Another Best Day So Far

Security drove around the WalMart parking lot south of Albuquerque several times, I guess to make certain we were safe.  It's a fine place to park.

After few hours of southbound driving we opted for a back road into White Sands National Park.  The desert prevailed but periodically there'd be a lava field or a variation in vegetation or lack thereof.  Overhead the clouds ranged from scattered fluffy cumulus to dark rain clouds with hanging virgo which also sometimes reached our windshield.  Notable throughout the desert southwest these days has been the wind.  The roads are smooth and often straight but correcting for wind gusts keeps me glued to the road and steering wheel.

Our vision of the white sands was that it was just off the main Interstate but in fact it was an hour or so off.  Yet, the side trip was well worth it.  Kids had sleds and were sliding down the banks.  In places there were small drifts of sand across the road, much like snow.  The sand is the result of gypsum from the mountains getting trapped in the valley and eventually breaking down into very fine crystal.  While some of the sand was soft and difficult to walk in, like Oregon beaches, the dunes were firm and easy walking.  Apparently there is moisture not far below the surface which keeps the dunes firm.

After reheating leftovers from last evening's restaurant meal, we just sat back and rested.  Our niece in El Paso wouldn't be home until later in the evening so we had time to pause between driving and visiting, and visiting and driving.

Kathleen arrived home as scheduled.  We shared stories of the past and some ice cream on a bit of chocolate cake from the day before.  Then it's back to the evening routine for a night in the covered wagon, this time is cherished electricity from the house.  Good night.

 

Flagstaff to Albuquerque

This day, the start of week three, was the best day so far.  Of course, each previous day was also noted as the best so far.  We awoke in a rest stop just east of Winslow, Arizona, surrounded by dozens of semi-trucks.  The movement of America at work or in this case asleep.

It rained throughout the night which considering that we are in the middle of a desert and have been for a week or more is quit intriguing.  My sister whom we left late last evening said she received about .35 inches which is great for someone who counts on rainfall off her roof for survival.  The day was cool, in the fifties instead of the nineties.  We stopped at a state park where there were Hopi ruins.  We were the first and only customers and had to ring the doorbell to get into the gift shop.  I was intrigued by the story of one village which had more house fires than similar villages.  They conjectured accidental fires, wildfires or ceremonial fires, but no conclusions.

 

A bit later in the morning we stopped at the Painted Canyon in the Petrified Forest National Park which I realized we had seen years ago on another trip between my sister and our adopted son’s biological mother.  It was still awesome, breathtaking and as beautiful as ever.  The small cumulus clouds cast moving shadows over the multiple-colored valley.  What a gorgeous planet we have been planted on and what a great land we live in.

 

About mid-afternoon we arrived at the home of Joan, our adopted son Darron’s biological mother, in Albuquerque.  Joan had the table ready for tea.  She brought out the hot tea followed by a chocolate cake with a heavy fudge-like frosting.  After digesting all that sugar we shared a meal at a restaurant down the street.  After a couple hugs and words of appreciation in both directions we headed out for an overnight in another WalMart lot.  

 

Joan is 85 and starting to look a bit frail.  She’s sharp as a tack and as beautiful as ever.  She practices daily Zen meditation for which she was an instructor all her life.  She continues group meditation alone but simultaneous with others the in group.  She has given up her car as she feels unsafe after having several TIAs.  We are so blessed to have her as the biological mother of our son and now a dear friend.

Nephews and a Rough Trail

Sunday was a full day, full of nephews, four of them.  One, a twin, turned 60 in January and his brother a senior by two years, share a house in Tempe, on the eastern edge of Phoenix.  They are Gail’s sister’s sons.  The other two are my sister’s sons, one a residence of Cave Creek on the northwest edge of Phoenix and the other a Wisconsinian (Is that a correct label?).

 

Their jobs or occupations were vastly different and interesting.  Steve, who moved to Alaska and lived with us for a while, the eldest, inspects houses for buyers hoping to buy.  He has had a life of extreme lows and highs but is doing awesome with a daughter in Juneau studying to be a marine biologist and the older about to graduate from Johns Hopkins in nursing.  His 60-year old brother, Cameron, works for a company that creates gases such as oxygen for hospitals and hydrogen for vehicles.  He’s involved in the design and installation of the equipment that uses these gases.

