January 6, 2007

We took the Bird from Carlsbad, NM a couple of days ago to El Paso, Texas, to spend a little time with our managers Beth and Paul Royalty. They are working a big park on the east edge of El Paso; it also gave us a chance to finish up our Tucumcari job by phone and send in the paperwork. We really enjoyed the time with Beth and Paul; we usually only get to see them at company meetings or at a diner on the freeway halfway between our jobs. They drove us to Las Cruces to see the house they have built. It’s a great house, although it’s purely investment, as they only spend four to five weeks a year in it. Lots of Southeast Pub reps have a house because if you do, you can expense the cost of getting the motorhome from one place to another. If the motorhome is your only residence, you can only expense the car costs on the job.

A slightly shorter than usual travel day today, as we left late. We are usually on the road at the crack of ten but hung around today, talking to our friends. Once out on I-10 it’s Texas everywhere, flat, flat, flat, forever. This is where they filmed Giant. The speed limit is 80 mph. Not many towns along the way, though we managed to find a barbecued brisket sandwich at Curley’s in Sierra Blanco. Curley’s wife makes us fries from scratch and tells us we’re living her dream.

We lost an hour with the change to central time and the wind is wearing us out, so we stop in Pecos for the night. The RV park is an Escapees Park – they’re big in Texas. $18.50 per night and only 30 amps so we blow the breakers twice. Chicken tenders, acorn squash and rice for dinner, and a great Seahawks game tops off a pretty typical travel day.

January 7, 2007

We took the high road yesterday afternoon (I-20 goes to Fort Worth-Dallas, I-10 travels south to San Antonio) so we’re back on the windy road headed east. Some oil wells dot the horizon today. It got down to 27 degrees last night but is sunny today. We’ve come down 1500 feet from El Paso; elevation here is 2,500. They were expecting a little snow in El Paso yesterday.

By the time we get 100 miles east, to Odessa and Midland, the landscape is covered with oil rigs and tanks. No stick built buildings, just metal sheds. Lots of rusted, dead tanks. And wind. Dave doesn’t complain but it feels like driving is a struggle. The constantly passing trucks add to our being buffeted on the road.

There are what is called “picnic areas” about every 40 miles on I-20. They are turn outs like our small rest stops but there are no toilets or water. We stopped to have a chicken wrap but didn’t observe anyone at picnic. It appears truckers sleep there.

By the time we get to Sweetwater, quail hunting capital of Texas, the oil wells are specks on the edges of cotton fields. The road is torn up but traffic is still heavy. We’ve seen some cattle spreads but expect to see more when we get past Abilene. Prickley pear and yucca grow along the freeway; lots of salt cedar and mesquite. No trees as we know them. Occasionally we can see rows of wind propellars running along a distant mesa.

We did about 250 miles today and end up just outside Abilene. We try to stay at Passport America parks when we are just moving from one point to another. This park is advertised for the PA discount price of $14.00/night but the manager charges us over $21.00 – new owners, book is not up to date, etc. It’s tempting to unhook the car and drive down the road to the Chinese buffet but we have learned that the dining experience is often worse than anything I can put together. Davey made a loaf of french bread and we have macaroni and cheese and green beans.

Another good football game, but the game is interrupted by storm warnings from Atlanta. Tornado warnings and watches, plus many thunderstorms to the east of us. Our weather path looks clear all the way to the east coast, but we check often. We have a weather radio which goes off and scares the pee-waddings out of us if something comes close.

I’ll check in tomorrow so you can get an idea of what it is to be with swans on the go.

Sam

Happy New Year to all! We be taking our time in Carlsbad, New Mexico, watching openmouthed at all the bad weather on TV, while we sit in relative warmth, under blue skies in a little corner of the state which is untouched by storms. The Governor of NMÂ has declared a state of emergency, even Southwest Airlines is grounded, and interstate highways have been closed for a couple of days. Albuquerque was just plain shut down with record snowfall. Amazing.

We had “Christmas on the Pecos,” a unique one-hour float down the Pecos River, on a comfortable barge, to see the lights on the homes along the waterway. It’s a big thing regionally, and we really enjoyed it. Festive lights today have gone beyond stringing, and the moving scenes like a shark which traveled along the dock, or Santa in a front loader, were fun.

