Sick of that photo!

In Rocky Point, OR: 26 degrees F and the high predicted today is sunny and 57 degrees?!

I have nothing exciting to write about, but I am sick and tired of looking at that last post with that face!  Needless to say, I am better, with just a few yellow and green patches here and there and a bit of a weird nose.  November is my least favorite month for outdoor photos, though, and I don’t have many that are worth putting up.  I suppose I could get out there and try for something, but all the leaves are gone, there isn’t any snow on the ground, and nothing seems to inspire me much.  Instead I’ll just pop in a shot of last November on our cruise for bit of text relief.

It is almost the end of November and just a few days ago, Mo motored around the yard with the mower.  She said technically she wasn’t “mowing” although that is what it looked like.  Instead, she was mulching up the bazillions of pine needles that come down every year and make spring raking a back breaking chore.  With no snow yet to speak of, that chore should be a bit easier this year when we return in April to the Rocky Point homestead.

I have been busy quilting, and sent sister Sal’s quilt off to her daughter in Corvallis.  She was supposed to make it home for Thanksgiving, but instead is holed up in a motel on the Iowa/Minnesota border, waiting once again for a truck repair.  Cold and no income while she is sitting.  Bummer.  The life of a trucker can be so frustrating when the truck doesn’t run.  Although with the weather back in that part of the country, I guess I am glad she isn’t on the road.  She has her gorgeous big German shepherd with her for company, and I am glad for that as well.

Daughter Deanna is safely home in Washington State for the holiday, something that doesn’t happen all that often.  Thanksgiving for her will include most of Keith’s family and at least one of their sons.  Makes me happy for her.  They will be back on the road again before Christmas, and I am dreaming of the chance for a visit with them here sometime around Christmas.  Then again, who knows, I may not see her again until we are both somewhere in Florida.  They deliver a lot of jet engines to Miami.

Tomorrow Mo and I will amble into Klamath Falls for Thanksgiving dinner at my daughter, Melody’s home.  Yippee!  I am often the Thanksgiving hostess, although last year I was cruising around Hawaii for the day.  This year Melody decided she was up for doing the holiday and since Daughter Deborah lives close enough now to share, she is heading to Melody’s tonight after work.  I hear rumors of lots of sister cooking with some drinking involved.  Ha!  They should have a lot of fun together.  Makes me happy.

I have just two jobs.  Dressing and Gravy.  Melody and Kevin are making the turkey on his Big Green Egg.  Makes for a great turkey, but then there isn’t any gravy.  So I bought a turkey, will cook it today, keep the meat for sandwiches for Mo and I, and have lots of gravy to take to Melody’s tomorrow.  The girls have big lists of goodies, including a lot of our traditional favorites and some new things Deb is trying.  I am stress-free.  All I have to do is show up.  Wow, that is just soooo different, but kinda nice.

I even managed to finish Deanna and Keith’s quilt and get it down to Merrill to the machine quilter.  It is promised before Christmas and I can get the binding on in time to deliver it to Deanna before we head off to the southland.

In exactly one month we will be heading out on our three month sojourn, and I will find out just how well all the planning worked.  Being on the road that time of year is a crap shoot, and the possibilities run the gamut.  Smooth sailing or crazy weather, either way it keeps us young and if we stay loose, it will be great.

In the midst of all the homey things I have been doing that involve a sewing machine, I neglected to wander around the internet enough to keep track of the comet Ison.  This morning I heard that it may just get blown up by the sun, but if it doesn’t then we should get a great comet show in December. 

On another very exciting note, my theater geek daughter, Melody, who acted with Albany Civic Theater, Corvallis Civic Theater, and the Linkville here in Klamath Falls, was just cast in the Sally Field role for Steel Magnolias.  Acting is Melody’s first love, but it sometimes is hard to do with a family, a full time job, and all the other requirements of daily living.  She thought long and hard about auditioning, especially since she works in a jewelry store and it is the Christmas season.  I pushed kinda hard, knowing how much acting means to her and she went for it.  Of course she was cast, my daughter is one amazing actress, something that was born in her, and something I knew by the time she was two.

Worst part about this whole thing is that the play is opening on January 15!  Yes…right in the middle of the part where we are somewhere in Texas.  For the first time, I will miss one of my daughter’s plays.  Filming or photographing a play is just a no-no, but rumor has it that someone is going to film it, with permission from the director, just for Melody’s mommy!  Is that great, or what! 