 

On my side of the family Craig designs the inflatable escape ramps for airplanes.  Yes, you read that correctly, the inflatable ramps of airplanes. Intriguing!  His wife suffers from continuously uncontrollable pain and therefore no longer works as a psychiatric.  Craig’s younger brother, Kevin, gathers wind data for companies which install wind chargers.  He’s visiting his mother, my sister Ruth, during a break from a job in New Mexico.

 

Saturday evening after leaving our friends and a fresh welcomed shower in Patagonia, Arizona, we found the nephews' house and stacked a claim on their driveway for a night of land electricity.  Steve took us to an Italian dinner that evening and Cameron treated us to breakfast at US Eggs.  The afternoon meal at The Creek was shared with the other nephews, a spouse, a mother and a mother-in-law.  What a delight to see and meet them all.

 

That evening we parked on a gravel pad just off an Interstate exit along with about half dozen other overnighters.  One knocked on our window almost as soon as we stopped looking for help with his RV battery which quit working.  After he explained the problem I knew the issue was way over my head.  A friendly chap he was.

On the way to Flagstaff we stopped by to visit with some cliff dwellers but no one has been home for several hundred years.  I wonder how many children fell off the edges.

 

Just before Monday noon we arrived where the pavement ends and the trail to my sister’s home starts.  She met us there and we discussed whether the van could make the drive.  The worst was the first one hundred feet, a rutted steep twisty stretch.  The next 25 minutes were level but the best and well defined wash board trail we have every driven.  The last 10 minutes consisted of extreme S-turns which we had to exaggerate to avoid the close juniper trees most of which were dead for lack of rain.  She has ruins of a Native American village on her property.

 

After swapping stories and laughs, eating fish tacos made by her son and playing a couple rounds of the game Clue – the original one that we played on as children 60 years ago – we sauntered off and crept back out to the pavement and down the road to a rest area for a early stop and rest.

 

Charlie’s doing awesome although today was tough because he had to stay outside in some miserable wind.  BYW, we also shared a hug and a fresh drink of water with Shirley and Jim Morehouse a couple days ago.

 

The End of the Week

We fully anticipated that there be diversity and variety throughout this trek.  We arrived at Kenny and Sally’s mid afternoon Wednesday.  The drive through the LA suburbs to reach their home west of Disneyland was about as easy a drive in that area that I can recall.  I405 which abuts their backyard has been under construction for many years but now the sound barrier wall is complete and their backyard is again theirs.  The wall is very effective but for those of us who live where there often is total silence in the evening, the constant din of traffic is notable.

 

Kenny, one of Gail’s three brothers – she had three sisters also – will be 89 years old this weekend.  A farm boy as a child, a young farmer as he started a family, and an animal nutritionist for a career Kenny has been faithful to the Presbyterian church and fully opinionated on all topics.  His hearing has waned to the point that only robust direct comments can be heard.  As a Luddite on matters of cell phones and as an old-timer regarding the use of computers for determining the rations for cattle, he lives in a world of the past.  Among the blends of virtues and vices, he and his wife Sally are the only remaining siblings of Gail’s who remain married to their original spouses – 64 years.  The other remaining two lost there spouses to death.

 

Unfortunately Kenny's basketball team, the Lakers, lost the evening we were there.  He does enjoy watching sports in his world.

 

Thursday evening we drove out of the "city" and parked in WalMart's parking lot near Palm Springs.  This gave us a clearly needed head start because the journey through more desert to our Alaskan friends' home in Patagonia was an all day exercise.  Having seen 28˚ the morning we left Salt Lake, it was a shock to see 97˚on the thermometer in the van.  When we stopped and chatted with our friend Dave, he got out his calendar and explained that it was 22˚ that morning and had reached in excess of 90˚ by that afternoon.  We were pleased with the 45˚ the next morning and continue to anticipate the high 90's this afternoon.