Carlsbad is another New Mexico town with a main thoroughfare which must be 15 miles long, has three names, and a lot of empty buildings. They are really promoting it as a retirement area, and it is probably a good bet for mild weather all year and low real estate prices. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant would put me off, but that’s just me. They advertise it as “the nation’s defense-related transuranic nuclear waste stored inside a 2,000 foot thick salt bed.” We have heard people (employees?) refer to the WIPP as “protecting our nation.”

We have wanted to spend a day in the Carlsbad Caverns but probably won’t get to this trip. I gave myself asthma for Christmas and after a week can barely get through the Wal*Mart parking lot, let alone the caves. We both got hay fever about three weeks ago, and I just didn’t pay attention to getting the rest my body said it needed. So, my body said I’ll give you a rest, I’ll slow you down good, old girl. Thanks to Dr. Harless in Bend, I didn’t have to go to the ER, and hopefully the drugs will get me over the hump. It’s been nearly three years since I’ve had asthma and I’m real cranky about it. I thought it was gone. I guess I just have to look at it as a physical warning system – rest up, or else!

We have really taken the week off, here at the Carlsbad RV Park. I have been sewing and quilting blankets for my youngest nephew and his wife who are expecting their first baby in April. I was crushed to find that the world’s best fabric store in Roswell has relocated to Ruidoso, and we couldn’t get there because of the weather. Davey has been able to ride his bike nearly every day. This park has a busy activities schedule: We attended the Christmas potluck and met some nice people, including a family who works next door to the park we are going to do next in Shreveport! Last night we joined the ice cream social and a showing of Talladega Nights in the Rec. Room. Couldn’t stick around for the hats and tooters at midnight, but I did step outside in my nightie to yee-haw a couple of times when the owners set off the fireworks display. These desert folk do love their fireworks!

We have a minor car problem so we are going to get that looked at tomorrow and gear up to leave for Louisiana on Wednesday. I’m hoping to feel stronger by then. I find traveling very tiring, I don’t know why. Dave says it’s because I am hanging on ….

We’re looking forward to our journey into the south. We’ve never been to Louisiana. Of course it will take us nearly a week just to get across Texas, assuming the tornados are gone by then. Adventure awaits!

We wish you all the best in this coming year. We’re grateful for your friendship and promise to stay connected.

Love,

Sam and Dave

Holiday greetings to all!

We’re just leaving Tucumcari, New Mexico. We’ve been here before because the town is within the advertising area of two parks we do, Santa Rosa and Ute Lake. We’ve just finished a park in this little town and it didn’t take long, because there are only so many businesses to call on. They say Tucumcari used to have 30,000 people. It’s down to about 2,000 now. It used to be “the heart of Route 66” but now that long stretch through town is a series of flat-roofed, peeling and empty motels, boarded up liquor stores and signs and billboards advertising shops that are long gone. It has the usual number of small boutiques, but they are all short of stock, shelves a little dusty, the greeting cards faded. The rent is probably cheap.

Still, the convention center is new and active, the C of C is fairly vital, seeming to spend a lot of its energy competing with the convention center. We missed the Christmas parade but read about the “string of jeeps,” 30 jeeps connected by tow bars, serpentining through old town. Dave was especially sorry to miss that one.

It’s been cold here, 22 degrees at night, and we got the edges of the Denver blizzard and the Amarillo ice storm. Also had heavy winds, but nothing like the Seattle area had. Our biggest complaint is that the butter won’t spread in the morning. We actually had to find an ice scraper two days in a row. There was some grumbling that day about our job schedule….

I’ve met a new bird in New Mexico, the Says Phoebe. A common looking little yellow-brown bird, I met it in June when I was in a pet shop in Bernalillo. This little bird kept flying at the front, glass doors, almost knocking, until the owner went out and tossed a handful of mealy worms to the bird. The owner said the bird had just come back, that he was there the year before! I saw a couple last week in Santa Rosa. No birds here in Tucumcari. Can hardly wait to get further south and see the cardinals, probably have to get to Texas.

