RV Travels With Huggy

Last Sunday Pat and I drove south to Auburn to attend a birthday party to celebrate the 12th birthday of my oldest granddaughter, K. I can't believe that she is almost a teenager already. She was born while my older son was on his first deployment in his Navy career so she was about three and a half months old when he first was able to hold her. The Navy lets those sailors who's wives have delivered babies while they were deployed be the first off the ship, and B was about the second of the bunch of a dozen or so.

K is now 12 and I guess that makes her kind of still a kid but not yet quite a teenager (I know teenagers all think they are adults but we know better.) I have no idea what a girl of that age wants in the way of birthday presents so I took the easy way out and got her a gift certificate for a store where I know she likes to shop. She did get quite a few gifts and I think mine was the only gift certificate, but much of the rest of the family lives closer so were able to know more about what she would want. I did take a few photos-


Here's the birthday girl looking through a bag with a number of gifts inside. Yep, she is still enjoying this opening gifts thing.


This is the card from Pat and I. It is a funny one. She is still young enough that funny birthday cards work, but she is young enough that they are not "aren't you getting old" themed. It was fun picking it out.


She sat across the table from Pat and I for awhile and I got what I think is a pretty cute photo of her snuggled against the shoulder of her other Grandpa. When she was a small baby until when Annie & I moved to Mount Vernon, K would spend most Saturday nights with us and go to sleep on my lap in my recliner chair. She was so cute and sweet then. She is still cute and sweet, but not small enough to go to sleep sitting on Grandpa's lap in a recliner. One more year and she will be a teenager.

I guess wonderful memories like that is a part of the fun side of growing older.

Labels: Birthdays, Family, Grandkids, Photos, Reminiscing

There is a great miniature golf course at Ponderosa Falls RV Resort and my brother and I played all 18 holes there on Wednesday of last week. That was the day the temperature reached 84 degrees in Spokane in the afternoon and of course that was when we were out there playing golf. This RV park used to be in the Yogi Bear Campground chain and there are still some left overs from that era, including the golf course. The course has a man-made river that flows through it, starting with a water fall that is about 25 feet high. There are foot bridges that cross the river in a few places through the golf course, and at one point there is a rapids that drops probably about 6 feet.


Here my brother, L, has just taken a shot and you can see the ball moving toward the camera on the carpet. As you can see there are lights and the course is playable until about 22:30 hours at night. The RV you see in the background is ours- we were right beside the 15th hole. This is about the only place that I can say that I "live" on a golf course!


One thing about just playing alone this way is that you can kind of make up your own rules. We would sometimes have the ball end up against one of the bricks at the side of the course and we determined that it was proper to move the ball up to 6 inches out into the course so that you could hit it with the putter. Here L is doing just that.


This view is looking down over the rapids toward the 15th hole, with our RV in the background. I hadn't taken my camera along but, thanks to cell phones, I called Pat who carried it out to me, handing it across the fence. Otherwise I'd have had to walk all the way back to the start and to the RV, then back to where we were playing. Alright, it wasn't all that far, but it was pretty hot!

This RV park is beautiful, with many Ponderosa pine trees all through it. Central Washington State is more of a desert with very few plants other than sage brush but about 20 miles west of Spokane you start back into the trees. Here they are the long needle Ponderosa pine rather than the predominant fir, spruce and cedar trees found on the west (wetter) side of the Cascade Mountains.


Here is the rapids as seen from below, with the fairway of the 15th hole at the left side of the photo. Those lights turn off at 22:30 so we could go to sleep at night but the water runs all night. At first we wondered if being so close to the rapids would be a problem but it turned out to just be a pleasant background sound, kind of like being near the ocean where the surf is breaking on the beach.


As I said, this place used to be a Yogi Bear Campground and here is Yogi's little friend, BooBoo, atop about the 5th hole on a large piece of driftwood. The driftwood really isn't green but with strong sunlight reflecting up on the bottom of the driftwood arch, it does give it a very green color. You can also see the waterfall that marks the start of the river. Of course the hole you had to sink the ball into is under that arch BooBoo is on.