We've known David and Sondra 45 years and would probably declare each other on the list of best friends.  Dave worked through a bone cancer many years ago in a hospital in Seattle.  Sondra also fought off cancer about the same time.  They decided that they didn't need to fight off Alaskan winters any longer and purchased a winter home here just 20 miles from the Mexican border.  Now the short season is in Alaska during the summer and their temporary shack is a beautiful home only minutes from where their son, daughter-in-law and only grandson live.  They too are aware that they no longer have the energy and drive we all had when homesteading in Alaska bush.

After having grown up in small town North Dakota, living mostly in remote Alaska and now having a home in the foothills outside small communities in Oregon, traveling Interstate highways in southwestern United States is always a shock.  On the highways the constant bumper to bumper flow of semis moving something to somewhere else is hard to conceive or understand.  I contrast that with our life in small town areas, and also with the settlers a hundred and fifty years ago, and it totally astounds me.  Watching civilization evolve through the movement of stuff is an encyclopedic story in itself.

Here in a bit after a little rest while we occupy the home of our friends who had to leave on an afternoon errand, we will head north to Phoenix to set the stage for visits with nephews - three of them.

Week 2 Day 1 aka Day 8 aka Tuesday, March 22

 

This evening feels like we’re camping.  It’s an exit to nowhere off I15 just north of Las Vegas.  The sand is white and the surroundings are cluttered with garbage from other campers; we’re not the first to claim this spot.  There’s another hour before sunset and the thermometer registers 76˚, a far cry from the 28˚yesterday morning in the Salt Lake area.  Our appetite is light and there’s plenty of food in our galley.  It’s almost like being home on a quiet sunny evening.

 

Utah is a geological marvel.  Never is there a place where a horizon doesn’t have mountains.  Some are snow covered, others have some vegetation.  Some are twisted lava rock; some are mesas with a top crust of rock; some mesas are inclined and fractured; and some are eroded valleys and canyons.  I gasp at the differences and the beauty of each one.

 

Interstate 15 travels for some 30 miles through Arizona as it moves from Utah to Nevada.  That was awesome as it twisted and turned through huge rock canyons for about 5 miles.

 

Our covered wagon – a analogy to the trains of wagons with families of settlers of a century and a half ago - of this journey didn’t have a ripped canvas but did have a rock pit in the windshield.  Within blocks of our departure from cousin Cheryl this morning, we stopped at a windshield repair place along the road hoping to get some miracle chemistry to close the wound and prevent future aggravation.  They were so congenial slipping us in with an appointment in ten minutes and patching it within minutes.  The repairman found a second pit – a very very small pit – which he fixed at no charge.  We have been so blessed with the service on our covered wagon.  We still have some issues: we don’t fully understand why the refrigerator doesn’t always hold its temperature, and the fresh water tank still has a major leak.  Someone referred to us as “dry camping.”

 

Charlie – remember he’s the four-legged traveler – thoroughly enjoyed his visit with Murphy, the four-legged labradoodle who managed the house for Cheryl and Bob.  He had access to a full box of toys including his favorite which squeaked with each bite.  And there was a “doggie door” to the fenced back yard which he had to be taught how to use.  In the parking lot where we parked we could freely play fetch with the frisbee.  Now he’s laid out flat on his favorite bed between our seats after an evening meal with a touch of fresh milk.  He is a bit overwhelmed with all the new smells at each new stop.

 

Tomorrow morning we will continue toward Westminster, California, which is the home of Gail’s brother Kenny’s family where we will hang out for a couple days before heading east.  Westminister is south of LA and west of that Disney place.

 

Now the sun is setting and it’s time to dig out the peanut butter and jelly.

What do you call a vacation when you are so busy that there’s no time or energy to write a blog? 

We arrived at Toni’s home in Reno late afternoon with plenty of time to blog and kick back.  She said she’d back after a medical procedure about 6PM.  The lawn chairs in the front yard were perfect for this scenario; when lo and behold she pulled up with a friend neighbor as her chauffeur.  The exchange of stories about before Alaska, after Alaska and during our time as neighbors in Trapper Creek kept us energized until dark and bedtime.

 

Toni’s latest best friend after four marriages is “Jimmy to the Rescue,” if I remember right, a poodle type who received his name because he rescued her from her fifth marriage.  Her three kids, now of course, adults, are scattered about: Tony’s in the Carolina’s living a secluded life after some major effects from injuries in a Gulf war, Elizabeth’s in Eugene and Greg’s a captain in the fire fighting professional.  We visited Greg on the other side of town and had a chance to see his collection of Coleman lanterns throughout the house and garage.  The second evening her friend Willie joined us for a salmon dinner (see about image).

