Deborah's Post - Coronado State Park

Because our blog is also a home school project, it's time for me to hand the reins over to the kids. Here's Deborah's entry & pictures for Dec 5:

Today we went to another National Park. This time Joel tried to win a badge too. We met this teacher, named Danielle, she was a teacher for 35 years. she made her own house of adobe and told us of a really neat zoo and art museum. she also told us a lot about the Pueblos people and yucca. Yucca roots can also be used as soap for your hair - it makes it really soft.

We even got to go in the Kiva. The Kiva was used for ceremonial worship for the native men. The women only went in there to give food to the men and their sons. Later on we got to see the Festival of Lights.  It was really pretty to see it turning dark and all the lights lit up.

At the Visitor Centre we met this funny ranger who gave Rachel some answers to he Junior Ranger Guide, like saying the answer rhymed with adobe, then whispered the answer in her ear. He also taught us the junior ranger's secret handshake. Mom & I are hoping to go back there sometime.

...and ended up in Elephant Butte

Nov 30 -  ... so after waking up in Pecos, we headed to the nearest automotive repair shop, Sam's Auto Body. The owner, Sam Whittington, took care of the problem for us, then showed us around his place. He took special pride in his pontoon, telling us about fishing on Val Kilmer's property (he even had one of Kilmer's quads in his shop for repairs), and asking if he could keep Ben around to go hunting. On his advice, we got some breakfast at Rivera's, where his daughter works, and went to see the Pueblo ruins at Pecos National Park:

It was very cold with the wind, so we didn't stay very long outside. We went back to the museum & looked at the artifacts while the oldest 3 kids completed a workbook to receive a Junior Park Ranger pin.  Afterwards, we hit the I-25 (aka as the Santa Fe Trail on the section we were on). Most of the housing in Santa Fe has some form of adobe feature on it, or is completely finished in adobe - really quite lovely.

Dec 1 - Really only stayed in Santa Fe long enough to go to the library & catch up on emails, then we were off to Albuquerque.

Dec 2 - Our headlights had gone off again,  so we went to  repair shop that could diagnose the root of the problem, which was a burn out switch. while it was being replaced, we walked to the Petroglyph Monument National Park, where the kids earned another junior park ranger badge & pin.

Dec 3 - found a good library in the Alamosa county of Albuquerque that I used to make the last post - there was a skate/bmx park nearby, so we didn't see too much of Ben all day ;)

Dec 4 - on the way to look for a bicycle shop, we brushed against a tree that was just about down & it popped off part of something on our roof (can't remember what it was, but nothing important & Dan was able to put it back on), as well as ripped it right out of the ground. this happened near an Emu farm, so the kids went over to take a look at them while the repair was being made. Later when shopping a rep for a fundraiser sold us a coupon book for discount meals at Denny's, so no supper for me to cook tonight :D

I think I missed that right turn in Albequerque...

...at least, that's what Bugs Bunny would have done. Don't know how he would miss it now, especially if he made use of a GPS :)

It is pleasantly cool out - like a mild autumn day on the prairies. The locals here find it cold, the coldest they've known for a long time. Let's send them to Southern Saskatchewan to compare - Bwahahaha!!!  Seriously though, all the people that we've met here are very nice, so I really wouldn't want to torture them that way. Since I've got our personal computer in the library, I can finally show some photos.

                          Dan busting out of jail when things didn't go so well at the first attempt across the border

 

                                                                Cowboy statue greeting us in Plentywood, MT

Nov - 26 - Deborah is standing next to the propane tank of our RV when the valve shoots off & gas goes up in a big cloud. Dan isn't around & I'm not sure what to do, so being the "safety dog" that I am, I have Deborah call the fire department & track down Dan in the store he was in, while I keep the other children away from the vehicle.

The fire truck & Dan arrive at the same time, & I'm told that it was a good choice to be safe rather than sorry by the chief, but that it was just the safety valve that blew. Apparently the attendant at the gas station over filled the tanks. Still, they checked around the vehicle for any signs of leaking propane or carbon monoxide inside just to be sure, and then invited us to stop by the station so they could give the kids a tour (which we did). Too much excitement for the day, we drove on to Wyoming & bunk down near Guernsey for the night. It is extremely windy & I wonder if we might get knocked over while we sleep.

