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Current Location: The Cottage in Grants Pass Raining and 45 degrees

At the moment, Mo is outside washing the MoHo.  Yes, washing it in the rain.  I am pretty sure she is thinking that she needed to get the salty residues removed that are left over from our last trip to the coast.  It was raining back then as well, and we put her away without our usual cleanup.  After 9 years on the road, the MoHo still looks shiny as new.  Good paint and good care make a difference.

More than a week ago, the snows hit hard all over Southern Oregon, even here in the Rogue Valley.  When we arrived at the cottage yesterday, our neighbor told us that there was more than six inches of heavy wet snow dumped on Grants Pass, and he was without power for 48 hours after a big old oak fell on his power lines.  We were lucky.  Mo had the trees trimmed last month and we didn’t have a lot of debris down to contend with.  According to the neighbor, he watched our Christmas lights go on and off with the timer with considerable envy. Everything here was just fine and the house was nice and cozy since we left the gas heat on 55 degrees.  Just enough.

Since the first snow fell at the apartments, we enjoyed home time, cozied up with the fire and actually relaxing a bit.  I worked on homemade Christmas cards with daughter Melody up in Apartment B (my crafting and quilting apartment) and managed to get a decent number of Christmas lights up to make everything cheery. Mo taught Jacob (one of the tenants rooming with grandchild Axel) how to run the plow, so that when we are away, the driveway and parking lot will stay clear.

It was a very cold week, and quite delightful. We decided to return to Rocky Point to spend a few days working on painting touchups and other little chores before our planned quickie trip to California.  While we were there, the big snows hit, including the one that dumped on the Rogue Valley, and Mo and I shoveled the driveway by hand.  With the plow at the apartments, we relied on the 4 wheel drive in the pickup to get us up and down the road leading to our house.  It worked.  We didn’t get snowed in, and even managed to get the trailer hooked up for the trip to Grants Pass to pick up the motorhome.  Mo wanted her big compressor in the RV shed with the MoHo.  Gotta keep those tires up!

Driving from the brilliant sunny skies of the east side of the Cascades to the gray, rainy skies of the Rogue Valley was a treat.  For the first time in a few years, crossing the High Lakes Pass was a bit of a challenge.  Not too much, just a bit. Seems as though the wet, heavy snows were too much for the big trees on the pass and one had fallen across the road.  Traffic backed up for awhile before some logger with a chain saw managed to clear the road.

Tomorrow we are heading to California.  Friend Maryruth’s mother is celebrating her 90th birthday and Maryruth is putting on a very big party.  The MoHo is ready and waiting, and we are hoping that the weather continues to be only rain as we will be traveling south on I-5 over the Siskiyous in the morning.  We do NOT want to chain up the MoHo, in fact the main reason we bought property in Grants Pass was to be able to travel north or south in the wintertime without having to get out of the snowy Klamath Basin.  Of course it snows in this part of Oregon, but thank goodness, not nearly as often or as long, and hopefully not tomorrow.

Again, mid January, we will again travel south.  Desert Hot Springs is calling, as it does each winter.  I called to find out what kind of rules Catalina Spa and RV Resort might have this year.  It changes every year it seems, ranging from a maximum of 2 nights with our Passport America card, to no discount nights unless you sit through the long and boring sales pitch.  Imagine my surprise when they said, “No problem.  You can stay for 30 days and half price (22.50 per night) with your PA card, leave for two weeks and come back again if you like.”

What a treat?!  If I hadn’t already made reservations for Catalina State Park near Tucson I would have reserved more than the 4 nights we had time for on this round.  I love that pool.  Love it.  I am excited about three weeks in the south this winter and hoping that El Nino doesn’t send us any big southwest surprises, but we will be ready for whatever comes.

Today I raked leaves on green grass in the rain.  A far cry from shoveling snow in Rocky Point and Klamath Falls. 

On another note, I am letting this particular post be a test.  I am writing it with LiveWriter…planning to pop it over into the html tab of blogger after in insert the photos from SmugMug links and see how it does.  Erin sent me the instructions, so we will see how it goes.  Then, just for fun, I am going to try to build the same post from Blogger.  Just to see the difference, if any.  Then, at last, I will write the same post over on WordPress, using their fancy smancy editor, and see how the whole thing looks.l

This was a great plan when I started this day, and now it is after 5pm and I am nowhere near finished.  I am working on my laptop, the one I use for traveling.  I upgraded it to Windows 10 Pro, and decided to just wipe the thing clean and start fresh.  So far so good, but as I am beginning the blog, I realize that I have yet to install Lightroom and Picasa.  That done I start again, but ohoh…some of the photos are on my iphone and ipad…and what do you know, I haven’t downloaded and installed iTunes yet.  Ok…that done and now I can finally get around to finishing this post! 

Here we go.