On The Road Again; Happy Independence Day!

We pulled out of Denver this morning, destination Salt Lake City. We planned an overnight stop in Rock Springs, Wy. We will arrive in SLC Saturday afternoon.

The past week went by amazingly fast with the broker meetings, interviews, dinners, plant tours and meeting up with Laura's uncle . Thank goodness we at least got to take the downhill run down Pike's Peak! We didn't get nearly enough time to explore the city or surrounding area. We are definitely going to have to revisit Denver, after our visit to Vancouver!

We'll be in Salt lake to enjoy the Fourth holiday. We plan to visit friends and take a few downhill runs, on our bikes, down the Sundance and Park City ski runs!

There maybe a few days between new entries. Don't worry, we are just partying over the long weekend!

We hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable 4th of July weekend!

-Rich & Laura

BIG news on the job front!

Besides the broker meeting, I was in Denver to discuss future possibilities with the family owners of Maverick. They have always been very supportive of my business back in Michigan. They were also aware of and supportive of the the "bag-it-tour" from the beginning.

The development of new initiatives for the next five years have created some opportunities within the organization. Today we discussed me joining the team, not as a broker, but as an employee of the company! I have the opportunity to become a Business development Manager. I would follow-up on leads that come into the company and from trade shows, develop new business, manage parts of the broker network, aid in new roll-outs, trade shows and other facets of day to day operations. I would have a salary plus commission with FULL benefits; Something I have not had since starting my own business almost 6 years ago!

The best part of the deal is I can start now, while on the road, developing new business! My role would increase, once we park for the winter in Tucson and have more of a base from which I can work and travel from. The responsibilities will then grow even further, and are guaranteed to be there for me should we choose to land in the Denver area in 07. If we decide not to land in Denver, I can always return to a broker role of the business, but without the benefits.

It's wonderful to have so many opportunities to choose from for landing, it also makes the ultimate decision that much more difficult! At least for now, we can take comfort in knowing we both have positions nailed down through early next summer and a great opportunity to put a large amount of money away for landing!

-Rich-

Rocky Mountain Oysters.......

......OK, now that I have your attention! Wednesday was the big broker meeting at Maverick Ranch, in Denver, CO!



I'll start at the end, that doesn't make much sense, but it will explain the Rocky Mountain Oysters!

This month is Maverick's 20th anniversary. They brought in all of the brokers from around the country to kick off some new initiatives. They treated all of the brokers, office and support staff to a wonderful dinner at the Buckhorn Exchange, Denver's oldest restaurant. They hold liquor license #1. Denver became a state in 1857, the Buckhorn has been around since 1885!

Drinks were ordered and appetizer were served, buffalo sausage and, yup, Rock mountain oysters! If you're not familiar with them, they are, well, smashed bull scrotum fried and served with cocktail or horse radish sauce. When in Rome..... They actually weren't all bad but a little on the chewy side :) The remainder of the dinner consisted of buffalo prime rib and garlic mashed potatoes, it was awesome!

Rewind back to beginning of the day. Since production starts early, they wanted everyone at the plant early, 5:45am to see how production runs. Luckily, harvest(slaughter is not a nice word in the industry) actually takes place some place else. The whole program starts with the carcass rolling in off the truck.

From there they took us through fabrication into box beef and buffalo. As the carcass makes its way through the system, every guy is responsible for removing their "piece"; There is the ribeye guy, the chuck guy, etc.... All the way to the bone guy at the end who dismantles what's left and put in bins. The total time from arrival to box beef is about 10 minutes!

After that we went through the chicken room, the pork room, the ground beef room, the entree room and the lab that test everything that goes through the system for anti biotic, hormones, steroids and pesticides. Nothing leaves this plant that tests' positive for almost 50,000 substances down to a billion parts per million. That last statement is one of the new initiatives. Because of their stringent testing policies, they are the first food producer in the country to carry the USDA "process verification" stamp, one step away from certified organic! In fact, the company is commited to being 100% certified over all proteins in the next 3 years, very exciting news!

The remainder of the day consisted of meetings. Marketing, operations, production, sales, executive; Everyone got a chance to talk about their department. I left the house at 5:30 am and didn't return until about 9pm! A very long day indeed, but exciting times to be representing a great company!

-Rich-

Starting Up A New Blog!