 

Paul, Toni and Willie all shared a common theme regarding Nevada – “I love Nevada, I love the desert.”  I thought it ironic when told that one of the joys of Nevada was climbing into one of the many isolated mountain ranges finding water and trees.  In Oregon we also find the beauty in water and trees and we don’t have to climb a mountain range to find it.  It’s so great that different individuals enjoy different environments so we can scatter about.

 

Sunday we left early for an eight-hour drive to Salt Lake which was exaggerated by crossing into an earlier time zone making it an hour later when we arrived at my cousin’s house.  Hundreds of miles of sagebrush with some grass land on the alluvial fans coming out of the mountains backdropped with mountains leading up to scattered snow and then solid white peaks, were our scenic views for most of Nevada’s 400-mile crossing.

 

We crossed into Utah at Wendover which straddles the states’ border with casinos on the Nevada side of town and everything else on the other side.  Leaving Wendover one drops down in to flatlands, really flat flatlands, the Bonneville Salt Flats flatland which reaches for nearly another hundred miles until the sage brush and mountains reappear on the edge of Salt Lake.  There’s a temptation to drive off the road and race down the flats but DOT had already thought of that having put a fence along the shoulder of the road that lasted forever.

 

The salt flats also offered a wind, a strong wind, fortunately coming from the rear left, rocking the van from time to time.  The skies were clear or polka-dotted with fluffy white clouds in a deep dark blue sky.  Cheryl however texted and said that they were experiencing a snow/rain mixture which we discovered in the last ten miles.  That evening was cool and breezy which was OK.  However, the next morning the water on the vehicles was ice and our outside thermometer read 30˚.  Fortunately we’ve mastered the van furnace so life is good.

 

Cheryl’s husband had been a lawyer which took them to multiple houses and apartments over the years.  Being Mormons doing mission work contributed to frequent moves.  Murphy, an almost three-year old puddle mix keeps them active and entertained.  One of their three daughters, Britta, a twin, joined us for our first evening meal; a relative I had never really met before.  What a joy, and what a delight she is.  Her twin is in the LA and their sister and family are in Hong Kong with plans to leave soon, neither of whom we will meet this trip.

 

One goal in this trip is to visit the Mormon genealogy library and Cheryl graciously took me there this morning (Monday).  What an active place that is!  On level B1 we were escorted to computers and joined shortly by a helper.  My question was with regard to the confusion about our first adopted daughter and why our names were listed as parents of a person with a totally different name but the same birthdate as our daughter.  Apparently a computer in a different agency accumulated this data and we couldn’t do anything about from this angle.  A specialist joined me but we couldn’t get much further than we already had gotten.  It’s great to know that one is doing well in one’s research and disappointing that we couldn’t get further.

 

Now we are allocated free time and blogging is possible.  The sun is shining, the wind is blowing, the van is comfortable, and we’re kicking back.  Oh, by the way, I have no answer to my original question.

 

 

 

 

Day Three - Leaving California

Lake Walker

This was our first day on this trip to experience a gated community.  The community had a single entrance, a sign saying to check in with the head office and a speed bump.  Along the right side were about eight single-wide pre-fab homes with space enough between to walk.  On the left was a equal nunber of RVs permanently connected.  In the center of the cul-de-sac were several more RVs.  The residents acted like a big happy family, at least what we saw.  At the end of the cul-de-sac was dock and patio overlooking a beautiful lake with mountains as a background and full of fish.  And a bit of mercury from mismanaged explorations in the past.  From Jack and Shannon’s deck on the third home from the lake, the view was equally awesome especially of a cool Californian evening.

 

Jack is one of the blessings of our lives, a single fellow we met in Trapper Creek and with who we shared many adventures and slices of rhubarb pie.  He married and we were there at his first child’s birth.  Since then he married again accumulating about eight step-sons and step-daughters.  If we were to return home today the trip was worthwhile.

