Sorry, no physical cards this year. Everyone on our list has an email address so we're trying it this way this year. I hope you have a sense of humor about the whole thing.
So we’ve been retired a couple of years now – know what that means? Yup, the old retirement accounts have really tanked. That means no exotic foreign travels this year. Of course we couldn’t just hang around home doing arts and crafts. After all, C.J. turned Social Security-able so there was some help there.
During the winter we mostly stuck close to home. I built some stuff out of wood and refinished the ancient, ugly door to the garage (what had been the original front door to the house). C.J. worked on her scrapping, stamping and sewing. We got out ski touring several times and even dusted off our old ash-and-rawhide snowshoes for a hike along the Cascade Crest Trail. We also got some exercise sandbagging the front of the garage during the January flood – it turned out to be not quite necessary.
We got more ski touring time in around Mt. Bachelor in February and the weather at home improved enough for a paragliding flight and a kayak paddle. C.J. was still a committee chair for the USHPA so we had to attend the board meeting in Colorado Springs in March. Since we were going all that way, we decided to make it a vacation as well. (Of course we hadn’t counted on the blizzard as we arrived) The condo at Estes Park put us in easy reach of some good snow trails in Rocky Mtn National Park but the east side of the park was better for snowshoeing than skiing. Fortunately we found a deal on end-of-the-season rental snowshoes so we got to do some exploring. From there we dropped south to northern NM expecting it to be warmer and camp-able after a few days at the condo in Red River.
No such luck! It was warm in the day but at the Colorado Plateau elevations we were experiencing, it was mighty cold at night. Nevertheless we visited Great Sand Dunes NP, Taos, Philmont, Los Alamos, Bandelier, Canyon de Chelly, Monument Valley, Natural Bridges, Capitol Reef (finally used our camping gear), and … Oh, and it snowed the night we were staying near Bryce Canyon so we got to see the rainbow colors against the snow, then took a hike through Kodachrome State Park. Our last National Park excursion was to Great Basin in eastern NV where our hike was curtailed a few miles up the trail to Wheeler Peak when the snow got deep enough for the snowshoes we had not carried with us. The whole trip was a great experience but it would have been a whole lot nicer if we had, say, a small trailer to camp in. Hmmm.
So that got me doing some research about small trailers. The Internet is an amazing source . And we kept looking around. Eventually Craigslist coughed up a deal we couldn’t resist. In Indianapolis. Whew, good thing my brother and his wife live there and were willing to do the inspection , purchase and storage! I installed a hitch and the necessary wiring, as well as as an oil cooler on the Outback.
Meanwhile we continued hiking, camping, flying and kayaking as usual. C.J. participated/competed in the Rat Race for the 7th consecutive year, and we went to the Chelan XC classic to help out. I finally got the roof trim painted on the house. Before we knew it August had filled up with things we wanted to do – explore the Idaho Panhandle with Doc, meet the Goldmans on the Oregon coast, go back to Woodrat to visit Barbara, get to Florida for the Farnsworth family reunion and …
Wow, we still needed to pick up the trailer at Wayne’s! The pressure was building because we’d developed a hankering to drive the Alaska Highway and there was a definite end to casual tourist travel in late September for obvious weather-related reasons.
We didn’t get on our way to Indiana until the end of August but we did get to visit with family along the way and see some new country. We drove the 2005 Aliner Sport, all twelve feet of it, back via Devils Tower and Yellowstone to see how it felt being a (gasp) RVer. It was cool! The temperatures dipped into the 20’s at night but we were comfortable with our propane furnace. Our gas mileage went down but there wasn’t much strain on the car or driver. We even spent a night with our “self-contained” RV in a WalMart parking lot.
Three days after returning to North Bend we were again pulling out of the driveway on the way to Fairbanks via British Columbia and the Yukon Territory. We were just a tad late and our photos show that we ran into some gloomy weather but we hardly noticed. New country to see, no mosquitoes and few tourists. It was only a 2 ½ week trip but it took us from the unseasonal heat wave of Washington into autumn colors, then bare trees and, in Denali, snow.
Since we’ve been back C.J. has taken on a project to get her mom’s photos into an online scrapbook (http://sturtevantcj.blogspot.com) and then get them printed , bound , and sent to her in Florida. I’ve been doing maintenance and painting on the trailer – stuff that should have been done before we left on a 5000 mile trip, as well as repairs of the dings caused by occasional unpaved roads.
Next up is to get out of this rain – we’re taking the first two weeks of December off to go to sunny southern California to get some Vitamin D, and maybe some paragliding. After that we are still thinking about visiting Yellowstone in the winter (didn’t make it there last year). Then the big, long-awaited trip to Nepal with a bunch of our local flying friends in February!
We hope you and your loved ones are healthy and happy. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays! Write and tell us about your 2009. You can reach us at georges@nwlink.com and, if you are interested in more detail, click on http://sturtevantg.blogspot.com .
Love,
No comments:
Post a Comment