Nov 27- The wind is gone by morning & I feel surprisingly refreshed. It is starting to feel more like autumn outside. After looking at some points of interest on the maps at the rest stop, we decide that we have to check out some of them: Guernsey Reservoir, Oregon Trail Ruts, & Ft. Laramie.

A scenic, winding road brings us past a dam into serenity. The North Platte River is frozen over, there's a kiss of snow on the ground and the crisp air carries no voices of man or beast. We have this wondrous place all to ourselves, and it is heavenly.

The boys try to break the ice, literally, by throwing stones, only to have them skip along the surface. It sounds like rain on a tin roof, due to the great acoustics provided by the surrounding red-faced cliffs. We walk along the shoreline, picking over rocks, then side-stepping cacti as we climb the banks back to the road.

                                                                Guernsey Reservoir

Next stop, Oregon Trail Ruts. The road leading to the park is very rocky & uneven, which we would discover later to cause a flat tire on the way out. Despite that, it was the perfect place for the kids to burn off their pent up energy.Aside from the paved trail that climbs up the hillside, there are smaller footpaths that cover the area and the wagon ruts themselves to clamber over. Looking at the terrain that the settlers crosssed, I'm amazed that they succeeded in moving west at all - certainly no passenger car  could travel that same route today.

 

                                                           Wagon Ruts along Oregon Trail

After getting our flat fixed, we went on to Fort Laramie. We came after 4pm & weren't sure that we'd be let in, but we had about an hour to look around. the site is very clean, well-maintained, and the staff are incredibly knowledgeable about the site's history - friendly too! We really enjoyed looking through the exhibits and old housing units on the grounds. I personally would have loved to camp out in their bookstore (as would Deborah) - so many interesting tomes on Native American history, the Oregon Trail, the Pony Express & more.

 

You can even quench your best friend's thirst out here at the Fort :)

Nov 28 - made our way quickly through Colorado - it was difficult to get a reliable wifi And Dan just didn't like driving along I-25 through all the big cities. We did stop near Garden of the Gods for some photo opportunities and picked up a few trinkets for the kids.

                                           Red rock formations at Garden of the Gods

Nov 29 - We stopped at Trinidad, just before the border to try to get wifi at the Carnegie library (my last post) but it turned out that connection really was painfully slow - it took nearly the whole hour to upload my post, then my time limit was up. :( Other than that, got to see everybody's posts wishing me well on my birthday. Awww - Thanks everyone :) Then had chocolate mousse cake for dessert that night - my favourite!

Then, our signal lights & headlights decided to fade in and out of working, so we quickly pulled off into the town of Pecos, NM for the night. To be continued......

Catching up in Trinidad, Colorado

It has been a bit difficult to get to wifi along our route, either because the wifi signals haven't been very strong, or have been so painfully slow that it made posting very frustrating. Here at the Carngie Library, it is still slow (just shy of painful) so I finally have the time to catch up on the blog.

Here's a run down of the past week:

Nov 23 - stopped at the border and not allowed to cross - the US border patrol really don't like you coming down to "wing it" for vacationing - they want addresses, names & numbers to reach you at. Oh yeah, they also want to know how much money you have in your bank account, your income tax return, your house taxes, your utility bills, your credit cards & sign over your first born child (ok, I'm just kidding about the last one, but they do require all the rest). We are told that if we come back with that info, they will let us through, so back to Regina we go to use the library to print off the info & stay the night there. We go to the swimming pool that night too, so we are in good spirits.

Nov 24 - they let us through with the info we provide - Hurray!!! The roads are amazingly clear, as if a switch turned the snow off as soon as we crossed the border. I find out the hard way the need to be careful when walking from the kitchen to my seat while the vehicle is moving. Ouch! Must watch that top corner.

Nov 25 - Spent the night in Miles City, MT. Our table had been on the verge of breaking when we bought it & finally gave. The contact cement Dan used to fix it was terrible, it was supposed to dry in 5 minutes, but kept running. despite efforts to keep it out of the way, all the kids managed to put their hands into the wet glue at least twice before the table was fixed. It works quite well now. It is Thanksgiving & we "cheat" (as the grocery clerk put it) by buying a tub of popcorn chicken, popcorn shrimp & wedge fries for dinner - but there is cranberry sauce, so we think this is ok :)

The Night Before Leaving...

...and all through the house,
the only one stirring was myself (where's my spouse?)
Ah yes, he was sleeping in bed with no care,
while I fret & worry about our trip there!

