June 22, 2014

06/02/2014

Yesterday we mad the short run up Hwy 97 to Smith Rock State Park, our favorite park in Oregon.  This is our seventh year serving as hosts here and in our opinion, it just gets better each year.  To make it even better we will be working with our good friends Jerry and Marilyn Howett from Nevada City, California and Bill and Carol Smith who are full-timer’s like us.  Also joining us was Ranger Kacey Epplett from Tumalo who was kind enough to bring up some of our “stuff” that we didn't have room for in the RV or car.

Last night we all loaded up and met up with Ranger Matt Davey, our direct supervisor here at Smith Rock at the Terrebonne Depot, one of our favorite restaurants here in Central Oregon.  The food was fantastic and the conversation was very lively.  To make it even better, Jerry and Marilyn paid the complete tab!  Thank you very much.

06/03/2014

Yesterday we had Jim and Jeanne Glaspey over for a short visit. They were kind enough to load Joyce’s motor scooter up and haul it over for us, making Joyce very happy.

06/10/2014

On the 5th we welcomed Art and Kandi Jones to the park for a short visit.  I few with Art in the 7th Military Airlift Squadron for several years and had not seen him for a long time.

On the 6th, I turned another year older and Joyce had a little surprise birthday party for me at a local pizza shop.  Helping me celebrate was our co-hosts, Bill & Carol Smith and Jerry & Marylyn Howlett along with Art & Kandi.

A very bad fire has broken out north west of Bend, treating several subdivisions in that area.  Some residents have been evacuated but so far no homes have been burned.  Called the Two Bulls Fire, it appears that it was “human caused and suspicious”.  Very sad.

We’re still sorting and moving our “stuff” into hour new home.  We lost a lot of inside storage when we traded in the Landmark so it’s time to do some down sizing.  Some things will be put into storage and hopefully, we can have a garage sale soon to get rid of everything else.  It’s truly amazing what you can collect and store in a 400 square foot trailer.

More Pic's of our new home and towd, a 2010 Honda-CRV.

06/22/2014

We’ve been very busy here at Smith Rock since I last wrote.


We did take the time to drive up north to see Cottonwood Canyon State Park, the newest in Oregon.  This park is pretty isolated but in a beautiful area.

On the way up to Cottonwood, we stopped at Clarno Unit of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument.

Awhile back, the State of Oregon declared Smith Rock one of the Seven Wonders of Oregon and since then, the visitors have increased dramatically.  Couple that with the events we have been having at the park this month, we've had some long days.

One of those events, the Second Annual Smith Rock Paint Out, was held yesterday.

First Place

Second Place

Jeanne Glaspey and Marcia Stevenson with Joyce.

Nice cloud formations over Smith Rock

More later.

Barry & Joyce

May 23, 2014

05/05/2014

After a fun time with Jim and Jeanne Glaspey, we made the run over the Willamette Pass to Tumalo State Park in Bend.  We hosted here in the summer of 2008 and swore we would never come back.  Tumalo is a very, very busy park requiring us to put in many more hours than is normally required in most state parks.  However, as the hosts assigned to site B-6 and being May, we were hoping to get some breaks.  Well, that didn’t happen.

There should be three sets of host here, but as it turned out, one set doesn’t even start until June and the host that showed up for the primary Greeter Host position turned out to be a single lady who had never been a volunteer before.  Not that is a problem in itself, but she didn’t really doesn’t want to do anything but just enough to get her free parking site.

05/07/2014

Our days off here at Tumalo are Wednesdays and Thursdays but since the primary host site was not filled, we decided to help out with some of the work.

On Tuesday we had the pleasure of welcoming our good friends, Rick and Patty Stills for a short visit.  Joyce prepared a delicious turkey dinner for the evening meal and we had a lot of lively conversation.

On Wednesday Rick smoked his famous ribs and I can say that they are some of the best tasting ribs we have ever eaten.  Thanks Rick and Patty!

05/16/2014

It’s been a few days since I last wrote and I can say we have been very busy here at Tumalo and in our personal lives.

Joyce and I are in the initial stages of looking for a motor coach to replace our 5th wheel trailer.  Several reasons have brought us to the decision to do this right now, one of being that Joyce would like to do more of the driving when we are on the road and if something happens to me, she could take over all of our moving from place to place.

