Year end review 2020: Part 10-November and December

November

The next day, after we returned our rental car, Christy gave us a ride to the train station. We were excited for the train ride and I was really happy that Vladi finally got a break from driving. The train ride was a lot of fun.



We left in the early afternoon on Monday, Nov. 2. We stayed in our little bedroom compartment most of the time, where we sat across from each other and looked out the big picture window. But we also spent time in the observation car, which had even bigger windows and two long rows of seats facing them on either side. There was also a dining car where there were tables for eating meals. But our porter told us that in non-Covid times, the dining car was much more enjoyable and the food was so much better. Covid had dictated that passengers could only eat with their travelling companions and the food was all prepackaged rather than cooked fresh. Normally, one could go to the dining car and eat with other travelers and meet and talk to all kinds of people but only so many people were called at a time to eat their meals at every other table. So, we missed out on that communal experience.



This was the sunset on our first night.

At night, the bench seat in our “bedroom” became a bed and another bed folded down from above it. The porter came in to prepare everything for us for sleeping. I was a little worried about being able to get out of the top bed to make my nightly bathroom trips, but it wasn’t as difficult as I anticipated. The clickety-clack sound of the train wheels and the gentle rocking movement made for a great night’s sleep.



The next day, the train passed through some fields in California, where the laborers were hard at work. We also caught a glimpse of the SpaceX facility in Hawthorne, CA.



The sunset was beautiful over the ocean that night.


Vladi’s son, Sam picked us up from the train station that night. We were happy to get home to these guys.




As we were travelling home, the presidential election was taking place. We had submitted our votes by mail, long before we went on our trip, but anyone who went to the polls in person was doing it on the day that we were on the train.

In most other elections that I can remember, the results were known within a day of the election polls closing, although the 2000 election was dragged out because of the “hanging chads” in Florida but was eventually conceded by Al Gore to George W. Bush. In the 2020 election, because of the pandemic, there was an enormous number of mail-in ballots which had to be processed by election workers. For several days the country waited anxiously to hear who our president would be for the next four years. It was the biggest voter turnout in history and both candidates got a record number of votes, but on Nov. 7 Joe Biden reached the 270 electoral college votes that he needed to be declared the winner. In another historic occurrence, Donald Trump asserted that there had been widespread voter fraud and began filing lawsuits to get the results overturned. His lawyers filed over 50 lawsuits, none of which proved any of his allegations. All of them were thrown out of court because of lack of evidence. Trump fought for two months to retain his power, continually claiming that the election was stolen.

Personally, I could not wait until inauguration day arrived. I hoped that once Biden was sworn in, things would calm down and start normalizing. The country has grown more and more divided over the last four years and it seems like Republicans and Democrats live in two alternate realities. We get our news from different sources and the middle ground between our values seems to have become a chasm that can’t be bridged. I’m convinced that we have many more things in common than we realize but calm and rational discussion doesn’t seem to occur very often and compromise has become a dirty word. I enjoy hearing both sides of issues discussed in a thoughtful manner, because I want to understand why people think the way they do but trying to have that kind of discussion on social media is counterproductive. It inevitably seems to devolve into name-calling and accusations and suspended or terminated relationships.

I now understand with crystal clarity the advice my dad imparted to never discuss politics or religion in polite company. He was incredibly wise.

On the coronavirus front there were a lot of warnings about the danger of having gatherings over the holidays and indeed, the Covid cases were surging again in November. Just before Thanksgiving, I got news that my Aunt Louise had passed away from Covid. She was really the first person that I knew personally that had died from it. But around then my daughter heard that a couple of her former co-workers had died as well.

After all our adventures, Vladi and I were ready to stay home and have a quiet Thanksgiving. We bought a Rotisserie chicken from Costco and I made the traditional sides that we love: stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, butternut squash and cranberry sauce.



We toasted with our Asti Spumante and watched TV. We were happy that our friends that we usually celebrate with got a chance to go visit their kids in Idaho for the holiday.

