Fall in the Mountains

Dear Friends:

As we left La Grande a couple of weeks ago, we were awed by the sweep
of the northeastern Oregon landscape. Great wide, fertile valleys
surrounded by high folds of buckskin colored hills draped with rock.
Trains run constantly along the Grand Ronde Valley, little square beads
pulled along the base of the hills.

The Eagles Hot Lake RV Park is right next door to the old Hot Lake
Sanatorium/Hotel, trying to make a comeback. The hot lake itself still
steams and stinks and attracts a lot of visitors, though most of them
come now to visit the foundry, run by the hotel owner and bronze
artist. There are pictures around that show the hotel in its heyday,
about 1910, when folks came for the waters. It was thought the sulfur
baths could cure syphilis and arthritis; I don’t know about the
arthritis, but they have pretty well documented that the syphilis did
very well. (Old time OBR veterans may remember the place – we camped
there in about year three or four.)

We left La Grande racing an early winter storm. Headed for the storage
unit at Logan, we elected to hole up in Brigham City for a couple of
days. It is a little lower elevation. When the snow cleared we drove up
to Logan only to find we were locked out of our storage unit, again. We
pay by the year and apparently they have trouble applying the payment.
This is the second time in two years we have been locked out. It was a
Sunday, then Columbus Day, and a total hassle, but we got it sorted
out.

The Cache Valley is breathtakingly beautiful this time of year, with
Aspen groves and vine maple sweeping the steep mountain walls. We took
flowers to our granddaughter Olivia’s grave and had an omelet at Angies
and generally basked in a blue bird day. We had to remind ourselves
that for much of the year, the air quality in this narrow valley is
very, very poor. We have been in Logan when they wouldn’t let the kids
out for recess. The combination of exhaust and methane gas from
livestock is truly toxic.

Jamie especially misses the Cache Valley this time of year but Jason is
taking her to see the colors of the Blue Ridge Mountains this week.
Good trade.

Right now we are high above Salt Lake City, at Heber City, Utah,
staying at the Deer Creek State Park. We’re doing the Wasatch Mountain
State Park map; the sites at Wasatch are quite primitive and hard for
us to get in and out of, so we stay at Deer Creek while we do the map.
The colors aren’t as spectacular as they were last year, but it is
still a very pretty place. We’ve had three beautiful days and now
another small storm has passed through. Jamie’s Mom and Dad, Diane and
Jim Freston, drove over from far eastern Utah to have dinner with us
before the storm. It was great to see them. They just got back from two
weeks with the kids in North Carolina, so we got caught up on all the
kid-stuff.

We just finished our second full year with Southeast Publications. It
was a push to get as many jobs in as possible before the end of the
fiscal year, October 1st. We made the second level sales award this
year, one step up from last year. The Redmond Fairgrounds actually
ended up close to the good sales number we hoped for. The sales award
doesn’t mean too much to us, but I think our managers get points and we
really like our managers. (Actually, the sales award doesn’t mean zip
to Dave, but you know me ….) Anyway, with this award we get another T
shirt and rings. Rings! With little chips of something on them. Dave’s
real excited. 🙂 Our goal is to hit the third level ($100,000 gross)
next year, doing the same number of parks (20). We like earning the
money but do not want to have to pay a lot of taxes, especially while
we still have Oregon residency. We think about changing that residency
all the time, mainly because of the taxes, but have to consider the low
registration fee for the bus in Oregon and the health insurance we now
enjoy. While our lives are greatly simplified with this lifestyle,
there are still some knotty considerations.

We will finish up this job in the coming week and head for Albuquerque.
It takes us a couple of days to get there, though Moab, Four Corners
and down to Bernalillo. We will do a new park for us, a City RV park in
Bernalillo, then we do a park on the southwestern edge of Albuquerque.
Then it’s on to Santa Rosa to do our last park of 2007. We are headed
to North Carolina for Christmas, hoping really hard we can talk Kevin
and Shelly and Morgan into meeting us on the Carolina coast in January.
Life is good.

Love to all,