 

After a shared Thai meal down street and a second night in the RV, we journeyed up and down winding through the big hills or small mountains, out onto a flat fruit producing central valley of California and back up and down and around through similar hills to Reno.  The schedule flip-flopped on us and we continued on to Hawthorne, Nevada.  This too is new territory for us.  It’s the childhood and now retirement home of a good friend and college classmate – Paul.

 

Hawthorne, beyond the south end of badly depleted Walker Lake, is the largest military ammunition depot in the world with semblance of appearance to that of the Umatilla military depot with rows and rows of identical half-buried structures.  However, on the opposite of Hawthorne is the mountain range Paul loved, explored, hiked and talked about.  He told us someone had told him once that Hawthorne is colored in multiple shades of brown.  We agree.  Not a tree or a blade of grass.  Just sand and barren brush.

 

Paul sought his PhD in English after we parted ways but ended up repairing and selling phonographs in the ‘70’s.  He never married but fostered and supported many a teenaged boy.  His stories of their successes were a pride and joy among his tales as we reminisced and caught up on life.  Back in college he started writing a fictional Western based on his adventures in the canyons of these hills.  He continues to delight himself in writing and rewriting the novel which may only ever live in his heart.  He commented several times on the time it takes to put together a one-hour radio program on classical music with commentaries on their histories and composers.  It’s been 56 years since we graduated from college.  I doubt if I will see him again in 56 more.

 

We shared a meal in the local casino, essentially the only eating place in town, swapped a couple more stories and crawled into our sleeping quarters.  The nearly full moon shone down on us with a smile.

The Best Day Ever So Far - Day Two

The drive to Lakeport was quite routine, but you might like to know that we paid $6.30 for diesel fuel in Weed, California.

If this is indicative of future days, we will be overwhelmed with great friends and lacking in time to blog.

Much more visiting, reminiscing and having a great warm fuzzy time and less blogging.  Maybe more, hopefully more, tomorrow.

Day One

There’s a story, fact or fiction, I don’t know, about a family on a road trip.  After a day at the Grand Canyon, the boy made a short entry into his mandatory daily journal.  The father being curious what he wrote, took a look and read, “I spit a mile today.”

Today I could simply write, “All’s well that ends in some unscheduled location,” however, I won’t.

The day had a bit of a rocky start as a stomach acted up and invited (invitation accepted) one to take an early morning nap.  Nap done, stomach settled, everything packed:  noon is a great time to start a road trip.

Stop number one was the RV dealership in Junction City with a question or two.  The receptionist said everyone’s at lunch so we drove around the back door and chatted with some technicians just standing around.  We left there a bit wiser now knowing that they couldn’t answer our questions.

We pulled into a gas station to top off the tank.  We saved 20 cents a gallon by choosing the station where the diesel fuel was $5.20 a gallon as opposed to $5.40 down the street.  We thought four dollars for gasoline was high.  Wow.

We considered driving the beautiful scenic coastal highway 101 to our first stop, the home of an Alaskan couple, but chose the monotonous straightforward, yet beautiful (all of Oregon is beautiful with the sheep grazing in rich green meadows with mountainous backgrounds) on I-5 for this inaugural drive.  We’ll drive it again someday; we’ve done it several times in the past.

Rolling down the backside of Siskiyou Pass into California we were prepared to relinquish our bag of quartered oranges as we passed through the California inspection station.  As we approached the station we noticed no lines and people were gong through quite quickly.  When we pulled up to the stop sign by the vacant booth, we read the sign stating that there were no inspections today and that we should process with caution.  The oranges were safe for another day and they are delicious.

After grabbing a bit to eat and walking the dog we settled into our first overnight in the van, so happy to be on our way.

  

What to Expect

I expect that I will have to push on the accelerator a bit harder to climb out of our driveway.  I expect that I will have to swing a bit wider turning out of the driveway.  I expect that because I've done it in the past and I know I need to do that.

What I don't know and for what I have only vague or no expectations is where we will park the first night or where we will fuel up.  Believe it or not we have never fueled this camper van.  This is a relatively new experience for us.  Oh, we've traveled broadly having been to al the states but Oklahoma and some 20 countries, but we were younger, more adaptable to change and foolish enough to take unforeseen risks.