On Nov. 29 Vladi and I were watching an episode of All in the Family. Growing up in Russia there are many American TV shows that Vladi had never seen and because Netflix gives us the opportunity to revisit shows from the past, we frequently watch old series that I think will give him a more rounded American cultural picture. All in the Family debuted in the early 70s. I remember watching it as a young teenager and I’m sure that at the time, half of it went over my head, especially the way Archie misused and mangled words.

But the episode we watched in November was especially timely and touching. (In fact, I was amazed how the themes of the whole series seemed just as relevant in 2020 as they were when the show first came out-how, sadly, little has changed.) The episode was from season 6 and Gloria had just announced her pregnancy. At first, her husband, Mike, was ecstatic, but then he began to worry about bringing a child into the world when there were so many things wrong with it.

He found himself in the kitchen of their neighbor, Irene, who shared a little newspaper clipping she had tucked away in a drawer. He took the clipping back to Gloria and she read it out loud.

What it said was just as relevant to today’s world.

“Even the prospect of early annihilation should not keep us from making the most of our days on this unhappy planet. In the best of times, our days are numbered anyway. And it would be a crime against Nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were presumably designed in the first place, and which the gravest statesmen and the hoarsest politicians hope to make available to all men in the end: I mean the opportunity to do good work, to fall in love, to enjoy friends, to sit under trees, to read, to hit a ball and bounce the baby.”-Alistaire Cooke

December

In December we were delighted to hear that 2 vaccines had been approved by the CDC. We were told that it would take some time before the vaccines would become available to everyone but Vladi and I started hoping that we might be able to get them in time to make our trip to meet my cousins in May.

As Christmas approached, I began to feel my usual anxiety about it. I’m not sure why I get anxious, other than feeling pressure to spend money (which I usually overdo). No one in my life puts this pressure on me. I do it to myself. With that in mind, I decided to take the year off from celebrating Christmas. I wanted to see what it would be like to not participate. I warned everyone that I wouldn’t be buying gifts or sending cards or baking cookies. I didn’t put up a stitch of décor other than the cards I received from a few people.

Vladi maintained his tradition of lighting his beautiful menorah with the pretty colored oil pots he always buys and I was happy with that. It really is beautiful.



On Christmas day Christy, Ben and I scheduled a zoom meeting and as we were talking, Jessica joined us. It was great to see their faces and we talked for 2 hours.

But my heart was sad that we couldn’t be together and I miss times gone by when we did a lot of fun things, especially with the Heaton family. One of my favorite traditions was our eggs benedict breakfast on Christmas morning. It was quite a feast! I have a few videos from Christmas when the kids were little and I indulged myself by watching them, but it makes me sad that their childhood is past.

For the last few years I have been saying that I need to start some new traditions and make Christmas meaningful to myself again, but I haven’t figured out how to do that yet.

Summation

The last couple of months of 2020 seem rather anticlimactic after the busy 10 months that preceded them but Vladi and I were very satisfied with where we had been, what we had done and who we had seen.

Vladi and I have felt an urgency to live life as fully as we are able while we can. If this year has taught us nothing else it has taught us that tomorrow is not guaranteed and things can change in an instant.

So I intend to continue getting the most I can out of each new day.

On to 2021. . .

Year end review 2020-Part 9: 2nd half of October

October-2nd half

Soon after we returned from our trip, our granddaughter celebrated her 4th birthday. We still weren’t able to visit her and her brother in person, but we spent a little time on Facetime.








While we were on our trip, Christy started making arrangements to move to Portland, Oregon. She was going to do the whole thing herself by hitching a U-haul trailer to her car, but that idea worried me so I asked her to wait until Vladi and I got home so that we could help her with the move. She agreed. She wanted to move to Portland to get a fresh start in a place where she felt she could afford to live on her own. She also liked the idea of being closer to her brother, who has lived in Portland for several years.
At the same time that she was planning this, my friend Janeen’s daughter, Deonna, was also making plans to move. Coincidentally, she was moving closer to her brother as well. She was moving to Idaho with her partner and their kids.