I didn't have my macro lens along on this trip but my standard 18 - 200mm zoom lens will focus fairly close, so I was able to get a pretty good photo of this dragon fly who had lighted on a fir tree branch. This is a bit of an enlargement from the original image as it tended to fly off if I tried to get any closer.

The park has a lot of other activities available including an indoor swimming pool, weights room, pickleball court, volleyball, plus some neat things for kids.

Here my Grand Daughter, K, is enjoying one of the paddle boats in the kids lagoon at the park. K wasn't there with us this year- this photo was taken in July, 2006.

I really enjoy visiting Ponderosa Falls RV Resort. As I said earlier, it is one of the parks owned by the group I belong to, K/M Resorts, and it is one of those that I have spent the most time in. This one and Ocean Mist on the Washington coast where Pat & I visited back in August.

I have a few other miscellaneous photos from the trip that I'll post at another time. Now that we are home I have the faster Internet connection and posting of photos seems to work much better. But I did get these six edited in Photoshop Elements and uploaded to my Flickr site from my laptop computer with the WiFi connection in the park. So it wasn't all a failure.

Labels: Family, Grandkids, Photos, RVing, Trips to see things

When I first moved to Mount Vernon, WA in 2003 and started attending church at St. Paul's Episcopal Church I heard about the Kiwanis Park that was going to be built across the street from the church. Construction finally was started in Spring of last year and the City Parks Dept. held an opening ceremony Friday, July 11th. The park is on land that was purchased by three local Kiwanis clubs and those clubs have contributed over $100,000 to it's construction.


This is a scan of the program that we were given at the ceremony. I'll be honest and admit that we didn't stay for the talks by these important people. We went to dinner at the Olive Garden instead.


Our church parking area was used by the construction people and in exchange for that we have a newly paved parking lot. We also provided the kitchen facilities to prepare the goodies that were handed out at the ceremony and ladies from the church manned the tables handing them out. This photo has many from the church getting things ready.


I think some of the park was done by volunteer labor and it is not yet finished. In fact what has been finished occupies less than half of the space. One main thing that is in is a finished play yard with some pretty nice toys to climb and swing on. There is also a finished baseball field and a basketball court that is almost finished. There is going to be some sort of a water park on an area that right now is just in lawn, although that lawn is still growing so it really isn't very usable yet. The treed area in the back, which is over half of the property, will have walking trails, some on a board walk as it is considered a wet area.


I wish there were some of these kind of things when my kids were young! We did have some pretty nice climbing toys for them that were built of logs but nothing like these climbing rocks and walls and some of those fiberglas things are really nice.


The base of the whole play yard area is of something that does not give slivers like cedar bark and is soft & absorbent if a child falls. It is well designed. And there are things for the little ones as well as those a bit older.


My church can be seen in the background of this photo. I think that both of my grand daughters, even the 11 year old, will enjoy this place and I look forward to being able to take them there. The park is only about a mile away from our house.


This is an add on to the original post as I forgot to include it. This shows the setup for the opening ceremony but behind it is the baseball field. It is well designed and was about the first thing built so the grass is mature and can be played on now. Beyond the ball park is the basketball court. You can see Little Mountain to the left side of the photo in the background. Our house is located in a park at the base of Little Mountain. Well, it is really just a hill as it is only about 1500 feet tall and I guess it officially has to be over 2000 to call it a "mountain," but that is it's name. The whole of it is a city park and there are a couple of fabulous view points on top that give good views to the west and north. There is also a place for hang gliders to launch from but I don't think that is done very often from up there. It is probably a risk that the Park Dept. doesn't want to take on.

