We take a day off on the Jersey Shore

We rented a car and spent 24 hours on the New Jersey Shore. The first day was still rainy but on Thursday we woke up to a beautiful day. We walked on the beach and climbed up the Barnegat Light house. HEre is the view from the top

Here we are back on the sand

NOW LOOK WHERE WE ARE!!!!

We departed Washington on Thursday 7/12 with 42,000 lbs. of onions headed for upstate NY. We had a great trip across, including taking a new route through Montana that took us by Custer's last stand and by the BadLands of South Dakota. We delivered our load on Tuesday morning and reloaded a truckload of canned vegetables.......

.............going to NEW YORK CITY........!!!!!



Look at this delivery location......

What an experieince!!

Although we began our day 60 miles from NYC at 5 am- we were still in rush hour traffic all the way to our delivery site on the East River. If that wasn't enough- we hit multiple THUNDERSTORMS! while in the city. [These storms were so close there was only 1 or 2 seconds between lightning and thunder clap and the accompanying rain was coming down in sheets!]

Most of my pictures of the rain did not turn out because it was also so dark that my flash went off (even thought is was after 8 am ). Here is a shot of one of the rivers formed by the rainfall-this is on the freeway through the Bronx. Also notice how tight the lanes are!

Much of the freeway through Brooklyn is elevated- and, of course, there is road construction. Here you can see that there is JUST enough room for our truck to pass. There are also many low overpasses. At one point signs said there was a 12' 6'' clearance ahead (we need 13'6") - so we took the next exit - unnecessarily at it turns out - and ended up needing to do a U-turn on city streets in Brooklyn to return to the freeway. Way to go Kurt!

This is the closest we came to Manhattan- driving under the Brooklyn Bridge

We left the city by driving across to Staten Island and then over the Hudson river via the Verazano Bridge to New Jersey. On a clear day you would be able to see the tip of Manhattan Island from this bridge- but not today!!

We parked the truck in New Jersey and now will take a well deserved day off!

Home Time

After San Francisco we returned to Tacoma and were able to take 6 days off at home. A bonus was that Lisa was also home for a little R-n-R after her school teaching year. The weather was perfect- hot and sunny. We ate out on the deck each night, went to the lake for afternoon swims and even got a little work done

Here is one of our al fresco dinners- this one with our friends Barry and Valerie and with Lisa

One morning we were visited by a young male deer. He came right alongside our deck and took a little shower in the sprinkler.

Lisa was a big help. Here she is down in the basement contemplating the next step of the re-plumbing of the water lines. She ran the hot and cold water lines for the new bathroom--without any leaks (that spray on the wall doesn't count)!

Okay- a slight amendment to the weather report. It actually was too hot on Wednesday- over 100 degrees in the shade. There was a long afternoon swim in the lake and we slept on the deck outside that evening.

Guess where we spent July 4th?

Shouldn't be too hard to guess.......


We were able to spend 24 hours visiting Joanie's brother Nat and his wife Madeline in the Bay Area over the 4th. WE took a circle drive from the hilltops above Berkeley over to Sausalito, across the Golden Gate and through San Francisco back to the East Bay. Later we walked to the Berkely tide flats to watch the spectacular fireworks.

Here are the 4 of us above the Golden Gate Bridge. Nat is just 8 weeks from suffering a paralyzing stroke and he is doing great! He is up and about and walking well with the aide of a cane or walker. (Though we did make him ride in the wheelchair for the long walk to view the fireworks!)

Too much salt!

This most recent westbound trip also allowed us to get up close and personal with the Great Salt Lake Basin west of Salt Lake City.

First of all- the place is FLAT! Here is one view of our route.

Along the way, some one had the idea to erect a sculpture to enliven the landscape….. But the prevailing opinion is that these spheres and the casings on the ground are proof of extraterrestrials breeding on earth!

Interstate 80 crosses the Bonneville Salt Flats. We made a stop at the visitor’s center. Here is the informational sign that describes the history of setting the world land speed record on this site.

We walked out onto the salt flats and, sure enough, the ground is nothing but salt! Here is a close up.

But then Kurt started ribbing me about MY land speed truck driving record set the day before as I topped out at 77mph passing other trucks in Wyoming. I decided I couldn’t take it any longer- so I kicked the legs out from underneath him and left him stranded on the salt flats.