On a final note, my son-in-law Kevin, Melody’s husband, who has worked in our small town of Klamath Falls for insignificant salaries, just landed a job with the big guy!  Kevin is now a Google contractor, and will be heading south to the Mountain View Google Campus for a year long stint with hopes for more permanent employment in the future.  Sad to say, the Klamath Basin just doesn’t offer much for computer geeks, so Kevin and Melody will be managing a long distance marriage for a time, at least until the grandson exits high school in three years or so.  Working at Google is pretty amazing, and Kevin’s brother has been there for some time now.  Melody is in super freak-out mode, knowing it is a good thing and still not excited about being a long distance wife.  Of course. Those two communicate on Facebook when they are sitting in their own living room, so I would imagine they are better equipped than most to handle the apart time.

Time to get busy with the turkey (source for the gravy) and finishing up the complicated quilt blocks that are making me crazy.  Wishing all the US folks a great Thanksgiving celebration.

A Fight!

Home in Rocky Point: cloudy, chilly at 40 degrees F, with snow coming tonight

It was just a fight with a lawnmower, but the results looked as if I had been in some kind of bar fight!  Early in the month, we took the MoHo over to Grants Pass for the last time this winter and decided to do a bit of yard cleanup while we were there.  Mo, of course, is the riding mower queen and I was busy raking leaves.  I was at least 20 feet away, but was downside from the eject window on that mower and a rock hidden in the long grass decided to come my way.

Ugh!  It knocked me down, hurt worse than anything I can quite remember, and the results were not pretty.  Of course, all the yard equipment danger stories came out of the woodwork after it happened.  Of course I wouldn’t mow barefoot, am pretty careful with the weed eater, and have managed to do yard work for half a century without anything like this happening to me in the past.  Still, you can bet I won’t be anywhere in the yard in the future when that mower is going.

Now, of course, it has been a bit of time since I last posted and lots has been happening, and it is time to try to catch up so I don’t forget what we did in November.  How do you pick a title for the mish mash of stuff that is to follow?  A funny thing to note….until recently the most popular post in my entire 6 years of blogging is one called “Vandalized”.  Go figure.  At last the main post about the MoHo has surpassed the stats for Vandalized, but it has taken years!  Betcha I get a bunch more hits when I talk about a fight.  What is it about people anyway.  I am sure the the word “Fight” gets a ton more views than something like “gorgeous bird” or “Halloween” or “My grandson’s play”.  Wanna make a bet with me on that?

We have driven the MoHo across the mountains more times than we planned because it was time for new tires.  Basin Tire does great by us, but it is a locally owned company in Klamath Falls, 30 miles east.  The MoHo was already over in Grants Pass, where she doesn’t have to be winterized, 100 miles west.  Oops.  So we brought her home to get tires, and an oil change and transmission service, which made her very happy, and made us very happy with more than 8,000 travel miles already tucked away on our winter agenda.  Of course, sitting at home in Rocky Point, with sub freezing temperatures and a smattering of snow wasn’t the best.  Mo set up the electric heater inside and we parked her under the shelter of the big trees.  It was nice to see frost and snow all over the grass but not on the driveway.

Not long after the tires were added, I got an early morning wakeup call from Daughter Deanna, who was just an hour out of the truck stop in Central Point.  This was exciting for several reasons, one of which is that I don’t get to see her often, and their jet engine deliveries don’t take them down I-5 all that often.  For some reason she thought I was in Grants Pass, but instead we jumped up and dashed over the mountain in the melting snow, in the MoHo, so that we could meet them by 8 at the restaurant so they could continue with their very tight schedule.  They were delivering some kind of big jetway, an oversize load, and had all sorts of permitting and route variations they had to follow on their way south to LAX.

Whew!  Now,  just maybe, a few old time readers will remember Deanna lent her huge fast magnificent Nikkor lens to me for our trip to Alaska and I crashed to the ground and crashed the lens.  I replaced it for Deanna, and repaired the old one for myself and I love it.  I happen to have a zoom lens, but it isn’t anything like the big zoom lens that Deanna had for her photography business, and since I was responsible enough to replace her lens, she had no problem lending her big zoom to me for our upcoming trip to the southeast.  I really do want to get some spoonbill photos!  Now lets hope my old lady tendency to crash every now and then won’t cost me the several thousand dollars it would cost me to replace THIS lens.

The good part about the quickie visit to Medford, is that Deanna had a chance to pick up the lens from their storage in Wenatchee and bring it along for me. Way better than trying to ship and insure the thing.  Breakfast and daughter hugs were great too!

Another good part about the quickie visit is that I was able to bring the beginnings of the quilt I am making for their truck bed over for her to see and approve in person.  Deanna saw Sally’s quilt and asked for one, and was willing to pay for the fabric if I would make the quilt.  We decided on an idea, and it was great to see that our over the phone choices worked out perfectly for the soft gray and blue interior of their truck.  Eventually I will even make truck curtains to match.  It is been good that I can stay at home in the dreary November weather and just quilt and not scare people with my fighter face.

Another little glitch showed up early in the month while I was working away on the quilt with a broken sewing machine.  Sheesh.  My machine is a Bernina 1230, a model from the 80’s, and it seems the part is expensive and hard to find.  It would require a 150 mile round trip to the Ashland Bernina Dealer.  Sister Sal, the other trucker in the family, who recommended the 1230 because she loves hers, sent a quickie text message to me saying, “Go get mine, it is in storage, you can use it while I am driving”  Wow!  Just before that, Mo and I decided it was time for me to get the little 12 pound travel Janome 600 machine I had been eyeing for awhile now.  So now I have the Janome for travel and classes and quickie piecing at home, and my broken Bernina, and Sal’s working Bernina and two of her sergers which I haven’t a clue how to thread. Did I mention I don’t have a sewing room, that I store all my sewing stuff in my bedroom and quilt on the dining table?  Ha!

It seems I don’t have a lot to show for it yet, except of course Deanna’s quilt which will be ready for the quilter this week.  They promised to get it back before Christmas, so the next time I meet Deanna on the road somewhere (probably in Florida or Texas or something), I’ll have her quilt all bound and ready to give to her.  Yippee!!

The other little busy maker around here has been Mo’s computer.  She has a great Dell workhorse that has plunked along for a very long time, but it is a bit slow and still runs XP without the bones that could be upgraded to Windows 7.  I had Bel’s little Dell laptop I got for her before she passed away, just sitting in a cupboard, so decided that it would be a good backup computer for Mo.  Sure enough, Mo is now learning to use Windows 7 and is getting more and more used to the idea that she can let the old beast go.  I have been using Windows 7 for some time now, but in teaching Mo the differences in the OS, I am learning things I didn’t know.  I have no desire whatsoever to try out Windows 8 any time soon.  Just the upgrade to the IOS on my iPhone made me a bit crazy.  Finally, after some of our computer work, this morning Mo said something to the effect, “Gee, I like this, I can work on Quicken on my old machine and see all the banks on the laptop at the same time!”  Power User!  You go Mo!!

Oh yeah, another little busy maker….I am trying to get all the old VHS videos that I have in boxes transferred to DVD’s so that I can actually do something with them.  I bought a Toshiba machine that does the job, but still takes a bit of tweaking and concentration to make sure that the resulting DVD can be viewed on a computer.  The plan is to eventually get those files converted and transferred from the DVD’s to the computer and to then make some nice movie clips from the good parts.  I can’t believe how much wasted, pretty boring footage there is on the old videos, and yet how many sweet special moments are tucked away in there as well.  It is a big job, and I have to thank Erin and Mui (this is a link to his great videos) for sending some emails along that helped me at least begin to understand what I was dealing with, what kinds of files and software I needed to understand to actually do the project.  For now, I am just happy to get them to DVD’s where I can skip and fast forward and find things much more easily.

Another delightful treat early in the month was a trip to town to watch my youngest grandson, Xavier, starring as Jack Rover in the play Wild Oats.  It was amazing to me to see how great the kids were in this high school production.  It was as good as many community theater productions I have seen.  I even went for the second night since I did learn, when Melody was doing theater, that every single performance has its own nuance, its own special moments.  Sure was proud of that kid!  Plus he is getting all A’s for his first year of high school in advanced placement classes.  He is on  a roll, and I trust it will keep going throughout his high school years.

I would imagine that those who read the blog because it said “Fight” are long gone.  Those who read the blog because they read RV travel blogs have probably bailed by now as well.  But at least when I go back to the blog to try to remember what we did this month I will have something to read.  There are times in the past when we ask that question, and if we weren’t traveling there is nothing but a big blank!

I have lots of practice ahead of me using Deanna’s lens, but I did try it out a little bit.  She has a nice tripod that is attached to then lens rather than the camera to help hold it.  While it is only a 200mm, it is fast, so hopefully I can get photos that are more clear than I have managed with my much less expensive slower lens.  Wish me luck!

