9/2/11 Just a quick post before we catch the shuttle to the Radiance of the Seas here in Vancouver, BC. On the way here we stopped in Seattle and visited with my granddaughter, Paige when she was at work at Nordstrom. Here are some pix:

Then we visited Linda Lightfoot, a longtime buddy of Elaine's from school in Illinois, and her partner Greta. Here is a picture of them:

After a nice overnight stay with them, we drove up here to Vancouver and stayed at a hotel where Carol & Byron Hall were also staying. So we went out to dinner together last evening at a Vietnamese place. Good food and good company.

When we get on the ship today, we will be joining David & Diane Wilson, Pene DeMore, and Mark Lorenzetti to celebrate David's birthday at Chops tonight. Let the partying begin!

8/30/11 This will be my last post before we go on the Alaska cruises. Currently we are set up at the Elks Lodge in Port Townsend. Tomorrow we will move our rig to the dry storage area for the 16 days we will be away. Then we will drive our car to the Kingston ferry which will take us across Puget Sound and over to Edmonds. My wonderful granddaughter, Paige, works at Nordstrom only 9 miles from there and we will be taking her out for lunch and having a visit. She will also help Elaine find a suitable outfit for the Oct. 8 wedding of her son, Darran, and Marielle, the best daughter-in-law ever. In the late afternoon we will return to Edmonds to stay with Linda Lightfoot and Greta McKay. Linda and Elaine have been friends since kindergarten, back in Illinois! The next day we will drive to Richmond, BC where we have a hotel booked, and where we can also leave our car for 2 weeks while we are cruising. Lynda & Jo, 2 other friends live near there and will be visiting us at our hotel that evening. Friday we take the hotel shuttle to the ship and the next adventure begins!
Since I last posted, we have been very busy because the Sekiu fishing and the processing continued until a few days ago. I showed you a few pictures of Elaine and Peggy and their big fish, but I neglected to show what happens next: cleaning the fish! Here is a picture of Chuck, Elaine, George and Ron at the cleaning station, which is right on the dock where they moored their boats.

Then the brining, smoking and canning commenced. I took lots of pictures at the many social functions we had with the group but none of them turned out very well so I won't include one here. But here is a very unusual picture, because everyone knows how Elaine is not very fond of animals and is also allergic to cats.

This dog in her lap is Sassy, George and Judy Hilke's dog, who was so cute and friendly and who decided she just loved Elaine and jumped in her lap at every opportunity. After a few times like this, I think she had won Elaine over!
A few of the days at Sekiu were sunny and gorgeous from the very beginning of the day, and on one of those days we drove out through Neah Bay to the very northwest tip of Washington called Cape Flattery. There is a nice hike from the parking lot on a fairly easy trail, through a nice forest, which they say is 1/2 mile, but really is a bit longer. Towards the end, there are a few places where a side trail took us to nice overlooks, such as me at this one:

In the forest we saw this interesting sight, a tree artistically hosting some fungus:

Then we reached the end of the trail where there was a viewing platform and we could see the island about 200 yards away with the lighthouse on it. Here are some pictures from there:


And some lovely views of the coastline:

Sunday we left Sekiu and drove back to the SKP park at Chimicum. Ron & George had been out crabbing in Port Townsend and everyone got together again for a crab feed and potluck at Chuck & Peggy's lot. Everything was delicious and we met some very nice people who are park members.
Yesterday was my 67th birthday, so we went into Port Townsend for a scenic walk. Port Townsend has a lot of historic buildings and many of them have been nicely restored. Here is a picture of me on one of the wharfs with Port Townsend in the background:

Most of the buildings are from 1889 such as this one:

Then we walked down to the marina, where there are some interesting boats, especially during the Wooden Boat Festival which will start on Sept. 9 this year. Here is Elaine at the marina:

On our walk back through town, we passed a row of women with a sign in front of them which said: "Women In Black". They do not speak because words cannot express the tragedy that war and hatred bring, and they dress in black because they are mourning the lives broken or lost through violent acts such as war. They meet every week on Mondays and stand there making this silent statement for an hour.

This was very sobering, so we went to drown our sorrows and also celebrate my birthday by having a microbrew on the outside deck of Sirens, a local restaurant and bar. Here we are enjoying the amber ale on tap there:

Of course, one beer isn't enough to celebrate 67 years of a great life, so we returned to David & Ann's at their lot in Port Hadlock for another tasty Happy Hour with more delicious treats and chilled champagne and wine. Here Elaine & Ann are setting up the feast:

Then Joss, Gail and David joined us for the goodies:

Of course, we brought them some recently caught salmon, and we will be bringing some on our visits tomorrow too with Paige and Linda & Greta. Does knowing this induce any of you to encourage us to visit when we are in your area? We hope so!!!!