When we blog about wine, wineries, recipe's or restaurants it always generates a lot of e-mail and comments wanting to know the who's, what's, where's and why's.

It gave us an idea to start a blog about wine. The goal, to share with you what we think are good wines. We plan to throw in some restaurants, recipes and pairings. We'll also try to take the mystery and snob appeal out of wine by making it all less intimidating and easier to understand. Finally, keep it all under $20 per bottle!

Go have a look at Simply Wine. It's in the construction stage now, so give us a chance to get it organized, up and running.

Enjoy

-Rich & Laura-

Going downhill in Colorado Springs!

Yesterday Rich & I traveled to Colorado Springs (81 miles) to do a 20 mile downhill mountain bike tour. The company, Bike Pikes Peak, runs 2 different tours. The one I originally considered starts with a breakfast buffet, then a drive up to the top of Pikes Peak at 14,110 ft. The only problem with that is that when I was about 11, my family took the tram up to the top of PP and I got physically sick. Not wanting to repeat that event, we chose the 20 mile downhill ride that starts at a much lower 9500’. The ride mainly consisted of fireroads and was gradual, but I still managed to maintain anywhere from 17mph. to a blistering 35mph. on pavement closer to town. So, we arrived at the bike tour shop at 9am, loaded up the van with the group (1 couple from Grand Rapids, Michigan, and 1 couple from Albuqueque), and headed out of town. We barely got out of town and started climbing when we were halted! The road was closed because a power line and pole had come down and was covering the road. So Dylan, being the innovative guy that he is, took us up to a point on our way down where we would be 8 miles up.

By the time we got down, Dylan announced that the road is open and he had another group of 5 arriving at 12:30. The couple from Albuquerque had afternoon plans & couldn’t stay, but they did join us for lunch up the street. We had a great bar-food lunch at the Meadow Muffin in downtown Colorado Springs. After lunch, we again loaded up and drove up, this time all the way up to 9500’. Since I had been warm enough during first downhill run, I only wore my short-sleeved bike jersey and shorts. It was quite chilly at the top! I figure It was probably 55-60 degrees, which became even colder at 20mph. It took us about 1.5 hrs. to get down, stopping to wait for the couple from Grand Rapids (Cassie & Rich), and to take photos.

On the way home, we stopped at a wine shop and got a tip to try “the best wine store in the country” Applejacks. So of course we had to go there, but first I needed food since it was going on 6pm. After a great Italian meal, we went to Applejacks and found all kinds of great wines, none of which were over $12. By the time we got home, I was bushed. Who would have thought that by barely pedaling for almost 28 miles, I’d be so tired? But I was and by 9:30 I was in bed for the night.

Arriving in Denver, Co

We were originally going to spend Saturday night in Wal-mart in Fort Collins, CO. After driving the 350 miles from Rapid City, we arrived to the dreaded, "NO overnight parking by city ordinance" sign, darn! We were starving, so we decided to leave the coach in the Wal-mart lot and take the car into town and find some sushi for dinner. When we got back to the coach, we looked up a campground (only 4 miles away), got a space, made the drive over (through the CSU campus, that was a treat!), plugged in to water and electric and called it a night, it was 9PM and we were done!

Check-out on Sunday morning was not until 11 AM. There was a Green Way right next to the campground. For those not familiar with them, Green Way's are multi-use trails, usually paved and they are everywhere in Colorado. We decided to get in an hour bike ride before making the 70 mile drive down to Denver.

We are staying in the Prospect RV Park in Wheat Ridge, a suburb of Denver. The park leaves a lot to be desired, but it is close to all the places we need to visit this week. There is also a green way right next to the campground for riding!

Our first order of business was to get in touch with Laura's Uncle Fred. He is from Michigan, but is Denver on a long term cell phone project.

Fred met us at the coach in the afternoon. We him the 'Grand Tour' of the coach. We spent time catching up. Fred suggested this great little family owned Mexican place in Golden for dinner, sounded good to us! He then took us on the 'Grand Tour' of Golden, which is a nice little town!

It was fun catching up with family. I'm sure Fred enjoyed the visit also, with his wife back in Michigan, kids and new Grand child in New York, we could all relate to missing family while out on the road!

