Colorado!

We found a nice park, Boyd’s Lake State Park outside of Fort Collins/Loveland Colorado and have decided to stay here for a few days and tour the area.

We rode the bike up Highway 34 (Big Thompson River Canyon) into Rocky Mountain National park and the town of Estes Park. I had never thought about it before but it’s called The Rocky Mountains because the mountains are ‘rocky’. Well, Duh! We easily found Mall Road and took a couple of pictures of the house we think was Wayne’s family home, overlooking Estes lake.

The Mall Place in Estes Park?

Beautiful Estes Park

I spotted these beautiful white buildings on the hill overlooking Estes Park. It’s called “The Stanley” and is a resort that was built in 1909 by F.O. Stanley, one of the brothers who invented the Stanley Steamer. It’s also where Stephen King was inspired to write “The Shining”.

"The Stanley"

Lester & the Stanley Steamer

Out of Estes...

We spent the next day in Fort Collins. It’s easy to see why the Hoffman family loved living here. It’s a very cool college town with a wonderful old town and main street.

We even drove by Korin’s childhood home on our way to the New Belgium Brewing Company where Fat Tire beer is made. This was a really fun tour and we learned a lot about the company. When an employee has worked there for one year they’re given a fat tire bike (which many of them ride to work). They also become owners, as the brewery is privately held and employee owned. The plant is 100% wind powered and they even recycle their own wastewater and the resultant methane gas provides 15% of their energy needs.

The Hoffman Place in Fort Collins

On to the town of Golden Colorado where Coors is King! It’s a huge plant; the world’s largest on a single site. Above the campground where we’re staying in town is Lookout Mountain where Buffalo Bill is buried (according to his wishes). Compared to the wonderful museum in Cody, this is a very tacky grave site for such an important guy.

Lookout Mountain looking West

Lookout Mtn. towards Denver

Looking down on the town of Golden & the Coors plant

We’ve done a number of motorcycle rides in and around the Roosevelt National Forest and The Rocky Mountains. Today we made Boulder part of our route. We’re finding that Colorado is a really beautiful state.

Riding into the storm...

We’ve had a bit of rain and the aspen’s are starting to turn colors in the upper elevations. It's also a bit chilly at the upper elevations.

Tomorrow ~ off to Vail.

Buffalo Bill Cody ~ American Icon

We made our way into Cody and spent 3 nights while we waited out a bit of rain. What a neat town. Literally. It was very neat and tidy. The town was founded and designed by Buffalo Bill and he wanted the main street to be big enough to run his Wild West show down the main street. Considering that his troupe was about 600 strong, they’d need a pretty wide street! The best part was the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. It’s really 5 museums under one roof; the Buffalo Bill museum, the Whitney Gallery of Western Art, the Plains Indian museum, the Cody Firearms museum and the Draper Natural History museum. A $15 ticket will get you in for 2 consecutive days. We spent about 3 hours each day and I still only saw the Buffalo Bill, the Art and the Natural History! Les skipped the Art and did the Firearms. The original BB museum was started in 1927 by his niece; 10 years after Cody died. It is amazing how much of his memorabilia they’ve retained. The whole thing is so well done that it was reminiscent of a Smithsonian. Don’t miss this if you’re ever near Cody! http://www.bbhc.org/museums/index.cfm

One evening we stopped in Buffalo Bills’ “Irma Hotel” for a cocktail. While there we meet a fun couple, Tony & Lin, from Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, England. Famous for Pork Pie, Stilton Cheese and Robin Hood! http://www.melton.co.uk/ I was inspired by their adventuresome spirit! One day Lin told Tony that she’d found a great airfare special to Denver and the next week they were here. Once here, they rented a car and just started driving wherever the spirit took them. They didn’t even make hotel reservations! Not the first time they’ve done this! Can you imagine doing that with a flight to England?

The Irma has a beautiful old bar that was gift to BB from Queen Victoria as a thank-you for him bringing his Wild West show to England. At the time the bar was estimated to be valued at $100,000. It was shipped over by boat and then cross country by rail and then buckboard. It’s amazing that it even survived. The show toured Europe for 4 years.

We’re starting to feel the push of the weather to head south to Colorado, so we beeline south to Casper. We had planned to stay at the Wal-Mart but on arrival we encountered the “No Overnight RV Parking” signs. Bummer. Its late afternoon, but we jump in the truck and drive around to the 2 RV parks on our Woodall’s list. Yuk! The first one was a nasty little gravel park filled with permanent trailers. We drive all the way across town to the second park which is full! After about an hour we’re back to the Super Wal-Mart where Les decides to defy the law and stay anyway. He talks to a couple of Wal-Mart employees who insure him that no one has ever been kicked out, to their knowledge. Another RV joins us and we were rewarded with a lovely sunset…

Today I made my first attempt to drive the coach! We were on this very straight, very lonely stretch of road in southern Wyoming and I brazenly said “hey honey, why don’t you let me drive”. Yikes! What was I thinking?? He quickly pulled over and said “help yourself”! I was able to white knuckle it down the road for 20 miles and thought that it was enough courage for one day. Kudos to Les for all the miles he’s driven.

