Adventures At The Beach

In my last post I showed you our new-to-us home-away-from-home.  Thank you for your sweet comments.  Yes, it seems like a palace instead of a travel trailer.  I’ve already begun to add a few of our own touches here and there but there will be many more.  I’ll share them with you soon.  It will be an ongoing process.

We picked up our trailer from the dealer on a Friday.  We were given a tour of the trailer, complete with explanations of all most of the ‘systems’ involved.  Some things we knew from our years with our little trailer.  Those things weren’t new to us.  Other things were new because our little trailer didn’t have all the bells and whistles this one does.  That was Friday.  On Saturday I moved things I wanted to use from the little trailer to the big trailer.  It wasn’t long and we had everything we would need for the first trip in the new trailer.

In September we made reservations to return to our new favorite campground on the Oregon Coast in October.  I shared our late summer adventure at this campground here.  We planned to take our little trailer for one last excursion this year before putting it ‘to bed’ for the winter.  Then, before that happened, we bought our new trailer.  I quickly called and changed our reservation to a bigger site that would accommodate the longer length of the new trailer.  When we arrived we were thrilled to spend a few days with wonderful views of the sea from inside our cozy dwelling.  I spent a lot of time looking out the big back window. 

At times I opened the door and just stood there to savor the view.
That area was our own little ‘yard’ – just for our site.  It was just a few steps from the door of the trailer.  We could stand at the fence along the edge of the bluff and see –what seemed like - forever.
We had some pretty amazing adventures with our new-to-us-trailer.  Things didn’t start out well!  Because we are seasoned trailer people we knew the basics.  We knew exactly what to do to get a trailer ready to roll and we knew how to work most of the systems in this big trailer.  Or, at least we thought we did.  The dealer had walked us through the trailer and around the outside and explained everything.  Or, had he?  There were still lessons to be learned:

• Not everything in every trailer the same.
• Be sure that the refrigerator and freezer doors are firmly latched before you take off!  Don’t take anything for granted.  Just because the refrigerator door looks like it’s closed and latched securely doesn’t mean it is.  You have to check it to be sure.  Double-checking wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.
• When the refrigerator door opens and a dozen eggs fall out on the floor while you’re going down the road, they roll – and break.  And scramble.  And get all over anything in their way.  You may be surprised how far broken eggs can run in all directions as you merrily make your way to the beach!
• A good egg wash shines vinyl floors!
• Don’t assume that the fresh water pump works exactly the same way as in the old trailer when you are ‘dry’ camping (camping without being hooked up to a water faucet – drawing water from your big fresh water tank that you fill for times like this). 
• Water pumps  in trailers need to be primed when they’ve been ‘run dry’ when tested by the dealer. 
• The service manager at the dealership where you bought your trailer will be happy to talk to you on the phone and tell you the ins-and-outs of priming your fresh water pump.
• You can go for a day and a half without water in a travel trailer – especially when there’s a water faucet across the street and you have a couple of big pans or a jug to carry it to your trailer. And it’s a good thing you are parked just across from the very nice restrooms!
• Not all hot water heaters work the same way in all trailers – but, with another call to the dealer’s service manager you can learn what someone should have told you when they walked you through and showed you how all the systems work.
• Once you have fresh water pumping through your faucets and hot water you don’t have to heat on the stove – be grateful!  Don’t take it for granted.  There are people in the world who would give anything to have the luxury of fresh water.
• After all the lessons are learned – LAUGH!!!

We had guests visit us while we were at the beach.  We didn’t expect them but they must have decided that we were pretty nice people because they came by more than once.  One little kitty seemed a bit braver than. . .
The other two.
We saw them resting in the sun near our trailer.  Then we saw them again when we returned from a walk on the beach the next day.  They were waiting at the door for us - relaxing in the sunshine on our welcome mat!  They let me get fairly close before they scampered off down the road and into the bushes.  We wondered if they belonged to someone who lives in the homes next to the campground.  One evening we saw a mama cat strolling through the campground like she knew where she was going.   Maybe, she was rounding up those babies to come home for dinner.

