I managed to get inland all the way to Wisconsin. Sorry I have not updated this in so long. My life has taken a turn in another direction than what I had planned. Isn't life funny that way! For the forseeable future, I will be living in an apartment in Wisconsin and helping my Mom and Sister with daily tasks so they can continue living on their own.

I have a wonderful apartment not far from my Mom's and lots of time to help them out and do a little exploring around the area. This also gives me a chance to really concentrate on improving my health by eating live, raw food. I feel best when eating only raw food and believe this will keep me going for many more years.

At some time in the future, I hope to get back out on the road if only for short periods at a time. I have not decided yet what to do with this site. I may just let it set for a while and see what happens. I may start another website about raw foods. If so, I will enter that address here.

Take care,

Dorothy

Heading inland

I have left the beach where it was rainy and cold and headed inland. It is hot here! What a change with half a days drive going from 60 degrees to over 80. I need to stock up on water!

Had a fairly uneventful and easy drive to eastern Oregon. Beautiful scenery through the mountains. One event shook things up a bit. As I was heading up a long steep section over the mountains, the pickup ahead of me swerved over into the next lane alerting me to a problem. Standing in my lane was a doe and two very tiny babies. The doe was confused after almost getting run over by the pickup and wasn't sure if she wanted to continue across the road or turn back. Fortunately, I wasn't going very fast and it was uphill so I put my flashers on and slowed to a stop fairly close to her hoping she would get the idea that she need to move. She decided to go back the way she came and the babies followed her off the road and we all started up the hill again.

I made it to my campground for the night fairly early and after a green smoothy for lunch, I cleaned the bugs off the front of my RV. Glad there was no blood there.

Interesting beach finds

I found a neat trail going from Agate Beach into Newport last week. Here is a picture of it. It is a short but well maintained trail. It is called the Agate Beach to Bay Trail but seems to end long before you get to the bay. A pleasant walk though.



I have found numerous interesting things on my morning beach walks. This is a jellyfish I saw on the beach Saturday.



Here is a photo of a starfish I saw this morning. Actually I saw three of them in the tidal pool area. The tide was way out there this morning and I had a very interesting walk.



The weather has been rather grey and cool here lately. It was sunny and warm until people started coming for the 4th of July weekend, then it turned cloudy and cool. No heavy rain fortunately but not very nice for the weekenders. Today all the weekenders are gone and the weather is clearing up a bit.

I have been getting in a good walk on the beach every morning. Here is a picture of the beach, it is an excellent place to get my daily exercise in.



Yesterday I went into town to pick up some velcro for my project. I hung all my pictures I stitched over the years by putting the hook side of velcro on the back and hanging them on the fabric covering my walls in the RV. Here is a picture of two of my favorites. I thought it would be better to have them out where I can see them rather than have them rolled up and in storage.



After my shopping, I went to the Yaquina Bay State Park and enjoyed the sunshine for a while.

Today I spent getting things done around the RV after my morning walk. Tomorrow I plan on heading in to town to pick up my mail at the post office. After that I plan on going for a bike ride.

Verizon wireless at my site

Yesterday I put the Wilson truckers antenna I bought from the 3Gstore on the top of my RV. I had my doubts that it would work but I ended up with one bar and it seems to work just fine. So now I have internet at my site but I don't have an easy way to get it inside the RV. As long as the weather is good, I have internet access. :-) Eventually I will get it set up permanently I guess.

Not much going on. I have been taking a long walk on the beach every morning. Yesterday I drove into town and stopped at the Chamber of Commerce so I could find the post office. They gave me a nice map of the town and I picked up a bunch of other info. I also went to Fred Meyers to get a few groceries and found a cafe that had smoothies. They didn't have green ones but the owner said he would look them up on the internet and check into it. I had a nice blueberry smoothie that was excellent.

So anyway, not much going on, just taking it easy. The weekend is coming up so I will lay low until Monday, then I have some ideas on hikes and a place to go bike riding. Life is rough. :-)

At the beach

I moved to a new campground and am practically on the beach, and this is an excellent beach for walking so that is what I will be doing for the next few weeks.

On the down side, I have no cell phone or air card access at my site. I need to go to the main lodge for wifi access so updates to the blog will be sparse. Since I am only walking on the beach and in general being a beach bum, no great loss. :-)

I got up early and got in my 10,000 steps for the day, on the beach of course. I then unloaded my kayak and bike from my car. Don't think I will get much kayaking done here. I am not into going out on the waves on the ocean and there are not many lakes around here. The next place I go to will be better for kayaking. I have some hikes planned and will need to go into town now and then.

