Well, not quite on the road again but getting ready.
I know it's been a couple of months since I've updated here but believe me it hasn't been because nothing has happened. What a whirlwind of activity it's been - but most of it hasn't really involved RV trips so I don't feel too guilty about neglecting the blog.
We arrived in the Olympia area on Memorial Day weekend, although we have actually been staying in Centralia, which is about 20 miles south of Olympia. There are a couple of campgrounds closer to town, but none that could accomodate our size. It's been so great having the kids in the same zip code after years of living so far away - I love the inpromptu calls and get togethers that we can now have.
Just to summarize the not-so-insignificant events of the past two months, the first was that we had a wedding less than two weeks ago when Bethany and Matt were married on July 5. It was a lovely outdoor ceremony on the waterfront at Steilacoom, followed by the party of the year at the Olympia Ballroom. I wish I had more pictures to post but of course the real ones aren't ready yet so these are just a couple of the ones I was able to steal from Facebook:
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Getting ready
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| New family |
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| The beautiful bride and handsome groom |
Can't wait to post the rest when we get them! We all had such a great time. The weather was perfect and every little detail just fell right into place, with just the right amount of mishaps...becauase we all know you gotta have mishaps to keep it real.
The other major life event is that we closed this past Tuesday on the five acre parcel of land that Bill and I bought, just outside Olympia off Steamboat Island. Woohoo! We are now officially Washington property owners. We dropped off the well and septic design plans at the county office this morning and as soon as it's approved we have the installer ready to go on the site work. The property is mostly wooded but there is a large area already cleared for a building site. When we return in September from this road trip, we will have an RV hookup on the site so we can put the moho there and live on site until our home is built. Our plan is to build just a 3 bedroom ranch house (or rambler, as a single story home is called in these parts) on the property, but it will have a kick-ass outdoor space - remember, our son is a landscape construction contractor! We are seeing lots of gatherings in our future... I also plan to have a huge vegetable garden, so we have lots of plans for all that land. Once the space is a little more defined, I will post pictures. We're pretty excited about it.
So those are the two main events that have been keeping us occupied during the past few weeks. However, we've also squeezed in a lot of other things. We attended a Tiffin RV rally back in June in Castle Rock WA, just about 30 miles south of here. We met a lot of other RVers from up and down the west coast and joined a local RV club. We look forward to joining them on campouts this fall when we get back, both around Washington, down the Oregon coast and up through British Columbia - there are so many beautiful areas that within an easy weekend drive for us here.
We spent a lot of time on the many bike trails in the area. Less on the hiking trails, but we did some of that too.
Just a two hour drive from our new home town is the Johnston Observatory that sits right across from Mt. St. Helens. This is the spot (formerly known as Coldwater Ridge) where the impact of the blast took about 40 seconds to reach back on May 18, 1980 when the volcano erupted, ending the life of the young geologist David Johnston that was on the ridge monitoring it. Although we've been there before - in fact 14 years ago, we climbed to the summit - St. Helens will always be one of my favorite places, and I can go there again and again.
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| Mt St Helens - it lost over 2,000 feet on that day in 1980 |
Then there was lots of fun stuff. As always, when you are part of the Parrot Head network, you are welcomed as family to new places and last weekend we attended "Laid Back Attack" in Seattle as new members of the Parrot Heads of Puget Sound. What an event! This is the largest event of the year for the local club, with an impressive list of well known musicians from the trop-rock community. It was a 3-day event held at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Seattle. Since parrot heads always "party with a purpose", the purpose of this event was to raise money for the USO - and the final tally came in at over $27,000! That's a lot of Coronas and margaritas... We made so many wonderful new friends that we no longer feel like newcomers. And of course we knew a lot of the musicians, since many of them had played in Chicago for our events, or in Key West, Tampa, or other events we had attended. We had a fabulous time and can't wait for next time we get together with all these new friends. Just a few pictures from LBA:
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Helping to get things ready is half the fun!
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| Dave Edmisten and us |
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| Mike & Donna |
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| Jimi Pappas & Bill |
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| Thom Shepherd & me |
So now here we are, ready to hit the road again. We'll be leaving very early tomorrow morning and taking about 6 or 7 driving days to get to Pearl Lake, our old seasonal campground in South Beloit IL. Pearl Lake is about 100 miles west of Chicago, so we are actually not taking the moho anywhere near the city. We'll be based there, although we'll be driving the car into the suburbs a lot, since most of our friends are there, and therefore most of our activities will take place closer in. But since we have a great little beach at Pearl Lake, we know people like to come out to visit us there as well, so we'll all have some toes in the water, ass in the sand time as well. Crossing our fingers for good weather for our cross country trip on I-90 - see you all soon!
