After returning from Anachortes Gary and Judy now must learn a whole new way of traveling. Stepping up from a two-person backpack tent and a Honda Civic to the 23 foot Aquarius was easy. We have done this on vacation each year for thirty years. We are now expanding into a huge 34 foot long by 8 and a half foot wide motor home with double slides.

After hanging around Scappoose for a little over a week to get our dentist visits out of the way, and transfer bunches of stuff from storage into our new home, we are now underway on our first trip in the Arcturus. This is the name we have commissioned our Alpine motor home with. It is the name of a nearby star that is easy to locate by following the curve of the handle of the big dipper. It is also kind-of appropriate since it wonders around the North Star, Polaris, throughout the year.

Our first destination was the Sun Valley, “Swing-n-Dixie,” Jazz festival. We listened to five whole days of Dixieland jazz, blues, even some French interpretation of American jazz, but one of our favorite groups was Ann and Jeff Barnhart with their Flute and Piano duets.

Sun Valley lived up to its name. It was sunny and nice Wednesday through Saturday, October 13-16th. Sunday was cooler and cloudy. Our friends, Ed and Sarah Dougherty, headed home about noon on Sunday. Sunday night it snowed down to the 6,000 foot level. We were camped at the 5,994 foot level, so we had snow on our roof and rear view mirrors.

Over the next three days we worked ourselves Southward through Nevada into Southern Utah. We camped in Jackpot NV, Ely NV and finally Springdale UT, just outside the gates to Zion National Park. We skirted snow covered peaks and arrived just in time for a “hundred year’s storm” in this area. We rode the free shuttle buses into Zion on a wet and miserable day, and we discovered what a unique event we were witnessing. We were told that all of the wonderful waterfalls we were seeing had not been seen in eight years in the park. On Friday it only misted a little so we took a chance and rode our tandem bicycle to the end of the road in Zion National Park to take in the panoramas at a slower pace. Even a day later all of the waterfalls had vanished. The Virgin river had also moved back within its banks, which is good. It came part way into the campground the first night and distributed driftwood in and around about a dozen campsites.

This map now shows the inaugural trip of the motor home “Arcturus”

Here are two digital photos from this segment of our journey.: