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.

Port Angeles, Washington

We left Vantage at our usual time between 10:00 and 11:00. We didn't want to leave too early because we were meeting my chatroom friend Phyllis and her husband Bob for lunch and we were only a few hours away. I forgot about all the fruit stands in eastern Washington so when we came upon the first one, of course I had to stop. Then we came upon a HUGE one in Thorp and had to stop there too. We finally found corn. Boy, do I have produce now! I have to take a day and freeze some bags of peaches. I bought a whole box of them! We made it to Kent and took the exit Phyllis told us to take and it took us right through the middle of town! We missed the turn we were supposed to take and ended up in construction. I called Phyllis and she knew where we were so she had us park behind this convenience store that had a huge lot in the back and then came and picked us up. We had a great lunch at a pizza restaurant called The Rock. It had a wood burning pizza oven and the pizza was fantastic!! Phyllis and Bob are really nice and fun to be around. We had a GREAT time with them and our lunch took about two hours. I really hope we can get together again sometime before we leave here.


We left Bob and Phyllis and headed for Graham to my brother George and sister-in-law Jolene's house. Normally this would have been only about an hour or so away but it was already time for rush hour traffic. UGGHHHH The traffic was awful and it took us about 2 hours to get there. As we were driving down the road I just happened to look to my right and saw a car sitting at the light and the driver was frantically waving. I immediately recognized my sister-in-law. She was coming from the grocery store and saw us. She passed us and led us right to their driveway where Rod had to back in along side their motorhome and car trailer. He did really good and was so pleased with himself. I think his fear of backing into places is going away.

We spent two days there and had a FANTASTIC time! They have three beautiful daughters. Stephanie, the youngest stills lives at home, the oldest, Tiffany, is married with two kids and the middle one, Ashley, is working and owns her own home with a cousin. We got to see all three while we were there. That was really nice. Tiffany came over one night with her two little kids Camryn and Jaedon. Sorry, Tiff, I don't know if that's the correct spelling but probably not. They're so cute and we call her daughter a "mini me". She looks just like her mom. She was really stubborn about having her picture taken though.

Ashley & Stephanie


Tiffany and Jaedon


I snuck a picture of Camryn


Here's some pics of our "campsite" in the back yard. Yes, they're really were SIX dogs!



We left Graham on Thursday morning and stopped for gas before hitting the freeway. It was $4.09 a gallon for diesel!! We haven't seen it this low since we've been on the road. After we were almost out of Tacoma we realized we hadn't even gotten any teriyaki chicken. If you've never been to the Northwest you wouldn't know that they're are as many teriyaki places as there are Starbucks and we really wanted a fix. I put it in the Garmin and we found a place in Silverdale and there was a big mall there so we were able to park and walk across the street. Well, it wasn't there but we did find a Chinese restaurant so that worked out just as well. We got some really yummy teriyaki chicken and continued on to Port Angeles. We had to cross two very large bridges to get there. The first one was the Tacoma Narrows bridge which only recently had a second one built because of the horrible traffic.

The Tacoma Narrows bridge. The one on the left is the new one.


The second bridge we had to cross was the Hood Canal bridge. This one is a floating bridge and swings open in the middle to let ships go through.


We are now at our campsite at Salt Creek County Park outside Joyce, Washington. I had to put that name in for my Sissy. We'll start our jobs here on Monday which consists of cleaning out fire pits, replacing TP in the bathrooms and picking up trash. Not too bad for a free spot. The other camphosts are still here but will be leaving Tuesday. We have no sewer hookup until then but I think we'll make it. Our view here is absolutely incredible. We're up on a hill overlooking the Strait of Juan De Fuca and over into Canada. This was one of the cruise ships we saw yesterday heading into Seattle. Are you onboard, Nancy??



I haven't taken a pic yet of our campsite but we'll be here for two months so I'm sure I'll be getting one soon. Also, I'll take LOTS more pics later of our incredible view here. People pay a lot of money to have a view like this and for us it's free........

Spokane & Vantage, Washington

We got a late start leaving St Regis. It was a little after 11:00 when we finally pulled out. We didn't have too far to go though and we were picking up an hour crossing into the Pacific Time Zone. YAY! We finally made it to Washington! We went from the southeast corner of the U.S. to the northwest corner of the U.S. in just eight months. We did stay in Georgia for a month, Texas for a month, Utah for two months and Idaho for a month. We're going to spend the next two months in Washington at Salt Creek County Park workamping. We get a free site for the time we're here so that'll be a big savings (that we'll probably use for fuel).

