Farewell, Old Friend.

After sitting in the garage for two years without being used, it was time to say goodbye to the camper.   I knew it was time last fall, but figured that it would sell quicker if I waited until spring.  I must have been right, for within 6 hours of posting it on Craigslist, I had about 20 people who were interested. 

We were able to sell it to a young couple with a 2-year old who were just as happy to get it as I was sad to see it go.  It may have been a great garage shelf for the past 20 years, but we had some great memories. 

I had thought I had everything cleaned out when we popped it up to show the new couple, but they noticed a magnet attached to the side.  Then another and another.  As I collected the magnets, I remembered the good time we had, and the multitude of places the camper had been.  We camped in it from coast to coast, so it has seen it's share of use.   And who can forget 15 straight days across the Southwest as we were moving to Everett. 

Ahh, the good times. 

Farewell, old friend.  Hope your new family can make as many good memories as we did. 

Summer Vacation 2003 - Washington, Oregon, Northern California

As the kids were growing up, we made it a point to take summer vacations, and given the number of people, it was usually a road trip.  We frequently traveled long distances, so we had plenty of time in the car.  One popular activity was keeping a journal of our trips.  I found this while cleaning out some boxes late last year.  It contains our road trip to Oregon.

I apologize for the lack of resolution in some of the pictures, the scanner had difficulties with some colors.  And I made the images pretty big so that there's a chance you can read them. 

This was also the trip where one of my favorite pictures was taken. 

Mount Rainier GeoTour

Mount Rainier from White River Valley
at Sunset

In a nice marketing move, the Visit Rainier organization leveraged the 100th anniversary of Mt. Rainier National Park by creating a series of 100 geocaches in and mostly around the park.  The caches were released in groups of 25 about every 6 months, and were placed so that you would have to travel around the mountain for each of the groups. 
We began this last year, and were a couple of short for Series 1 before the snows came.  Series 2 came in the fall of 2015, and we were busy and couldn't get to any.  Series 3 came right before we went camping over the weekend of July 4th, so we decided to get as many as we could. 

We obtained 42 of them the weekend of the 4th, I got another half-dozen a couple of weekends later, and last weekend, we got back to the Sunrise side of the park and polished off the last ones.  A little hiking, a little camping, a little sightseeing.  We went up to Crystal Mountain Ski Resort to see the Perseid meteor shower, but after an hour without a trace, we gave up.  It was still nice to see the stars outside of the city lights. 

America the Beautiful Pass

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

Wallace Stegner, novelist, environmentalist and historian, once said "National parks are the best idea we ever had.  Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst."  I agree.  

Every year, we manage to visit at least one National Park, and when we go, we make sure to get an America the Beautiful pass.  It allows access to all the parks and any national fee site.  We may not get full value from the pass, but the money goes to a good cause.  When I retire, I'd love to devote some of my time volunteering in the parks.  

When I hear of certain individuals who "take over" national lands and demand that it be "given back to the people", I am puzzled.  As a US citizen, I own 59 National Parks, 82 National Monuments, 19 National Reserves, 50 National Historic Parks and a huge number of other public areas.  If they aren't being run the way I like, I vote.  

Buy one today.  

Disclosure:  I am not compensated in any way for any sales from the National Parks.  

Camper

When we were in St. Louis, we frequently went camping with our friends from church, Dan and Donna.  Their daughter, Rachel, was about the same age as our oldest two and they all loved to have little sleepouts in their camper. 

A few years later, Dan called us up and asked us if we wanted to buy the camper.  We agreed, and we then began dragging the kids around the country in the camper.  It went with us to Yellowstone, Glacier, Utah, Oregon, California, and many places between.  The most notable was 15-days straight when we were moving from Iowa to Washington (via the Grand Canyon). 

Now it's primarily used once or maybe twice a year.  It makes a great shelf in the garage.  This year, I had 4 days off around the 4th of July holiday, so we went camping near Mount Rainier. Deanne was able to come, and Maria and Chris came up from Oregon to visit for a bit.  It's showing its age, and there are fewer parts than there used to be, but we still enjoy getting out in the "wild".