Another Snowstorm!!!!!

You would think that you wouldn't have to worry about snow in the second week of June- but here is proof that is has been a slow-to-warm-up spring in the Pacific Northwest...
Kurt had to navigate up to 6 inches of fresh snow while traveling westbound through the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon on June 11th. Luckily he hit the snowstorm at mid day- because earlier that morning they were making trucks put on CHAINS! It was still ugly!

Finally- Some travel pictures

It is still pretty out here on the road. Seems like there is another stunning view around every corner- expecially in the West. Here are some sights from our travels between Tacoma and Denver.

We took a shortcut from the Yakima, WA valley over a plateau and down to the Columbia River. Here is the view along the flat top of the plateau.

Here is the view as the river comes in sight, there were vineyards on both sides of the road at this point.......

Later, in eastern Oregon we saw this rainbow...

And later the same day - in early June- we saw this fresh snow on the Rockies in eastern Idaho....

Sorry we sound like a broken record- but Mark is SO CUTE!

Sorry, the route between Denver and Tacoma still cannot hold a candle to the cute things Mark keeps doing! Here are some pictures from this week while Joanie has been staying in Denver.
In the last five days he has progressed from mostly crawling to mostly walking. On Sunday he was still just walking in straight lines between objects. Every day he was doing a little longer walks and he waved his hands 'like a drunken sailor' to keep his balance.
Here he is on one of those walks....

The thing holding him back from full time walking was that he couldn't get himself to standing without having something to pull up on. He would get so frustrated when he was sitting in the middle of the room and couldn't stand up. I happened to be videotaping him when he stood up mid-room for the first time on Thursday. It was soooo cool to see it! Here are a sequence of pictures taken from the video (sorry I don't know how to to upload video)
Here he had just landed on the floor and rolled forward to stand up...

One leg is up.....

Here comes the second leg and he leaned forward for balance....

Then a squat and another re-balancing to be able to stand....

Almost there---

Done! He was not impressed with himself- he just kept on walking....

He hasn't stopped walking since he mastered this- he is quite a go-getter!

The cutest grandbaby keeps growing up

We have had ample visits to Denver and the cutest grandbaby. Here is a sample of our most recent photos.

This is Mark with his "auntie Sharon"-

Multnomah Falls and other scenes from the road

Here are some pics from our last trip north from Denver. This is a pretty good picture of Multnomah falls near Portland- considering that it was taken by Kurt as he was driving by.

Also along the Columbia River Kurt took this picture of Mt. Hood.

The several days before this picture was taken there was a howling wind storm through the Columbia River gorge. As we were passing this tow truck was pulling the last of the overturned trucks out of the ditch.

And here we are parked nose to nose- The big Red Truck and the little black subaru. We purchased the subaru in Denver and then drove back to Washington- Kurt in the truck and Joanie in the subaru. We hope the subaru will make a reliable and economical car for driving in the snow and driving back and forth from the truck to home.

How about this for a fill-up. Yup- thats $806.73- enough to get the truck one way between Tacoma and Denver.

Here is a pretty shot of Mt Rainier from the Yakima Valley on Saturday June 7th.