Track of the Canoe Trip on Morro Bay

The attached photo shows the satellite view of the bay with our GPS track superimposed. The track represents just under 4 miles, but I am sure the shoulder muscles will let us know how far it was in the morning.

Spring is blooming all over. The cormorants were diving to the sea bed and flying home with sprigs of seaweed as a token of their esteem.

We also saw seals, gulls, Great Blue Herons, Great Egrets, Brown Pelicans and several varieties of ducks and shore birds. We were taking advantage of the new moon and the super high tides. It allowed us to float all over the bay. At times we had less than a foot of water under us.

Doug and Sean on Morro Bay

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view,) we had no mishaps, dunkings or strandings to tell you about. Cruise-master, Doug, kept us on schedule so we met the top of the tide and got back before things got too far along.

We have worked our way through a couple wet blustery days, and now the weather is quite nice. Weather at the beach was clear and warm with a light breeze from the north.

Next we will be heading for Gilroy, California. We plan to spend a couple weeks visiting our son, Glen and his family. I expect to spend some time at the air museum again this year to help out at their annual open house on May eighth. If you are in the area please drop by and visit. It is worth the trip. The museum is on the west side of the San Martin Airport which is just beside highway 101 between Gilroy and Morgan Hill, exit 362.

We wish all the best to our friends and relatives.

From sunny southern California

Gary and Judy

First and foremost we are still traveling, and still having fun. We have been doing this for five and a half years now. This year we relocated 101 times and that is in line with previous two years. In 2005 we toured Canada all the way to Newfoundland and moved 169 times. Similarly in 2007 we moved 125 times on our trip to Alaska. In 2009 we drove 10,504 miles and that averages about 104 miles per move.

Besides the mileage on Arcturus, we also ride and walk a lot. We rode Path another 2086 miles, walked 236 miles and canoed 4.7 miles.

For the past three weeks we have been hanging out in Gilroy with our son’s family. For New Year’s Eve we attended a party with them at Allen V. ‘s home. Allen is the Scoutmaster for the grandsons’ scout troups. The feature dish for the feast was the Italian dish bagna caoda. The dish was a lot like a vegetable fondu. The pot contained a lethal mixture of olive oil, sardines and lots of garlic. It was delicious, but it was an eight Tums night.

Tomorrow we will be back on the road headed for southern California to Indeo for an RVer’s rally. We usually run into many of our RV friends at these rallys. Perhaps we will see some of you there.

Security Airster Wing Spar With Bushings in Place

Turning a Bushing

I have been volunteering at the Wings of History Air Museum. Here are a couple photos of the wing spar for the Security Airster showing the bushings I have been turning on the lathe. The bushings help spread the stress where metal parts meet the spruce spars. You can check out other work I have done at the museum by clicking the “museums” tag in the Tag Cloud at the left side of the screen.

Good bye and Happy New Year from Gilroy California.

Gary and Judy

During the days we rode the bicycle, hiked and canoed the lake. Mittry is a small reed enclosed lake with meandering channels and lots of wildlife. We saw Egrets, Herons, Coots, Ducks, Hawks, Osprey and a few thousand swallows. In the canoe we would drift through an opening in the reeds and watch the birds up-close and undisturbed.

Yesterday we joined friends Tom and Margie at the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma for an Air Show. There were the usual collection of aerobatic flying acts plus we got to witness a B-1 Lancer over-flight and a re-enactment of the Zeros and torpedo planes attacking Pearl Harbor. There were only six AT-6′s and BT-13′s flying in the re-enactment. The pilots, however, did an excellent job of creating the feeling of the confusion of a real battle, and the pyrotechnics team added to the realism. I found myself all choked up at the end.

Today we traveled back to the relative civilization of Quartzsite, AZ. We how have cell phone and internet. We will still be “boon-docking,” that is no water or electric. Our Solar panels keep up with the power demand just fine. Tonight we will be hanging out with a group of Bluegrass people doing our picking and grinning. This is the simple life, and it suites us just fine.