On the second to last weekend of October, we decided to throw a party to wish both girls goodbye and good luck. Vladi’s birthday is at the end of October as well, so we were celebrating that too. And it just so happened that the L.A. Dodgers were on their way to winning the World Series, and there are a lot of Dodger fans in our crowd so we had to set up a TV to watch the second to last game. We had the party on our patio so that there was plenty of fresh air circulating around us because we still had to be careful about the virus.



This is what the party looked like. The Dodgers went on to win the World Series two days later.

And here are the guests of honor. Christy is hugging Alex and Athan (Deonna’s boys), next is Vladi, then Deonna is holding her youngest, Brayden, and Kenny is her partner.

The following couple of days were spent packing the moving truck and getting ready to leave.



We had decided to drive separately, allowing Christy to go ahead of us in her car. She would be able to get there more quickly, with only one stop while we would need to make two.

The trip went smoothly and when we arrived, Ben came over to help us unload the truck. Vladi and I rented a car for the rest of our stay and did a little exploring around Portland.

First, we went to Union Station because we had decided to take a train ride home and we wanted to make sure we knew where to go to get on the train. We also upgraded our tickets from a roomette (which was very small) to a bedroom (which was still pretty small, but a little more comfortable.)



With that accomplished, we took a walk around downtown Portland. It was one of the places where protests following the George Floyd killing were most violent. Five months had passed and the damage was still very much in evidence.



I took these pictures across the street from the Apple store. Their broken glass windows were boarded over and the boards were covered with messages of pain and sympathy and demand for change. The Louis Vuitton store was similarly arrayed.



I didn’t take pictures of all the damaged buildings that we saw but what we saw was sobering. Ben told me that a lot of the buildings were still boarded up in anticipation of the unrest that was expected in the coming week. And what was coming up? The presidential election. It made my heart ache.

We did this walking tour on October 31st.

Even though the next day was November 1, and it should begin Part 10 of my story, it really fits better at the end of Part 9. Christy, Ben, Vladi and I took a beautiful hike at Powell Butte Nature Park. It was a gorgeous day and the most fun part of it was getting some great photos with my kids.



We started out with our masks on and Vladi took a few standard photos. As we saw fewer and fewer other people on the trail, we felt it was safe to ditch the masks and then Christy took charge of our “photo shoot.” We found several spots with good backgrounds and a place where she could lean her camera against something. And she directed us to “strike a pose!”

Christy and Ben are really good at this sort of thing. Vladi and I got into the spirit but our poses were a little awkward. We had so much fun, though, it didn’t really matter.

We’ve been asked by a couple of people when the album is going to drop. Don’t my kids look like rock stars?



We were leaning against this old fence and right after we got this picture, the top rail that I was leaning against gave way and I fell backwards flat on my back. Vladi and the kids were very concerned but I started laughing so uncontrollably at the how ridiculous I felt that they quickly realized that I was okay. Fortunately there were no sharp rocks or pieces of wood where I landed and the ground was pretty soft (you can see how grassy it was). But it was quite some time before I could stop laughing. We had a really fun time with my kids.

The next day Vladi and I left for home.

Year end review-part 8: Oct. first half- Day 17-30 of RV trip

October (1st half)

Our next destination was a visit to my sister Elizabeth and brother-in-law, Rick, who live in Kansas City, Missouri. On the drive from Omaha to Kansas City, I was mesmerized by the changing look of the sky. We started out with big puffy clouds in the morning.

