Musings on Our Lifestyle and Back in Illinois

We arrived back in Rochester on Friday, Oct. 16. It is really interesting to see how some things have stayed the same and others have changed after having been gone for several months. There was extensive road work being down on East Lake Drive, the main road we take to get to Springfield, when we left in June. Most of the time the road was one lane during the road work. It was heavily traveled, thus the need to widen it; but it seemed like it was taking forever to finish the work. The work is all completed, with turn lanes, a traffic signal, new grass on either side and one of the smoothest surfaces we've ever seen. And a hike and bike trail. I hope the people who use it every day appreciate all the work that went into it.

Our neighborhood looks about the same. The house looks just like it did when we left (in need of getting the remodeling done). Our neighbor has kept the yard mowed and checked inside occasionally. After getting the motorhome parked and hooked up (we have 50amp and water on one end of the house and access to a sewer drain in the basement to dump the tanks via our macerator pump, we talked a little about our emotions and feelings of coming back to this house. We concluded that we really don't have any feeling one way or another, except the need to get this remodeling done so we can turn the key over to the realtor!! We raised our family in this house. Dan built the house the spring of 1978 after Sarah was born, and all our children graduated from the Rochester Schools. We have LOTS of memories of kids over to visit, birthday parties with grandparents included, Easter egg hunts in the back yard, Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners around our big Amish built dining room table (with card tables added as a daughter-in-law and sons-in-law were added, and then grandchildren). Other memories of each child learning to drive, working at the local grocery store, library and restaurant and then leaving for college or the military, or just to "find themselves". At one time both parents and two children were all in college at the same time. Dan built a house for my parents just one block away so they could be closer to us as they were becoming less independent.

But time marches on and children establish their own homes in 5 different states, our parents do not live forever and our own needs and wants change. I'm not sure our needs and wants change as much as our sense that we now have the freedom and abilities to pursue some of our dreams which may have been put on the back burner. We neither one have a sense of "coming home" to this house.

We so enjoyed our three months in Seattle. Dash Point State Park is actually located on Puget Sound in Federal Way, just south of Seattle; about 25 miles from Gretchen's house. We were maintenance volunteers at the park. Our campsite certainly didn't have the "it" factor as we were parked across from the office and maintenance buildings. But we did have a nice big grassy yard and met and worked with a fabulous group of park rangers and park staff. And we were able to set our own hours independent of the campground hosts, so we could come and go as we pleased. This was especially helpful as Gretchen needed quite a bit of help after Edie was born. Our previous visits to Seattle with the motorhome we had parked in Gretchen and Rodney's back yard in West Seattle, and that was beginning to feel like "home." I'm sure if we volunteer at Dash Point again, we'll feel right at home.

Here are some pictures of our site at Dash Point.


This is the entrance sign on the beach side of the park. Our site was about 400 ft to the right of this sign.

The entrance booth to the beach and day use area looking toward out campsite.  This was my work station on Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons as I passed out trail maps, answered questions, gave directions, and reminded visitors of the donation box.  Dash Point SP is supported by the state, but all donations are used for improvements and projects at the park that are not covered in the regular budget.  The 400 acre park is located within the city of Federal Way, and is heavily used by the local neighborhood families. 

Our motorhome is visible in the background.  You can see, I didn't have far to walk to work, and Dan just walked across the street to the maintenance area where he repaired and revamped all the old wooden picnic tables.  He recycled the usable wood and bolts and used other recycled wood that was leftover from other projects. 

Lucy and Grandpa blowing bubbles in our

yard next to the motorhome.

Just relaxing.  Notice Grandpa and Lucy's legs.  The office is in the background just across the street from our campsite.
 

This is Edie and her mom.  Edie was asleep in the motorhome when the other pictures were taken.

As I said before, we felt right at home at Dash Point and look forward to returning in the future.  And we get to see spend more time with our granddaughters and their mom and dad also.

We left Seatle and headed toward Colorado to visit our grandsons in Carbondale, CO.  How about this scene as we approach Redstone Campground in the White River National Forest just 13 miles south of Carbondale?  That's Mt Sopris.  It never fails to invoke a sense of awe in me.  Mt. Sopris is on the northern edge of the Elk Range and its twin summits are 12, 935 ft tall.  It sits at the confluence of the Crystal River and Roaring Fork River, both noted for their trout fishing.  The Crystal River flows right by Redstone Campground.

One of our favorite campsites at Redstone Campground.  And since it is a National Forest Campground we're able to use our Federal Senior Discount Pass and cut the fee by 1/2.  There is a $5/day charge for electricity which is not discounted. 

We really do feel like we've come home when we pull into Redstone. 

And here are Isaac and Elijah

So, even though we no longer live in a "sticks & brick", and we hope to be rid of it very soon; we make each place we stay our home.  Some are more special than others, but we feel very comfortable in our home on wheels.  We have everything we need with us and have found that we just don't have the "wants" that we used to.  Our biggest "want" is that our kids didn't live so far apart (diesel fuel isn't inexpensive), but I can't think of a better way to see this wonderful country, meet new people every day, and spend as much time as we want in various parts of the country. 

More about what we're doing this fall in a later post. 

Till the next time..........

House Sitting, Dog Sitting and Just Hanging Out in Seattle

I realized it's been a over a week since I last posted. A lot has happened since then.

Currently, Dan and I are "home alone" with three dogs. Erin's mom came and took her home and Rodney, Gretchen and Lucy have gone to Florida for Rodney's brother's 40th birthday. So it's just us and Murphy, Jack and Kasey. Gretchen adopted Murphy not too long after she moved to Seattle. He is a German Shepherd/Golden Retriever mix and is about 10 years old. He had been abused and Gretchen spent a lot of time and effort to rehab him. Murphy and Lucy get along really well. She climbs all over him and loves to take him for walks. He is a big dog, but never pulls on the leash with Lucy and if she stops, he does too.

Not sure what breed Jack is, but Rodney adopted him shortly after starting college. Jack is about sixteen years old and is in failing health. He has a large growth on his side, is deaf and partially blind and has mobility issues. He has lost his peripheral vision and doesn't like being surprised from the side. But he has been trotting out to see me when I come into the back yard. Gretchen and Rodney have taught Lucy not to bother Jack and she really does leave him alone.

And of course, Kasey is in the middle of everything. He is four years old and would like to play, but the senior citizen dogs would rather just take it easy.

So we're caring for the dogs, sitting out in the yard (when it's not raining - it's rained quite a bit the past few days, but was sunny today), watching the Olympics, picking zucchini, playing with the dogs, watching the Olympics, ....... You get the picture.
So, what were we doing before everyone left? Stephanie arrived on Wednesday, August 13th. Erin was really glad to see her mom. They both left this Wednesday. Erin's first day of school as a sixth grader was today. We really enjoyed having her with us this summer. And we all enjoyed our time with Stephanie and Erin this past week. They stayed in the motorhome with us, and enjoyed having breakfast with Lucy every day and just hanging out with family. We did go to Pike's Market one day and Stephanie and Dan did a four-hour hike up Mount Si another day.

And Stephanie made a wonderful blackberry cobbler with blackberries picked from the blackberry patch just across the street. Blackberries grow wild all over Seattle and most people don't even pick them. You can see by the pictures just how difficult it is to pick them. And the big ones are always just out of reach. :)


But just see the results of all that hard work. And they picked enough to freeze some too.

As I mentioned earlier, the O'Byrne's are in Florida. They'll be back Sunday morning. We took them to the airport Tuesday evening and they flew nonstop from Seattle to Miami, arriving in Miami about 3:00am. Then Wednesday morning, at 6:15, we took Erin and her mom to the airport. And we will pick up some friends of Gretchen's on Friday morning when they return from vacation. (Gail took them to the airport on Monday last week). We could probably drive to the airport blindfolded. :)

Yesterday, Dan and I drove to Everett, north of Seattle, and visited the Boeing assembly plant. We weren't allowed to take any pictures, but we did see the most recent plane in production, the 787, Dreamliner. Dan always enjoys visiting any airplane facility. He spent four years in the Air Force, but had nothing to do with planes.

And today we attended the fall RV show at Qwest Center in Seattle. It's always fun to check out the newest RV's and see the changes. We have no plans to trade our motorhome. We are very happy with it even though we do have some issues to be addressed this fall with the manufacturer. But our Mandalay came with a three year warranty and the manufacturer has honored that warranty as we've had some things fixed. And they allowed us to get most of the work done in Springfield, IL at a local RV dealer before we started fulltiming. However, we wanted to take it back to the manufacturer before the warranty expires in November for a couple of issues and some minor things which we've found since we began fulltiming in June. So we'll be in Elkhart, IN toward the end of October. We may have to leave the motorhome there for several days since some part of the work may not allow for us to stay in it while they work on it. If so, we may just stay in Monticello with the Beever's (Erin's family). Sure don't need to decide that now.

