I guess that I have gotten into the habit of providing a little statistical review the first of each year. I promise to make it brief. Read More
2009 in Review
January 1, 2010
Afton Canyon:
December 3, 2009
The Mojave National Preserve is a huge area of pristine desert landscape in south eastern California. My blog on Mitchell Caverns and Hole-in-the-Wall covers our first trip there. We expanded on that trip over the past two days by visiting Kelso Depot. We intended to camp in a primitive campsite alongside the Kelbaker road that crosses the Preserve from south to north from Interstate 40 at exit 78, to Interstate 15 at Baker, CA. The road tops 3000 feet on both sides of Kelso and for a time exceeds 4000 feet elevation. For comparison both I-40 and I-15 pass through this area at about 1000 feet.
Wildlife
September 19, 2009
As usual this is a double entendre. We have been enjoying the wild life at the beach this week. We visited Ocean Park on the Longbeach peninsula in Washington. Long time friend and reader of this blog owns a condo on the beach. We parked Arcturus in the driveway. We had to back and fill several times to stuff all 52 feet of our rig in the space allotted to her condo. The windshield was 4 inches from the eves of the garage. Renee, Neil and Georgia came and Neil’s folks, Jerry and Janene and Neil’s brother Mark also came. The occasion was the celebration of Georgia’s third birthday. You will want to go the web site and see the photos of the birthday girl.
More Seals
August 20, 2009
It is Thursday and we are on our way to a church campout this weekend in Chehalis, WA. Now one of the advantages of having a home on wheels is that you can schedule your maintenance on the way to these events. We were due to have the oil changed and the chassis lubed. I scheduled this event for Thursday around noon at Pacific Power in Ridgefield. Now that would give us time to seek a campground if all went well and leaves us a whole extra day if things implode.
San Juan Islands
July 8, 2009
After an almost unbearable hot spell in Hillsboro we have taken our 23 foot sailboat, Regal Jug, to the San Juan Island Archipelago in Washington State. We were immediately rewarded with complete relief from the oppressing heat; perhaps even a bit too much of a good thing. It has been cold and drizzly both days that we have been here
Camping
April 4, 2009
As you might have guessed we lead a somewhat nomadic style of life. We are continually looking for new, suitable campgrounds to stay at. The operative terms are new and suitable.
Mittry Lake
March 15, 2009
Sometimes our life is one long campout. This has been one of those weeks. We joined up with a small group of friends near Yuma, AZ. We were camped on the desert on the shores of a small backwater off of the Colorado River called Mittry Lake. We were almost roughing it. We had no electric, no running water, no cable TV, no cell phone and no internet. We did have sparkling clear skies and a full moon each night. We sang songs around the campfire, had pot luck meals and coyotes yelping right under our windows in the middle of the night.
March Update
March 9, 2009
I know! You haven’t heard from us for about two weeks and you are wondering if we drove off the end of the earth. Well no, we haven’t gotten to the end of the earth, but I am sure Gila Bend, Arizona can’t be too far from there. It is about half way between Tucson to Yuma and made a nice stop over. It is cheap, about $10, it’s windy and it is close to the freeway so it is somewhat noisy. It does have water and electric, so we are getting the water tank topped off and the batteries charged up. Tomorrow we will return to Mittry Lake. It is close to Yuma, on the Colorado River and we will be meeting several RV’ing friends there. It is also free, no water or electric and probably out of reach of the cell phone and inter-net. We will probably do a little canoeing and a little music around the campfire and a lot of talking. We heard from some friends that the mosquitoes are bad there this year, so we laid in a supply of Cutter.
2008 in Review
January 1, 2009
We relocated 116 times in 2008. This is about average for us. For 2007 it was 125 times and 2006, 118 times. Total distance driven was 10,465, bicycled 2,097 and hiked 236 miles for a grand total of 12,798 miles in 2008. That works out to 108 miles per move. Our big event for the year was the big Dinsmore-Cook family reunion in Colville Washington. It was really fun having all the children, grandchildren, cousins, nieces and nephews together. We were glad that we made our big trip to Alaska in 2007, but my records show that we did not substantially curtail our travels in 2008. We never have enjoyed driving long days. We have developed a style of travel where we pick a monument or battlefield along the way for a mid day break. We either hike or break out the bicycle for an hour of exploring; then we then get back on the road and complete the day’s route. We were more careful planning our stops this year and we are getting better at staying put for at least two or three days.
Winter Cleaning:
December 19, 2008
I know you have heard of spring cleaning. Today we seized an opportunity to clean the “basement” of our motor home. We call the cargo bay under our coach the “basement.” The trailer is the “Shop Annex.”
We scheduled this winter cleaning just two days ahead of the winter solstice. That way there would be minimum of daylight. The schedule fortunately coincided with a record breaking warm day here in Nashville Tennessee at 73 degrees. You heard me, 73 degrees.
