Birthday in NOLA

What can I say??? A birthday spent on Bourbon Street in New Orleans was the best! The party here is ongoing, so all we had to do was slip in and enjoy. Good food, great music and the sites are one of a kind. This should be on everyone's bucket list.

WOW!!! Texas is really big!

Padre Island just outside of Corpus Christi Texas is a bird watchers paradise. This 35 mile long island is also a full time RVers dream come true. You have a choice of the campground for $8 a night with your home backed up to the beach with a view of the
Gulf Coast or park right on the beach for free. You can walk or ride your bike for miles in either direction and catch dinner right out your back door.

Back to the size of Texas. We decided to drive straight through to the beach. After day and night driving, we had only made it as far as San Antonio. It is a monstrous state with great, straight roads and light traffic and really cheap gas. We may never leave.

Whew! What a S?!t Storm

What was supposed to be a few weeks in Bend turned into 2 months. Don't know how that happened, but my son named it a s??t storm.

Two vet visits for each of our small dogs, emergency room visit for stitches in my hand, my desk top crashed permanently, Rhonda's folks lost both their dogs within 6 weeks of each other, cost of a new bed, extended warranty for our tow vehicle and laptop, and chipping ice and snow off our stairs before we could escape to warmer climes.

On a more positive note, we did get the Hattons packed and moved to Palm Desert, Celebrate my dad's 80th Bday and Daughters 22nd Bday, and enjoy friends and family while biking and hiking in the Cascades.

Bend is still a great place to be in the Fall, and Crown Villa RV park is one of the highest rated RV parks in the nation, so other than being over budget, it was a great stay.

UPS Retirement Party

Wow!!! What an August and September. We are now plugged into our good friends, the Hatton's and enjoying cards, Landshark and Tequila. It is nice to be settled down for a few weeks, enjoying friends and family, celebrating birthdays, and of course doing our annual doctors visits before heading south.

Actually, not that settled down as the Hatton's surprised me with a retirement party!

Thank you everyone for a very special day! The send off will be remembered forever!
Bruce

Dave Matthews at The Gorge

A weekend at The Gorge with your friends, favorite band and 20,000 like minded souls should be on your bucket list. We spent 4 nights listening to The Dave Matthews Band, partying with old and new friends and slip-n-sliding until The Gorge Nazi Police shut us down because we might hurt ourselves.

Sprint Boat Races in St. John

What a Hoot! The little community of St. John, Washington puts on one big Sprint Boat race. St. John is a small wheat and barley farming community, where both sides of my family originate from. Not only does this town feed our great country, but they entertain with the warmest of hospitality. Within 10 miles of St. John, every vehicle waved a hello greeting to us. My wife ask if I new them or if they were relatives? I said "no, it is just a friendly community"!

A little history about Sprint Boat Racing in St. John.

A local farmer took an area a little bigger than a football field and carved out a technical course for small jet boats to race against time. These boats can reach a speed of 110 mph on straight-aways, and complete approximately 30 turns in less than 45 seconds. There is a driver and a navigator for each team.

This should also be on everyone's bucket list! Just be prepared to party, as 4000 plus spectators show up with RV's and form a small city for the weekend.

Best Campsite in Washington

We have found the best campsite in Washington. Just a few miles East of Lake Chelan on the mighty Columbia is a Campground called Beebe Bridge Park. Rhonda worked hard for this site, but it was well worth the wait and effort. Lots of grass, boat dock and water-frontage, full hook-up (have to use dump station when you leave), all for $25.00 a night. We are definitely going back!

Box Canyon in the Mt.Rainier Nat'l Forest

Our New Happy Place

We have found our new Happy Place ... Mt. Rainier! It's what we imagine Heaven would look like. Naming it Paradise is spot on. The spectacular green meadows, wild flowers in full bloom, the ice blue glaciers and the sheer majesty of 14,000 feet summit is breath taking. The best part is we got to share it with our daughter Mackenzie and good friends, the Hatton's. Our little RV home slept 7 comfortably. AMAZING!!!

We did several hikes, including High Rock and Osborn mountain. Unfortunately, in this area, they all require serious climbs. Not good on our old knees. I kept saying, "I am too young to feel this old"!

Our RV Park was MountHaven, just a 1/2 mile from the Mt. Rainier entrance. We would recommend this Park to all our RV friends. Great, friendly host/owners. If you go, say hi to Craig and Joan. I am sure they will remember us....or at least our barking dogs and late night parties.

Off to Prosser and the wine country....Cheers, The Brondawgs!

Farewell Olympic Peninsula

It is time to say farewell to Hurricane Ridge, Crescent Lake and Beach, Hoh Rain Forest, Cape Flattery, Victoria BC and so much more. Our two months have flown by, but we are excited to revisit Mt St. Helens, explore Mt Rainer, taste the fine wines of the Yakima Valley, Om pa in Leavenworth, relax at Moses Lake and cheer the jet boat racers in St. John. If all goes according to plan, we might even get to spend a few days in Glacier National Park, before we meet up with friends at the Gorge to spend a weekend with the Dave Matthews Band.

