9/14/10

This update is being written while Elaine drives us in the car to the Portland airport. Her lifelong friend, Elaine Lewter, is flying in from Michigan for a week with us and we are picking her up in about an hour. Hopefully, she will get in on some more of the fun social times and great crabbing that we have been experiencing since we arrived at Winchester Bay.
Yes, the crabbing is still good and even though we took three days off over the weekend, we were amazed yesterday when we totaled up what we had caught so far – 199!!! It was a very good thing that we had between 8 and 10 friends nearby to help with some of the work and also help eat this many crabs! Here is a picture of some of the catch right after we cooked them:
The friends have also been preparing a joint dinner for everyone every night, which has helped us a lot. Plus the food has been delicious and the company outstanding. Here is a picture of Mike & Marilyn with the dinner they cooked for everyone:
Carole & Dick have been really great about having everyone into their RV because it has been mostly too windy or cool at dinner time to eat outside. Here is a picture of them on the one day it was sunny enough to be outside:
And here is part of the group eating in their RV:
Kit and Nancy Carter arrived also, and spent about 5 days with us, and everyone was delighted to have them. Kit jumped right in and learned everything he could about crabbing and processing them, and was a huge help. Here is a picture of Kit, Mike & Lee sitting outside picking crab:
Nancy, of course, was a big help with the other chores. And they taught us a new way to prepare oysters, one that even I liked a lot. They took the oysters in the shells and spread them out on the BBQ (on a piece of foil because the sea water drippings will wreck your BBQ otherwise) and heated them enough that the shells started to open. Then Kit pried off the top shell and as they continued to cook Nancy spooned garlic and butter on them. When they were nearly done, she grated Parmesan cheese on the top. Try this at home because these were awesome! Here is a picture of them cooking:
And here is a picture of them together:
And here is a picture of the people who were coordinating everything and teaching everyone how to do the crabbing experience in style:
Jack and Karen Vincent, RoVing Rod members we already knew, arrived early and are parked near us. They joined us for Happy Hour on the sunny day we could sit outside:
Lee & Susie got a new car and here they are, showing it off:
Saturday they took us for a nice drive in it to lots of the inlets and state parks south of Charleston and we had a delightful day. It was sunny and we saw lots of great scenery as well as some sea lions, seals, and even a couple of whales which had come in very near the shore. Here are a few pictures from our day:



Yesterday we started crabbing again and although we didn't get our pots out until nearly 11 AM, by evening we had caught 24. And the exciting part is that one of them had tag #26 on it. Every year they have a month long contest and if you get a numbered tag on a crab, you get entered into a drawing for $1000, plus various other prizes. The drawing is on Oct. 1.
The bad thing that happened is that my new computer is infected with something. I am typing this on our new netbook which we bought for our upcoming trip to India. Hopefully, Padraic, the computer genius of the RoVing Rods and Boomers will be arriving soon to help me out.
Mike and Marilyn will be leaving Thursday, Lee & Susie on Friday. Come the weekend, Mary & Rich Baumann will arrive and probably some other friends. This flux is all part of the RV lifestyle, and we love it.

9/3/10 One thing about doing a blog, sometimes life is so routine and boring that you have nothing to write about, and other times you are so busy that you don’t have time to update your blog!! The past week or so we have been too busy to update this, and we apologize. But now - Hugs from Winchester Bay! Yes, we have arrived at the coast and although today started out with the water calm and the sun out, (see picture below) now the fog is rolling in and the wind is coming up. That is one thing about the weather here – it changes rapidly! Yesterday when we arrived it was sunny and warm and we had a delightful afternoon and calm evening – somewhat of a rarity here.