-Rich-

Sellin' No-Wet

We extended our stay into today so I could take advantage of the craft and flea market held here every Saturday to sell the No-Wet waterless wash. This is a fairly large campground, 500 spaces and it's full for the weekend. However, the clientele is typically, seasonal older members (read they typically don't wash their own rigs!). I didn't set my expectations very high, plus we only had 2 of the 3 available hours of the market. It goes to 11:30, check-out was at 11 and the campground was not wiling to extend the extra time to me as the site was reserved for the day (plus, we weren't members here).

The show started at 8:30 and things started out slow. It turns out, most of the people around here don't rise until 9 or later. I brought along the spare tire cover of the Suzuki to use as a prop to demonstrate the product(it's now the cleanest part of the car :). It also turned out to be the smartest decision I could have made. Some of the older guys were interested, but didn't really understand how the product worked. Once I showed them, they were sold!

In the pic above, I'm demonstrating the product. The guy on the right is counting the money in his wallet (yeah!) and the guy on the left was one who didn't really grasp the concept until the demonstration. He ended up buying too!

At 10:30 I wrapped it up, had to be out of the site by 11! Out of 18 bottles of various products I started with, I only had 4 left! I'm positive had I stuck around till 11:30, I would have sold every bit of it! I ended up somewhere around $150 profit for my 2 hours in the sun, I was happy!!

We spent the remainder of the day driving from Rapid City to Fort Collins, CO. We logged around 340 miles. We stopped in town for sushi and landed in the campground around 8:30

Tomorrow we make the final 70 miles over to Denver.

-Rich-

Wind, rain, and Horsin' Around; Rapid City

One thing I'll say for this campground, there's never a lack of a breeze or a very strong wind. Last night and this afternoon, the wind was so strong that we had to bring in our window awnings. Fortunately, we didn't have many things outside because they would have blown across the street! This afternoon the wind, lightening, and rain came through & then the sun came out and so did a rainbow!

For the most part this was a lazy day. Our big excursion away from the campground was to get groceries. We'd hoped to get some sushi for lunch since I haven't had any in over a week and I'm starting to "suffer" from withdrawals. Unfortunately, we couldn't find any sushi in this, our "hometown" of 60,000 people. Aauuugh!

Tonight we're packing up the moho so we can be ready to leave at 11am (check-out time) tomorrow. Rich has a booth at the campground's flea market so he can sell his No Wet stuff. The flea market is 8:30-11:30, but he'll pack up early so we can roll out of here on time because this campground has a LOT of rule and they are sticklers for them. Here's an example: the speed limit around the campground is 10mph. They have security mini-vans cruising around here 24/7 that have RADAR GUNS! I've never stayed in a campground with soooo many rules, but I guess it keeps out the riff-raff.

We've been taking Snuggy for a walk around the campground every evening. She usually just beats up on dogs. Yesterday, she had a bulldog cowering under a picnic table, that was really funny. Today she had the opportunity to check out some horses as we fed and petted them. It was her turn to cower as she hid behind me, on my shoulder as we fed the horses!



-Laura

A busy, touristy day in the Rapid City, SD area

Whew! Yesterday was a busy, touristy type of a day. It started when we went to Mt. Rushmore, 20 miles away. It's very awe inspiring and makes you feel patriotic. We watched the short movie about how it came to be and learned cool things like how they make the eyes look bright.

From there we went to the Crazy Horse Memorial, that our friends, Rick & Susan recommended we see. Turns out it was $20 per car. That was more than we were willing to pay to see a head, so we snapped a quick picture and turned around. The picture is from far away, but it's as close as we could get without paying.

So we continued our touristy day by heading back towards the Mt. Rushmore area to a town called Keystone to ride the alpine slide! It was a bit more than the head statue, but a lot more fun. The first time Rich was behind me as we whipped down the track. The 2nd run, we ran on tracks opposite each other in a race. I hit the first curve at full throttle and got sling-shotted (is that a word?) ahead of him. I went so fast that I kinda scared myself. Whew! Guess I need to start practicing my fearlessness in preparation for the downhill mountain biking we're going to be doing in Salt Lake in July!

After the alpine slide, we had one more stop, at Reptile Gardens, which is within 3 miles of our campground. We'd passed it several times and thought it looked touristy. But since we were having a touristy day, we thought we'd check it out. They had a lot more than just reptiles! The big exhibit was the tropical forest in a dome. When you walk through the door, you are greeted by a cockatoo! In addition to a few reptiles, they had an assortment of macaws, an eclectus, an amazon and a few doves. Outside they had a prairie dog display. These were much bigger dogs than the 2 Rich squished on the road in Montana! There was also a giant tortoise display with a tortoise that you could rub on the neck. He seemed to like it.

