Further 2025 Adventures

We meet the most interesting folks at the local laundromat!!  The Lady from Texas was in BOISE as one of the venders at the EXPO where the State Fair had another week to run.  Her family owned company had 16 of the 40 games and rides for the two week event.  We were LUCKY to ask for a space at the RV PARK on the 2 days between the end of the 4H events and the remaining week of entertainment!!  She said that this was her last year - 16 years since she and her husband took over the business from her parents.  She was raised as a "carnie" and until recently has enjoyed the ROAD TRIP that is the carnival business;  she does go home to Texas for three to five months each year once the State Fairs / County Fairs are over but the profit has been eaten away by policy changes and inflation.  California especially has become a pain to work with both financially and paperwork required!!  Fortunately, one son still helps with the business end of things AND comes from his home in Texas to MOVE the rigs.  THAT seems to be a big deal / a huge enterprise all it's own!!  Once that is done, he flies back to his home and family and the paperwork!

From BOISE our next stop for just one night was Pendleton's KOA where we had the back-in spot overlooking a portion of the town including a HUGE Middleschool-Junior High with the mountains we had just descended as our backdrop for a refreshing stop.  They provided a paved pad to park the rig on as well as the towing vehicle, a nice picnic table surrounded by grass and a tree.  We ate our ice cream under the shade of the tree in our rocking chairs, enjoying the cooling breeze.  

Interstate 84 is one of the better freeways we have traveled; it was built in the 50s, 60s and finished in 1975.  We probably added an hour to our trip to Pendleton by taking a "road less traveled" thru Fruitland and Payette Idaho but needed a potty stop and a change of drivers, pulling into the go around road at a Mavarick station in Fruitland and getting our business done before one of the semis at the semi side of the station decided to come our way!!  Then we proceeded to Highway 210 through a beautiful farming valley on the Oregon side of the Snake River.  This side trip included passing a wide piece of farm equipment with our rig; the farm machine took a portion of the opposing lane but the pass was completed uneventfully!!  Praise GOD!  There were a lot of fields being mowed and harvested before we came to the "Narrow Road" and "Rough Road" signs!!  This was the beginning of the Onterio State Recreation Site we had noted on the Rand McNally Road Atlas!!  The rough road had been repaired where Hiway 210 skirted the Snake River and several washouts had occurred this Spring.  BEAUTIFUL AREA with fishing camps, boat launching area, and then BINGO back to I-84, but just in front of the WIDE LOAD that we had passed back at Caldwell Idaho!!  The flat and wide construction item, possibly a roadway of a bridge, had FOUR escort cars or pickups and was two tires off the side of the white line on all six or eight axles.  We passed it a total of four times on I-84.

On this side trip we saw snowy egrets, ducks, and geese but in three different contiguous ponds!! There were not as many nesting platforms on Highway 120 as on the highway past Palisades Reservoir on the Idaho / Wyoming border. There the platforms were every mile and the HUGE nests were occupied in most cases by either eagles or osprey.

Our next side road was a stop in Baker City where we enjoyed a Mom-made sandwich in the parking lot of a Dollar Tree (of course we found a nice city park just down the road on our way out of town!)  I was a good customer buying a couple of prayer journals and two FALL CUPS for enjoying hot beverages with friends and relatives.  I had left the Strawberry Inn Cups in the cupboard in Arizona!  We had our cups but no spares!  The cashier's daughter had just driven from Sprindfield Missouri to Baker City in an RV by herself, doing her counseling on line as our Kathleen does when on vacation or a trip!!  It felt like a GOD appointment.  Her daughter will be living in the RV there in Baker City, but Mom wasn't sure for how long!

Taking Highway 30 we rejoined the I-84 at La Grande.  The road was getting higher, into the evergreen trees and out of farm country.  The mountain road coming down into Pendleton, which is farm country again, reminded us of the road from our place in North Ranch up the mountain to Yarnell and on to Prescott,  it was totally separate from the opposing traffic, like almost on a different mountain!!   