Hugs to all from the Arizona Desert

Gary and Judy

Egrets on Mittry Lake, Yuma AZ

While we are here we have gotten out the canoe and both couples paddled around the lake. It has been a simply delightful day of just vegging.

This is a fairly small pullout but we were able to get well off the pavement, and we have been told that if you can safely get off the road in Alaska, it is legal to boondock. This afternoon we have watched a parade of locals as they come down to dip in the lake. The temperature at five p.m. is 81 degrees. We have been sticking pretty close to the shade and I have played through pretty much my entire repertoire on the guitar.

About mid afternoon a Truck-trailer rig pulled into the pullout and a cluster of local cars showed up immediately. The driver and his crew started setting up shop. They pulled out hand carts, tables, and price-list boards and within ten minutes they were open for business. People from the local area started queuing up with copies of their e-mail shopping list orders in hand, and the boys started wheeling stacks of boxes of fruit to their waiting cars. For three hours the cars came and the fruit went. We even queued up and bought a half a crate of nectarines and a cantaloupe straight from Washington State.

To say fresh fruit is rare around here is an understatement. About six the whole thing folded up and we were once again left alone in the quiet serenity by the lake. Only the occasional whiz of a car or RV to punctuate the beauty surrounding us.

We are at the edge of the Wrangle-St. Elias Park and National Preserve. We can see three mountains that are all over 12,000 feet from here; Mt. Drum at 12,010, Mt. Wrangle at 14, 163 and Mt. Blackburn at 16,390 feet. The hills around the lake are covered with stubby little Black Spruce trees that are about as big around as a good sized banister rail and over fifty years old. The Alaska Pipeline goes by across the lake on its ammonia refrigerated, stilt legs to protect the permafrost that underlies this whole area.

This is what it is all about, full-timing. Watch a different sunrise from your bedroom window every morning. Unbelievable landscapes are visible from your front yard. Oh yes there are days when you are stuck in a campground with freeway on one side and railroad on the other side; but look on the bright side. You can open your window and ask the neighbor if they have a bottle of “Grey Poupon.” By the same time tomorrow you can be miles down the road and looking at another beautiful vista.

Once again we say goodbye from the land of the midnight sun. (Actually we are getting almost four hours of mostly dark these days.)

From the shores of Pippin Lake in the shadow of the Wrangle Mountains, Gary, Judy, Jack and Sonja.

Boondock Camp on Lake Pippin

Fruit Stand Sets Up For Local Alaskans

Well we contained it with wet towels and continued our journey to Scamokawa, Washington. Once we got there and were safely parked we began to disassemble the kitchen cabinets as we fought our way upstream. By now Judy has visions of one of the old Dagwood comic strips. Dagwood always winds up under the kitchen cabinets with a pipe wrench around the drain pipe. Inevitably the drain pipe springs a leak that sprays all over him and the kitchen. I never did figure out why Dagwood’s drain pipes always had high pressure water in them.

As you can imagine RV’s have many things compressed into very small spaces. In addition these things have to move each time we open and close the slider. The first task is to unscrew and remove several false backs and partitions. When I reached the deepest recesses of the cabinet under the sink, I found source of our problem; The two inch flex hose had become separated from its socket in the “tee” leading to the gray water tank and its vent. I removed a couple hose clamps, cleaned and dried the fittings and slathered each piece with some 3M 5200 adhesive caulk. Next I rigged a strain relief from a long hose clamp fed around the back side of the “tee” and trapped under one of the hose clamps around the boot. Finally I wrapped everything in duct tape to prevent any chafing. Red-Green of PBS fame would be proud of my patch.

Today everything is back in place and the sink drains into the gray water tank like it is supposed to. The rest of the weekend can be spent bicycling and canoeing and catching up on life in the Plymouth Church family.