 

MoHo upgrade and Saving the blog

Home in Rocky Point, Oregon.  Clear and sunny and 37 Degrees F

It is a bit amazing to me that after almost six years traveling in the MoHo, we would finally realize that the beautiful leather sofabed was just not to our liking.  When we first bought the rig, it looked oh so luxurious.  We learned how to make down the comfy queen size bed on the first day, and never have used it in the entire six years we have traveled in the rig. 

The sofa was pretty comfortable, or so it seemed, but with use we discovered that the pedestal table was a pain to set up every time we opened the slide, and that our little wooden tables, nice as they are, were susceptible to doggy coffee spills, and didn’t work all that well for computing.  We also discovered that the seat was much too wide for either of us on the ends, and the only really comfortable place to sit was in the middle…for one. 

Three people lining up on a sofa doesn’t make for good conversation, either, so we would bring in the folding chairs for company.  It all worked just fine until we saw more and more rigs with those big curved dinettes, including Mo’s brother’s Winnebago, and we finally decided to bite the bullet and try to get one.  Calling around, we first discovered that our slide was just two inches too narrow for the standard curved booth, and we also worried about the desire to maybe make out a bed for one reason or another.  The $5,000 price tag helped to nix the idea as well.

Mo started cruising the internet, and found a really nice little FlexSteel dinette booth, with sides that made into a single bed if needed.  A call to Countryside Interiors in Junction City confirmed the unit would fit, and they would install it.  There were some measurements taken, the valance covers were too long, but that was an easy fix according to Steve, the owner of Countryside.  After seven weeks, our unit arrived and we headed over the mountain to spend the night in Eugene before the big installation day.

With a four hour installation time estimated, I have to say they did a great job in just under five hours.  Josh was incredibly professional, doing good solid clean work, and paid attention to all the little details that would make the unit perfect.  Countryside Interiors was a great place to have the work done, and we appreciated the good service.

I do have to include a bit of a rub, however.  When we ordered the dinette, we were told they would sell our sofa on consignment so we could recoup some of the expense of the new one.  Our sofa was in excellent condition, and the bed as I said, had never been used.  But when the whole job was said and done, and I requested information on the consignment, we were told the sofa was no good, that they couldn’t sell it, that it was basically worthless, and she asked me kindly, “Would you like a donation slip for Habitat for Humanity?”

Fishy, fishy, fishy!!  Their used furniture room was full of units not as nice as ours, and while we were waiting for the installation to be completed, a dealer came in to look at their used inventory.  I did ask if I could trade in the sofa on one of their nice Euro Chairs (a recliner on my wish list) and she said again, “No, we don’t do trades”.  I did plan to buy that chair from them eventually, but the more I think about it, I do think they have enough of our money.  The price was reasonable but definitely a high price for a piece of furniture, but maybe their profit margin for something like FlexSteel isn’t very good and they need to make more money selling the used pieces.  Either way, I will not go back to buy my recliner from them. 

As long as you know about the consignment part, it is a great place to have work done.  They were on time, professional, and very careful and thorough.  Don’t hesitate to use them for upgrades, just don’t expect any trade in for your current stuff, unless it has never been used at all.  That was her excuse, at least.  We had sat on the sofa and there was a rub (not scratch, just a dirt spot) on the arm next to the slide wall.  Enough of that.

The dinette is absolutely perfect for us.  We were able to use our existing table, although it is about 2 inches more narrow than I would like, but the wood is so nice we hated to give it up.  The best part is that the chairs are incredibly comfortable, and wide enough for four people to sit for a meal, and with the wall end arms, perfect for lounging for joint television viewing.  Even more perfect, when we are sitting at the table, we now have a view directly outside, rather than staring at the kitchen wall in front of us from the sofa.  I can type on the computer and we can play dominos again and play a hand of cards without craning our necks sideways and trying to keep our hands hidden.  The bed flips out with just a touch and is also really comfortable.  There are even two nice drawers in the base of the seats.  Somehow, it seems that we have much more room inside the rig, even when the slide is closed.  (Notice that all these photos of the new dinette are with the closed slide)

On to the next subject: Saving the Blog. 

