Month: September 2010

Mountain Home, ID – Rest Stop – Friday September 24, 2010

Sunny warm day no clouds and only light breeze.  It’s 4:00 we are at a large rest stop on I-84 just east of Mountain Home.  Came 399 miles and ahead of schedule, started the morning 3 hours farther north then usual.
Will rest here a while before moving on.  Get gas in Boise and spend the night at a rest stop just inside Oregon, that rest stop does not have internet coverage.  Be home tomorrow :   🙂  &  😦

Update
7:00 pacific stopped for the night, 534 miles today and 532 from here home.

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Valley of Fire State Park, NV – Tuesday September 21, 2010

The text did not paste from OpenOffice.  I’m doing this again.

Vacation Monday 9/20/2010 and Tuesday

Monday we moved to Valley of Fire State Park north east of LasVegas.
Lot of red sand store and HOT sunny weather, 97 Monday and 96 on 
Tuesday.  
While driving to one of the many view points we drove through a 
rather deep wash area.  I was doing 20 miles per hour however 
that was to fast.  When we got to the bottom and started back 
up I heard a thump but didn't know what it was, thought it could 
have been the clothes closet door opening and then closing.  At 
the next view spot I went back to look and sure enough the back 
closet door was open.  It had an additional feature as the clothes 
closet rod had snapped and all the clothes were on the bottom 
of the closet.  
In all the stuff I carry one item is these 8 inch red velcro 
strips I get at Home Depot.  I used three of these strips 
wrapped around the pole and we have a useful clothes rod.
The park map has something I've never seen before on a park
map.  Three different view points are marked as possibly 
having cell phone service.  This could be a new feature on 
all maps.

Tuesday was also a hot day.  Hank was starting to look like 
a melted puppy so at 94 degrees we turned on the A/C, it's 
now 87 in the motorhome and he's a lot happier.  
Photo count for this trip is at 1615 and my camera just 
went over 10,000.

Added with update.
Tanya says I'm not to drunk post, however does it count if 
it's a Washington wine (and on vacation)?
Harry

 

Vacation – Zion Narrows – Saturday September 18, 2010

Saturday September 18 Tanya and I went on a Zion Institute guided walk up the Zion Narrows.

We got on the 8:00 a.m. tram for the 40 minute ride to the end of the tram road and the beginning of the River Walk which leads to the starting point of the Zion Narrows river trail. There is tons ofinformation about the Zion Narrows (plan a visit) already on the net so I’ll skip most of the Narrows details. We started the day’s walk at 9:00 am and returned at 3:45 pm. Went up river to the first Y, turned right and up Orderville Canyon to the turn around point, returned to the Y and up main river to Wall Street. At Wall Street we turned around and headed down river. I’d say about 80% of the time is spend walking in the river.

It was a great day with a really nice group of people. I scheduled the hike with the Zion Institute so we’d have the opportunity to learn something and I thought it would be more enjoyable going with someone who knew what they were actually doing. We could have walked up river on our own however going with someone who had done this a couple of hundred times was much more enjoyable. Gene could read the river and picked the easiest and fastest route up and across the river 99% of the time. I didn’t see how really good Gene was until the trip down river. We didn’t encounter many people early in the morning however on the trip down river we saw hundred’s of people. Watching them stuggle to pick the route up river showed Gene’s understanding of the river.

Our Zion Institute guide was Gene (as I mentioned above). He is in his 70’s and volunteers to lead programs for the institute all year round. Gene said his wife’s father was actually born at the same location as the current Zion Museum.

We had a great day. I’ll include a couple of pictures now and maybe some more later.

This is one of the 191 pictures I took during the day.

This is most of the group.
Have a Great day, Harry

 

Vacation – Friday September 17, 2010

It’s Friday and vacation is a great thing. We should do this more often.

It is warm as in the lower 90’s and Hank is uncomfortable. He’s not grouchy as he was the first couple of years he’s just can not get comfortable. He’ll lay in one place for about 10 minutes and then he has to move.

It’s the couch

chair

floor

under the table

different spot on the floor

chair

couch

he’s a warm puppy

In as much as Hank is a warm puppy Jean is ecstatic. She loves the heat and it’s actually quite nice this sunny and warm in September.

On a non vacation topic since I got this new laptop I’ve been working with OpenOffice for word processing and spreadsheets. MsOffice is just to expensive for a non work related activities. I think I’ll continue use OpenOffice for a while. One of the driving forces is my version of Office is Office 97 and it will not work with 64 bit Windows 7, at least I don’t know how to make it work.

OpenOffice wants to save text as ODF whatever that is however I’ve been saving text documents as rtf’s. Not really sure how odf’s will paste into wordpress blogs so I’ll stay with rft’s for now, may try odf’s later.

Got to go get a picture or two for today.
Our campsite for the week.

View of the west rim valley about half way up to the rim.

Vacation Update – Monday September 13, 2010

It is Monday evening and I’m going to get caught up on our vacation.

We are at Utah Lake State Park on Utah Lake just west of Provo. Here’s what has happened:

Left home Thursday at 6:00 pm and drove until 11:00 pm., got to Wilsonville rest stop just south of Portland. 194 miles

Friday morning we were on the road at 5:30, got to Grants Pass at 10:00 a.m. And Richards at 7:40 p.m. 709 miles.

Saturday we went for a drive up into the mountain. Pretty much a paved logging road the sign at the bottom said up to 24% grade. It was a pretty drive. Had lunch at the top of the hill and returned to Richards.
Richard and I went to the rifle range which is just a couple of miles from his house to check the sighting on two of his rifles. He’s going hunt over the next couple weekends. They were both just fine. He let me shoot his .243 rifle. It’s been almost 40 years since I fired a rifle and I think I did pretty good. I’ll insert of picture of the 3 rounds I put into the target at 100 yards.

We then moved over to Vicki’s in Sparks. This will put us closer to Reno for the Sunday morning balloon races.

Sunday morning we left Vicki’s at 5:45 to go the the balloon races. I’ll attach some pictures, I took 493 all together. I’ll also put some into my google pictures later.

Sunday after noon Richard and I built a rack which attaches to the ceiling of Vicki’s garage so she can store her window sun shades during the winter.

Monday morning Jean and I left at 6:30 a.m and got to Utah Lake State Park just south of Salt Lake at 6:15 p.m. 562 miles for the day. This will leave us with 264 miles to get to Zion on tomorrow.

Night will do more later this week.