Our first week in Monroe

We arrived in Monroe on Friday and met Heather at home. She had to work on Friday and Saturday, so we met her for dinner on Friday during her supper.Saturday Greg and Dawn came down from BC to visit us. They met us at Becky's house and we had a great visit.
I cooked steaks that we had bought at Cosco, and the girls played Mexican Train.
It was nice to see them again, since they left Timber Ridge in December last year.
They are very busy. Greg has a job at a tank manufacturer, and does his racing on weekends. Dawn is doing her reflexology and hopes to have her own business going soon.

Fred went back to work today. I haven't seen him since he got home as I went home to start on some of the projects I have been planning to do to the coach.

The front TV is going out, I have the brightness turned all the way up, so we decided to replace it.
We are going to upgrade to HD when we get back to Houston, as we won't be in one place long enough to have it installed in our coach until then.
Since we are upgrading, we decided to change the TV in the bedroom for Brenda. I will be working on both of these for the next few days, installing the new TVs.
The coach is set up for the old heavy tube TVs so I have to modify the hole where the tvs are now. We have replaced them with flat panel ones.

Since this coach is only 30 amp electric service, we cannot run 2 electric heaters at the same time. I want to put an electric plug in the wall in the slide out. I am having difficulty finding a male plug to fit in a box on the outside wall. I will keep looking.

There are a couple of other things that I need to repair, but that is the way it goes when you have a home, whether it be a stick & brick or one on wheels. I enjoy trying to work out better ways to fix things here in the coach.

We have plans for the rest of the weekends we are here. With Fred working, weekends are the only time we can all get together and do the things we want to do.
We are going to Camping World this weekend and Fred wants to visit Cabelas. They are both in Tacoma. Sunday we are going to the Evergreen Fair here in Monroe.
We are going to the circus, visit Mt. St. Helens. Alex is coming up to visit. Just busy, busy, busy.

We stopped at Fred and Lurlene's home yesterday and had a great time visiting. We have not seen them in some time. I haven't been here in 2 years although Brenda was here in April.
They are kind enough to let us park our rig at here home while we have to be out of this park for a week.
We'll see them again over the the holiday weekend up at the lake.


Ta ta for now

Our first week with the Kids

We have been with Fred, Becky and Lindsay for a week now and we are enjoying them immensely.
Lindsay is a joy and she is riding with us to the different stops.
Fred is busy with school work. He is getting his bachelors degree on line. He has lots of homework to do and I am proud of him as he is pretty diligent about getting it done. He still finds time to socialize with the family.
Becky spends a lot of time here in the MH with us and is such a pleasant person.

We now are in Vantage, Wa. We arrived on Tuesday after an overnight in Pendleton, Or.
We stayed in the RV park on Wildhorse Casino grounds. It is on an Indian Reservation.
Brenda wanted to gamble and saved her money so she could.
I won $40 so dinner was on the casino. Brenda lost $12 andwent back the next morning and lost a little more.

Fred and I went fishing yesterday on Wanapum lake. There is a small power dam just down river and has formed a small shallow lake. Because it is so shallow, there are a lot of weeds growing and it is somewhat difficult to cast and retrieve without getting tangled in the weeds.
We were out for about 4 hours and didn't even get a bump from a fish.We did see some very large trout in the water, but they weren't interested in what we were offering.
We are going out again this morning and try live bait. We'll see.

We went to Ginko Petrified Forest State Park yesterday, Very interesting. We looked over the Columbia river and you could see the weeds in the water. It looked like an areal view of a forest.
We went to the interpretive center and saw 2 short films about the formation of this area and the discovery of the petrified Ginko trees.
It apppears that the Gikco trees were everywhere in the world and sometime about 15,000 years ago the Ginko trees became extinct except in some parts of China and Japan.
Multiple erupions of volcanoes and the formation of the Cascade Mountain Range caused the trees to be caught in the lava flows and petrified. This whole area was wetlands and as the Cascades grew in size they blocked the pacific flow into this area causing a desert like condition.
It is very warm here, It is predicted into the 100's today.
It is more humid here than I thought it would be, with the desert like terrain, but the Columbia River is just right here.
Tomorrow we are leaving for Monroe. Fred has to go back to work on Monday.
The time has just flown by this last week. I supect that he will be very busy after we get back to Monroe.

Ta ta for now.

