Visiting Mt Rainier

Revisiting Judy's Mountain August 16-19th (Days 511-514)

Going to Mt. Rainier is an annual event for us. This year we decided to go to the Sunrise (east) side of the mountain. The campground within the park isn't a good one for Howie (too uneven, and too crowded anyway). We found this forest service campground a few years ago, and enjoyed the quiet, shaded sites. It's called Silver Springs. Since we arrived on a Tuesday, there were plenty of sites to choose from, although most had reserved signs for the upcoming weekend. The sites are large, well spaced and very shady from large trees. We welcomed the shade since it was over 80 degrees! (Judy's melting point.) It is right beside the one and only road here, so it's a bit noisy from traffic during the day, but not at night.

Hard to see stars at night with this canopy above!

All of this space was ours.

The best part of going to Sunrise is how close the mountain seems. We parked at the end of the lot so we could spread out a bit, unrolling the recently repaired awning to enjoy lunch after hiking.

If you look closely at the right side of the mountain, you can see steam...not clouds...coming up from a vent. We watched this off and on over the 3 days we were there.

Our first hike, up the side of the hill....not a lot of climbing, but starting out at 6400' and hot sun made it challenging enough.

Happy hikers! (yeah, right)...but happy to be out in the mountain air and sunshine. The air smelled like the trees and bushes...very different up here.

A view of the parking lot from our trail.

Harris had a similar picture taken from the Paradise side  made into a canvas for Judy last year...so we're comparing the view here.

More pictures of the steam venting from the volcano.

A view of the valley...along the Silver Fir trail.

We only went for a few days to escape Seattle's heat. Friday night, Harris went outside to get a shot of the moon at home. It was bright orange.

Taidnapam Park

Thursday July 7th - Sunday July 10th (Days 507-510)


Marilyn and Gene invited us to join them camping at Taidnapam Park, which is a Tacoma Public Utilities park near Randal, Wa...Mt St Helens territory. It was a good trip, almost the exact opposite of our last outing...Montana was HOT, and while Taidnapam wasn't cold, it did rain a lot over the course of the four days.

Marilyn's friends, Al and Sharon Brown also came along....Judy's taking refuge under their fifth wheel during a rain storm.

We walked every morning along logging roads, following streams that fed into Riffe Lake below the campground.

One of our campsites. We used the screen house here more for the rain than for the bugs.

Guess this little guy wanted out of the rain as well.

Harris cooked dinner over the grill on Friday night....very tasty chicken!

Marilyn's granddaughter, Maddy, wanted s'mores for dessert.

We left Sunday morning, leaving in plenty of time to stop in Kirkland on the way home for River's 3rd birthday party. The cake was beautiful, but she was really only interested in the frosting.:)

Off to Montana

Sunday June 26th -Friday, July 1st(Days 501-506) 

Candy and Rick were eager for us to come see the improvements they've made to their house in Hamilton, MT, and even more eager for us to see their new camper van. So, on Sunday we left our house and started east. We were surprised by the amount of traffic on the road. It  usually thins out for us once we get over the pass, but this time it didn't seem to let up until we were in Idaho.
We left early, drove all day, and arrived about 7:30 pm, just in time for a quick tour and a game of cards before bed.

This is a picture of 2 vans we saw ahead of us on the road. The one on the right looks like our Howie, and the one on the left looks like the Lubansky's new rig, minus its pop top. It's a Ford Transit that has been modified into a camper. We liked the side by side comparison here.

On Tuesday we took our rigs and went camping at a forest service campground about 30 miles or so from the house.The weather had turned HOT...in the nineties, with no plug ins for any air conditioning! Luckily the nights weren't too hot to sleep.

Our hors d'oeuvres for the afternoon snack.

Candy's relatives  Dave and Cyndee came along for the trip. The bugs were so bad we spent a lot of time under the screen house.

Wednesday morning Harris and Judy got up early and took a walk/hike up a nearby trail. The other campers loitered over their coffee and hiked later in the morning. By the time they left, we were coming back...melting again in the heat.

We had planned to camp for 2 nights, but the heat and bugs drove us home after just one night. Did we wimp out? Yes.

On our way home, we stopped to find an easy geocache at the veterans park in Darby, a town just south of Hamilton.

There was a fire just up the ridge from Darby, and although it wasn't close to Candy and Rick's house, the smoke from it filled their valley as well.  Between the heat and the smoke, we decided to leave a little early from Montana as well. Guess you could say we wimped out again. We were glad to come home on Friday to a bit of a drizzle and cooler temps!

South Beach, OR and home

Monday April 11th (Day 500)


We left Brookings and Harris Beach State Park on Monday morning and meandered a bit up the Oregon coastline. We love camping in Oregon, and the coast is beautiful any time of year.

We stopped for a quick lunch and walk at the Coquille River Lighthouse. Looking at our jackets, you can tell the weather is changing.

Another stop at Devil's Punchbowl close to Newport. We didn't get good pictures of the wave action which rushes into a tiny channel and boils up at the end into fantastic sprays.

That afternoon we stopped and camped for the night at South Beach State Park outside of Newport. We had never camped here before and we'd like to come back. It is a large park with just a short walk over the dunes to the beach. Unfortunately, the weather forecast was for rain and more rain the next few days, so we decided to just head home in the morning.

This was a great trip with Candy and Rick. We went from the deserts of Phoenix and Death Valley to the mountains to huge trees, through Napa Valley wineries to the Oregon coast. So much variety in the scenery along the way. Huge temperature changes within just a few day. Lots of good food, wine, card games and laughter.

Over 500 nights now in Howie! 

Brookings, OR

Sunday April 10th (Day 499)

Harris's knee was still bothering him so he skipped the hike through the Redwoods by Crescent City while Joe, Rick, Candy, and Judy. Judy was the official photo recorder.

This is the view from Helen and Joe's place looking toward our campground at Harris Campground.

And the views north and south.

Helen prepared a great meal.

Seafood salad, chicken, beans, potato salad, strawberries.

And the sunset followed by card playing 

To the Redwoods

Saturday April 9th- Sunday April 10th (Days 498-499)


On the way from seeing the largest/widest redwoods to the tallest redwoods, we decided to stop at a few wine tasting spots.

At the first winery, the Nelson Brothers hostess was showing a couple the property as a wedding venue and because Candy was being her charming self, the hostess gave us a bottle of wine and some passes to a nearby winery since she could not take care of us. Not bad.

We followed Goldie to the next winery where Candy and Rick bought a bottle of red so that Candy could stay ahead of the wine demand (and Harris could mooch yet some more wine).

We moved on until lunch time where we stopped at a (you guessed it) another winery.

We finally arrived at Jediah Smith campground in the Redwoods National Park where we found a site that could accommodate the two rigs.

This has become our new favorite national park campground because of the great sites and the new bathrooms and showers.

Sunday morning we hit the road early because our good friends Helen and Joe promised to treat us to Sunday breakfast at Star of the Sea Catholic Church in nearby Brookings, OR.  Biscuits and gravy, scrambled eggs, ham, sausages, hash browns, pancakes, coffee, juice, and lots of attention... all for $8 per person. Wow, what a deal and a meal!

We then took a walk through nearby Azalea Park which was stunning in its beauty. Lots of landscaping and volunteer help was evident.

An interesting feature was the Capella by the sea building. Details here:  http://or-brookings.civicplus.com/Facilities/Facility/Details/2

We then did a couple of geocaches which gave us an opportunity to drop off a travel bug we've been carrying since Phoenix, AZ. We thought it was appropriate to drop it off at the Boy Scouts building in Brookings.