We’re in the land of the Albuquerque Isotopes, Odessa Jackalopes and the feared Amarillo Gorillas, local hockey teams. The highlight of our sports experience in New Mexico, however, is selling an ad to the Brian Urlacher Autoplex. It is testimony to my sales skills that I managed to recover from my opening of “May I please speak to Brian, please?” I’m still not sure what position Brian plays but now I know he’s a Chicago Bear, number 54, got voted pro bowl again, is from Lovington, New Mexico down the road and I’m one of his biggest fans! GO BEARS!

The weather is so iffy we aren’t going to Logan for Christmas. Our kids are being very understanding (as long as I get a Christmas tree up in the next two days, and I will, Kevin). So we boxed up the gifts and mailed them in a breaded okra box; no line at the post office here. We apologize to friends and family trying to send us anything. We have our mail forwarded from the Bend box about every 7 to 10 days and sometimes we have to have it sent to the place we plan to be next. It takes a week. We discourage packages because to forward them, Mailboxes, Etc. sometimes has to re-box them with other mail, and once we ended up paying $25 to have a package forwarded with a $5 postage sticker on it!

We’re headed to Carlsbad, New Mexico, home of the caverns and nuclear waste. On the way we get to spend a day in Roswell, home of the greatest, most memorable fabric store in my world. We plan to spend a week in Carlsbad, take some time off before heading off across Texas to our next job in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Our Christmas plans include a float on the Pecos River. Carlsbad features “Christmas on the Pecos,” a series of boats that float by beautifully lighted homes and buildings on the banks of the river. Not exactly the same class of gondola and dripping lights we experienced in San Antonio last year, but we’re looking forward to it just the same. We feel kind of good that we’re not too old to do something kind of goofy.

Holiday hugs to all of you. While we never get homesick, we do get pangs of “friendsickness,” and miss our times together, whether it was on the bike, on the patio, across the table, across the counter, or an occasional chance meeting of old pals. We’re grateful for this electronic opportunity to maintain connection, especially because the more we travel, the more people we meet, we realize how true it is, it’s all about connection.

Love,

Sam

You know you’re in New Mexico when the men in obituaries are all wearing big hats. And when the supermarkets sell vodka and there are things in the meat department you don’t recognize.

In spite of these gringo observations, every time we come back our respect for the State grows. Poverty is evident almost everywhere, yet there is a strong sense of pride in New Mexico and a maverick-ness that reminds us of Oregon.

When we visited with Marcia and Ted (Berthelote) in Placitas last month, I asked Ted why he thought there was such a difference between Arizona and New Mexico. Ted and Marcia have lived in New Mexico before and Ted said he had thought about the differences in the two border states and attributes it to a blending of three cultures: Spanish/Mexican, Indian and Anglo. Arizona’s history does not include the strong early Spanish influence.

Ted’s theory was borne out when we spent some time at New Mexico’s newest state monument, located just north of Truth or Consequences where we just spent two weeks mapping a park. El Camino Real International Heritage Center is a wonderful validation of the Hispanic roots of this area. Just celebrating its first anniversary, we found it short on artifacts but incredibly rich in photographs and sparkling in its presentation of the history of the 1,800 mile long “royal road.”

The Camino Real ran from Mexico City to Santa Fe and was the first European road in North America, and probably the most significant. It is pretty well known that the Spanish brought horses, guns, religion and other figments of civilization via the royal road, but we learned that eastern traders turned south at Santa Fe and traveled the road to where the real money was, Chihuahua, Mexico. Ships from the Orient unloaded and merchants traveled back up the road to sell their wares.

By the time the English settled at Jamestown, Virginia in 1609, the Spanish had been in the Americas for over 100 years. The English were not the first European colonists in the United States but rather it was the Spanish who created a settlement in New Mexico in 1598. As I recall my American History, taught in grade school and middle school, the chapter on the southwest and the Spanish was real short.

Highway I-25 runs north and south along roughly the same route as El Camino Real. El descanso are evident today, crosses and memorials next to the road where travelers died, a tradition dating back to the 1600s.

Near the Heritage Museum is the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge. We got there in time to celebrate the Festival of the Cranes and fortunately the Sand Hill Cranes showed up, too. Lots of them.

