Year in review 2016: Part 2/August to mid-October THE RV TRIP

August 1, we took possession of our new RV. Vladi's first experience driving the rig, other than a short test drive at the dealership, was driving it 300 miles home from Gilroy. He did great, other than one little time when he was crawling back on the freeway from a rest stop and a monster big rig was barreling up behind him so fast that I thought for sure I was going to witness a horrible crash. The truck driver managed to avoid hitting him, but I was pretty sure I could feel the reverberations of the expletives that exploded inside that trucker's cab. And Vladi never even noticed him. After that, the trip went smoothly and we made it safely home. 
The rest of the month was spent purchasing the many items we needed to outfit the new rig and getting our driveway widened so we would be able to park it easily. 
Ben came down from Portland to spend a couple of days camping with his sister and to visit with us. We had a lovely dinner with him and Christy in Santa Barbara for our 6th anniversary.

In the beginning of September, we got a neighborhood garage sale organized with our neighbors and got rid of a lot of the stuff we had been setting aside in Sam's bedroom. It was great to make a little cash just before our first big trip, which we planned for mid-September to mid-October. I planned our first trip around making sure I got to see my sister Elizabeth in Kansas City, Missouri, my niece Jessica in Chanhassen, Minnesota and my niece Jocelyn in Mason City, Iowa, who have all moved into their new homes since the last time I was back there to see them. Having those destinations in mind, we planned a route to see a few other people on the way there and a few others on the way back. We had to strategize how to avoid getting caught in snow, because there was the possibility of snow starting to fall in several of the more northern places that we were going to visit. 

When all was said and done, we visited 14 states and put 6000 miles on the RV. Our first stop was to visit Sam in Wyoming.

He was very happy to see us and he was especially happy to see the puppies. We got to see where he lived and where he went to school and one evening, we drove up into the hills to a dog-friendly restaurant that he found for us.

The drive up was quite beautiful although on the way back it was very dark! The GPS took us past the restaurant on the first try but when we got to where it said it was, there was nothing there and we realized we had to go back. The place was in a tiny town called Centennial, WY. It was very rustic looking and the restaurant was actually a tavern. There happened to be a wedding rehearsal dinner going on there that night so the place was busy. The area that was dog-friendly was out on a back patio where there was a nice fire pit with a great fire burning. By that time, the sun had gone down and the air was quite chilly. We were hungry but we had to wait quite a while for our food because of the big party going on. As we sat waiting, a couple of men came out to enjoy the fire. I noticed that one of them had on the white collar of a priest/preacher, and the other had the weathered features, the hat, boots and jeans that marked him as a cowboy. The cowboy had a medium-sized, scruffy looking dog that wore a bandanna and was running around free but dragging a blue rope that was supposedly it’s leash. This dog kept coming up to Roscoe and Zuli, sort of teasing them and Roscoe let it be known that he did not like him. But the guy paid no attention to the ruckus being created until Vladi asked him to please get his dog away from ours. The guy would yell “Spud!” and the dog would go away for about 2 seconds and come right back. This went on several times. It was rather exasperating. At one point this cowboy started a conversation with the preacher and looking around to us, presumably to find his audience, launched into a poem about Wyoming and how it was like Heaven, with just a few minor adjustments. It was actually a pretty entertaining poem and he had it memorized. But I kept thinking it was coming to a close and he’d start on another verse. And then another one, and then one more. When he was finally done, the preacher asked “So you wrote that in jail?” (I guess we missed that part of the conversation.) And the guy said “yep.” Sammy was pretty convinced that the guy was quite drunk, but I didn’t see any stagger in his walk. I’m really not sure if he was, although he sort of had that manner about him, but he sure wasn’t paying attention to his dog!

Sammy did say “Well, that’s Wyoming for you!” And I thought, yep, we were regaled with a poem at a campfire by a genuine cowboy with a bandanna wearing dog, and with a preacher in attendance.

We finally got our food, after a very long wait, but we were so hungry by then that it tasted really good. 

We made another stop in Wyoming to see my childhood friend, Sharon, her husband, Dave and her mom, Joanne in Casper. After we sat and chatted and got caught up on each other's lives

Sharon made us a beautiful meal of chicken marsala, asparagus and roasted red potatoes, with a dessert of pumpkin crunch. Everything was truly delicious. My friend has always been a great cook.

Our dogs were happy to be able to run around in Sharon’s yard, but only if one of us was out there with them. They never wanted to be too far from us. They would get rowdy in the house and we would kick them outside and then they would sit right outside the door and look longingly in at us. Silly puppies. But Sharon was so kind. She kept telling us that they were wonderful and that we could relax. But she had some beautiful things displayed that we were afraid our big clumsy monsters would knock over. She said that even though they didn’t currently have a dog, they were used to big dogs and had no problem with ours. At one point, when she was showing us her (beautiful) yard, Zuli came upon her fountain.

