Trip to Idaho
Friday Sept. 26th
We were to meet Candy and Rick Lubansky who live in the Bitterroot Valley in Montana so Judy and Candy, the decision makers, looked at maps while on the phone and settled on Farragut State Park, in Idaho.

We thought we’d leave early, but after a walk it was still 10:30 before we got out of Lake Stevens. Of course, last time it was 11:30, so, it’s progress of some kind!

We drove highway 2 all the way to Spokane, not hurrying, but not taking any long stops either. Then 90 to Couer d’Alene, then 95 north to Farragut State Park. It is a great place to camp and recreate. We arrived just before nightfall and only a few minutes before Rick and Candy.
They arrived in a “too cute” white Eurovan that when glanced upon made one think of good things of our generation- Woodstock, connecting with Mother Earth, not using more than your fair share, and sharing what you have with others. They popped up their home and came over to our place to share snacks and wine while we caught up on life events.

Saturday
After sleeping in…Wow these nights were chilly. The sun goes down and sucks up all the heat after it leaving behind clear star-filled skies that are barely visible through the dense trees of our campsites. After sleeping in until the temp was more manageable, taking hot (and unlimited) showers, and a quick breakfast, we were off to explore the lakeside town of Bayview.
Bayview is a stone’s throw from the campground and supports a summer resort economy complete with all services (bars, restaurants, realtors for summer vacation spots). Rick and Harris parked themselves on front row lounge chairs taken from the Corona beer commercials that had a commanding view of the lake. Judy and Candy window shopped the lake floating boat homes, some that were for sale for only 300,000+. We then parked ourselves at a floating bar that was cleaning out everything because it was closing for the season the next day. Candy focused on “Delicious Red”, Harris on a miss-poured beer, Judy on lemonade, and Rick (the DD) ice cream. We threw off our eating cycle by eating the salad bowl sized chips and salsa and gabbing for a couple of hours.
We introduced C&R to geocaching and they became instant converts. Well, Rick might become one after the Twins finish their season. We found one that Harris had to climb a tree to retrieve. The log was in the mouth of a complete face that someone had created and nailed 12 feet up on the tree trunk. One geocache was on the disc golf course. Judy found the hardest one that was hidden in a drilled out hole underneath a root, completely hidden from view. (We had warned Candy that Judy wasn’t up to hiking, due to a bad cold. “No problem, “ says Candy, “I have a bum knee”….right…..you should have seen her charging up those hills. Harris remarked “I’m glad she’s ‘slow’ right now!”)
They taught us a card game called “quarters”, a variation of rummy. We taught them whist.
Candy and Rick are definitely the people you want to camp with. They love to cook and are very generous with their provisions. Rick brought sugar free chocolate for Harris. He also made a great breakfast Sunday morning. After more geocaching, Rick and Candy left for home. We lucky retired folks played on.
(Note to C&R, Heyburn park isn’t worth the time.)

Sunday night
So…we drove further west and camped at Riverside State Park outside of Spokane. Beautiful place to be. We spent the next morning walking and geocaching in Riverside City park and downtown Spokane. We meandered back on highway 2 and decided to take a small detour up to see Grand Coulee Dam. What a marvel. Harris loves to see these things. He wanted to take the tour, so Judy bravely went along. We had to go through a metal detector, then we walked along the top of the dam to a little building. Inside we found several rows of long seats with rails in front of them positioned like a theater, which were all facing a glass wall. Great view of the part of the dam….then the guide came in, closed the door, pushed a button and we moved! Down, down, down a gentle incline to the inside of the dam. Judy closed her eyes. We stopped halfway down to see the tops of the generators, then continued down to the bottom of the turbines. Huge buildings, huge machines, lots of noise, and Judy was glad to get to the top again.

We decided to stay for the laser show, which is beamed from the visitor’s center to the face of the dam. Interesting, a little hokey (I am the mighty Columbia, life giving river), but fun to see. Especially since the weather has been so great. The evening was just a touch cool, and the stars were fantastic. We camped outside of the city at Spring Canyon national park. One great advantage to camping this time of year, there are very few other people around. Farragut was almost full on the weekend, Riverside had about 6 others, and Spring Canyon had 3 other campers.