Last week we found a beautiful 2003 Beaver Contessa in outstanding condition and actually got down to making a firm verbal offer on her.  After having our Landmark appraised we got a call back from the dealer, they told us that the company’s owner’s wife said that she wanted the rig and that they couldn’t sell it to us.  Hummmm…..!

On Wednesday we drove over to Eugene for Joyce’s eye doctor appointment and after that looked at several more motorhomes, none of which really jumped out at us.

When we got back to Tumalo, out other host had packed up and left.  So, now Joyce and I are the only hosts in the park.  Of course, we’ll step up to the plate and “git ‘er done”.

05/18/2005
What a difference a day makes.  Yesterday we signed papers to purchase a 2005 Holiday Rambler Ambassador Model 37PBD 37’ motor coach.  The motor home was purchased new by a dealership’s owner and is immaculate inside and out.  Powered buy a 330 hp Cummins motor and coupled to a six-speed Allison transmission, there is plenty of power to pull just about anything we would want.  There are many options on the coach such as upgraded TV’s (after market additions), a large slide tray in the front bay, 3-camera rear vision system, front door awning and many more.

Our new home.

The dealership has agreed to put on new tires all around, transfer our washer/dryer and reprogram the existing King Dome satellite system that is installed on the Ambassador.

On the 28th we will pull our rig down to the dealership and on the 29th we’ll take possession and transfer all our belongings.  We expect all of this is going to take all day.

05/23/2014

We welcomed Rick, Patty, Hunter and Paddy Stills back to Tumalo on Wednesday the 21st for a short stay.  Then on Thursday Jim Glaspey rode his Harley over from Oakridge.  We all had a good time telling stories and just enjoying the company of good friends.

Enough for now.  More pictures of the new rig soon.

Barry & Joyce

May 1, 2014

04/10/2014

We left Fresno on Tuesday, jumped onto Hwy 99 and bounced ourselves up to Stockton.  The state is working on the highway all the way from Bakersfield to Sacramento and believe me, it is very rough in places.  We then cut over to I-5 a tad better road, but not by much.  Then, it was Hwy 12 into Fairfield which we won’t drive again anytime soon.  There were several times I had to slow down to 15 mph due to the pot holes and bumps.  Even at that speed, there was a couple of times I thought I would break an axle we were bouncing so hard.

Not only is California going to hell financially and politically, the roads are terrible as well.  I don’t have a clue about what the state does with their money but they need to spend a lot more on their roads that’s for sure!

We’re now parked at the Travis AFB Famcamp where we have stayed several times.  It’s an nice RV park with a few exceptions.  One, they play Reveille at 7 AM here.  What the heck!  Even the Navy doesn’t wake you up until 8 AM!  Two, the park has rules, rules and more rules.  Not that we mind rules all that much but, here at Travis they are excessive.

04/20/2014

We had another great visit at Travis AFB.  We especially enjoy seeing Joe and Lorie Martin every time we are in the area and Joyce got to visit with Nancy and Linda.

04/24/2014

On Sunday the 20th, we hooked up the rig and headed up to Calistoga to visit with Joyce’s family.  We always stay at the Napa County Fairgrounds which accepts our Passport America membership.  We actually pay for our membership with the discount they offer.

A Walk Around St. Helena

After a wonderful four days there, we made the run up to Redding, CA.  We had planned to stay at the Elks Lodge there but they have changed their parking fee from $20 for all Elks members to $25 if you are a member of another lodge.  They only offer electric and water hookups for that fee and since the lodge didn’t have a lot of activities on their calendar, we decided to stay at the Win-River Casino.  Although the casino is just a big parking lot, they do have full-hookups for $24 which is pretty reasonable for the Redding area.

After a fairly good nights rest, we went to see the Sundial Bridge which spans the Sacramento River in Redding.  Not only is the bridge beautiful, but there’s a museum and botanical gardens to see as well.

After spending some time there, we drove up to Trinity Center, CA.  As you might recall, Joyce and I house-sat for a friend there a few years back and while there, I established a geocache called Trinity’s Hero.  Over the years the container had lost the lid and the logbook needed replacing as well.

After taking care of the cache, we had dinner at Trailhead Pizza in Coffee Creek with some friends we had made there.