I do reasonably regular backups of the blog, so that if something happened to the google/blogger servers, I would have a hard copy of the code that I could then use to import into another platform if is wanted.  The photos are also linked, even though blog photos are actually stored on the google server as well.  Hopefully Google won’t die.  But things change, life changes.  Sometimes technology changes.  At the moment I am trying to convert VHS video to DVD and then trying to figure out how to edit the footage.  (Still no progress on that one, but I am working on it)

Who is to say that sometime in the future there would be another tech change that would make our blogs completely obsolete? Or inaccessible?  We all work so hard on them, and for me it is my journal, the record of my life that is becoming more and more important as the memory card of my brain fills up and overloads.  Voila!  Blog2Print.  Others have talked about doing this, and it has been on the list for a bit of time now, but I couldn’t decide exactly how to go about it.  Of course it isn’t cheap, so I originally thought that maybe I would just do a book on the Alaska Trip, or the Covered Bridges of Oregon, but then I would miss all the rest.

  Instead, I decided to do a year at a time, starting with the most recent completed year, 2012.  The book arrived yesterday, and I have to say that I really love it.  I chose to let Blog2print arrange photos at the medium size rather than trying to keep everything exactly as I had it on the blog.  After browsing the entire 277 pages of text and photos, I am completely happy with the book.  My middle daughter, Deanna, is the one who kept saying, “Mom, you need to get all this in a book"!”  OK, Deanna, the book is done! My next book will be 2013 when it is completed, and then I’ll have to save up to do a year at a time back to the beginning.  Sure is a lot easier to read than my own handwritten journals. 

One last note here.  My new friend John Parsons asked me to put a FaceBook post that I wrote awhile back on the blog.  He said he wanted to be able to find it again, and that is really hard to do with FaceBook!  Everything there just rolls by so quickly, and I can NEVER find old stuff in there.  So, John, here you go.

GROWING UP IN LA

I remember chocolate colored water thick with sticks and rocks hurtling down the wash behind our house during the monsoon floods.      Leaping with a thrill from huge boulder to huge boulder they used as fill to try to stem the flow, which for me was a magic wilderness of danger and roaring water.      I remember the soft bellies of horny toads when you caught them, the sharp prick of stickers in your feet from goatheads...who ever wore shoes?          the smell of dust when the first drops of rain hit after all those dry months.      How incredibly green the San Gabriel Mountains looked in April with the tall candles of yucca backlit against a setting sun. The muted happy sound of kids voices on the playground as I lay on my back watching sky so blue it looked very nearly black.      The milky way and pungent pines of Mt. Baldy on a summer night of camping.      I remember the sweet sad feeling of yearning when the winds blew and the smog vanished leaving behind air that was so sharp and clear that you could actually see the sparkles floating around it in...dreaming of a magic place to live where the air was like that all the time. climbing to the top of the hill in Sierra Madre Canyon, among the prickly pear and agave and morning glory and old live oaks to the digger pine that was high enough to let me see Catalina.      I remember how golden a warm apricot tastes when picked from your hiding place in the tree, and how bitter a surprise an unripe olive can be. ...Childhood in LA in the 50's.... .....Warm as an apricot and bitter as an uncured olive.

 

Rocky Point October

Sunny!  Clear!  Crisp! at 66 glorious degrees F

I know, I know…it is supposed to be a blog about traveling, or the MoHo, or at least something a bit adventurous.  But I just couldn’t resist talking about October right here at home.  Looking back to past years, it seems to be a repeating pattern.  October is probably the most glorious month of the year, at least when it doesn’t snow.

The leaves on the aspens are at their high point.  I have to take photos every year, and it seems as though I keep going back to the same spots where the aspens have a particular shade of pinky orange, usually backlit since the sun is rather low in the sky.  Every year the colors are different, just a little bit here and there, but different enough that I have to take another picture of the same spot.

The colors in the yard are different each year as well.  There is lots of shade here and trying to get our hardwoods to flourish is a labor of love.  A few of the flowering cherries and crabapples have finally reached high enough to find the sun and are growing in leaps and bounds.  The maples are so gorgeous, but due to the shade, they never get really fat and thick the way they might in the sunshine.  But oh, how that brilliance lights up the forest!

