The Bag-It Tour!

We've Moved

2006-12-09T09:29:00.000-05:00

Please be sure to visit:

www.rolo2point0.blogspot.com

For our continued adventures!

Thanks for stopping by!

-Rich & Laura-

Time for Some Changes!

2006-11-15T15:57:00.000-05:00

Alright, the Bag-it-tour is officially wrapping up :( Our year on the road ended on October 5th, without much fanfare. Notice we didn't even do a journal on the anniversary date.

However, we accomplished all of our goals; We visited many parts of the country neither of us had ever been too, we got to do and see some amazing things, we found our new place to live, I found my new "career", Laura found an awesome temporary position in Tucson, we came in on budget, we didn't go crazy living in 350 sq ft, and the best part, we met tons of wonderful people and made new friends in many different parts of the country!

Now that the ground work is laid for life 2.0, we think its time for an update to the blog to celebrate the next "phase". So, we hope that all of faithful readers will join us on a new journal: rolo 2.0! I'm the "ro" and Laura is the "lo" and we'll continue to chronicle our adventures, exploration and travels. Just because the full-time travel is ending, doesn't mean the adventure has to end :)

We hope you'll check out the new site, be sure to book mark it too! Here is the new site address:

www.rolo2point0.blogspot.com

We are going to start using the "new" site now, so check there for our continued adventures ;)

Thanks to everyone that has followed along on our journey; offering encouragement, advice, comments & opinions, places to see and people to visit.....

...you followed us on the road, now follow us a we transition back to "stick & brick" life!

-Rich & Laura-

Found a horse to ride!

2006-11-12T17:03:00.000-05:00

Say hello to my new buddy, Cascade. She's a 10 yr. old thoroughbred, former hunter-jumper show horse. Now her owner, Aubrey doesn't have as much time to ride her as she'd like between work and school, so that's where I step in. I'm going to be riding her once, maybe twice a week on the trails near her house. She lives right near Saguaro National Park, so there's tons of trails around. Cascade gets a lot of attention on the trail because she's beautiful and almost 17 hands (5'8")tall, which is about the tallest horse I've ever seen, and definately the tallest horse I've ridden. Oh...and the height measurement on a horse is just to the withers (shoulder), then add a foot or two for the head. I had to climb up a fence to get on her, then getting down was a loonnngg slide.

The barn where she's being kept is about an hours drive, but well worth it!

-Laura

The Ultimate Fun Bike!

2006-11-12T16:13:00.000-05:00

Last October, when we left Michigan, we didn't have room for me to bring my cyclocross bike. I left it with our friend Mary, to use while we were on the road. A few months later, Laura convinced me to sell the bike to Mary. For the uninitiated, a cyclocross bike is a cross between a road bike and a mountain bike; And they are just a blast to ride because you can take them just about anywhere!

There are tons of fire roads, 4X4 track, horse trails and mountain bike trails within riding distance of our home, here in Tucson. Since we are in our "temporary" permanent location, I decided to start looking for a new cyclo bike. Plus, a cyclo bike will make a great commuter bike, with the addition of some fenders and a rack, for the 6 mile commute I will have to work when we move to Denver, next spring!

I found a great deal on a Schwinn DBX Sport cyclocross/commuter bike. Because it is a year end close out, I picked up for 30% off, plus an additional 10% (of the price) in credit towards parts and accessories! It has a cool "flat" paint job in gold and British racing green (looks black till you get it in the sunlight) It has some really great parts that you just don't see in this price range; It has disc brakes, which will be great to have if I ever run into rain on my work commutes (disc brakes are not affected by water and dust like traditional rim brakes!), it has a carbon fiber seat post and front fork to tame the jarring effect of those potholes.

Here it is, my new favorite bike:

After my long work week of travel to the east coast, I was anxious to get out for a ride! I ended up doing a 32 mile ride! I did 8 miles of dirt road and 4X4 trails, 6 miles of single track mountain bike trail (I got really funny looks from the full body armor "free rider" guys) and 18 miles on the road!

Here is a map of my route, the blue line is pavement, the red is dirt road and the green is the singletrack. There was a lot of elevation change in my ride. I started out at 2,900 ft and went to 3,500 ft by the time I reached the single track trail. I ended up at 2,400 ft down at the bottom of the blue line, on the map(top speed, 36 mph). I stopped for some lunch before making my way back home, back to the 2,900 ft mark (ya gotta love GPS systems!).

By the way, if you can make out the black box on the right, it says "Mt Lemmon, 9,157 ft"! My goal, before we leave here in March, is to be able to climb to the top on my bike! That would equate to about 5,700 ft elevation change in the 20 miles to the top :() Stay tuned to see how that goes!

-Rich-

Horses horses horses!

2006-11-09T21:39:00.000-05:00

Ok....so I've been looking for a horse to lease since we got here, to no avail. Now, between my posting on craigslist and a free ad I put on equine.com, I've found 3 places to check out. The first I wrote about on Tuesday. The second, came when a woman on Craigslist emailed me to say I could ride her horse anytime. So yesterday, after work I drove 40 miles to the middle of nowhere to see the horse. Well, without being snobby and being politically correct, it was a big fat "NO". There were 2 horse, one was arthritic, the other (the "rideable" one) looked like he'd seen better days. The owner guessed he was about 15, but he looked a lot older. Apparently he's been ridden once in 2 years, the last time being a year ago. The last person who rode him got bucked off. The saddle in the tack room was covered in an inch of dust & dirt. So, the bottom line is that I'm decent on a horse, but I'm not about to risk getting bucked off.

On Sunday I'm going to look at a thoroughbred as a possible lease. It's also far, way over on the east side, by Saguaro National Park. It's a college girl who owns the horse, but doesn't have the time to ride him. Sounds like a high-end horse because she was telling me about his championship hunter/jumper points, etc. I'm not looking for a champion, just a horse that will trail ride without freaking out if something runs across our path. Stay tuned!

Rich comes home tomorrow. Hooray!!!!!!!

-Laura

A day full of feelings

2006-11-07T21:56:00.000-05:00

Today was a long day and I'm bushed, but it's been a day of happiness and sadness. The day started when Rich's alarm didn't go off, so at 5:45am we were racing out of the RV to drive him to a shuttle pickup place. He scheduled a last-minute business trip to Philadelphia. We found a shuttle that will take him to the Phoenix airport for a reasonable fee, thus saving me 4 hours of round-trip driving. After a brief rest, I was off to work by 9am. Today I took the car since I was going to see a horse after work.

A horse? Yes, I've been looking into leasing a horse while I was down here. I've already found 4 places that are options in Denver, but was having a heck of a time finding a place here. I've looked in local papers, craigslist, & asked anyone and everyone if they know anyone. Finally I found 2 possibilities. One lady responded to my craigslist post. She has a horse that she got for her kids, but they haven't been riding him/her(?), so it's a little reluctant to leave the barn. She said I can come ride him anytime, but she's 33 miles away, on the other side of town. Then, a co-worker suggested I look on equine.com, which is where I found Julie and Fantazee Farms, 18 miles away. I went there after work today to meet her and ride a horse. The horse I got to ride, Hawk (painted pony on the far left in the group pic) is owned by a busy teenager who doesn't get to ride her much. I would be doing a "partial lease" which would give me access to him 3 days a week, any day except Thursday and Saturday. Julie and I each groomed and saddled a horse (been a loonnnggg time since I did that!) and off we went. First we did some arena work, then we ventured onto the trail on state land behind her property. But there were obstacles! We got chased by a viscous bull cow! Her horse, which is only 4, was freaking out. Julie was laughing while her horse was going backwards and sideways. I would have been a bit scared. My horse was watching the follies with interest. After about 1/2 hr. we headed back to the barn. On the way home, I stopped for a quick bite to eat and realized I was exhausted. Whew!

In sad news, we learned today that one of our RV friends that we met last winter at the graduation rally for the fulltime class of 2005, died today. Micky is the author of RV Notebook, a tracking program for RV'ers. I bought the program before we went on the road, so I was impressed to meet the author in person. I think he was about 60'ish and appears to have died of a heart attack. In addition to meeting Micky & his wife, Patti in Quartzsite, we also "stumbled" upon them when their network popped up when I did a search when we landed in an RV park in Yuma a week later. You can read about Micky & Patti's adventures and see pictures of them in their blog. When I hear about tragedies like this, it makes me really grateful that we embarked on our Bag-it Tour in our 30's, instead of waiting until later because there's never any guarantee of "later".

So it was a day of happy and sad feelings.

I miss Rich!

-Laura

Trail Obstacles?

2006-11-02T06:22:00.000-05:00

One of the advantages of directing sales in the east and living in the west is that most of my business is concluded by 3pm my time, 5 pm EST. That leaves me at least a couple of days during the week to get a bike ride in before the sun sets at 5:30(I hate that about winter)!

Yesterday I rode my mountain bike from "home" to the 50 year trail. I was able to get in 6 miles on the road and 8 miles of intense singletrack before the sun set.

I've run into many different trail obstacles in the 28 states and 1,200 miles I've put on my bike in the last year, but this is the first time I've run into this:

A momma and her brand new baby! Normally, cows tend to be fairly skittish animals, especially if you are on a bicycle. But with child, they can get a little aggressive! This mom was busy munching on the cactus with her hind end all the way across the trail and her baby in the background(sorry about the pic quality, it's a phone!). As I approached she looked up and gave a stomp with her front foot as if to say, "I'll move when I'm done eating!" I waited a couple of minutes and "mom" decided she had enough and moved on.

All of the "fall" babies must have been born in the past week, I saw four different sets of mommas' and calves on my ride. Most of them far off the trail, but very aware I was there!

-Rich-

These Boots are Made for Walkin..........

2006-11-01T05:30:00.000-05:00

.......and that's just what we'll do!

Well, we took the plunge and both found boots we liked.

We never dreamed there was so many choices in cowboy boots. We spent a good hour trying on different shapes, styles and finishes.

Laura decided on these Ariats with a very feminine blue stitching to them, very cool!

she'll get chance to try her shoes out Friday at work for "jeans day" !

I went with these Justins in a "distressed" leather. The stitching on the shaft is pretty much the same color as the boot so its hard to see, but a cool design!

I liked the fit of my boots so much I wore them out of the store :)

By the time we got back home, I decided they were the most comfortable shoes I've ever owned! (except for maybe my running shoes, but those are for running)

Who knew cowboy boots were so comfortable?!?

-Rich-

Happy Halloween!

2006-10-31T13:53:00.000-05:00

Happy Halloween!

We make it a tradition NOT to be home on Halloween. Simply because we don't have kids that take part, so we don't give out :)

Tonight we are going to Sacinko Sushi, its the last night for dollar Nigri! We are also going to the Corral West store, here is Tucson to look at and try on cowboy boots. You heard right. Now that we live in the west, its time to dress like the west. Plus, and I need cowboy boots to complete the "team" look when I do food shows for Maverick Ranch. My next show is the National Cattlemans' Beef Association annual convention in Nashville, in January. Not, that I consider myself a cattlemen or anything, but it should be fun none the less ;)

Anyway, have a happy & safe Halloween, however you choose to celebrate!

I originally wanted to post a different picture for the holiday but(pun intended!) thought it might offend.............................

................................................Sorry if you're offended, here it is anyway!

Ya gotta love Google Image search :)

-Rich-

Weekend Stuff......

2006-10-29T21:28:00.000-05:00

The weather was beautiful on Saturday, sunny and 85, another typical day in Tucson. It was a great day for a bike ride. We headed out for a mountain bike ride on the 50 year trail , we both really like this trail, it has a little bit of everything; climbs, technical, rocky sections, chutes, flat areas, lots of wildlife and fast descents!

Most of day Sunday looked quite ominous. This pic was taken Sunday evening as the sun set and illuminated the clouds from the bottom, making them look even more evil. However, we never received anything more then a brief, light shower from these storm clouds! Since it looked like this most of the day, we decided not to head out for a hike or bike ride and instead spent the day cleaning inside and running errands!

We also had an unexpected visitor over the weekend. A neighborhood cat was sitting on our door step peering in at Snuggy! Laura invited her in, she was quite friendly. Snug was NOT to happy and here she expresses her displeasure with our friendly visitor! I think the cat got the hint as she has not been back since Snuggy screamed at her :)

We also shared a nice bottle of wine over the weekend. Now that we are both back to working, its nice to be able to have a nice bottle of wine, once in a while :)

We had a Paul Hobbs Russian River Pinot Noir. We paired it up with grilled duck breast with hoisin sauce and grilled fall squash. You can click the pic and visit our wine blog to read more about our adventures in wine!

Over all, a good weekend, even if the threat of rain kept us less active then we had planned;)

Now, its off to bed for an early start to the work week ;)

-Rich-

Payday and other stuff

2006-10-28T22:21:00.000-05:00

Today Rich and I went mountain biking. We both drove in the car to the trailhead, then went our separate ways because Rich rides longer and faster than I do. I rode for about an hour before the heat and sun, and my lack of physical fitness, got the best of me. After a quick shower, I took the scooter up the street to the hardware store to get some diesel stabilizer. Apparently diesel fuel can get all gummy in a couple of months from moisture and sitting. The hardware store only had stuff for gas engines, so they sent me 10 miles down Oracle to Fletchers. After a quick stop for lunch, I stopped at the closest gas station to our moho and gassed up the scooter. I put $2.28 in, which is how much gas I used all of last week! Not bad, eh?

Yesterday I got my first paycheck in over a year, so to celebrate we went out to dinner at Bistro Zin. We thought the menu looked intriguing when we were here last year, but never went. Tonight we went to Sachiko sushi because they had nigri pieces for $1/each. We chowed down and still saved $15 over what we usually spend. This deal is going on until Halloween, so we're going back on Tuesday night.

What's the picture of the Peeps slippers got to do with anything? Nothing, but I stumbled upon it and thought it was a funny way to end a blog.

-Laura

Scooter Diva pin

2006-10-25T18:29:00.000-05:00

Got this in the mail today. 'Nuff said.

-Laura

Reader Comments!

2006-10-23T11:21:00.000-05:00

We're glad some of you are hanging on!

While we were traveling, our little space on the web was getting around 78 hits per day. A number I still find amazing! Since we've landed in Tucson, its dropped, not surprisingly, to 48 per day. Thanks for hanging in there!

We have limited our posting to weekends or something exciting happening, which ever comes first :)

One of our regular readers, Linda, from rv-dreams, commented on yesterdays blog. She made a comment regarding our lovely little "child" Snuggles the Cockatoo being grounded. I think an explanation warrants its own post :)

Linda wrote...

"I am so glad you guys are still blogging. I miss reading what's going on with you during the week.
Is Snuggy still grounded?"

First of all, if we posted everyday, it might look something like this:

"We got up, showered, had breakfast, headed off to work. Got home in the afternoon, chatted about our day, went for a ________ (walk, hike, bike ride, errand, grocery run, fill in the blank) came back, had dinner, surfed the net or watched TV, catch the 10:00 news, in bed by 10:30."

....Repeat Monday through Friday.......

