9-12 through 9/22/2016 - Go Cubs Go!

 Today is Sunday, November 13th and we are already on our way back to the southwest.  I have fallen way behind on this blog so here's a post about our trip from Washington to Chicago.  The very exciting October/November post (Go Cubs!) will be worked on soon.  

Monday and Tuesday (9/12 and 9/13)

One last stop at the Pacific before heading east

We left Forks, Washington on a beautiful sunny day and started our trip back to the Midwest.  Our plan was to be back by 9/23 so that I could watch the Cubs play the Cardinals in their last home game of the regular season.  Our first night on the road was spent in Ellensburg, WA, we had only planned to spend one night but there was an interesting wind farm tour so we ended up staying two.  We also wanted to check out the town of Roslyn (site of the old TV show "Northern Exposure", one of my favorites).

We were up bright and early to drive over to the Wild Horse Wind and Solar Facility for a 10:00 tour.  Ellensburg is one of the windiest spots in Washington and the tour was pretty interesting, we even got to go inside a turbine.

Hard hats and safety glasses are required!

It was a beautiful day for our tour

After leaving the wind farm we took a drive over to Roslyn to see the sights and to check out the local museum.  We got there around noon but the museum wasn't scheduled to open until 1:00 so we grabbed a bite to eat.  When we went back the museum still wasn't open due to "volunteers schedule".  I think they need better volunteers.   Oh well, it gives us something to look forward to the next time we find ourselves in that area.

From the TV show "Northern Exposure" - one of my favorites

We drove back to the rig to hang out for a few hours before making our way back to the wind farm for some sunset pictures.  If the skies are clear you can see three mountains to the west.

That's Mt. Ranier in the background

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Wednesday, 9/14

Our next stop after leaving Ellensburg was Palouse, Washington.  It was an easy drive which was good because our GPS cord broke and the app on my IPad wouldn't work so we had to go "Old-School" and use our atlas.

We were settled in to our next campground by 1:00 and took a quick drive thru main street to the post office (when we left Forks we took our keys with us - OOPS!).  This is a very small town and, unfortunately for us, nothing was open except for the post office.  The museum is only open Thursday-Sunday and the antique store was also closed.

Since we couldn't shop or visit the museum we took a drive to Kamiak Butte.  Here's the information I copied from the internet:

Kamiak Butte rises 3,641 feet and offers 298 acres for hiking, picnicking, camping, and sightseeing. The area boasts over 130 species of birds, 170 species of plants, and nearly 30 species of mammals for wildlife viewing. A favorite spot for photography, a hike to the crest offers spectacular panoramic views of the rolling hills of the Palouse with the patchwork of fields and farmlands changing with the seasons.

The Palouse Reqion from Kamiak Butte

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Thursday, 9/15

Our plan for this night was to drive as far as Butte, Montana and spend the night at Walmart. This was a very good day because we stopped for gas and lunch at a station with a casino attached and I put 10.00 in and won 67.00! Free camping, lunch and some gas - Cha-Ching!!

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Friday, 9/16 and Saturday, 9/17

We continued our drive back to the Midwest on 90 and stopped in the very tiny town of Ranchester, Wyoming.  This is a town that is on Highway 14 (the same 14 that runs into Chicago).  We were about three hours east of Yellowstone.

On Saturday morning we walked over to the Visitor Center  to pick up some information and then walked across the street to the Farmers Market to pick up a few goodies.

The visitors center had recommended a drive to Medicine Wheel so off we went.  The drive was beautiful and we even found an antique shop to visit.  Our drive to Medicine Wheel took about 2-3 hours (we possibly went the wrong way at one point).

Marty and I visiting this spot may, possibly, be the reason the Cubs would go on to win the World Series.  This is a sacred Native American site and if you leave something there that is precious to you and say a prayer your prayer will come true.  It also helps if there is another tourist there who explains this to you and happens to have a baggie with tobacco in it to sprinkle on to your item which will make your prayers even more powerful.  
My precious item?  My "Believe" bracelet which I hadn't planned to take off until they won the World Series.  I was very sad to leave it but at that point I was willing to do anything to get the Cubs into the World Series - You're Welcome!

I should have had my Cubs shirt on but look at my matching socks!

My "Believe" bracelet - didn't have a string to tie it with so we left it under a rock

Here's some information from the internet about Medicine Wheel:

On top of the Bighorn Range in Wyoming, a desolate 9,642 feet high and only reachable during the warm summer months, lies an ancient Native American construction -- an 80' diameter wheel-like pattern made of stones. At the center of the circle is a doughnut-shaped pile of stones, a cairn, connected to the rim by 28 spoke-like lines of stones. Six more stone cairns are arranged around the circle, most large enough to hold a sitting human. The central cairn is about 12 feet in diameter and 2' high. 

The wheel was constructed by Plains Indians between 300-800 years ago, and has been used and maintained by various groups since then. The central cairn is the oldest part, with excavations showing it extends below the wheel and has been buried by wind-blown dust. It may have supported a central pole. The star alignments are most accurate for around 1200 AD, since slight changes in the Earth's orbit have caused perturbations since. The solstice alignments remain accurate today. 

The Bighorn wheel is part of a much larger complex of interrelated archeological sites that represent 7000 years of Native American adaptation to and use of the alpine landscape that surrounds Medicine Mountain. Numerous contemporary American Indian traditional use ceremonial staging areas, medicinal and ceremonial plant gathering areas, sweat lodge sites, altars offering locales and fasting (vision quest) enclosures, can be found nearby. Ethnohistoric, ethnographic, and archeological evidence demonstrates that the Medicine Wheel and the surrounding landscape constitute one of the most important and well preserved ancient Native American sacred site complexes in North America. Between 70 and 150 wheels have been identified in South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. 

As warm as it was we still found snow on the side of the trail

Taking a break after all the emotions of leaving my bracelet

A stop along the road, looking out over the Bighorn Basinn

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 Sunday 9/18 and Monday 9/19

Sunday morning we got back on I-90 and headed to Rapid City, South Dakota.  We stayed at a RV Park that was right off the highway and very convenient to Custer State Park and Crazy Horse.  Crazy Horse is an amazing sculpture - it's been a work in progress for 50 years and it won't be finished in my lifetime.  It's very near Mount Rushmore which we didn't stop at because we visited there a few years ago (before RVing).

American Bison

Custer State Park was a fun park to drive in. We drove the wildlife loop and were not disappointed - we saw all kinds of animals.  This is a park that we'd like to come back to and stay at.  It would be fun to wake up and see a bison outside our rig.

Prairie Dogs are very friendly!

The burro's were looking for handouts

 
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Tuesday, 9/20

Tuesday was spent driving the width of South Dakota until we got to Sioux Falls where we spent another night in a Walmart parking lot.  The weather wasn't very conducive to sleeping-  a parking lot without electricity, it was hot and humid and very uncomfortable (but free!).

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Wednesday, 9/21

Wednesday was our last night on the road and we spent it at Veteran's Memorial Park in LaCrosse, Wisconsin right on the LaCrosse River which was on the verge of flooding.  They were actually moving rigs from the river sites up to higher land because there was more rain coming.  We were fine on our site and we were very happy to be there because we were visiting our niece, Elizabeth, who is a freshman at UW-LaCrosse!  We took her out to eat and then went back to her dorm room to check it out and meet her roommates. It was so nice to see one of my very favorite girls!

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Thursday, 9/22

Back in Illinois!!  We are very happy to be back in the midwest and have lots of catching up to do with friends and family.  We also have some issues with the rig that need to be addressed.

That's it for this post, there's a lot more coming in the next one for October!

Go Cubs!!

Stick a Fork in it - we're done (for this year) - August, 2016

Today is September 11th and our time in Forks has come to an end for this year.  We've had a great summer here but there is October baseball in this girl's future so it's time to head back to Chicago. 