We went to Mexico for Thanksgiving, crossing the border at Los Palomas, a very small, dusty town south of Deming, NM. This part of southern New Mexico is in the Chihuahuan Desert, the largest desert in North America. It is sandy soil, dotted with low growing scrub and broken up occasionally with a cotton field or pecan orchard. There are mountains in the distance, long craggy stretches of mountains, dark and naked and wrinkled, no trees, no color. Scattered yuccas stand up across the desert like bent old men, the spent sticks of their bloom waving crazily. The customs people in this little town are very laid back, in contrast to places we have crossed before. Border Patrol has a check point about five miles out of town, with the usual profiling: Red car, Oregon plates, white folks, mom and pop sightseeing, wave ‘em through.

We both like Truth or Consequences. The people are warm and welcoming. It’s a little town of 6,000, populated by old, poor people who live here because it’s cheap, and new age, granola trekkies who live here because it’s cheap. Throw in some wacko artists and the folks who live at the State Veteran’s Hospital and it livens up an otherwise quiet little town. Kevin’s great grandparents are buried here. Harness horse people, they wintered in T or C, for the healthy benefits of “the waters.” The hot springs are still operating in old, low tile buildings. No sulphur smell, just a little pachouli.

The Rio Grande flows through town, an ugly little brown river. Old tattered signs boasting homesites “on the banks of the beautiful Rio Grande” didn’t fool anyone. The banks of the river, like the town, are peppered with old trailers.

We’re on our way to Santa Rosa, on Historic Route 66, and bracing ourselves for a hit of winter. Crossing the plains of north central New Mexico, at 6,500 feet elevation, we know where the phrase “high lonesome” came from. The landscape stretches out, the mountains disappear as the horizon bows and even the telephone poles go away; finally it’s just a ribbon of road and us.

After Santa Rosa, we do a park in Tucumcari, 60 miles east. We’re hoping for good weather for Christmas, so we can park the Bird somewhere and drive to Jason’s. We’re a two-day drive away, but just don’t do well in snow and ice, so are keeping our fingers crossed. After Christmas we head south and east. We’ve picked up a park in Shreveport, LA but I can’t remember whether we do it before Savannah, GA or on the way back.

We send warm wishes and holiday hugs to each and every one of you. Sam

All joking aside, Susie had become a little sensitive about the dog party because she has heard us laughing so much about it, she is not sure if we are making fun of her of just enjoying what she did. We are very proud of her, not many kids at any age could come up with something like this, plan it out like she did, do all the work for it (well Jason made the hot chocolate!!!) and have such a success! She is an amazing sweet sensitive girl who has a passion for animals. We are very proud of her.

The big dog who came…can’t remember it’s name… But when he showed up he drug his poor owner Brandi across the yard trying to get to the other dogs, luckily she came up laughing but I am certain the stains on her white pants are there forever!

Lois Dewey with Rusty and Joan Shepherd, can’t see her dog Ruffy-Jo…the dedicated neighbors who love us!

Kids had a great time, one hour was not enough for them!

Chad and Naina, this was the best part of the party for me to get to see Chad, Myra and Naina, Shannon couldn’t come, they were our favorite renters and we miss them.

Winston, Naina and Rusty checking each other out!

And of course the star of the show… Roxy!!!

Love to you all,
Jamie

No big news in this missive; just want to share some points of interest.

Turns out the “earth” filled trucks we mentioned in our last letter are not all filled with stuff that can be used again, and we don’t know where it’s being taken. The gov’mint is finally picking up the uranium processing plant tailings in the Moab area and hauling it off. When we came out of Green River on the way to Moab, I asked Dave “why doesn’t anything grow out here?” Maybe that’s where they’re hauling it.

We had dinner with Marcia and Ted Bertholate last weekend. It was really fun. They moved from Bend to Placitas, a village north of Albuquerque, in June. The meal was wonderful and it’s such an occasion to connect with someone from our old life.

Dave has managed to only get in one bike ride. It has been cold here in the mornings and we’ve had some real wind. Trust me, 60 mph is real wind. The bus just rocks. Fortunately we haven’t suffered any dust storms in our High Desert RV Park location.