The two biggest followers of our blog; Full-time travelers, who certainly don't want to read about an existence they have been fortunate enough to give up or retired from; and working folks exploring the possibility of full-timing or retiring soon, they don't want to read about an existence they are in now! So, as a service to our reader's, we spare you the boring details and provide the fun and exciting stuff :)

Now, I'm not complaining at all about our situation. Economic reality means we work. We both are doing something we really love, on our terms(the goal of the Bag-it-tour). We are forever grateful that we had the ability to take a year sabbatical to figure out life 2.0. So many people never get the chance or are willing to take a chance on the unknown that life on the road provides.

OK, enough of that, now on to Snuggles.

For those of you who don't know Snuggles has her own little space on the web so all of her "fans" could keep up with her travels :) (click the pic to go to Snuggles blog!)

Well, it seems that Snuggles is having a troubling time adjusting to us working full-time again. We were very careful, when she was a baby, to raise her to be independent from 8-5pm during the week. Well, a year on the road got us out of that routine.

Even though I'm working from home, she needs to be "independent" during that time because I'm on the phone or on the computer. Well, I let her have some free time while I was working. I turned my back on her for 30 seconds(max) and this the havoc she created, a nice 3 inch cut in the driver seat of the coach :(

I'm sure we'll be able to get fixed by next spring when the coach goes up for sale, but we were not happy. Snuggles was forced to spend the rest of the day in her cage, "grounded". She has also been "snippy" with both of us and feisty around the dinner hour.....

....Needless to say, we are working on a little attiTOOde adjustment ! ;)

So, thanks again for those that still visit! The "tour" doesn't officially end until April 1st, next year and we still have some adventures to share with everyone, so check back every once in a while......

....And keep those comments coming!

-Rich-

Beautiful Weekend for Riding

2006-10-22T15:42:00.000-05:00

The weather is stuck in repeat mode. For the past 6 days, its been 85 during the day 50 at night and never a cloud in the sky. It has been getting dark earlier and earlier each day so we don't venture too far out on our bikes(or scooter) after we finish our workday.

The weekend, however, is a different story!

All things Scootering!

Saturday morning we headed to Scoot Over to check out windshields for Laura's Buddy. The crisp morning air is getting up under Laura 's helmet on her commute and freezing her face. Not good since the morning are only going to get colder as we get into the winter. Laura decided that the medium height was most appropriate for her. Good thing too, it was the only size they had in stock :)

Here is the Buddy with the new windshield "mod"!

While we were at the store Laura got information on a group scooter ride happening on Sunday. It was going from the Tucson Mall to Biosphere 2, 60 mile round trip. Since we already knew what the weather was going to be (repeat of the day before) Laura decided to head out for the ride!

Now, this is NOT Laura's group (nobody thought to bring a camera) but I'm sure you could have taken a similar picture as the group made it's way up Oracle Rd to the Biosphere :)

Laura was really glad she went on the ride. She met some fellow scooterists (it's a word, I got it from the Scoot Over website), learned how to ride in a group, got some more "big road" experience and got to test out the new windshield "mod" ( determined the windshield is a keeper)

All Things Biking

We have some world class biking, both mountain and road, available to us, right from our front door. On Saturday afternoon, I headed out on the road to the Biosphere(we did the tour last year, you can read our review HERE ). I had no idea it was 1,000 feet higher in elevation then our "home". So, only averaged 12 miles an hour out. It took me just over an hour to cover the 15 miles to the Biosphere. Because of the hills, this is a major training route for "roadies", so there was a ton of other cyclist on the road. On the way back (downhill!) I averaged 28 miles an hour and hit a max of 38mph :) It took me just a little over 30 minutes to cover the miles back.

On Sunday, I went for a mountain bike ride on the 50 Year Trail. The trail has everything you could want in mountain bike trail, elevation change, some easy sections, some crazy technical sections and a really fun section called "the chutes" that reminds me so much of the trenches at one of our favorite trails in Michigan, Fort Custer Recreation Area in Battle Creek! Including the road ride from home to the trailhead and back I was able to put together a nice 20 mile ride.

We finished up the weekend by feeding our "neighbors" Dolly and Poncho a snack and watching the sun turn the Catalinas a brilliant orange. Here is Laura feeding Poncho. The arena is right across from the coach so that view of the Catalinas you see in the background is the view from our porch, everyday :)

-Rich-

Beautiful Weather!

2006-10-17T09:20:00.000-05:00

Daytime temps have been in the mid 80's. It's funny to see the locals all dressed for fall in their jeans and sweaters. I guess when you're used to 115, 82 seems downright chilly :)

Last evening was probably the best evening, weather wise, we have had since we've been in Tucson. The temperature was about 76 as the sun dipped behind the mountains, illuminating the Catalinas in a brilliant orange (they are a different color almost every evening). I washed the car, Snug sat in a tree and picked as many pods as she could reach off of it and Laura sat on the patio reading and surfing.

Yep, a great "fall" day!

-Rich-

Vonage VoIP.....huh?

2006-10-15T05:02:00.000-05:00

Comcast finally showed up and got us hooked up to cable TV and highspeed internet!

We had discussed the Vonage internet phone system, as opposed to a conventional phone line, for our home when we land in Denver next year. However, since we are staying put for the next 6 months, and neither of our personal cell phones works from our current "home" location, we decided to make the jump now.

Appently, VoIP stands for voice over internet protocol. Basically, it takes your phone signal and magically converts it to be able to send it over the internet to avoid long distance charges. I'm not sure how it all works, but this thing ROCKS! For $24.99/month you get unlimited calls, local, long distance, wherever. We bought a cheap 5.8ghz cordless phone to connect to it. We also hooked up our fax/printer/copier so I can work. The clarity is amazing, we haven't experienced any echo or delay, yet. We went ahead and set ourselves up with a Denver area code, so we're ready to go when we land next spring :)

Their current incentives (probably all the time) is one month free and a manufacturer rebate for the $49.99 that we spent at Circuit City for the Linksys/Vonage box to connects to the internet. So, virtually no start up cost, except for the $19.99 cordless phone we had buy, since we're in the mothorhome.

The best part, I closed out my cell phone (I now have a corporate cell phone) and closed out my internet efax service (faxes sent to me via e-mail). Our net monthly savings, even with the Vonage, is $75/month, bonus :)

So how does the jingle go........?

woo, hoo, woo, hoo, hoo.......

or something like that :)

-Rich-

Go Tigers!!!

2006-10-14T19:27:00.000-05:00

This afternoon Rich & I watched the Tigers beat the Oakland A's to win the American League championship!!! The Tigers are going to be in (and hopefully win) the world series for the first time since 1984....when I was 15! Now I am definately a fair-weather fan. This was probably the first Tigers game I've watched in many years, but it sure was an exciting one!

In other news, I've been riding my scooter all over and getting more comfortable on it. In fact, yesterday I rode it 10 miles to a new sushi place. Getting there involved going out onto Oracle Rd., which is similar to M-59 in Highland, Michigan. I got up to 60mph with plenty of throttle to go. It was strange to go that far in a scooter, but fun at the same time. Oh...on a slightly different topic, a motorcyclist did "the wave" to me on my way to work on Wednesday...made my day!

In geeky news...I used Rich's wrist-mount GPS thingy to check the speedometer on my scooter. It appears to be reading 5mph faster than I'm actually going. I also learned that we're at 3120' above sea level. That's about 600' above Tucson and 1200' above Phoenix, but 2300' below Denver.

-Laura

We're Still Here.......

2006-10-11T12:13:00.001-05:00

.......But I'm sure you don't want to read about our full-time working adventures :)

We think we're going to have to drop from daily (well almost) to a weekly post on the blog. Since both of us are back to working full-time, our adventures aren't quite as exciting as life on the road!

I've been in Baltimore, MD for the past 5 days, at the Natural Products-East Exposition. If it's Natural and Organic, it was at this show. I was busy introducing our Certified Organic products. My company, Maverick Ranch, has committed to being totally Organic within 5 years. It's my job to promote our vision to the retail trade. (See, I told you work life wasn't good reading, but I am passionate about the company and our vision!)

Laura has been busy with "Family Week" over at Sierra Tucson. Family Week, for the most part, involves family members confronting their loved one's, that are in treatment, with intervention and assistance from the counselors. Laura is an observer for her first few weeks.

Now, for some exciting news. Laura's Buddy finally came in!

Here is Laura posing in her "gear" (safety first!) on her new hot pink, Genuine Buddy 125cc. This is much more then a play toy. It will be Laura's daily driver to and from work. We are just about 5 miles from Sierra Tucson and it rains very little here in the desert during the winter. She should get plenty of use out of it!

The goal is to go as long as possible without having to invest in a second car. When we relocate to Denver, in the spring, we will be 10 miles from downtown Denver. The hope is that Laura will be able to commute to a job in Denver, when weather permits! (we will, eventually, have to get a second car for those wintery days!)

Here is Laura heading out this morning on her inaugural trip to work on the Buddy! She loves her new Buddy and I'm guessing that this scooter will eventually lead to this:

We'll just have to see about that ;)

-Rich-

Signing papers, mountain biking, & weather

2006-10-06T20:05:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was a day of firsts for us. It was the first time we saw cloudy weather in AZ and we experienced our first desert rain. You'd think...ok...it's the desert, this rain will be over in 10 minutes. Wrong! You can see the rain approaching quickly. That was the first batch, which lasted about 10 minutes. An hour later batch #2 came through, then around 10pm. the big whopper hit. It rained continuously (I think) ALL night! From about 5pm on, there was thunder and lightening. It must be a really big deal because when I was driving home from the grocery store everyone was outside watching the lightening.

This morning I went over to the HR department at Sierra-Tucson to sign papers to become an official employee. Whew! What a process! On top of everything else, I was there, signing papers for almost an hour! And I still have more stuff to read. It's all the same stuff I've signed and learned about before (infectous diseases, fire safety, HIPAA, etc.).

Since it was such a nice day today (high about 87), I decided to go mountain biking. The trail is about 3-4 miles from home and never ceases to surprise. Last year we always saw some sort of unusual (to us) creature. Today was no exception. I saw a chipmunky thing, lizards, and THE BIGGEST spider I've ever seen. I was going to stop and take a pic with my camera phone, but I decided I didn't want my feet anywhere near this spider. Did I mention how big it was? It was HUGE!!! I started getting tired soon (too soon) and started making mistakes. At one point my hand smacked this tree-cactus thing. OUCH! I tried to pull it out of my glove, but it kept breaking into pieces. When I finally got it all out, my hand had multiple puncture wounds. At that point I was done, so I turned around and headed back. Tonight I'm going to chill out and watch a movie.

-Laura

My first sorta day at work

2006-10-04T17:59:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I dropped Rich off at the Tucson airport at 5:30am for his trip to Baltimore. He's there until Sunday for a natural food show. So I'm alone until then....just Snuggles and I. Guess this is kinda like being a single parent...LOL!

Today I went up to Sierra-Tucson for a meet & greet. I met my boss, then we went to lunch where I met 10 future co-workers. We had a great italian lunch, so now we know of a good, close place to go. There's not a lot that's close since we're in a pretty rural area. I got the quicky tour when we got back. It's a pretty swanky place. I also found out that 80% of their patients come from out of state, which makes sense because they are a cash only place. Operating a rehab on cash only is pretty impressive and not easy to do. I should be able to start next week after I've been "blessed" by HR. I had to go yesterday morning and get a physical and drug screen. They're also doing a background check. This is a pretty extensive hiring process, especially for a temporary job.

This afternoon, I went to the local coffee shop that has wifi to order some more work clothes, update the blog and do some general surfing. Rich called while I was here. He's in 87 degrees and humidity, while I'm in 96 and dry. We're not sure which is worse, but I think the 87 & humid is worse now that I've experienced both.

Ok....I'm off to the moho. Later!

Laura

Home!

2006-10-01T10:20:00.000-05:00

The nearest campground we could find to Laura's new job was 25 miles away, not exactly what we were hoping for. Laura's new boss helped with getting the word out around the workplace that we were looking for a place to park for the winter. We were put in touch with a couple that has a 9 acre horse property with hook-ups. They have a couple of spots available to rent. We went to check out the space, before we drove the coach up to the property.

The space is beyond anything we could have imagined. We have full hook-ups (and soon cable and highspeed internet) we have an awesome view of the mountains. There is great road and mountain biking accessible right from the property. Laura will be 5 miles from work, more on that later!

So, here's our home for the winter as the sun sets on a blistering 98 degree fall day in sunny Tucson. We have nice trees and plenty of cactus surrounding us. There are lots of desert quail running around the grounds.

Here is the view from our "front porch" as the setting sun turns the mountains of the Coronado National forest a brilliant gold. In the foreground are the outdoor stalls and the riding arena. Laura is hoping some friendly folks with horses(willing to "share") check in really soon :)

Here are the stables, just across from us. Since they have extra room. We were able to "stable" our bikes! We have our own little room to keep bikes and equipment out of the elements and just enough room for me to work on bikes. This was bonus we weren't expecting!

We are quite happy with our surroundings and location. Our landlords Dee & Dennis are quite nice and came by a couple of times during the day to make sure we were making ourselves at home! I know we're going to like it here!

I'll let Laura tell you herself about being so close to work!

-Rich-

I'm getting a scooter!!! When we were in Denver, I test drove a lot of scooters and fell in love with the Buddy, pink to be specific. Since we'd have to buy a carrier to get it to Tucson, we decided to wait until we got here. We'll still need a carrier, but we have 6 mos. to buy one. There's a pink Buddy coming to the scooter store in Tucson that they'll get all prepped and delivered to me. How close to work am I going to be? Well, we'll have to measure the exact distance, but I'm guessing it'll be less than 5 miles! I go to the HR department tomorrow to take a drug screen, get a TB test, and fill out a bunch of paperwork. I'm actually excited to start work for the first time since August, '05.

-Laura

Arrived in Tucson!

2006-09-29T20:49:00.000-05:00

Today we drove 250 miles to Catalina State Park where we're staying for
1 night. Since check-out isn't until 2pm., tomorrow we're going to check
on the space we're going to rent while we're here. Even though it was a
"balmy" 95 today & forcasted to be 98 tomorrow, we're glad to be back.
We love Tucson! Funny short story...we were watching the news when they
were talking about how it's going to be in the 90's all week. One of the
co-anchors said, "now that it's cooled down, you can do pretty much
anything outside." LOL!
-Laura

Return Trip to Sandia Peak Tram

2006-09-28T09:21:00.000-05:00

On our first pass through Albuquerque, last November, we made three attempts to ride the Sandia Peak Tram. Our first try, a Tuesday, was maintenance day. Wednesday, our next try, was too windy and they shut the tram down. Being the resourceful people we are, we decided to call for our third try, Thursday. Yes, indeed they are running, "and its prime rib night at the High Finance Restaurant", was the response we got from the customer service person! We're there!

However, it gets dark early in November. We ended up riding the tram in darkness. The view of the city lights was spectacular and we experienced a wonderful dinner at 10,500ft. We really wanted to experience the tram during daylight hours.

Fast forward to now. We made our way up Tramway road for our daylight ride on the tram. Guess what? Closed till 5pm for maintenance! We were assured the tram would be running on Wednesday. We also double checked the weather to make sure nothing would stop us :)

We finally got our daylight run on the tram. It was a beautiful clear day and you could see for hundreds of miles in every direction! The picture above is the tram coming up to meet us for the ride back down. Albuquerque is in the background below. We had a nice lunch at High Finance and explored the top of the ski hill on the eastern side of the mountain.

There were plenty of blue and green runs on the Sandia ski area. Perfect for beginner skiers such as ourselves. It's only 500 or so miles from Denver to Albuquerque so the occasional weekend trip here would be a definite possibility....

Although, I hear Colorado some has some good, quality skiing too!!!!!

-Rich-

Missing Denver Already!

2006-09-26T20:54:00.000-05:00

The fall colors were just starting to pop. The snow was starting to pile up above 8,000ft. The days were warm and the nights were crisp; We're missing Denver and we just left 2 days ago!

We caught this pic of Pikes Peak with a fresh blanket of snow on it as we pulled out town on Sunday.

The house will be done in about 6 month's. It seems like a long way off, but this time last year, a year on the road seemed like a long time too ;)

-Rich & Laura-

Arrived in Albuquerque

2006-09-25T18:06:00.000-05:00

Last night we were in Vegas, baby! Actually we were in a Wal-Mart in Las Vegas, New Mexico. We found a spot way in the back which made our night quieter than some RV parks. The best part was that it was free. We were going to stay at an RPI park that advertised themselves as being 8 miles east of town, but actually wound up being 20 miles, dumpy, and without wifi. Rich needs wifi for work stuff. So we headed out of there, and went to the othe side of town to the American RV park, where we stayed when we were here in November. Once we got settled in, we headed for our favorite store that we haven't seen in a LONG time....Trader Joe's! Even though we'll soon be in Tucson, where there's multiple stores, it was still fun. After picking up a few things, we treated ourselves to a 4 pack of steaks from Costco. It's going to be a good dinner tonight!

-Laura

Wrapping up Denver; Contract Day

2006-09-24T09:17:00.000-05:00

Saturday was our last full day Denver, and we made the most of it!

The day started out with a breakfast meeting with the owner of Maverick Ranch. We had a verbal agreement on the job situation, from our last visit back in July. We now had to finalize it all and agree on start dates, arrival dates in Denver, areas of responsibilities and benefits (it was going to be a long meeting!)

We were able to nail down all of the specifics. I really ended up with more then I expected coming into the meeting (How often does that happen in today's job market?) Sorry, details are confidential ;) Suffice it to say my broker history and previous success was taken into account as well as relocation cost and transition time for Laura to find a position in Denver, next spring; We'll be well taken care of during the transition from traveling nomad back to "normal" life. Although I've been making the transition from broker to "employee" since July, my official start date is October 2nd. Just in time to be swept off to Baltimore for a Natural Food Products Expo!

After that long meeting, it was off to Stapleton for another long visit with a builder to see if we can nail down a house and move-in date.

Laura and I weighed all the pro's and con's, what we wanted, where we wanted to be, lifestyle, proximity to work and budget. It all led us up to the Stapleton "New Urbanism" development.

I would call us "picky" buyers. We aren't looking for the suburban hell "McMAnsion" surrounded by strip malls, which is all they seem to be building. A mountain home(our original thought), would create too much of a commute and be too far from "stuff". A downtown loft won't work for us, we need a garage for bikes and toys. We are looking for something small and high quality, within a very specific price. The builder we found has everything we are looking for that fits in our budget. We spent some time walking around Stapleton and the weekly Farmers' Market. We talked with residents, vendors and shop owners on the area and it has a great community feel to it! In all the places we've lived, we have never really known our neighbors. That will change at Stapleton as the houses don't face a street, but a central court yard that 4 houses will share. Garages will be in the back of the house. Oh yeah, almost forgot, NO yardwork!!

The builder we are working with has the model we are interested in with completion dates around mid March to mid April. That would be perfect for us. We have to coordinate our move with the arrival of our stuff from Michigan. It looks like we can have the house done, our stuff from Michigan in and waiting for us in time for my April 16, 2007 start date at the Maverick home base! We like that idea much better then living in the motorhome while we search for a place after our arrival next spring. One of the best things about the location, 7 miles to my office, which means I can ride my bike to work on nice days(and Denver has a lot of 'em!).

So, here it is, our little piece of heaven in Denver :) It won't actually start to become a home until early next year. They may try and get the basement dug and poured before the ground freezes.

That little hump you see in the background, behind the equipment, is the western edge of Central Park. When completed, it will be the second largest park in Denver and will have bike path's that should connect directly downtown, 1 block from our home, how great is that :)

After almost a full day of negotiation of one type or another, we were ready for a drink! My boss from Maverick took us to Sushi Den, downtown, as a celebration of our new partnership. It's supposed to be THE place for sushi in Denver. It was probably the best sushi we've had since last year in Santa Barbara!

We can't believe our 2 weeks in Denver is up already! Between looking at houses (over 50), negotiating contracts, working and mixing in a little bit of fun, we were busy all day, everyday. Now its time to make our way to Tucson. We plan to take 2 days to get to Albuquerque, with a Wal-mart stop Sunday night. We'll spend 3 or 4 days in Albuquerque for some much needed R&R before landing in Tucson for our 6 month stays and full-time jobs for both of us!

This stop in Denver was definitely a "mission accomplished" as we were able to finalize everything we needed for a smooth "landing" next year. Ironic, as Stapleton, in its previous life, was Denvers main airport!!

Rich & Laura

Dinner with Fred, lunch with Stephanie, etc.

2006-09-23T12:28:00.000-05:00

Whew! We sure have been doing a lot of eating out while we've been in Denver, and it's all been excellent. One of the best new things about Colorado is the fact that, as of July 1, 2006 all restaurants are smoke-free! I might not like this if I was still a smoker (quit June 10, 1998), but as a non-smoker, it's wonderful. Maybe because I was a smoker I'm more sensitive, but it'd be a tough choice between sitting next to a screaming kid or a smoker.

Anyway, we've been so busy looking at houses, we haven't had time to do much else because we're so tired at the end of each day. But we finally had a couple of days off and called up my Uncle Fred, who's living in Denver, working for Crickett cell phone company. I found a restaurant in Lodo (lower downtown, the hip & cool area of Denver) that was actualy reasonable and sounded good, named Venice Ristorante. During their happy hour (5-7pm. & 9-close), they have a happy hour menu with small plates that are each $3, and glasses of wine at $5. We each had 2 glasses of wine, split 2 orders of an appetizer, salad, and a pasta dish. It was very good.

Yesterday I took Stephanie, from Maverick Ranch out for her first real sushi meal. I got to know Stephanie when she came to Michigan for the D&W (a grocery chain in Grand Rapids) Food & Wine show in Grand Rapids. Rich & I had gone when he worked for another beef company, and we'd also been a few times with Maverick. Usually Rich hands out samples, while I wander around eating and getting drunk. The time that Stephanie came, we had a blast together & have kept in touch ever since. When we came to Denver in June, Maverick put on a fabulous dinner where they served Rocky Mountain Oysters as an appetizer. Stephanie encouraged me to try some. I agreed as long as she agreed to have sushi the next time I was in Denver. She'd had sushi before, but only the cooked stuff. So yesterday I picked her up and off we went for raw fish! We had sweet shrimp, eel, tuna, salmon, a spicey tuna roll, a california roll. Stephanie ate everything except the tuna and sweet shrimp. We had a great time and I learned all about team roping.

This morning Rich left around 8:30 to meet with his boss, Charlie for breakfast to discuss more details about his job. It's now 11:30 and I'm going a little stir-crazy without a car.

-Laura

Company picnic and a bike ride

2006-09-20T21:17:00.000-05:00

This morning Rich and I decided to take a bike ride around Stapleton to get a "bike feel" for the neighborhood. It's a good feel. There's not a lot of paths (that we can find), but the streets are easy enough to ride on, especially for weekend morning rides to get bagels or a Starbuck's. We came back to the moho for a quick shower, then we were off to the Maverick Ranch company picnic. They put on a wonderful picnic, complete with pork chops and 2 kinds of sausage. One sausage was chicken, and the one I ate had bits of garlic inside. We talked with a lot of people who gave us suggestions for places to look for a house, best sushi, places to see, etc. By the end of the day, my head was swimming with directions and intersections. There will be plenty of time to explore it all when we're back next spring.

Ok....we need opinions on sun. If we go with the place we really like in Stapleton, we have a choice of courtyard locations. Wherever it's located, the family room, kitchen & master bedroom will have morning or afternoon sun. Which one would you choose, and why? Thanks!

-Laura

A glimmer of hope in the house hunt

2006-09-17T21:54:00.000-05:00

A couple of days ago we drove through a new development in Denver called Stapleton. It's on the site of the old Stapleton airport, which closed in 1995. Today we went back to look at builders' models, peruse the weekly farmers' market, and just get a feel for the area. The first thing you learn upon stopping at the visitors' center is that this place is going to be HUGE! There's shops, big box stores, office buildings, apartments, lofts, homes, duplexes, and bigger homes. There's a place for every price range from rental apartments and places to buy from the low $100k's to over $1 million. It doesn't look like a subdivison (which we wanted to avoid) but like a town. It has that feel too. Today there were people outside everywhere. The proximity to downtown and Rich's job (6 miles) doesn't hurt either.

We may be idealistic, but we're going to try to live with only 1 car and a scooter. A lot of that will depend on where I get a job, but we're willing to try. Ever since we watched the movie, "An Inconvient Truth" by Al Gore (with our wonderful Canadian friends, Rick & Sue, who's country hasn't ruined the planet), and seeing the retreating glaciers in Glacier National Park, we really want to do our little bit to help decrease the effects of global warming. We know we're just 2 people and we could probably do more, but every little bit helps in the end. It also kinda makes you wonder how things would be different if Al had won (as he really did) the presidential election instead of GW. I like to think the country would be in better hands.

-Laura

A Shout Out To All The Folks' Checking in From Hitch Itch!

2006-09-16T10:58:00.000-05:00

We have to give a big Bag-It-Tour welcome to all of the readers' that have joined us from the Hitch Itch site. Our readership has gone from about 40 day to almost 70 per day!

Hitch Itch is a site with links to TONS of other Rv'ers journals. Full-timers, weekenders, wannabees, anybody with a passion for the open road and a journal has links here. You can check them out by clicking the link below!

For those of you that have just joined us, you've caught us on the tail end of our adventure, but we still have a way to go. Hopefully, you'll follow along as we make the transition from the road back to a "normal" lifestyle.

Here is a quick synopsis of our adventure so far, but you'll have to go back and explore previous entries for all the crazy details ;)

In January 05, we made the decision to sell our house, leave our jobs(Well, Laura left, I tele-commuted part time) and seek out a new life out west. However, we had no idea where we wanted to be. We decided a full-time adventure on the road would be the best way to figure out where we wanted to live.

We spent most of the spring and summer of 05 packing, selling the house and planning the trip, we were finally ready to hit the road in October of 05. We ended up in Las Vegas just before Christmas. We stored the coach and flew home to be with family in Michigan over the Christmas/New Years holiday.

To start 2006, we headed to warmer climate! January through March we circled in and around Tucson, Phoenix, Quartzsite, Yuma and Palm Springs. As spring approached we started making our way up the California coast.

We spent most of the spring and summer circling around the Pacific northwest. We ended up in Denver in July for the Maverick Ranch annual brokers meeting(I was their Michigan representative). They had an offer for me I couldn't refuse. If we wanted to consider Denver, they a job for me in marketing and sales!

As we pondered where to live, Laura made a proposal to a drug treatment center in Tucson(we loved it down there last winter!). Sierra Tucson is in expansion mode and they were impressed with Laura's experience in the field. They look forward to having her fill-in in three different departments over the winter!

Now, you can see the quandary we faced. I had an opportunity in Denver and Laura created an opportunity for herself in Tucson, at least for the winter. To our relief, this was not a problem for the folks at Maverick! If we commit to moving there, the job will be available in spring of 07'. In fact, they are willing to have me start upon our arrival in Tucson, via tele-commuting and monthly visits up to Denver.

All of which leads us to today. We are in Denver, I'm working(mostly on coordinating my position and responsibilities while in Tucson) and we are searching for areas we like and looking for houses with our real estate agent. We start heading to Tucson on September 23rd. We will arrive in Tucson on September 30th. We'll be spending the in between time in Albuquerque, NM. I will be digging right into work the first week of October. I'll be heading out to a Natural Food show in Baltimore, MD. Laura starts work on October 9th, and Sierra Tucson says they'll have no trouble providing Laura with a full-time schedule :)

Now that you've been brought up to speed, we hope you'll continue to follow along!

Rich & Laura

Rock Mountain National Park

2006-09-16T08:56:00.000-05:00

Friday, we decided to take a much needed break from looking at houses. We took a drive up to Rocky Mountain National Park.

Here we approaching Estes Park, a little resort town at the "base" of the park. It sits at about 8,000 ft.

This will probably be the extent of the fall colors we will experience this year. Fall is by far our favorite time of year and the BEST time of year in Michigan. It's one of the things we will most about our previous home state.

The mating season is in full swing and elk viewing and photo opportunities where abundant!

Here are our elevation stats at the top of the park. Well, not actually the top because we went around another bend and actually made it to 12,150 ft!

For reference, our base camp in Denver is at 5,335 ft and it was 79 degrees an hour before our arrival at the summit. Yes, we did catch some snow at the top. However, we didn't stick around to enjoy it, the wind was blowing around 50mph which made it hard to stand in one place and it felt like any exposed skin was being sand blasted by the snow!

This is an interesting picture because it clearly shows three distinct zones. I didn't take the time to research the names of the zones, sorry :)

The trees stop growing at about 10,000 ft. The top zone starts at 12,000 and the peak you are looking at tops out around 14,500. There's not a lot happening in the zone in the middle. So, our non-scientific terms are the tree zone, the dead zone and the polar zone :)

It's still hard for us to imagine that we are going to be living just about an hour from all of this ;)

-Rich & Laura-

Banging Your Head Against a Wall........

2006-09-15T07:22:00.000-05:00

.......and searching for Real Estate in Denver......

One in the same?

For the past couple of day's we've been exploring areas in the Greater Denver area, both with our real estate agent and without, for a place to call home when we land next spring. The market here is very strange. Some areas are depressed but prices are not dropping, just holding. Other areas are hot and prices are going up fast. A majority of the places we looked at were empty (folks just get tired of waiting and move on?) Yet, according to our real estate agent, people aren't really negotiating on price. Go figure that situation out? It's a good thing we're not buying now, just trying to figure what area we like and a general idea of what we can get for our money.

One thing we know for sure, we can rule out living anywhere in or near Boulder(it reminds us so much of Ann Arbor, MI which we just love) There is only one major road leading in/out Boulder enroute to Denver (BAD traffic). The houses our agent showed us around Boulder are C-R-A-P (I had a much more appropriate word but decided against its use!) It seems the favorite past time of homeowners in Boulder is to sit and watch their property values go up. In the mean time, they don't do ANYTHING with their houses such as updating, cleaning, painting, maintenance and yard work!

despite being frustrated with the real estate search, we've really been enjoying the city of Denver. We are not used to a bright, vibrant and active downtown. Keep in mind, we have Detroit as our reference ;) There is just so much to do and see in town. The city is clean, the people are friendly and there are paths and parks everywhere. If you're bored in Denver, it's your own fault!

In the meantime, we keep searching and learning more about the place we're eventually going to call home :)

Rich & Laura

Exploring Denver

2006-09-12T10:22:00.000-05:00

I don't have any pretty pictures for this post because we haven't taken any yet. We got into Denver on Sunday afternoon and chilled. Yesterday morning Rich took the car & went to work at Maverick, leaving me to do....nothing. Yes, I could have done dishes, cleaned up, ridden the path behind our RV park, but I was feeling lazy & painfully aware that these are my last few lazy days before I go to work in 3 weeks. I did manage to do 2 loads of laundry & secure us a parking spot in Tucson, less than 5 miles from where I'll be working. It's technically in Catalina, about 5-10 miles north of Tucson. It's close to our favorite part of Tucson where the good shopping, mountain biking & Mt. Lemon is. The montly cost, $350 is much less than the $525 everyone else around there was quoting me. It's more than the campground where we have reservations ($315), but that was also 25 miles away in the middle of nowhere.

Yesterday we met our new real estate agent, Jodi Keiter-Wilson, who was referred to us by our old agent, Konnie Shaw. I had originally picked out some homes in the Golden area that I thought looked interesting. The appeal was that they were "out in the woods", so there was no landscaping or lawn to speak of. One house, was just beautiful & I'd convinced Rich to do a drive-by on Sunday evening. Holy Hill People!!!! Not only was this house 23 miles west of where we are now, but it was a good 10 miles up a windy canyon road. It was 57 degrees when we left, and 46 when we got to the house. The house did look nice, but there's no way we'd ever get up or down that road in the winter.

So Jodi and I developed a quick "Plan B" where she picked a few houses in areas she thought we might like, but the emphasis was going to be on areas, not on houses since we won't be in the market to buy until at least May '07. The good news is that Denver's market is only doing slightly better than Detroits, so it's still very much a buyers market. We actually liked the first house we saw. The best part of it was the protected land & moutain in the back yard. The bad part was that it was literally across the street from an elementary school! That may sound fine to some, but when you are childfree by choice, it's not such a good thing. So on we went, driving by some houses, going in others until we'd seen 8 total. At the end of the day we were tired and hungry, so Jodi dropped us off while we went to get a pizza for dinner.

-Laura

W-O-R-K; Denver Colorado

2006-09-11T13:36:00.000-05:00

Greetings from Colorful Colorado(the slogan on the sign entering the state)! Denver to be exact.

We arrived on Sunday and spent the afternoon setting up, washing the car, RV maintenance(fluid levels), catching up on laundry and other fun and exciting chore type things.

Today, I actually got to go to what will be my new office for w-o-r-k (still have a hard time saying or writing it). I have to ease myself into it, 4 hours for the day, but work none the less ! I've got strategic planning meetings set for Tuesday and Thursday; We'll be figuring out exactly how I'm going to be incorporated into the system while down in Tucson for the winter;) My company is being amazingly cooperative with our situation since Laura committed to working in Tucson before I accepted the job in Denver.

We also have some time planned to spend with our real estate agent searching areas in which to land next spring. Today we'll be exploring Golden, CO and Tuesday we'll be looking at the Boulder area; These areas are the top two contenders, as of now!

Of course, we have to leave some time for play too! we plan to hit Rocky Mountain National Park while we are here. We'll also spend some time exploring the miles of greenway(bike paths) they have all over the city!

There won't be much down time in the next two week, but that's how we like it!

Fun and exciting times, for sure!

-Rich-

Busy In Salt Lake City

2006-09-09T08:50:00.000-05:00

After "roughing it" in Glacier, Yellowstone and Teton National Parks for the past 3 weeks, it was nice to be back in civilization!

We pulled into SLC on Tuesday afternoon and had a lot on our calendar. Grocery shopping, hair cuts, a/c service on the coach(Freon leak), road testing scooters and visiting friends.

Errands don't make for interesting entries, so let's move right to the fun stuff, visiting friends!

Cockatoo Street; Cari and Gregg

Snuggles favorite place to visit! We visited Cari and Gregg on Wednesday evening for dinner. The girls did sushi and guys (and birds) did pizza! As usual, Snuggles was completely freaked out by the noise and craziness of all the birds at the cockatoo house. Here is Snuggles sizing up a much bigger Louie, who was quite comical. Louie would take chopstick and toss them in the air and then laugh hysterically. Snug just quietly watched the whole scene.

Gregg is an accomplished, self taught guitarist. I've been itching to get a guitar and learn how to play. I spent some time picking his brain on guitars and what too look for. Gregg showed me his skill with 80's hair metal(which I grew up on, works for me!).

After my quick lesson and messing with a bunch of Gregg's guitars, I've decided on an electric guitar. With our limited space and not wanting to torture Laura as I learn, I decided on this Steinberger travel electric and a personal amp w/headphones. This way, I torture no one but myself during the learning process :)

So, my eBay search is on!

Jerry & Lyne

We met Jerry and Lyne a few weeks ago, up in West Yellowstone. They pulled into their site and three big labs immediately piled out of the door! I think if we were to have a dog, it would absolutely be a lab! We were over there quickly to meet the dogs and their owners!

It turns out they had enough of California and ditched it for a much quieter life in Layton, UT. They travel in the RV when they can. They love wine and had labs', we had a lot to talk about! They knew we were headed to SLC and suggested we look them up when we got to town.

We met up with them on Thursday evening. They BBQ'd steaks and fresh corn for us(yum) and we chatted over wine (lot's of it!) Of course, I had to roll around with dogs; Buddy, the chocolate lab (14 years old!), Jake and little Mookie both Yellow's, and brothers!

They also recently purchased a horse and Lynne invited Laura for a visit and ride on Friday morning. I was forced to stay back and wait at the coach for the mobile a/c guys to fix the Freon leak.

Karen & Rich

We met up with Karen & Rich on Friday evening. We met at a brew pub in downtown SLC. Karen is originally from Michigan and we've known her for quite a few years. She is slowly trying to recruit everyone she knows to SLC :) It almost worked on us, except for that little thing called a J-O-B!

We didn't take the camera to dinner. Here is a pic of Karen and Rich from 2004 when we met up with them in Paris to watch Lance capture his 6th Tour D' France!

Every time we visit SLC (3 times on the BIT) we always run out time before we run out of things to do and friends to visit! Good thing it's only 540 miles from Denver to SLC. There should be plenty of opportunities to visit, once we have a permanent base in Denver next year.

Today we make our way to Denver, taking 2 days to get there. We'll stop overnight in Rawlins, WY, for rest and diesel. Monday will be my first day of "work" as I go to an office for my first time. That should be an interesting experience :)

-Rich-

Wrapping up Teton, NP

2006-09-05T22:49:00.001-05:00

After receiving the news we wouldn't be able to do the moose hunt(with camera, of course) on horseback, we decided to spend Labor Day over at Teton Village bombing down Rendevous mountain on our bikes!

We forgot to pack the camera, so we were left to take pics with our cell phones. So, sorry about the picture quality.

Laura catches me as I expertly wedge my front tire in between 2 rocks and darn near go over the bars. That would have made a better pic, but I managed to save it before going over.

There was a small skills park in the middle of the downhill run. We had fun doing the stunts. The phone camera was a little slow, but this is actually a see saw where you ride up one side and it swings down and you ride off it. It looks more difficult then it actually is!

We each ran about 4 different runs. By mid afternoon, we were hot, tired and hungry. The village had a tram that runs up to 10,500 ft and our lift ticket included a ride on the tram.

We enjoyed the view on the ride up and we sat at the top for a while and watched the para-gliders run off the side of the mountain and float away. Don't worry, neither of us are adventurous enough to attempt that :()

Here is a pic of the Jackson valley from the summit. Yeah, I know the quality stinks but the view was just awesome!

We packed up this morning and shot down I-15 to Salt Lake City. Darn, it's HOT here! We've been used to 68-72 degrees for the past couple of weeks. It was 92 when we arrived in SLC!

For dinner we hit the Happy Sumo for Laura's sushi fix(it's been about a week and a half). Upon our return, there was a knock on the door for a windshield repair. Nothing like having dinner paid for for 15 minutes worth of work!

Good News.....Somewhat Bad News........

2006-09-04T21:52:00.000-05:00

Bad News....

We called the horse place to reserve "our" horses for our moose search on Tuesday. Guess What!? Labor Day was the last day they were renting horses for the season :(

Oh well, no need to stay an extra day afterall. We are going to go ahead and make the drive to SLC on Tuesday as originally planned. At least we'll have an extra day to visit with friends in SLC!

Good News......

I did enough windshield repairs and sold enough No-Wet to cover our campground expenses and all of our activities this past week! The only hits to the bank account this week was for food and gas. It's those kind of weeks that make us think we could stay on the road longer.......But our time is closing in on us fast...... And we have new and exciting opportunities in front of us!!

Snake River White Water; Jackson, WY

2006-09-04T10:45:00.000-05:00

Our first white water trip on the Flat Head River in Glacier left us both wanting more! The Snake River Canyon, here in Jackson gave us the opportunity to experience some bigger water.

The flathead was predominately class 2's, with a couple of "3's" thrown in to make things exciting. The Snake River, on the other hand, was mostly class 3's, with a couple of 2's thrown in to get your heart rate back down ;) Our kind of water, we had a BLAST!

The on-shore photog got a great series of us on the biggest rapid on the trip, may have been a class "4", don't quite remember. Laura and I are on the left side of the boat!

Approaching "Big Kahuna" Rapid

Here we go!

IMPACT!

Just a little bit wet!

Today, we are headed over to Teton village. They have a Tram/ski-lift package on special for $15, all day use. We are going to take the mountain bikes over, bomb down the ski hill a few times, take the tram up to 10,000 ft for lunch and finish up by bombing down the hill a couple more times! It's too bad you can't take your bikes all the way up to 10,000 and ride down from there, that would be quite a ride :)

We still want to get over to Alpine and take the horses out again to try and get a look at the moose and her calf. We extended our stay one day, through Tuesday to try to get a glimpse of her..........

stay tuned..........

Horseback Riding; Jackson, WY

2006-09-02T04:50:00.000-05:00

Laura found a place in Alpine (little town SW of Jackson) that had horse rentals, unguided, for $55/full day. That is GREAT deal! We've done riding in North Carolina and Albuquerque, NM; They've always been guided trips where you plod along in a long group line. Now, this is OK with Rich, mister horse novice, but not Laura, miss horse "expert". So the thought of being able to go on an unguided trip was too much for her to pass up.

Here's Laura posing with her horse, Pal.

Here I am with my horse, Major!

These horses were outstanding in every way. Best handling horses of any other riding excursion we have done!

We wound our way up some pretty steep single track trail to an overlook of the town of Alpine (pop. about 300).

After about an hour and a half up, this was our view overlooking this massive town ;)

We packed lunches with us, and they had a grain bucket at the top for the horses. We sat enjoyed the view and our lunch for a while.

Here is Laura on the way down the single track trail.

Here my view coming down from the overlook.

The ranch hands at the stable told us to be on the look out for a moose and her calf and to make sure if we saw them that we did not get inbetween the two of them. Yes, wildlife opportunity! So far we've seen black bear, elk, mule deer, eagle, Osprey and fox all we need to add is a moose encounter.

Well, we didn't see the moose. However a guy who was out there alone, who we met up with back at the stable, claims to have saw them right near the trail that comes down from the outlook!

We lasted 4 hours, which was about all our butts could take! We found out, on our return, they have a half day rate of $35. I think we might come back Monday, skip the lunch and lingering at the Outlook, and search out the moose and her calf!

-Rich-

A Nice Dinner; Jackson, WY

2006-09-01T20:33:00.000-05:00

The day was pretty uneventful; surfing, blogging, clean inside the coach, two more windshield repairs(Yes! Covered tonights event!) and chilling out. The evening, however, had a nice dinner in store for us.

We've been watching our dining budget pretty closely and what better way to celebrate keeping it down then by adding to it :)

We decided to check out The Granary at Spring Creek Ranch in Jackson Hole. We picked it out of a local dining guide based on the sample menu they had in it. We called to make sure you could bring your own wine in (you can), its a great way to keep the cost down as restaurants usually double what you would pay retail in a store. The corkage fee was only $10, very reasonable, especially for a resort town.

Here was the view of the valley and the Tetons from our table. On the way up to the ranch we saw a pair of Osprey and a Red Fox, but were not quick enough with the camera!

We brought along one our favorite Archery Summit Pinot's we picked up on our last visit to McMinnville. We shared a wonderful scallop dish to start. For main courses, Laura had a Halibut with mushroom risotto and morels. I had Asian spiced duck with the same mushroom risotto. Both dishes were fabulous and paired just about perfectly with our Oregon Pinot Noir.

Bring on the holiday weekend..........

A few Updates......make sure you scroll down :)

2006-08-31T13:56:00.000-05:00

There are quite a few journal entries added so make sure you scroll down a bit to check them all out!

We have to go to a central location here in the campground to get internet, so we had to upload multiple entries at one time!

Grand Tetons; A First look

2006-08-31T13:37:00.000-05:00

We made our way over to Grand Teton National Park yesterday! Here is look at Grand Teton glacier, another North American glacier that could disappear in as little as 10 years!

We decided to go check out Jenny Lake. They had tour boats which went across the lake to a place called hidden falls; Ah, but Laura had a better idea! They also rented canoes by the hour. We decided to take our own canoe across the lake to check out the falls.

Of course, the wind picks up while we are about a quarter of the way across the lake. We both had to work much harder then anticipated to get across. I did manage to snap this picture of Laura with the Tetons in the background.

It was a nice little 1/2 mile hike up to the "falls" (after sitting and paddling for 40 minutes, the hike was nice). Here is a look down the falls.

Back at the coach for the evening; Snuggles decided she wanted to explore the trees in our campground. It's a good thing Cockatoos are not native to North America, there would be a lot of bare trees around ;)

Wrapping up Yellowstone!

2006-08-30T19:03:00.000-05:00

The Swimming Hole

On the drive through Firehole Canyon, earlier in the week, we came across this swimming hole. We waited for the weather to be warm enough to enjoy a swim and a "shoot" through this little canyon. Good thing the weather was warm, because the water was cold....About 65 degrees!

Laura got this pic of me, about to go over the "falls". Well, not really because where I am, it is about 4 foot deep and there is a rock ledge that prevents people from going over the edge.....But it does look dramatic, doesn't it?

Drowning flies.........some might call it "Fly Fishing"

Fly fishing is something I have always had a desire to learn. I've seen it done, many times. To me, it always looks art in motion when it's done correctly! Since we were here, in Yellowstone, what many believe to be the greatest trouting rivers in the country, I had to give it a try.

I got permission from Laura to do a guided trip and lesson. (We have never gone over our monthly "attractions and Entertainment" budget, to this point) This one would break the budget and deserved some discussion and approval. I went to a few different shops to get the low down on prices. I just couldn't bring myself to spend the $275 for a 3 hour trip and lesson. But there were options!

The guys at Bob Jacklin's Fly Shop were awesome and they had the perfect solution for me! Bob holds a fly fishing "clinic" free every Sunday night. They even have a little casting pond across the street from the shop. The guys spent some time showing me gear and the flys the locals use on the river. For $75 I got a decent beginners rod and reel. For another $10 bucks I picked up some fly's, leaders and tippets(boy, I sound like I know what I'm talking about!) It was $10 for a 3 day fishing license. So for $100 I got the gear and a great free lesson.....It's time to soak some flys!

Here I am trying to make sense of it all.

I got it! The lessons helped and for the next couple of hours I drowned flys, watched the elk and bison and just enjoyed the park and the surroundings. It was really a great way to waste a few hours and there really is an "art form" to the whole process; I have a ways to go before my cast look anything like art..... but at least I have my own gear now to continue practicing.

Next time I'll have to try to put the "fishing" into fly fishing :)

-Rich-

Business Has Been Brisk...........

2006-08-30T18:26:00.000-05:00

......Especially on our own vehicles :(

The Montana DOT's favorite way to repair roads is to spray a coating of tar on the road, spread gravel over the tar and let traffic compact it all down. If that works for them, great, it sure has been good for the windshield repair business!

I've been doing at least 2 repairs per campground, usually more. However, 3 of my last 8 repairs have been on our own vehicles. Two on the motorhome and one on the Suzuki.

No sooner then we pulled into our campground, here in Thyne, WY, there was a knock on the door for another repair!

Here is a "before" shot:

Here is the "after" :

I'm only going to give this repair an "8" out of "10". The black marks you see on the lower left leg are air remaining in break. I also get a few point deduction for being able to see my drill mark in the center of the repair. This not an unsucessful repair, in fact, its better then alot of what I've seen out there; But I strive for prefection in every repair I do;)

-Rich-

Moving on to Thayne, Wyoming

2006-08-29T20:36:00.000-05:00

Today we drove 177 miles (all state highways) to an RPI park called Star
Valley Ranch Resort. It's further from Jackson Hole & the Grand Tetons
(60 miles) but at $8 a night, the price can't be beat. Tomorrow we'll
spend the day in Jackson Hole. There's three sushi places there. I'm
craving sushi in a major way. I haven't had any in over a week!
-Laura

Firehole Canyon

2006-08-27T22:39:00.000-05:00

Yesterday Rich and I went on bike rides, although seperately because I can't keep up with him. Rich rode a total of 36 miles round trip in & out of the park. I only rode 12. Being up at 6600' is hard on the lungs. Anyway, Rich rode into Firehole canyon and wanted to show it to me today. I saw a bald eagle on my ride and wanted to show Rich where. Much to my surprise, the eagle was still there! Here's a pic. Click on it to get a slightly better view:

After about 15 miles, we came to Firehole canyon. What a beautiful place!!! I took a picture of Rich looking at some rapids. There was also a chipmunk that came right up to Rich's shoe, looking for food. When Rich tried to take a picture of him, he ran, as if to say, "no food, no picture!" Rich made clicking noises & held his fingers together, as if he had food; when he saw the chipmunk looking up at us from where he'd run. The chipmunk ran back up to Rich's shoe, and again, when we tried to take a pic, he turned tail and ran away. So no food, no chipmunk pictures. *sigh*

We also saw a swimming hole, where the current ran into. There were a ton of people swimming, so the water couldn't have been too cold. Rich said there were only 3 cars parked there yesterday (when the high was only 65), but since it was 72 & sunny today, there were a lot more people. We're going to go tomorrow since it's going to be 76.

Rich bought a fly-fishing package today for a very reasonable price. The shop where he bought it gives free fly fishing lessons on Sunday evenings at 7:30. Free beats the $250 lesson & walking trip most places want to charge. I didn't get any pictures of him casting since it was dark by the time I got there.

-Laura

Waterfalls and the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

2006-08-26T22:16:00.000-05:00

Today we drove into what's essentially the center of the park to see the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. It's 40 miles one way, which doesn't sound like much until you remember that the speed limit is only 45mph & there's lots of cool stuff to stop and see. One good thing to remember is that wherever you see a lot of cars pulled over, there's usually something good (i.e. wildlife) to see. We found that out yesterday when we pulled over with about 20 other cars to watch a herd of elk cross the road. This one was across the street already and calling the others. Notice the radio collar with the cellphone-type antenna?

Or this guy, who was in the same spot alllll day:

Another time we saw a line of cars and found this bull elk just 40' or so away. He saw the people, but seemed completely unconcerned:

After awhile, we finally got to our destination, the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. This where we saw the upper and middle falls from both rims.

Upper falls:

Middle Falls:

The rest of the evening was spent chilling with grilled lamb chops and a glass of red wine. Ahhhh!

And that's all folks!

-Laura

The Yellowstone Fires of 1988

2006-08-25T20:51:00.000-05:00

I'd heard about the Yellowstone fires of 1988, but until we got to the park, I didn't understand the full extent of it. Unlike Rich, this wasn't my first time here. I went to Yellowstone with my family when I was about 11, in 1980. I remembered the hot springs and lots of really tall trees. Well, a lot of that is gone. As soon as we drove into the park at the west entrance, there's evidence of past fire everywhere. There's dead trees standing up and laying down everywhere. But as signs that nature heals itself, there's signs saying, "naturally reseeded after the first of 1988". Because among the dead trees are growing evergreens that are 10-15' tall, signs of rebirth. Apparently the national parks policy of natural and man-caused fires used to be to let themselves burn themselves out, but that was changed in 1988. According to this article, a series of weather conditions (along with a few human-caused fires) caused a total of 706,277 acres of Yellowstone's 2.2 million acres to be burned. On August 20, now known as "Black Saturday", more land burned than in any other DECADE since 1872. Over 10,000 firefighters helped in the over $100,000,000 effort to save Yellowstone. They did manage to save the historic Old Faithful Inn.

So that's the scoop on the fires. Interesting and sad at the same time.

-Laura

Waterfalls and the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

2006-08-25T16:16:00.000-05:00

Clean up and Work Day; West Yellowstone

2006-08-25T06:42:00.000-05:00

I spent most of the morning working while Laura checked out houses(on the web) and scheduling showings for us when we arrive in Denver in mid September.

After lunch, we spent the afternoon cleaning the coach, both inside and out and washing the car. We were really behind on our cleaning and everything was a dusty mess!

I know, all of this makes for really compelling reading ;)

I did manage to update our rafting entry with our actual pictures from the trip. You can go back here: White Water Rafting; Glacier National Park

or

You can just see them here:

We plan on heading back to National Park today to hike around "The Grand Canyon" of Yellowstone. Check back tomorrow for, hopefully, a more interesting jounal entry :)

-Rich-

Yellowstone; First visit

2006-08-24T22:33:00.000-05:00

Here it is, our shot of the most famous destination in the park! The plan for today was to stick to the main road attractions. We'll spend other days "off the beaten path", exploring the interior of the park.

Here is Laura on the "boardwalk" with Spasm geyser in the background.

One of the many Geothermal pools that create these magnificent colors in both the water and ground around the pools. Our camera just doesn't capture the brilliance of these colors!

The painted pots were pretty spectacular. The bubbling molten minerals had many different colors. Again, our little digital just can't capture the colors. Boy, we just gotta look into a better camera ;)

One of the best things about Yellowstone is the wildlife. On this visit we watched a herd of mule deer cross the river. We also caught a couple of single Bison in various spots around the park.

Almost more amazing then the closeup animal experience was the human experience. After the mule deer crossed the river they came up the bank to cross the road. Another part of the herd was already across the road and calling the rest of pack (really weird howling noises). As they tried to pass, in between parked cars, people would actually block their path to get their pictures. Hello, people, do not realize this animal could freak out because you are blocking its path to it's group and could knock you down and crush your skull?!?

As we shot our picture of the Bison, about 20 yards from the road, we watched a college kid hop of his car run across the road towards the bison to get his picture. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea, run up BEHIND a big male bison while its feeding!

So, we're not sure if it's more fun watching the human element or the animal element in the park. I always live by the, respect mother nature, motto. If you don't, she'll eventually bite you in the ass :)

Arrived in West Yellowstone, Montana

2006-08-23T19:27:00.000-05:00

After one of our shortest drives ever (163 miles), we arrived at Yellowstone Grizzly RV park. It's a very nice park with free cable & pay wifi. In the mornings they have free cappuccino (push button kind), coffee & hot chocolate. It's pricey at almost $300 for the week, but then, everything is pricey around here. I got us a backin site because it was $5/day cheaper. The bonus turns out to be that we are backed up to national forest, so it's pretty quiet. We could have stayed in Yellowstone, as this is one of the few nat'l parks that we'll be visiting that has spaces long enough for us. I didn't try because they are first come, first served and have no hookups. We spent the rest of the afternoon setting up and chilling. They say it gets cold here at night (40'ish), which will make great sleeping weather.

-Laura

Traveling

2006-08-21T19:28:00.000-05:00

Today we drove from just outside of Glacier Nat'l park to a Wal-Mart in
Butte, Montana, a 269 mile drive. This Wal-Mart is the only one for
miles around, so I expect it'll get full of RV's. Last time we stayed
here, there were 10! Today there's 5 so far. On our way here we saw a
billboard for "The Testicle Festival. Everyone have a ball!"

Tomorrow we drive 169 miles to West Yellowstone.

Travel Day to West Yellowstone!

2006-08-21T04:34:00.000-05:00

This morning we head out of Glacier and begin our way to Yellowstone. We are taking 2 days to make the 400 miles to West Yellowstone. We are stopping, for an overnight, at the Wal-Mart in Butte, MT. We are going to be sure to load up on groceries and supplies for the comming week; We've already been warned that good groceries are hard to come by and expensive in West Yellowstone.

We'll be out of commission for a day or two while we travel. Check back for a report from West Yellowstone Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning!

See ya!

Rich & Laura

White Water Rafting; Glacier NP

2006-08-20T15:41:00.000-05:00

Today, we took a 1/2 day white water trip. It was the first white water experience for both of us. We had a blast!

Here is a couple of photos of us on the white water! We're in the back of the raft.

We did not take our camera, by the raft company suggestion, for fear of water logging it or having it fly out of the raft. So, of course, we get the best wildlife opportunity EVER.

Right as we start out and momma black bear and her 2 cubs were on the shoreline. We passed probably 6 feet from them in the river. It was an amazing close up experience that will have to live with us in our memory banks! Thanks to Google Images, this gives you an almost identical view of what we witnessed today, but add in two litte cubs in the tree on the bank!

-Rich & Laura-

Return to Big Mountain; Glacier, NP

2006-08-19T21:44:00.000-05:00

We had so much fun downhilling at Big Mountain Ski Resort, we just had to return!

Here we are on the ride up. They alternate chairs and gondolas. Our first time here we took the gondola up. We did not make the same mistake this time. They may be great in the winter to block the wind, but they're like ovens when it's 85 degrees out!

Here, Laura catches my "good side" as we make our way down the mountain. We are about 1/2 way down at this point. The lake you see below is at 4,000' and we are at about 6.500 feet at this point.

"If ya' ain't bleedin', ya' ain't pushin' yerself hard enough!" I have no idea who said this to me, a long, long time ago but I always remembered it :) I got a little over confident on a really loose section and the mountain reminded me who's boss!

-Rich-

Road Trip and Meeting Blog Readers; Glacier. NP

2006-08-18T21:40:00.000-05:00

Today we decided to make our way up and over Going to Sun Road to visit with fellow full-timers' Peter and Patty, who have been on the road full-time since 99. They are camp hosting in the Many Glaciers Campground on the eastern end of Glacier National Park.

We stopped along the road to get this self portrait with Jackson Glacier in the background. Don't you just love the self-timer?

Another shot of Jackson Glacier. This is the one Al Gore talks about disappearing completely within 15 years in "Inconvenient Truth".

There was a huge fire in the St Mary's area 2 weeks ago. We passed through the area on the way back to West Glacier. The fire devastated 32,000 acres of forest! If you enlarge the picture and look real hard at the mountains in the back you can see smoke from hot spots that are still burning. They were much clearer in person. A completely different experience seeing this type of devastation in person, then on the news or in the paper.

This is the road to Many Glacier campgrounds. It sits just below the glacier in the background. It would have been great to stay there for a couple of days.

Patty and Peter were great to talk to . We hung out for a couple of hours and shot the breeze on a number of subject. I wish I could give you a link a journal for them. However, according to Peter, "we had an on-line journal once, I just don't remember where we left it." Although they've only been full-time since 99, they have been camphosting summers in Glacier for 16 years, can you blame them!?

-Rich & Laura-

Uneventful Day in Glacier, NP

2006-08-17T22:05:00.000-05:00

This is the view we enjoyed this evening from the trout pond while trying to catch dinner for tomorrow night. We were not successful, but the sunset and weather was amazing!

After all of the activity of the past few days, we needed a break. Today we went to get haircuts and lounged around the motorhome. Neither of us felt like cooking dinner. One of our neighbors recommended a pizza place down the street as having great pies, they were right.

I did run this morning and moved up another level. I moved up to doing 3 minute runs, 2 minutes walks for 5 repetitions 3 days per week. The improvement, slow at first, is starting to come at a faster rate. I still think I'm far away from "officially" calling myself a runner!

-Rich-

Riding downhill at Big Mountain

2006-08-16T18:22:00.000-05:00

Today we headed out to Big Mountain Ski Resort for a little downhill mountain biking! The resort is in Whitefish, Montana. The scenery and mountain were spectacular. About 1/2 way through our 8 mile downhill run, they had a skills park. It was not in the best of shape but was fun to play around on some of the stunts. Laura even got into the stunts.

Here are some photos form the ride:

After lunch it was starting to look like rain, so we opted out of doing another run. We are definitely going to go back to Big Mountain before we leave on Sunday. On the way back to the campground we stopped at a rafting center to inquire about rafting trips. We are going to try and do a half day raft through Glacier before we leave.

In the afternoon, one of our neighbors knocked on our door and asked me repair his windshield on his coach and his tow car. Later in the day, I sold some No-Wet. We just paid for our rafting trip and have spending money for the week :)

We didn't get a chance to add to our trout we caught yesterday, so we went with what we had. I filleted it up and sauteed it in olive oil and lemon. The trout and steamed vegetables wasn't quite enough for dinner for 2, so we'll augment it with some popcorn later this evening. There's something really satisfying about catching and preparing your own dinner :) We'll be trying our luck in the trout pond again before we leave here!

Boy, we've a lot to do before we leave!

-Rich-

Running, Errands and Trout; Glacier NP

2006-08-15T22:41:00.000-05:00

The Day started out brisk, 48 degrees! It was my day to run, but I waited till it warmed up to about 50 at 9AM , before heading out the door. I've been running 2 times per week for the past 2 weeks and I'm starting to see some improvement in my stride, my breathing and my distance. Today added another element, hills. Our campground in built into the side of a mountain and it got my heart rate up rather quickly.

When I returned from my run, we headed out to the local Wal-Mart for some misc supplies, which included and assortment of flies; To try our hand at catching some Rainbow trout in the pond in our campground. There is an assortment of Polaroid pictures in the lobby that show smiling people with their 14" and 16" Rainbows the campground claims were caught in the pond. I've been skeptical of these "catches" since an experience we had in Pennsylvania; A campground had a bunch of pictures of locals with large mouth bass they claimed were taken from their mud pit they called a pond. I spent a weekend catching nothing more then a cold!

So..........

............Here is my picture, ready to added to their "wall of fame" with my 13" rainbow that is currently sitting in our refrigerator for dinner tomorrow! I threw one much smaller one back, lost 3 others and Laura didn't have much luck at all. Hopefully, we can add another by dinner time tomorrow. I think we are going to cook it like the steaks the previous day, over an oak fire.

After dinner, we spent the evening with fellow full-timers Toni and Mike by the pond, with drinks, trying to add to our catch. None of us were successful :(

Tomorrow, the four of us are headed to Big Mountain Ski area for a chairlift ride to the top and a mountain bike ride back down. This will be Toni and Mike's first real off-road adventure. I already have confirmation from a local bike shop that the decent is beginner friendly!

We promised to return them back to the campground in one piece ;)

-Rich-

Busy Day in Glacier National Park

2006-08-14T21:30:00.000-05:00

The fun Started Sunday evening. First, we met up with another young full-time couple. Toni & Mike(click to check out their blog) just started a couple of month's ago; We thought we were young to be doing this, they are under 30! We chatted with them for a while and hope to do some biking with them later this week.

On the way back from our chat, our neighbours noticed Snuggy and ran into their coach to bring out Buddy, their White capped Amazon. Snuggy and Buddy were not too interested in each other, but we had a nice chat with Buddy's parents! We managed to get Snuggy and Buddy to tolerate each other enough to get this picture!

After I did my grueling 2 hours of work this morning, we decided to head out and check out Glacier park. We headed out on the " Going to the Sun Hwy" through Logan Pass. It was quite an impressive ride as we rode along MacDonald Lake, crystal clear and aqua blue. We drove up to 8,800' and snapped this pic of Heavens Peak and the valley below.

We made our way back down to the valley to grab some lunch. Next, we decided to take a nice leisurely hike to John's Lake. Here is Laura testing the sturdiness of the bridge over the bog, before I tried to cross over :)

After a long day of working, visiting, driving and hiking, there is nothing better for dinner then a big, juicy steak and a glass of red wine! (you veggies can stop reading here, you know who you are, eh!). Our campsite had a fire ring which we have not seen since we've been west of the Mississippi! We bought some firewood at the camp store and grilled our steaks over an oak fire; There is NOTHING better then a good steak grilled over wood! Oh yeah, if you veggies are still reading, we did have steamed broccoli with the steaks and wine ;)

I'm tired.....See ya!

-Rich-

Settling in at Mountain Meadows RV park

2006-08-13T20:31:00.000-05:00

Today was a short drive day in terms of distance (270 miles), but a long day in terms of hours. We didn't get on the road until 10:30 and lost an hour when we got into Montana and the Mountain Time zone. Between last stops for groceries, lunch, & potty stops, we didn't get into our park, Mountain Meadows, until almost 5pm. So far the park seems nice, but we've only seen the office and our spot. We do have a fire pit which is exciting because we haven't been able to build a fire in a long time. We're looking forward to steaks cooked over a fire. Part of the reason the drive took so long was that we're 130 miles off the interstate. We drove a lot of windy roads. But even though this park doesn't have cable, and it looks like we won't have cell phone service for the next week, we at least have wifi, so we can update our blog and email our friends.

-Laura

Planning The Remainder of 2006

2006-08-12T07:16:00.000-05:00

You may have noticed we haven't been doing a very good job of keeping the blog updated. Since leaving Monaco on the 2nd, we have not had much luck with internet connections(the good part of that is we are out and active, not spending time sitting, inactive, in front of the computer!). Our time in Vancouver and Rick and Sues internet connection helped us get caught up on our computing. It also allowed us to plan out our remaining 2 months of freedom!

If you recall (new information for new readers), we will be spending winter in Tucson, AZ. Laura has accepted a temporary therapist/utilization review position with Sierra Tucson through April 1st. We have to be in Denver to "officially" start my new career in May 2007. It seems like we just started, but here we are planning our exit :(

Our National Parks pass will expire in December. We figured the best way to finish up with a bang (and maintain the budget) was to hit as many of the National Parks around us as possible.

So, here it is, hot off the press, our plan up to our arrival in Tucson on October 1st!

Glacier National Park. We'll be there next week. When we saw the movie "inconvenient Truth" about the global warming crisis. One thing that caught our attention; The glaciers in this park could be completely gone in as little as 10 to 15 years. A very sad thought.
Yellowstone NP. We'll drop down and spend a week here starting on the 22nd. A necessary stop on any RV adventure!
Grand Tetons, NP. A good spot to spend the long Labour Day weekend.

Rocky Mountain NP. We plan to take a day trip or two here from our campground in Golden, CO.

We will be in Denver for 2 weeks starting September 10th. We are going to concentrate on exploring the towns surrounding Denver for places to live. Right now, we really like the Golden and Boulder area. They are closer to the mountains then the rest of Denver. Unfortunately, proximity to mountains usually comes with a high price tag.

From Denver, we'll be heading down to Albuquerque, NM for a few days. We didn't get nearly enough time in this great town on our previous visit last November. Finally, landing in our temporary home(for 6 months anyway), Tucson, AZ.

The green line you see in the map is a tentative plan for the month we will have available to us in April 07. We will spend at least a week in Sedona (our favorite place of all!) and would like to plan another stop at Best Friends' Animal Sanctuary, Moab, and Grand Juction, CO. Finally arriving in the Denver area for start of life 2.0 in May. We plan to live in the coach through the spring and summer while our stuff in storage back in Michigan makes its way out and we search for the right area and home for us!

07 seems so far away! However, so did the end of the tour we left Michigan way back in October, 05!

-Rich-

Vancouver, British Columbia.

2006-08-10T11:10:00.000-05:00

We have always passed in to Canada through Detroit. You either have to go over the bridge or through the tunnel, which means a toll. Since it's one of the largest crossing points, its massive and usually very crowded. The crossing at Sumas, WA was small, one gate and a land crossing with no tolls, a nice experience for us!

Our friends Rick and Sue, who winter in Palm Springs and spend summers here in Vancouver with family, have been trying to get us up here all year. Our only previous experience with this wonderful city was on a tour bus on our way up to Whistler for a skiing vacation.

Their daughter Karley and husband Ian have a home in Mission, BC, about an hour outside of the city. Rick and Sue park their motorhome next to their house for the summer. We visited with them Tuesday through Thursday. They were going to act as our tour guides of the city! We were treated just like family as we met Karley and Ian, their children Makai and Monet. Rick and Susan also have a son, Jay, who has an apartment downtown Vancouver, in a very hip part of town.

Anytime we get together with Rick and Sue, we always seem to be eating. This visit was no different. It started out with a wonderful homemade dinner at Karley's on Tuesday night. Wednesday we had lunch downtown, very cheap sushi, Bento box for $4.95! We had dinner with Jay and his roommate at a hip grill just a short walk from his apartment!

We spent some time around Granville Island, the Market area, perusing the market and seeing the sites. Here we are checking out the city from the marketplace.

Next, we decided to rent bikes and follow the path around Stanley Park. The views of the city and the water surrounding the area was spectacular. It was about 10 miles around the island, so we did manage to get in some exercise in between meals ;)

As we were cruising around on our rentals, the Snow Birds, The Canadian equivalent of the Blue Angels, were practicing for a weekend air show. Susan managed to catch this great shot of them between buildings as they cruised over the city!

Words can't accurately describe the city of Vancouver. You just have to experience it for yourself! Besides an absolutely stunning background of mountains and water, the city is clean and vibrant. There is construction everywhere (may have something to do with the 2010 Olympics), the people, of course, are very friendly (their Canadian, eh!)

We can't thank our tour guides enough for their hospitality and making us feel like part of their family! We had a wonderful time and can't stress enough what a beautiful city Vancouver is; We can't wait to return!

-Rich-

Friends come to visit; Mcminnville Oregon

2006-08-08T20:49:00.000-05:00

After the Lobster feast we spent some time with our friends Rick & Sue.

Sunday was going to be a hot one in Eugene, 92 degrees. We decided to head to the coast to escape the heat. We escaped it alright! It was 55 degrees in Linclon City! We spent a little bit of time on the beach but, as you can see is it was really windy and quite chilly. We decided to head into town and do lunch at a place called the Black Fish Cafe. If you find yourself in Lincoln City and like seafood, I would highly recommend it.

After half a day at the coast we made our way back to Eugene. It is still hard to believe the temp can vary by 40 degrees in a 45 minute drive without much elevation change!

The town of McMinnville has this tiny little theater, and they were showing Al Gore's documentary on global warming, Inconvenient Truth. We had all heard good things about the movie so we decided to check it out. Political views and party allegiances aside, everyone should see this movie and think about not only our countries roll in the environment, but your own personal roll as well. The biggest thing I took from the movie was what a dynamic and motivational speaker Al Gore is; It just makes me wonder where our country would be right now and how different things might be if he had actually become our President? (hopefully that will be the most "political" talk you ever have on this blog :)

With the movie out of the way, it must be time for more food!

Laura and I discovered this great little tapas restaurant in McMinnville on our last visit, La Rambla. The food is reasonable and they have a lot of vegetarian fare, we thought Rick and Sue might enjoy it, I think we all did!

Monday was going to be a travel day for everyone. Rick and Sue were heading back to Vancouver and we were headed to Sumas, Washington. Sumas is a border town that we will use to park the motorhome and commute across to visit the sights of Vancouver and we are going to have a couple of wonderful tour guides!

-Rich-

Archery Summit; Lobster Fest

2006-08-07T20:03:00.000-05:00

Archery Summit is our favorite Pinot Noir. We joined their wine club when we were in town this past May. The wine club entitles you to free tasting when you visit, special events they have throughout the year and great deals on their wines! In fact, they sell 80% of their yearly production strictly to wine club members! (Sorry, there's a 3,000 member limit, we just made it, and the waiting list now is about a year out!)

We knew through the newsletter that they had "Lobsterfest" going on this weekend. We figured it was full and we didn't know exactly when the coach was going to be ready, so we didn't give it much thought.

We pulled into McMinnville at 4pm on Friday afternoon. Laura said, "Archery Summit is opened till 4:30 and we're 5 minutes away". Being the good husband I am, we parked the coach and made our way to the winery for our free Pinot tasting.

We were chatting with Lynda, the customer service manager, and she let us know they had a cancellation for the Lobster Fest and we could get in if we wanted too. Now, it was a bit expensive, but we were here and they had a cancellation; Who am I to mess with Karma ;)

While the lobsters' cooked, we drank Pinot! They had quite a few vintages availble for trial and purchase; 97 cuvee, 2000 cuvee, 03 Redhills just to name a few. They were all delicious, but we didn't have the budget to buy any 40-60 dollar Pinot Noir!

After about an hour of mingling and drinking, we were summoned to the "feast" and it was amazing!

They poured the lobsters directly on to the tables; No plates and the only utensils available were the lobster Krackers. Thank goodness they gave us all aprons before we got started :)

Beside the lobster, this one pot dish consisted of whole shrimp, artichokes, potatoes, corn, onions and cloves of garlic. It was all served with drawn butter, fresh baguettes and of course Pinot Noir!

In both pictures you can see the amazing view of the vineyards we enjoyed during the meal! The weather was fabulous, 80 degrees and not a cloud in the sky!

The cave was open during the event, you actually had to walk through it to get to the rest rooms. It was a nice refreshing walk to get out of the sun and cool down for a moment.

We stuffed ourselves silly with lobster and washed it down with plenty of Pinot. It ruined the "dining" budget for the rest of the month, but we both agreed it was well worth it and an experience we won't soon forget!

-Rich-

No Internet :(

2006-08-07T10:05:00.000-05:00

We have not had internet available to us since checking out of the hotel on Thursday afternoon!

We had a great weekend in McMinnville; Lobsterfest at Archery Summit, dinner with Rick And Sue, another visit to the coast and Al Gore's movie inconvenient Truth.

Lot's to tell you about and pictures to share, but can't do it on dial up.

Today, we will be making our way up to Sumas, WA, about a 320 mile drive. We will be using this small town as our access point to visit BC this week.

Hopefully we will have access to highspeed and we can get our pictures uploaded and share our stories with you....Stay tuned....

-Rich-

Mobile Blog; On The Road Again!

2006-08-04T21:35:00.000-05:00

Monaco finished up the repairs on the coach on Thursday afternoon. We were able to spend Thursday night in it to make sure everything checked out OK.

Since everything checked out fine, we were cleared to hit the road. It sure is good to be home! We checked out of camp Monaco this morning and stopped back by the hotel to get our bikes out of the lock up. We made quick work of the 75 miles to McMinnville Oregon (wine country!)

While we are here we are going to LobsterFest at our favorite vineyard, Archery Summit. We are also going to visit with our favorite Canadians, Rick and Sue, who rumor has it are here shopping for a new bike(motorcycle, that is!)

Taking Up Running....

2006-08-02T20:59:00.000-05:00

....Ok, stop the laughter and I'll continue :)

I've been riding the path along the Willamette River just about every day. I ride in the morning, before the sun gets too high in the sky. I usually get around 24 to 36 miles on a ride. After a shower and some breakfast and I'm ready to take on the day!

I feel more energetic throughout the day after exercising in the morning. I also find that I eat a little more for breakfast after working out, which results in less snacking during the day.

The bike rides have been getting (gasp!) a little boring, so I've been looking for something to "spice it up". Of course, there are a ton of people running on the path, so I thought I would give it a try. Understand, I've never run, anywhere, for anything, at anytime!

I headed out one morning with my "trail shoes", ipod and waterbottle for a little run. I just assumed, I'm in shape I bike, you just run, no big deal. WRONG! About 36 seconds into my running, I had this amazing pain in my shins! I could walk it off but it came back the second I did anything more then a fast walk.

I got in touch with my friends Karen and Rich in Salt Lake City. They both have run marathons and Rich is fresh off an Ironman in Cordelane, Idaho. Their advice, go talk to the pros at a shop and get some real running shoes. I took their advice and went to the local Nike store(I'm partial to Nike!) and explained my situation to the local running expert. I got hooked up with some shoes that have maximum support and cushion. Here they are:
They sure are pretty, all blue and silver, but I hope to dirty them up soon enough! I also dug into the internet for some information for beginner runners. It turns out, I had my expectations set just a little too high! I found some great programs on-line 10 -12 weeks, that take you in steps up to being an actual runner. For the first couple of weeks, you run twice a week and alternate a 1 minute run with a 1 minute walk 5 to 8 times.

I tried out my shiny new shoes today. I started with a 5 minute walk then alternated 1 minute runs and walks for 10 minutes then ended with 5 minute walk. Guess what, no shin pain! There was still pressure in the area, but not the pain I experienced before. I'll chalk that up to those muscles not being developed for running, yet.

I even got Laura to go out with me for the "run". She also has never run, ever! We'll have to see how it goes, it was a nice alternative to the daily bike ride!