My greenhouse didn’t do as well this year as some past.  The tomatoes are still trying to ripen, although I did get a few.  Seems as though the best crop this year was the bush beans, which fed us many meals of yummy fresh beans.  We even tried to grow corn.  Probably won’t do that one again.  Even though I had pollinated the silks, I guess I am not as good as the wind or bees, since the cute little ears had about 2 inches of filled out kernals and 6 inches of what looked like baby corn from a can.  ah well, the price of living in a forest in the Cascades…

Now home for a bit of time, and no longer working even part time, I found myself with time to play with all that fabric I have been hoarding.  I had a couple of projects that were cut out last spring, when it was still raining, and some ideas rolling around in my head that would wake me up at 3 in the morning.  Fabric does that, kind of the way yarn used to do it to me.  It has nothing to do with the quilting exactly, but more to do with the color, the playing with color, moving it around, blending it, turning it into something different than the sum of the parts. Even though I mentioned the quilt in the last post, I didn’t have a photo of it, so here it is.

Mo likes fall too.  Her favorite thing is fixing stuff, and with the lawns slowing down she has less mowing time and more fixing time.  The Rocky Point place is getting all ready for winter.  Wood is in, cabin is winterized, our road has been re-graveled by Mo and her trusty tractor, the chains for the tractor are on and the blade is ready.

Winter will be short this year for us.  Sometimes it snows in October, often in November, almost always in December.  Last year in December we were plowing and shoveling and blowing every single day for two weeks!  January it is getting a bit old, but for us this year it won’t matter at all, since we will be heading south.  Snowbirds?!  If we go south for three months in a motorhome does that make us snowbirds??

Today we are leaving for Junction City to have our new dinette booth and table installed and the sofa taken out.  Of course I’ll take photos of the process, and hopefully we will love it.

During this month past, Time has given the blessing of long lazy visits with daughter Melody on her day off, having coffee and doing the girl talk thing.  It is the little things that matter somehow.  Time also allowed me to finally almost finish going through the last of Bel’s (my friend who passed away last February) stuff that was in storage and send it off to her sister. Time gave me a day of at long last starting a “retirement project” that has been on my list for the last few years, and one I never could seem to get started.

I am copying a gazillion old videos to DVD, with the hope that someday I will figure out how to edit the goofy footage to the really good parts.  In the mean time, I get to look at what I looked like when I was 51.  Geez?!  I wanna do that again….but I seem to remember at 51 I felt really old….Time.

What is it about fall that makes Time seem so precious.

And friends, old and new.  Blogging and Facebook are mixed blessings, I know, but I have to thank my new friend, John Parsons, for somehow finding me on Facebook, writing about truly amazing stuff about water, climate, fires, and the planet in general, and actually being the conduit that helped me to find another old friend from the 80s, Marti Bridges.  We worked together for SCS back then and had some truly great times together. 

And then, of course, I received news from my friend Jeanne, (who anyone who reads this blog even a little bit should remember).  Jeanne had GREAT GREAT news and it seems that I will be traveling to Vermont to share it with her next fall.  Ahhhh  I can hardly wait till it is old news and Jeanne has told everyone and I can talk about it!  Jeanne, do you have a clue just how much self control it took for me to NOT put that photo on my blog??

Time and Friends and the Internet.  What more could I ask for.

 

50 years gone, let’s celebrate at the coast

Currently in Rocky Point, Oregon mostly cloudy, breezy, and 57 degrees F, with a chance of thunderstorms with snow? predicted for tonight.

So very glad that this forecast wasn’t around last week when we were on the Oregon coast, enjoying gorgeous sunny skies and nary a bit of fog.  When we planned this trip last spring, our comment to our California friends was all about how gorgeous, warm, and fog free the coast usually is in early fall.  We had no clue that a huge storm would blow through just a few days before our arrival, or that the predictions for continued rain and wind would be all wrong.

Long time blog readers have heard me mention Maryruth often, my lifetime friend.  This month we are celebrating 50 years of friendship.  It isn’t often that friends can stay close, much less even in touch with each other after so many years.  Especially since we didn’t grow up together, or go to school together.  Maryruth and I met over the neighborhood fence in 1963, both of us young mothers with babies.  Even though life circumstances took us thousands of miles apart many times, we never lost each other.  The friendship cemented in those early days has stood the test of time.

Congratulations to US! 

Maryruth and her husband Gerald don’t have an RV, and haven’t been tent camping in some time either, so a yurt at an Oregon State Park was the perfect solution.  Especially the great yurt at space C2 in Harris Beach State Park.  The site is huge and just a step back from the front ocean view sites, but also boasts a very long, paved RV pad with electricity, water, and cable TV.  The yurt also has electric, with a nice heater that came in handy on the cool coastal evenings. Good thing we had reservations, since the fall is high season for yurt camping on the Oregon coast.

