A visit in Bellingham, WA

Our truck deliveries brought us to Bellingham on Sunday. We spent the afternoon with my cousin Elizabeth and her daughter Molly--and we visited our former cat, Wylie, who now happily resides with Elizabeth. Here we all are. Wylie is the grey mop that Elizabeth is holding. Molly is holding Maxx.

Another tight parking job

Just another day at the beach for Kurt, but I was amazed at how easily he backed our 53' trailer into this extremely narrow space.

Only inches on each side and he did not touch either of the neighboring trailers as he backed in. (I know this for a fact-even though I had my eyes closed for most of the manuever)

Spring in California--OR maybe not!

We are back in California this week-

We had a lovely drive over the Grapevine on I-5 on Wednesday morning- blue skies and about 65 degrees

- and 50 miles of fruit trees are blooming in the San Joaquin valley

BUT look what a difference two days makes.

Here we are parked at the truck stop at the top of the Grapvine on Friday morning. This time the weather is more like 32 degrees and the strong wind blowing SNOW sideways around us.

Visitors

On our last trip past Longview WA we were visited by our friends Bobbie and Mike

Time to get the truck washed

Here we are driving in to the wash bay as another truck is leaving out the other side. We will get the tractor, the trailer and the engine washed- for a total of $70. Notice the road film on the sides of the tractor

Once inside the bay 6 to 8 guys go to work spraying and scrubbing our truck. It took 15 minutes to wash all 65 feet of our vehicle.

Back out into the sunshine and look how shiny we are!
[We washed the truck on Saturday in California- by Monday morning we were in the rain in Seattle-- end of shiny truck :( ]

Oranges look even sadder!- But they are going to Market

Here is a picture from this week of an orange grove in California. The trees look awful-makes us wonder if they will lose the trees too.

But just after seeing these trees we saw a number of trucks hauling oranges- so they must have had some fruit worth saving after the January freezes

Freeway bird- UPGRADE

Version 1.o
For the last three trips through the Sacramento River delta in California we have seen solitary white birds just standing alongside the freeway. Sometimes they are in the median between the lanes- unfazed by the noise and motion of passing vehicles. I finally got a good picture of one. I think they are Egrets


Version 2.0
On yet another trip through the delta we got this close up

A quick visit to Sequim

We got back to Sequim over the weekend. We met up with my sister, Su, and had a nice visit with our brother Jay--even getting him to smile for the camera.

Later we took a nice hike on the Olympic Discovery Trail near Sequim with Su, Jeff and Tucker.

Then later that day we got this great shot of Mt Rainier catching the last rays of the sun at sunset

Back to the Evergreen Northwest

Here is our route for our first trip in February. Tacoma to Salt Lake City, over to Stockton and then north again to Tacoma. No bad weather- YAY- but it is still winter everywhere east of the pacific coast mountains. It was great to get back to the Pacific northwest and see green again.


Here is a picture from my favorite Rest Area in Oregon. It is a thrill for me to be back under the evergreens after a week of driving in the more arid places in the american west. In my experience there doesn't seem to be any place out side of the Pacific Northwest (and the redwoods of CA) that grows towering trees like these.

Another Idaho-ism

Also along the Idaho highways - at least every 5 minutes we passed a truck like this. At first we thought they carried Idaho's famous potatoes but the tubers were more football sized. We think they are carrying sugar beets--- Hmm, a truck every 5 minutes all day long, 7 days a week-- that's a LOT of sugar!

Along the "Oregon Trail"

Today we stopped at a historical site along Interstate 84 in southern Idaho. The highway follows the route of the historic Oregon Trail and they have preserved a portion of the actual trail ruts from the emigrant wagons. Fascinating!

More family visits

On our way north from California we had time to spend with Kurt's baby sister, Mary Jo in Eugene. Here they are together. The insets are our two beautiful red-headed nieces- Taylor and Claire.

A surprise for Lisa's birthday

Joanie made a surprise visit to Denver for Lisa's birthday (Her 30th- wow!). Amy and Tim also were in on the surprise and we all arrived at Lisa's school in the middle of her class day. She was quite overwhelmed by her "sneaky" family- but she managed to carry on with her kindergartners. Here she is being the wonderful teacher that she is!

More storm damage

We saw more winter storm damage when we got to California. The usually robust and dark evergreen orange trees were, instead, a sickly paler green and very droopy.

Ice Storm Aftermath

On Tuesday we came upon the aftermath of the Ice Storm that went through Oklahoma. As we entered the state all seemed well- it was cold but there was no sign of snow or ice


Quite suddenly- as if there was a line where the ice started/stopped- we were surrounded by ice draped trees. It was really quite pretty- even glistening in the sun. Luckily again for us, the roads were perfectly dry and not icy.

As we drove on---for the next 100 miles!! -- the ice coat thickened. The trees were sagging, even the blades of grass were coated

Eventually the trees were broken from the weight. We saw where power poles had snapped too.

