Archive for Uncategorized
July 24, 2006 at 9:30 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
I’m so sick of the word “torque” that I’m going to try avoid the word for a while. Suffice to say, our wheels are still attached, and we are now parked for a few days of rest in this suburb of Denver. (We were here last October, and you can read about it in the blog archives.)
Not long as we arrived, I got an email from The Health Chic asking where we were. Turns out they were at a cybercafe in Denver catching up on email. I told them where we were and about an hour later they showed up for a night of camping in the next space! This is the third time we’ve crossed paths since last month. Are they stalking us? 😉
After work, Bill and I took Emma out for a quick bike ride and Eleanor and Wendimere sat in their trailer gabbing … for hours. I think Eleanor and I are still decompressing from the events of the past few days, and having someone else to talk to has been nice this evening.
This week will be busy. I’ve got to run all over town to get my new cell phone, get my laptop fixed, and meet with people. Eleanor plans on running her errands too, so we’re going to have to negotiate “car time”.
I have neglected to mention our recent experience with the solar system. It has exceeded our expectations. At this time of year, we can go indefinitely without plugging in. When we reached Victor ID, we had been unplugged for eight days straight — and our batteries were still at 95%. The only reason we bother to plug in now is for A/C. Everything else we have runs on the batteries and solar panels.
I’m going to be interested to see how well the system performs this fall and winter. Obviously it won’t be quite so good, but I still expect we will not feel the need for a generator at any time, which makes me happy.
July 20, 2006 at 4:18 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Sorry for the shortage of pictures lately. It has been hectic this week, with work, equipment trouble, and having to commute back and forth to the Public Library. Sometimes the Internet works at the campground, but mostly it doesn’t, or it drops out at inconvenient times. And I’ve had to concentrate on the Fall magazine most of the week. So I haven’t had much opportunity to take out the camera and document this town. Mostly I’m working.
Emma has been completely occupied the past two days with the girls from next door, Rebecca and Susannah. Their parents (David and Laura) invited us over for dinner last night and we took the opportunity to cook up that giant salmon that Eleanor and Susan bought back in Montana. David and Laura chipped in shrimp and ice cream.
Once again we stayed up late yakking and comparing great places to go. Yup, we’ve made another set of new friends. That’s one of the best things about being “on the road”. We’ll stay in touch via email and probably see them again when we get to Florida in December.
Today is the fourth day of catching up on stuff I thought would only take two days. I’m still behind where I’d like to be, but regardless, we need to get over to Denver and we are leaving tomorrow morning. I’ll have to find some time next week in either Estes Park or Aurora (the two places we expect to land while we are in northern Colorado).
We’re certainly not tired of Victor. There are still cafes to explore, the drive-in movie theater, and a lot of interesting back roads to drive. I love the dry climate. I can see why we keep running into people who are settling here, after years of being seasonal residents. And Emma will never get tired of the swimming pool.
Tomorrrow’s route should be scenic, from here to I-80. Thereafter I don’t expect much. We’re hoping to get somewhere east of Rock Springs, WY by Friday night. Blog reader Roger wrote in to say the Rock Springs was only memorable because he lost an window on his Airstream there. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen to us –we’re already using enough spare equipment as it is!
July 19, 2006 at 1:47 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
A lot of people wrote to me today to offer advice on the phone problem. Brett suggested I get a refurb phone for less than the new price, so I’d still be able to upgrade to a nicer phone in September.
Dennis suggested a second phone on a different network, for redundancy. (We already have a Sprint phone for that exact reason, and I’ve been using it lately.)
Janine suggested finding one on eBay. Clarke suggested trying *228 to reprogram the phone.
These are all good suggestions. We did try *228 and it didn’t help, but it was certainly important to try it before giving up on the phone. I wish I’d thought of the eBay or refurb ideas last night but, being in a tizzy about the impending failure of the phone, I ordered a new one online. I’ll pick it up at The UPS Store in Aurora CO next week.
Terry also called to suggest we put a tube in the damaged tire, and keep it as a spare. We’ll be looking into that possibility, which could save us $100 or so.
Thanks to all of your for your concern and assistance. It really means a lot to us to know so many people are looking out for us!
Today, Rich C and I took one more drive over the Teton Pass to Jackson to pick up another mail package I had requested be sent to General Delivery. The pass is still an interesting ride each time! Today there were a bunch of cyclists working their way up the 10% grade. A few people we’ve met here in Victor commute over the pass every day, all year long.
I am still getting a lot of paper mail despite trying to get everyone on electronic delivery. Sprint keeps sending me paper statements even though I enrolled in their online system, but hopefully this is the last one. The health plan people can’t seem to wrap their heads around the concept of electronic delivery at all. Fidelity is still sending me statements on my retirement investments, so I’ll log on there today and try to put a stop to that. USAA sends me everything electronically except life insurance renewals, so there’s another website to visit today. And, about half of the advertisers in the magazine still prefer sending paper checks even though we accept all credit cards and PayPal.
It would be a fine day if I received my mail and there were nothing in the package except Netflix! But I’ve come to realize that day is probably never going to come. Paper ain’t dead yet — a good thing, considering that my job is publishing a print magazine.
Emma has found friends at this campground. They were also homeschooled for the first few years of their education. We stayed up till 11 last night talking with their parents in their motorhome, and Eleanor has picked up some very useful information about homeshooling as a result.
July 16, 2006 at 2:41 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
We are back in contact with the world. At this moment, we are making an afternoon camp in the parking lot of the Menor Historical Site, just 1/2 mile north of Moose, in the Grand Tetons National Park. The mountains are looming to our west, just out the dinette window where I am sitting catching up on work.