We made our way into Colorado, through Fort Collins (right through town with our monster coach) and have landed here in Boyd’s Lake State Park and plan to stay here for a few days while we explore the area. We met some fun folks at the campground tonight and they invited us to share their yummy freshly caught fried catfish. They had run out of TP so we gladly provided a roll!

Charles, Sheila, Dale & Terry!

Tomorrow Estes Park!

The End of the Rainbow

Now that the holiday weekend is over, we’re finally able to get into a campground in Glacier. All the campgrounds in the park were officially closed on September 4th, except one called Apgar.

We took our motorcycle trip around the Going-to-the-Sun road. It’s an interesting road that was completed in 1932 and cuts through the middle of the park. Glacier is actually Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park; it’s a combined effort with Canada. We packed a lunch in our saddle bags (some of the wonderful smoked salmon that we’d bought off the back of some guys’ truck in Puget Sound) and rode 135 miles that day. It took us about 5 hours to complete the circle, from West Glacier to East Glacier and back around. The last hour was really windy and I was ready to get off when we finally got back to camp.

Bighorn sheep near East Glacier.

The next day, we took a shorter ride (70 miles) to Whitefish for lunch. It’s another really nice town with another beautiful lake. It seems there’s a lake around every corner in Montana.

Can you see the ski area above Whitefish lake?

Les thought it would be fun to park in front of the "No Parking" sign at Hungry Horse Dam, on our ride back from Whitefish.

Driving south to Missoula, we drove by Flathead Lake, which is the largest lake west of the Rockies. Its 28 miles long and 15 miles wide! All of these lakes have private property along their shore, with some really nice houses with lawns that go right down to the water. Beautiful!

Our mail finally caught up with us in Missoula! It’s a months worth of mail and what a pile it was, even without any catalogs. It took me a couple of days to get through it.

We’ve been traveling the back roads from Missoula through Helena (Hwy 12) and down to Billings. There are more people in the Bay Area than in the whole state of Montana.

Tonight we’re in the Billings Super Wal-Mart (bless you Sam Walton), experiencing a thunderstorm and tomorrow we’ll head south into Wyoming. Going to Cody!

The End of the Rainbow!

What's in a name?

Coeur D'Alene

Just before the thunderstorm!

We stumbled on the 28th annual “Pig Out At The Park” in Spokane at the Riverfront Park. This park was used for the 1974 World’s Fair. Funny, we only remember the World’s Fair in Seattle. Perhaps Spokane should have erected a Space Needle? And how is it that Washington hosts the “World’s Fair” only 14 years apart. Where was it held the years in between?

Coeur D’Alene is a very beautiful lake with a nice resort feel to it; however, we stumbled across Pend Oreille Lake (Ponderay) about 50 miles north and it is just as beautiful. (We literally had to drive across it on a long bridge.) I have to wonder what makes one area become a destination resort and the other remains relatively obscure? Perhaps it's in the name? Pend Oreille Lake is the 2nd largest lake west of the Rockies and is almost 1200’ deep. During WWII it was used as a submarine training base.

We had our first rainstorm and Les is fretting about the water spots on the RV! I’m sure a truck wash is in our future. We’ve finally spent a couple of nights in a Wal-Mart parking lot (Sand Point, Idaho and Kalispell, Montana). It feels like old times! We did a lot of Wal-Mart camping with the Aerbus.

Tomorrow it’s up to Glacier and a motorcycle trip around the Going-To-The-Sun road.

Can you see Herman the 450 pound Sturgeon? This was taken at the hatchery near the Bonneville Dam.

Just Another Boring Travelogue…

We stayed a couple of days near Snoqualmie Falls, outside of Redmond and Kirkland, Washington. They’re both very nice towns, but I was really impressed with Kirkland. It’s a really nice, upscale town on the shore of Lake Washington (think Saratoga on a lakefront). Of course, the weather is at its best and I can only imagine the winters here, but it’s easy to see why Microsoft moved to this area.

The drive across the bridges into Seattle was the prettiest drive into a city that I’ve seen (including S.F.). We did the typical tourist stuff; took the elevator to the top of the Space Needle and went to the Pike Place Market. This is a very vibrant city. Did you know that Nordstrom’s started here?

We had a lovely dinner with my cousin, Sandy & her daughter’s family, and then headed east the next morning. We spent some time in Leavenworth, which a Bavarian style town in the mountains. It reminded us of Solvang in California. We finished the day in Wenatchee, staying at the Confluence State park where the Wenatchee River meets the Columbia. Les likes this area best so far, because we’re finally out of the heavily wooded terrain that you find in Western Washington and Oregon. He likes being able to see a horizon.