Ok - night time has a way of opening up some poetic weirdness for me. Everything in our house is in order - other than a huge batch of receipt scanning I want to get done so it's all ready for filing the income taxes when we return. Then early this morning - uh, make that later this morning - I just need to hop over to the bank to get a bit of US funds, cancel our internet at home for the season, pack the last of the food & toiletries, do a head count (very important when you've got 6 children) and away we go!

We couldn't get any chains in Swift Current for the RV (everybody local has to put them on order), so we will head into Regina first to get some, then top up the propane & head south towards New Mexico. Hopefully we won't have any trouble getting through the US border - that would really put a damper on things. Praying that the

Not sure how well things will go with getting wifi access, though we plan on trying to update at least once a week. Until then, happy trails ahead :)

Tick, Tick, Tick

The clock is ticking and there's so much to do! I'm sure that I'm going to forget something important - that's what I keep telling myself. I've got the passports & birth certificates ready & packed. Have the extra insurance on the RV done.  Benjamin, Zachary & Joel are packed, Nathan is half packed. The girls, Dan & I are next in line.

I've gotten all the spring booking order checks written up & sent off to suppliers for the bike shop. Dan is contacting Canadian Tire & Worker's Comp for funds that they owe him for parts & labor, as well as any other customer who's account isn't current.

We're waiting to hear back from the Watershed Authority for a brochure order that they need to approve so that we can get them printed before we go. I just printed off 30 menus for the local restaurant, 5 months of calendar blanks for the craft shop, and two other clients want Ben to make them business cards before we go. We are suddenly so wanted for printing projects!

So much to do, so little time....

The Countdown Begins

We have an unofficial departure date on November 22th, and the plan was originally to head west to Vancouver to visit my MIL & brother, then hop over to Salt Spring island to see my college buddy Jane, then possibly hop onto Vancouver Island to see many more friends & my folks.

That plan looks like it is going to change though, as a severe storm front that has hit Western Canada & Montana. We'll just have to wait it out & see whether it is safer to head south first or keep to our current plan. Until then, the countdown begins and I've got to get back to organizing this house before we go.

Today I have to get a set of keys cut (accidentally threw my spares into the town's paper recycling bin - don't ask), return everybody's library books & dvds, call the utilities, & clean, clean, clean! My oldest 3 are in town with Dan, helping him with the inventory count at our store. Hope that Dan remembers to get the oil change done. Hmmmm, I think I better phone to make sure!

The Unofficial Beginning

We'd bean hoping for this moment for years - dreaming really - that we would one day be the owners of our own RV.

I think it really all started back when Dan & I only had 2 children, Deborah & Ben, and were in the position to finally get out of apartment living and buy our own home. We had gone on walks through the Fort Victoria RV Park that was near my parent's place, and had often oohed and ahhhd at the beautiful motorhomes that were there. We talked about how we "hadn't done things right" by buying into the common mentality that you move out from home into an apartment, then save up for many years until you buy a house, only to be bogged down with a mortgage for the rest of your life.

The very idea of being tied down to one location seemed the anti-thesis of who we were - we loved to travel & meet new people! How was it that we missed this better ideal - to live full time in a home that you can take with you just about anywhere you wanted to go? So we started looking seriously at the different models that were available, scouting out ads in the classifieds and making numerous trips to RV dealerships. We were very close to settling on a Prowler 5th wheel with 2 sets of bunks in the back and a queen bed in the front, when I found out I was pregnant again.

That got all our close friends & family "concerned" because I had a history of problematic pregnancies and guilt placed on us that it was going to be too difficult to raise our children in an environment like that. And so we were talked into getting something more "stable", such as a mobile home (a poor name for a wood & plaster box that doesn't go anywhere!) Rachel was born a couple of months after we settled in to our home in Sooke. We had only owned that house for a year when Dan was bit by the traveling bug again and had us move to California.

I was really quite upset about this upcoming move for the first few months. This wasn't just going for a local mystery tour or a vacation to head back home again from. It was more like leaving my heart behind - my family and friends and everything I knew was going to be so far away from me - and for all I knew, it might end up as our permanent residence. Needless to say, I was pretty grumpy and miserable - oh yeah, and pregnant with child #4 too!

Dan had to make sure everything was in place for us to have health insurance cover the cost of having a baby in the US (the delivery would have cost us $30,000 if we didn't have coverage - and that's without complications!).  His work visa was in order and our apartment was supposedly ready for us, so we left in December for sunny St. Helena.