Until next time, enjoy life!

Rainy day

Yesterday I hiked a trail around Coffenbury Lake in Ft Stevens State Park. Part of the trail is shown below with the lake on the side.


Most of the trail was in excellent shape but small sections of it were very overgrown. These sections were in sunny areas and in the spring with the ample rain and some sun thing grow fast! Overall it was a good hike of about 3 miles.

I spent the rest of the time in the park sitting in my chair and reading. I was in a picnic area and had the company of several ground squirrels. They had their holes dug under the picnic tables and would keep watch by sitting or laying on top of the tables. When I first arrived, one was laying all stretched out on top of a nearby table. I wish I had been prepared and could have snapped off a picture. They would wander around looking for food but as soon as a dog showed up at a distance they would run back to their table and hole. One would get on top and keep an eye on things while the other would sit by the hole or go in.

The opposite reaction occured when they would hear paper crinkling when I opened a bar to eat. One guy would come up close to me expecting to get fed. Unfortunately, I resisted and told him my food was not the proper diet for him and he would need to find his own food. Persistent little guy though.

The next picture is of my bike. I didn't download my pictures from my camera when I posted my last entry so thought I would share it with you here.



Today is one of those days when it looks like it is going to rain all day. Considering that this is June and the first totally rainy day since I got here, it's not too bad. I have lots of indoor things to do that I have been putting off so I guess this is a good day to get some of them done.

Back to Ft Stevens

Went back to Ft Stevens today for a bike ride. According to the map, I rode for around 10 miles. That is by far the longest I have ever ridden in one day. I bought the bike some time ago but while I was working and my days off were so limited, I usually ended up hiking or kayaking when the weather was good. So this was my first bike ride of any length for many, many years. I sure like the bike and got a lot of experience today with shifting for hills. The bike trails were not too hilly but there were some difficult ones like a couple of overpasses over roads. I was able to ride up every one of them though!

After the bike ride, I came back to the RV and relaxed for a while then took a walk around the campground before dinner. Altogether a very nice day.

The bike came from www.dynamicbicycles.com and has a shaft drive instead of a chain. Very easy maintenance and a nice ride. Shifting was smooth and I had a nice range available.

Ft Stevens and back to Cullaby

Yesterday I made the trip up to Fort Stevens State Park and had a long hike up the beach and then inland to a bike trail and back down to my car. There is so much to see here I think it would take me several weeks to see everything. This first picture is what is left from the wreck of the Peter Iredale where I started my hike.



There are seven miles of bike trails in the park. I hope to come back for a bike ride soon. Here is a sample of the bike paths.



Today I returned to Cullaby County Park. I went out on the lake with my Sea Eagle inflatable kayak and had a very enjoyable day. It was very cloudy so the pictures did not come out as well as I liked but here is one.



I am running out of days here and I have so much more I would like to do. Guess I will be busy next week trying to get everything done.

Laundry and apples

Took a day to get things done. Started the day out with doing my laundry. After that I dried some apples in my dehydrator. I was running low on my dried apples which I like to take with me on day hikes so thought it would be a good day to stock up. While the apples were drying, I went into town to pick up my mail I had sent to me. I found the post office with no problem and my mail was there waiting for me so that worked out good. I was just kind of lazy for the rest of the day. :-)

Pictures

I have added all of my Ecola State Park photos to Winkflash. To see them, go to http://dorothysie.winkflash.com/

Ecola State Park

Yesterday I drove to Ecola State Park and hiked the Clatsop Loop Trail plus part of the way over Tillamook Head to Seaside trail. I highly recomment the Clatsop Loop Trail for its scenic views and wonderful vegatation. This area has lots of huge Sitka spruce trees some estimated to have germinated around 1615. They would have been about 191 years old when William Clark walked this trail. William Clark and a small exloration party walked this trail in January 1806, searching for a beached whale near present day Cannon Beach.

Here are some pictures of the views from the trail.



This Sitka spruce provides an ideal nest platform for the marbled murrelet - a rare seabird that likes to nest on big branch platforms. This tree once stood in an opening that allowed the branches to spread out widely until the other trees closed in. Now its branches must grow upward, making it look like a giant candelabra. I love seeing the ferns growing up in the trees.



