RV Travels With Huggy

Yesterday was quite a day. First it was my younger son's 32nd birthday. His brother & I drove to M's house for a dinner & party in their large back yard & got to initiate the "lawn house" (I don't know what else to call it) that J bought him for his birthday. It is about 12 feet wide and 24 feet long, with a roof & sides that are mostly screen (the sides) to allow the breeze through. It is like a big tent or one of those canapies you see in yards over picnic tables but this is much larger than any of those I've seen and it has sides you can close for mosquito protection.

The day sure was different that the one 32 years before when he decided to be born, starting in the middle of the night. We lived on an island in Puget Sound, accessible only by ferry boats that do not run in the middle of the night. I called the dock & we headed there. I thought they started up the boat that was parked there all night but no, they had to contact the one over at Southworth & have it come over to Vashon, then to Seattle. The phone was busy at Southworth. For over an hour. Later a ferry worker claimed he was giving detailed routing instructions to a customer. Sure, at 3am. For over an hour. I hope his girl friend now knows where to go. Anyway, we got to the hospital where M was born about 40 minutes after our arrival. Here is a scanned image of a snapshot that was taken of Annie & M in our Vashon Island house I think in the summer or fall of 1975 so M was a little over a year old. I have been having a lot of fun scanning snapshots into digital images but I sure wish we had done a better job of labeling them with at least the date they were taken!


An RV friend, who I also worked with at Metro Transit for 23+ years, told me another full time RV couple, D & S B, were staying in the Thousand Trails park just outside La Conner, WA. I contacted them & we setup to meet yesterday for lunch at Shari's. That went well and we had a good visit for nearly three hours. I last saw them at Life on Wheels in Tucson where they are instructors and I'll see them again next week in Moscow, Idaho where they will be teaching ten different classes at Life on Wheels again. I wrote here about a visit with them in Boomerville at Quartzsite, AZ last January, too.

The RV life style is perhaps a little hard for non-RVers to understand. You make good friends that you see periodically in various parts of the country as you both travel around. Sometimes these are regular places, like Life on Wheels or Boomerangs like the one at Quartzsite. Sometimes you will just find you are both staying in the same campground or nearby & will setup a meet. Escapees RV Club Boomers BOF has an online site where members let others know where they are, or you just hear like I did from another RVer who knows where you both are at the moment. That is part of the fun of that life style.

Last Sunday I was in La Conner after church to meet long time friends D & J C who, with their four grandkids, were staying a couple of nights in a travel trailer at a campground there that they are members of. They are not full time RVers. They left Monday for Spokane where they will stay in a campground on Long Lake & plan a day trip to Silverwood, a large amusement park in north Idaho a few miles east of Spokane. Silverwood has a most unique roller coaster in that it actually goes through one of their gift stores which makes an exciting ride and perks the excitment level for the shoppers, especially if they don't realize that the roller coaster does that. They have two of the largest wooden roller coasters in the country plus of course the typical cork screw ones that run on metal supports. D & J are my age and are raising their grandkids that range in age from 5 to 12. They are an amazing couple & Godparents to my younger son, the birthday boy, M.

I had a string going, actually making it to four consecutive men's walks from our park to the hospital cafeteria for coffee. I missed it yesterday with too much going on but hope to do it again tomorrow. My Doc last week said I was doing pretty good but he wants to see less of me (about ten pounds) when he next sees me. I don't think my diet is too bad but I know I need more exercise. Those walks sure can't hurt as they are about three miles round trip. I have been paying dues to the YMCA for ten months or so but that hasn't helped. Maybe I should also start going there as well as just paying the bill.