Catchng Up

Having a blast on the beach!

View from Mary in Newport

Okay...I know. I'm sorry! While we were Oregon we were pretty busy but now we are in Reno on our way to Arizona so I'll have some time to catch you up on our adventures (and misadventures). I will work on another web album of our time in Oregon. I got some good pictures of the Oregon coast, Hood Canal and of the farm in Springfield. Today we are taking the Eastern Sierra Scenic Byway again to get to Barstow and from there into Arizona. It will be a beautiful drive today. Unfortunately I probably won't take many photos. There was a bug massacre on the way into Reno yesterday and the windshield didn't get cleaned before we left this morning. Such is life.

Mary overlooking the bluff

When I last left you I think we were pulling into a KOA in Mountain Home, Idaho. It turns out that the people who managed the park knew people who John went to school with in Marion, Pennsylvania. Talk about a small world. And this was the first KOA that had a Kamp K-9, a fenced area with agility obstacles and toys where you can turn your dogs loose. It was the first time that we have been able to turn Breezy and Ransom loose together and it was just a riot! We found out that of the two dogs Ransom would be the agility dog! He is lightening fast, can jump like a deer and has no fear of the obstacles. It took me three seconds to get him up and over the elevated ramp. Breezy got half way up the ramp and decided that heights weren't for her. They ran and played and had a blast. The next morning we left there and drove to Sisters, Oregon for an overnight stay at the KOA.

View of Hood Canal from our campsite

It was an uneventful stay until we got ready to leave the next morning. It was cold out that night. Sisters is the Cascade Mountains and is around 4,000 feet in elevation so in September it gets really cold at night. John got up to take his shower and discovered that the hose attached to Mary was frozen. So he switched her over to the on-board water system and showered. I went on about my morning business and just as I was about to take my shower I heard water running outside. I looked out the window and it was shooting out of the faucet like an open fire hydrant. John was outside putting the bike rack on the car so I ran out and hollered, "There's water running!!!". He hollered back, "Okay!" I went back into the coach and started doing the breakfast dishes. About a minute later the door flew open and John staggered in saying something about hitting his head. He had his hat in his right hand and his left hand on his head. I stepped back from the sink as he bent over it and the blood ran into the sink.

I'm not squeamish. It's a good thing. We spent the next half hour mopping blood and icing a large crease in his head. He wouldn't go to the hospital for stitches ("I'll just sit around an emergency room for hours and then I'll have to have them taken out," he complained. "Infection is an ugly experience," I replied. I lost the argument). I wouldn't let him drive (and of course he has never let me drive so my first big experience was not going to be on a windy mountain road) so we had to wait for while while I quizzed him every five minutes. "Are you dizzy?" He shook his head. "Blurred vision?" Another negative. "Headache?" I asked. "What do you think?" he replied. He had raced around the end of the coach to turn the water off and when he did he whacked the top of his head on the edge of the bedroom driver's side slide slide out leaving a trough about three inches long. The only think that probably kept him from being knocked out was that he had his hat on. So after I was sure that he wasn't going to drive off of the road we decided to go on to Arcuri's farm in Springfield.

We arrived and parked Mary in her spot in front of the barn on a private part of the farm. It's like having our own little farm. The dogs can go out and play without leashes...mostly. Ransom is a little hard headed about coming when he is called now that he has found freedom from the leash. So we spend some time on the leash and some off. He has also learned to run alongside the bike. John worked with him on that. He took him out yesterday to get a little exercise. When he came back I asked, "So how did it go?" He said, "Fine until we rode up on a flock of wild turkeys crossing the road." The farm has resident wild turkeys and Ransom thinks he is a bird dog. One wild turkey outweighs him by double his body weight I'm sure and could eat him in one bite but he doesn't see it that way. Apparently he decided to try to catch one and nearly jerked John off of his bike. Anyway, it is a wonderful, peaceful spot at the farm. We were here less than one day before John decided that we needed to move up to the Oregon State Fairgrounds where they were having a horse show (to cut down on driving). Tim had a client showing there so I very reluctantly agreed to give up our private little spot. When we pulled into the State Fairgrounds I was completely depressed. The weather was awful and the RV area was dreary. The only good thing was that the van der Walts were next to us so we got to visit with them and Bill Blacklaw too. We stayed through Friday night and on Saturday we said goodbye and happily took off for the coast.