On Sunday we made the run up to Oakridge, OR to Jim and Jeanne Glaspey’s RV Park.

Sunday evening Gary and Marcia Stevenson had us over for a wonderful Easter dinner.

Last month we received an email from Jill Nishball, Oregon State Parks Mountain Region Visitor Experiences Coordinator, informing us that we had been selected as finalists for the Oregon State Parks Hosts of the Year Award for 2013.  The celebration luncheon was Wednesday the 23rd in Salem.

Although we weren’t selected as the winners, it was still an honor to have been among the six finalists out of over 1100 hosts in the state of Oregon.

While here Jim helped us out with some maintenance on our truck and replaced the kitchen faucet in our home.

Last night we were all invited up to Chuck and Sue Svendsen’s for a delicious barbecue rib dinner.

That's all for now folks!

Barry & Joyce

April 6, 2014

03/21/2014

On the 12th we drove up to Hemet to visit our friend Sheryl Cain, who is in the process of moving to Hawaii.  It was good to see her again.  Hey Sheryl…get our room ready for a visit!

03/27/2014

On Tuesday we made the drive to Long Beach to tour the RMS Queen Mary, which is now a hotel and museum.  Since it was almost a four hour drive to Long Beach and we wanted to take a couple of tours, we decided to get a room on the ship and spend the night.  “Part of the experience”, so to speak.

Joyce booked us one of the first class stateroom and I have to say, it was worth the experience.  The room was a mixture of many of the “old” features but there were modern convinces also, like a LCD TV and a very comfortable king size bed.

The bathroom still had some of the old controls for the the bathtub.  Back in the day you could get both fresh and salt hot and cold water.  The original fan and environmental controls were still in place and there was much more closet storage than you have on the cruise ships today.

We took two tours offered; the Diana: Legacy Of A Princess and The Glory Days, both of which we enjoyed.  We also did the self-guided walking (and a lot of it) tour.

We had dinner at the at the Chelsea Chowder House and Bar on the ship and all-in-all, we were not impressed.  Very pricey and the food was not all that good.

Would we do that again?  Probably, but with changes.  We would get one of the less pricey staterooms and we would probably not eat on the ship at all.  The hotel has a free shuttle to the downtown area so we would use that.  Also, we would plan to arrive there before 10 AM, even though you can’t check-in until later.  To see everything on the ship you need more that just a couple of hours.

 Our Stateroom

The Hallway.  Notice the handrails.  The Queen Mary had no stabilizers so the ship rocked and rolled in high seas.

 Duck Press's

 Wood used on the ship

 Grand Hall

 The Bridge

 The Auto Pilot

 Radio Room

 Liberace.  He played on the ship several times but never for the 1st class passengers.  He said that 2nd and 3rd class folks needed to have good entertainment as well.

04/01/2014

We left El Centro on Sunday and headed up to Ontario Elks Lodge.  Our original plan was to go over the hills to Edwards AFB but there was high wind warnings through the pass on I-15.  It is no fun pulling a 5th-wheel in winds gusting to 50 mph.

After leaving the park, we jumped on Hwy 86 north and immediately ran into fairly strong cross winds and blowing sand, especially in the Salton Sea area.  When we got up on I-10 in Indio, all hell broke loose.  Very strong headwinds with blowing sand/dust greeted us all the way through Desert Hot Springs.  A few times we actually had to slow down to 5 mph in visibility less than 50 feet.  Of course, the crazies were out driving like their butts were on fire and cutting us off a lot.  Most folks have no idea what it takes to stop a 15,000 lb. 5th-wheel trailer and I don’t think they even care.

After a restful night there, we then made a very rough and bumpy drive to Tulare, CA.  We had planned to stay at the Bakersfield Elks Lodge but since we are members of Passport America, we got a nice RV park here with full hookups for $18.50 vice $20 for electric only in Bakersfield.  Hey, and it actually rained last night.  No, really.  It did!

04/06/2014

We’re now in Fresno, CA visiting my mother, brother and the rest of the family.

When we were getting ready to leave Tulare, the bedroom slide would not retract all the way.  It would go in about two feet and stall.  I did some troubleshooting and discovered the cable connector blocks were hitting each other and stalling the motor.  Since the blocks were behind the bed frame and not having all the tools necessary to get into that area, we called Total RV Service, a mobile RV repair service out of Visalia.