Idaho State Penitentiary

Friday we took a trip down to Boise. We went in Fred's truck and the drive was much better without the trailer.
We are going Pendlelton, OR back through Boise when we leave tomorrow.
We specifically went down to see the Old State Penitentiary. It was closed after the last riot in 1973. The state was building a new facility and the riot was the driving force in moving the inmates.We had a guide that led us on the tour for over 2 hours. It was very enlightening.
We toured most of the buildings, that were left as they were, when the last of the inmates were removed to the new facility.
The prison is a fairly large complex with many different buildings. The original Buildings were built in 1874 as a territorial prison. There were only 2 buildings that held inmates with a wooden outer wall. When Idaho became a state in 1890, the prison became a state facility and construction was begun on the outer walls, which are stone.
The inmates built most of the buildings and the walls. There is a stone quarry on the property and all of the stones were taken from that quarry and cut and laid for all of the structures there.
The buildings facilities improved as new ones were built. Some of the older buildings still do not have toilet facilities. The inmates were given a bucket of water to use as their toilet and the inmate took his bucket out and emptied it daily, if he was not in some sort of punishment cell for breaking the rules.
The Women's prison was built in 1920 in a separate area of the complex. It could house up to 12 prisoners with an open area in the middle for meals, etc. The need to build this facility was due to the fact that there were more women coming to the facility and the need to keep them separated from the men became harder to do.After seeing this place I can understand why there were so many riots throughout the years.
This kind of facility could not exist in today's litigious society.This is the wardens office. All inmates received in the prison facilities were taken through this office for interview and photographs.
The warden knew every inmate in his prison.

When we got to the maximum security facility, any and all who wanted to experience being locked up could go into one of the cells and the door locked behind them.
Since I had worked in the jail for Harris County Sheriffs Office, I declined going into the cell. I had been in many cells at one time or another while working there.The kids seemed to enjoy the tour and the guide was especially attentive to the small ones.

Yesterday, we took the 12 foot jon boat over to Cascade Lake. It is a large lake that acts as a reservoir for the area. Fred was not comfortable taking the boat into the river as it is very swift. The small engine probably couldn't have taken us back up the river.
It was quite windy and the lake was choppy.
Fred and I took out to the lake but had no luck at catching fish. The fish finder saw many large fish, but they didn't like what we were offering them. We didn't get one hit.
We moved to a different, more protected area of the lake. Fred and Becky went out while I watched Lindsay and Kaetlyn.
They wanted to swim and play in the water. It was so cold and windy, I don't know how they did that. I was in jeans and a long sleeve shirt and I was chilled.
Becky and Fred came in with one 10" Rainbow trout and said that they stayed out longer than they had intended trying to catch another fish.

We leave Mark, Jennifer and family tomorrow. They are headed to Coure d' Alene to meet her folks then they will meet us in Vantage, Wa and caravan into the Seattle area with us.

Ta ta for now

Arrowhead RV Park

We left Hagerman a little after 9am and proceeded onto Cascade.
The trip was uneventful until we arrived at the exit for ID55. On the map it looks like a straight shot north to the campground. Ah, but were we fooled.
First you exit onto a busy city street through a very affluent area of Boise. The road is 7 lanes wide and pretty busy for 11am.The road narrows to 2 lanes and starts this steep incline. Fortunately, you get a good running start. It is a long climb turning into a 5 mile 7% down grade. This was fun, but it gets better. The distance from I84 to the CG is about 70 miles, and the road becomes narrow with no shoulders, a steep drop off and twisty, windy curves. It was white knuckle in some places.
The Payette River runs along the side of the road and the vistas are spectacular, but, you'll have to ask Brenda about that as I was busy driving.We arrived about 1pm and was greeted by some very lovely people.
Mark and Jennifer and their children arrived around 4pm. Becky, Fred and Lindsay arrived around 6pm.
Mark left the night before as it is a 600 mile drive from the Seattle area to here.
Fred and Becky left @5:30am and drove straight through. They were tired.
Mark and Jennifer came down from the north on ID55 and we came up from the south. They reported that 55 from the north was pretty much the way we described the southern route.

It surely was nice to see Fred again after 2 years. and Lindsay sure has grown since I saw her last year. I won't let this happen again that it is so long between visits.
Fred wants to do some fishing today as we are right on the Payette River, so we are going into town to check on fishing licenses. They brought their 12 foot jon boat,
Ta ta for now.