This is called a "clothespin" tree. The nurse log the tree grew on decayed from underneath leaving a large open area.

A typical hillside:



Watch your head!



This little guy was walking along with me but he was too slow so I went on.

Hiking

Saturday I found a wonderfull county park near where I am staying. I spent a lot of time hiking the trails and checking the place out. There is a nice lake and I plan to take my kayak up there in the near future for a day on the lake.

I have been getting in a lot of walking both in town and on the beach. The weather has been rainy and windy but not too cold so I have been ignoring it. :-)

I have also been starting to wash my motorhome. Yesterday I washed half the roof. I plan on doing a little bit at a time between the rain showers.

On the road!

I finally got the Steer Safe installed and started on my trip. The RV handled just fine pulling up mountains and going down the other side. Here is a picture of where I am camped tonight.



Now I get to start my exploration of the areas around where I camp. When I left town, a severe thunder storm warning was being announced on the radio with possible large hail. It seemed to be coming up on the east side and I was slipping out the west side so I missed it. :-) The weather during my trip was fine but when I arrived at my campsite, there were really strong winds. The grocery clerk was saying the power was flickering and there were tornado warnings. The high winds only lasted a couple of hours and then everything settled down. Just had a rain shower go through but no more wind. It is a lot cooler here than in town. Feels good for a change.

It feels weird when I think about the fact that I have everything with me and I do not need to go back after a few days. I will be able to just keep going on and on. I always hated turning around and going back whether it was on a trail or a road trip.

Still here

Well, here it is, Wednesday and I am still not started on my trip yet. Still waiting for the Steer Safe unit to show up. If it doesn't show up today, I will seriously consider not getting it installed. I could get it installed tomorrow but that would mean a very late start.

So what have I been doing? Well, Monday nothing was planned so I spent the day running around and picking up some last minute things one of which was my mail. I also made a last trip to my storage unit to drop some more things off. After I finished all that I took a trip to Champoeg State Park and spent the afternoon there hiking and getting in a nice bike ride. The place was almost empty so it was nice and quiet. Here is a picture of a place I stopped and had a snack and read a bit:



Tuesday, the RV was in the shop in hopes the Steer Safe unit would come in. The kit for raising the back of the RV was in and installed. 2 inch blocks were put in which gives me an extra 4 inches of clearence at the back. The yearly refridgerator maintenance was also done. While all that work was getting done, I went to a local park and did a lot of hiking.

Today I did my 4 mile walk and am now waiting for a call to see if I need to take the RV in again. Hopefully I can get on the road tomorrow.

Enjoying the sun

It has been sunny and warm here lately. I have started making a habit of getting up at 6 AM and taking my 4 mile walk every day. It feels good to have my exercise done first thing in the morning. The first few days though, I felt guilty in the evening because I was not taking my walk at the usual time. I had to remind myself that I had my walk already for the day. :-)

Tomorrow I head into town and pick up my mail for the last time as well as take a few more things to my storage unit. Tuesday, hopefully, I will get the Steer Safe unit put on my RV and be ready to hit the road on Wednesday. In the meantime I am just sitting back and relaxing under my awning and enjoying the weather and the quiet.

Quiet day

Today was a nice, quiet day. I took a 3 mile walk in the morning for my daily exercise. After that I worked on getting my Verizon card to work on my XP laptop. It looked like everything installed good but when I was instructed to put the Verizon card in, it would just sit there and not acknowledge it. After checking in Control Panel/System, I found the driver was not installed even though earlier it said the driver was installed. So I said to install the #$%$## driver and it worked. I hate computers! Anyway, I have the Verizon card set up and working from the router and from my XP laptop. Not sure if I want to install it on my Vista laptop. That one is so big I don't like carrying it around so I will just use it with the router.

The rest of the day was spent going through magazines and cutting out the few things I wanted to keep and throwing away the rest.

The parts for my RV did not come in yet. The guy who is doing the work came to the RV park to measure things for the blocks he will put in. A well known springs shop is going to set up a kit for him with everything he needs to get the job done.

Clean RV

I have not had my laptop up and running for a while. Had enough of computers for a while I guess. Saturday I washed my RV and Honda. The RV had lots of grey streaks from the freeway which is just a little ways away and lots of yellow dust on both vehicles from pollen. The RV looks like new again and I washed out all the outside compartments and even in the back of the refridgerator unit. The batteries checked out good and tires are all aired up. Propane is still at half full and I will probably get it filled before I leave here and that should last all summer and then some.