So, we are enjoying a little down time as we house sit and take care of the dogs. And we've started thinking about where to head to when we leave here next week. We know we'll be going east, but haven't settled on anything else. We've talked about stopping off in Carbondale, CO to visit Tim, Karen, Elijah and Isaac for a few days. We sure do want to see those boys again.

We'll head east on I-90 about next Wednesday and see where we end up. It's sure great to have so many choices in this lifestyle, and to know that the only big decision we have to make is where we'll park for the night. There may be a few others, but I can't think of them right now.

More later.......

Parked at Lucy's House, Playhouse, Birthday Party

Thought you might like to see our 40' motorhome parked behind Lucy's house (and the neighbor's house).

 
Dan drove down the alley and parallel parked between Gretchen & Rodney's blue garage and the neighbor's brother's small travel trailer. And there is a chain link/wooden fence on the other side of the motorhome. Several times he has commented, "I don't know how I did that."

 
Just another view of the narrow alley and the local "campground".
 
 

We are really enjoying being right in the kids back yard. Lucy and her mom have had breakfast with us and it is so nice to be able to go back and forth between houses. Makes it a lot easier to prepare meals and share food. We've enjoyed playing table games at our house after Lucy has gone to bed (with the baby monitor on); and it's nice to have our own space to retreat to without having to drive to a campground. Plus we get to sleep in our own bed every night. :) And it feels more like family time rather than just visiting. Erin has really enjoyed playing with Lucy and is earning some babysitting money.

Grandpa has been building Lucy's playhouse, so I've included some pictures. It now has a roof. The back wall is not on yet, and the door will probably be installed tomorrow or Saturday. Grandpa has been visiting the shipyard to see a fleet of ships that came in this week; and the Blue Angels are at the airport. So for those of you who may not know, Dan has a real interest in ships and airplanes, so he gets time off for some fun.






We celebrated Lucy's second birthday yesterday. The Adams family, Frank, Maggie, Bridget, Nick and Matthew came to supper along with Ella and her mom and dad, Pauline and Bill. More pictures of the birthday girl and her friends.


Notice the "Pin the Tail on the Donkey" on the side of the playhouse for Lucy's birthday party.

Terri, the neighbor who is sharing her backyard with a motorhome, gave us some bing cherries from her tree. Erin pitted them, with the cherry pitter, and Rodney showed Lucy how to put them on her fingers. Of course she now has to put her cherries on her fingers before eating them.








We are really enjoying this time in Seattle with our family.

More later......

Wading Pool, Airplanes and Chalk Drawing

If "Variety is the Spice of Life", then being in the company of a two-year-old provides lots of spice. Yesterday afternoon we walked to the neighborhood park about three blocks from Lucy's house. (I haven't forgotten that Lucy has parents, Rodney and Gretchen) - It's just easier to type "Lucy".

For those of you who may not know, Gretchen is our fourth child, and third daughter. She is married to Rodney and Lucy Marie is their daughter. Lucy's middle name is the same Gail's mother's middle name. Gretchen moved to Seattle in 1997, met Rodney and subsequently Lucy was added to our family.

Now, back to this post. Two dogs live at Lucy's house. Jack is sixteen years old and came to live with Rodney during Rodney's college years. Jack is getting very feeble, blind and deaf. He is living out his life as the senior member of a very loving family. Murphy was adopted by Gretchen when he was five months old, not too long after she moved to Seattle. He is a Golden Retriever/German Shepherd mix. Murphy didn't really interact with Lucy until she started crawling and walking; and now he certainly is her dog. She climbs on him, tries to ride him and just generally gets along well with him. And he is very tolerant of her. She leads Murphy down the sidewalk all by herself. As you can see from this picture, she is leading Murphy. He slowly trots along and she runs behind holding his leash. If she so much as tugs on his leash, he stops and waits for her to start again. They really do have a unique relationship.





Lucy loved playing with her cousin, Erin, in the wading pool.




Today we went to the King County Airport to see the display of planes celebrating the airport's 80th anniversary. Since grandpa has such an interest in airplanes, Gretchen thought he might really enjoy this. Here's a few pictures of the day.

Lucy following Grandpa up into a plane


Erin and Gretchen dressed in part of the Airport firefighter's gear. Hope we don't need them in a emergency.