Our friends drove from California to spend the night with us in Rocky Point before we caravanned over to the coast on a cool, cloudy afternoon.  Of course, we had to stop on the way in at the Chetco Seafood Company for the best fish and chips ever.  (Just proves that you can’t always tell  how good something might be by the reviews).

Since they were driving their car and we didn’t have ours, we thought it might be a good idea to stop for supper with the MoHo so that Abby could wait ‘patiently’ while we ate rather than leaving her in the park.  The restaurant has a big parking lot adjacent to the harbor where she can bark away and won’t bother anyone.  Not such a great idea in a campground. 

By the time we settled into our comfy site the clouds were lifting and the skies promised good weather for the next few days instead of the gloomy forecast on weatherunderground.  Of course, as anyone knows, forecasting the weather on the Oregon coast is not an easy thing to do. 

On our second day at the park, we decided to just lay low and enjoy the beach walks, the trails, and sitting in the campsite reading and visiting.  We had a campfire every single night thanks to Mo packing up firewood in big bins that just barely fit inside the MoHo, but it was enough.  Tuesday evening we finally made it to O’Holleran’s Steak House, an old Brookings institution.  We had heard good things about their food and thought as many times as we have been to Brookings, we should at least say we had tried it out.

Dinner was ‘nice’, with the $31. price of the New York Steak special quite high for the ambience of the place.  One of the nicest amenities was a note on the menu that said if you want to share a meal, there would be an extra $3.50 charge, which would include an extra plate, an extra potato, and bread, and vegetable.  There was still only one salad for this price, but Mo and I shared our dinner and had more than enough salad, and since we can never eat a full restaurant meal, the sharing option was really nice.  Maryruth and Gerald shared their New York Steak with Blue Cheese special as well.  What a great idea.

The food was decent, the steak was good, but the restaurant itself doesn’t have the atmosphere that I associate with that kind of price.  Although I must say that the service was impeccable.  Glad we did it, won’t have to do it again.

That morning, as we walked around the park, I passed a great big 40 footer parked up on the front row.  Something looked very familiar to me, and I told Mo that I was sure I must know whoever was in that rig.  I kept looking and then thought…hmmmm….it is an Endeavor, now who do I know with an Endeavor?!  But wait….I thought Nina and Paul were off to the east side of the Sierras on 395 already?  Nope…I checked their website and lo and behold they were in Brookings.

After a few years adjusting to this blogging thing, I have learned that it isn’t exactly cool to just bop up to someone’s rig and bang on the door, so I sent Nina a note inviting her over to our fire.  Within minutes she showed up with sweet Polly and we chatted up a storm.  Of course, Nina and I couldn’t stay off blogging and traveling subjects and Maryruth and Gerald thought the conversation wasn’t all that exciting!  Ha!  Guess it is like the old days when I would have soil scientist friends to dinner and the spouses would roll their eyes at all the work talk. 

Nina wanted to know about all the exciting things to do in Brookings since we come here so often.  I looked at Mo, and couldn’t think of a thing.  Geez.  We love it here, but most of the time that is because we can do nothing.  I wasn’t much good at local recommendations.  When Nina asked what to do I said, “Go to Bandon?”  Harris Beach is fabulous for just hanging in the campsite, relaxing, walking the beach and the trails and enjoying down time until the sunset shows up.

I followed my own advice and on Wednesday Maryruth and Gerald and I took their car up to Bandon to explore all the wonders of that sweet little town that, unlike Brookings, actually DOES have a cute downtown old town area.  Mo thought it was nice to stay home with Abby since she has been to Bandon many times.

It was a perfect day for coastal driving, with gorgeous sunny skies and warm temperatures.  Mo suggested that we stop in Port Orford and check out the boat lift, thinking Gerald might get a kick out of it.  As many times as we have driven that part of the coast, I had never stopped at the lovely Visitor Center or been down to the docks to see the famous lift, one of only six in the world and only two in the US. 

As luck would have it, there was a fishing boat coming into the dock while we were there, and we got to see the famous lift in action. We watched in fascination as the fishing boat was lifted up by a hook and just four ropes and dropped down easily on a big old wooden trailer. 

There is much more to do in tiny Port Orford than I realized and I added the Lifeboat Station Museum to the list of future todo’s, in addition to going to the Cape Blanco Lighthouse, but on this day Bandon was waiting.  