It wasn't a good start when we showed up with all our family at the apartment with all our goods in the moving van, only to be told that the tenants that were supposed to be gone were still there and that they didn't have anything for us (despite the fact that they already took our first month's rent & damage deposit).Thankfully, some quick thinking on my part to write down the phone number of tenant's rights association suddenly inspired the landlady to accommodate us with a different suite.

All of us soon grew to love our St. Helena home, including me. But what's not to love? Warm weather in winter, beautiful coastal views, lots of fun activities for the kids, and on and on. Who knew that the fresh oranges we bought in Canada tasted so different from ones plucked straight from the tree? Bliss! My parents gave a surprise visit in January, and my Mom came again in April after Joel's birth. We had another terrific visit with them in fall and saw the San Francisco Zoo together. It felt as though we may have found paradise on earth.

It was too bad that the wonder of it all was not to last, as we hit tragedy after living there for just over a year. Dan had renewed his work visa with a different company, the owner of which often payed Dan with bad checks. Having a financial crises start due to our rent & bill payments bouncing was bad enough - then we got the news that my Mom's lung cancer was now untreatable - that I needed to get there as soon as possible to say good-bye. Unfortunately, I didn't make it in time - she passed away while we were halfway on our drive there.


Even though I determined to just go on living my life (kind of have to when children need to be looked after), I definitely felt the impact of losing my Mom. I would even say that I went into a depression, though I think I hid it pretty well.  Easy to do when the bad employer situation meant we had to start looking at moving back to Canada & all the stresses that entailed. That and by the time we found a place in Saskatchewan to call home, I was expecting baby #5 in a couple of months.

The move went well, I was happy to be back in Canada, even though I was still far from family and friends and everything went well with Zach's birth (though I got very sick just a few weeks before, probably from all the pent up stress from the previous year). We settled in fairly well, but after a couple of years of -40ºC, the whole family began itching for a change in scenery.

The financial difficulties that we had accumulated in our last few months in California had compounded here in SK, simply because all the kinds of work Dan knows how to do are not in demand in this area. Seemed like a great time to open up a bike shop - lol! :) I think we were very scared of this decision at first (ok, I was terrified, but then, I'm the worry-wart around here), but it turned out to be the best thing Dan could have done. It was like igniting that fire to be adventurous once again.

The first year of business was over, we hadn't ended in bankruptcy, and our sixth child Nathan had been added to the family. We started talking about how it would be so nice to get away for the winter (did I mention that I really hate -40 weather?) Perhaps if we could scrape together just enough money we could get an RV and go back down to California for 4 months and not be cooped up with everybody in the miserable cold.  It was a lovely, lovely dream!

We carefully weighed out the costs of living in our house with all the bills associated with it and life in an RV - oddly, they are pretty close to the same. So when the question came up of "Do we stay here & freeze, & not see Grandma Dianne (who's health has not been great), or do we go see as many family & friends as we can & enjoy a warm winter?" it was no contest! Soon we were searching furiously on the internet - Craigslist, Kijiji, Ebay & RV sales sites.

One thing we decided early on was that we didn't want all of our money to be thrown away on poor gas mileage. The Class C style caught our attention - I liked it for safety reasons, Dan favoured it for fuel economy. After a bit more research, Dan felt that a Toyota chassis would fit the bill, as they typically get 16-24 mpg. But they are hard to come by in good condition, if at all, in Canada. Our other alternative was to find a motorhome that ran on propane. These motorhomes are easier to find, though gas stations that sell propane are hard to find.

This past week we narrowed our choices down to just a handful to look at; after phoning the owners, it was narrowed down to just two: a 21" Toyota Oddyssey and a 21" Ford Vanguard. Both had pros and cons to them, but Dan felt that both were also asking more than they were really worth. As he was humming and hawing between the two, I found another RV available - and it was right here in Saskatchewan!

I phoned the number right away and had a good feeling about it when I talked to one of the owners on the phone. She told me so much detail, that you could tell that it was a cherished home, not just some junk they were trying to get rid of. Their only reason for selling it, I was told, was that they had the opportunity to buy their dream RV - one with a queen bed in the back. Otherwise, if that opportunity had not come along, they would be using it for many years to come.

Dan made an appointment to go see it yesterday and was blown away by just how great the condition of it was. So we are now the proud owners of a propane powered 23' Ford Scamper! :) :) :)