FIRST AT SEA POST

 I broke down and paid the (Hefty) price for internet while at sea so we can keep up with e-mail and hopefully make a few blog posts.  This is my first attempt at the latter.  Have had some issues with the shipboard wifi so we will see how this goes photo-wise.

We left San Diego promptly at  5:15 yesterday afternoon.   The captain  warned us that it was going to be a bit bumpy the first couple of days and so far he has been correct.  It has been a while since we had our “sea legs”.  The rolling and bumping is wonderful at night except once Arlyene woke up wondering if she was drunk.

Other then that there is not much to report.  We did a little exploring of the ship yesterday and will do more today.  Lots of activities to choose from including doing almost nothing which is pretty high on my agenda.  I did not get my nap yesterday.  Will need to fix that today.

If these photos post OK you will see one farewell photo of  San Diego and the ship's position this morning as we head west.  Having some unusual issues with formatting text etc that I may just have to live with. 

After waiting 18 months for this trip it is great to finally be on our way.  Having Arlyene’s brother Mike and Sister Sandy and spouses Kimberly and Ken with us is making it all the more special and fun.

View of the Eurodam from our hotel room Saturday morning.

Leaving San Diego

TROPICAL VOYAGE

"Don't talk about the things you are going to do, Do the things you are going to talk about"

I read this recently and I really liked it so it will be my theme for a few weeks.  

As I type this Arlyene and I are in the final preparations for a 28 day cruise that will take us from San Diego to Hawaii for about three days and then on south into French Polynesia.  We will cross the equator and the international date line twice and we will visit such places as Fanning Island, Bora Bora, Raiatea, Moorea, Papeete, Fakarava and Nuku Hiva before returning to San Diego in early April.  Arlyene's brother and one of her sisters and their spouses are going with us - so a party of six.

This is the cruise we always wanted to make in Denita - but life just got in the way.  (For those of you who knew Denita she is now in southern Chile with her new owners).  We are making this cruise to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary.  That is not until September but this cruise only runs once a year so we are celebrating early.

I don't know what kind of internet connection we will have on the ship or how practical posting pictures will be so we may not have much to post in the way of photos until we get back.  We will at least be able to post some once we are in Hawaii.  I should be able to post text to the blog from time to time at the very least.

We are thankful to Jim, an old high school buddy, who is house and cat sitting for us.  That is a big load off our minds.

There are going to be some long days at sea between ports.  Hope we have loaded up our Kindles sufficiently.  Packing for a month has been a new experience.

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DEWS' DESERT DIGS

(This is a post I started back in December but never finished.  Posting it late because I am too lazy to retype it as an update.  It is now March and most of this is still true.)

It has been a busy three months since getting back to Las Vegas.  Not only busy but with some major changes for us.  In September we found a house we really liked even though we thought we were not seriously looking yet.  One thing led to another, we made an offer, it was accepted and we got the keys on November 1st.  Since then we have been making the house our own and trying to find where we put things while moving in.  As I mentioned in our previous post we also adopted a kitty and named her Peanut because she was so small.  That was a mistake as we now have a seven nine pound Peanut.  (I guess since our boat was a 43 foot Oyster a nine pound peanut is not so unusual for us).

I have been so busy with move in related projects that I just have not gotten around to posting  much of anything about all this activity so hopefully we can correct this now.  As I write this Peanut is busy climbing our first actual (artificial) Christmas tree in about 20 years.  She has turned it into a Charlie Brown tree.  None of our tricks to keep her out, or any amount of yelling or threats, has done any good.  At least we now have room for the tree to fall over without breaking anything.

Two of the attractions to this house that made it an especially good purchase for us was that it has an RV pad next to the house with all the necessary hookups.  The house was built for that back in 2007.  That made the move easier as we just parked the coach next to the house and moved stuff off of it at a comfortable pace.  There is still stuff on the coach but mostly stuff that should stay there.  The other really nice thing was that the sellers offered to sell all the furniture with the house.  Have NO furniture ourselves this option saved us a bundle of money and allowed us to spend a little more on the house itself then we might have otherwise.  For the most part the furniture is in good shape and fits the house well.  Over time we will replace some of it piece by piece when necessary but for now it is working out just fine.

Another feature of the house the was a high priority for us is that it has not only one good guest bedroom but TWO.  So, we can well accommodate the guests we hope will come and visit us.  We are only about 10 minutes from where we were at the Las Vegas Motorcoach Resort  so we are still close to the airport and very easy to find.

NEW TRAVEL BUDDY

We arrived back in Las Vegas last Tuesday (Sept 11th) a little ahead of schedule.  There were a couple of reasons for that.  Could not meet up with sister Kris in Heber City so we cut out the extra day there.  We also learned that there was a NASCAR event starting on the 13th and traffic on I-15 during NASCAR can get pretty crazy so coming in two days ahead instead of one made sense.

While Arlyene was in LV for three weeks in August she ended up adopting a kitten that her brother and sister-in-law were fostering until her and her sister were old enough to be adopted.  Arlyene fell in love with "Peanut" and her personality and could not resist her.  Mike and Kimberly took care of her until we got back.  We picked Peanut up the same afternoon we arrived and she has settled in nicely here in the coach.  We, on the other hand, are learning to "cat proof" the coach much as we would have to make it safe from a 2 year old human.  Peanut is into everything and a real dynamo.  She eventually wears herself out (along with us) and then sleeps to store up more energy for her text terror attack.  She is a ball of laughs.  I started the engine up a couple days ago and she did not react so I am hoping she will make a good traveling companion.

So......heeeeeeeere's Peanut.

She still has her kitten fur but is developing some really interesting colors and markings.