For those of you who are not here with us, Skamokawa Washington is a very small town alongside the Columbia River on state highway 4 between Cathlamet and Ilwaco. We are camped in a county park called Skamokawa Vista Park. It has a range of sites from full hookup to primitive tent sites. It has a boat launch ramp with access to the Columbia River and also to canoeing in Steamboat Slough and Brooks Slough and the Julia Butler Hansen Wildlife Refuge. Our front window looks out over the Columbia River and the big ocean going ships rumbling through our front yard. Check the photo below.

Bye now and love to all from Gary, Judy and our church family at Skamokawa Vista Park.

Gary, Judy, Gretchen, JP, John, David, Adrian, Sean, Jennifer, Ruth, Harold, Jill, Yvonne, Mikey and Hiram.

Big Ship in Our Front Yard

Several of us spent some time birding and we identified 26 species including a couple first time observations for us. We walked and fished and canoed. Judy and I rode about 130 miles this week. The local roads are quiet and the locals are very patient. One day on our route we met a lady and her miniature pony enjoying the sunshine. We leaned over the fence and petted Stormy and chatted for half an hour. We then made it a quarter mile down the road and found a motorcycle three wheel chopper on a flat bed transporter truck. We stopped to admire this wonder and the gentleman who had built it trotted out with his sandwich in his hand to tell us all about it. That took us another half hour. Photos are below.

Glen, Barb, Cody, Patrick and Bryce and friend Derrick all fished while we were riding. The fish that got away were simply awesome, but we didn’t get to eat any fresh fish this week. The lake was at flood stage, and one of the campgrounds here was closed with water over the roadway. It has taken all week for the water to go down three inches. It has to drop another foot at least before all facilities can reopen here. With the high level, however, Judy and I were able to canoe a mile up Kelsey Creek. This turned out to be really exciting. We flushed out a pair of Wood Ducks. They are very elusive and very beautiful. No, we didn’t get a photo of them, but we kept flushing them out as we paddled up the stream. They would go 100 yards and then find some cover. We finally reached the place where our speed through the water just about equaled the current in the stream, so we turned around and made our way back to camp. Once in a while we are able to justify hauling that darn canoe all around the continent.

The rest of the troupe headed out this morning. Now it is just Ma and Me and the quiet is deafening. Tomorrow we are heading for a rendezvous with some old friends in Chico California. We will be attending the Escapee’s spring “Escapade” and making lots of new friends and probably renewing friendships with others we have met before.

I, for one, need a little time to recuperate. I smacked into the awning brace and rolled the tongue wheel of Glen’s pop-up tent trailer over my toe this morning. I am now a little cross eyed and gimpy. Sometimes I think I never will learn to duck.

Judy and I send our love to all of our relatives and friends back home and from along the way. Good bye for now.

Gary and Judy from Clear Lake California.

Stormy the Minature Horse and his Mistress enjoy the sun.

Hand Built Tricycle Chopper built in Kelseyville California

We spent a couple hours on the water and paddled about two miles this time. Our trip was very tranquil. We were able to observe a Great Blue Heron as we quietly paddled on this warm sunny afternoon. He didn’t seem to mind us shadowing him and he periodically flew up ahead of us and watched us glide by again. The autumn colors are beginning to develop nicely around the lake. We did observe that the beach houses are spaced very closely along the shore, and each house has a dock. Most docks have a speed boat or a party barge. In addition many docks have two or three “Personal Watercraft.” We only saw one “Bass Boat.” I would imagine that the intensity of the cacophony of buzzing boats makes it tough for the devoted fisherpersons. But on a quiet autumn weekday there was nothing moving except ourselves. It was magical.

We will spend a couple more days here, and then we will flirt with the big urban sprawl of Atlanta. We are going to a fairground campout in Marietta Georgia for a Bluegrass festival a week from Friday. Gary has been faithfully playing the guitar every day and teaching himself to pick melodies with the computer providing the accompaniment.
Judy is just as busy creating quilts and wall hangings for the church. So you see that we keep ourselves busy and entertained. By day we are always exploring our surroundings and in the evenings we create and practice.

We do enjoy getting comments back from these Blogs, and we like to hear what is going on with our friends and relatives back home. Do remember that if for any reason you wish to be dropped from our mailing, just send back a reply. You can always catch up later by checking out our web page.

Just copy this link and paste it into your browser and it will take you direct to our Blog. Select the current year link, and then browse through the titles. I usually am able to update the web page at the same time I send out the e-mail. I often include a photo or two on the web page. This way you can see our photos, but your e-mail system doesn’t have to handle them.

2010 update: You can click on the rss feed and set up to receive notifications whenever a new blog appears.

Time to wish everyone a good evening and send this on its way.
Love to all from Gary and Judy

Gary Walking the Two Masted Canoe to the Water on Lake Hartwell

Fall Colors Reflecting in Lake Hartwell, SC

It took us about three hours to make our way down river, including a lunch stop about half way down. The river is very interesting, for there are over a dozen islands along the way. You can pick either channel so you could float this river section several times and see new scenery every time. The trees are just now starting to show their fall colors. The temperature outside our window was 34 degrees this morning. It was in the high sixties for our trip. We think the peak colors will be in about a week.

At least now we have good justification for hauling our canoe 9,000 miles across the country. Right now I am thinking that I will be feeling some canoe paddling muscles that haven’t been used for a long time when I wake up tomorrow morning.

This campground has been a real haven in a storm. I finally decided that the computer was never going to be fully healed after our virus attack. I tried backing everything up and then I wiped the disk clean and started over from zero. The campground has DSL service and a connection to their LAN. I spent more than a day hooked to their internet connection downloading all of the Windows service packs and updates. I only lost a couple of important things, and I am still working on a way to retrieve some of that. Anyway all of my really important programs are fully functional. Hooray!

Here is a photo of the Androscoggin River. Bye for now and love to all from Gary and Judy in Bethel Maine.

Canoeing on the Androscoggin River near Bethel Maine, Gary Dinsmore

The next day some folks noticed the canoe pulled up behind our coach and stopped to chat. They belonged to a group that calls itself the R(o)Ving Rods. They invited us to come to their end of the lake and join them at their camp. It had the advantage of no dust. We joined them the next day and eventually were included in a group of a dozen or so RV’s. We did pot lucks, happy hours and campfires with singing and swapping lies. They turned out to be a really fun group. Their end of the lake was no better on the moskittos. One night around the campfire, I was wearing long sleeves, long pants, hat and the super REI moskito repellant to thwart them pesky varmints. Between two songs I looked down at my feet. I had long socks and sandals on. Each foot had at least a dozen mousquitos on it lined up and pumping away. I made a swipe with my hand and smashed the whole mass in one swipe, and my white socks were instantly speckled blood red.

You may have noticed by now some creative spelling for the word “Miskuitto.” This is the year of the Lewis and Clark Bi-centenial. Lewis, in his journal was able to spell “Muskuitto” nineteen different ways. I will leave it to you to see if I was able to meet the challenge.

Judy and I send our love to all.

Gary and Judy.

Blooming Beavertail Cactus at Mittry Lake AZ

Annual rainfall average for Quartzsite is just over four inches a year. August gets the most rain with 0.66 inches average. December through March all get half and inch , more or less. Parker AZ, a town just 34 miles north of Quartzsite already is reporting 1.49 inches of rain just in February this year. The desert is as lush as a green grass meadow back in the Willamette Valley in Oregon this time of year. Fortunately these storms don’t last long. A sliver of sky is starting to open up on the horizon.

Now lest our friends think that we are not having fun, let us assure you all that we are having the time of our lives. We went hiking on the trail system around Buckskin Mountain State Park, just north of Parker AZ. Yes the trails go right up the side of the mountains and yes we got wet. We got to look deep into a mine shaft and got a wonderful panorama view of the Colorado River slicing through this rugged country. You might want to check out the panorama photo I have taken.

Goodbye for now, and we send along all of our love. Gary and Judy

The Colorado River at Buckskin Mountain