I got a new bird book (early Christmas present) and have been happily feeding the birds here. So far all I have are sparrows and I’m not certain what kind. Black throated sparrows, I think. They are real flockers though and sometimes I have nearly 100 visiting. (I feed them on the ground.) It’s fun.

We’ve been here in Albuquerque eight days and are ready to go. It’s been a good job. We have a chance to do a park in Truth or Consequences, so will head south tomorrow. We are too early for Ralph Edwards Days, but will enjoy going back to T or C just the same.

New Mexico has officially declared English as the state lanquage. Seems silly. No one is going to quit speaking Spanish here just because English is “Official.” A local pundit recalled Texas doing the same thing 80 years ago when the governor pronounced “If English was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for Texas!”

And the beat goes on.

Sam

How We Be:

We be good, and ready to move on to another town, another job. We left
Heber City and climbed over 1,000 feet to get over the Wasatch Front,
then dropped down into Brigham City, pop 17,000. The park we’re
mapping is Willard Bay State Park, about 14 miles north of Ogden on
I-15. We thought the park was on the Great Salt Lake, but it turns out
they have built a fresh water reservoir on the flood plain of the Salt
Lake, so have a large recreational lake, with lots of water sports and
apparently really good fishing.

The Box Elder beetles were out in force at Wasatch Mountain. Reminded
me of how they used to get into Q Photo and cover the windows. They
also used to get into the GYN office I worked in on 4th street. It was
very disconcerting for women to have the doctor pick bugs off their
gowns and sheets. The offending tree was tracked down to the Red Oaks
Square but the beetles apparently don’t bother anyone over there.

Here we have some skeeters, but not too bothersome. It’s windy,
blustery and rainy. Pretty typical fall weather.

We have had a mouse die in the coach. It’s been as awful as you can
imagine. We figure it will take about three weeks for the smell to go
away; it’s been nearly two, now, and getting better. Even more
upsetting than the smell is what we hear about the deer mice in this
area carrying the Hantavirus. A friend of a friend cleaned his rig
really good, looking for mice nests, found a big one and cleaned it
out. He was dead within four days, having breathed the mice feces
“dust.” Davey tore the Bluebird apart, looking for our mouse, and found
evidence of them in a pair of large blue shorts (not ours!) which had
fallen down behind a drawer. It wasn’t much of a nest, but I’ve been
watching him closely for flu symptoms, etc. I think we’re okay. We are
now putting moth balls in little plastic raspberry containers, with
holes in them, in the backs of cupboards and under the beds, etc. Old
RVers swear the mice won’t come in if they smell the camphor.

One of our last days at Wasatch Mountain, Dave biked around the park
and noticed a bunch of “women” on the golf course dressed in lavish
ball gowns. He asked a ranger about it and the ranger groaned as he
described some annual event sponsored by a Park City Saloon. We thought
it was pretty funny. It became even more interesting when the weekly
paper ran a picture of the “homecoming royalty” I described as being
stuffed in the trunk of a hatchback for the Wasp parade – turns out on
closer inspection, they were all guys. As was a major part of the pep
squad, wearing cute little cheerleading uniforms and wigs. Whoever
thought there was so much cross dressing in a little Mormon mountain
town.

On our way to Brigham City we spotted a whole herd of oreo cows. Must
be a new breed: they were all black with a broad white band around the
belly.

Southeast Publications’ fiscal year just ended. We’re proud to say we
made the sales achiever’s club, for gross sales over $50,000. I think
we get a T shirt. We aren’t going to the fall meeting the end of this
month in Florida (where we would get proper recognition, I’m sure);
it’s too far. We’ll hit the other annual meeting on the west coast in
April.

For your next movie night, if you haven’t seen it, be sure to check out
“The World’s Fastest Indian,” with Anthony Hopkins. It’s wonderful.

