Aug 21-29 2010 Denver

I had an uneventful flight to Denver. Rented a car. I moved more things out of my house up to Fort Collins.  visited people in Fort Collins. Threw more things away. I spent two days at my house in Denver hacking the weeds  back the yard. I fell two dumpsters with weeds. I then scraped off all the peeling paint from my house and primed the holes. Painted over some of them with the blue paint till I ran out.  Pretty exciting. I also visited friends and had a party with the my Arapahoe lab friends. And had my oral surgery. Surgeon pulled the root of the broken tooth and the hole the tooth came out of was too big for an implant so he put a bone graft in. In the spring I can get the implant. Busy week. Really hectic compared to the mellow life on the bus. John in the meantime had the bus at Seaside, Oregon. He called me daily to gloat about how nice the beach was. Jeff our bike riding friend  from Fort Collins was still out riding and he stopped in Seaside and visited John. Finally flew back to Portland and we drove to the bus. Whew

4563 Winona Ct. Garden did pretty well without me. Peeling paint.

Primed paint, and I ran out of blue, so only part got painted blue

Pool party at Pam’s condo.the Queen of the road hat they presented me at my retirement party

Rainbow and one of my roses in the back, a double delight

Aug 20 2010 Portland, Oregon

I have my appointment with the oral surgeon for my dental implant this week in Denver. I am flying home out of Portland. John is going to stay here with the bus at the beach. My brother’s wife’s sister lives in Portland . Allison and her husband Matt.  They  is going to entertain us tonight.  Matt is going to take us for a spin up the Willamette river at sunset then we will go out to dinner.

John on the boat with a bottle of wine. We forgot the glasses and the snacks. We are going to drink the wine from the bottle and just starve(Ha). John and Matt at the wheel.

John, Sue and Matt with the sunset bridge in the background. sunset bridge with out us.

Sue and John, and sunset wake

Sunset again.
We had a great time on the boat. What a beautiful place. It was great to visit with Allison and Matt and see their new house. We had dinner at an Italian restaurant in their neighborhood. The next day John dropped me off at the airport.

August 17, 2010 Springfield, Oregon

After the Rally we headed to Springfield, Oregon.  At the rally John had one of the service reps look at the bus. Mainly because in Missoula he had been in a hurry and plugged the wiring between the bus and the car in upside down and shorted out the connection between the car and bus. He tried to fix it, but made it worse.  they fixed it but the bus still  needed some minor tune ups. Their shop was in Eugene.  When we left Redmond the bus started making a funny noise. John took it in to a shop in Redmond and one of the  air bags for the pneumatic leveling had a broken valve. It had to be replaced. Took 4 hours, mostly waiting our turn. I napped in the bus in the shop. Then we headed to Springfield. Our friend Scott and Leslie live in Springfield, so we parked at a nice RV park there. Dropped the bus of the next morning and spent the night at their house. Picked the bus up and spent a few other nights in the RV park to visit.

Leslie took us on a hike up Mount Pisgah the next day.

We went on a short hike in a near by park with Lilac, Scott and Leslies dog. Into a hazel nut orchard. I had no idea they grew there, in fact I was not sure they even grew on trees, could have been like peanuts underground. We bought some hazel nuts to take with us at a farmers market.   We also got some huge peaches that were so juicy we ate them in the parking lot,then borrowed their hose to wash the juice off us. We found ripe blackberries on the hike and picked a whole bag full. Yum.

Sue and John in front of a section of a huge tree. When we were in Redmond I got this new bedspread for the coach. It was getting too beige for me in it. Looks great.

John, Leslie and Lilac(rolling on the ground) in the hazel nut orchard. Wild turkeys on the road

Scott’s garden in the Alley

John with a snake on our hike, Leslie and Scott sitting in the passenger chair of the bus.  the chair was made for a BIG, WIDE  passenger. They joined us for dinner.

Sunset over the RV park.

RV Rally Redmond Oregon Aug10-14 suep

Aug 1-14 we went to a RV rally in Oregon. We being newbies had no idea what to expect. We arrived the first day and we sent to lot 5 street 4. We were only one of 2000 RVs. The red arrow is us. Pretty overwhelming. The RV's are in 12 lots, circled around the action. The meetings, classes, venders, new RV's to preview, 2 entertainment stages,food, ice cream socials etc. We had bus service to and from  and trash pick up, emergency medical clinics, addresses etc.

We attended meetings, seminars, met new friends, went to entertainment. I took basic classes in RVing, Mexico/Copper Canyon trips,learned how to use the microwave/convection oven and the compact combo washer/dryer on the bus, memory enhancement, how to set up a blog among others. John went to classes dealing with the workings of the bus, solar panels, generators, the instrument panel in the cockpit, the engine and I don't even know what else. We bought books, new equipment we learned about in the classes(I had never seen the silicon cookware used in ovens, microwaves etc). There were concerts every night. We went to the Jimmy Buffet tribute band. People danced, threw beach balls, and even a conga line went thru the crowd. And we listened to the music. We are some of the younger people here, but everyone is pretty tuned in to life and very active. The last night we went to a Motown band that was great. Not conga lines tho.The setting was beautiful, Mt's in the background. And a few other sites. . .We toured some of the newer, expensive coaches. Ours is pretty moderate compared to them.We had a great time, but it was really exhausting.

Aug 6-7 2010 Dry Falls and Grand Coulee dam, Washington

The Inn was full for the weekend so we had to move on. We headed north and visited the Dry Fall state park. When the great ice sheet over Canada melted it was dammed up with ice it was called Lake Missoula. When the ice dam broke thru a huge river ten times the flow of all the rivers in the world flowed thru in 48 hours. It surged down and made the Columbia river channel. Many lakes were scoured out called coulees. This area had a large falls to the left. It was 400 feet deep over these falls. There were many nice campgrounds on the coulees that would have been great had we had the motorhome.Or even our camping gear that was on the bus.

Dry falls

We were having lunch by this lake. It looked like the left photo. All of a sudden there were these sirens and the falls increased to the right photo. This river come from a dam and has a power plant above the falls. When they are not making power there is less water coming over the falls. When they need more power they let more water out of the dam thru the turbines and the falls look like the right photo. Pretty exciting.
We found an hotel on the Coulee with a cancelation and got this great room overlooking the lake

sunset from our balcony, The wild Life

We found this pinwheel garden outside Electric city. A man made it over his life and people stopped to see on their way to see Grand Coulee damn. When he passed away it was donated to the city in his memory.
Wind mill garden

Grand Coulee damn. We took a tour of it, pretty impressive.

power plant at the dam, Steam boat rock in one of the coulees

Look who we ran into on the road by Dry Falls! Jeff on his bike.
We went to Moses Lake for another night. Visited a classic car museum, and a water park.  the next day we went back to Spokane and picked up the bus. Woo Hoo.  We had reservations to go to a RV rally in Redmond, Oregon the next day so we drove half way. We stayed at a  nice RV park on the Columbia River. Then took off the next day for the Redman Rally.

sunset on the Columbia River