We've talked to Jack and Shannon on the lake with whom we will share a St Patrick's Day meal.  And with Toni who has had her son clear the trailer from her driveway in Reno so we can park there.  Cousin Cheryl is planning to go to the Mormon genealogy library in Salt Lake City with us in about a week.  Even with those general plans we don't know what to expect for details.

The van itself has many variables like which switches need to be flipped which way to make the refrigerator work.  And how comfortable will the fold-down couch/bed actually be.  And then there's the dripping water we discovered yesterday after waiting for months to fill the tanks, months during which temperatures dropped low enough to freeze the water if we had filled the tanks earlier.

One of the joys and outcomes from living in remote Alaska is that we had to solve many unexpected issues on the run.  We expect that there will be some of the same on this trip.  It makes me a little nervous but visiting with family and friends, especially after two years of pandemic limitations, the deaths of Gail's sister and cousin, Denvy's brother and niece (none COVID related), is worth any risk.  Rising and record-breaking fuel prices are a topic in the news these days but that's irrelevant considering that a reason for the increases is the war in Ukraine where we left friends and acquaintances after a mission trip to that country almost two decades ago.  We are so concerned about them that fuel prices are trite.

We expect to be gone from Oregon for more than two months, long enough for the war to take some drastic turns, COVID variants to disturb normality again, the status of friends and family to change with marriages, births and deaths, and Mother Earth to kick up some notable weather and regreen its fields and forests.  Thinking of it that way we are ready and rearing to go.

Having done some twenty-plus mission and service trips and several extensive family journeys including three weeks of driving around Europe in a van, we know this will end on the up-side.  Therefore we set aside our expectations and heed the words that say don't worry about tomorrow, tomorrow will have enough to worry about in itself.

The above pre-trip images are from Bob Main's collection of awesome photos.  Thanks, Bob.  It is our expectation to provide our own images as we move along.

It's The People

Yes, it is definitely the people.  They are certainly the reason for this toad trip.  Oh, yes, we will see many new vistas, taste a broad variety of foods, experience a host of new events otherwise not found sitting in my recliner, but it's the people who initiated this trip and who will give it dimension.  It will be the people we know and have known, people who are family and perhaps seldom or never seen, and the people who we have never met and will never see again as we move on.

As we prepare for this trip by making lists and checking off items on those lists, we are also reviewing names, memories and contact information.  Yesterday we checked in on a friend and we were given yet different phone number.  The second number revealed an exuberant "Gail and Denvy, what a blast from the past!"  That in itself ratcheted up our enthusiasm several notches.  She was a next door neighbor in Trapper Creek, a friendly progressive young lady with kids about the age of our kids.  We've haven't seen her in say about 15 years, but as the cliché goes, "We picked up where we left off," years earlier.

Not every effort to reconnect goes like that.  Several phone messages remain unanswered.  Some are doing their own traveling and our timing was unfortunate.  Some are no longer capable of answering the phone, which is why we would love to see and hug these people one more time.  Some don't really know us from Adam and aren't interested in meeting their never seen great aunt and uncle; besides they have their own busy lives to live and, well, we're just not part of that schedule.  In these cases, they may be on our list but we are not on their list of people to connect with, and that's just fine.

This nasty war in Ukraine is another reminder that it's the people.  We did a mission trip there in 2004 helping convert a storefront into what was to become their church, doing some Bible studies with the children, and sharing worship and a retreat experience in the rural hillsides.  Now we're not thinking about the statutes we saw, or the quaint small houses with gardens and a tethered cow, or the churches and marketplaces; we're thinking about the families with whom we stayed and the church members with whom we shared a Ukrainian hymn.  We're thinking about Yiktor, Ivanka, Raya, Sasha and so many whose names have vanished even those the memories of laughter haven't.  Now 18 years later, these young people are of the age of those fighting for Ukraine and raising their young families.  Yes, it's the people who are the reason.

Setting aside the comforts of home and stability doesn't compare to the relationships we will kindle with this trip.  Besides when it's all done and said, and we cross the bar to another phase, what will there be but relationships.  We suspect there will be no physical bodies, no possessions, only our essences interacting with the essence of others.  Yes, it's the people.  And so we get up out of our bed, our recliner, our comfort zone to connect with people.