After that exciting day we came home to a very happy Snuggles who had been lonely all day. She got to meet a little dog named "Sweetie", so of course she greeted it with her favorite word, "Hi Sweeter!"

-Laura

Running errands around "home"

Today we ran around our "home town", Rapid City, SD to get our SD drivers license, a title and plates for the Suzuki, deposit some checks in Merrill Lynch, visit a chocolate store, pick up our mail and get some bagels for breakfast tomorrow.

There's big differences between getting this all done here vs. how it's been in Michigan, are: different locations for licenses & plates, much cheaper, and it's all done faster. We were in & out with plates in 10 minutes and 15 minutes for our drivers licenses. I remember being happy to get out of the Secretary of State's office in Michigan in less than 1/2 hour! For comparisons, the title and 1 yr. plate in SD cost $48. Our licenses cost $8/each. Out auto insurance will also be cut in half once I call the company tomorrow.

Tomorrow Rich is going to try to get an appointment with a CPA we've been referred to so he can get his No-Wet and chip repair business established. If we don't get an appointment tomorrow, we're going to go to Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse memorial, which are about 1/2 hour from here.

-Laura

Waterless Carwash?

First, a little background. Very few campgrounds allow you to wash your coach on-site. Especially out west where water is a very valuable resource. Truck washes just don't cut it, the pressure washers are just too powerful for an RV. Of course, no good RV'er wants to pull into the campground with a dirty rig ;)

I was first introduced to waterless carwash products in Quartzsite. I started using a product called Dri-Wash and Guard. Basically, you spray it on, it emulsifies the dirt, you wipe it off, it forms a haze and you buff to a shine. It is a good product and has served me well, it is, however, very expensive.

Then, our good friend Rick, the Canadian eh, who also used Dri-Wash, introduced me to a new product. No- Wet Waterless Concepts, the same basic concept as Dri-Wash, at 1/3 of the price. No-Wet also has a few key differences from Dri-Wash, that really made me make the change.

For those of you who don't know, I represent an Organic meat company (Maverick Ranch) based out of Denver, CO. So, I am always promoting "all-natural", "organic" and "additive free" to my customers and end users. No-Wet follows this concept with VOC-free(volatile organic compounds) line of vehicle care products. Basically, No-Wet uses Kanolin clay to trap and emulsify the dirt and Carnuba Wax to leave a protective coating and shine. The main ingredient in Dri-Wash is Kerosene. It leaves a great shine, but doesn't seem to last very long. Now, both products deliver what they promise. However, No-Wet follows the same guides lines that I promote in the "natural" meat business, and these issues are important to me. That, and the much lower cost :)

I contacted the owners of the company and became a distributor of their products. My first product order was waiting for me here at the campground when we arrived. The owners understand that RVer's naturally don't have a lot of space to maintain inventory and are willing to work with me on Just in Time deliveries of product as needed. We'll see how it goes!

So, "clean and green" is the motto for me, whether it's dead cow or car care products!

-Rich-

Rapid City South Dakota, Home?

We arrived in Rapid City today, around 1:30pm. The weather was the best we have experienced since Salt Lake City, 5 weeks ago! It was 75, sunny with humidity at 15%. The drive felt quick today, at 250 miles, it was the shortest drive of the past 4 days by at least 100 miles.

We are staying at the Hart Ranch RV Resort , just south of Rapid City. It's an RPI affiliated park, so for us its $8 per night, $40 for the next 5 days. The budget REALLY loves that! The park is outstanding with large, concrete pads nicely spaced apart. A really large pool, minature golf, tennis courts(no Pickle Ball though :( ) and a bunch of activities sceduled every day. If you're bored in this park, its your own fault!

Tomorrow is a business day. We'll be getting our licenses, registering the Suzuki, consulting a CPA on our work situation coming up this fall ( SD residency, Laura working in AZ, me getting income from Denver, performing services on the road and selling products....Too confusing for us!) and finally stopping by America's mailbox to pick up our mail and meet the people that handle and forward our mail to us......Busy day!

Once we get all the business stuff out of the way, we'll have some free time to check out Mt Rushmore, Crazy Horse monument, do some mountain biking in the Black Hills and enjoy the pool and miniature golf course!

So, this will be the first time in our lives we will hold driver's licenses from somewhere other then Michigan. It will be very strange for both of us, home is now officially in South Dakota.......Even if it is just a PO box!

-Rich-

Quick stop; Sheridan, Wyoming

We promised to show you the sights of Sheridan. Well, there it is. The historic Sheridan Inn Built in 1849 and home to Buffalo Bill. Now it's a restaurant.

Tired after the 355 mile drive and highly recommended by Peter, of Peter's RV Park (great place for an overnight stop, btw!) we decided to go to the inn for dinner Saturday night. We are also doing great on the food budget, we have not eaten dinner out yet this month, so this was a Quicken approved outing :)

Peter supplied us a copy of the menu, which looked promising. Laura's comment after looking it over, "prime rib sounds good, too bad it's not on the menu." We arrived for an early dinner, drinks provided a necessary calm after a full day behind the wheel! The waitress explains the specials for the evening, guess what, Prime Rib, and it's only $17.99! We both ordered it up, rare of course! We got out of there for around $60 plus tip. It was a nice treat and probably only the third time during the "tour" we have broken the $50 dollar mark.

We were up early on Sunday, after turning in early the previous night. We went on an hour and a half walk into town. It felt like we were in a scary movie. Old time town, almost completely void of people or vehicles, everything was closed. We did find an open grocery store to stock up on supplies. We finished up the day packing up for an early departure on Monday.

-Rich-

Big Sky Country

This has been our view, out of our windshield, for 325 miles Friday and 355 miles on Saturday!
They aren't kidding when they call this "Big Sky" country. I think it's because no matter where you are, you can see for miles, making everything on the ground appear small an insignificant and the sky just massive.

We know there is ton to see and do in Montana, but we have business to take care of! We have to get to South Dakota to get our car registered and our ID's. We plan on returning to the area after our visit to Vancouver, BC to check out things like Glacier, Yellowstone and Teton NP's.

We currently find ourselves in the small city of Sheridan, Wyoming. We are taking a day's rest before we knock out the final 275 miles to Rapid City, SD on Monday.

I'm sure we'll find a few things to entertain us and blog about while we are here. I know you are dying to see the sites of Sheridan!

-Rich-

Exploring Coeur D'Alene, Idaho

Today we were going to ride our bikes, but it was cold and blustery, so we took a day to drive into Coeur D'Alene, Idaho (30 miles away). We'd heard a lot about how beautiful the city and surrounding area is. Since we only have one day we didn't get to see much, but we saw enough to agree that it is a beautiful area. After spending some of the morning updating the blog, uploading photos, and cleaning up, we were off. We parked in the city lot that was free for 2 hours and walked around downtown. We could tell that it was a ritzy area because the majority of the downtown consisted of art galleries and restaurants. We stopped for a quick and cheap lunch. We took a Rachael Ray tip and went off the main street to hunt for lunch place. After lunch we walked around the marina on Lake Coeur D'Alene to gaze at the boats. There was a board listing used boats for sale. Very few were under $200k, most weren't even very big for the money. I'm betting the boating industry has suffered some with the high price of fuel, like the RV industry.

Later we headed back to the moho to chill and get our dinner marinating. Tonight will be a chill night while we pack up the moho. We're taking it to the Cummins Coach Care facility down the street for generator oil change and service. We have to be there at 7am and are promised to be out in an hour. Tomorrow's drive is scheduled to be 334 miles to a Wal-Mart in Butte, Montana.

-Laura

The Big Loop; Tour update

Ah, back to a high speed internet connection! No more quick, brief posts' that take forever to load up on dialup! Back to nice long post with lots of pics ;)

We have a busy June and July planned out!

Here is the plan and some highlights for June and July:

• Spokane Washington 6/14-16. With a visit to Coeur d' Lane, Idaho.

• Butte Montana 6/17, overnight stop.

• Sheridan Wyoming 6/18, overnight stop

• Rapid City South Dakota 6/19 - 6/23. We will be getting our driver licenses, registering the Suzuki, setting up our business. We plan to see Mount Rushmore while there.

• Denver, Colorado 6/24-6/30. The company I represent, Maverick Ranch Natural Meats, is having a national brokers meeting at its headquarters, Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday of that week. We also plan to see Laura's uncle Fred who is on a long term cell phone project in Denver. We are going to try to mountain bike down Pikes Peak as well!

• Salt Lake City, Utah 7/1-7/7. Back to SLC to visit friends over 4th holiday! I also will be doing some business development work with Harmon's, a local upscale grocery store chain in the area.

• Coburg, Oregon. 7/10-7/18. Back to the Eugene area for our Monaco factory appt. to finally get our leak issues taken care of once and for all. During this stop, I will be flying back to Michigan on July 14-17 for a customer appreciation BBQ that I sponsor at Holiday Market in Royal Oak, MI.

• We'll finish up the month up in Vancouver, British Columbia with our friends Rick & Sue, who are there for the summer, and their children who live there year around.

Sierra Tucson, the drug treatment facility in Arizona, is looking to have Laura start working around October 1st. So, right now, we are kind of leaving plans for August and September up in air while we decide what we want to do with our remaining "free" time. We'll be cozy, and working hard, down in Tucson, Arizona from October through March 2007!

-Rich-

One Last Party Before We Leave

Tuesday night, it was Joel, the head ranger's turn to host people for dinner. It was mostly designed for the camp host (Garry, Jenny, Ken and Sandy), but some of the regular campers were invited. Since we have an in with the host, and it was our last day, we got invited also.

The ranger had a great park provided house right on the hood canal. The view was amazing. That is one heck of a job perk! They put on a great spread, we brought wine, as usual. Joel BBQ'd some chicken breast marinated with ketchup, soy sauce and lemon. I was skeptical at first, but it was really good, give it a try.

Thanks to Garry, Jenny, Ken, Sandy, the Belfair State Park staff and some of the local, frequent campers for making it a wonderful week for us!

We got on the road by 9am for our 330 mile drive to Spokane. Once we got through the Seattle traffic, it was smooth sailing on I-90.

-Rich-

Moving on from Belfair, WA

Tomorrow we move on from our home of the last week, Belfair State Park, where we hung out with our friends Ken & Sandy, and Garry & Jenny. For those of you who are not familiar with Belfair, it's a small state park on the Hood canal. There's a day use area for swimmers, & clammers and 3 camping loops. We were in the "beach loop", which is the most open and easiest to get a 40' moho into. Today is packing up day, and I'm happy to report that it's not raining. The forcast was for yesterday and today to have steady rain. Yesterday it sprinkled for an hour around 6pm. and today has been rain free & partly-sunny so far. Another observation is that the pacific northwest looks like the U.P. of Michigan with more hills and a lot more people.

Our destination tomorrow is a park in Cheney, Washington, about 10 miles west of Spokane and about 325 miles from Belfair. We were originally going to go 374 miles to a park in Cour D'alene, Idaho, but I found an RPI park on the interstate we'll be traveling. We want to spend 2 nights in this area, so an RPI park at $8/night sounds a lot better than $35/night. Our eventual destination is Rapid City, South Dakota to register our car and get drivers licenses, then to Denver by the end of the month where Rich's company, Maverick Ranch, is hosting a meeting for all the reps from all over the country. We're taking about 2 weeks to do this, so stay tuned for details as they become available.

-Laura

Party, Party, Party; Seattle, Wa

The weekend was full of parties!

Friday, Garry and Jenny hosted the big fish fry.

Saturday, Laura and I hosted everyone for Chinese spare ribs.

Sunday everyone joined up at the "party hut", community picnic area, for a Mexican inspired potluck brunch. We provided our world famous bean dip.

This evening Ken and Sandy are hosting people at their site for steaks on the barby!

I don't know how much more of this I can take :)

-Rich-

PS Sorry for the brevity, but it sure takes a long time to load up, even the smallest post, on dial-up :( Suffice it to say, we are alive and kickin' but crawling on dial-up, No pics either!

Belfair State Park. Seattle, WA

Wednesday we made the quick 190 mile drive from McMinnville, OR northwest up to Belfair, WA. The tiny city of Belfair is just west of Seattle, across the bay. Two couples from our 2005 Full-Timer graduating class are camp hosting here. Garry and Jenny, originally from Wisconsin and Ken and Sandy, originally from North Carolina, are sharing the duties here for a couple of months. We have not seen them since Quartzsite in February so we have a lot to catch up on!

