All posts by Gary

We are full time travelers. We live in a 34 foot motor home. We travel from place to place towing a white Sprinter Van full of my tools and two Cattrikes. I like to play bluegrass music and you may find me at Bluegrass Festivals in Arizona during the winter months and in Washington and Oregon during the summer. We will also visit our daughter, Renee and her family in the Austen Texas area.
Maintenance

My First 2022 Blog

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I admit that I have fallen down on my commitment to send out a “Blog” from time to time and let you know where we are and what we are doing. These were frequently spawned by an “event” that usually started with me muttering under my breath, “I feel a blog coming on.”

So here is a short synopsis of 2021: We traveled north to Washington State in late April 2021. We visited Holly in Newman Lake, Washington, Took in a single Bluegrass Festival in early June, 2021. Visited some friends on the way through and arrived at our Son and Daughter-in-laws’ place in Seabeck, Washington on July 18, 2021. We spent some time looking for property in Washington, but the housing balloon was growing fiercely and we couldn’t make any headway. We spent a week on Audrey II, Glen and Barbs’ 37.5 foot Hunter, sail boat from July 27 2021 to August 6, 2021. The rest of the summer was spent between Sequim,WA., Seabeck, WA. And the Portland, OR area visiting friends and relatives. (1)

In early November we put the rig on the road to Texas once again. We arrived on October 15, 2021. We are mostly hiding out from the “Co-Vid 19” Pandemic for a year and a half.

(1) Genaveve Starr and Karl Stokke, in Sequim, Wa; Ed and Sarah Daugherty, Sue and Phil Owen, Mel and Charley Stowell in the Portland OR. Area; Camped with Dave and Adriene Schilling at Silver Falls State Park; and bid, “Bon Voyage” to Bill and Kitty Bates as they sold their farm in Grand Ronde OR, and started the “Wandering Lifestyle”.

    • Gary and Judy enjoy hiking in Silver Falls State Park.
      Gary and Judy enjoy hiking in Silver Falls State Park.
    • Gary contemplates a Maple Bar Man at the Poulsboe Bakery.
      Gary contemplates a Maple Bar Man at the Poulsboe Bakery.

    That catches us up to January 2022.

    December and January were busy months for us. I did two Physical Therapy series. One to address my increasing struggle with Parkinson’s disease with posture, stiffness, tremor and dyskinesia, which makes me look like I am struggling with some invisible Python. The other was to address my soft fuzzy voice. We replaced Judy’s hearing aids but that wasn’t much help. I learned to “Speak with Intensity.”

    “God willin’ and the creeks don’t rise, I will go under the Brain Surgeons scalpel, or maybe more like a Dremmel tool, to rasp a pair of holes in my skull. I will get a pair of electrodes and a control module much like a heart pace-maker under my clavicle bone in my left shoulder. We are hoping to get better control of Parky and reduce the 30 or so pills I take daily. This operation is called “Deep Brain Stimulation,” “DBS.”

    I will be following in the footsteps of Louis Wu of the Larry Niven Science Fiction Novels, “Ringworld”, (1970)” and “Ringworld Engineers” (1979). I consider these two books to be tra;ning manuals for me. The principle character in the two novels is Louis Wu, a 200 year old “Spacer” at the start of “Ringworld.” Nine years later we meet Louis Wu” again as a “Wirehead” in “Ringworld Engineers.” If you haven’t the time, or inclination to read the books you can get an idea what they are about in Wikipedia,org.

    Right now I need to quit this, and book another doctor’s appointment, for next week.

    Uncategorized

    20210407 Spring migration

    Hot news flash
Well the news is we're ready to come back to Washington. It won't be long now before we get out of Dodge, that is Leander Texas. We just about have our little projects all wrapped up. Here this weekend we probably will move back into the Motorhome. Yesterday we got our second covid 19 vaccination, and five days after that we should be good to go!
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I have been visiting several doctors, and Judy and I signed up with a primary care physician at the Baylor Scott and White clinic. This has allowed us to be included in a waitlist for vaccinations. I have been thoroughly inspected inside and out, and my last inspection will happen next week! They will be testing my brain. If they find the test went well, I might qualify for a DBS implant to control my Parkinson's.

Right now our plans are:
1. Sell the sprinter van.(We were successful selling the Sprinter Van)
2. Drive the coach only to Arizona.
3 look around the Phoenix area and see if we can find a smaller rig that we can squeeze into.

Our alternate plans are:
 1. Tow the unsold sprinter to Arizona.
 2. Sell the sprinter in the Phoenix area.
 3. Look for a smaller rig that we can squeeze into.
 4. Trade both rigs for a new smaller rig we can squeeze into.
 

Our alternate plan
To tow the sprinter to Washington in about a month. 

There, that ought to cover all our bases.

Over the years I have come to realize it's always easier to buy something new than it is to sell something used. In which you can have lovingly created, worked hard to get just the way you wanted, is not necessarily a compelling reason for someone else to buy. The Kelly blue book people suggest $35,000 as a fair price. A local auto dealer suggested a mid $20,000s and would offer us $12,000, maybe.

The new issues we are finding for our newly adopted way of life, which we call snow-birding, has its own list of things to consider.
1. Do we leave everything in the coach and create duplicates in "Nana's Tiny House in the Meadow.", Or do we take a bunch of stuff back and forth across the meadow to the coach each year as we get ready to move. I expect it will take most of the week to move everything back to the coach.
On our migration trip this year we are planning to stretch our legs a little and consider doing some 300 mile days. We are hoping that the RV parks haven't all gone out of business.

More good news: we are actually starting to hear about bluegrass festivals that are really going to happen in the summer. Looking forward to meeting up with sister Holly at Sacajawea State Park and Pasco. It won't be the same, there will need be no bands featured, only picking n’ grinning. But it's a start.