Labels: Events, Friends, Grandkids, Photos

We usually don't have much snow at all over a winter here in north west Washington State, but the last few days have been very unusual. Yesterday we started out from home about 11am to drive south to my grand daughter's 11th birthday party. It was raining when we left home but as we started up the hill on the freeway south of town we started into mixed snow & rain. A few miles farther, about at the Skagit/Snohomish County line for those familiar with the area, the snow really started sticking on the road as well as alongside the road. A mile or so farther we spotted the first car that had slid off the road. As we approached the Camano Island exit there was close to 4 inches of snow and it was coming down hard. The speed of the traffic was down to about 30mph and it looked like it was getting worse, so we got off the freeway there and turned back. Later we learned that there had been something like 6" of snowfall down at Smokey Point & Marysville that was about 12 miles ahead. I talked with K, my grand daughter, in the evening and we will go take her to lunch the week after next when she is on spring vacation from school.

Back home it was still just raining which actually quit later in the day although it never did warm up very much. When we got up this morning, this is what we had outside our windows:

This is our front yard with the new Thundering Plum tree and the forsythia, both in full bloom, although both with snow on them. You can see the snowflakes falling in the photo. The roads were just slushy but not any problem to drive, although I'll bet that farther south as you get into the so called convergent zone there was a lot more snow (like yesterday.)


This is a telephoto view of the condos on the hill just east of us. This is very unusual weather, especially for "spring."


A photo from the sunroom showing the little fireplace at work, trying to make it warm for the cats. The "flames" are visible here and the heat comes from the bottom of the fireplace. They love it out here but are not fond of cold weather, so we are spending electricity to heat the room. Also notice the hummingbird in the upper part of the window. More about these next.


A closer view of one of the other windows, with a hummingbird in it. Notice all the ice and snow on the pampas grass plant outside the window, and you can still see the snowflakes falling.


A closeup view of the hummingbird in the previous photo. Yes, it did stay there and wait for me to take a closer photo. That is because they are not real birds. Pat found some in a catalog that are split in half. Each half has a magnet attached so that you can put one on each side of a single pane window and they look pretty real. They say they won't work on a double pane insulated window and we haven't tried them on any of those but they work fine on the sunroom windows.


This is a different bird that is on one of the south facing windows. You can see the melted snow drops here as the weather system is coming out of the southwest, but you can also see how the birds are split in half. I used the flash unit to light the bird but it didn't penetrate the tinted window so the outside part is just in silhouette against the brighter sky. These things are fun and if anyone is interested in them I can post where Pat found them.

Our weather is supposed to change for the better after today. I am really getting tired of having winter in springtime. The temperature yesterday never got out of the 30s. This afternoon is supposed to have sunshine but the weather forecasts we get usually come from Seattle, 80 miles south, and it can be different up here in the frigid north. But, we are ready for better weather. Soon, please.

Labels: Birthdays, Grandkids, Griping, Photos, Sunroom, Weather

My youngest grand daughter, K, celebrated her 7th birthday just three days after my XXth birthday this month. Since all the kids are now back in school, her party was held on a Saturday at their house. Pat and I attended along with her other grand parents, many aunts and uncles (her mom is child number 14 in a family of 16 children) and many of her friends and neighbors. Since the party started at 1:30 in the afternoon, they started with pizza for anyone who wanted a little more lunch. Then it was time to move on to the cake for desert.


Here is the table with the cake and many of the kids plus a few of the adults gathered around, including Mom & Dad. The birthday girl is on the right side of the photo, wearing the hat.


This one looks like she is saying blowing out seven candles is no problem. She did it fine.


Now it is time to start opening the gifts. This bag was from Pat & I and contained about half a dozen gifts. No, I wouldn't spoil my Grand Daughter!


This gift is one of those from us that was inside the big bag that she was holding in the previous photo. It is a notebook with a photo of K on the cover. The photo was taken in 2004, of K wearing one of Grandma Ann's Red Hatter hats.


I think all kids like money. Someone gave her a stack of seven dollar bills and they were a big hit with K, as you can tell from her expression.


Grandma Annie was real good at picking gifts for the grandkids. She would buy them when she found them, sometimes saving them for months before the event they were needed for occurred. Sometimes they were forgotten at the time they should have been given. These sticker books were a couple of things that Annie had picked out for one of our two grand daughters, before her death in 2005 and they were safely put away. I found them this spring while cleaning out the house to get it ready to sell. So, these sticker books and a couple of small books about Kochina dolls that were with them are some of the last gifts for K from her Grandma Ann.

The birthday party was fun. It doesn't seem possible to me this little girl is already seven years old. She was born just four months after the death of my Mother and K's Grandma Ann died while K was four years old, a month & a half before her fifth birthday. In many ways it doesn't seem possible that it has been over two years since we lost Annie, either. I know I sure am a lot happier this year than I was last year. I have Pat to thank for that.

Labels: Annie, Birthdays, Family, Grandkids, Pat and I, Photos

The birthdays of my older son, myself and my youngest grand daughter all fall within a week of each other in September. For quite a few years I've celebrated them by doing coffee hour at church on the nearest weekend to my birthday. This year was no exception except that this year I had Pat to help grand daughter K and I. Son B is out at sea on his ship so wasn't able to be there. K's Dad is working today but her Mom brought her up and that gave Mom a chance to go do some birthday shopping without K being along.

When you need a cake for 50 to 60 or more, I think the best place to look around here is at Costco. Plus their cakes are very good and at a good price. My favorite is carrot cake and since it was my birthday and I placed the order, that was what I got.

Here is the cake before we started to cut it. It is one half of a full sheet cake and at our store sold for $18 which seems like a pretty fair price to me. And it sure was good, although I only was allowed one small piece as I am still trying to loose more weight.


Pat is starting to cut the cake while K is asking what do we need to do next. We are almost ready and people will be coming in soon as the church service is nearly over. Annie taught me that we always bring fruit as some people can't or don't eat cake. And there are cookies and punch for the kids but I've been amazed at how many big kids also eat them. I know- I used to.


Pat is finishing up cutting the cake. We managed to have it all eaten so that I didn't have to bring any home to tempt me. I LOVE carrot cake! We finally did get the chance to eat a (small) piece along with some fruit and a cup of coffee. Then it was time to start loading the dish washer and clean things up. We got away just after noon and brought our extra car home as we had driven there from different locations.

Pat then took me out to Cascade Pizza for one of my favorite lunches. We even have enough left for lunch tomorrow! There is a nice steak house here in town called Max Dale's Steak and Chop House. They sent me a coupon for my birthday to get a dinner free so we are going there tonight. It will be steak time. Then tomorrow son M has the day off and we are invited to dinner with he, his wife J and the other birthday person, K. It sounds like a couple of nice eating days to me and a good way to celebrate the 29th anniversary of my 35th birthday.

Labels: Birthdays, Family, Grandkids, Pat and I, Photos

The house is nearly ready to list and I have finally had enough time to work a bit on the photos from our Memorial Day tour of my son's Navy ship, the USS Ingraham. Pat, her 13 YO grandson B, and I were shown around the ship by my son B, who is a crewman on her. They were not participating in an official open house but we were able to tour with B as a guide.


This isn't the first photo I took but I thought I'd start with it here. We were outdoors looking down onto the main deck and this brightly colored life ring really stood out. It does show the name of the ship.


B doesn't work on the bridge but we were lucky enough to find a Chief who does and he gave us a tour of the bridge. The Ingerham is a fast frigate that was built in 1989 so it is fairly new. It's main mission is to find & destroy enemy submarines so most of it's armaments are things that would fit that use. One of the first things we looked for when we came into the pilot house was the steering wheel. We couldn't find it. Here is why:


That little brass wheel is it. They no longer use cables that directly move the rudder so a large wheel isn't necessary. That one is about 6 or 7 inches in diameter. The gauge above it is a rudder position gauge that indicates where the rudder is pointed. Some of the navigation and communications systems are amazing.


This photo was taken just outside the bridge on the port side. That large container on the left is one of the lifeboat containers. There are at least three ways they can be opened including one that automatically opens & inflates it if the container is submerged to 6 feet or more under water. Someone must make a lot of money from selling gray paint to the Navy. It seems like they know of no other color.