This is the first time in a long time we have stayed in a state park. Most of the state parks out here were built in the 50’s when coaches were quite a bit shorter then 40’. Belfair has upgraded one loop that can handle rigs over 35’ with full hook ups. We like state parks since it really feels like “camping”. Surrounded by trees, animals and the smell of the campfire, you gotta love it! The park also has a very “Northern Michigan” feel to it, which makes us feel right at home.

We spent Wednesday evening trading travel and adventure stores with everyone over wine and cheese for appetizers and burgers and dogs and homemade potato salad for dinner. We finished up the evening with a great campfire.

Thursday, Garry and Jenny had the day off from their hosting duties. They carted us around for the day. We started out with breakfast at the Airport diner. It was a great little place right next to the runway of the local airport with, not surprisingly, a plane motif. We drove up to Paulsboro and checked out a few wineries, had some lunch, stopped at the local market to pick up some supplies. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but we didn’t get back to the campground till after 5pm!

Friday, Laura and I will be on our own as the others will be doing their hosting duties. We plan to head over to Seattle for the day. We’ll have to be back by 6pm to join our host for a big fish fry they are planning!

We are really roughing it in Belfair. There’s no cable or internet available (yeah, feel sorry for us :() so blog updates will be somewhat sporadic, starting with one! We have to blog in a word document, go into town and update from the library or coffee shop.

-Rich-

The Oregon Coast

Today was cool and rainy (BIG surprise :( ). We decided to road trip over to the coast. It was just about 70 miles over to Tillamook (yes, the cheese Tillamook). We stopped there for lunch. We had some wonderful sauteed Halibut sandwiches. The cheese factory was, unfortunately, closed on Sunday.

Goin' Crabbin'

It's the middle of crab season here. We found plenty of guys baiting cages and tossing them in the shallows. We found a few crabs on the beach, too small to make a meal, but cool to play with!

Does anybody know what heck these are? This one's all curled up, but when their out, they look like big ticks! They left these worm like lines in the sand, so of course I had to dig one up!


Laura had to take her sandals off and test the water while I played with crabs! It was too cold for me!











The Oregon coast is more rugged and untamed then the California coast, but just as spectacular. The three rock formations are known as "Three arches", it's a wildlife refuge for seabirds and sea lions.

As we headed home, the weather started to clear up and the sun actually made an appearance. Laura made a pasta dish with the morels we picked up at the Farmer's Market on Saturday. I cleaned the bugs off the front of the coach. Turned out to be a pretty good day!

-Rich-

First "Real" Windshield Repair!

Since becoming a "certified" windshield repair tech,I've been practicing on the 2' x 2' piece of auto glass I was allowed to take home from the cert class. Now it's time for the real thing. Our coach was the perfect place to start!



We had this half moon chip, about the size of a dime in the lower right hand corner of the passenger side windshield. Perfect for putting my training and the tool kit to the test.

You have to look really close, towards the windshield of the coach on the right. You can see a slight blur, that's where the chip used to be. Once I polish it up the smear will be gone! I can't go through the steps I went through to accomplish this, trade secret ;)

A successful first try on "real" glass, I'm ready for action!

-Rich-

Goin' International?

I checked the Site Meter today and found something really interesting. In the last 12 hours, we've had readers from the following countries:

Germany
Latvia
Brazil
Canada (4 different provinces)
Venezuela
Mexico
United Kingdom
Puerto Rico
Brazil
Norway
Thailand

In any given day, we might have one or two countries outside North America pop up, but this is unusual. They mostly are referrals through the "next blog" button in the top right hand corner of your computer screen. It takes you to a random blog. If you've never tried it, experiment, there are some REALLY interesting things out there!

Anyway, whatever the reason, welcome aboard, glad you could join us!

-Rich-

Farmers' Market; Portland, OR

One our favorite things to do is visit Farmers' Markets. We try to hit them in most of the major cities along our route. Portland's Market, on the PSU campus, was one of the best we've been too!









This one had it all. Live band in a central courtyard with tables to enjoy your treats. Flowers, herbs, fruits, veggies, bakers, wine tasting, meat, seafood, cheese and prepared foods. Everything grown locally and Natural and Organic! See the table with the huge pile of Morels'? We bought some more and look to make a pasta dish with them this time around!