Our probable route was suggested by Google Maps.

   > US 29, US71 and US 87 to San Angelo TX
   > Interstate 20 around Midland TX
   > US 62 to Los Cruxes NM
   > Interstate 10 through Deming, Benson, Tucson to Casa Grande.
   > At that point we will leave Google maps for Interstate 8 to Gila Bend
   > Then we will cut across country to Wickenburg AZ, our old standard route.

        Location:                          Date
North Ranch, Congress AZ                 April 21
Cottonwood AZ                            April ??
Bend Oregon                              May 7? (Arrived May 11)
St. Helens OR  (Spokane)                 May 14? (Plan for May 14th)
Colville WA day trip for Dwane Phipps Celebration of life, May 22nd
Seabeck WA                               May 21?
Trip to Winthrop WA                   May 24-27?
Sequim WA                                May 28?
Seabeck WA                               June 1?
Notice: These sailings are not yet approved by the Fleet Admiral. Also recognize that these dates are much closer than they appear.


   Potential Events:       Date      
Sacajawea Pasco WA      TBA  (2nd week in June)
Lacey Dixieland Jazz    May 25-26 not confirmed
Wenatchee Bluegrass Cashmere June 18-20
Darrington Bluegrass    July 16-18
Stevenson WA            TBA {3rd week in July}
    Little House

    20210212 Making records in Leander Texas:

    We have a continental polar air mass coming down from Canada to make Texas cold this week. Last night got down to 25° we are expecting single-digit temperatures by Tuesday.

    Ice thickness over 1/4 of an inch
    Close up of iiiciie layer on handrail (over 1/4 of an inch)

    This is our second day of below freezing temperatures, and we are expecting three or four more days perhaps as far as Wednesday before we get through this. I just now measured 1/4 of an inch of ice buildup on our handrail. The trees are all glistening with 1/4 inch of ice on every branch some of them are breaking. There are reports of widespread power outage because of this although we have done fine so far. It’s reassuring to know that this is a record-breaking episode.

    Our tiny house is protecting us very well. We haven’t heat taped our waterlines yet so that is a concern. We are simply not venturing out at all. I had a dental appointment for today we postponed it a couple weeks. Traffic is terrible in this weather Austin and Fort Worths had 40 and hundred car pileups. The freeways have big swooping flyovers that ice quickly. I guess drivers don’t account for that and don’t slow down. The worst time seems to be just as it’s getting icy. The bridges all have warning signs that say “bridges ice early”, but that doesn’t slow anybody. We are just staying home.

    20210214 Breaking News:

    just as I was about to press the publish button on my blog Judy noticed the water was off. That’s when I got the old time feeling ” I feel a blog coming on”…

    Yes, even though we were carefully running a few ounces of water through each tap in the house a couple of times an hour, it was not enough for our totally unprotected water system. The pump suction was frozen and could get no water. The next few hours was like a Keystone Kops movie. Blankets, heating pads, heaters and all were no match for a stiff 10 mile-per-hour Northwind at 25°. That was three days ago we haven’t been above 29° since. They’re talking about 8° tonight and 4° Monday night. We will do without water until the 70° weather returns.

    Lessons to be learned:

    1. In this part of the country listen to the weatherman/weaterwoman.

    2. Insulating pipes dangling under a park model home is very important.

    3. Design a water re-circulation loop into the water system based on above ground rainwater collection tanks.

    We will recover. All our piping is In Pex tubing, which is supposed to be immune to freezing. We’ll see…

    Of course it helps to know that you all are in much the same boat this cold snap is widespread so were not complaining too loudly..

    Art, Travels

    20201102 The new blog using no fingers:

    1 Comment

    Okay folks out there in blog land, this is the new chapter in my blog. I’m using a new program called Dragon speaking naturally version 15. It’s not a perfect solution but it may go a long ways towards containing my jittery fingers. So far things are looking pretty good. I have dictated this first paragraph and only had to go back and take out the 15 about five times. But no fingers!

    Now the one danger here is that someone speaking in the background could get included in my blog. That was a particular problem with version 12 that I was using before. When I went to proofread what I had just written I would discover comments from Judy included in my text. This new version is passing the test with flying colors. Judy is over next to me listening to videos particularly the one about two bartenders in a boat of our friend Henry and none of it is showing up in my blog.

    We have come across three states now, Oregon Nevada and Arizona. Were halfway across New Mexico and tomorrow we are going to Hueco tanks State Park near El Paso Texas. This is a really fun state park because it has huge boulders everywhere. It’s a playground to people who do what they call bouldering. Here’s what you see when somebody is coming bouldering.

    Judy in 2006
    Judy hanging out under a huge rock December 2006

    You see this huge mattress waddling down the pathway like SpongeBob SquarePants with a little person under it. They choose a boulder, lay their foam pad at the bottom of the climb, rosin up and free climb to the top of boulder. Of course the Sponge Bob is waiting there to catch climber in his arms if they fall. Often these boulders that they’re claiming are 12 to 20 feet high and many of them have shallow depressions in the top of which are called tanks that’s really what the name Hueco Tanks is referring to.

    If it's old it's not grafiti at Hueco Tanks
    Historic Pictographs

    The other thing we like to do is hike and take the camera and photograph the pictographs that are everywhere including on the bottom side of some boulders.

    We first came to this park in December 2006 and spent a couple of days taking the long hikes in the north part of the park led by knowledgeable rangers. I got lots of good photographs that we won’t have a chance to do this trip.

    I’ll end this blog on that note. I had to correct a few mistakes with my fingers but it is been pretty good.