Nice long run with Steve in Southern California

We are leaving Wilderness Lakes rv park in the morning, and will post some drone footage of the park in a few days. It is a nice enough park but we spent most of our time visiting with Steve, Jinxi and Aidan so don't have a lot of comments about the park other than we got lost several times walking the dog.

We are kind of sad to be leaving all of our kids and grand kids for the next year or so to travel the south and eastern part of America, but the last 3 months have been great and we won't be forgetting these experiences for quite a while and if we do we can always look back at the blog.

We are so impressed with all of our grand kids it is hard to put into words but the word "Proud" pretty much sums it up. We don't have a lot to give, but our last name is being done proud with the next two generations (even though some of them actually have a different last name or will soon) we are so very proud of each and every one.

The video with Steve and Jinxi is a little short as we got so busy visiting, I forgot to shoot much video. Steve and I went out for a run Saturday morning and Aidan and Jinxi caught a little bit of video of that with a regular camera as well as the drone so that will have to serve as most of the video along with some Vegan Treats that Brynn brought back from Europe last week. Brynn said that everyone would be excited about the treats, so we promised we would film their reaction and she was correct about these Vegan Treats being the hit of the party.

We received a text from our friends in Kingman Arizona that there is going to be a fish fry at their home tomorrow night but they need someone to bring some desert and that fit our "Can Do" list nicely so we are heading out a day early to make sure we get there in time.

Hopefully everyone enjoys the video and in the spirit of full disclosure, Steve does run 10 miles 4 or 5 times a week and Jinxi swims for a couple of hours in the Olympic size lap pool at the gym while he is running. They do this at 5:00am until 7:00am and they seem to love it. I think Shea even goes to the pool on a regular bases, so if you hear something in the video below that sounds like I think I am in better shape than anyone in that family you obviously heard wrong or I mis-spoke.

I-80 Friends & Family

Well it has been a great couple of weeks in Nevada and Northern California. Elko was a whole lot of fun and it continued through Winnemucca, Reno South Lake Tahoe and Sacramento.

We stayed a couple of days in Winnemucca visiting with Brian and Kan, two of our best friends and shared a lot of stories on what we all have been up to in the last year. Brian is trying to talk Kan into riding on their Harley all the way to Florida to visit with us when we winter there in 2018. We hope they can make that happen.

Lake Tahoe was very pleasant and our evening with Steve, Diane and Brian was great, not to mention the food. We miss seeing them regularly since we moved to Vegas and it was a fun time catching up. Tinker seem to think she had found her big brother in Chewy.

Pearls sister "Helen" and her daughter Bobbi went to breakfast with us in Jackson, just outside of Sacramento and we spent the day catching up on what is going on in our lives. I really enjoy spending time with Helen but wish I could have gotten to know her husband better before he passed away several years back. They traveled full time in a 5th wheel RV for 5 years back in the day. He had lots of stories from those times that I really enjoyed hearing him tell along with a beer or two back when he was still alive. Helen can tell some pretty good stories too so it must run in the family.

We also got to meet Brynns new boyfriend Christopher for lunch at  a Mediterrian restaurant close to where they go to school at UC Davis. They just returned from 5 weeks in Europe visiting Christopher's family and seeing the sights. We simply can not put into words how proud of Brynn we both are.

We have travelled down I-5 to Southern California for a week to visit with Steve and Jinxi for a couple days before heading out to Texas for the winter. The weather has been great, but rumor has it there is a heat wave headed our way so we need to check that out and figure out just how we are going to miss any triple digit weather which simply isn't acceptable.

I hope you enjoy the video

Leaving the Pacific Northwest

It has been a wonderful 3 months up here in Oregon, Washington and Canada. Lance, Lisa and the grandkids were so much fun although it was hard to keep up with them. Thanks so much for taking the time to visit and show us around your great part of the country. We had perfect weather with almost no wind, consistent 75 to 85 degree temps and only a hint of rain once or twice.

This video covers Thousand Trails campgrounds "Pacific City", "South Jetty" & "Bend/Sunriver". We only had a few days at each location but they may be the top one or two thousand trails parks we have visited. Mainly due to being so close to the ocean and privacy in each site at both Pacific City and South Jetty.

I am getting much more comfortable with flying the drone, but the trees are so high and thick that I lost sight of the drone almost immediately and it was hard getting it back to land in the campground so I  able to get much usable drone footage of the campsites.

As most of you know we have already posted the next video for the Elko Car Show, so this one is sort of out of order, but I wanted to get it posted anyway because of the great ocean locations and fun we had at these parks. It is going to be a big change from where we are headed for winter in South Texas. First we have to travel down to southern California then through Arizona and New Mexico before we get there.

We get to have lunch with our Gran-daughter "Brynn" tomorrow and that will finish up our I-80 leg of the trip from Elko Nevada to Sacramento California. It has been a really fun time visiting with friends and family and will post that video in a day or two.

Thanks for taking the time to watch the video and I hope you enjoy it half as much as I did making it.

Fun week in Elko Nevada

We still need to edit the video for Pacific City and Bend Oregon, but we have been having so much fun at our daughter and son-in-laws home (Ronnie & Melissa's) in Spring Creek (Just outside of Elko) that I couldn't help but to edit this video first.