Lucy and a firefighter in the cab of the fire truck


Grandpa at the controls of a small aircraft


Lucy in the same plane Grandpa had been in; listening to the chatter from the tower


The Chalk Corner in the children's area



Erin and Lucy drawing with chalk around Gretchen



Lucy wanted Grandpa to draw around her feet



Not much else to report for today. Nap for the toddler, played a new game with Erin, Rodney cooked steaks for supper, had S'mores for dessert. Gretchen, Rodney and Erin have gone to a park to see an outdoor movie, so Grandpa and Grandma are babysitting. Lucy is sleeping and Grandma is getting this post done. Sorry about the sizing of the pictures. Not sure what happened, but I uploaded some directly to the blog and some were copied from Web Albums. Please forgive the different sizes. I'll do better next time.

More later.....

Catching UP AGAIN

Here are some links to pictures we've taken in the past 2 weeks. Just seems like I can't get "in the groove" to actually post, so thought I would play "Catch Up" with pictures and then tell you about our trip to Mt. St. Helens yesterday. So here are the links to pictures. Just click on the picture and the album will open in My Web Albums in Picasa.

Redstone & Carbondale, CO and surrounding scenery

2008 07 16 From Deschutes SRA, OR to Ainsworth SP, OR

2008 07 22 Mt St Helens drive

The story of the Mount St. Helens eruption on May 18, 1980 is very powerful. The first earthquakes that signalled that the volcano was awakening occured in late March, 1980. As the frequency and intensity of the earthquakes increased the Forest Service and geologists were on alert and monitoring the volcano. Along with the earthquakes, which occurred about one to two miles beneath the north slope of Mount St. Helens, a large bulge was growing upward and outward on the north face of the cone. The bulge was more than a mile in diameter and pushed out 300 feet by mid-April. It was growing at a rate of five feet per day.

The Forest Service had set up a Red Zone around the mountain and had evacuated people from the area. On Saturday, May 17 some people were let back in to retrieve belongings from their homes and there were plans to let another group of people in on Sunday, May 18th. Dave Johnston, a geologist monitoring the volcano from a ridge 5.5 miles from the volcano, made an early morning radio report that the bulge continued swelling at a steady rate. An hour later Dave was dead. At 8:32 AM an earthquake of 5.1 magnitude shook Mount St. Helens and triggered a giant avalanche of the bulging north slope of the cone and slid away into Spirit Lake. The blast cloud shot out of the torn-open north face and quickly outraced the speeding avalanche. It raced north, northeast and northwest, climbing ridges and sweeping down valleys, killing everything in its path. It blew trees down like toothpicks and destroyed 230 square miles of forest. That took about 5 minutes.

The unroofed magma column jetted upward for the next nine hours into a fifteen-mile high ash cloud. More dense portions of the ash cloud near its base formed pyroclastic flows of hot rock fragments fluidized by expanding gas. These flows poured our of the horseshoe shaped crater toward Spirit Lake. Mudflows - floods of water from melting ice, the ground water soaked avalanche, and the water from Spirit Lake rushed down the stream and rivers. Homes and bridges were swept away. Much of the mud ended up in the Columbia River, clogging the navigation channel for months.

Fifty-seven people died and property damage totaled 1.5 billion dollars. One person we talked to said if it would have happened on Monday rather than Sunday, more lives would have been lost because many of the men would have been working at the logging camps.

Mother nature is doing her part to recover from this terrible event as are private and public entities. Weyerhaueser Lumber began an aggressive reforestation program and the Forest Service alone salvaged 200 million board feet of downed and standing dead trees and has replanted millions of small trees. Replanted areas are labeled with signs indicating the type of trees that were replanted and the year replanting occurred. And most amazing of all, after five years, the numbers of Roosevelt elk and black tailed deer at Mount St. Helens were back to normal.

Inside the National Monument boundaries, which include Mount St. Helens, 110,000 acres have been set aside to study Nature's process of healing itself. No replanting was done in this area, so it is still very stark with patches of renewal. Researchers from around the world are studying this area and learning about the recovery of a totally destroyed ecosystem.

Geologists continue to monitor Mount St. Helens with sophisticated equipment hoping to be better able to predict her next eruption.

The Mount St. Helens Visitor Center, at the beginning of the drive; the Forest Learning Center, and the Johnston Ridge Observatory all depict different aspects of the eruption. Each has wonderful displays and short movies which really help the visitor understand all the events that occurred on May 18, 1980.

