We're back! Did you miss us?

Wow, I looked at our blog the other day and saw that it has been over a year since we last posted. And many things have changed in that year. So let us catch you up.

Most of you know that we left our winter work/volunteer in Santa Cruz, CA and headed back up to the coast of Washington. We parked the RV and proceeded to house hunt. We looked at a lot of houses, made offers on three and settled on the best and last one. By July, we had moved in and proceed to work on the grounds a little before  heading to UT for one last volunteer stint. Our “new” house has 1.5 acres, a slough, large trees, lots of wild berries and foliage that needed trimming or taming. The inside is in decent shape, just outdated and those projects came later after returning from UT. We also got 4 blueberry trees and harvested 4,1 gallon baggies of blueberries before we left. They reside in the freezer and Bill loves them in the pancakes, I put them in the cereal, tarts. muffins. The thousands of blackberry bushes hadn’t quite ripened before we left and after trimming and thinning, we are hoping for a bumper crop this Fall. The original beach cottage is still here and will be a future project to redo and be a guest house

front "yard"

We spent Sept and Oct in Escalante, UT  for our last volunteer time. I really love it there and have some great friends and good times. I want to do more hiking but this getting older is making me slow down. When we left, we drove up through Boise and in one weekend traded the Rv and truck in for a motorhome, bought a mid size SUV and proceeded back to Ocean Park, WA. Wow, what a difference it is driving a motorhome. We drove a record 400+ miles in 1 day, and made it home in a day and a half. Our usual travel distance was under 250, due to the driving slower and the roughness of the big truck. We learned all the buttons and knobs, a small shake down cruise, on the way back and towed the new car. Our nomadic lifestyle came to an end. Not the end of traveling, just ending a chapter of living full time in our RV.

The last year has had joy and sadness. Gail lost her mother in April to Alzheimers, our youngest son, Kyle, got married to Brandi, on the beach in Oregon, at Hug Point and it was beautiful. They live in Portland, OR and it is nice being close. Brenton, our oldest came out for the wedding and it had been about 2 years since we had seen him. A great visit for 2 weeks. We all traveled to Challis, ID for a small memorial for Gail’s mom in Aug and mini reunion with family. The kids returned to Portland, and Buffalo and we went on to UT.

Our new home is on the Long Beach peninsula of the southwest WA coast. If you know where Astoria, OR is, cross the Columbia river on the large bridge and 20 miles later you are in Long Beach. It is known for razor clam clamming and the worlds longest driveable beach. The weather can be a bit rainy in the winter, although we didn’t find it too bad this winter. Typical dress includes light layers or sweatshirt, not too hot or cold, not too humid, no hurricanes or tropical storms and best of all, NO SNOW!

Spring flock

So this is a small return to the blog and we will fill you in on the changes. There are lots in store, redoing the inside, the cottage, the grounds, and Bill has a large shop/shed to build! And occasionally an adventure or two