The past four days have been great, and there’s much to tell. I will try to backfill some blog entries tonight and tomorrow. In short:
1) I took over 500 photos, of which some are now in our Flickr album.
2) Yellowstone was crowded and, although a terrific place to visit, will not be on our top ten list of national parks we most like to go. Yes, we saw geysers, bison, pronghorns, and many other creatures. The park is so big (size of Connecticut) that we were only able to see a tiny fraction in three nights. But in that short time we managed to get caught in a couple of huge traffic jams, the parking lots were all overflowing, and even the 7 a.m. ranger walk was attended by over 50 people. We got up every day at 5:30 to beat the crowds, and it was a drag to find full parking lots everywhere by 8 a.m. If we come back, it will be in the off-season.
3) My Mac’s internal hard drive died on Friday, but fortunately I had a full backup made on July 4, and I had enough warning of the problem to save most of the intervening work as well. It’s now completely un-bootable, but I am fine, working off Eleanor’s laptop with all my data on the external backup drive. However, I was not able to retrieve about 100 great photos from Glacier National Park before the main drive died. I still hope to do that when we reach a service center in Denver. Have you remembered to backup your data lately?
4) Jackson WY campgrounds are incredibly expensive ($52 per night with Good Sam discount) so we are going to head to Idaho today to get cheaper camping in Victor.
5) We managed to run over a 1″ drywall screw in a campground in Grand Tetons, which meant an emergency trip to the service center in the park. The tire is unrepairable, so we are on the spare at the moment. How did a drywall screw end up in the center of a huge National Park?
July 12, 2006 at 10:00 am · Filed under Uncategorized
We are heading out this morning to Yellowstone National Park, 100 miles south of here. We’ll probably be unable to blog for a couple of days, because we are staying in the center of the park where only analog phone service exists. Yellowstone has been the subject of a few well-publicized cell phone towers, but in reality it is unlikely we’ll find any coverage (except at Old Faithful).
Rich C is heading to Bozeman for maintenance. We’ll meet Adam and Susan in the park and report back when we emerge, probably by Friday.
July 11, 2006 at 5:25 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
It’s a fine day here in southern Montana. This really is a beautiful state and worthy of many weeks of exploration, if not months. I’m sorry we aren’t taking more time here, but we will just need to come back again later.
Us, and Rich C, parked in the otherwise empty campground
Our drive today has taken us to Lewis and Creek Caverns State Park ($18, no hookups), which was once a National Monument. It was transferred to the state of Montana in 1932 when Congress was looking for ways to pare down the National Parks budget. The caves are three miles up a twisting road from the campground. The area is very scenic and remarkably quiet.
We’ve decided to skip the cavern tour, even though Adam and Susan reported it to be a good one, because it is two hours long. Emma’s attention span in a cave is not quite that long, and we’ve seen a lot of caves in the past six months, including Oregon Caves, Mammoth Cave, Lehman Cave, and Kartchner Cavern. Instead, we’re taking a quiet afternoon around the Airstream.
I’ve been meaning to share a small tip for camping this time of year: be careful for wasps at your campsite. Last week at the Corps of Engineers campground in Pasco, WA, I opened the cover to the electrical hookup in campsite #46, and was immediately stung twice by wasps. We retreated to another site.
Even though the stings hurt, I was sort of happy to be the recipient of them. Rich C is allergic to insect stings and it would have been much worse for him. I didn’t want to have to inject him with an Epi-Pen. Carol gave me some topical pain reliever (benzocaine or something similar) and it worked very quickly.
This experience actually paid off just a couple of days later when Rich C opened another electrical hookup cover at another campground. Just before opening it, he thought, “Hmmm…. maybe there are wasps in here, too.” So he opened it cautiously, and sure enough, there were unhappy wasps. He ran fast and was lucky not to be stung.
Photo by Scott Fassett
July 11, 2006 at 7:59 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Monday was a chance for everyone to figure out their new plans. Since Bert & Janie are leaving today for up to five months, we have decided to leave the rest of Glacier for another visit.
Susan and Adam decided to start heading south toward Wyoming. They only have a few more days before they have to park the C and fly home, and they would like to see some of Yellowstone. They left Monday afternoon.
We are going to follow them today (Tuesday) and catch up in Yellowstone on Wednesday. Tonight we’ve got a nice state park picked out in southern Montana.
Rich C is going to go the same way, but he’s already left early this morning. We should re-group with him tonight. His friends Tom and Shane decided to head up to Banff for a few days, so other than a brief visit yesterday afternoon, we won’t be seeing them. They will be flying back out of Seattle this weekend.
Bert & Janie are leaving this morning too. We are both parked in the driveway, hitched up and just about ready to go. Watching Bert & Janie, I am reminded of how much work it is to get an entire house secured before an extended trip. They’ve been checking items off their lists for days, arranging for mail forwarding, turning off appliances and water, setting out supplies for contingencies … it seems endless. We used to do that too, before every trip.
My major prep was putting in a 12-hour day at the “office” yesterday. The World Headquarters of Airstream Life magazine were located in Bert & Janie’s living room for the day, where I could borrow his broadband Internet connection. I like having a portable office. Everything I need, including whatever current projects and paperwork I have, fits in a medium-sized blue backpack. I just sling it over my shoulder and head to my dinette, the local coffee shop, or a lawn chair outside.
If Emma wakes up soon, we’ll be able to follow Bert & Janie for a few miles, but Emma seems determined to sleep in today. We’ll be the last people here in the driveway today, looking forward to seeing our friends again tonight and tomorrow for more adventures.
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