Here is the last view Kurt had of me and the truck as I drove away

[ha ha]

Westbound trip

Just one week ago we were dining in New Jersey and tonight we are in the Bay Area of California! We started this westbound trip at the Stonyfield Yogurt Factory in New Hampshire. Here is a picture of their corporate sign


With Joanie driving we are able to extend the hours we can drive daily hence we made the crossing to California in four days. We followed Interstate 90 from Massachusetts to Ohio and then I-80 all the way to the Bay.

On one of Joanie's driving stints - in the middle of Nebraska - we had a flat tire. Luckily it was one of the dual tires on the trailer- so it did not effect how the truck handled- but it still made a pretty spectacular boom when it blew! There wasn't much left of it by the time we came to a town to get it replaced. [FYI-$250 for a used tire and the labor to install it]



Here is picture of the tire remains....

On the highest point on I-80 in Wyoming they have erected a monument to Abe Lincoln. It is pretty impressive to come upon it when you are westbound.

As we were crossing Wyoming on Saturday we started noticing a number of oversize rigs traveling east bound carrying some huge pieces of something. There were at least 4 trucks
carrying gridwork that hung over the lanes at least 2 feet on each side and here is one of 3 trucks carrying huge cylinders. We thought maybe the state permitted these rigs to cross on the weekend. But the point is- it never ceases to amaze us what gets moved by truck in this country!

Dinner with the Naspos

On Monday night we were very fortunate to meet up with Joanie's cousin Diana and her husband Ron just two days before they head out for a trip to China. They very kindly picked us up at a NJ Turnpike Service Plaza and brought us back to their home for a nice visit and a delicious dinner. It was great to catch up and to hear about their upcoming trip. We hope they got all their pretrip tasks completed on Tuesday! Thanks for seeing us on such short notice!

Cutting through the Delaware Water Gap

We traveled through the Delaware Water Gap between Pennsylvania and New Jersey on Monday morning. This is the place where the Delaware river has cut through a set of mountains and now Interstate-80 follows the river through too. You really do get a sense of there being a gap as you travel through. The first picture is approaching the gap from the west.


The river and the road run side-by-side at the tightest part of the gap. This is the muddiest that we have ever seen the Delaware- must be from the horrendous thunderstorms they had upstream last week (8" in 3 hours in one storm we read about).


The road takes a bend right after the gap and heads to New York City- which is about 70 miles from here

Headed East again

We loaded 42,500 pounds of Washington potatoes at this warehouse in Mattawa, WA. There's our red truck backed up to the loading dock. The sign on the building says "tatoes-really good potatoes!" This load is almost heavier than legal for our truck- we can only fill the fuel tanks half full and we are mighty slow going up hills. For my part- I have discovered that the truck does handle differently when it is so heavy- for instance it makes it REALLY important not to miss a gear! We are headed to New Jersey.

This trip marks the first anniversary of Matters On The Road- and it has been a beautiful trip- with lovely weather all the way so far. Montana and North Dakota have been particularly spectacular. Wide open skies and rolling green hills as far as the eye can see, here are a couple pics.


(this lower picture was impaired by BUGS on the windshield--the down side of the summer season!)

We loaded in WA in Thursday and will deliver all the potatoes to NJ on Tuesday morning. Stay tuned for our next installment.

12 days at HOME

We had the luxury of 12 days to spend in Kettle Falls. As always, there was more to do than we had time for but it was still wonderful. The weather cooperated with warm days and cool nights and we got a lot done.

The bathroom/stairwell remodel is moving along. We lowered the ceiling to create a loft area and Kurt completed the rewiring. Next trip home will finish the plumbing and then the fun part starts (tile and wall treatments). Here is Kurt hard at work...

We had visits from several family members including the other "Matter girls" - our three nieces, Molly, Becky and Jenny- seen here walking down to the orchard with Kurt.

AND, for Father's Day we drove our 47 Chevy to Couer d'Alene Idaho for their Car Cruise. It was great fun to be in parade of about 1500 old cars. Here we are

A surprise visit

There was a baby shower for Amy on June 2nd. The biggest surprise was having Lisa fly in from Denver for the shower. Here are the three of us the next day getting ready to go out to lunch during the real estate open house.