A view of Arcuri's farm

Tim and Jean told us about a cool place to park Mary in Newport. It is called Outdoor Resorts and cool just doesn't quite cover it. We made a reservation and when we arrived we were assigned to a space that was overlooking the ocean and next to the path to the beach access. Mary was parked overlooking the Pacific Ocean and with a perfect view of the Yaquinta Lighthouse. We set Mary up, thrilled at our good luck at getting the very best spot in the park, leashed our dogs and headed down a winding tree lined path to the beach. We descended a steep stairway to the sand and when we got to the bottom we looked around in amazement. The beach was empty! The tide was out and no one was there! It was time to let our dogs run together. Ransom had obviously never been to the beach so it was an exhilarating experience for him. There were seagulls and waves and rocks and sand and the weather was glorious. We unhooked them and Ransom took off leaping across the sand. He looked like a tiny gazelle bounding and leaping. Then he took off running in a big circle, around and around and around with Breezy on his heels. It was so funny that we both nearly fell over laughing. Those two dogs had a total blast and we had a blast watching them. They were so busy running and playing that Ransom (who as I mentioned thinks he is the bird dog of the world) didn't notice all of the seagulls on the beach. They ran until they were totally tuckered out and we releashed them and walked for awhile. According to all of the people who are regulars at the Outdoor Resorts park we managed not only to get the best spot on the grounds for Mary, we also arrived on the very best weekend of the year for weather. It was in the mid seventies with a light breezy, azure blue skies and beautiful sunshine. It was heaven and for a moment on the beach John looked at me and said, "Let's sell everything and move here!" I said, "Yes!" Then my memories of living in Oregon kicked in. I said, "Wait. I take that back." He said, "I loved it out here when I lived here before." I said, "Talk to me again after it starts raining," which I knew without a doubt it would do within a matter of days.

I love Oregon. I miss a lot of things about the state...the ease of getting to the coast or the mountains (within two hours either direction), the beauty of the entire state and the city of Portland (great restaurants and shopping too), the progressive thinking (very "green" state, environmentally conscious), no sales tax, no self service gas stations, friends and family close, and it is gardening heaven not to mention that the weather is very mild, not terribly cold in the winter or terribly hot in the summer. I won't ever say never about coming back here to live because you just never know where life will take you but I do remember what I didn't miss about the western part of the state when I left and moved to Kentucky. Darkness and dampness. I don't mind rain. In fact I like it when it rains in Kentucky. We get nearly as much rain in Kentucky as they get in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. The difference is that when it rains in Kentucky it rains like hell and gets it over with. When it rains in Oregon first the clouds roll in. They are big puffy and charcoal in color...very dark. A damp wind will begin to penetrate your bones. Then you begin to smell the rain that is packed into those big dark clouds. Then it will spend a week doing things like drizzling, showering, spitting, raining, storming...there are more terms for rain in Oregon than you can begin to imagine. I remember the year before I left the state we literally had months of rain as the state made up for a lengthy drought (which doesn't mean that it didn't rain, it means that there was not much in the way of snow pack for a couple of years and rain levels were somewhat less than usual). After a couple of months of dark clouds and some form of moisture every single day I began suffering from a bad case of rain madness. I could barely drag myself out of bed in the morning. My allergies went nuts, I got obsessed with eradicating black algae which was growing on everything outside. I began walking with an exaggerated stoop, like I could avoid getting my hair wet, which when exposed to sufficient dampness turns into a mop of fuzz and waves. Gross. I wore out an umbrella and checked daily to see if I had developed webs between my toes. I love the sun and the blue sky. It lifts my spirits. I also love Oregon. It is a gorgeous state.

So we spent two glorious days on the coast of Oregon. The second day on the beach with the dogs was really fun until Ransom's bird dog persona took over and he took off after a seagull. The dog is fast...really fast. We ran after him on the beach as he disappeared from sight (he's small and fast and we're old and blind) hollering "RANSOM!! RANSOM!!" over and over. Apparently he got out of sight of us and decided that being that far away from us wasn't to his liking. We looked up and he was running flat out back to us. He bounced and leaped all the way back to the coach...on the leash.

The night before we left at about midnight the infamous Newport wind came up and rattled us out of bed. Mary's slides were vibrating and John ended up outside in the dark with his little metal rod retracting the awnings on the driver's side of the coach. It was so wild that we didn't get much sleep that night. In the morning we got up and hooked up the Camry, said goodbye to our wonderful spot and headed north to Washington. Our destination was Hood Canal, a gorgeous spot on an ocean inlet from Puget Sound where my some of my family (great grandparents, grandparents and parents) spent a good deal of time. We spent two days in a tiny little berg called Potlatch. Mary had a space within 20 feet of the water. It was beautiful. We took the dogs up to an old ball park on the hill and played frisbee with them and had a lovely dinner at the Alderbrook Inn, which I highly recommend if you are ever in the area. The resort is beautiful, right on the water with wonderfully appointed cabins and also a regular hotel and spa. From there we went to Long Beach, Washington to have a great two day visit with friends. It was a really nice loop through Washington and we got our coastal fix for this trip.

I'm going to stop here because we are heading into the mountains and I know I'm going to lose my signal and not be able to post this if I don't. I'll be posting again soon. I promise!