We are back in Pocatello safely at home from the trip to the northwest. As a fitting end to the trip, it was raining when we got to the house. In fact, we are supposed to get between one and three inches of snow tonight! It did snow a week ago here while we were gone, but since we weren’t here, that snow doesn’t count. The drive from Baker City, Oregon to Pocatello was completely uneventful. The trip went well despite being down with a cold. It was very good to spend time with Jared and Arlene and to see Wendy, Kendra, and family. Our next trip will be south, into much warmer territory. But that won’t be for a few more weeks. We need to get some things done around the house!

There are occasionally signs that cause me to chuckle. This was one of them. The top sign was the name of the road: “Summit Road”. We were driving north on Highway 101 near Tillamook, Oregon (on the coast). To the right was a small set of hills, the tops of which would have been about 700 feet above sea level.

Just below it says: “No Outlet”. You can go up, but the only way out is to come back down this road.

Finally, the blue/white signs in the middle say that in case one needs to evacuate because of a tsunami, go up the “no outlet” “Summit Road” and then pray that there will be a road to come back down. I thought the sign combination was much funnier than my traveling companion thought….

I’ve put three sets of pictures in the Photo Album. One has some miscellaneous pictures from around Seattle, another has some pictures from a couple of days of sightseeing around Seattle and visiting with family, and the last has some pictures from our whale-watching cruise. Enjoy!

Nina just came back from the laundry so we’ve now clean stuff for the rest of the trip. A little earlier we trimmed a day off our time here in this campground. Nothing against the RV Beach Resort in Cannon Beach, Oregon! It’s just that the forecast is for rain the rest of the week. That’s a bit too much rain for us and we’re headed inland where there will be much less rain. We had a pretty good weather week last week and it was too much to ask for this week to be equally as good.

I’m starting to feel a bit better (as long as I keep taking the drugs every three hours). Hopefully this cold will be brief and stay up top. Today amidst all of the raindrops, we drove north to Astoria, across a classic bridge into Washington, and up along the seashore. I should rather say amidst the torrents of rain. We stopped at Desperation Point State Park where I walked out to one of the lighthouses to try and get a picture. The wind must have been blowing 50 mph or better with rain just pelting down. I did take a few pictures, but the weather didn’t not help. I was quite soaked when I got back to the car. We had lunch at a restaurant in downtown Astoria where we both had a bowl of delightful clam chowder. Now that the laundry is done, it’s only about 6:30 p.m. at night, and we’ll need to figure out what else to do with the evening. There must be something around worth doing!

We have arrived to our asphalt campground in Bellevue, Washington. The campground is definitely an asphalt jungle! No grass, but there are a few trees and bushes. It’s about fifteen minutes from Jared’s house and therefore very convenient.  It is also directly across the freeway from the Seattle Temple!  We’ll do a session there probably on Saturday morning. We drove past it this evening and it is a very beautiful building.

We decided to go to Mt. Rainier National Park on our way to Seattle today. That turned out to be a mistake. We drove to Yakima and then turned inland to drive to the park. A part of the road was closed and we were sent on a very, very long detour to go around where the road construction crews were blasting a hillside. It took about an hour to go around  large (and almost empty) reservoir and back to the main road. It was a twisty, narrow, windy road! When we finally got to the southeast entrance to the park, we found that all the roads in the park were closed. We drove all that way for nothing. That was quite disappointing. Despite that, we got to the campground at about 5 p.m.

We picked Jared and Arlene up for dinne and had a wonderful visit with them. We’re now back at the RV winding down for the night. We’ll pick them up at about 8 in the morning for our whale-watching-cruise-and-adventure. That should be a lot of fun.

We’re back at the RV from the Columbia River Temple. We struggled out of bed about 5:30 a.m. PDT this morning and were actually out of the RV driving to the temple at 6:24 a.m. this morning. It was about a ten minute drive from the campground to the temple. I was pleasantly surprised at how many people were there. We had thirteen sisters and ten brothers in the session meaning there were seventeen empty seats. The temple is small but very beautiful. The Celestial Room is gorgeous! We had a delightful session and the time was well worth it. In a few minutes we’ll unhook the utilities, hook up the car, and drive away. We think we’ll drive through the Mt. Rainier National Park on our way to Seattle.