And as we drove, the clouds seemed to transform into ever-changing configurations. The next few pictures show how the sky changed it’s look throughout the day. I’m not sure why I was so fascinated by it, but one of the things I love about travelling in the RV is that I have a chance to take in the beauty of the sky and the landscape around me. I love the wild places of dense forests and high mountains and layers of colored rocks in the desert as well as ocean waves crashing against jagged boulders and places that are preserved for the beauty and the wildlife they harbor, but I am also awed by the expanses of fields, whether freshly harvested and mown down or miraculously growing in meticulously orderly rows.

This is where I have to give a shout out to my incredible husband, who affords me the privilege of this kind of observation. Even though when we first bought our RV, I thought maybe I would try to learn to drive it, and he encouraged me to do so, I could never overcome my fear of the task. He has never insisted, and he gave up asking me to try a long time ago, when he realized I really didn’t want to do it. His only requirement of me now is to keep him awake by talking when he starts to feel himself getting tired. And he encourages me to take as many pictures as I can. I give him a ton of credit for the excellent job of driving that he does. And I adore him for letting me observe and record the beauty around us.

We passed by the Kansas City Royals Stadium on our way to our campground which turned out to be about 30 miles from my sister’s house, but we rented a car for our stay so that it wouldn’t be too much trouble for us to drive back and forth.

When I checked us in, this sign on the left had caught my eye about a place we could call to order BBQ and have it delivered to our RV. I thought that would be the perfect thing to have for dinner. Kansas City is famous for it’s BBQ so it had to be good, right? The last time we visited, we had gone with Bets’ & Rick to a place called Jack Stack, which we had thoroughly enjoyed. Well, let’s just say this was no Jack Stack. But at least I didn't have to cook.

I let my sister know that we’d arrived and we made plans to have breakfast together the next morning. For breakfast we went to a little place called Caleb’s that had outdoor seating and we had a fantastic breakfast. It was a little chilly outside but we survived. We spent that day discussing what we wanted to do for the four days we would be visiting (I’m all about a plan.) And we went shopping for supplies for the meals that we would be cooking. That evening we made Mexican food (have I mentioned that it’s my favorite?) and it was really good. I was especially impressed with how good the corn was. And then I thought about all those cornfields I’d been admiring.

Our plan for the next day was to take a walk on a pretty trail just a couple of miles down the road from my sister’s house. It was an easy, level walk through beautiful trees along a paved walking trail, over a couple of bridges that crossed pretty streams of water. The dogs liked it a lot. My sister told me that she drives past this place every day on her way to work. It’s actually in Kansas City, Kansas-so we were able to say that we visited another state on our trip! The next day, we went back to the same trail and took a different direction which was just as lovely.
       

Roscoe wanted to show his appreciation.

This was the second day.

I made sure to ask what kind of birds these were so that I would identify them correctly as geese- not ducks in a row.

These large metal sculptures reside on the Greenway that runs alongside the road next to this park. I never found anything that said the titles of the artwork, but I thought they were pretty impressive. I wasn’t sure what they represented, but this the one on the left looks like feathers. And the other one makes me think of a bull.
     
After our walk that day, we had decided to go out for dinner. We had to find a place that was dog friendly so we ended up at a groovy joint called “Rock & Brews.” It was fun to learn that it was founded by a couple of members of the band Kiss and from what we could discern on the website it sounded like a really fun place to have dinner. It did not

disappoint. 

We were able to dine inside because it was open and airy and all the patrons were seated at least six feet apart. The staff all wore masks and we only took ours off to eat.

 

The walls were covered with depictions of all kinds of rock bands.

And the dogs even got special bowls to drink from. We had a fun time and the food was really good, too!                        

Oh, and because it was a sports bar, there was a Kansas City Chiefs game on TV. You can see the guy in the Kelce (Chief's player) shirt at the table behind us. Kansas City is very proud of their Chiefs football team and their Royals baseball team (and with good reason.)

In this pic you can see the bartender with a mask on.