Did you know that you can get automatic updates of our blog when you "follow" us (I just found out how to do this).  Click the follow button on the right and get started

Even though we are here to volunteer at the Forks Timber Museum, Marty has found a few ways to make a little money.  The Visitor's Center next door to us has asked him if he'd be willing to shuttle hikers from their cars to whichever trail they want to hike.  He contacts the hikers and tells them how much it will cost and they make their arrangements.  One of the hikers was hiking the Shi-Shi Trail back to Rialto Beach (all along the coast), a distance of about 50 miles.  He anticipated taking 6-7 days doing it.  We picked him up at Rialto (1/2 hour from where we are) and drove him to the trailhead at Shi-Shi which took about an hour.  The shuttle service is a win-win, we make a little money and the hikers get to hike some amazing country.

We tried to hike Shi-Shi earlier in the summer but when we got there we couldn't find parking so we just explored a different area that day.  We did hike some of the trail when we dropped off our hiker, but at the end of the trail it's a very steep hike down to the beach so guess who decided to stay on top? 

On the trail at Shi-Shi - this bridge I can handle.

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We spent another day hiking out to Cape Alava which is the westernmost point of the United States.  It's a 3.4 mile hike one way so we got a lot of steps in that day! As we got closer to the beach we heard quite a few seals barking, they sounded like they must be right on the beach but when we got there we discovered they were way out in the ocean on a little island. They were quite noisy!

The seals are on that outcropping over my shoulder

This "bridge" was a shortcut to the beach

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We were lucky enough to see the Perseid Meteor Shower on August 12th. We woke up at 2:30 A.M. and drove the 1/2 hour to Rialto Beach.  I just sat on my lawn chair looking up at the Milky Way and watching meteors shoot across the sky - it was so worth getting up early for; the skies were clear and it was truly amazing!!

Incredible!

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Sitkum Road

One Sunday evening we decided to take a drive on forest service road 29 ("A" Road) thru the Sitkum Solduc Forest.  We had no idea where we were going, just decided to do a little exploring.  We drove about 18 miles with the road narrowing (and climbing) and the pavement turning to gravel before deciding to turn around.  We weren't sure where we were going to come out and weren't brave enough to continue (it was getting dark out). We did stop a few times for photo ops.  The below photos were shot in infrared.  We found out later that the road did get worse but eventually would have taken us back out to 101. 

Sitkum Solduc River

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On Monday, August 22nd we had an adventure of another sort.  We were lucky enough to join the Forks Chamber of Commerce on a tour of the Olympic Correctional Center, a Level 2 Facility.  It was very interesting. Level 2 is basically minimum security and all of the inmates have jobs either inside the prison or on the outside doing community service work.  The grounds at the Museum and Visitor's Center are taken care of by one of the crews.  There are 374 prisoners currently housed there with a capacity of 400.

Our first stop was checking in and turning in cell phones, wallets, keys (nothing was allowed in).  We also had to sign in and be signed out when we left.  That was the only time we felt like we were in "prison".  Our next stop was to a meeting room where we met Superindent Aldana (the big boss).  He presented a video, answered questions and then introduced one of the prisoners, Benjamin.  Benjamin is on one of the work crews that works outside the prison, he was very well spoken and seemed grateful to have the opportunity to be working outside the prison and learning skills that will, hopefully, be useful on the outside.  The motto of the prison is have a "Full Productive Day"

Our next step was getting split into groups of about 10 people and touring the facilities. Some of the areas we visited were the maintenance shop, the sew shop, the greenhouse, the dog house (where inmates work with rescue dogs), and the wood shop.  I thought the most interesting was the wood shop - they make beautiful items which are then donated to non-profit organizations to be raffled or auctioned off.  One inmate was working on a dollhouse which was absolutely beautiful.  He did it without plans and was planning to add a spiral staircase.  All that work and he just finishes it and then starts another project.

The greenhouse was pretty cool too.  We were encouraged to ask questions and they were very happy to share their knowledge of gardening with us.  We later had lunch inside and all the ingredients from the salad came from the gardens.  We had birthday cake for dessert but no files were hidden in the cake.

Locked Up!!

Luckily, we had our "Get Out of Jail" Card

Fun, Interesting, and "Productive" Day!

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I could watch them all day

The Roosevelt Elk herd finally came back to visit us.  Aren't they amazing?  The herd this year seems larger than last year, there are probably 40-50 elk out there.  They hang out in the grassy area on the west side of the airport.

Hey, whatcha looking at?