It’s a big ceramic pot with water burbling out the top which Zuli took as an invitation for a drink. You can barely see her in this picture because she blends right into the plants but she's there, right next to her sidekick, Roscoe. It was pretty cute and of course, we had to take pictures.

Sharon invited us to spend the night in the house as she has lots of room and when we realized that the slide outs on the RV would be sticking out into the street, and she told us that the dogs were welcome to sleep in the room with us, we decided to take her up on the offer. As we were bringing our things in from the RV, I managed to twist my ankle and fall down the RV steps and tumble to the ground. Vladi was sure for a moment that our trip was over but I’m not sure if I have an instinct for falling right or that my vitamins are super on the job or I have a guardian angel but I got up with only a scratch on my arm and a sore knee (which felt fine after about three days.) Sharon had told us at dinner that many people have heard the footsteps of a ghost in her house and after my fall I told her that her ghost must not like me. She assured me that it could not be her ghost that caused my fall because the fall happened outside and the ghost is in the house.

From there we visited Devil's Tower, Mt. Rushmore, and Rapid City, South Dakota, where we had a great time.

Everywhere we went, the dogs were the center of attention. I can't even tell you how many times we were told how beautiful they are. It worked to our advantage when people offered to take our picture for us after admiring our dogs. In Rapid City there are bronze statues of all the presidents on the street corners of several city blocks . We found a scavenger hunt at the information center and spent a very pleasant day finding different things on the statues. This was another place that should have had an Adventurequest.

We hit rain once we got to Minnesota and we saw first hand why it's called the land of 10,000 lakes. It seemed like there was water everywhere! Of course that also meant that everything was lush and green and sparkling with raindrops. But it became pretty hopeless to keep mud from getting tracked into the RV because the dogs continued to require several daily walks.

I got to see my cousin Tom in Minneapolis and we had a fun visit with him. He found us a dog park so that our dogs could get out and run around off leash. After we spent a short time in a rather small fenced area we were surprised to realize we were in the area for dogs 25 lbs or less (of which there were none at the time) and that the "big" dog park was further up the hill and not fenced in, but was rather a large open area with patches of old fake turf surrounded by marshes. There were a bunch of dogs running around and playing and having a blast getting muddy and they never went too far out of sight. Our dogs joined in with enthusiasm. 

We ordered some thai food to take back to the RV and then we introduced Tom to our favorite game, Settlers of Catan, which he promptly won! We had fun with him.

Next was our visit to Jessica and her family, where we discovered that we could leave the dogs alone in the RV for several hours as long as they were tired enough.

Jessica has cats so the dogs were not able to come in the house with us. Also, her little boy, Jack, is allergic to dog saliva, which fortunately, Jessica was prepared for when the first thing Roscoe did to say hi was lick Jack's face and leave a nice red tongue mark. Jess quickly gave Jack the remedy to counteract the effect and no harm was done but we were more careful to keep dogs and baby separated after that.
As ambassadors of Catan, we had to introduce the game to the Roemer family, and Rylee (age 9) almost kicked our butts. She would have, too, if her dad hadn't stolen the game away from her at the last minute. We had a blast.

Jess wanted so much to be able to show us all the cool things to see in her area but we realized that most of them were places that we couldn't take the dogs, so we found and visited another dog park, took the kids to a kid park and hung out at the house and ate tacos one night and ravioli lasagne another night. Contrary to what she thought, we had a great time.

From there, we went on an unplanned side trip to visit my Aunt Dean and cousin Joe in Rockford, Illinois. When we visited Tom, he mentioned that his mom lived a mere 5 hours away and since we did not have to meet any deadlines, he suggested that we might make a trip to see her. She is the only one of my dad's 11 siblings still alive, and she has always held a very special place in my heart, so we decided that it was definitely a trip worth making. So we found a campground near Rockford and made arrangements to stay a couple of days and contacted Joe and his wife to have lunch with them and Aunt Dean. It was absolutely lovely. I was happy to see that my aunt is as beautiful and stylish as ever with her alabaster skin and hair looking lovely against her cobalt blue coat and multicolored scarf. And the sparkle in her eye is as bright as ever. I loved that she ordered the most decadent dish on the menu (waffles with strawberries and nutella) and enjoyed it thoroughly.

That was the furthest east that this trip took us and from there, we headed back to the west to Iowa and a visit with my niece Jocelyn and her husband, Dan. We timed it so we could be there October 1 for a Suicide Prevention Walk that we all participated in to honor my nephew Caleb and others that we've known and loved that have succumbed to this abominable tragedy.

Of course, it was also important for us to introduce Dan and Jocelyn to Catan. And we got them hooked. Hehe.