We arrived here yesterday, along with Carole & Dick Schneider, shortly after noon and were delighted to find several friends here from the RoVing Rods: Chuck & Betty Goehring with their daughter Pam and her partner, Charlie, and also Ted Sudtell. Mike and Marilyn Harrison were also parked out on the point. Elaine and I quickly purchased crabbing licenses, got some tuna carcasses for bait, Elaine assembled 3 of our crab traps, and we threw them in off the dock by about 5 PM. Chuck & Charlie had been getting lots of crabs so Chuck brought over some cooked crabs which Mike & Marilyn, Dick & Carole, Elaine and I all enjoyed at Happy Hour. Chuck agreed to move our traps from the crabbing dock across the channel for us, and when Mike and I went down to the dock to get them, we already had caught 2 keeper size males! In a few minutes Chuck will take me over to the traps to check them again and see if we got anything overnight. Later today Mike is going to help me set up our inflatable boat so we can get over there to deal with our own traps without bothering Chuck.
Before coming here we stayed for 2 nights at the Sutherlin SKP park with Dick and Carole parked right beside us. Other RoVing Rods friends, Pam & Sid Bowen, have a lot there and we enjoyed Happy Hour on Tuesday with them, and also met their two new little doggies.



Tuesday Dick was the designated driver while Carole, Elaine and I did some wine tasting in the Upqua Valley. There are quite a few small wine making operations here and they make some surprisingly good wines. Although they all seem to have an emphasis on pinot noir, and we usually enjoy reds more than whites, at this batch of wineries we liked the whites better, especially pinot gris. They have a “passport” and if you get yours stamped at 5 wineries, you are entered into a drawing for lots of wine from all of the wineries. So, of course, we had to visit 5 wineries in one afternoon, which was about 2 too many! Also, we all believe in supporting these small boutique wine makers so we not only tasted a lot, we bought a lot. By the time we got back to Sutherlin and met Pam & Sid for Happy Hour, we all switched to water….
9/4/10 Ran out of time yesterday to finish this. When we went to check our traps in the late morning yesterday, we had 4 BIG keepers, and in the late afternoon, 4 more less large ones, so once again we had hot crab for Happy Hour with the 4 friends. We also bought some fresh tuna from one of the commercial boats so we had seared fillets for dinner with some of Carole’s delicious nicoise sauce. And Elaine canned the rest of it. Mike helped me set up our inflatable boat but when Chuck came over to help me get the motor started, we were not successful. He knows a lot about engines like this but he says ours is too new and has too many electronic components for him to fix it. We will try to get a guy in Reedsport to look at it later today. This morning we put the traps out on the crabbing dock and several hours later had caught 4 more big males. So things are looking good for crabbing this year.
Before coming here, as you know from my previous post, we were working on our rental in Woodland. The kitchen cabinets looked bad so we cleaned them, primed them and painted them with white semi-gloss. I would have taken a picture in order to show you the marvelous transformation, but somehow we lost our camera, which I thought I had loaded into the car. There was a lot of stuff in there for the rental work, and also our inflatable boat and motor. So when my niece Kathy, and her daughter Camille, visited us at our RV for dinner one night, I could only take their picture with our cell phone camera.

On our way here we stopped at Costco in Roseburg and bought a new digital camera which was my birthday present. Then, yesterday, when we unloaded the boat and motor, there was the “lost” camera! Now I have to decide if I am going to keep the new camera. It has a lot better zoom on it – 12x which is really great for a small camera. But I don’t like the fact that it has a specialized battery. When we take our camera on foreign trips, it is much easier to get AA batteries (which our old camera uses) if we can’t get our batteries recharged.
For my birthday, which was last Sunday, I asked my daughter, Laura to meet me for lunch at a restaurant in Roseville. She lives in Sparks, NV so she had about a 2 hour drive and I drove up from Sacramento. I hadn’t seen her for almost 2 years because of all our travels and it was a wonderful reunion. Here is a picture of us at the restaurant,

and also a picture of Laura by herself.
After lunch and a nice walk in the park, Laura went with me back to our RV and she had a nice reunion with Elaine too.
Laura has recently divorced her husband, so her daughter Michaela (15) was spending the weekend with Scott, otherwise we would have been able to see her too.
The reason we were able to leave Woodland and head up here to Oregon a few days before our tenant turnover at the rental was because we were done with the cabinet painting and we convinced our new tenant to take over the other chores. She seems like a responsible person and since she would be the one having to live with any inadequacies left by the old tenant, she didn’t mind taking over. It will be interesting to see the place the next time we are there.
Lee and Susie Blattner have just arrived and managed to get the parking spot right next to us. We haven’t seen them for a while either, so this was another happy reunion. Isn’t this RV life great because of all the friends we can hook up with in various places??!!