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The second weekend in September is a big deal in Forks - it's Bella's birthday!  Who is Bella?  Obviously you haven't read the Twilight series of books written by Stephenie Meyers.  People come from all over the country (and world) for this celebration.  There are activities planned from Thursday through Sunday all over town and there is not a hotel room to be had.  Marty was asked to play at one of the events and he even revised the lyrics to "Werewolves of London" to "Werewolves of Twilight".  Pretty clever and very popular with "Twilighters". 

Hanging out with the Olympic Coven and the Volterra Coven

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We were very happy to have Joe and Linda back after their month-long adventure in Alaska.  They had an awesome trip and we loved seeing their adventures on Facebook.

Linda surprised me when she got back by telling me she was promoting me to Assistant Manager and my pay has been doubled!  Of course, since we're volunteering, that's 2 x 0.  That's ok, the honor alone made my day (and the nifty new badge).  My summer has been spent entering more data into the museum database, doing a little research for some of the displays and a whole lot of front desk greeting and answering questions.



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Here are some of the projects that Marty worked on this summer

A little insulating foam, a little stain and voila - pancakes!

He painted the 2nd of Bella's trucks and the railings of the fire lookout tower and replaced the door

He sawed some rounds and made our trail a little less muddy

Cut a stump on an angle, draw out a design and rout it out - simple, right?

The Visitor's Center even had Marty driving their tour bus for the logging tours, he took pictures of a logging site and put them on display in the Museum, that's multi-tasking!

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We had a final get together with our fellow workcampers (Jerry and Lynne) and Joe and Linda on Saturday, September 3rd.  It was the last chance for all three couples to be together. This summer went by so quickly!  We will be back working at the museum next summer for three months, May, June and July.  After that who knows where we'll be - any suggestions?

Marty found this "fungi" on our trail today

We head out of Forks on Monday, 9/12 with an anticipated arrival in Chicago of 9/22 (just in time for the Cardinals-Cubs Series at Wrigley). We're looking forward to the trip back and have a few stops planned along the way - stay tuned!

GO CUBS

 WORLD SERIES OR BUST!!

June and July in Forks, Washington

So far, our summer in Forks has been busy with lots of visitors in June and lots of projects in July.  It's hard to believe that in just six weeks we'll be leaving here and heading back to Chicago (GO CUBS!!). I can't wait to see some OCTOBER baseball!!

Our first set of visitors were the Freeman Family - my sister Donna, her husband Rick and two of their four children, Sarah and Mark.  They are a very active group so we were kept busy showing them our favorite local sites.  We hiked in the Hoh Rain Forest, hiked along Rialto Beach to "Hole-in-the-Wall" and drove to Cape Flattery, the Northwest point of the United States.

Hiking on the Spruce Trail in the Hoh Rain Forest

Mark has no fear of heights

Mary, Donna, and Sarah at the "Hoh"

Hmmmm, a new home?

 

Donna scrambling over rocks to get to Hole-in-the Wall

Sea Anemones

Rialto Beach

Mary, Donna, and Sarah at Cape Flattery

Marty at Cape Flattery

If you'd like to see more of the Freeman's on the Olympic Peninsula, here's a link to a YouTube video that Marty made:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXA2mHpDPlw
 
They left on Wednesday morning, June 8th and a few hours later we were in on our truck headed south to Olympia (about 3 hours away) to pick up Marty's sister, Jan. She took the train up along the Pacific Coast from Oceanside, CA to Olympia, WA - what an adventure that was!  36 hours on a train with crying babies and partying passengers and even a 6 foot tall male passenger wearing heels!

The weather for Jan wasn't quite as nice as it had been for the Freeman's but we still got in a lot of sight-seeing.  We drove up to Hurricane Ridge to see mountains (and even snow), drove to Rialto Beach to see the ocean and, of course, drove thru some of the rain forest.

Hanging out at the Big Red Cedar

Marty and Jan at Rialto Beach

Jan and Mary on "our" rain forest trail

We were lucky enough to see this eagle at LaPush

I'm pretty sure that Jan's very favorite day was when we took her to meet Mick Dodge (from the National Geographic reality show, "The Legend of Mick Dodge").  He lives in a yurt about 1 1/2 miles north of us and he was happy to meet one of his biggest fans. 