After we got set up at Riverside State Park in Spokane I called Jenny to let her know we were there. She was surprised we were so late but that's the way it goes when you're fulltiming. Can't be sure what time we're ever going to be somewhere. She came over with her gentleman friend, Richard and we had a little visit before heading out to dinner. It was a really cool local bar with a BUNCH of TVs. We weren't interested in what was going on with the TVs because we had so much to talk about. We had such a good time and it was sad to leave. I wish we would have had more time there. It was a GREAT visit and I can't wait for our mini rally in Texas so I can meet more people from our chatroom. We took it easy for the rest of the evening chatting in the chatroom and watching TV. We went to bed earlier than usual because we're still used to Mountain time and now we're on Pacific time. You'd think we would have gotten up earlier too but nope, that wasn't the case. We pulled out of Spokane at about 10:15.

Our campsite at Riverside State Park


Do you think they're having any fun at all??


Me and Jenny


She couldn't finish her dinner


We are now in Vantage having gotten here at about 2:30. We stopped at a produce place along the way. I was so happy to see one of these. I have been wanting some fresh produce for so long. I was like a little kid in a candy store in there. I bought green beans, tomatoes, Walla Walla sweet onions, and oh yeah, some Rainier cherries for my friend PennYE in Florida. She really loves them and they are so expensive in Florida so she's going to be SOOOOOO excited to be getting these.

We were also going to stop in George because there is a cafe there called Martha's Cafe . I've always wanted to eat at this place but we saw a little grocery store in town and stopped there first. They didn't really have anything cool or unusual there. We walked out the door and Rod spotted a Mexican restaurant on wheels. Well, forget Martha's. I'll take Mexican food any day! It was really, really good too.

As we got back on the freeway we saw Martha's and it was all closed up with a lot of weeds growing in the parking lot. I guess it didn't do very well and it's now closed. Oh well, good thing we got the Mexican food.

The bridge going over the Columbia River into Vantage



It's very windy here but the temp is nice. It was 77 this afternoon and now it's 70 so not too bad. Now we're just staying in tonight and watching the Chargers and Seahawks on TV. I don't usually get into pre-season football but we don't get to watch either team that much during regular season. Since I'm from San Diego and Rod's from the Seattle area it gets interesting in our house when these two teams play each other. Not really, it's just a game.

Tomorrow we're headed to my brother and sister-in-law's house in Graham. We're just gonna park in their yard for a few days before heading to Port Angeles. First stop though, is Kent to have lunch with Phyllis and her husband. Phyllis is another one of my chatroom friends that I've never met. It's so cool to be able to meet these people that you kinda already "know" from nightly chats on the computer. It should be another GREAT meeting.

St Regis, Montana

Yesterday we went to the National Bison Range. It's a preserve set up by the American Bison Society back when the bison were on the verge of becoming extinct. That is no longer the case but they still have the preserve. They even have a corral here where they round up the bison to give them their vaccines. There are a lot here but not near the number we saw at Yellowstone. These are right by the road also but there are several other animals in the preserve as well. There are 6 to 8 bears (they're not sure of the number?!), elk, pronghorn antelope, big horn sheep, mountain goats, weasels and various birds. We only saw the antelope, bison and big horn sheep but we were pretty excited about that! We consider that a JACKPOT.


Do you think we were close enough??


Pronghorn Antelope


Big Horn Sheep


We still haven't found the elusive moose. We were told several places to go by the office staff here but we've been there quite a few times and still haven't seen one. They're supposed to be out either early morning or early evening. Well, anybody that knows us knows we're not going to go looking early in the morning. We've been out where one is supposed to be every evening but nothing. Oh well, maybe we'll just have to wait for next summer when we go to Alaska.

Today we took a long drive through some beautiful parts of Montana and into Idaho. We were on a gravel road until we reached the Idaho state line and then the road was paved all the way. The canyons and rivers were absolutely amazing. The rivers are pretty low right now but apparently they are raging in the spring. We saw some rafters but they were standing in the water pushing their rafts. The water was up to their knees. There were a lot of fishermen too. We saw this one group of four guys. One of the guys apparently thought the fishing would be good on the other side so he tried to "walk" across a wire but wasn't having much luck so he was attempting to come back. We thought it was pretty funny watching him struggling with the wires while holding onto his pole so I took a picture. His buddies were completely ignoring him and going about their fishing.


We took a picnic lunch and found a really nice spot right on the river with a covered area and about six picnic tables. It was a little chilly but we got a table with a little piece of our table in the sun. There was nobody else there so it wasn't a problem finding a seat. Despite his expression he really did like his ham sandwich.



Some more of the amazing scenery


A Heron?


Tomorrow we're heading for Spokane and are staying at Riverside State Park. It's close to my internet friend Jenny so we're excited about that. After tomorrow she'll no longer be known as my "internet friend". She'll just be a friend! I'm looking forward to it but I just wish we had more than one day there.