It's a shame it rains so much in Portland, it really is a great small sized city! Oh well, we keep this on our "Great place to visit, don't want to live there" list.

-Rich-

The Spruce Goose; McMinnville, OR

Hopefully, you've seen The Aviator, the 2004 movie about reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes. Well, his Spruce Goose resides right here in McMinnville, right next to our campground!



I wanted to check out the Evergreen Aviation Museum, Laura wasn't interested(It's a boy thing!). She dropped me off at the museum and she went to go check out the town of Dundee. I borrowed the above pic from their website. In my pic below, you couldn't see the "goose" inside the building!



The Spruce Goose is not the only thing on display. The museum takes you through the history of aviation. Of course, starting with a replica of the Wright Brothers Plane.

Here are a few random pics:
























What amzed me was the shear size of the Goose vs. everything else on display! Each plane had a detailed discription and history about it. There were ton of interactive displays and videos about design and building of the aircraft. I thought it was a nice touch to have a few volunteers on hand that had actually piloted the exact planes that were on display during WW2.






They did let you inside the Goose, but only on a small platform , about midship. You could only see the cargo area and it was huge!. My only complaint was not being able to see the cockpit area of this massive beast. When you see her in person, it's just hard to believe it actually got of the ground(or water, in this case).
Well worth the $10 entrace fee. I think I spent 2 hours just wondering around, reading the history of the various planes on display and watching some of the videos. If you find yourself in Portland or McMinnvile, be sure to check it out! (in between wineries, of course ;))

-Rich-

McMinnville, OR

We have been in Oregon for 10 days now. It's been raining 7 out of the last 10 days,ugh!

McMinnville is a great little town in the heart of the Willamette valley. It's about 25 miles outside of Portland. Since it has been raining, we don't have much to report. We hit the Farmers market and picked up some great organic veggies, fresh baked bread and a 1/2 slab of ribs from a guy who calls himself "The Rib Slayer". Our campground is right next to an air museum where they have the "Spruce Goose" parked in a really gorgeous building. We hope to hit that, and give a full report in the next couple of days.

Of course, we are in the heart of Pinot country, so we had to hit some wineries. Everytime we post about wineries, we get emails asking what we liked. So, I'll tell you our top picks from the places we hit. Will call this "Our Favorite wines to taste, that we can't afford to buy" list! Most of the "good" Pinots' start at $40 and go up from there, and we just can't bring ourselves to spend that much on a bottle of wine!(plus, the budget doesn't allow it)

We stopped at Panther Creek. They have 2 great single vineyard Pinots, both priced at $42. The Freedom hill vineyard is their flagship. If you enjoy a good Pinot Noir, anyone that produces from Freedom Hill is worthy of trying, if you're willing to pay the price. They also have the Nysa vineyard Pinot. Nysa is more fruity and jammy while Freedom Hill is more earthy and smokey. You can't go wrong with either, but we preferred the "earthy" over "jammy".

We also visited Adelsheim vineyards. They have mostly blended Pinots. We are big fans of the Elisebeth's Reserve ($40). Their "retail" blend was a little to fruit forward for us, but is a good deal at $20.

Archery Summit makes some of the best Pinots we've ever had! Their least expensive is the "premier Cuvee" and that starts at $36. Our absolute favorite is the Arcus Vineyard ($60) We were lucky enough to pick up 2 of these, at cost, when I was selling wine back in Michigan. They are safely stored away, awaiting our landing early next year! They charge $10 for tasting at Archery, but they always open some the best bottles in the house.(we split a tasting, which makes it reasonable, and at $10, they are not shy with the pours) Even though we don't buy anything, its fun to taste some truly great wines. They even taste the "estate", that usually save for members only.

We located our other favorite Pinot producer, Patricia Greene, only to find out they only do tasting on Memorial Day and Thanksgiving day. What's up with that? We left there disappointed, but still love her wines. Our top pick for Patricia Greene is her "Shea Vineyard" Pinot, I think its around $35. We did find out some disappointing news. Patricia's block of the Shea Vineyard just got replanted, so it probably won't be available for quite a few years. If you find any Shea out there, buy it up!

So, that's it for now. Look for a report on the Spruce Goose, some more tasting notes and an updated map on travels through July in the coming days .

-Rich-

(Pics borrowed from the winemakers websites)