By the next day, we were a little tired of walking, so we decided to stay at the house and play a game instead. We had purchased a Costco lasagna to make for dinner along with a salad and garlic bread. The game we decided to play was “Worst Case Scenario.” We teamed up as couples and had a lot of laughs at the silly scenarios we were presented with as well as the sometimes ridiculous “right” answers. We enjoyed

our dinner and soon it was time for us to take our leave.

Even though our campground was pretty far from my sister’s house, we had a great stay there.

After returning our rental car, we had another nice breakfast at a place called The Big Biscuit before we got back on the road. I gotta say, the Midwest does breakfast right!

We saw more idyllic farmland on our way to our next stop in Oklahoma.







The KOA where we stayed in Tulsa was next to a Cherokee Casino and the Will Rogers Downs racetrack. 

The campsites were large and widely spaced and the dogs enjoyed the clear view they had of everything going on around them.

Vladi and I took a walk to the casino to explore what was available to order for dinner and to see if anything interesting was going on there.

We found a place inside to order our dinner but the indoor activities were very limited so we took our dinner back to the RV with us so we could watch the vice-presidential debate on our outdoor TV. We don’t use the outdoor one very often because it can be tricky to see if the ambient light is at the wrong angle, but that night, we were able to see the screen with no problem. We enjoyed our dinner and the debate and the balmy evening.

The next morning, when I went out to take the dogs for their morning constitutional, I saw that it looked like people were setting up the track for a race that day. And soon, there were people warming up their horses.

One rider was leading one frisky horse around while riding on another one. She snapped at me that I had my dogs too close to the fence. I hadn’t realized that the horses could smell the dogs and that was what was making them a skittish. I was chagrined so I moved away from the fence but tried to still watch from a greater distance.

Here’s a look at the building. You can see the viewing stands on the left side and the entrance to the casino on the right.

We got on the road again after breakfast and drove through most of the length of Oklahoma. We made one stop at an “Indian Trading Post” to see what kind of souvenirs they might have.

Vladi wanted to get a picture in front of this big Indian brave. We did find a couple of things we liked in the store and then continued on to our campground in Elk City. I’m beginning to think that KOA should pay me for all the advertising I’m doing for them.

One benefit of rising early to take the dogs out is that I get to see sunrises like this.

    

This campground was a little more tightly arranged than some of the others, but it was still nice.

At this point in our trip, we were not staying anywhere more than one day and we were trying to get an early start to cover as much ground as we could toward home. On day 25 of our trip, we drove through the small northern portion of Texas between Oklahoma and New Mexico, where our next campground was in Tucumcari.

                                         
In the distance there are probably as many windmills as there are cows in this picture.

 
The sunset that night looked a lot like the sunrise had that morning!

We speculated a lot about the people that could live in these houses that were so far from anyone or anything else.

I would file this under, “things you would never see in California!”

We saw a lot of trains crossing the wide open spaces of the country.

New Mexico has a number of buttes (pronounced beauts as in beauty) and mesas. In the picture below, if you can see between our collection of windshield bugs, the highway passed between a couple of them. The rocks are really pretty striated shades of red, brown and yellow.

We stopped for a second night in New Mexico, near the town of Grants.



It was next to an interesting area of lava activity. We took the dogs on a walk next to the campground that displayed educational signs explaining what we were seeing.

Here’s our boy, Roscoe. He’s a good little traveler.

The next day we made it to Arizona.

Although this highway sign didn’t say anything about masks, most of the businesses that we dealt with had signs on the doors requiring them.





The Williams KOA was a beautiful campground nestled in the mountains of Arizona, just beyond Flagstaff.



It wasn’t far from the Grand Canyon. In fact, the place where we had breakfast the next morning was called Grand Canyon Coffee. But we did not plan go to the Grand Canyon on this trip.

We were anxious to get home.

It was a little too far to drive all the way that day, so we made one more stop in Barstow.



We had lunch at a Peggy Sue’s 50’s Diner, which had a nice outdoor seating area and where their decorative dinosaurs followed the mask-wearing rules.



Finally, on Day 30, we got home!