-Rich-

Coach Update #2

2006-08-02T18:28:00.000-05:00

We stopped by the factory today and got some real good news. Our coach should be liveable by tomorrow night and DONE by Friday afternoon!!! We're so excited to be going home! So tonight we have to get packed up tonight. Hopefully we can get eveything in the car and back to the moho in 1 trip. We'll have 1 less bike because Rich dropped his road bike off at a shop to get his cables & chain replaced. This afternoon's other project was replacing the handlebar tape on our road bikes. Neither of us have done this before. Rich's came out better than mine, but at least my bright orange tape looks bright again.

In other news, our next stop is going to be McMinnville, Oregon, about 95 miles north of Eugene. We have some more wines to taste! Our friends, Rick & Sue, are going to meet us there, but they are traveling by motorcycle, so they are going to try to find a local B&B to stay in. After a weekend in McMinnville, we're going north to meet up with them again in Mission, BC (that's Canada). But since it's such a complicated process to take Snuggles across the border, we're going to park the moho in Bellingham or Sumas on the U.S. side, then drive over.

-Laura

Coach Update

2006-08-01T22:11:00.000-05:00

The pic is a little blurry but this is the driver side slide about 1/2 reassembled after a complete rebuild.
It appears the culprit to the leaks in the front slides was the failure to install slide stops. This caused the slides to overextend everytime they were put out and stress out seams and joints, which of course started leaking. Both slide boxes have been rebuilt, all seals around all three slides have been replaced, drip cups and drainage channels have been added. The coach should be going into the Monaco "hurricane tunnel" for wind and water test by Thursday. We are hoping to be back in it for this weekend!

We hope to be back on the road by early next week after passing the test and living in it at "camp Monaco" for a few days to make sure everything is fixed to our satisfaction.

Meanwhile, back at the Residence Inn in Eugene, we have been taking advantage of the access to the trail system along the Willamette River. We have been doing a hike or bike ride along the river everyday. We also like the ability to get just about anywhere in town on your bike. We need to make it a requirement, when we move back into a sticks and bricks, to be close to "green space" bike paths!

-Rich-

Heaven is.........

2006-07-30T09:42:00.000-05:00

.....A sunny 72 degree day with humidity less then 10% and not a cloud in the sky.

.....Having a bike lane on just about every road in and around town.

.....Being able to ride your bike, out your front door to the Farmer's Market every Saturday.

.....Having every vegetable imaginable organically and locally grown available in one spot.

.....Mountains 15 minutes from downtown.

.....Struggling up the side of side of that mountain on your bike to a lookout called "Eagles Elbow".

.....Understanding why it's called Eagle's Elbow as a lone eagle flys over the lake looking for dinner.

.....Unwinding from the day with fresh figs with blue cheese and drizzled with honey and a glass of Pinot Noir, all local products.

.....Experiencing everything mentioned above with the one you love!

Yeah, it was a great day! No pictures necessary.

-Rich-

BMX'ing in Eugene

2006-07-28T15:17:00.000-05:00

This afternoon Rich, Snuggles & I rode our bikes (Snuggles rode on the handlebars) over to the BMX track at the local park. I think the park is called Alton Baker park. It seems to be the center of activities here. The nice thing is that it's less than 1/2 mile away. In the picture above, you can see the bike shed where we store our bikes at the Residence Inn. It's a wonderful feature, especially since we have nowhere else to store our bikes. They keep a key at the front desk, and we have our bikes locked up within the locked shed. Plus, we can see them from our window.

Anyway, the 3 of us headed off on our mountain bikes to the BMX track. Rich went first, while I snapped as many pictures as I could. The ones posted are the best of a bunch of about 15. Rich only took 2 pics of me, one of which wound up being my butt, so we're NOT going to post that. Snuggles mostly watched, but she thought it was pretty cool. After a couple of runs we headed back. I found out BMX'ing is harder & more tiring than it looks.

Later that evening, I was pulling out our rice cooker, and it somehow jumped out of my hands! I think I killed it because it's got some funky things in the window and it's not showing any signs of power/life. I was bummed because it's a really nice rice cooker. Fortunately, there's a really good asian market & deli here, so tomorrow's budget buster will be buying a new (but this time smaller) rice cooker. Ouch! In the morning, we're taking our bikes over the the Eugene Saturday market, which is just a mile away, and actually easier to access by bike than by car.

-Laura

Road Ride

2006-07-26T17:55:00.000-05:00

Somewhere between Eugene & Harrisburg

Today, I decided to ride my road bike from Eugene to the Monaco Facility in Harrisburg. It was about 28 miles out there, with a strong wind hitting me in the face the whole time. I managed a 16 mph average, despite the wind.

I took this pic, with my phone, of the road I was on for about 14 miles of the ride out. That scene didn't change for the entire 14 miles, there wasn't anything to look at except hay fields but that also meant no traffic!

I pulled into camp Monaco just in time for lunch. I did a quick check on the coach. They have the bedroom slide and driver side slides rebuilt and are starting on the passenger side slide. They hope to water test the repairs by mid next week. So far, they are ahead of schedule; Let's hope they stay that way!

On the way back, I felt like a superstar. It's amazing what a BIG wind at your back, pink frosted sugar cookies and kickin' tunes on the ipod can do for your riding! I skipped the scenic route along the Willamette River, so the route back was 24 miles. I made it back in 1 hour and 10 minutes!

What a great ride -Rich-

Another hot day, another movie

2006-07-24T18:56:00.000-05:00

Today was another hot day, but today it was only forcasted to be 100. This is getting crazy! Who knew it got to be this hot in Oregon? I certainly didn't. Anyway, we need cheap stuff to do in air-conditioned areas, so today we went back to the movies, especially since Monday is 50 cent movie day! When we got to the theater, we found out on Mondays, movies are only 50 cents if you buy 3 or more tickets, or else it's $1.50 a ticket. So, I bought 3 tickets for a total of $1.50, instead of buying 2 tickets for $3 (which is still a great deal). Today's movie was "RV" starring Robin Williams. It was cute and a good deal for the price, but I'm glad we didn't pay $7-8/each to see it.

-Laura

Another hot one!

2006-07-23T19:20:00.000-05:00

Today was another hot day in Eugene. At 5pm. it was 104! Oh...but since the humidity is only 17% I guess this qualifies as a dry heat. Ug! I do NOT do well in heat. This is one time I'm glad we're not in the moho because the a/c doesn't work very well. Usually we can only get the coach 10-15 degrees cooler than the outside. Today we have the hotel a/c set at a chilly 72 and I love it! We turn it down even lower at night.

Today's cheap source of entertainment was going to a movie at a discount movie theater. Unfortunately everyone else in Eugene had the same idea. I had Rich get in line while I parked a country mile away. We went to see Mission Impossible 3 and it cost us all of $1.50/each! I think Tom Cruise is a dork just as much as the next person, but he is a good actor and his action movies are definately entertaining! If that wasn't enough of a bargain, they have 50 cent movies on Mondays. We may go back tomorrow at those prices!

-Laura

A Mountain Biker Wins the Tour!

2006-07-23T13:03:00.002-05:00

What an unbeleivable Tour! Congratuations Floyd, can't think of a more deserving champion! USA!, USA!, USA!.......

From Bob Roll's comments on the OLN website, perfectly summed up!

-Rich-

Paris in yellow

Congratulations to Floyd Landis on an unbelieveable win of this years Tour de France! This continues seven years of domination started by Lance Armstrong and going back to 1986 when Greg LeMond won the first of his three titles. Floyd Landis overcame a disintegrating ship, an incredible loss of power, energy, fuel and focus on the roads during Stage 16 and then he had the most incredible comeback we've ever seen in the Tour de Cycling. On Stage 17, just one day later. Two days later it was the time trial where Floyd Landis blew away Oscar Pereiro. You don't give a man 30 minutes lightly in the Tour de France and I think that is a lesson Floyd Landis will remember and carry with him for the rest of his career. Floyd Landis will cartry the yellow jersey forward in the great tradition of the best American Athletes in the world with Greg LeMond and Lance Armstrong. Congratulations Floyd Landis! Floyd's hip replacement surgery is on the horizon , a couple more races and then a long road to recovery and back to the top of the sport. IF Floyd Landis is Pain Free and as focused and committed as he has been through out his career, it might be a while before anyone else wins the Tour de France. Unbelieveable stories continue to unfold on the roads of France. One of the most thrilling Tours we have witnessed in a long tme. So many twists and turns, ups and downs, much like the road the riders travelled themselves. Thank you so much for joining me on these transmissions everyday for the 93rd Tour de France. God Speed, God Bless and take care. I hope I see you next year.

-Bobke

The Exit Plan :(

2006-07-23T09:52:00.000-05:00

The "I"s are dotted and the "T"s are Crossed!

It's hard to believe that we have been on the road for 9 months! Unfortunately, we are at the point we need to start making decisions on the opportunities we have in front of us. The debate for the past few weeks has been where to land in the spring of next year. If you're a regular reader, you know that we have committed to spending winter in Tucson, AZ. Laura has a temporary job with a drug treatment facility in Tucson. She has committed to 6 month's, from October through March.

We love Salt Lake City and have a great bunch of friends already in place. However, we also love the Denver area and I have a great job opportunity there. After much debate, pro and con lists, discussion with family and friends; We have made a decision.

beginning in May 2007, the Bag-it-Tour will officially end in Denver, Colorado! More precisely, we hope to be in Boulder, CO. Boulder reminds us so much of Ann Arbor, MI but with the addition of mountains! We love college towns and everything they have to offer! The price of housing in Boulder means we will be getting something smaller(under 2,000 sq ft), older(pre 80's) and in need of some TLC (read: will need updating). We've done the big house on a huge lot thing and we don't want to do it again. Too much work and expense to keep up; We want to spend our free time playing in the mountains!

For our RV friends, yes, we will look for a place with an RV pad with hook-ups ;)

In an interesting coincidence that we just found out about; The real estate agent that we dealt with back in Michigan, and bought and sold our last 2 homes through, has a sister that is a real estate agent that lives in....You guessed it.....Boulder! We plan on heading back to that area in early September (to coincide with the Mountain Wine Festival :) to meet and explore some areas with her, give her our time table of moving to the area and showing her what types of things we are looking for.

On to the job front. I have accepted a Business Development Manager position with Maverick Ranch. I have represented this company as an independent broker for 5 years. Since my Coca Cola days, I have vowed NEVER to return to Fortune 100, big business corporate America! Maverick Ranch and the Moore family is the pinnacle of the "anti-corporation". They have the necessary "sense of urgency" that you need in business, without forgetting what comes first; quality of life and family!

The exact definition of my job is determined by what I make of it. How great is that! I will be developing new business, primarily in the Pacific Northwest, managing new and existing brokers (since I was one for 5 years) and helping out in the marketing department. Who knows, I may even grab a knife and help out in the processing room! (OK....Not really that far!)

Anyway, if I sound excited, it's because I am! The opportunity here is unbelievable and the growth of the Organic grocery segment is off the charts. The Moore family has been extremely supportive of the Bag-it-tour. They know and are willing to work around the fact that Laura accepted the position in Tucson for the winter; I'll be telecommuting during that time! Plus, living in mountains is something we have both dreamed of since leaving Michigan!

The end of the Bag-it-Tour is a sad thought. It's been a wild and crazy ride! We are extremely grateful to have been able to enjoy a taste of this wonderful lifestyle in our mid thirties. Most people don't have the ability to try something like this until they retire or have dreams of trying it but are fearful for stepping outside of their comfort zone and taking a chance!

One thing we know for sure; We'll be returning to this mobile lifestyle someday in the future. Between the places we've been, the people we've met and the challenge of the next adventure it is too intoxicating not to! However, we're not done yet! So we hope you'll continue to follow the adventure through to end. Thanks to all of our faithful reader's; Those that have sent words of encouragement, ideas for places to visit and those that just lurk in the background as we move about the country!

-Rich-

Trying to escape the heat

2006-07-22T11:51:00.000-05:00

Yesterday's forecast was for temps to climb to 102, so we decided to try to find cooler weather along the coast. We loaded up our bathing suits & towels and headed west. When we left Eugene, the temp was already 82 at 10:30am. When we got to Florence (y'all), 60 miles west, the temp was 63! We started by having lunch that the famous "Mo's" where Rich had fish-n-chips and I had a grilled halibut. It was a fun & casual restaurant on the water. I'd read a lot of good reviews about it on the discussions on the Escapees board. Turns out the reviews were spot on because our lunches were delicious!

After playing around on the beaches, we headed back to Florence to get cappuccinos, since it was "almost" cold at 65 degrees. After driving around a bit, we headed back to Eugene, which was a steaming 97 degrees when we got back at 4pm.

After lunch we headed north on the 101 to find a beach for Rich to find some creatures. We found a beach within a few miles and started exploring. This beach was covered in a weird, very dense fog unlike anything we'd ever seen. There wasn't but 10 feet of visibility. Oh...and forget swimming. The water was numbingly cold on our feet!

Here's a picture of Rich, looking for crabs and creatures, being the boy that he is.

After that beach, we headed about 12 miles further north on the 101 to the entrance to the Sea Lion caves. It looked like a big tourist trap, so we drove about a mile further to another beach. This one had all kinds of stuff! First you can see a pic of the bridge we drove over before turning off the road and driving down.

Here's a picture of Rich peering into a pool, looking at marine life:

Rich climbed up onto some rocks to get pictures of waves breaking:

After playing around on the beaches for a couple of hours, we headed back into Florence for a cappuccino, since it was "almost" chilly at 65 degrees. After driving some more around the area and doing some more exploring, we headed back to Eugene, where it was a steamy 97 degrees at 4pm.

-Laura

Wine Bloggin'

2006-07-20T19:35:00.000-05:00

If you haven't stopped by the wine blog in a while, or ever, what are you waiting for......Go check it out!

Simply Wine
"Attempting to demystify wine without destroying it's magic!"

We paid a visit to King Estate Winery, just a few minutes from downtown Eugene. We're going to try and avoid double posting, so wine & food related entries will now go into Simply Wine.

We also found a bunch of really useful sites for pairing wines with various proteins, cheeses, pasta and some wonderful recipes; They're worth checking out.

Enjoy!

-Rich-

Catching up

2006-07-19T11:18:00.000-05:00

It's been a few days since our last post, so I thought I'd do a catch-up post. Our moho is coming along fine. The leakiest slide is just about fixed. We found out that they are going to replace our overhead cabinet boxes with real wood ones instead of pressboard with "wood stickers". That was an unexpected bonus! They also installed drip cups on the bedroom slide and noticed where part of it had been cut out on the sides. They thought we'd done that to accommodate a picture we had up. Nope! We're a little smarter than that!

Yesterday Rich got an opportunity to hold a seminar on No Wet at Camp Monaco. We thought we were in the perfect time slot because we were just before margaritas. Unfortunately we weren't too popular. Only 5 people came to the seminar and we only sold 1 bottle for a profit of $8. Oh well, $8 is better than nothing.

After escaping the heat wave the rest of the country has been in (been 75-80 here), it's getting hot today and getting hotter through Sunday. Today is forecast to be 96 and tomorrow's going to be 103. Not sure what we're doing today, but tomorrow we're thinking of going to the coast for cooler weather and exploring. It's only about 60 miles from here. An option for today is to go over to Lowell, which is near where I've been biking and hiking. There's a lake there that's beautiful and appears to have rental boats. We're also open to suggestions if anyone has any!