8/20/11 Just had to post a few pictures to show that Elaine, Peggy and Chuck are finally catching some nice salmon. Yesterday Elaine caught a nice sized silver:

And Peggy did too:

They caught several others too, which Chuck and Elaine rapidly cleaned and filleted.

The past few days I have been busy smoking and canning their catch so we can enjoy these beauties all year!
Of course, since the season for catching Chinooks (Kings) ended Monday, Wednesday Elaine caught a really nice big King that would have been a keeper just a few days before. And yesterday Peggy caught a huge silver that was too big for the net, and when they were trying to get it into the boat, broke the line and escaped with the best lure still in its mouth.
Hopefully, today the catching will still go on because then we have happy campers here!

8/17/11 Another sunny day at Sekiu where we are still fishing with the RoVing Rods. Unfortunately, for Elaine, the fishing hasn't been as productive as she had hoped and she is starting to become rather frustrated. So far she has only caught 6 fish, and the limit is 4 per day. She has been going out on Chuck and Peggy's boat and they have been giving her some of the ones they caught too, but they haven't got many either. Part of the problem has been that one of the couples here brought their 2 young grandsons, and when this many people are depending on going out on one boat, everyone has to take turns. Ron & George have been going out in their own boat and have been getting their limit nearly every day, but they stay out longer too. And one day, Ron caught an 18 pound king fish - the best fish caught by the group so far. King season ended Monday, and now they have to hope they catch silvers, although pinks (or humpys, as they are also called) are just fine with us because they taste good when they are brined, smoked and canned.
We have been having many sunny days, but that does not mean that they are warm days. The wind comes off the water and often it is cold. Yesterday was pretty foggy too. The good thing is that we haven't had much rain.
We have managed to get 2 smokers full of fish to can and here is a picture of what the pieces look like when I get them out of the smoker:

We have been having Happy Hours with the group and also some potlucks. Besides the 5 rigs that are here, Carol Noyes and Maggie Speight drove up for a few days and stayed in the motel. Carol fished one day with Chuck and Peggy and Elaine.
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Here are two pictures of one of the potlucks at our picnic table. This is the Underwoods with their two grandsons:

Here are the Palumbos, Bonhams, Hilkes and Elaine:

One day Elaine and I drove into Forks for some supplies, and then drove out to La Push, which is on the ocean and in an Indian reservation. The beach there has a lot of driftwood:

And there are lots of islands offshore:

Today is Barb Underwood's birthday so Elaine and I are fixing spaghetti and homemade sourdough bread for everyone and Barb is making her own cake. Tomorrow is Ron Bonham's birthday but we haven't made any plans for that yet. Perhaps there will be Polar Bears (an alcoholic drink with uses vodka, kahlua, ice and vanilla ice cream in a blender). Quite decadent and they really sneak up on you, not to mention the calories....
We are planning to stay here for about 10 more days and hope that the catching of fish starts to pick up!

Blog Update August 4, 2011
Hello from Sekiu, WA which is a small town mostly inhabited by visiting sport fishermen and located on the Straits of Juan de Fuca near the farthest Northwest point of the USA. On our arrival, Monday, it was warm and sunny, which is a fairly unusual occurrence here.

Although we have had 2 more sunny days since then. We established ourselves in the campground on the bluff overlooking Olson’s Marina, and are waiting for the rest of the RoVing Rods to arrive, probably next Monday. There are always plenty of chores we can do of a housekeeping nature while we are “alone”. On one of our first walks around here, we went down by the boat ramp where there are three rock formations called the “Three Sisters”. Here is a picture of Elaine with the carved eagle near there, and the Sisters are behind her.

We will be here for the month of August because of the fishing, and also the only reasonably priced option when you stay here is to pay the monthly rate. Also, we are planning to stay in the area until early Sept. when we will be leaving our RV at the Elks Lodge in Port Townsend, while we drive the car to Vancouver, BC and take a 2 week Alaska cruise on the Radiance of the Seas. That will be between Sept. 2 and the 16th. Some of our cruise friends from other voyages will be along and it should be great because we haven’t been to Alaska since 1995.
When we last posted to this blog, we had contacted Laurie & Odel, from our Boomer group, and were planning to meet them over on Whidbey Island where they were staying in an RV place in Oak Harbor. Saturday we walked on the ferry between Port Townsend and Coupeville. It runs fairly often and is probably the biggest bargain in WA because the Senior rate meant we paid $5.50 for both of us to go over and back! Here is a picture of Elaine with Laurie and Odel when they met us at Coupville and the ferry is in the background.

From there we went to the Farmer’s Market in Coupeville. It wasn’t a big market but there were some interesting produce stands, in that they had unusual stuff. Here is a picture of some of the big cabbages they were selling, one of which isa Dutch cabbage, kind of flattened and has thinner leaves than a regular cabbage.