National Fish Hatchery and 1000 Spring Preserve

Today we decided to go to the fish hatchery. This is the National one as there are two more. One belongs to the state of Idaho and the other belongs to University of Idaho.
The tour of the hatchery is self guided with fair documentation.
There are only fingerlings there now. The other fish were released and in May they hatched the eggs which have since turned to fingerlings. They will release this bunch in the fall into larger tanks outside and start the process all over again inside.
While we at the hatchery we found directions to the 1000 Spring Preserve. These springs are spectacular. The water just comes out of the rocks it is phenomenal.
There is a power plant built to use the flow of the water to generate power. It is small and there aren't too many power lines leaving the area.

There is also an island that was a private farm. It now belongs to Idaho. It is a State park with no fee. The island is large and was a dairy farm. There is a dairy barn on the property that is in great shape and set up as a display area with old farm equipment. There are guided yours of the barn, but we were there in between tours. The whole second floor of the barn is hay storage. a beautiful view from the door of the second floor.
These are the milking stall in the old barn.

You walk behind the barn on a short path to see the Minnie Miller Falls. They are beautiful coming out of the middle of the escarpment.Ta ta for now

Hagerman, Id

We arrived at the campground about 3:30 yesterday. It is nice here, not far from the freeway, but a berm is between us and the freeway so no noise. We are in the shade and although the temps are in the 90's, there isn't too much humidity. We seem to be in the desert. There is water flowing into small pond where the water for the sprinkler system comes from. They have been watering behind the office for over 6 hours and no standing water.
The grass is green and pretty in all of the common areas, whereas outside of the park the areas are brown with tumbleweeds everywhere.

Today we went on the 1000 spring byway. A nice drive, and picturesque.
We stopped at the visitor center and saw a short film about the area and a replica of the 'Hagerman Horse'. It is not really a horse but an extinct version of the Zebra.
We then went to the Hagerman Fossil Bed, where the "horse was found. It is a National Park, but no fee area. We didn't see any fossils in the park, but we were impressed with the vistas of the Snake River.
Also parts of the Oregon Trail goes through the park. The wagon ruts are still there in some places.
We drove on to Twin Falls with a stop in Buhle.We needed fuel and it was attached to a farmers supply store. They have everything a farmer or rancher could need.
I found a good pair of boots there at a good price. Since it is my B'day Brenda bought them for me.

We haven't figured out what we are doing tomorrow, but there is quite a bit to see here.


Ta ta for now

Almost time with the kids

Tomorrow we leave Island park and head for Csacade, ID. We will meet Becky, Fred, & Lindsay there. We will see some friends of Fred & Becky's there, too. We will stay in Hagerman, ID. (between Twin Falls and Boise) for 3 days. It is a Passport America park and $10 cheaper than here.
We have been here 2 weeks and we have run the gamut of things to do and see. Ten days would have been long enough, but we couldn't meet the kids until Wed, the 12th.

We have been doing laundry and generally cleaning up in and around the coach.
I washed the car on Thursday and that evening we got a short lived thunderstorm that was carrying dirt in the rain. The car looked as if I had not washed it other than the dead bugs were gone. I was not a happy camper.
It rains here almost every evening for a short time. But the wind blows so much and so hard that it dries out very fast. The management is watering every day in the lots between the sites.

It is overcast this morning with the tops of the mountains obscured by the clouds, and the prediction is for rain and cold temperatures today, high 54. It will be warming tomorrow into the 60's.
There isn't any wind this morning, but I'm sure that will change, being at the edge of the valley and so close to Henry's Lake the wind blows almost constantly.

This area of the country is beautiful and we love to come and see it.
Yellowstone changes every time we come and there is always something new to see.
We still haven't seen any moose or bears, but with the crowds that are here this time of year, the animals are staying away from the areas traveled by humans.
The bison and cow elk don't seem to mind the people, they just go where they want.

Ta ta for now

Harriman State Park & Virginia City

Monday we went to Harriman State park and the Railroad Ranch. It was interesting, but disappointing. There are no guided tours except on weekends so we couldn't get into any of the buildings. Visitors are not allowed in the buildings without a guide because some of the dinnerware was stolen off of the table displays.
The Harrimans, from the Union Pacific Railroad, owned all of this land along with a few of the other owners of UP. There are thousands of acres and was a working cattle ranch. It was donated to the State of Idaho and became a state park.
There is a self guided tour of the property, around all of the buildings. It is an easy 1.5 mile walk. This is to give you an idea of the size of the compound. The houses sit on a hill overlooking Henry's fork of the Snake river. It is a spectacular view.