Our New Mexico jobs just increased by one. Our managers are doing a
Chamber of Commerce directory in Fife, WA and can’t get to the park
they committed to doing in November. We’re happy to help them out, so
will go back to Albuquerque the first of November and do a park on the
west edge of the city. Then we’ll go north and do the two parks we have
in Santa Rosa, NM and Fort Sumner. We’re gonna be there in December,
again, damn! We tried to work our schedule to get further south by
December, but it’s hard to pass up a good job, and we would do almost
anything for our managers. They’ve lined us up for a park in
Montgomery. Alabama after New Mexico, so I guess we’ll get thawed out
then.

Love to all,

Sam

We Be settled into site # 13 in Deer Creek State Park, at almost 6,000 feet at the base of the Wasatch Mountains, near Heber City, Utah. Mount Timpanogos, an 11,000 ft. ridge of limestone and granite, looms above us on the west; Deer Creek Reservoir, going down daily, sparkles clean and blue just below us. (One would hope it sparkles clean and blue, as it is referred to as “culinary water.”)

We’re not mapping the park we’re staying in, we’re mapping the larger, more popular Wasatch Mountain State Park, 15 miles away. The sites at Wasatch are smaller and tucked in the trees (no phone or computer service), so they put us up at Deer Creek. It doesn’t make much difference in driving time to Heber City, pop. about 7,000, to do our job.

Heber City is a typical little Mormon town, clean, with wide streets & brick buildings. Friday afternoon we stood on the sidewalk and watched the homecoming parade for the local Wasatch Wasps (bzz-boom-bah!). The Wasatch homecoming queen led the parade in an open convertible, albeit with an umbrella. The opposing teams royalty were rather rudely stuffed into the trunk of a hatchback near mid parade, six legs poking out of pouffy skirts. The band was pretty good and we were impressed by a scooter brigade, plus a classy team of girls on unicycles (black velvet pants and gold lame tops -bzzz). We loved it.

Heber City retains its swiss heritage. The sheep dog championship is held on Labor Day, in conjunction with Swiss Days. Midway, a very small town on the way to Wasatch Mountain S.P., is even more alpine looking. some buildings have a cupola with little dancing figures coming out ala cuckoo clocks. Midway also has an influx of money showing up in huge, chalet style home, plus multiple surrounding enclaves of smaller chalet style homes.

This is very interesting country, geologically. Much younger than the Wasatch Mountains, the high hills leading up the mountains appear to me to be very organic. Rounded, with no trees, the humps resemble knees and hips. Come around a corner and . . . oops, the two hips are sandy breasts. Vine maple and a little dark green scrub oak cover some of the hills and the colors are the beautiful gummy-bear colors of fall.

A rump and two knees away is Park City, a compact little community tucked in a Wasatch crack. Park City oozes money. Sun Valley looks shabby in comparison. The luxury homes are built on hills and very in-your-face rich, perhaps because the geography makes them very obvious.

Evidence of the 2002 Olympics is everywhere. Soldier Hollow, venue for the cross country and biathlon events is near where we are staying. Posters and photos are all over in stores and restaurants.

The valley and the surrounding mountains are very beautiful. Dave took a bike ride to the hamlet of Wallsburg today (where they put luminaries on all the graves at Christmas), and I walked to Sailboat Beach, a long finger of Deer Creek Reservoir. Surrounded by the beauty of a bluebird day, warm enough for a t shirt, I was reminded of the importance of taking the time to smell the roses, or the sage, and just enjoy the beauty. I read something recently that pointed out how we tend to measure everything, find our happiness in terms of accomplishment, the doing of our lives. Beauty is good for our souls, because it just is.

“We have the capacity to feel wonderful and expansive, not because we have met our goals for the month or because we have accomplished something big, but just because we are alive. Beauty reminds us of that”

Love to all,

Sam

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

For the first time in two months we had to run water this morning to
get it hot. We have been unable to get cold water out of the tap these
100 plus days. Everything in the coach has been body temperature; you
can’t feel it when you put drops in your eyes. And we have put in many
drops. Albuquerque has constant wind, hot and gusty. A couple of dust
storms reminded us of that movie “Tornado” where Helen Hunt says “There
goes a cow.” We didn’t see any cows, but we saw blue tarps, blankets,
beach balls and a lot of dirt go by. Actually, we stopped a lot of
dirt.

We stayed in a park between Rio Rancho and Bernalillo. The latter is
still a crumbling little southwestern town of low adobe buildings and
hollyhocks along the walls. Rio Rancho is a new, rapidly growing faux
adobe complex with no plaza and acres of look-alike middle income sand
colored “adobe” homes. No grass. No trees. The clay bakes to a hard
smooth finish and the dust moves on. Intel seems to have been the
founding impetus; Sprint is also huge here. Albuquerque is high on
Forbes list of the top 100 places to work and build a career.

We made a map featuring two parks, one in Albuquerque and one in Rio
Rancho, so we have been able to experience a lot of the area. Dave rode
his bike along the Rio Grande but generally found the area lacking in
information about where to ride. We agreed we could never live here.
The slow western pace is gone. The sweet Mexican flavor is covered in
faux and the art is overpriced. Makes me sad. The New Mexico I
remember, from living in Santa Fe in the 60s, exists only in pockets of
poverty. Some things are still the same, though: Corruption in
government. Democrats and Catholics are still the majority.

The park owner here is a middle easterner. While 95% of the motel
owners I call on are Pakistani or Indian, this is the first RV park
owner we’ve worked for. (Motels like to advertise in RV park maps.) We
can see that if this group of people buy RV parks the way they have
bought motels, our map-making business will be severely impacted.

My two weeks with Ali has given me a lot to think about.. Apparently I
am so solidly locked in my culture and my belief system that doing
business with someone whose value system is the opposite of mine makes
me not like them. And I don’t want them in my country too much. But
because I like to think I am not prejudiced, these feelings make me
uncomfortable, so I’m trying to understand and accept differences.

Ali runs a jewelry business in the University district of Albuquerque.
As Dave says, it’s “genuine, hand-made by Indians in the southwest.” He
buys cheap imported beads and has a warehouse sized building full of
tables and bags of beads and people stringing them. A 90-something old
woman is the receptionist. Although reception is hardly what you get.
The front door is locked and you have to be buzzed in.

All the signs on the walls of the warehouse say this is the Islamic
Center. The quotations to Allah look like they are written in Arabic.
Yet Ali’s RV park is full of references to Christian living – prayer
cards and magnets, God Blesses from the management, invitations to
worship at the Baptist Church. This throws me right into judgment:
This man has no integrity. He’s pretending to be something he’s not.
Ali himself sort of clears it up for me at our exit meeting. “To make
money is what is important.” Take out the playground and put in a
motel, “whatever is necessary.” BUT no places of gambling or sellers of
alcohol on the map. He was very emphatic about that. And me with two
casinos and a big smoke shop lined up.

What to think? Can I possibly withhold judgment until I know more about
this man, who may be Iraqi, and not trusting of the American’s tendency
to prejudge …. Ali never works in the park office. Although his wife
worked there the day the manager quit. She is a lovely woman. (The
manager later agreed to continue working. She says negotiating with Ali
is tough. I hope she knows she is history once he gets that motel in
next to the office and moves his nephew in.)

Ali agreed to everything we wanted to do on the map (except the
gambling and alcohol). But he also contradicted himself so often and
flagrantly that we doubt he was listening, doubt that he cares. He has
so many rules in his map we had to make a special insert. When we
showed him samples of how we could put both his parks on the same map,
he went right for the rules. “Oh, yes, these are veddy good rules.
Maybe I will see some I can use on my map.”

So, we’re headed to Utah, looking forward to some serious
grand-parenting. Xander won’t remember us and there’s a dog we’ve never
scratched. We are scheduled to work two parks in Utah in September, so
won’t stay long this stop. At least I won’t. Dave is going to stay in
Logan and work on the rig while I drive up to Bothell and spend a month
with my mother. We have two parks to do in Washington in August and
Dave is going to do the Oregon Bike Ride and we have doctor visits to
do in Bend, plus want to clear some stuff out of storage. Haven’t
figured the logistics of all that yet. Hope to spend some time with the
kids in Tacoma. Morgan is doing so well in her show jumping with
Desiree, her new horse. We would really like to see a show. Hard to
believe she’s nearly in high school.

Everything is not always what it seems on the road, but it’s all good.

Sam