After they showed up and did some further checking, the determined that they would need more time than we had in Tulare to get the issue fixed.  So, they got the slide retracted, made an appointment for them to come to Fresno and do a permanent repair.  The work has been done and we don’t expect to have any more problems with that slide….hopefully

Enough for now.

Barry & Joyce

March 14, 2014

02/16/2014

Can anyone tell me what is worse than having "new truck" fever?  Well, I can tell you and that is "new phone" fever and I have had it for some time now.

Since I needed some relief for that affliction, we went to Best Buy and got me a new Apple iPhone 5S.  I did consider replacing my old Samsung Stratosphere with another one of Samsung's products but since Joyce and I both have Mac's, the iPhone just made sense.  And, I can tell you I am glad I did too.

I selected the 16g version but they didn't have one of those in stock so they gave me the 32g one for the same price.  Then, Best Buy had a promotion going on, so I got $50 off the price of the phone and then $20 off any accessories.  To go along with the phone, I also scored me a Mophie Juice Pack which is a really cool device that gives me about 80% more battery life.

Is there a learning curve to using the iPhone over an Android OS phone?  Yep, there is but not near as steep as I thought it would be.  The phone operates much like my Apple iPad so I was able to get up and running in no time.

One of the best features of this phone is my personal assistant, Seri.  I can ask her to make a call for me, help with writing an email or text message and a host of other things.  I can say, "Tell Jim that the beer is cold." and Seri will text him for me.  Since the iPhone doesn't have a speed dial feature, I now make calls using Miss Serri with, "Call Mom" and boom, she is off and running doing that for me.  Yes, a lot of other phones have something like Seri but…, well, it's cooler on the iPhone.

The Blue Angels have been flying twice a day for the past week, practicing there new show routine.  Everyday they add a new maneuver or two and it is getting very exciting to see.  Y'all may have seen the thing where they all go vertical and peal off into what is called a fountain.  Well, you should see the new variation to that where they do the same thing but from horizontal flight!  Amazing to say the least.

The Blues will put on their first show of the season here in El Centro on March 15th so if your anywhere close to this area, come on out!

03/11/2014

On March 1 we drove over to Navy North Island to spend the night before catching an airplane to North Carolina for our visit with Justin and Adrian.  One of the advantages to staying there is that it's close to the San Diego airport and we can leave the truck parked there for free.

After a good nights rest, we were up early and caught a cab to the airport.  I am not going to go into details about our experience with the gate attendants for United Airlines right now, but suffice it to say the ones we dealt with need to go back to school and learn some customer service skills.  More on United Airlines later.

After a rushed stop in Houston we flew on to Raleigh, NC where Justin and Adrian met us at the airport.  We had not seen Justin in about two years which is way too long for us.

The first day there we just relaxed and enjoyed being with them again.

As you probably know, Justin is a company commander in the 3rd Special Forces Group (Airbone) at Fort Bragg, NC.  On day two of our visit, we had an opportunity to meet two of his soldiers, both his outgoing and incoming First Sergeant's.  The outgoing one is leaving soon to attend graduate school in Monterey, CA.  Justin told me that only a few enlisted folks get selected for that and it's pretty much restricted to Special Forces soldiers.

After a great lunch in downtown Fayetteville, we headed over to visit the Airborne and Special Operations Museum.  Joyce and I had toured the museum before but they have a temporary exhibit now, "The Battle of Mogadishu" that we wanted to see.

The next day we drove over to Pinehurst, NC, the "Cradle of American Golf".  There are several nice little shops in the village so we spent some time walking around and popping into a few of them.   One that we stopped in is the Green Gate Olive Oils store where we sampled several of their delicious oils.  Then we found the Old Sport & Gallery, which is all about golf.  I could have spent hours in this great little place.

All of that shopping made us thirsty so we stopped in Dugan's Pub for a pint or two.  After an hour or so of strolling around, we went to the Too Blonde Tavern for dinner.  Outstanding!

On Saturday morning, we had to say goodbye and catch an airplane to Houston for our planned cruise.  We got a very restful nights sleep at the Westin Oaks at the Galleria Hotel.