Hooked everything up and went for another test run on Sunday. I think I am getting the hang of hooking up the car so it goes pretty smooth. I have some handling problems I am trying to pin down so I took the RV towing the Honda out on a road that was recently paved to check it out. After I came back from that, I dropped the car off at my site and took the RV to a weigh station to check the load I am carrying. I am 1000 lbs less than the Gross Vehicle Weight Rating so that should not be a problem. I think I am going to lower the weight a little more though. Still have stuff I don't think I really need in here. I will be working on that the rest of the week.

Today I sat at a RV repair place and had the auxiliary brake components installed in the RV and had a trickle charger installed to charge the Honda's battery from my house battery while I am towing. I have heard lots of people complaining about the Honda's battery dieing while they were towing. I really don't want to deal with that so thought I would get this set up before I leave.

Tomorrow I will be going back there to have a Steer Safe unit installed and blocks put in to raise the rear of the RV a bit. Hopefully these will fix the handling problem.

Here is a picture of my dinner Saturday night. I thought it looked pretty so I took a picture of it. :-)

Goodbye lunch

I had an excellent goodbye lunch at work today. I really was fortunate in working with some wonderful people day after day for many years. I will miss them all and wish the best for them in the coming years.

I will leave them with this picture.

Last day

Well, here it is. My last day at work. I put in a lot of hours last weekend so I am not working much today. Going in late, signing some papers, going out to lunch and then leaving. What a day! It still hasn't sunk in yet that I will not be going back to work. I guess it will next week. I have a lot planned for next week to get ready to hit the road.

I have worked and planned for this day for the last 10 years or so. It is hard to believe that the sometimes elusive goal date has finally arrived. I hope to have at least a year to play before I need to think about supplementing my income in some way.

Hope you all have a wonderfull day.

Test run

Friday I made arrangements to stop by an RV repair place near here. I need the auxilary brake pieces installed in my RV and I wanted to get a trickle charge set up to charge my Honda battery while it is being towed. So I had to get busy and get ready to pull out Saturday morning at 10 AM. I thought I would make it a test run so I loaded my kayak and bike on the Honda and put everything away where I think I will want it when I hit the road.

I had everything done and was ready to go an hour early so I had plenty of time to recheck everything. Had no problem hooking up the Honda and it didn't come off so I guess I did good. Towing my Honda is still a little scary. I have only towed a couple of times since I moved into my RV in 2005 and the last time was about 3 years ago so I was not sure I remembered how. I had reviewed the pictures I had taken of the hook up when I first got it and did a test hookup a few weeks back to make sure the lights worked and to check the angle of the tow bar. The hitch on this motorhome is lower than my 2004 so I had to get an extension that raised it up a bit and I wanted to make sure it was level. Everything worked good so I guess that part is ready to go.

I have an appointment for after I retire to get the work done so I will be hooking up again in a couple of weeks. I plan to leave my kayak up on top of the Honda so that will be ready to go. I only need to drive in to work 6 more times!

I have to work the last two weekends before I retire. Sure will be nice to be able to do things when the weather is good instead of waiting for the rare weekend when I don't have to work and the weather is reasonable. Except now, I will be doing stuff during the week and stay home on the weekends and do stuff around the RV. That way I will hopefully miss the crowds a bit.

Not many working days left!

Hope everyone had a wonderfull Mother's Day.

Monday again

Just 3 more weeks to go and Monday will be just a normal day like all the rest instead of the first day back to work.

It has been stormy here lately with lots of rain and wind. At least it is getting warmer. I have been getting by with just using my electric heater to keep the RV warm. Sometimes the sun actually comes out and I can turn off the heater! Imagine that.

Had someone I knew from RV.net stop by here at the park for a couple of days. It was nice visiting with her, we have many of the same interests. I wish her well on her continued journey. She had problems with the new tires she had put on and had to stay on an extra day so we went shopping at Camping World and went to a grocery store to pick up a few things.

At Camping world we met a couple who live in the park I do and had a long talk catching up on things. Made plans to go kayaking with them before I leave the area.

Long days

I have been putting in some very long days lately trying to finish up a project at work so not much to put in the blog.