Our first stop in Bandon was Tony’s Crab Shack where I had fresh grilled halibut with cilantro lime, Maryruth had fresh steamed clams, and Gerald had a rock cod sandwich.  So fresh, so good!  YUM. 

Back another block from the waterfront we found the Coastal Mist chocolate shop.  As we walked through the door the rich, warm aroma of really good chocolate welcomed us into this beautiful little store full of the most amazing chocolate ever. Trained in Belgium, the owners are chocolate makers par excellence!  I had never tasted “sipping chocolate”, and believe you me, it is nothing whatsoever like your everyday cup of hot chocolate.  It was beyond incredible, and so rich and so decadent.  Of course I came away with a little bag of solid gold/er chocolate truffles and a big chunk of pure Belgian chocolate.

After browsing a gorgeous gallery that almost tempted Maryruth to spend a half year’s salary on a clock, we ambled off to the new Face Rock Creamery, built to replace the old Bandon Creamery that had such a great Bandon history.  Sold to the Tillamook Cheese company, the owners lost their rights to the Bandon Cheese name.  Bandon Cheese is now made under contract by Tillamook Cheese somewhere in Wisconsin.  Check out this website.  Sheesh.  We still like Bandon Cheese that we can buy at Fred Meyer, but it isn’t really Bandon Cheese.

Face Rock Cheese is wonderful, and the owner is the original Bandon cheesemaker’s son.  I asked if there was any cheese that tasted like the old Bandon cheddar and the cashier laughed and said, “No, not yet, We haven’t been open long enough!  Just leave it in the fridge for a few months and you’ll have it”.

Hoping for an ice cream dessert so touted by so many visitors, we decided instead that the money was better spent on cheese goodies.  The ice cream is great, but it isn’t made by Face Rock, and we can get Umpqua ice cream any time.

Home after a great day, we cooked up a good supper of spaghetti and salad, eating one more time at the big picnic table with another roaring campfire.  I think it was a perfect way to celebrate our “anniversary”.

On Thursday we had a leisurely departure from the park, driving through the brilliant light and dark shadows along the Smith River, past Jedediah Smith State Park, and home to the cottage in Grants Pass.  The celebration wasn’t yet over.  Maryruth and Gerald decided to stay in town for a couple of days to check out the area, see the cottage, visit with Deb (who is almost like a niece to Maryruth) and share some more great meals with us before they went back to California.

Grants Pass has a great downtown area, with historic buildings, some nice art installations, and several annual festivals.  Saturday and Sunday was the annual “Art Along the Rogue” festival, a celebration of street art.  I guess that street artists are a genre of their own, and I only saw them some time ago when visiting downtown Pasadena.  I loved having such a cosmopolitan event right there in our second adopted home town.  Both main streets were shut down to traffic so the artists could create these amazing images with chalk on asphalt.  Ephemeral, beautiful, like a sand castle, they are created, we enjoy them, and they then disappear.  I actually do wonder just how long they last after the traffic opens again.

Maryruth and Gerald left for home, and Deb, Mo and I wandered the town, discovering the fabulous Saturday market where I bought more goodies than I really wanted to carry.  We then met up with our neighbors, Wes and Gayle who were also at the market, and wanted to come and see the cottage before they leave for their winter home in Arizona this week. We then ran into a bunch of folks from Rocky Point who were visiting the festival as well.  So much social stuff!  Geez, for someone who isn’t very social, this was a LOT of interaction.

When we got back to Rocky Point on Sunday afternoon, I was so very very glad to be home where I didn’t have to talk any more.  Except for one little surprise.  My sister Sal, who was a medical transcriptionist, lost her job to changing technology, and instead of sitting around moaning, decided to go to truck driving school and become a truck driver.  I hadn’t seen her since Easter, and she was in Klamath Falls for just a quick turn around before getting back out on the road.

My baby sister, at 63 years young, is now a big rig driver!  Sheesh!  the girl has guts, always has.  She is trying to get her tractor fixed up a bit with some girly stuff, and asked me to make a quilt for her that had LOTS OF COLOR!.  So I did.  I was glad to have the top finished at least to show her when I drove into town for our quickie visit.

So now, finally, it is Tuesday, and I really don’t have to talk any more.  Once I hit the PUBLISH button for this blog, I don’t even have to write any more.  I don’t have to do a dang thing!  At least not today.  Tomorrow it might be time to pull out the Halloween decorations, trim back the summer foliage for winter, wander around taking photos of the fall colors, and maybe catch up on the Homeland DVD’s that showed up in the mail yesterday.