The KOA in Pendleton is not in the town, which explains why we could not find it a couple of years ago and ended up in the overflow big rig parking lot at the Indian Casino on the east side of town.  The KOA is on the bluff on the south side of I-84 and will be a stop for another time since we did not take the time to do any touristy things.  I still have a Pendleton shirt that Diana made for her brother and I inherited, and a Arizona motif cape with fancy metal buttons that a friend in Strawberry blessed me with and I wear in the winter in Arizona.  So two pieces of Pendleton will serve me well, but I would like to see the town NEXT TIME!! 

We lamented the several burned areas in the Columbia River Gorge which we had heard about earlier in the year.  Lots of grass fires.  Fires are so hard to figure out.  How they start, and how they jump from here to there without rhyme or reason other than wind gusts.  That is an amazing piece of waterway from wide, smooth lakes to tight gorges topped by buttes that must have seemed a blockade to the folks on the Oregon Trail;  daily water for themselves and their critters would have required ropes and pullies to send able-bodied young folks over the edge and then pulling up the buckets and buckets and buckets of water needed for watering the critters and the travelers - washing clothes and bodies occasionally even!!  I have read MANY Oregon Trail books in the past six summers and I am not sure that I could have made that trip.  I like my comforts too much!

We will be rested up and exercised in the pool here at McMinnville for six days.  Thank you Jesus for safe travel and our own bed to sleep in, and a working refrigerator for maintaining safe food for our use.  Two of our OLD FRIENDS here in Oregon offered us their spare bedrooms, but we are "stuck in our ways" and said that was why we tow our bed, bath, and kitchen behind us!!   We do enjoy our travels though,  just need to stay in one place a couple of days at least!!

The Wandering Weathers

 

We left Congress the Wednesday before Memorial Day after a week of repacking the COUGAR.  Two days of cleaning it in Kingman and getting used to the 24 feet instead of the 33 feet of living space in our park model with a full kitchen and a full sized shower, a queen bed with room around it to a king that I have to literally CLIMB into using the TUFFET and the cover of the water pump.  I was amazed how quickly I became used to the smaller space!  LOL!!

In Las Vegas we were welcomed to the Oasis RV Park – 975 spaces – by Kerry Grenfell, Tammy’s husband.  Tammy being the mother of our grandchildren Amy Weathers, Tommy and Joey Poley.  They have California plates on their pickup and trailer;  we have South Dakota plates on our rig!!  It must have been a GOD THING!

Since AMY was a bridesmaid and Lane and Grace were ringbearer and flower girl respectively, it was an important stop on their summer loop as well as ours!  And it certainly made the farewells on Monday simple having us side by side.

It was a beautiful wedding, joining Cassidy, our granddaughter, and boyfriend Brandon as husband and wife.  It was a very hot afternoon in Las Vegas but the vision of a water course did add a cooling atmosphere to the occasion.   The venue was within walking distance of the condo that Brandon and Cassidy have been living in while he completed his BA in communications and she works as a cake designer at Las Vegas Custom Cakes where she has done several for Kathleen as well as her own wedding cake.   Lovely words were spoken and THAT LOOK on her Brandon’s face…I pray that 65 years from now she will be blessed with THAT LOOK as I am.  We were so glad that Uncle John and Aunt Diana could come as well as their family since they have been so important to Tom and Allan and now their kids and grandkids!!  They ran the service station the first summer that we owned the Strawberry Inn – they were newlyweds at the time!!  TIME MARCHES ON!