Our last day at the beach was different from our first two.  The weather changed and dark clouds rolled in.
It rained in the night and we woke to a gray day the next morning.  As I looked out my little kitchen window I was glad to see that the rain had stopped.
There was time for one more walk on the beach before we packed up and headed home.
We enjoyed our time on the beach but it ended too soon and it was time to head back to our trailer to get ready to head home.  From the beach we looked up and saw our trailer.  It was hard to believe it was really ours.
We have a process for getting things ready to travel.  My sweetheart takes care of the outside tasks and I make sure everything inside is situated so it will travel safe.  This time I made sure the refrigerator door was securely latched – now that I knew what to do! - and I checked it several times. My sweetheart came inside and he checked it, too.  We’ve had enough experience cleaning up raw eggs that have broken all over the floor.  We don’t need to do that again!  Just to be safe – I hard-boiled the remaining eggs shortly before we left.  Just in case!  Soon everything was securely in place, the trailer was hooked up to the trailer and we were ready to go.
I never want to leave the beach but I always know I will return again.  A piece of my heart is there and there’s no doubt it will call me back again.  Each time is special.  We’ll always have sweet memories of those few days at the beach with our new trailer.  And lessons learned.

An Autumn Day In The Mountains

I didn’t mean to be gone for so long.  I’ve written a hundred blog posts in my head since I was last here but they never got to my keyboard and on to you!  Everyone here is fine and doing well.  We’ve been busy with a million things that keep us coming and going – things like grandsons’ football games; appointments, shopping and errands with my dear little mother; day trips and a few days away here and there with my sweetheart; and business dealings that take time and energy.  Oh, and a new something in our life that has become part of our life and is giving us adventures we never dreamed possible at this season of our lives.  I’ll share more on that tomorrow.  I will – because I can’t wait to tell you all about it.  It’s a good thing!

A few weeks ago my sweetheart and I took a day trip into the Cascade mountains not too far from home.  My sweetheart wanted to check out a new-to-him deer hunting area that a friend had recommended.  I wanted to scout around with my sweetheart and enjoy the day in the mountains.  It wasn’t long before we began to see familiar scenes that I love!
The road took us from the valley where we live, around corners and turns in the road, alongside a beautiful river that flows from the mountains to the valley where it joins two more rivers and heads toward the sea.  Partway to our destination we came to a gorgeous, big lake.  Well, not really!  It’s where a beautiful lake should be – a lake that is usually filled with marinas and boats and people who are enjoying all kinds of water sports.  That’s the normal thing at this spot but it’s not that way anymore.  Instead, it looks like this.  Normally I would have been standing at the edge of the lake to take this photo.  But not this year!  You can see a bit of the lake - really just a river now - at the base of the hills.  The lake should be up to the tree line on those hills across the way.Two years of drought have brought devastation and loss – loss of most of the lake and loss for the business people whose lives depend on the income that life on and around this lake brings.  A river exists where there was once a lake.  The tree stumps you see are all that’s left of a forest that once stood tall here.  The trees were cut down and many years ago a dam was built downstream to control flooding in the valleys below.  The drought has pretty much returned the land to its former state.Our trip continued as we began to drive higher into the mountains.  The first signs of Fall became evident.  At first, just a little. . .And then more and more as the altitude changed and the temperatures cooled.We stopped along the way several times to walk on trails or see sights we didn’t want to miss.  All the while my sweetheart was checking for signs of deer for his upcoming hunting trip.  My camera seemed to find more places where the colors of Fall were on display.  Oh, how I wished we could stay longer and explore. 
We stopped at a place where we expected to see the headwaters of the McKenzie River, a rapidly flowing river that comes from high in the Cascade Mountains.  I have lived by this river twice in my younger years and I was excited when we saw the sign directing us to the place where the river begins its descent down the mountains.  I love bridges and it didn’t take me long to get out of the car and head walk to the middle of this one.

Imagine my disappointment when I looked down to see the river and this was all I saw!
No water!  More signs of the drought that has hit the West Coast over the past couple of years.  The Cascade Mountains are made up of volcanoes that erupted many, many years ago.  Lava flows that covered the countryside are evident everywhere.  It always amazes me to see trees and shrubs and flowers growing in the middle of lava beds.   Lava rock is extremely hard.  You don’t want to walk across the lava beds because the rock is so rugged it will destroy the soles of your shoes in no time at all.  Yet there is beauty in the middle of all of this hard rock.  It seems a bit impossible, but it’s true!

There were other adventures from our day but I’ll save them for another time.  I always enjoy sharing my corner of the world with you.  Oregon is a state of breath-taking beauty.  We have it all – sandy ocean beaches, fertile green valleys full of abundant agriculture, gorgeous high mountain vistas and deserts that have a beauty of their own.   I‘ll return and share more with you soon.  Before I do I want to show you our latest ‘adventure’.  Please come back very soon so I can tell you all about it.