For the past year one of the “hot” topics on the Internet has been Twitter.  I finally set up my account the other day. Apparently this setup allows one to send little “tweets” either as text messages or through the web browser or such to your Twitter account. Then anyone subscribed to this feed will receive those little “tweets” however they choose, such as on their cell phones or computer screens, or such. So, who has a Twitter account? It’d be interesting to see whether or not this has any value or usefulness.

Nina has an amazing amount of trouble with her Windows laptop, particularly trying to connect to wireless access points. My Macbook simple connects. No hassle, no fuss or bother. It finds the strongest, open signal and just connects. If there are no open access points, but secured access points are available, it’ll ask which one I want to connect to and lets me put in the key and it connects. This sure seems to be something that Dell needs to get figured out on their laptops. One of these days Nina will be ready for a new notebook computer. I think the next one will be a Mac based on our experience while traveling for the past couple of months.  Time to get moving!

We’re safely ensconced in a very nice RV park near Pasco, Washington. This is one of the nicer RV parks we’ve stayed in over the past few years. Very clean, well maintained, level sites, and WiFi. What more could a person want? We drove away from the house about 9 a.m. this morning after Nina put Bradica (the dog) in the kennel  (she probably thinks this is her second home, she’s been there rather regularly lately). The weather was cold and somewhat rainy in Pocatello, but an hour west on I-84 we were in sunshine with clear skies. It was a good day for driving. We arrived at the campground about 5:30 p.m. PDT, drove past the Columbia River Temple, had dinner at a nearby Applebees, did a little shopping at a local supermarket, and are now back in the RV checking email and whatever else is interesting on the Internet.

Tomorrow morning we’re doing a session at the Columbia River Temple at 7 a.m. After that we’ll wend our way into the Seattle area to our destination campground in Bellevue. It will be an easy driving day tomorow with some sightseeing along the way. Life continues to be good!

A cold front really blew in today and it is … COLD! The forecast says that there will be snow in the mountains. Oh joy. We’ve gone from summer to winter with no season in the middle. I’m definitely not ready.

I’ve spent some of the week working on an insert for the screen door to the deck. We have been leaving the screen partly open so Bradica (the dog) can go out to do her business. However, more often than not she does her business elsewhere. She doesn’t like going out as it’s now very hard for her to go up or down the steps. As it is, she has never really liked going out, ever. But, Thursday a bird flew in through the partially open screen door. Flying in was apparently easy, but flying back out again was not so very easy. After flying in circles for a couple of hours, the bird finally found the front screen door and tried to get out that way. The door was closed and locked, and as I tried to get there to open the door, the bird flew back into the family room. So, I unlocked the door in case the bird made her way back there again.

Sure enough, about a half-hour later, Nina called that the bird was hanging on the front screen door. I went out through the garage, slipped onto the front porch, opened the screen door, and the bird flew away! Success … except for cleaning up the leavings of a very frightened bird.

So, how to prevent that from happening again? There are hundreds of birds flocking around the back deck during the day feasting at the bird feeders all along the railing. It is probably a miracle we haven’t had more birds in the house entering through the partially-opened screen. I went to Lowes and bought some lumber and screen and have built a small insert to go into the screen door. It’ll leave a small opening at the bottom for Bradica (the dog) to go in and out but the rest will be covered with a screen. No more birds in the house (and far fewer flies and bees and wasps and such). I should have made this months ago. It’s not quite finished. I put the stain on this evening. I’ll attach the screen and put it in place when we get back.

Back? We just got back! We are leaving again and I’m quite excited to be going. We’re heading for Seattle on Monday. We’ll drive as far as Richland, Washington (southeast corner of the state … near Pasco and Kenewick) on Monday and spend the night in a RV campground. We’ll do a session at the Columbia River Temple at 7:00 a.m. on Tuesday, perhaps a little sightseeing, and then drive the rest of the way to Bellevue, Washington. We’ll stay there through Sunday and spend the time playing with Jared, Arlene, Kendra, Wendy, Aaron, and Aiden. We’ll kick it off with a whale-watching cruise on Wednesday. Then the following week we’ll wend our way down the Washington coast and get home on Friday, October 5th. I’m almost packed … I’m ready to be on the road again!