This view is looking up toward the top of the mast. Of course there are no sails here but you can see some of the many antennae that are used with the many communications systems.


Here we are walking across the main deck, with B, Pat and my son B, left to right. This ship is fairly narrow and I guess it tends to rock pretty strongly when the seas are striking her from the side. They carry two helicopters on the aft deck and will turn into the weather to help stabilize the platform for them to land or take off from.


We were able to see the crew living quarters. It isn't quite like a room in a Hilton Inn. That lower bunk, called a coffin bunk, is B's. There are some that are a little larger but they do not have the built in storage under the mattress so he would rather have this style. Just be careful to not sit up too fast!


Here is the aft deck, where the helicopters land when the ship is deployed. While in port it is the area where the gang plank ends and you step off onto the ship. You can see another of the ships that are home ported at Naval Station Everett in the background, tied up to another pier.

The tour was fun and Pat's grandson really enjoyed it. You don't realize how tight the quarters are on these ships until you actually tour one. They try to have things to occupy free time and do have crew rooms with large LCD TVs, DVD players and satellite TV. Internet email is available while in port or at sea. B is assigned to this ship until later this fall when he finishes four years of sea duty and starts three years of shore duty. This is the third ship he has been assigned to in his a bit over ten years in the Navy. I guess there will be at least one more if he gets to finish a twenty year career with them. Our tour was fairly short as he was to be on watch at noon, but it was fun to see where he spends his time. Like I said, it isn't like staying in a Hilton or on a cruise ship, but they do make good use of all the space they have. I was in the Army myself but is is fun to see another branch of the service at work.

Labels: Boating, Grandkids, Pat and I, Photos, Trips to see things

Here are a few more photos from Pat and my wedding. I am a bit slow at getting these posted because I've been working pretty hard on getting the house cleared out, but I do have a few more that will probably finish the set.


This first one is of my two sons, B on the left and M on the right. The photo was taken by M's wife, J, as were most of the photos I have posted. Some were by my long time friend R or his wife D and some by my next door neighbor in the park, D.


This is one by my friend, R, and shows part of the mirror room in the clubhouse, where our guests were able to be seated to eat and visit. He even managed to catch me in the background opening a window for some ventilation.


The outside patio was a popular seating area for some due to the fantastic weather we lucked out and had. This shows one of my grand daughters, K, at a table at the left and my nephew J with his daughter B near the right side of the frame. A long time friend of mine, DS, is seated behind my grand daughter. DS & I started kindergarten together in Spokane, WA in the fall of 1948.


Another view inside the clubhouse, here looking past the kitchen area toward the library. At center left is another of my nephews, another J. My brother and I are in the middle of the photo and at the right is my neighbor, B, whose husband D was the third person taking some of our photos.


We have to sign the paperwork that will be filed to make it all legal. Here is our Priest, Vicki, with Pat signing her part of them.


And here is my turn to sign them. Boy, I sure need more hair!

We left the morning after the wedding to spend a few days east of the Cascade Mountains in the little Bavarian themed town of Leavenworth. I have some photos from there but haven't had the time yet to work on them. I at least reduce the size of the images before uploading them to Flickr where my photos for here are hosted. I'll get them done soon, I promise.

In the meantime, progress is being made on getting my old house cleared out. I have the den piled on one side with things to move to our new house and on the other side to move into storage. The really big pile is in the rest of the house that was going to be in a yard sale, but we had coffee last Thursday with a former neighbor who used a local auction service when he moved. I called them on Friday and have an appointment to deliver my "stuff" Tuesday. I have a rental truck reserved and my son M is coming up to help. We should be able to get it all transfered there in that one day. They will sell it in the next auction, keep 35% and I get the rest. Anything left over they will dispose of. That sure sounds a lot better than going through the problems associated with holding a yard sale! By Wednesday the house should be empty and ready to start the final cleaning. It may be listed for sale by the weekend. Then maybe we can finally take out the new RV on it's maiden voyage!