The weather was great when I got off work today so I spent some time sitting outside in my chair reading instead of working. Need to get that vitamin D. Looks like it will be raining again on the weekend. Ah well, summer will get here eventually I guess.

I need to work at rearranging my RV and getting rid of things I don't really need so I am ready to travel more often. I have been accustomed to sitting in one place and just taking vacations each year and I tend to leave things sit out and build up over time. Maybe when it is raining this weekend I can get some of that done. Only 3 weeks left.

Still working

It is 10 PM and I am still monitoring stuff at work. Bad day. Hopefully I can call it quits soon and get to bed.

Saw my tax guy today to get some things verified so I don't have any suprises next year. It all looks good at this point. Just a few more things to do yet before I hit the road.

Quiet Sunday

Not much happening here today. Cleaned house and did some rearranging. Getting excited about starting my travels and starting to think about things I want to do and see at my first stop. 25 more days.

Lots of energy

It stayed cold and windy here today so I didn't go out and wax my RV. Instead I worked inside on stuff. I also took a trip to Whole Foods and picked up some fruit and veggies and some green powder.

After checking things at work I took about a 3 mile walk and I was kind of dragging near the end of it so thought I would make myself a smoothie when I got home to give me some energy. I had not had much to eat yet today. I was looking through one of Kristen's ebooks I have and found this one:

1 1/2 cups water
2 apples
2 handfulls spinach
2 T hemp protein powder
2 t green powder
1/2 t cinnamon

I put this all in my blender and smooshed it all up.
It really tasted good, especially with all that cinnamon in it. That was my late dinner which I think may have been a mistake. Now I have lots of energy and would take my walk again but it is dark out there. :-(

The next time I make this it will be earlier in the day.

New laundry

Our laundry here at the park has been closed for the last week while they removed the old machines and brought in new. Today it is open again with all new machines. I didn't think the old ones were that bad but I guess they had been there for a while and were breaking down too often. The washers cost the same but the dryers are more. Hopefully they won't eat my clothes or anything.

Today, besides doing my washing, I plan to work on cleaning and waxing sections of my RV. It is cloudy and if I am lucky it won't rain much. Should check my batteries too. I also am logged on to work and running some long jobs there trying to get things done before I leave. 26 more days!

My Mother has finally decided to get on a computer, something she swore she would never do. I am so proud of her for tackling something like this. Maybe I can talk her into starting a blog and writing stories of the past. Wouldn't that be great.

Guess I had better get to work.

The tank is gone!

One more step has been taken towards hitting the road. The large propane tank I was renting from the park emptied out and stunk up my house. LOL I unhooked it and removed the extend-a-tank thingy from the motorhome. I will keep the extend-a-tank thing, even though it stinks, in case I need to sit somewhere for a long time and want to hook up to an external tank again. Rick, the manager here at the park is always so helpful when I am having problems getting my propane connections tightned. The nipple that goes into my propane tank needs to be tightened with a socket wrench into the regulator thing before screwing it into the tank. Don't you just love my technical terms? Well, I know what I mean and that is all that counts. If I need to reattach the extend-a-tank thing I will be able to look this up and remember how to attach it. :-) I am using very little propane now because I only run the furnace for a short time in the morning and that is all I use the propane for. When I am traveling I will use it to keep the refridgerator running. When I am hooked up to electricity as I am now, I use the electric heater and the electric setting on my hot water heater. I very seldom cook my food so I don't need it for that.

Took about a 3 mile walk tonight. Weather was good and I had lots of energy. It was a little windy and chilly but that was good for a brisk walk.

28 days 4 hours and counting.

A beginning

So here I am finally starting a blog just like a million other people. Hopefully you will find something of interest here. I will be retiring soon and traveling around the country in my RV. I plan to spend lots of time investigating areas I have never had time to before and I plan to share these places with you by posting lots of pictures.

Last Sunday I went to Hagg Lake and though I had my inflatable kayak from Sea Eagle with me, I elected to hike the trail around the lake. The trail was a little muddy yet but not too bad and the views of the lake were great. It was a little too crowded for me and I look forward to the time when I can get to these places during the week when they are not so busy.

The county park offers fishing, boating, hiking/biking trails and a nice area for disabled people to get out on the lake and fish. I saw this fishing pier last fall and it was way up in the air and I wondered how people could reasonably fish from there. I saw last weekend though that it sits right on the water in the spring!