Friday, September 12, 2008
Got up at a more decent time of 9AM and went on a walk of the Belknap premises. Talk about flowers and gardens! This could qualify as the Butchart Gardens of Oregon. There were several types of gardens including Asian and memorial, but our favorite was the secret garden. There were ten or more water pools and fountains with beautiful aromatic flowers enclosed within a circular wall. We were impressed. We decided to spend the day at the hot springs but camp at a national forest camp ground called Olallie that we heard about from a full timer Sprinter couple in Madras, Or. The camp ground is at the junction of 2 rivers. We will have plenty of water music tonight. At the hot springs we spent the afternoon reading and talking with various couples that showed up. A cleaning lady put up a closed sign on the men’s bathroom and I turned the sing around so that people thought that the pool was closed. We had the entire pool to ourselves for a couple of hours until someone investigated further and entered the pool area when they saw us. Their remark of “Wow, the lower pool is really crowded and this one has only you two” drew a smirk from Harris. When we returned to the campground for dinner we shared our next door neighbor’s campfire for an hour or so and heard about their plans to go deer hunting the next day. On a sadder note, we heard that the Jim (the older of the two hunters) had lost his 40 year old son in a hit and run accident in Renton this past June. It had made the local Seattle news and Jim is still working through that horrible experience (Police are still investigating). Judy made a great chicken stir fry and we are getting ready to see The Great Debaters now before bed.

Sept. 11 Thursday
Our morning walk outside the Tygh Valley Fairgrounds included a vulture drying its wings over a branch that it was perched upon, a dead deer (which might have explained the vulture just mentioned) and a cemetery that was established at the time of the Civil War! We said good bye to the “Escapees”, a group of RVers based in Oregon that had a 30+ unit rally there for the past 4 days (bean bag baseball, white RV elephant auction, shared fires in the evening and lots of RV experience story telling to us). Ours was the 2nd smallest RV there but they were a great group of people (made us feel like youngsters!)
We stopped in Sisters for Judy to check out the stores and for Harris to find some geocaches. Then it was to Bellnap Hot Springs. We decided to take the scenic short cut route 246 over the Mckenzie Pass. It was one of those half the mileage but triple the time short cuts. It reminded us of the road to Hana in Hawaii with many turns at 15 mph. What surprised us was the lava rock bed at the top of the pass. It looked like a moonscape with an observatory plopped right on the top of the pass (no problem with nasty lights here). We made it to the hot springs just before dark where we feasted on roast chicken brought from Rays Supermarket just 2 hours before. The double wrapped paper bags held the heat in perfectly! Soaked for a bit and Harris showed his love for Judy by watching Atonement (those 2 rum and cokes sure helped!)

Wed. Sept 10
Today was a very lazy day. We got up late, ate a very leisurely breakfast, talked to several of the retired group of campers next to us. We finally went for a walk down the road at about 11 or so. Came back for lunch, showers, then into Maupin to check out a few things. Harris wanted to use a coupon for a river rafting, but it was only good for an all day trip, something neither of us wanted. We went geocaching, but only found one of the three. (two were hidden by the same guy in the White River Falls State Park…found an empty fishing line where one could have been once…and the other was somewhere in a wall of rocks…) disappointing. The high point of the day was driving a back way into Maupin that a camper told us about that goes along the Deschutes River that was scenic with Tribal fisherman netting fish on wooden platforms and the river rushing by below them. We kept passing alternating signs every few hundred feet saying “You are entering public lands” and “you are leaving public lands”. Talk about bipolar! Now we're back at the same camp, drinking rum and cokes, sitting outside in the beautiful evening, and life is good.

Pics: Stonehenge, Mt. Hood in the distance, Maryhill Museum

Wed. Sept 10

Today was a very lazy day. We got up late, ate a very leisurely breakfast, talked to several of the retired group of campers next to us. We finally went for a walk down the road at about 11 or so. Came back for lunch, showers, then into Maupin to check out a few things. Harris wanted to use a coupon for a river rafting, but it was only good for an all day trip, something neither of us wanted. We went geocaching, but only found one of the three. (two were hidden by the same guy in the White River Falls State Park…found an empty fishing line where one could have been once…and the other was somewhere in a wall of rocks…) disappointing. The high point of the day was driving a back way into Maupin that a camper told us about that goes along the Deschutes River that was scenic with Tribal fisherman netting fish on wooden platforms and the river rushing by below them. We kept passing alternating signs every few hundred feet saying “You are entering public lands” and “you are leaving public lands”. Talk about bipolar! Now we're back at the same camp, drinking rum and cokes, sitting outside in the beautiful evening, and life is good.

September 9th –Crossing into Oregon
After a night where we thought we were camping in Safeco Field due to the constant trains that went by our campground at Maryhill State park, we were off to see Stonehenge, Maryhill art museum and the Maryhill vineyard. The campground was beautiful perched up on the edge of the Columbia River with widely spaced RV spots and abundant green grass with a view of the river and Mt. Hood. It just took awhile to get used to those trains!

Stonehenge was picturesque being on a hill overlooking the river and with Mt. Hood to the west. The souvenir shop was closed which was fine with us and there were a whole 4 people there plus 2 dogs. Just the way we like to visit places! It looked smaller to us than we were expecting, but then we realized that there just aren’t a whole lot of big sized rocks to work with in England.

Next stop was the art museum where Sam Hill was showcased as a techie pioneer. He was the first to pave roads and his future house which was turned into a museum because he lost interest in living in, was made by pouring concrete into forms for the entire house. Judy bought a basket kit while Harris was impressed by the realism painters and the Andy Warhol exhibit.
Listening to the GPS, we drove 15 miles east of the museum to go see the winery. When “you have reached your destination” rang out, we were in the middle of nowhere. Back tracking 12 miles we saw a sign that stated the winery was 3 miles WEST of the museum! Dang that technology! We entered the winery with high expectations for the wine that we had tasted with Bob and Glenda at Mt. Rainier, but were told that the Sauvignon Blanc that we tasted was not the traditional recipe like the new stock that was currently available. We left with a wine cork instead.
On our way to Central Oregon we started looking for an overnight camping spot 30 miles south of The Dalles (where Judy checked out a quilt shop while Harris found 2 geocaches). At an intersection where a sign exclaimed a state park 4 miles east and an rv park 7 miles west and neither were in our camping book, we decided to poll the local folk by knocking on a door of a house with a rig parked outside. She proceeded to tell us of a county fair ground that had shade, hook ups and was only a mile away. We checked it out and found it more than satisfactory. Not only was the price cheap at $15/night, but it also had wifi! This is where the past few logs are going to be uploaded.

Mt. Rainier Sept. 8
The weather continues to dazzle. Bob greeted Harris with coffee at 8 AM and the four of us sat around the campfire as the sun rose into the sky. Four hours later it was time to say good-bye with promises of getting together some time in the future. We decided to hike to Carter Falls, a short mile plus hike. When will we learn that hiking to see the falls, any falls, entails long stretches of up-hill hiking! The cool part of the hike involved crossing the river bed that the storm of Dec ’07 unleashed volumes of water that brought down train loads of boulders down from the mountain heights. It totally wiped out one camping section (Sunny Point) and many bridges. Looking down we felt as if we were in an Indiana Jones adventure film (even though we were only 4 feet above the “raging” river). The only way across the river was on a log that had been sawed in half. It had a skinny rail on one side. Judy got dizzy crossing the river, but felt adventurous! We finally left our campsite around 2 on our way to Maryhill, our next stop. Our gps wanted us to go west instead of east to get to Yakima and it proceeded to tell us to turn around for the next 30 miles as we headed to Paradise and Ohanapacosh to exit the park. We continued to ignore it…It’s a beautiful drive out that way and over White Pass. We did a quick stop in Yakima to check out emails at the library (no wifi, can’t believe it!) We rolled into the Maryhill state camp ground around 9PM.

MT. Rainier Sept 5-7, 2008
We left Friday around noon, and drove to Glenda and Bob Dehning’s in Shelton. Had a wonderful meal, slept in our little home parked in their driveway, and persuaded them to join us camping in Mt. Rainier the next day. It didn’t take them long to get ready, their camper is usually loaded…just a few clothes and some food and we were all off. We were following them to the Yelm highway and down 706. We passed through the little town of Alder, and all of a sudden Bob pulled off the road. He had a flat tire! He called AAA, and was told it would take several hours to send someone from Centralia (!), so he and Harris heroically did it themselves. (No small task…take the camper off, crawl under the truck for the spare, etc.) About an hour later we were on our way again. We camped at Cougar Rock for 2 nights. The mountain was out! Just a few puffs of clouds around her. Of all the times we have visited Rainer, this has to have been the “hands down” best visit, weather-wise. It was incredibly wonderful, very warm short sleeves and shorts during the day and crispy cool at night. We ate well with Harris and Bob cooking like cave men over the roaring fire (chicken and steak). We hiked around Paradise area, played 2 new games (Bananagram and Rummicubes) and taught them whist. A great time was had by all…sorry to leave tomorrow!
Ps…saw 2 bears at Paradise. One was a very large black bear in the valley below the road at the Inn. The other was a cub on the trail up to Myrtle Falls. I haven’t seen bears here since I was a little girl.