-Laura

Tried to find a mountain bike trail

2006-07-16T21:49:00.000-05:00

I slept in again today until about 9am. Once Snuggles and I had breakfast (a waffle for me a biscut & eggs for her), I loaded my mountain bike and equipment into the car and headed out. My directions said take I-5 south to SR-58, and go southeast for 27 miles. Yesterday I'd taken the same route to go hiking, but had only traveled 20 miles on 58, so I figured this would be easy to find. The directions said turn left into the Waldo Lake campground & the trail goes around the lake. Ok..easy enough. First problem came when I'd gone about 27 miles, there was a campground, but it was named "Black Canyon". Second problem is that there was no lake, but a river. Something was definately wrong. I traveled 10 more miles, but never found it. When I got back, I looked at a map and found out I'd been given wrong directions in a major way. Turns out the Waldo Lake campground was 70 miles from Eugene!

So I headed back to the trail that I'd hiked yesterday. I was pretty sure that mountain bikes were allowed. But instead of turning right onto the Goodman Creek trail that I'd taken yesterday, I went straight this time onto the Hardesty(?) trail. It went up...and up and up and up. Just when I thought it would flatten out, it went up some more. I alternated between pedaling and walking. After about a mile, I was mostly walking...and it was hot...and humid. A little while later, I couldn't go anymore, so I rode down. Of course it was fun and over way too soon. So after a quick lunch, I headed back to hang out with Snuggles and get a shower. In the picture below you can see the trail going up....and up and up.

Rich comes home tomorrow.....hooray!!!!!!!!!!

-Laura

Mobile Blog from D' Town

2006-07-16T18:50:00.000-05:00

I arrived in Detroit on Friday afternoon and it was hot and humid(typical for July). My mom was nice enough to put me up for the night and had a wonderful grilled fish dinner waiting for me.

Saturday started early. I met Charlie(One of the family owners of Maverick, in the pic above) at the BBQ at 9 to setup. We were going to be grilling, sampling and talking to customers from 10 to 3. The forcast high for the day was 96 and I was was going to be behind the grll the for at least a portion of the day.

I think the heat of the day actually kept attendance down from last year. The event was still an overall success. By the time it was over, I was tired and hot!

After the event, I called up Lexington to see what my mother-in-law was up to. Turns out they were having a little get together for birthday's. I cleaned myself up, had some dinner and made the 1.5 hour drive up. It was an enjoyable evening and great to catch up with everyone.

Tonight I'm back to my moms house for the night. Monday is another busy day. I have to pay a visit to all of my customers, meet up with Charlie to do radio spot about organic meat and get to the airport for my flight at 3 PM.

I'm due to land back in Portland at 7PM.... I can't wait to get back :)

Bike & a hike in Eugene

2006-07-15T19:17:00.000-05:00

Today was my first full day alone, while poor Rich gets to BBQ in 92 degree heat in Michigan. I slept in until 9am & stumbled down to breakfast. Later I was trying to figure out what to do for the day when I remembered that the is today. Since it's a little over a mile away and parking is a pain, I rode my bike. It was a little tricky because getting there is a combination of path and road, but I found it. I wandered around without buying anything, then headed back. I had the urge to explore! I thought about taking a drive, then decided I wanted to hike, so I got online and
found a hiking trail that's about 20 miles southeast of here, in the Willamette national forest. Once I got to the Goodman Creek Trailhead, I figured it'd be a good idea to put on some bug spray, since I was going deep into the woods. Here's a picture of the trail about 1/4 mile of the way in.

A little further along, I came across the biggest slug I'd ever seen. You can see my foot in the corner, for scale:

The trail follows along a ridge, then dives down to a creek, before climbing back up to the ridge. Here's a picture of a 1/2 bridge that was built to cross the creek:

Here's a picture of the trail as it meanders along the ridge:

After a bit of climbing, I came to this vantage point, called "Eagles Elbow", but don't ask me why.

At that point, I turned around because it was going on 2pm and I hadn't had lunch. I think this is going to be a chill night.

-Laura

Good-Bye to Rich!

2006-07-14T14:48:00.000-05:00

This morning we had to get up at 4:30am to drive 120 miles to Portland for Rich's 8:45am flight to Michigan. 4:30 comes awfully early! Then I got to drive back to Eugene after a quick drop at the airport. I had to stop on the way home because the skid plate on the 'Zuki had some loose and was dragging. I managed to get it wedged up and got a 10am appointment at the Suzuki dealer across the street from our hotel. The trip to the dealer had me in & out 20 minutes and $27 later. No more dragging skid plate. We'll replace it, but in a month or two. This is going to be an expensive month.

Not much else going on. I went for a bike ride this afternoon. There's a 13 mile path right out the door. I love bike-friendly cities like Eugene. Not only are there bike lanes everywhere, but there's also plenty of bike paths, like this one that goes right along the Willamette river.

I'm sure going to miss Rich!!!

Laura

First Test; Mobile Blogger

2006-07-13T22:16:00.000-05:00

I just signed up for Blogger Mobile. It allows us to take pics with our phones and upload them, with text, directly to the blog. Isn't technology wonderful!

Here is Snuggy looking cozy in our tempory digs!

-Rich-

Business in Michigan

2006-07-13T04:29:00.000-05:00

I will be flying out of Portland International on Friday morning, heading to Michigan, for this:

Every year, my single biggest customer, Holiday Market, throws a huge customer appreciation BBQ. It's a free event for all of their loyal customers. They don't have the usual hot dogs and burgers either! They have representatives from Maple Leaf Duck, Adeils sausage, Jack Daniels BBQ, Foley Fish, Good Humor, Jones soda and their own house brands being sampled all day.

I have participated in this event for the past five years. This year we get top billing as the lead sponsor! We raffle off a gas BBQ grill, give away hats, Olympic collector pins, $2 off coupons and raffle off door prizes; The event is just a blast to work and be part of! I'll be on the grill cooking up Sirloin steak and Boneless chicken breast for sampling!

While I'm out grilling, Laura will be back in Eugene holding down the fort and cracking the whip on the Monaco factory guys! They had the slide out on the coach completely dismantled. It wasn't a pretty site! We're hoping to get some pics early next week.

I return to Eugene on Monday. Until then look for Laura to have some reports from the weekend!

-Rich-

Camp Monaco, Day 1 (of many more to come)

2006-07-12T10:14:00.000-05:00

We had our meeting with our service adviser, Jeff set for 10:30 am. It is very similar to a car dealership; The service advisor writes it up, an estimator goes over the coach and totals the job, you approve it, the work gets done and you pay the bill! Jeff was prompt, very friendly and had a little dazed and confused look when we told him how many places we are leaking from. It helps that I did not clean up the water stains from above the door or the windows.

Our motorhome has 3 slides, one bedroom, two in the front. Basically each slide was leaking in some form or another. We also had a leak above the entry door and the window just behind the passenger seat. The total leak count is 6. There are other minor details; The steps like to come in and out while we drive, an access panel above the generator was taped in place when it should have screws. These are minor inconveniences compared to the leaks!

While I was working with Jeff, Laura was out taking a driving course! Here she is with the instructor going over things before heading out on the open road! I'll say this about Camp Monaco, they keep you occupied while your coach is in service. There are all kinds of activities and tours to keep you busy. They keep you well fed too!

Snuggy, meanwhile, was relegated to the back of the Suzuki. She was NOT happy about that.

After taking most the day to go over the coach we got the news and it's not good!

Basically, the box of each slideout needs to be rebuilt. The reasons are a combination of improper workmanship, lack of proper maintenance by the previous owners and at least one botched previous repair. Monaco is also concerned about what type of damage they might find inside the walls, on the floors and in the cabinet boxes from water intrusion. They also hope they don't find any black mold!

Since we are the second owners of the coach, there is no warranty! I asked them to take the leaks under consideration due to the age of the coach, only 2 years and the fact that we they could only get us into the factory 3 months after making the appointment, making any potential damage worse.

It turns out, the previous owners had made an appointment with Monaco for these very issues. They never kept the appointment. (obviously choosing to sell the coach, which we now own!) SO, it appears that we have a pre existing condition. The good folks at Monaco are going to pick up the tab for repairing the leaks and any subsequent damage that may have resulted! A good number of people on bulletin boards and in RV parks have said this would probably be the case. Monaco stands behind their product and wants happy customers.

That's the good news. The bad news is, it's going to take up to 3 weeks to do the repair! We are going to be in a hotel (Residence Inn) untill the repairs are completed. I guess there are a lot worse places then Eugene, Oregon to have to spend 3 weeks! Eugene has tons of stuff to keep us busy; Mountain biking, road biking, wine tours and Portland is only an hour away.

Hopefully, I'll be able to get some pictures during the de-construction and re-construction of our home, stay tuned!

-Rich-

Arriving at the Monaco repair center, - Harrisburg, Oregon

2006-07-10T20:48:00.000-05:00

After 3 long days of driving a total of 876 miles we finally made it to the Monaco Corp.'s repair facility in Harrisburg, Oregon. For those that don't know, Monaco purchased Safari (the maker of our coach) in 2001. We weren't able to get a spot in the "campground" until tomorrow, so we're dry camping in the parking lot tonight. We're definately not alone though. The best part is that it's deliciously cool here compared to where we've been the last 2 weeks. For the past 2 weeks we've been in 90+ (32.2C) degree heat. When we stopped outside of Portland at the Wilsonville Camping World it was a beautiful 72 (22.2C)degrees and sunny. We got the moho parked and realized we probably only have enough water for tonight, so we headed into Eugene (18 miles away) for some cheap dinner and wifi.

Tomorrow Rich will meet with our service advisor at 10:30, while I attend a ladies' driving class at 10am. Fortuantely this class uses their moho's, so I don't have to worry about denting ours. We're not sure how long we'll be here, probably only 2-3 days at the most. I'm really hoping we'll get everything wrapped up by Thursday so we can move the coach to McMinneville, where we stayed before. On Friday Rich flies back to Michigan for 4 days to do a customer appreciation BBQ at Holiday Market in Royal Oak. We appreciate Holiday Market as they are responsible for 90% of our current income. If anyone in Michigan is going to be anywhere near Royal Oak on Saturday, stop in to Holiday Market. You'll get a lot of good, free food!

-Laura

Not Much Time For Bloggin'

2006-07-08T10:21:00.000-05:00

It has been a busy week here in Salt Lake!

While bombing uphill (to 10,000 ft) on bikes, bombing downhill at Sundance and Park City, BBQ’s with Karen & Rich, welcoming Karen’s sister Cathy to SLC (another loss for Michigan), dinner with Cari and Gregg, birdie play dates with Snuggles and their 10 cockatoos, fixing windshields and selling No-Wet, we have been neglecting the blogging duties! It didn’t help much that the KOA has switched from a pay internet to a free system. The free system is just crap and has not worked about 95% of the time we have been here!

Today, we check out of SLC and begin our trek to Eugene for our Monaco factory appointment on Tuesday morning. We will take a couple of days to make the 875 mile trek to Eugene. We have stops planned in Boise, Idaho and Boardman, Oregon.

I’m sure we’ll have plenty of things to write about while we hang around Monaco next week! I just know it won’t be nearly as fun as this past week 

-Rich-

Downhilling at Sundance Resort

2006-07-03T21:42:00.000-05:00

Today Rich, our friend Karen, and I loaded up our car & headed out to Sundance ski resort for some downhill action. We paid for an all-day lift ticket and headed up. Now up until this point, I thought I was a pretty good downhiller. After all, as long as I can see where I'm going, I'll ride without using my brakes and over anything (or so I thought). We get off the chairlift at the top, wait for our bikes and head off. I followed Karen and learned NOT to follow Karen's lines, because we both wound up sinking into some 6" deep sand/gravel. This was the first steep, gravely, loosy section that lead into some singletrack. By the time we stopped to gather at the start of the singletrack, I'd sceared myself silly. This was going to be a lot harder than I'd thought it would be!
I followed Rich & Karen down, but at a bit slower pace than they were going. There was one part where the trail was quite narrow with a loonnggg dropoff on the right side. We came to a "corner" where there was a panaramic view of the mountains. We got to chatting with some locals about life in SLC.(see pic)After some more sketchy, loose downhill, we got back into the woods where the trail was smooth and we were surrounded by evergreens. It was the prettiest part of the trail. After a short bit, we popped out onto a paved road & zoomed back down to the chairlift.

We jumped back onto the chairlift, since Karen promised she could take me onto an easier, but longer trail. Even though it was longer, it went a lot faster. It was smoother and basically criss-crossed the mountain with sharp switchbacks where you basically stop, point, & shoot your bike downhill. After that run we had some lunch of sandwiches we'd packed, then it was back onto the chairlift for Rich & Karen. I sat out to rest my arms, which were getting tired. After they got back, I took my final run on the "easy" trail. Rich & Karen took a different trail which turned out to be too short, so they went up for one last run.

Oh...and the other pic is these little squirrel-like creatures that were all over the mountain. Rich even managed to run over a couple!

It was a good & tiring day. I'll sleep good tonight!

Arrived in Salt Lake City

2006-07-01T20:48:00.000-05:00

Ok...we're back in SLC. We drove a whopping 180 miles today, landing in the SLC KOA around 12:30pm. We'll be here for a week, before heading over to Colberg, Oregon for our factory appointment on July 11. As you can see from the weather banner above, it's hot here, around 92 today...but it's a dry heat. After we got set up & had some lunch, I called our friend, Karen (a Michigan transplant). We talked about the ride she thinks I can do tomorrow. It's a kind of shuttle ride, but still involves a ride that starts with a 2 mile climb up to 10,000'. Uh...I don't think so. She said her husband, Rich knows I'll be slow. This guy does Ironman triathalons. He doesn't know what slow is until he meets me. I talked to Cari Anders of Cockatoo Street tonight. We're going to hang out tomorrow while Karen and the Riches ride. Since Snuggles just got a shower & a pedicure, she wants to go out while she's looking her best. Trimming Snuggles' nails is always a struggle. Cari says 3 of her 10 'toos line up and hold up their feet when she brings out the file. Oh..if only trimming our 'too was so easy!

Later Rich and I ran out to our favorite SLC grocery store, Harmon's to pick up a few things, especially supplies to make Mint Mojitos. Now I'm not a big mint person, but these are really good on a summer day. Harmon's was out of mint! Their excuse? "Well, we're running a special on salmon & a lot of people cook salmon with mint." WTF???? I've had salmon 7 ways from Sunday and NEVER with mint. Have you ever hear of this? We did find a Wild Oats with mint, so all was not lost. After a couple of mojitos, we BBQ'd up some chicken and chilled for the evening.

-Laura

On The Road Again; Happy Independence Day!

2006-06-30T18:32:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-06-30T05:25:00.000-05:00

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.......

2006-06-29T10:08:00.000-05:00

......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!

2006-06-27T13:21:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-06-27T12:50:00.001-05:00

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

2006-06-26T20:28:00.000-05:00

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

2006-06-24T22:25:00.000-05:00

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

2006-06-23T20:17:00.000-05:00

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