GREAT for us it’s not really “blog worthy”.  We did a lot of visiting!

Kevin, Jayden, Kamyrn & Tiffany

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Jolene & Ashley

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Ryan & Stephanie

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Jolene’s parents, Merle & Barb

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Nephew Ryan (just home from Boot Camp)

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Lunch with good friends Bruce & Marvina

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Then we had some HUGE news.  We had been talking it over about buying a motorhome to replace our 5th wheel.  We had been watching people at RV parks pull in with motorhomes and their setup was so quick and so easy.  We also saw a lot of places in Alaska that we would have liked to pull off the road and stay for the night or a few days.  Since we had no generator and no invertor we couldn’t do that.  We had to have electricity to run our freezer full of fish.  Yes, we could have added those things to our 5th wheel but it would have taken away a lot of our storage space.

Sooooooo, we took the plunge and went shopping.  I had been doing some research online and found a motorhome, went to look at it, test drove it and bought it.  LOL.  It’s a 2005 Tiffin Allegro Bus with only 21,000 miles on it.  We also had to buy a car to tow behind us so we could take our little day trips.  That ended up being a 2008 Ford Edge.

We LOVE being motorhome owners!!  The ride is SO much smoother than the truck, we don’t have to stop for a bathroom after drinking a pot of coffee and if I want to make lunch or dinner I can do that while rolling down the road.  It ends up being a money saver for us because the truck pulling the 5th wheel gets almost the same fuel mileage but we’re saving money by not eating out while traveling and having a more fuel efficient car for our day trips.

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It took a lot longer than we expected to move everything from the 5th wheel into the motorhome.  We also had to have our satellite dish transferred over and a few fixes done.  Poulsbo RV really did a nice job of taking care of us.  Anything we found wrong while moving in was taken care of.

After we got all moved in we moved to Graham to park in my brother’s driveway for a few days while we waited for our license plates to arrive from South Dakota.  Since we are residents there we have to license it there.  The people at the County Treasurer’s Office were so amazingly helpful telling me exactly what I needed to license the motorhome and the car.  The car was easy.  All we had to do was remove the plates from the truck and put them on the car after sending in the paperwork and the fees.  The motorhome was a little more paperwork but I got it all done, got the plates and headed down the road on Tuesday, the 26th.

First stop was in Portland, Oregon to see my daughter’s best friend since Junior High.  Kellie was VERY pregnant when we saw her last year.  We were so excited to see her new baby.  Jon couldn’t join us because he had to work but Kellie took him some of our salmon to make up for it.

Kellie and Izabella

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Isn’t she gorgeous???

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She’s actually giving the mustard some love.

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She recently started walking

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We left Portland on Wednesday, spent the night in a Truck Stop and moved on again the next day.  Thursday night and Friday night found us in Truck Stops also.  I’m thinking I don’t like them very much because of all the noise all night long.  We’re going to have to try Wal-Mart's along the way to Texas if we can find out where they are.

This was an interesting view, I thought

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This was at one of our stops!!  Yes, that’s snow!!

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We arrived in Ft Collins on Saturday to our favorite spot.  Our favorite spot is wherever our grandchildren are.  LOL.  They’ve already had a sleepover and tonight we’re going trick or treating with them.  Todd made a HUGE pan of chicken teriyaki and I made some rice.  It gave me a chance to try my hand at the convection oven.  Not sure if I like it but I guess I’d better learn to because it’s all I have now.

This is why we’re here.  Reilly & Ashton

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Reilly showed me that she knows how to tie her shoes.

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The weather here in Colorado has been pretty nice.  It was so warm last night that I opened my bedroom window but had to close it again because the rain was getting my face wet.  LOL.  It’s a gorgeous sunny day today though.  We’ll stay as long as the weather holds out.  We plan on being here for a few weeks and then heading down to Texas and Arizona for the winter.