We didn’t exactly follow Tom and Allan on their nine hour trip to Moccasin – Amy and Wyatt’s house – to await the rescheduling of the back surgery which was put on HOLD pending the healing of the seven cracked ribs and the healing of the gash in Allan’s head – only ten staples - after his crash on the concrete decking at the pool behind the house son Tom had rented for the out of town wedding guests.  AND then just three hours later, collapsing into the shower, flattening the channel where the shower door is meant to slide.  Fortunately, son Tom had the tools to straighten it out so it was workable once the ambulance left with Allan and his son Tommy.  Too much excitement in one 24 hour period.  We did visit Allan several times during the two weeks we were there in Tuolumne County before we felt it was time to HIT THE ROAD AGAIN!

Next stop was Gridley where we spent three nights due to high winds before we headed toward Susanville going past Lake Almanore where they had a BIG FIRE several years ago.  Fortunately, Mabel and Arleigh’s family cabin was on the east side of the lake and that was spared.  So Sad to see all the burned trees still standing bleakly for miles, a sad legacy of the USForest Service’s transition to the USFire Service, thanks to the many law suits every time a portion of the overgrown forest is put up for bid!

We spent two nights in an amazing RV Park in Likely California, south of Alturas on 395.  HOW LIKELY IS A GOLF COURSE IN MODOC COUNTY CALIFORNIA?  NOT!!  Great Stop!  We will keep it in mind for our next trip toward Idaho.  Burns was our next stop with a side trip to see a ROUND BARN, a leftover from the cattle boom.  It was used in winter or bad weather to exercise and train horses!!  Lovely drive.  The trip from Burns to Boise on Hiway 20 through Vail and the Onion Capital of Oregon – Ontario – includes three small passes and it too was a lovely drive, lots of green since it has been a wet Spring, but next time we will cut down from Burns to Burns Junction on Highway 95 avoiding those passes and coming into The Treasure Valley/ Boise from the southwest.  The mileage is the same but pulling the COUGAR IS SLOWER WITH THE “STINKING Water” and “DRINKING Water” passes as well as the “5555 foot pass”

A week in Boise, visiting with Kathleen seeing her office on American Dr, gasing up at Costco and getting Tom’s new prescription glasses, which he had the exam for at the Modesto Costco before we left Tom’s.   It felt like we were “shoppers” having purchased the glasses in Prescott AZ before the eye doctor lasered his eyes so the glasses were never useful or correct.  None of the local optomologists in Sonora would even return our calls for local appointments, but the Modesto Costco DID.  They did say that they were not guaranteeing that a Costco in another state would accept the out of state prescription, but it was accepted at the Boise Costco and with no charge since the AZ glasses had not been used, the prescription was not correct.

Five days at the Arrowhead Campground in Cascade over the 4^th of July where Kathleen had slept in a YURT two years ago but was unable to shift her clients this year, as they had NO PLANS for the FOURTH and wanted to keep their existing appointments.  It was a rainy day for the Parade, but lots of people and a good parade with cars, floats by two churches, the 4 H Club, the Veterans, and lots of side by sides / Razors and Jeeps ending with the fire department and the HORSES.  That DAY, there was a landslide north of Cascade near Riggins, with no alternate routes available we knew we would be heading South back to Boise and then East and North to South Dakota to get Tom’s drivers license renewed prior to his birthday!!  We did make it to Buhl Idaho that night even stopping for a quick lunch and retrieving our SD mail from Kathleen between her appointments for that day!! 

We were rockin’ and rollin’ for two of the nights there at Buhl due to HIGH WINDS.  We even put the auxiliary stabelizers out on the corners as the winds were forecast for even higher the third night!!  The drive across Idaho to Swan Valley seemed TOO FAR,  so we found a place to park for just one night, we didn’t even unhitch!  The next day we found Highway 26 again and went past  the Palisade Reservoir on the border with Wyoming.  It is a BIG LAKE.  Beautiful drive, as is the road through Jackson Hole and the Grand Tetons!! They are STILL GRAND!  We might have been through Dubois (dew-boys according to the locals!!) at some time on our journies, but this time we stopped and stayed at Longhorn Ranch three miles beyond Dubois.  We attended worship at Mountain Grace Church.  We will add that to our memorable worship services - four speakers including a visiting missionary from Zimbabwe, the retired pastor who blessed the OPEN COMMUNION after explaining several aspects of its history, a retired pastor AND the existing pastor.  Very welcoming congregation and I had to stand on Tom’s windward side while he took the indoor covers off his sticks so he could USE the points of the ski poles to ground himself in the wind!!  We have learned that in the wind we only open ONE door of the GMC at a time.  A memorable stop on our summer tour – Dubois WY.