The next morning we decided to have breakfast at The Cheesecake Factory in the Galleria Mall.  While waiting for the doors to open, we met "Big" Sam and Dori-Marie Adams, who thanked Joyce and I for our service in the Air Force.  After a wonderful breakfast, and to our surprise, the waiter told us that Big Sam and had paid our bill.  Fortunately, they had not left the restaurant so we were able to thank them personally for their generosity.  You can rest assured that Joyce and I will pass that wonderful gesture on to a deserving military person soon.

We were supposed to meet Chuck and Sue Svendsen who had booked this cruise but when they got to Eugene for their flight to Houston, United Express (United Airlines) cancelled the flight for a mechanical problem.  The airline offered to fly them down to Grand Cayman three days later, making several stops on the way down.  They opted to cancel their trip all together so as you can imagine, Joyce and I were pretty sad about that.

Our cruise on Royal Caribbean's beautiful Navigator of the Seas, to Jamaica, Grand Cayman and Cozumel was great.  The weather was beautiful during the whole cruise and the seas were almost flat most of the way.  We had an inside stateroom with a virtual balcony which we liked.  Read about that on the ship's web page.

After cruising for two days, we made our first stop in Falmouth, Jamaica.  Since we didn't have an excursion planned here, we just walked around the port area for a while and got back on the ship spending the rest of the day relaxing by the Solarium pool.

Our next stop was in Grand Cayman.  After finding the library and checking our emails, we took an excursion to go swim with the Stingrays.  We have been on a number of excursion's in the past but we have to say that this one is right up at the top of the list.  We were allowed to pet these wonderful creatures and both of us even got a kiss.

Anther night of cruising brought us to Cozumel, Mexico, a beautiful resort island off the coast off Mexico's eastern Yucatán Peninsula.  Joyce and I have been here a few times so we just found an internet café, had a cold drink and did the email thing.  On the way back to the ship we got a few t-shirts and Joyce got a new silver chain.

Another night and day of sailing got us back to Houston and our flight back to San Diego.

Before going to the airport, we took a short tour of the Houston NASA facility.

Getting out of Houston proved to be a hassle with United Airlines...again.  A maintenance delay caused us to have an airplane change so we were almost four hours late getting back to San Diego.

Without going into too much detail and taking the risk of boring the heck out of you, I want to tell you about our experience flying with United and United Express Airlines, who we will avoid at all costs in the future.

Back in January we had to change our flight reservations due to my leg problem.  United (or so we thought at the time) charged us a $400 fee to do that.  During the telephone conversation, the agent told us that we would be able to get that fee refunded if we took a letter from my doctor to San Diego and see any gate agent.  We did that but the person we spoke with was very rude and told us she didn't have the time to deal with our problem.  Joyce tried to explain that we were told to bring the letter to the airport but she didn't care about that.

We then came back to El Centro and I wrote a letter to United and enclosed the letter from my doctor.

In San Diego we were treated like criminals by one of the gate attendants when we wanted to take one of our bags on board.  The attendant very rudely told us that it was too large and it had to be checked.  Yes, it was less than one inch too large but there were several folks in line ahead of us that had bags much bigger than ours who were allowed to board the plane.  When we pointed that out to the attendant he just told us that "that is the way it is".  What an ass!

During our stop in Houston, we only had about fifteen minutes to make our connection due to being late pushing back and taking off in San Diego.  We asked the flight  attendant to please get our gate number for us but she just pushed us off.  Southwest always has helped us out with connections and does so gladly.  It appeared to us that United could have cared less and just wanted to get us off their airplane.

When we returned to El Centro from the cruise, we had a letter from United telling us that they couldn't process our request for a change fee refund until we had completed our travels.  There was a phone number provided to call.

When Joyce called the next day, the agent said that we needed to resubmit all the paperwork again.  Joyce then asked to speak to a supervisor but after being on hold for several minutes, the same agent came back and to her that United never charged a change fee in the first place.  It was in fact charged by our travel agency, military MWR.

After calling the travel agency, who in turn talked to United, we were told that United miraculously found our paperwork and was going to process our claim for a "possible" refund.

We then called American Express and they opened a fraud investigation.  They also told us to sit back, relax and they would take care of all this for us.  Now that is what we call great customer service.

"And the story never ends."

Barry & Joyce