It's been a busy month

OK, a whole month has gone by, it's Tuesday again and Kurt is BACK in California- but we have visited a few points inbetween in the last month.

After the last time we were in CA we got home to Kettle Falls for more than a week. The bathroom remodel moved along while we were there. Here is one of the new pocket doors just installed.

Here is our departing view of our home as we left on May 23rd to go back to work

And here are the lupines blooming on our property


On Thursday 5/24 we loaded evergreen plants at a huge nursery near Portland Oregon. Here is the back of our truck- loaded to the hilt.

Here is just one of the fields of plants at this nursery. There were plants as far as you can see in four directions. Turns out that they sell to Home Depots across the country. Our load was 7 deliveries going to 7 Home Depots in NY, Connecticut and Rhode Island.


After an uneventful run across the country we stopped and took a day off to visit Amy and Tim in PA. We got there just in time to see them off to Denver on a house hunting trip. Kurt stayed on for a day to work on his Daddy-do List. Joanie stayed on for the whole week to help stage their PA house for a real estate open house on June 3 as well as attend the baby shower on June 2nd. See Amy's blog [link is in the sidebar above on the right] for some pictures of the shower and the house.

In the mean time, Kurt made his 7 deliveries of evergreens, reloaded yogurt, and drove back to California! He was without a working air conditioner on this trip- beyond miserable in the Nevada desert! He will be back in Tacoma by the weekend- and Joanie will be flying to meet him on Saturday. See, it HAS been a busy month.

It's Tuesday- we must be in California

Well, here we are on the west coast again. We loaded yogurt on Friday night and we are in Barstow CA on Tuesday night. We had a pretty uneventful trip across- except for Sunday afternoon in Oklahoma where we encountered several bands of storm clouds that were potentially tornado-spawning. Here are two examples

Later we parked in E. Tulsa for the night and tuned into the local TV channel. Every commercial break was interrupted by thunderstorm and tornado warnings. Communities just to the west of Tulsa were warned to head to tornado shelters. Soon after, our location was hit by a very fierce T-storm with stunning lightning and torrential rains. We were fine in the truck.

These next pictures fall under the catagory of 'things you don't see every day'

Today we stopped at a rest area in the Arizona desert. It looks like your average rest area with restrooms and shaded picnic tables. But we loved the signs they had posted all around the edge of the pavement.

Here is a distant shot of Kurt standing by the sign

And here is a close up of the sign

It says "Poisonous snakes and insects inhabit the area"

The Poconos and beyond

We have been back on the east coast for two weeks. Our eastbound load was 7 shipments to go to 7 friendly hometown hardware stores. Five of our delivery addresses - in three states-were on Main street! We started in the Poconos, circled the Catskills and finished in the Berkshires. It was a very scenic trip. A highlight was getting to see spring arrive--When we started two weeks ago there were barely buds on the trees and now the hillsides are greening up. Here are some scenes from our travels

Here in the Pocono’s most of the trees were still just bare trunks except every now and then there was a blossoming tree in the under story. It was very pretty to see the lacy blossoms against the dark of the trunks


We traveled through the Delaware Water Gap- a national park along the Delaware river where it punches through the Pocono Mountains. I took this picture partly for the yellow forsythias- that I love and they were in bloom everywhere. Also for the huge clump of rhododendron beside it. Rhody's are the state flower of Washington - but clearly they thrive in other areas of the country as well.


OK, here we are getting up close and personal with some pretty old homes on some pretty narrow byways on the way to one of our deliveries.


Scharf Swamp. This a plot of land in the Poconos that happens to have recently been WON as a door prize at a land auction by our good friends in Washington, Bob and Laura Scharf. Since we were passing so close to it we got out of the truck and walked to the site. The 90x100 lot has a meandering drainage ditch running through it. Sorry Bob- looks like you won't be making much of a killing selling this beauty. :)


After making our 7 hardware deliveries we were sent to Atlanta. The route takes you by New York City. Since it was a Sunday we decided to take the close-to-the -city route through the Bronx and over the famous George Washington Bridge.


As you cross the bridge you can look down the Hudson River and see the skyline of NYC