So, we are back in Las Vegas for the winter now.  There will not be much to report in the way of travel although we do have plans for a trip in March which will no doubt result in some posting here.  More on that closer to that time.

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK

We arrived in West Yellowstone on schedule and spent the day cleaning and waiting for sister Sandy and husband Ken to arrive the next day.  I spent some time cleaning up the front of the coach which looked like it had a bad case of acne.  

Not the worst it has ever been for sure but bad enough to need cleaning.

It takes about three days to really see the park and we only had two so we had to pick the areas that would be best for Sandy and Ken to see.  Sandy had never been and Ken was here once many years ago.  Based on our trip here five years ago we chose to do Old Faithful and points in between on day one and then head for the Lamar Valley on day two.  Here are a few highlights of day one.

Many, many geysers and pools along the route to Old Faithful.

Colorful......

....and active.

This was about 20 feet high after venting for who knows how long. 

Lots of folks anticipating Old Faithful

Including the four of us.

Not much here to get the scale of the eruption but it was impressive.

Yellowstone is a massive volcano.  Here we are standing on one side of the caldera.  The other side, off in the distance, is 32 miles away.

Elevation from the edge of the caldera.

On the way to Lamar Valley

The Lamar Valley is where we saw the most wildlife on our last trip here.  But seeing wildlife is kind of like hunting or fishing.  Sometimes you "catch" something and sometimes you don't so there are no guarantees with one possible exception....you can almost always see bison and we certainly saw plenty of them.

I used my telephoto lens to get this (somewhat overexposed) picture but I was still pretty close and when he started eyeing me suspiciously I decided to make my exit.  This was a lone animal on the side of the road in a forested area. 

Antalope

 After Lamar Valley, on our way out of the park on day two, we spotted some moose on the other side of the river.

I was going to, sadly, say that we did not see any bears but that is not exactly true.  In fact, we are bringing one home with us for our new Kitty, Peanut who is not much bigger.

ON THE MOVE

Nice dinner with Larry and Linda a coupe nights before our departure.

So we are on the move towards the south with some delays along the way.  We left Sagle on Saturday, September 1st.  Yup! right at the beginning of the Labor Day weekend.  WHAT WAS I THINKING?  After a very "hairy" experience with a blocked freeway on ramp and a forced reroute through narrow streets in Coeur d' Alene we finally made it onto I-90 eastbound.  Next came multiple road construction zones, one with about a 4 - 5 mile back up while all the holiday traffic squeezed into one lane.  Like I said, "What was I thinking"?  Anyway we eventually got through the constructions zones and over Lookout Pass and worked our way to the town of Wye, MT just west of Missoula where we parked for the night Saturday.  The next day, Sunday, we had a very pleasant and trouble free drive to Dillon, MT where we are currently located.  The map below shows our route over the last two days.

As you can see from the map below there are basically two possible routes to West Yellowstone from here that are practical for a big motor home.  We can either continue on south on I-15 and cut over a little north of Idaho Falls and then north again OR we can go north out of Dillon and go east and then south.  The latter route is all two lane road and so today we decided to just drive part of it in the jeep and see how good the road is.  I had heard about a grade outside of Virginia City that was pretty steep.  It is.  According to a local trucker we talked to in the grocery store parking lot it is a 7% grade and 10 miles long.  That is a long slow grind in ar big rig and when you get to the top you have to go back down the other side.  

So on the map above you can see Virginia City about half way on the upper route.  That is a very old historic gold mining town with old store fronts and a Railroad Museum. 

The steep grade started there and the pictures below were taken after we had crested the top of the pass about 10 miles later and were looking down at the highway as it descends back into the valley.  That is as far was we went before turning around today.  I presume that rest of the road is fine.  I just wanted to check out the pass.

So we are now back in Dillon and I am debating with myself whether to take the longer, safer, route to the south or save about 70 miles and 45 minutes to an hour of driving time and go back through Virginia City.  I guess I will make up my mind in the morning. 

Unlike last year we are enjoying clear blue skies here with no smoke.  This is beautiful country this time of the year but I would not want to do a winter here.

We will be in West Yellowstone for five days and Arlyene's sister Sandy and her husband Ken will be there three of those days on their way to Bozeman.  We will have fun exploring together for a couple of days.  Then we will be off for a long drive to Heber City, UT for a couple of days and then back to Las Vegas with a stop in Beaver, UT.

So that's it for now.  Hope we get some interesting pictures to share from Yellowstone.

TIME FOR A BRIEF UPDATE

I guess it is time for a brief update to prove that we are still alive.  The reason for the lack of posts is that we have not had much of blog related interest to report.  Starting September 1st we will resume our journey working our way south via Yellowstone and other cool places.  As I write this Arlyene is five days into a two and a half week visit with family back in Las Vegas.  She is there primarily to give other family members a break in looking after their mom.  She is taking advantage of her time there to connect with others, pick up mail, and look after our resort lot etc.

Just prior to her departure Arlyene and I spent a week in the Seattle area staying with good friends Craig and Janet.  I did some business visits and we connected with friends.  It was a good time but a little too short.  I dropped Arlyene off at the airport on our way home.

Meanwhile I continue the occupation of Larry and Linda's driveway here in Sagle.  It is starting to get hot here, forecast to reach 100 here the next two days.  WAIT!  We came here partly to get away from that kind of heat!

Although there is no shortage of summer wildfires in the Pacific Northwest the air quality here has stayed reasonable.  That could be changing in the next few days but so far it is nowhere near as bad as last year where it reached it's worst around Labor Day.  A lot of smoke is working its way here from the massive Northern California wildfires.  We are starting to see more haze so time will tell.

Meanwhile I am puttering with small projects and walking as much as possible.  Hopefully we will have a few good pictures to share from Yellowstone. 📷 😊