Labels: Family, Friends, Grandkids, Pat and I, Photos, Wedding

When I logged on tonight at about 20:00 for the first time today, I saw that Statcounter, the program I have monitoring visits to my blog, said there have been 20,001! I have been posting here about a year and a half. I would like to thank those who have been here from the start and any new visitors who happened to find my little corner of the web.

I don't have any photos to post today but should soon. I have been working on my house and have sorted nearly everything in the place. Except the shed in the carport. I am thinking that I'll be ready for a yard sale on Sat but probably not yet ready on Fri. I'm looking forward to getting this behind me so we can get on with our new life. I should have done more before the wedding to get the place ready.

Pat & I did go visit my son's Navy ship on Memorial Day and it was fun. We took Pat's 13 YO grandson along and he really enjoyed seeing the Navy base and the ship. They didn't have an official open house but since I had a family member who is a crewman we got a very good tour. I had forgotten how step those stairs (I would call them ladders) are when you go from one deck to another. And there are no elevators. I did take some photos and should be able to post a few later, when I can get them reduced in size.

Labels: Boating, Family, Grandkids, Pat and I, Trips to see things

I am making pretty good progress on sorting & packing up my house. I am writing this from the new location for my PC in Pat's computer room where it was moved to yesterday. I just took a little time this evening to reduce & edit a few more photos to post so will do those now. I didn't get things ready to hold a yard sale this weekend but that might be for the better as it is a holiday weekend in the USA (Memorial Day) and many people will be away from home. I really think I can have it ready for next weekend. Uh-huh. I hope.

These photos will start out with the reception line as our guests entered the clubhouse where our reception was held.


There were a lot of friends and family who came, some coming quite a distance to be here with us. These are long time friends of Pat's who have now been introduced to me.


This photo combines new friends and old friends. I am shaking hands with my next door neighbor in the park, D, who I've known about three years since he and his wife, B, moved to the same park where I live. He also took some of the photos we are enjoying from our wedding day. There is also a couple that I've known since 1969, along with their youngest grand daughter who is the same age as my youngest who was one of our flower girls. D & J are the God Parents to my youngest son, M.


I am about to shake hands with the Red Hatter who is now the Queen of the Little Mountain Red Hatters while Pat is greeting S with her husband B behind her. They are members of our church, St. Paul's Episcopal here in Mt. Vernon. Pat's grandson, B, who was our ring bearer, is between S & B in the background.


Here is our Priest, Vicki, who not only performed our service but met with us many times before the service to help in so many ways. Thank you, Vicki!

Pat is an Elvis Presley fan. She has always been a fan of Elvis' and has quite a few things in her collection. When her younger daughter heard that we were getting married and going to have a wedding, she said she wanted to take care of ordering the cake. About all we knew about it was that it would be Elvis themed and included raspberry filling.

Here is that cake! It was wonderful.


Pat and I are posed behind the cake in one of the traditional photos that you just have to have in your collection.


I am including this photo just because I like it. I think we were kind of trying to decide where to cut into the cake and how we would go about it.


Okay, we probably broke tradition by cutting the top layer. I guess it is supposed to be taken home and frozen to be eaten on the first anniversary. The cake was very good but we are both trying to watch what calories we eat and unfortunately cake, even very good cake, isn't on that list. So I guess it is okay that the top layer was eaten on the wedding day.


We had agreed ahead of time that we would not smear cake over each other's face and we held to that promise. Here I am feeding Pat her piece of our wedding cake.


And here is Pat feeding me my piece of the cake.

There will be a few more photos from the wedding in the next few days but right now I have to get back to putting things away. I have made an awful mess in the middle of Pat's computer room with boxes of my "stuff." I told her tonight that I thought I only had another 18 to 20 car loads of my stuff to bring over. She said she might move out of her own house. Good thing I was just pulling her leg. A little.

Labels: Friends, Grandkids, Pat and I, Photos, Wedding