This drive to Mount St. Helens was, for me, both very sobering and exciting. Sobering, as I saw up close what can happen in just a very few minutes when something this catastrophic takes place; but exciting to see the beautiful new trees, many of which are now 25 years old, the bright patches of color from the brightly colored flowers and the Roosevelt elk that I watched along the river from the Forest Learning Center overlook. It was also refreshing to see how the people have recovered and rebuilt as we drove along Route 504 which follows the North Fork of the Toutle River, leading to Johnston Ridge Observatory. Much of the original road was buried beneath the avalanche and mudflows of the 1980 eruption. The new road was built during 1992-1995.

We were able to see the mountain from Elk Rock lookout, but because of thick cloud cover, we could not see it from Johnston Ridge Observatory. There is a cloudy picture in the web album, and here is an "official" picture from the Mount St. Helens website.

Mount St. Helens

Not sure what we doing Thursday. We may check out the south side of the mountain which was unaffected by the eruption or we may drive to the Pacific Ocean. Dan and Erin are probably getting tired of trees and more trees, so the Ocean may be a good choice. Will decide in the morning.

Happy 17th Birthday, Taylor

More later....

Long Time Away

Just a note to let everyone know we are still among the living. We left Branson on June 15th and stayed for 4 days at a Corps of Engineer campground at Fall River, KS. NO CELL PHONE OR INTERNET SERVICE!!!! So was unable to update the blog.

Very relaxing after getting ready to start fulltiming, Sarah's wedding and the RV-Dreams rally.

But will try to get something posted this week. We are now in Burdett, KS visiting friends. We have known Roger and Elaine since 1972 when Dan and Roger were studying at Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Fort Worth, TX.

Plan to spend a few days with these good friends and then move on to Colorado to see Tim and Karen's new house and visit with grandchildren, Elijah and Isaac.

More later......

We ARE on Our Way !!!!!!!!!!!!

We left Rochester at 10:15 this morning on our first day of fulltime RVing. Hip, Hip, Hooray!!!!!

No, the house isn't sold, but it sure was nice to pull away from it. We built this house in 1977 and raised our family in it. Tim was a freshman in high school and Sarah was a baby. This is the house all our kids left from as they ventured out into the world. There are lots of memories in this house, but nothing to hold us to it any longer. As many of you have heard us say many times, "Our kids live in five different states from Washington to Massachusetts, including Illinois, Ohio and (soon to be) Colorado."

We are so looking forward to being able to spend time with each of them and their families as we travel, and take a grandchild with us once in awhile. Erin will be with us this summer.

So we begin our journey enjoying the freedom of traveling the open road, taking our home with us.

We still have some work to do on the house before putting it up for sale, and will get that done this fall.

Thanks to all of you who read our blog. Be sure to leave your comments.

More later...............

Still Here!!!! Sorting, Hauling, Planning

Yes, we are still in Rochester; and I have not been very good at writing on the blog. But we have gotten a LOT done in the past few days.

Sarah and her fiance, Chad, were home for a 3 day weekend for a wedding dress fitting and we conned them into helping clean out the basement. And what help they were!!! Also moved several items to the storage building for pickup later by the kids. Stephanie, Taylor and Erin came on Saturday and helped also. Sure makes for faster work when several are helping. And we had pizza at Gallina's on Saturday evening. It's a family tradition when any of the kids are here. Sarah and Chad slept in the motor home since there are no extra beds in the house. It's really nice to have hookups at the house.

I'm working 3 days this week and next so probably won't get much other stuff done. I was exhausted when I got home today. I do enjoy my job, but don't like having to be at work at 5:30 AM. And it's pretty fast-paced for several hours as we admit kids and send them off to surgery. But even though I enjoy my job, I am more than ready to make a change and really start this fulltime lifestyle.

And speaking of fulltiming; Erin, our eleven year old granddaughter, will be spending this summer with us as we travel. We're really looking forward to that. She has traveled with us on some other trips and we've always had a good time. Sure glad she likes spending time with grandma and grandpa. She'll be adding her thoughts to our blog; and she bought a new camera with money she has saved, so I'm sure she'll post pictures also.

We'll be leaving on April 19 for Talladega, AL for a Nascar race; then back home until June 1 when we head to Ohio for Sarah and Chad's wedding and then on to Branson, Kansas, Denver and Seattle. Erin will start traveling with us on June 1. She will fly back home in August to start back to school, and we don't have any specific plans after August.

I'll start posting more regularly when we start traveling.

More later.....