The Long Hot Summer

What a summer! We left the hot, dusty climes of New Mexico in June and headed to Utah where we had a short but sweet visit with the six Swans. Leaving Dave in Logan to do scheduled bus maintenance, I drove another 1,000 miles to Bothell, WA to spend some time with my mother.

Spending a month with a 92 year old cancer survivor who has two drinks a day, got her first tattoo at 86, and wears shoes with colored stones on them was pretty much what you’d expect. We’re both hard of hearing so everything was said at least one and a half times. Actually, since Mother’s short term memory is gone, we probably spent the whole time saying pretty much the same thing, over and over. We had some giggles.

While there, I did a job in Falls City, WA, up toward Snoqualmie Pass. It was a park that had a really good map done last year by our managers, and I was lucky to get a good percentage of renewals. Going to Falls City involved driving 100 miles and impressed me with the traffic situation in areas like Seattle and Bellevue. Very stressful!

Around the first of August Jason and Dave brought the Bird to Bend and I met them in a whirlwind weekend of unloading the storage unit in Bend and loading a U-haul for Jason to take back to Utah. We have cut the Bend umbilical cord. We got rid of all the furniture and will have a garage sale in Utah to sell kitchen stuff, bedding, etc. I spent at least a month fussing about the mess our stuff is making at Jason and Jamie’s until we get there, all the while trying to get my mother to let me help her, without fussing. (!!) Dave helped me get that picture.

We stay at Scandia RV Park in Bend, which will soon be the only RV park in Bend, as Crown Villa has been sold for housing development. Scandia doesn’t have a map, so… Our time in Bend was short and broken up by the Oregon Bike Ride, another trip to Bothell-Falls City, and tandem colonoscopies. Wuh.

Once again we didn’t get to see all our friends in Bend, but it was great to make the connections we could. Bend doesn’t feel like home anymore.

The large state park south of Olympia was home for only a week this year. It’s the park we did first when we took this job… you may remember pictures of me sitting in the middle of a field on the phone. It didn’t seem much of a hassle last year, because we were so new, but this year it was just awful. No phone, no computer, no TV, no FOOTBALL.!

The best part of doing this park is that it’s close to Kevin and Shelley and Morgan. We spent Labor Day weekend at their place in Tacoma. It was great. Our first grandchild, Morgan Ann, is nearly 15 and just started her freshman year at Bellarmine High School. Last year she was a little girl. This year she’s a teen showing the grace and beauty she will have as a young woman. The transformation is so stunning it seemed like every now and then just looking at her made my heart jump up and get stuck in my throat. At least, something got stuck in my throat. Amazing.

We’re headed to Utah to do the Wasatch Mountain State Park, southeast of Park City, before the snow flies. Then we’ll do Willard Bay State Park, on the Great Salt Lake, not too far from our Utah clan. We’re still trying to land the Redmond Fairgrounds RV Park map and will go back to Oregon in October if we get it. We’re due in New Mexico in November and will hang out in the southwest before we head east in December. We have a job in Savannah, Georgia in January and look forward to exploring areas of the southeast we missed last year. Coming or going, we hope to do jobs around Oklahoma City and Little Rock. Both of those areas impressed us when we came through this past spring.

We send our love to all of you,

Sam