At Last - On the Road - April 19th, 2010

After a minor setback or three, we launched our great adventure on Monday morning.  We had spent the weekend with our daughter Michelle, her husband Mark, and their two lovely kids at their house in Mount Baker.  They patiently put up with our ferrying goods back and forth to our covered wagon, outfitting it for the long journey.  We finally cleared their house of our huge pile of boxes and bags, getting everything stowed away and , after a last visit to our little house and picking a final bit of purple broccoli out of our garden, we were ready to go.
 
 The travel on Day 1 was largely uneventful, though somewhat rainy and cold, and we arrived at our friend Ruth's house in Salem, Oregon for the first night's stayover. She lives on a fairly busy street and her driveway was just barely able to contain our rig. By parking it diagonally across the driveway space, we could just barely fit it in so that people could still use the sidewalk in front of her house. We had a very pleasant dinner and a great evening of conversation and catching up, with her and her family, Margaret, Emily and Wes. We stayed in her house rather than the RV, a gentle partial transition to RV living.

On Day 2, we headed over to the Oregon Coast, along Highway 34.   The coast is stunningly beautiful, of course, but was very windy and cold. The RV handled very well, and our little tow car tracked along nicely in spite of the wind and rain.  We saw lots of birds along the way, including this flock of Brandt's Cormorants sheltering from the wind.  We spent the night in a state park called Honeyman, nestled in among the Oregon Sand Dunes.  It was a lovely area, well protected from the wind, and our first real night of RV living, setting up all our equipment, cooking in the rig, sleeping there and feeling much more as if we were on the road.  The RV was very comfortable, though we spent a lot of time re-arranging stuff and adjusting to our new lifestyle.  

 

On Day 3, Ivy and I began to settle into a better routine.  The basic chores of RV'ing were more familiar, and the pace of our travel began to match what we were intending.  Our trip down the coast continued through the rest of Oregon.  Although we were intending to move fairly quickly to California to visit my brother, we took a more leisurely pace on this day, stopping more frequently, looking around, taking pictures and exploring a bit more.   Our lunch was particularly nice, as we stopped in a small city called Bandon along the Oregon coast, picked up some fresh local snapper from a fishing outlet, and cooked it up right there while doing a bit of birdwatching out the windows of the RV, which was parked along the shore of a bay.  I saw some turnstones, a loon, and some brants in the water, while munching on one of Ivy's characteristic one-dish salad meals.  We began to get a sense of how this adventure would unfold. 

 

We went to an elk viewing area, and got to see a few of them, though they were far away.  We stopped at several spots along the highway to walk around or take pictures.  And I had my required mid-afternoon nap parked by the side of the road while Ivy went walking. 

We settled into an RV park for the night at Crescent City California.  I wanted one with all the trimmings, to check out the wi-fi, cable TV, electric and all.  And we got one, located close in to the city.  It wasn't much to look at, on a flat plane and row on row of RVs, but everything worked and we were able to check everything out and be nearby to the Redwoods Visitor Center, for the next morning.  The raging wind rocked our RV gently all night as we snoozed and waited for the next stage of our adventure.

Almost Ready to Go - April 9, 2010

Much has happened since our last post.  We are now about a week from departure, but a lot of work has been required to get us here.  Ivy and I are both quite exhausted from the endless preparation and are looking forward to launching the real trip.

Our RV developed several leaks during our shakedown cruise, all of which had to be worked on.  The most serious of these was some "delamination", a curse word dreaded by all RV owners the world over. That caused extensive repairs, which will be completed next week. In the process, we will lose our leopard decals along the side, to no one's great regret.   Once that is done, we will be ready to pack the RV and go on the road.

In the meantime, we have been packing up all our belongings in preparation for renting out our house.   Generous friends and family have provided us storage space in several locations for our mountains of stuff, and we have been giving away, throwing out, and selling off all kinds of things to get the profile down to something manageable.  It's great to be getting rid of things, which tend to accumulate to excess when you have been together as long as Ivy and I have.   We will be moving in to the home of some friends for a few days while they are away on vacation. 

We have found a tenant for our house,  and that family will be moving in at the end of the month.    It's quite strange to see our house so empty after seventeen years here, and to think that we won't be back for such a long time.  But we are very much looking forward to launch this adventure and seeing so many new places we have always wanted to see.

We have acquired some great new technology to help us on the road.  We have plunked for an iPhone to provide both GPS and internet access while on the road.  These amazing gadgets have countless Apps that provide information to travelers like us, pointing out the gas stations, RV parks, cash machines and whatever you need in whatever location you find yourself.  We were clueless about the features, but our children and grandchildren were happy to educate us, after appropriate eye-rolling at Grandpa and Grandma.

We will miss our community of Vashon while we are gone, and our many friends throughout the area.  We have been  used to visiting with them and being involved in our community activities for years, and that will be a real change.  For weeks now we have been having farewell luncheons and dinners with friends, sometimes multiple ones with the same friends.  And we have been gradually letting go of committee work and civic involvement and transferring that work to others.  Everyone wishes us well and has been as helpful as we could have wished, so we are ever mindful of and grateful for the support of our friends and family.

Most of all, of course, we will miss our four charming granddaughters, who light up our life on such a regular basis (Their parents are not chopped liver, either, but, you know......) .  We have two in Seattle and two in London, and we will be far from everyone.  Our last family gathering was last summer, and those are some of our most precious times, as you can see from the photos.  But we have not given up - we are busily plotting some kind of gathering on the road, so that we don't totally miss the little urchins.  Being residents of London and Seattle, they are all drawn to beaches and warm weather, so that will definitely be part of the plot. There will be future bulletins on this subject.

Some unfortunate news from our family down in California will be affecting our trip plans, as well.  My brother Chris has had serious spine surgery and has been diagnosed with advanced and pervasive lung cancer.  Given his prognosis, he is refusing further treatment and has arranged for hospice care.   So we will be heading down to his home town of Healdsburg, north of Santa Rosa for our first stop.  The news is very sad, but we feel lucky to have the RV ready at this time, so that we can spend as much time as needed in the area and have a completely flexible time schedule. 

Our next posts will be from on the road. We hope to see as many of you as we can while we are traveling, either by visiting you at home or meeting up in whatever places we find ourselves.  Keep in touch.

Steve