As most of you know Ronnie is a master mechanic and has built and restored several classic cars in his shop over the years, so naturally we took a couple of them to the Elko Car Show this week-end. I got to drive the Camero again and I was a little braver this week. It's been a long time since loud exhaust pipes and shifting gears was something I cared much about but that all changed this week. It may look mild in the video but for a 70 year old man, it was a real blast (Thanks Ronnie)

Ronnie was partners with one of his friends on a Monster Truck and although he sold his instrest to his partner Rick several years ago, he still helps him out with it at different car shows if he has some free time. This week-end Rick needed Ron to help him take the hugh tires off and put the regular sized tires on so he could load it into the truck to take to the next show. So Ronnie asked if I would be able to help, of course I was just in the way, but Ron figured I would like to see how it was done and it was pretty fun. I wore gloves but I barley got them dirty as I mainly just shot video and talked on the phone, but the video is fun to watch if you haven't ever seen it done before. Rick almost knocked the Roll Bars off, but luckily for Rick, Ronnie noticed it and stopped him just before he hit the top of the trailer. It would have made great video though.

We went to a sushi place so Ronnie, Melissa, Alex and his girl friend Nicole could all eat sushi. Pearl and I just ate some chicken and watched Ronnie eat Wasabi. We always love to watch him since he just keeps putting more on until it pretty much burns a hole in his nasal cavity. A little video is included so you get a feel for what I'm talking about.

The bottom line is, we had a really great time and hope you enjoy the video as much as we enjoyed  making it.

August 2017 Expenses

Well, we have finished dinner and are all packed up to head out tomorrow morning from
South Jetty Oregon over the hump to Bend/Sunriver for a day before we cut loose from this beautiful country and head through Idaho en-route to Nevada.

I had already imported the numbers from our quicken account into the excel spreadsheet for our August expenses and since I have some free time, I decided to do a little video with the numbers and explain a couple of items so it might be easier to follow.

The numbers for August are a little better than the two preceding months, mainly due to not having any diesel purchases, but that will change in September and October, plus I need to purchase a couple of tires for the car soon, which are close to $300 each if I remember correctly so I expect the numbers to go up for a couple of months until we get settled down in south Texas for the winter.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask them in the comments section.

La Conner Washington

We extended our stay at La Conner several days (Aug. 15-27) as we had a pretty nice site at the campground and met some really nice folks. It has been a great summer and the weather here in the Pacific Northwest has been absolutely perfect, No Wind, No Rain, the Temps have been in the mid 70's the entire time. I never knew they had such weather and it is supposed to generally last through September like this. Sweet!

The La Conner Thousand Trails campground is located on an Indian Reservation right on the Skagit Bay shoreline. We made several trips to Anacortes Washington, just a few miles away but never took one of the Ferries over to any of the San Juan Islands or Vancouver Island which we have already realized was a big missed opportunity.

We weren't sure just how we would like the Thousand Trails campgrounds when we first purchased our membership a couple of months back, but it has proven to be a great investment and we really enjoy the campgrounds. The fellow Thousand Trails members we have met seem to have been cut from the same cloth as both Pearl and I come from. Pretty much middle of the road folks, that for the most part are quite friendly and busy enjoying their personal adventures just as we are. Looking forward to our stays in the upcoming campgrounds to see how they compare to the ones here in Oregon and Washington but it will be hard to beat what we have experienced so far.

We have were able to hook up with the kids and grandkids several times over the last two months and will see them all again for the last time (until 2019) in a few days when we all meet just outside of Portland Oregon for Pizza. It has been fun visiting with them and it is kind of hard to believe we won't see them again for 2 years while we tour the southern and eastern parts of the country in 2017 & 2018.

The campground here at La Conner is secluded in the trees so much, we didn't even attempt to try and use the drone to film the campground, although I took several flights out into the bay and filmed the salmon fish farm anchored there. If you watch the video on a full sized screen, you can see some of the fish jumping and splashing at the surface, but not so much on smaller screens. Just a couple of months ago one of the fish farms came apart just a few miles away and the media said there were thousands of Atlantic Salmon that escaped into the ocean and streams which caused considerable concern from the environmentalist. They are a totally different species of Salmon than those that naturally live here so the new ones are considered a threat to the native species. They had a free fishing period to try and catch as many as they could and one article I read said over 20,000 of the Atlantic Salmon were caught by local fishermen.

I was kind of nervous about flying the drone over the fish farm barge figuring they would think I was snooping on them and they might try to shoot the drone or somehow knock it out of the air, so I didn't get real close. I never saw anyone on the barges so I may have been overly concerned.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the video and I will post the Pacific City and South Jetty videos pretty soon as well as the August Expense Comparison spreadsheet. The RV is getting pretty dirty, so I plan to try and clean it up a bit before we head to Nevada in a few days, hopefully we don't hit as much rain heading into Nevada as we did when we headed out of it back in June.

Looking forward to seeing more of you over the next two months as we meander down through Nevada, California, Arizona and finally Texas.