As we approached Oklahoma City there was more evidence of why the interstate had been closed during the height of the storm. Many vehicles were in the ditch.



AS for us...........we sailed on through. The roads were dry the whole way. We are in Amarillo Texas tonight.

Winter Storm!

Almost everyone in the country has experienced a winter storm in the last 5 days. Washington state was pounded (again) with snow and then freezing temps. Denver had the same- only colder. The middle of the country either got snow or an ice storm and the East coast has gotten lots of rain. Luckily for us we dawdled on the east coast over the weekend and we decided on a southerly route to cross the country.
On Monday morning we checked the Weather Channel and saw that we would be meeting the storm in Tennessee. Again- luckily for us—the storm was all rain by the time we crossed under it. Here are three pictures of us approaching and going though the storm
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Two more states for us

We loaded chocolate in New Hampshire on Friday, spent Saturday with Tim and Amy, visited my uncle in Washington DC on Sunday afternoon and drove into southwest Virgina by Sunday night.

On Monday we finished the rest of Virginia and then crossed all of Tennesee and half of Arkansas- both new states since Joanie started traveling in June.

JANUARY - On the road again

After a wonderful break at home for the holidays we began a new journey in the Big Red Truck on January 4th. First we had to drive the 300 miles from home back to where the truck is parked - our "commute". Here is a picture of the snow laden trees near Kettle Falls as we left.

We have hit more snowy weather on this trip. We were forced to stop in the middle of Wyoming on Saturday 1/6 because the next 200 miles of Interstate 80 was closed-the driving conditions were too treacherous. We think they would have been wise to also close the 100 miles we drove before we were stopped. We saw 10 jacknifed trucks and nearly as many overturned cars.

We were lucky- when they opened the road on Sunday morning - the sun was out and the snow was cleared well off the road- we sailed through (Literally- most of the time we were being pushed by a very strong tail wind. Made us glad we had a full, heavy load). Here is a picture of the hiway on Sunday as the sun came up and the wind was blowing the snow across the road infront of us.

We delivered our apples in Rochester NY on Tuesday night. We hadn't seen snow on the ground for a 1000 miles but it started snowing as we sat in the truck backed up to the dock. It was very pretty. (And thankfully it only lasted long enough to drop 1/2 inch.

We will be in New Hampshire on Friday to pick up a load of Chocolate :) then we will be heading to Los Angeles

More Christmas shots

The snow falling on Christmas Eve

We all got AVENGERS t-shirts. Here are Amy, Kurt's sister Kathy and Lisa modeling theirs.

Wonderful Christmas

Christmas in Kettle Falls

We woke up to 6 inches of new snow on Christmas morning. What a nostalgic way to ring in our first Chistmas back in our old home. Amy, Tim, Lisa and Ben were all there and we were joined by 8 additional friends and relatives for dinner. It was VERY special.

December--ANOTHER 12,000 miles!

Here is the map of our December travels. We left Tacoma on December 1st and returned to Kettle Falls late on December 23rd, logging ANOTHER 12,000 miles. Considering that it was December we had pretty good traveling weather. The blue line from upstate NY to New Jersey was the only time we were in serious snow conditions. When we headed west to LA we took the yellow-southerly-route to avoid storms in the upper midwest.

R-n-R time for us

Here is Kurt in Huntington Beach California on our day off. We rented a car and drove to the coast. The weather was a very lovely 75 degrees- no complaints :)

Of course we couldn't resist the urge to call someone and find out what the weather was like up north-- 25 degrees and snow falling in Kettle Falls. again- no complaints from us :)

Then we got sent back to Phoenix and ended up with a day off visiting with the Hellmans and Matters in Quartzsite. We had a blast riding their quads out in the desert.

Four new states for me

We have covered a lot of new-to-me territory in the last few days.

Now there are only 8 states in the lower 48 that we haven't traveled in since June (KS, TN, WV, ME, MI, FL, AR, and KY)

We started out in New Hampshire on Saturday Dec. 9th. We drove west on I-90 until we turned south at Cleveland Ohio. After cutting across the middle of Indiana and Illinois. and staying overnight at Effingham IL overnight and entered Missouri at St Louis in the morning rush hour. Despite the time of day, we took the mid town route rather than the beltway so that I could see the Gateway Arch.

Since then we have traveled Oklahoma, the panhandle of Texas and New Mexico.
We entered OK just at dusk- and drove most of the way after dark. Interstate 40 follows the route of Historic Route 66 (all the way to California) and true to that old road there are tourist traps or casinos about every 20 miles. Here is one at Big Cabin- i t features a giant Indian statue in its parking lot.

We entered Texas in the morning- it is also pretty flat- but is was a beautiful day, warm and sunny, so we were happy

New Mexico was also full of tourist traps-- and they caught us. We decided we needed a plant for our truck. Here it is

We arrived in Los Angeles on Wednesday night, and delivered our yogurt on Thursday morning. Hope to be back in the Puget Sound by Tuesday and shortly thereafter in Kettle Falls