Month: July 2022

July 22, 2022 – Wallowa, Oregon

Hello again everyone! So happy to be sitting at my dining table in the RV sharing our latest adventures with you! Do you believe it is mid-summer already? The weather here in northeast Oregon has been absolutely perfect – days of sunny warmth, cool evenings and mornings. Blue skies all around.

We’ve really enjoyed exploring this northeastern corner of Oregon. The Wallowa Mountains, the Hell’s Canyon National Recreation Area, nice little towns of Wallowa, Enterprise and Joseph. It’s been a good home base for us the last 8 or 9 days. Lots of hiking, farmer’s market, farm stands – you know us – we are eating ourselves silly on the abundant fruit and produce available here. Combine that with beautiful hikes and we’re happy campers!

This area is full of water – rivers, streams, creeks, lakes – everywhere we look there is water. All of our hikes have had lots of stream crossings, which we love. Gerry loves splashing in the streams. We’ve hiked through several river canyons – the sound of the water flowing through the canyon is always beautiful. And, on our hike yesterday – we met up with a big black bear! It was early on our hike, only about .25 miles from the trailhead, and this bear came out of the woods right onto the trail, about 20 feet ahead of us. Gerry was in front of us and started to run after the bear. The bear turned around and looked at us and ran up the trail and off into the woods on the other side. Meanwhile, I’m yelling (well, more like screaming!) at Gerry to stop. My wild screaming got Gerry’s attention and he stopped to turn around and look at me, which was a good thing. It was great seeing the bear, especially since he ran away from us and not towards us! It’s about the closest we’ve been to a bear. We’ve seen several throughout the last few years, but not usually this close up.

More good news to share – there has been a lot of “house and home” activity recently – Samantha and Sam just bought their first home in Denver! They moved in a few days ago and are loving having a home of their own. And today, we are closing on the 4th house for Aspire Sober Living in St. Paul with Guy. This will add another 9 beds to the Aspire Sober Living offering. It is truly amazing to watch the success Guy is having with providing quality sober living for the St. Paul recovery community. And, we have finalized our house plans with our architect for a home in southwest Colorado! We purchased 3 acres last fall and plan to build next year. I’m sure I’ll have a lot to share about that when the time comes. In the meantime, we’re thrilled to watch our flock feather their nests.

We’re moving tomorrow to Clarkston, Washington. It’s about 3 hours to the north, along the Snake River. I’ll be flying out to St. Paul to help get the new sober house ready for occupancy, and Steve and Gerry will be hanging out in the RV.

Our house on wheels, or the “house truck” as the grandkids like to call it – continues to bring us so much happiness. We feel connected to nature when we’re in the RV. I think partly because we literally have such beautiful views out our windows that are always changing and interesting, and, partly because it takes us to so many beautiful places where we get to go hiking and really immerse ourselves in the beauty of nature. We meet so many friendly people on the trails and in the campgrounds. People just seem happy when they’re out doing this. Combine that with our roaming around looking for the best local produce and food we can find and you have a winning combo!

Here are some recent pictures to share – enjoy!

https://photos.app.goo.gl/nBXkS7eFm4ZUEn489

Here’s a video of one of the rivers on a hike: https://photos.app.goo.gl/SsHPB6ce3F2MqFjm7

July 13, 2022 – LaGrande, Oregon

Hello, hello, hello! It’s been awhile! I’m a little slow getting a post up this year – sorry! I’ll bring you all up to date with the happenings in our RV world – grab a cup of tea and let’s chat!

We left Ohio the end of May. The RV was in Elkhart, Indiana – we had taken it in to the dealer about a month before we left for a variety of service needs. We had taken it to Port St. Joe, Florida in February and again had some things not work right – so it was back in for repairs. I think you just have to expect this in the RV world – at least from all the folks we talk to it seems to be pretty normal to have it in for service regularly.

Anyhow, and I’m going to keep this part short – we made it about 200 miles down the road and then discovered a brake shoe had fallen out, the brake caliper was hanging and flopping, and all 3 of the other brake calipers were loose and wobbly. Not a good thing. Especially since we had the exact same brake fail last summer and had to have a mobile repair fix it. And, especially, especially since the manufacturer had just recalled the brakes on our model and they had just replaced all 4 brakes and calipers as part of the recall. Hmmm – how does that happen one may wonder??? Well it happened, took about a week of phone calls, part shipment tracking, finding a very nice young man who had a mobile repair service and some luck on the shipment timing and it’s done. 4 new brakes. Hopefully last time we deal with that!

We had a great visit in St. Paul with Guy and Katelyn, and Katelyn’s parents came to visit and we had a nice picnic together at the RV. Then it was on to Denver and a great visit with Samantha and Sam. One of the things we like most about our RV life is that we get to go around visiting family and friends.

Then we moved to Boise for about a week. We haven’t spent time in Boise before. We’ve driven through it a couple of times, but this time we were able to do some exploring. A nice city, great farmers market, and a really nice green space that goes all along the Snake river, about 25 miles long of walking paths.

By the time we left Boise we were pretty much done with being in big cities. After St. Paul, Denver, then Boise, we had pretty much been in “big cities” for longer than we enjoy. So we were really happy to arrive in northeast Oregon, where we are now.

We’re spending several weeks in northeast Oregon, staying at a few different RV parks, all around the Wallowa mountains. We’re getting lots of hiking in and we’re really enjoying being in a “growing region” – tons of fruit and produce here. We are eating ourselves silly on strawberries, raspberries, cherries, blackberries, spring lettuce, spinach, and all the other early summer veggies. We went to a “u pick” farm the other day and picked a bunch of strawberries. Our freezer is overflowing with our bounty!

We just celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary this week! We were talking about how we celebrated our 30th anniversary in Fairbanks, Alaska, during our very first RV season. Seems impossible that 5 years have gone by. Without a doubt, adopting this RV life has been the absolutely best thing we could have done for ourselves. We are so glad we “took the leap”! It still feels like a wonderful adventure and we love it.

In the meantime, we are absolutely loving being back in the RV and settling in to our “RV life” routine. I will keep you updated as the journey continues to unfold this season! Exploring, discovering together, hiking in beautiful places, farmers markets, good food. Life is good!

Some pictures for you:

Visiting in St. Paul and Denver. I did a terrible job getting pictures of the kids – not a lot to share, sorry! https://photos.app.goo.gl/fMoCP6wPVSPsQy716

Hiking and food finds in northeast Oregon: https://photos.app.goo.gl/vDezAiHsY4iRg98j6