Wenatchee is the largest apple producing region in the world and the harvest was in full swing. The trees were loaded with fruit! The pear crop is apparently very good this year as well.

We toured the Rocky Reach Dam, in Wenatchee, which was built in 1959. The whole dam was built to scale at the University of Washington prior to any construction being done to make sure all the engineering was correct! Since we also toured the Bonneville Dam, near Hood River, Oregon, I’ve had about all the Dam fun I can stand. I think we’ll skip the Grand Coulee Dam!

We continue to head east towards Glacier Park in Montana, with a couple of stops in Spokane and Coeur D’Alene along the way.

There’s Magic in Mucinex

We finally headed north on Thursday and made it as far as Seaquest State Park, (nowhere near an ocean, just someone's name) near Mt. St. Helens. We spent some time at the visitor’s center and after getting settled into a campsite, drove up the western side of the eruption. The crater that was left from the eruption is obvious, but interesting to us, almost the whole drive up (about 30 miles) has been reforested (by Weyerhaeuser it appears) and will be harvested in another 30 years or so. The strange thing about it is that since everything was planted at the same time, they’re all about the same height. It looks almost like a green carpet. There is not many visual signs left of the terrible destruction that occurred.

We had planned to drive around the eastern side on Friday (at Wayne’s suggestion), but I had another terrible night with the mystery illness/sore throat and woke up determined to find another Doctor/Clinic where I could get some relief. (Thanks C for your advice… you’ll forever be Dr. Mom)

We headed north to Olympia and thanks to my trusty cell phone internet connection, I was able to find a clinic to go to and find a Home Depot parking lot close by to park the coach. This time I got to see an M.D. (as opposed to a P.A.) and I made Les go in with me (so they wouldn’t think I was fakin’ it. This Dr. didn’t think I had a sinus infection. He told me that the amoxicillin antibiotic I had been prescribed was kinda wimpy, so heres the prescriptions he gave me:


Some kick-*ss antibiotic stuff (Azithromycin) that cost $47 for six pills, but really seems to work.

A different cough medicine (Tussionex) that costs $53.29 for 90 cc’s (that’s $2,241.28 per gallon). Thank goodness I have insurance.

Vicodan for the pain (I could have kissed him).

Mucinex-D to break up the mucus crap in my chest (you’ll feel like a terrorist suspect when you get this ~ you have to show I.D. and they’ll enter it into their system. I asked if this was a Washington State thing or Federal, and guess what, it’s Federal. But it works great, so I say just go for it.

And the best tip of all, forget the Chloraseptic and use Children’s Benadryl elixir. It does a better job of relieving sore a throat!

Thank you Dr. Urmanski!

So now I’ve left with my own mini-pharmacy and rush back to the coach so I can pound down my first doses. It’s a little early to say voilà, but after one day the throat pain is almost completely gone and I was finally able to get a decent nights sleep.

Today we’re on the west side of Puget Sound and today took a drive up by the Hood Canal to Port Townsend and then back around through Bremerton. On the way through the little town of Belfair, we spotted someone selling Smoked Salmon out of the back of his truck. Les made a quick u-turn and after a couple of samples, we came away with a little over 2 pounds. Yummy!

Tomorrow we’ll be heading around to the east side of the Sound to visit with my cousin, Sandy, and spend some time in Seattle.

Here's something to ponder:

What do you do when you get too old to drive your car? Buy a motorhome and tow it behind.
(Think about that the next time you want to cut in front of an RV…)

Time in Portland

Yesterday we ventured into Portland for the day. We started with the Portland Classical Chinese Garden, an authentic Ming Dynasty garden. It is right downtown and was created with artisans and designers from Portland's sister city of Suzhou China in 1999. We enjoyed it alot.

Then off to Bridgeport Brewery, Oregon's oldest craft brewery, for a sampler tray & lunch. Of course, we had to leave with a six-pack of our 2 favorites. Don't expect we'll make it home with that particular souvenier...

Then it was up to Washington Park to wander through the International Test Rose Garden. It was fun to stumble across the rose varieties that I have in the yard. Anyone interested in a planting a rose should look into the new Marilyn Monroe.

Lastly, we walked around the Pittock Mansion (we were too late to take a tour). It was built by one of Oregon's founding fathers... Everyone knows I can't resist an old Mansion! Pittock was also instrumental in getting Oregon's first road built, which is the Historic Columbia River Highway. At the top, at Crown Point, they built a 'rest stop' called Vista House (1917). Amazing views from here!

Since I'm still having an awful time with my sore throat/sinus infection, we've decided to stay one more night here in the Portland area and move on up the the Mt. St. Helen's area tomorrow.