Having done the laundry, we headed to Riverton and on to the North Platte River Campground east of Casper WY again for just one night before going to Douglas where we caught Highway 59 up to Gillette WY on I-90 past all the coal mines, and on into Rapid City and Box Elder where we get our mail forwarded.  They have an RV Park that I would rate at a 3 but the price is right and we know our way around Rapid City after six years!!   Tom said that without an appointment we might have to wait awhile, but it is a very smooth and efficient Office of Public Safety and voila he had no problems giving them the two pieces of paperwork he was unable to input into the file he had started while we were at son Tom’s.  They gave him a license until 2030!!  We went out to lunch to celebrate;  a change of lifestyle will not be happening SOON,  LORD WILLING!

Next stop Cabela’s on I-80 in Sidney Nebraska, then leaving the rig, down to Yuma Colorado to deliver a metal creation that son Tom entrusted to us back in Las Vegas, not knowing when we would be in Colorado next…  FAITH IN ACTION  I would call it.  We had a nice lunch visit with Diana and John and even brother Byron that day, playing CATCH UP on our busy lives since we don’t exchange LETTERS anymore.  John’s sister had died, Byron and LaLani had a fascinating trip to England, and we had been doing what the Wandering Weathers do in the summer.

We hope you have enjoyed wandering with us as we catch up here in Colorado, seeing new babies, visiting with the rest of our relatives and relaxing here by the Big Thompson River near Loveland!!

Until we meet again, stay healthy and SMILE because GOD has already written the end of your story.

Love Tom and Martha – the Wandering Weathers

 

CIRCLE ETIQUETTE

We happen to drive through FIVE Traffic Circles to get south to Highway 60 in Wickenburg.  They really work quite well, except for a few IDIOTS who do not know the etiquette for use in traffic circles.   There are MANY semis on US 93 and they did not make the circles big enough for them to stay in the outside lane.  Tom always tries to get in a position to block the left lane so the semis can take a bit of the left lane without being run off the road by someone trying to pass IN THE CIRCLE despite the large yellow YIELD sign as you approach the circle which has a 20 mph speed sign as well!   Why is everyone in such a HURRY?  We have seen at least a half dozen accidents where the semi has been pushed OFF THE HIGHWAY only to create a large delay in the traffic flow.  And I doubt that anyone got the license number of the vehicle that caused the accident!!

The second most flagrant problem is making a right turn from the center / left lane crossing in front of the vehicle in the circle.  The kind thing to do would be to slow down and get into the right lane for making a right turn!  Again, being in a hurry is a recipe for disaster!  Or at least a fender bender.

For the number of semis and vehicles of Highway 93,  it is a wonder we do not have MORE road closures.  Just last week the north and south bound lanes were closed from the highway 84 exit to the highway 71 exit, sending all the traffic through CONGRESS, a little wide spot and back to highway 93.  I am sure that was a blessing that there was a solution to STOPPING the traffic on that main north/south highway even if frustrating for the people making that detour!

 

So use your brain rather than your accelerator and allow the other person to HAVE the right of way!

 

END of an ERA

It has led a PRODUCTIVE LIFE - the Viking Sewing Machine that Tom bought me in 1971 along with the sewing lessons in the "stretch and sew" technique in order to build my maternity clothes for Kathleen Ann.  I remember modeling the clothes at the Fashion Show in Platte Canyon, and then remodeling them after she was born to continue to wear them.  That is what Connie had promised to help me with when we purchased the machine!!  She was our "across the road" neighbor there in Colorado. When we moved to Poughkeepsie NY it was curtains for the house there and headbands for the "wild Indian Birthday party!"