We went back up to Henry's Lake State Park and looked around. The lake can bee seen through our front windshield. There is a small campground near the lake and a boat ramp into the lake, but not much else. As with most areas in the bottom of the Valley, there are few trees, so no shade.
Henry's lake is large and therefore produces some pretty horrific winds. We feel these at our space at Valley View CG. On some mornings fog forms over the lake, an interesting site.
Yesterday we drove back up to Virginia City. When we were there the last time, it was late in the day and most everything was closed.We especially liked the museum, and the authentic 1880's buildings that are under constant maintenance. Some of the buildings were being repaired and were closed, but those were unoccupied.
On a whim, Brenda and I had our picture taken in period costume. It was fun, and these people have easy on and off costumes. This is the first time we had had this done.
These last 2 pictures were taken outside of the building through period glass. The first is a barber shop, and the last is a cobbler. All are mannequins. The buildings are not open to the public.

Today is laundry day and house cleaning day. It is unbelievable how dirty this place can get in just a couple of days.

Ta ta for now.

Sand Dunes & Big Springs

We had heard a lot about the sand dunes @ St, Anthony, ID., so we went down there on Thursday. They were formed from 2 extinct volcanoes and since it is so dry up here the area has turned to sand. The wind blows voraciously here and has caused the sand to form dunes.
They are a play ground for ATV and dune buggies. There is a campground on the BLM lands, where the people who like to do that sort of thing come and camp. Lots of toy hauler RVs.There is some debate in congress as to have these lands preserved and limit the use of the dunes. This could hurt this area if the people who like to play on the dunes are restricted from using them.We thought that we could park and walk on the dunes and take pictures of the ATVs.
We pulled int the day use parking area and proceeded to bury the front axle of the car deep into the sand on the road leading to the parking area. Ted, Donna and Brenda tried to push the car back out of the sand while I drove, no luck.A man with some young kids came along on ATVs and tried to help, again no luck. Two BLM people came along and with all of their help we finally got the car out. We needed to go back about 4 feet to get the front wheels on solid ground but the sand was unforgiving.

We had been wanting to do a leisurely float trip, but it has been so windy and cold that we couldn't go.Saturday the temperature came up to the high 70's and the wind died down, so we decided to go. We were taken to an area a mile or so from Big Springs where boats are launched for the trip down Henry's Fork. We rented an 8 man raft and 4 paddles.
We all are such experienced paddlers (not), that we weren't too far from the launch point that we were aground. We just couldn't get off of the gravel bottom.
Donna had on Crocs and no socks, so she got out and pushed us off of the gravel. We got going again and had no more groundings the rest of the trip.
It must have been a comedy to watch us go all over the river. We went from one side to the other. It was fun.
The trip normally takes about 3 hours to go the 5 miles back to the rental area, but with all of our paddling, instead of just floating, we finished in just over 2 1/2 hours.
Yesterday, Ted and Donna left for their leg home. We have had such a wonderful trip with them, but it was time for them to move on.
Ted has to go to Denver, for work, before they get home and they wanted to see Moab, UT.,and New Mexico this trip.

We went back to Big Springs yesterday afternoon. There were lots of people feeding the trout from the bridge.Big Springs is the head waters for Henry's Fork and it dumps into the Snake River.
The springs put out over a million gallons of water per day and is a constant 52 degrees. The water is so clear that the trout are visible from the bridge.
John Sacks came to this area in the 1930's and built a cabin just above the springs.
The cabin is a small 2 bedroom 2 story house made from logs. He cut the trees down and built the house by himself.He built a small building to house a generator driven by a paddle wheel from one outlet of the spring. He built all of the light fixtures and wired the house. The house went on the electric grid in 1942 at the cost of $24 per year.He was only 4'11" tall and the house reflects that.
The volunteers there are very knowledgeable and friendly. We struck up a conversation with them, and learned they are just starting out as fulltimers and plan to do so for 2 years.
We exchanged business cards with them, so we could follow each others travels on our blogs.
Today we are going down to Harriman State park and the Railroad Ranch.
Ted and Donna went last Friday and said it was a great time.

Ta ta for now.