Right next to it were these cauliflowers of varying colors:

We hadn’t seen Mick & Ann Meilike since January in Quartzsite, so we were delighted when they drove over to join all of us for lunch. Laurie & Odel had previously eaten at a restaurant called Kim’s which is scenically out on a dock and located right over the water, and which had delicious mussels.

The cove here, called Penn Cove, is famous for mussels and you can even buy them in 5 pound bags in Costco. They had a very nice menu and we all ate lots of good seafood. Then we got another patron to take a picture of our whole group:

Coupeville is an old town with lots of history and the small shops along main street are cute.

We walked around a bit and also stopped for an ice cream cone. Thank goodness Elaine and I shared one because they were huge, but Ann, who loves ice cream enjoyed every bite of her own, as you can see in this picture.

It is a mystery how she stays so trim! After more walking along the cliffs, enjoying the gorgeous sunny day we were having, Mick & Ann left and we four went over to Fort Casey, an old military installation on the bluffs near the ferry terminal. There were lots of cement bunkers sunk into the ground so that they could not be seen from approaching ships until the huge guns were raised. Here is a picture of Elaine and Odel on the bunker with one of the guns behind them.

Later, when we were on the ferry, we marveled over how well hidden this entire installation was. Overall it was a great day with good friends, made even better by sunny weather and delicious food.
One other day we drove to Port Hadlock and had a delightful happy hour with David Brown and Ann Howells.

We met them years ago at Boomerville in Quartzsite, and stayed with them for a week when we were in South Africa in early 2008, because they always go there during our winter and rent a house there in the winelands near Capetown. When you are with David and Ann, you always have delicious appetizers served with interesting and good wines. They park their RV on a lot overlooking the water in Port Hadlock and we were lucky enough to be invited to have our Happy Hour in the yard of their “landlords” Gail & Joss, and on another brilliantly sunny day.

Gail & Joss built their own house and it is perfect for this site and full of many unique features in wood and glass because Joss does woodworking and Gail does stained glass. After we adjourned to the RV, we had good travel talk with David & Ann. These are four delightful and talented people!
While we were still staying at the SKP park in Chimicum, we enjoyed social situations with members of the RoVing Rods, and also Flo Palumbo and Colette Eisele. Flo is Chuck’s twin sister, but we had previously met Flo & Co at a women’s community and they are also friends with many of the women couples in the community near Port Townsend. They invited us to go with them to a public concert of the Port Townsend Summer Band at a local park. Here is Elaine sitting with Co & Flo at the concert.

Some of their friends were members of the band. Here is the band crammed into a very small bandstand:

Then they took us to the party put on by some of their friends, Gail & Jan, out in the Cape George Colony, which is a very beautiful and pricey residential community overlooking Discovery Bay.

We met lots of very nice women who all live in the Port Townsend area, at least in the summer. They made us feel very welcome and also sorry that we probably won’t be back here for a while to enjoy their company again.
The next day we drove out here to Sekiu. It is only about 90 miles from Port Townsend but it took us all day to get here because we made so many stops. Sequim was our longest stop because there is a Costco and WalMart there and we wanted to stock up on things before coming out to this fairly remote area. We used to stay in Sequim on the property of Elaine’s cousin, Sheila, who owned the Juan de Fuca Cottages. This was the most upscale lodging choice on Marine Drive, overlooking the Dungeness Spit, and on a clear day you can see Victoria, over on Vancouver Island. Sheila sold it a few years ago and we hadn’t been back, so we drove out to look at it again. The new owners have developed the 5 acres behind the cottages which Sheila was using as a pasture, and the place still looks great. It gave us feelings of nostalgia to see it.
The main reason the RoVing Rods come here is to catch salmon, and they are currently running. Today our neighbor caught a very nice sized King salmon, and nearly everyone is catching a few silvers and limiting out with humpies (pinks). Some people look their noses down on pinks but we find that if you brine them, smoke them and can them, they are very good. And since they seem to be plentiful, we are hoping to catch quite a few once the guys get here with the fishing boats. So hopefully, the next post you see will have lots of pictures of us catching and preparing salmon!!!