Mick and Jan

Our last June visitors were our friends Mary and Leo from the Chicago area.  Mary was the principal (and my boss) at St. William School and we've been friends for almost 20 years.  They only stayed two nights so we crammed in as much as we could.  By chance, they stayed at Huckleberry Lodge which is where Mick Dodge lives in his yurt. They stayed in a cabin (not a yurt or tent) and enjoyed their daily breakfast of pancakes and eggs cooked outside (along with cowboy coffee?). 

Marty, Mary, Leo and Mary at Rialto Beach

High up in the Big Red Cedar

Hi Marty!!

We loved having so many visitors! It's pretty amazing how far people travel to visit us and we are very grateful to them for including us in their travel plans.  We LOVE showing off this beautiful part of the country!  By the way, we are coming back next summer (only for three months) so if you plan to travel to the Pacific Northwest let us know and we'll be happy to play tour guide.

The Museum had a booth at "Moonlight Madness" on July 2nd

Joe and Linda showed us a different (easier) way to hike the "big" trail

Loggers Memorial is finished!

We've spent most of July working at the museum and on various projects. Marty worked very hard stripping, sanding and staining the 12' Logger Memorial.  This statue was carved out of a single log about 20 years ago.

We've also kept busy in the museum; Marty has added a few photos to the walls and we've also done some research and added a few descriptions for various items.  I'm still working on entering items in the database, we are up to about 2300 objects!  I've just started entering information from the 6300 +/- photo cards (only 6000 more until I'm finished).  My favorite job is interacting with our visitors; we had a visitor from Myanmar (formerly Burma) who explained that her country was about 90% forest (Teak) and she recognized many of our older tools because they still use them in her country.  We've also had people from almost every state in the union; I think we're up to about 35 states since May.  We've also met quite a few full time rv'r's, it's always fun to compare notes with them.

Logging Truck on HWY 101 after a rainstorm

Road Trip:  Forks to Umatilla to Walla Walla to Pateros - to Forks

We have one week off every month so we recently decided to take a road trip - yes, I know, our life is a road trip but this one was without our rig.  We left Forks on Monday (7/25) and took a drive southeast and headed to Walla Walla, Washington. I grew up hearing this song before every Cubs game and have become a little (ok, a lot) obsessed about going there.

"It's a beautiful day for a ball game, a ball game today

The fans are out to get a ticket or two

from Walla Walla, Washington to Kalamazoo"

Multnomah Falls - 620' (in Oregon)

We drove south along 101 and then headed east along the Columbia River (a beautiful drive).  We stopped at Multnomah Falls and took a short hike along a narrow cliff to get to the falls and visitor center.  This place was crowded!  We don't usually travel during July and coming here just confirmed our reasons why.

After leaving the falls, we continued our drive along I-84 along the river and ended up in the town of Umatilla, OR for the night.  In the morning we continued east about an hour until we made it to our destination.

Columbia River

from Walla-Walla Washington

 

TO

As close as we could find in Washington, too bad they didn't have a ZOO!

 

After all the excitement of being in Walla-Walla it was time to head back to Forks.  We wanted to continue our exploration of the eastern side of Washington so we headed north to connect with Highway 20 over the North Cascades.  The eastern side of the state is pretty barren and brown, nothing like the western side.  It was also much hotter with temperatures in the mid-90's.  We drove north to the town of Pateros, Washington where we found the last motel room in town! 

On Wednesday morning we grabbed a quick coffee and bakery treat and headed thru the mountains back to Forks.  It was a beautiful drive along Hwy 20 which we took to Coupeville, WA where we ended up on the ferry to Port Townsend.  Port Townsend is only about two hours from Forks so after a couple of quick stops in Sequim and Port Angeles we were home by 9:00. 

It was nice to go away for a few days but it's even nicer to be back in Forks where the temperatures are in the 60's and 70's and the skies are sunny! 

Ferry Ride from Coupeville to Pt. Townsend

We won't be doing too much traveling in August because Joe and Linda are going to Alaska for the whole month and leaving us in charge!!  We promised we wouldn't make too many changes although I do think the office would look nice painted purple.