8/22/10 Hello from sunny Sacramento. We are set up on the property of RV friends Ron & Carol Leonard in anticipation of starting work on our Woodland rental tomorrow. Our new tenant expects to move in Sept. 1 and we have some painting and fix-up to do before that happens. I suppose, since Elaine's hand is still heavily bandaged, most of the work will be done by ME! Luckily, my hand and foot have healed nicely, and I am probably able to do most of the needed chores. If not, we will merely hire somebody!
Speaking of Elaine's hand, she got her stitches out on Friday, which is what freed us up to leave Park Sierra and drive here. I took a picture of her hand after they took the cast and bandage off and before they removed the stitches, and here it is:

It looks pretty ugly but actually it is healing rapidly. You can see that this was a pretty extensive surgery and why it might take a while for Elaine to get back to 100%.
Last Sunday we had a delightful afternoon with our neighbors, Carol and Alan Rodely up in the mountains having an excursion on a former logging train. It is called the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad or "The Logger" for short. It is located about 10 miles north of Oakhurst on the way to Yosemite and is a beautiful ride right through the forest. There is a gift shop, bookstore, snack bar, museum, and gold panning area to occupy you while you wait for the train ride. One of the couples from Park Sierra, Rick and Laurie Phillips, work there, and also Al Brunsell, who runs the gold panning. Laurie works in the bookstore and Rick gives the spiel on the train. Here is a picture of Rick in his train gear:

There is a nice shady area near the bookstore where people can picnic and here are the friends enjoying the coolness:

This is the old steam engine pulling the front cars along the 4 mile route

After the ride, we had everyone over for dinner on our patio:

When Carol heard that we were leaving Friday, she arranged a Happy Hour and dinner under our neighborhood tree for Thursday. Our neighbors, Rich & Mary had returned from Idaho, and one of our new members who has become a good friend, Bev Mauck, also joined us.

There is another couple who just became members of Park Sierra yesterday, Glenda & Elleen, who have been joining us for social stuff every now and then and they came Thursday as well. They have been doing lots of bike riding in preparation for an upcoming trip to the Est Coast when they will be riding the Appalachian Trail. Here is their picture:

We were delighted when they called us yesterday to say that they had just become the newest members of our park!
Yesterday Elaine and I stayed at the Elks Club in Fremont so we could see her son, Darran and his fiancee, Marielle, who flew up from San Diego. We also spent some time with Elaine's daughter Tarra, her husband Alonzo, and their three girls, Ari, Alia, and Analy.
Here are "The Moms" with Tarra and Darran:

Here are the two happy young couples:

And of course, we need to put in a picture of the cute granddaughters:

Once we leave Woodland, we will be heading for the Oregon coast, looking for other RV friends, coolness, and crabbing. So if you are going to be in that area, contact us!!

8/12/10 Just a quick update to let you know that Elaine is doing just fine and surely must be healing rapidly. Of course, we can't know yet because her hand is in a cast and covered by a big bandage. Here is a picture of her taken tonight, right after she got out of the shower.

She has even been able to help with some things, such as drying the dishes. She is very independent and tries to do everything for herself, which certainly works for the nurse!
We have also been having some nice meals and happy hours with our good neighbors, CArol & Alan Rodely. Last night their daughter and her 2 children joined us too, but I didn't get a picture. This picture was taken a few nights ago when Carol & Alan were here:

About two weeks ago, Lee & Pat Pond were here cleaning up their lot because they are moving and they gave us some nice chairs, a table and an umbrella. Also a wooden swing, which was in fairly bad shape. So we took it apart, cleaned the boards and painted it and now we have a bright yellow bench to swing on in our yard:

8/10/10 I am sitting in the waiting room at Kaiser, waiting for Elaine to come out of surgery for her left hand. She has something called Dupuytens Contracture which causes the tendons in her palm to knot up and pull her fingers into a claw shape. Her surgeon is the hand specialist here who did my carpal tunnel surgery 11 days ago. I am healing well and was able to drive the car today in order to get her here, and eventually home again. Her recovery will take longer than mine, and I will make sure she is well taken care of. She was certainly a good nurse for me, although I didn't need too much help after the first few days.
So our time has been spent doing chores around the RV, socializing with our Park Sierra neighbors, and trying to catch up on some trip planning. Not much excitement to report in this blog. Since we have never been at Park Sierra during the summer before (it is always too HOT), we were unaware of all the new wildlife that emerges at this time. There are hundreds of new little quail running around in the early morning and evenings and lots of bunnies with their little white cottontails. They blend in so well in the mottled brown leaves that they are hard to see if they don't move or show off their tails. On one of our walks we saw a mother deer with her adolescent. There are tons of pesky woodpeckers which try to shove acorns in every available place, and who even peck on our RV!! There have only been a couple of days in the hundreds, so it hasn't even been too hot.
Once Elaine is released by her doctor, we will have to deal with a vacant rental in Woodland, CA. Then we will head for the Oregon coast looking for some coolness and hopefully, some crab.

7/25/10 The time has slipped away since my last post! Today was our first day back at Park Sierra and it was HOT here. Usually we don't like air conditioning but today we had ours on almost all afternoon. Tomorrow we go to Kaiser to start the lab tests and pre-surgery appointments. Friday I have carpal tunnel surgery on my left hand.
During our last week at Mike & Marilyn's we had fairly hot weather there too. We used the time to wash and wax our RV and once that was done, we rewarded ourselves with a nice afternoon canoeing on the lake. In case you can't tell, that is Mary & Elaine in the canoe:

July 16 Pat & Linda Jenkins drove down from Canada to visit all of us. They are also RVers but this time they just stayed in a bedroom in the house. It was great to see them, they brought us some cans of escargot from the dollar store, and we all had lots of fun together. Of course, we had Happy Hours and delicious dinners together. Here is a picture of dinner on the deck:

After we left Mike & Marilyn's, we stopped at Tom & Pat Bryant's farm near Canyonville. Here is a picture of them:

They have been working on their farm for about 8 years and have done such nice things with it. Here is a picture of the view from their house:

Every time we visit them they have more animals. This time they had a new hen house and about 20 chickens. There were more but a big raccoon has been breaking into the hen house at night and killing some of the chickens. Elaine helped gather the eggs. When she was growing up on a farm in Illinois, she used to raise chickens too, and at one time had hundreds of them. There were also some young ducks:

They always have lots of goats, and here is a picture of some of them who jumped up on the fence:

When they got goats and sheep, they had to get guardian dogs to protect them from predators such as cougars. Here are the two guardian dogs, Dutch and Char:

The most fun addition to their menagerie are the two pigs, Frank and Furter. When Elaine squirted water on them with the hose, they got so excited and ran all around. They also love it when the water makes a mud hole for them, because it helps keep them cool.

We were able to meet Pat's mother, Irene, who now lives in a little house on their property. Pat is taking very good care of her and she is also on hospice.
Our next stop was to visit Carol and Byron Hall, some of our cruise buddies. They have a place about 10 miles from Grants Pass. It was quite a tight fit to get through their gate, but they even had an RV hookup because they used it themselves when they were building their house and lived in a 5th wheel. They fed us a delicious dinner and we enjoyed catching up on all their news. Carol has had quite a few unexpected health challenges since we were all on the Spring transatlantic cruise to England together last April, but she is fine now. Actually, she looks great because she has lost over 20 pounds! Here is a picture of them:

While they were fixing dinner, we were able to see the little grey fox who comes often looking for a handout. All I had was my phone camera, but here is his picture:

My brother Jerry, and his wife, Diann, live at Lake Wildwood, so we stopped there next. They have a lovely home on the golf course, and Jerry fixed us a nice dinner.
Haven't seen them since our wedding, almost 2 years ago, so it was good to be there. They have recently acquired an Itasca RV so we conned him into showing it to us. It is a class C, which works well for their trips, and we know they will have some fun adventures in it. Here are the 2 siblings in front of it:

Our last stop on the way back was in Fremont where we had a quick visit with Elaine's daughter, Tarra. We picked up an old dresser from her to take down to Darran's. It was much cooler there, because of its proximity to the San Francisco Bay. We enjoyed it! While we were there, Darran called because he and Marielle had just returned from Ireland. The exciting news is that they got engaged while they were over there. We are very happy for them because we believe that they are perfectly suited for each other and will be very happy together.

7/14/10 A rather hot day here at Agency Lake, but we spent the whole day in Klamath Falls, shopping with Marilyn & Mike. This morning Kit and Nancy Carter, fellow Boomers who had been staying here for a few days in their RV, left. It was fun to have them here and also to get to know them better. Here is a picture of the 6 of us having dinner together:

They called on the very day that we were returning from our camping trip over at Farewell Bend NPS park on the Rogue River. It was a very nice park with lots of trees and unfortunately, quite a few mosquitoes. We had a scenic spot right on the river. This is a view of the river from the spot where we had our chairs:

And here is Elaine sitting in our chairs with our rigs in the background:

Almost as soon as we got set up, we started having visits from a couple of golden mantle ground squirrels, commonly called chipmunks. It was fairly obvious that people had been feeding them because they were totally fearless and kept approaching us, even though Elaine kept yelling at them and chasing them away. She has a serious rodent phobia and it extends to all small, furry creatures, even when they are cute chipmunks. Here is a picture of one of our visitors:

They were pretty smart and usually only showed up when we had food outside. One night at dinner one of them kept jumping up right next to me on the picnic table bench, that's how fearless they were.
Here is a picture of Mike & Marilyn at the campsite:

They just love camping and especially campfires, so they brought lots of wood. We also did lots of walking and we weren't very far from an area called the Rogue Gorge. Here the river drops through a series of rapids and then a steep rocky gorge. There are four viewing areas and we took a few pictures. This is the rapids:

And here is where the water drops at the beginning of the gorge:

We have been trying to get a few chores done during our visit here so we have washed the RV since we returned, and also waxed the roof. Now we have to try to finish the rest before the next batch of visitors. On Friday we are expecting Linda and Pat Jenkins to arrive. They are Boomer friends who live in Canada, and we haven't seen them for a long time, so we are excited about their visit. Tomorrow is supposed to be the hottest day since we arrived - 90 degrees. Don't know how much RV waxing will get done in that temperature!

7/5/10 Hope you all had a very Happy 4th!!! We joined Mike & Marilyn on their deck overlooking the lake for a hamburger BBQ. Here is a picture of the celebration:

It has been so pleasant to be here because the weather has been just about perfect: sunny and between 75 and 80. Those are good temps for the activities we have been doing: walking 3-5 miles a day in the nearby wetlands preserve, deep cleaning in our rig, and doing some rig repairs and improvements. The fact that I can walk that many miles indicates that my toe is healing quite well. I dropped the vacuum cleaner on it today, which really got my attention.
Mike and Marilyn have also been doing projects after our joint walks. Then we all have Happy Hour on their deck at 4:30 and dinner together afterward. One day Mike showed me that a little bat had decided to sleep in the corner above their front door. I took a picture of it:

Then Mike said to poke it with a broom stick to get it to spread its wings for a better picture, which I did. But he got pissed at me, made a rude hissing noise, and flew away before I could get a better picture. The other wildlife we have been seeing, besides lots of birds, are river otters which have dens in the banks along the path at the wetlands preserve where we walk. One day we saw 4 of them on land but we have only seen one in the water. If we are quiet on the walks, we usually see at least two. They never hold still long enough for a picture, however.
Tomorrow we are going to a campground near the Rogue River for a week, and Mike and Marilyn are joining us in their RV. Mike says there is no phone or internet service there, so it will be "rustic" camping for us! I will update this blog, hopefully with some pictures, when we get back.