7/28/11 Finally, I have a little time to do this blog update! It has been difficult since we have been on the move, visiting friends, and having Michaela with us. Now we are on our own again and staying for a few days at the SKP park in Chimacum, WA, near Port Townsend. We have been surprised by how many people we know who have lots here, and it has been a social whirl ever since we arrived 2 days ago. Many of those friends are from the RoVing Rods, the group we will be with for salmon fishing at Sekiu, out near the northwest tip of Washington and right on the Straits of Juan de Fuca. That will take place between Aug. 7 and 28. So, since we have arrived, we have seen Chuck and Peggy Palumbo, his twin Flo and her partner Co, Ed Bonham, Jack Vincent, Henrietta, Gerry & Carol Hanson, and Don and Nikki Boston. Today we will be having Happy Hour with Ann Howells and David Brown; this is the couple we stayed with for a week in South Africa, near Capetown, when we were there a few years ago. They have a lot overlooking the water just a few miles from this SKP park. And Saturday we will be taking the ferry to Whidbey Island to have a happy reunion with Laurie & Odel, and Mick & Ann Meilieke.
Our 2 1/2 weeks with my granddaughter, Michaela, ended on Monday. We stayed at Cabelas in Lacey, near Olympia, and her sister Paige came down Sunday to join us for dinner and stay overnight. Monday we packed up Paige's car with all Michaela's stuff, then we all drove to Tacoma and spent several enjoyable hours at the Museum of Glass. They have many wonderful exhibits, as well as a hot room, where experienced glass blowers and artists are actively making glass art. The renown glass designer and artist Dale Chihuly is from Tacoma, and has entirely decorated the bridge which goes over the freeway and which connects the museum and waterfront to the downtown. Here is a picture of Michaela and Paige in front of several of his glass creations on the bridge:

There are also several wonderful glass sculptures in fountains at the front of the museum and in a big fountain. Here is a picture of the girls and Elaine in front of the museum:

After we finished at the museum and treated them to lunch, off they went to Paige's apartment in Seattle where Michaela will stay until Friday when my daughter Laura comes up on her vacation. Hooray - we got our space back in the RV!
In my last post I described our stay at Farewell Bend camping with our friends Mike & Marilyn Harrison and Linda and Pat Jenkins. I couldn't add any pictures so I will do so now. This picture shows Michaela and me in front of some of the rapids in the gorge of the Rogue, which was very near the campground:

We took her to Crater Lake, and here she is with that beautiful blue water behind her:

We enjoyed the day just being with Linda & Marilyn:

Every morning and evening we had a nice campfire. Here at the two happy couples (Mike & Marilyn & LInda & Pat) enjoying it:

Marilyn & Elaine on one of our walks along the river leading to the gorge:

After the camping trip we drove over to Mike & Marilyn's house on Agency Lake. Unfortunately, as we left the campground, we didn't notice that our steps had not retracted and we bent them on a tree. So when we got to Chilicum, Mike & Pat took them off for us, and we had to drive them in to Klamath Falls to a welder to have them straightened. Then, Pat & Mike put them back on. Fabulous friends, aren't they!!!!
Our stay at their house was greatly enjoyed by Michaela because she had her own bedroom in the basement. Unfortunately, she fell out of a tree down by the water and hurt her wrist, so I was unable to take her out in the canoe, and we also couldn't give her driving lessons using our stick shift car, two activities we had promised her we would do.
When we left Mike & Marilyn's, we drove up to Estacada, just southeast of Portland, to visit Gary & Cecile Thompson. They are working at a day use park there for the summer and their 14 year old niece, Justine was visiting them. The girls hit it off, and Cecile and Justine had been making yarn hats on looms, so they taught Michaela how to do it. Elaine took her to a thrift store where she got her own loom and some yarn and she started to make some very nice creations. We also went to a local organic farm and bought some strawberries and blueberries, which we used to make chutney. Usually we make jam, but we haven't been eating much of that, and chutney is good on meats and in side dishes. We had also made rhubarb chutney at Mike & Marilyn's. Cecile and Justine used some of their berries to make a delicious trifle:

We also had some delicious joint meals with them, and a few campfires too:

From Estacada we drove about 40 miles and just across the border into Vancouver, WA to meet up with our old friends Lee & Susie Blattner. We all stayed at the Elks Club and finally had some very warm weather there. It was perfect for the farmer's market that we went to in the downtown park. Here is a picture of Lee, Susie and Elaine at the market:

There were lots of beautiful displays of produce, baked goods, arts and crafts, and people playing various instruments. There was a firefighter's event going on too and there was a bagpipe band that played for that. Their outfits were wonderful:

After that we went to a park along the river to do a long walk. Here are Lee, Susie and Elaine in front of the swimming beach at the lake near the river walk:

It was a wonderful day for a family picnic and reminded me of when my parents used to take us to the lake for playing and swimming when we were kids in Minnesota.
That evening, Lee & Susie took us to the tavern that one of their sons owns in Vancouver. We have gained a new appreciation for the downtown part of this town because it is developing into a place where there are little restaurants, bars, upscale stores and condos, and would be a delightful place to live and just walk to these places in the evenings. Here is a picture of Susie with Jerry, one of their sons who works at the tavern.

The next day we had to leave and drive to Lacey because we were meeting Paige for the glass museum trip on Monday.
Now that our trip with Michaela is finished, I will leave you with this last picture of the three of us in front of our RV. Perhaps she will never travel with us again, and this will be her only RV experience. I hope she enjoyed it because we love this RV lifestyle and after 17 years, are still enthusiastic about it.