In San Jose I was making cute clothes for Kathleen, camping and skiing equipment using Frostline kits and mending blue jeans, or making summer shorts from the knee-less blue jeans for the boys.  Fast Forward to Strawberry and it was napkins for the INN, more clothes for Kathleen, Skirts for the waitresses, gifts - like placemats - for family, clothes for myself.   It continued to be used for mending blue jeans and its last two projects were a quilt for Lane, our great grandson, made from all those blue jean legs.  It's last project was a flag to put on my trike for rehabing my second new knee this Spring!

Truly, that 54 year old sewing machine has had a long and productive life!!  But after dropping it off in Prescott Valley to be rehabbed ( like my knee )  The repair person said "NO, NO, NO"  but promised to check it out and if it was NOT repairable - no charge!  He would call either way!!  We got the call just the other day while on the way to my Physical Therapy - "Sorry,  not repairable!"  I asked if they knew anyone who needed a BOAT ANCHOR?  Got a laugh and an offer to trash it for us so we would not need to make another 3 hour round trip to pick it up!!  I would RECOMMEND that sewing machine store in Prescott Valley, where it was snowing when she called!!  Thankfully, the new knee is doing quite well for just Six Weeks post-op.  Today is my last day for PT and I would also recommend the Recovery Department at Wickenburg Hospital.  

 So stay STRONG, HEALTHY and keep smiling!! 

WOW!

THE LAST DAY of January.  Where did this month go?  Dentist, PCP, knee doc x 2, neurologist, chiropractor and THE FLU!!  This last item stole 2 weeks from this first month of 2025 for me.  Fortunately,  Tom did not get THE BUG.  Of course he didn't get any kisses either, and not much in the way of HOME COOKING!!  The microwave did a gangbuster job though!!  We did get one touristy trip to Sedona to check out the pretty ROCKS.  They haven't changed since Before Children when we took the southern route back to South Pasadena one year from our annual trip to Colorado to visit family.  The road builders had not completed I-40 so Route 66 was our normal route to Denver.  And both of our families lived in Denver!!

Sedona was a lovely little oasis in the Red Rock section of Arizona back then; now it is a touristy stop with lots of gift shops, bakeries, eating establishments and even in January plenty of vehicles doing the many traffic circles and stopping in all of the parking areas at the start of the plethora of hiking trails.  We drove out to the Church of the Holy Cross but were not able to hike the ramp going up to the Church.   First, Tom refuses to get a HANDICAP placard.   Second,  I am getting my second new knee on the 12th of February!!  Won't that be a FUN Valentine's present?

I am actually looking forward to the Physical Therapy which starts just 2 days after the surgery.  My surgeon feels it best to keep moving as much as possible, as soon as possible.  After "several events" on my new knee, I am hoping the PT will be a help for it as well as the New new knee!!   I told the surgeon that I want to be able to dance at my granddaughter's wedding on Memorial Day.  He said, "No Problem!"  So we will take any good thoughts, prayers etc. for success and no tripping until it is the "light fantastic" on the dance floor on Memorial Day!!

 That leaves just a week or ten days to check a few more "gotta see this winters" off my list.  Wish us well!!  By the way, we have had two neighbors assure us that they are ready and willing to help during my rehab - just holler.  As many of you know, I have no problem offering to help or ASKING FOR HELP!!  In the INN YEARS it might have been stirring the spaghetti sauce, bussing tables, or refilling water glasses in the dining room.   In the RESORT YEARS, it might have been shoveling snow, shaking pillows into pillow cases  (all the granddaughters have memories of THAT), or checking to see if the swimming pool needed the debris shoveled off with the long handled seine.