Jocelyn & Dan proudly showed us their cute little town and we had dinner at their favorite restaurant and breakfast at the only fully restored Frank Lloyd Wright hotel in the U.S. Both meals were top notch. And the hotel was very interesting! (Very low ceilings--made me wonder how short everyone must have been when it was built.)

From there we went to Kansas City, Missouri, to visit my sister Elizabeth and her husband Rick. 

I was so happy to finally get to see their house and to spend some time with some of my favorite people. They have a nice big back yard, which Rick had spent some time making secure for the dogs, so one evening we decided leave the dogs in the yard and take a trip into the city and have dinner at one of their favorite places that serves the BBQ that Kansas City is known for. 

Along with going to dinner, we took a little driving tour to see the sights. When we were heading back to their house, a neighbor called Rick to ask if he knew anything about the two dogs that were running around the neighborhood. My heart just about dropped through the floor as I heard him having the conversation. When he told the caller that, yes, the dogs belonged to us and asked if they were okay, I guess the caller said that they had been able to round them up and they would hold them for us until we got back. We got back as quickly as we could and boy, were those dogs happy to see us. We thanked the neighbors profusely and were assured that Roscoe and Zuli had been very friendly, but I felt like such a rotten dog mom that it took the rest of the evening for the knot in my stomach to subside. 

We enjoyed visiting for a couple of days doing ordinary things like going to breakfast at First Watch (twice!), watching movies (we tried to watch one on our outdoor TV but we couldn't get the sound loud enough.) But we got a kick out of watching "So I Married and Axe Murderer" for the first time.

and celebrating Taco Tuesday with some bomb margaritas

and Vladi was even able to help Rick out with one of his projects. For some time, he had wanted to get a lamppost in his front yard working but did not have the electrical expertise necessary to complete the job. He was really happy to have Vladi there to help him. 

 
We ended up leaving a day earlier than we expected to because we were hearing ominous reports about the weather and we didn't want to get caught in a storm. 

This picture was taken on the I-70 in Kansas. We heard that a pretty good storm hit right after we left Kansas City and even though the sky looks ominous here, we only had very light rain fall on us.

When we had visited Aunt Dean, we considered one more added side trip. We realized that one more cousin was somewhat close to the route that we would be taking home, and that was Cathy, in Colorado Springs. Cathy is Aunt Dean's daughter and Tom and Joe's sister. If we saw Cathy, we would have missed only one member of Aunt Dean's family, Sue, whom we'd have to try to catch on another trip. 
We got to Colorado Springs in a couple of days and met Cathy and her husband Gerry for lunch. We talked and did a lot of laughing. It was great to see them.

Our next stop was Albuquerque, New Mexico. We wanted to make it there before the (hot-air) balloon festival was over and we managed to get there on the Friday evening just before the final weekend. We stayed at one place Friday night and then moved to a campground closer to the festival on Saturday. We enjoyed our Saturday in the wonderful hot tub at our KOA campground.

We asked the nice people at the KOA if they knew where the best vantage point would be to see the balloons in the air, since we wouldn't be able to actually attend the festival with the dogs. Our best hope was to see them go up on the final day from a parking lot up in the hills above the city. 
Because the weather was touch and go, there was a question about whether the balloons would even go up, and when there was lightning and thunder on Saturday night, we thought for sure we would not get to see any balloons.
But we woke up at 5:30 a.m. and made our way to the suggested place, hoping that we would get to see something.

As we drank our coffee and ate our muffins we ended up having a spectacular view. And we were in the parking lot of a huge church that had a gorgeous adjacent park where we walked the dogs and shared the view with just a few other people. Very serene. But if I ever visit the balloon festival again, I really would like to see the balloons close up.
When we got directions, we were told about a couple of other fun things to do and since we had the rest of the day to fill, we checked out the "Singing Highway," which is a portion of road that has grooves over which you place your tires and you can hear the tune of "America the Beautiful" as you drive. It was really cool. We went up as far as 10,000 ft into the Sandia Mountains where it was really beautiful but cold! 

From there, we headed to the Grand Canyon, with a stop at another KOA in Flagstaff, Arizona along the way. We spent a day walking along the South Rim trail and marveling at the breathtaking beauty of this awe-inspiring, magnificent place.

Our pictures cannot possibly do it justice. I'm so glad we got to see it. And on a spectacularly beautiful day. 
We made one more stop in Lake Havasu on the way home, where it was actually really hot and we weren't too impressed with the campground there. We were ready to go home. 
As we got close, Roscoe seemed to sense it and eagerly looked out the window in anticipation.

We thoroughly enjoyed our first big trip. We got to see and do pretty much everything we wanted to and then some. We had no problems with the RV. And we look forward to planning our next big tour. But there's nothing like Home Sweet Home.

To be continued . . .