The best part of August/September is to spend time with our daughter at the Gorge and visit with our son, who is back from a year in Laos.

We will be out of email and cell range the first week of August while we are in the Mt.St. Helens area, but will have all the electronic comforts the rest of the month.

UN-Inspired....to write something pithy that is!!!

The scenery is breath-taking, the weather perfect, and the people the friendliest. It is hard to put into words what we have seen and experienced. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so enjoy.

Vampires, Moss and Red Hot Pokers

What do these obscure manifestations have in common? The Olympic Peninsula, of course, where we have decided to Summer.

Where I come from, the growing season is only about 14 days long, on a good year - you can drive through any neighborhood in Bend in early July and see blankets covering and protecting the petunias....believe me. So red hot pokers only bloom on average, once every 5 years. The plant is small and depressing looking and the bloom baffles most Central Oregonians, because we never see such a site. Here in Sequim Washington, they grow and bloom as a weed. With a growing season just shy of 500 days a year, everything flourish's here. Including moss and vampires.

What better place to welcome vampires.

The days are gray and overcast, even in June, so not only are vampires welcome, they thrive as they never have to hide from the sun. The moss, mist and eerie, exposed root systems just add to the blood suckers "movie-like" ambiance.

Personally, I don't know any vampires yet, but I think I like them better than mosquitoes. It has been over a week, and I still haven't been bit by anything with wings. In contrast, a mosquito heard I was in South Africa for a visit and flew all the way from Sudan to bite me! True story!

Regardless, this is a beautiful area with rugged coastline, beaches, palm trees, rivers, lakes, rain forests, really tall firs and pines, and not so tall mountains. The people are friendly and unrushed and always ready to have a cup of coffee and visit.

If you are wondering why vampires are welcome here, this is the area the Twilight series is based on, and the folks are very proud of that fact. My daughter has read the series and seen the movies with affection. She was to send the books with me so I could read up and be in the know, but like other items forgotten and left behind, it didn't happen. Sometimes being ignorance is bliss.

Bird, Boredom and Bora Bora or We are NOT Bird Watchers.....YET

We woke up to our dogs barking..screaming in human talk..and running laps between the bed and the living room. Once they hit the living room, they proceeded to climb, actually launch themselves up the furniture and paw at the windows. Upon further investigation, we discovered a "not so plump" robin attacking our reflective windows. We discovered that small dogs don't like birds fluttering about their turf. I don't know what was wrong with this red robin, but I decided it was some psycho, Prozac needing loony bird..pardon the pun or some homophobic fetid foul trying to take himself out. Either way, this did not sit well with the Brondawgs.

Since we have experienced wood peckers in the past, we tried the old trick of decorating our RV up like Christmas in Bora Bora and Mardi gras. So far it has worked. Between the tin foil, duck tape, crepe paper, beer bottles and smiley faces drawn on the windows, Red now just sits on the storage shed and looks in the window.

Kathy, my brother's lady friend, ask us on Mothers Day, if we were worried about getting bored. My first response was, "if we did get bored, we could go back to work! NOT! Between finally getting to relax and read some books, work out at the RV Park weight room, ride bikes, poop and potty the dogs, and learn how to use this complicated home, a little mid May RV decorating can REALLY throw a curve ball into this well orchestrated day.

We adapted and overcame...and I think this will our retirement strategy in the future.

Home Sweet Home

Whahoo!!! We did it. One final push and our first big trip (across town)and we are now FullTimers. Don't let that "across town" fool you. After the final push and the closing of our home, we did the final load into the RV and headed to our first destination. CrownVilla RV Resort. Probably 3.5 miles as the crows fly, it must have taken us 1 and 1/2 hours because of construction one route, a bridge 2 inches too low to navigate on the second route and the third, lets just say our tempers were wearing thin and that ice cold brew in the fridge was sounding better and better.

Doh!

Let me weigh the options??? Option #1. Retire with 60% of my normal income and pay for my own benefits, or return to work with the option of further injuring myself? Doh! Option #2. Undergo back surgery for hopefully a better quality of life or continue to use muscle relaxers, pain killing narcotics, and alcohol to numb the senses??? Doh! Option #3. Hit the road with my bitches and do a reality show, or continue to be a tax paying productive citizen??? Doh!

Baby Steps

One day closer, and 80% of our worldly possessions gone. It is amazing how freeing letting go of those material things we hold so dearly and work so hard to consume.

We spent the day stocking our new home with what we now consider important. The great news is.....we still have room for provisions and reading material.

45 days and counting

Hey world, here we come. 45 days until we are retired and on the road. We welcome you to follow us on our discoveries, excursions and sightseeing. We also invite you to comment on our travels. Bruce, Rhonda, Riley and Shailey aka Runkle.