Great Jeep Rally in Durango

We had a great rally in Durango. Lots of fun and food was enjoyed by all.

New TV

When we were in Bend OR, we got our front cabinets rebuilt to hold a new 40" HD TV.

Before and after:

Happy plants on the dashboard

This guy went nuts this summer. It had 19 blooms.

July 2010 - Oregon Coast

In July, it stopped raining. The highs are still in the 60's with a cool breeze off the icy water.



This is a lovely flower that we have seen blooming all along the coast.





We went to McMinnville to the Evergreen Aviation Museum to see the Spruce Goose. It was pretty neat! Gerald really enjoyed all of the planes and the space museum, too.




This picture was from the upper level. The Spruce Goose is so big, you can't get it in one frame. I waited and waited for this guy to get out of the way, but gave up and took it anyway.



Here's Gerald reading one of the plaques.


He was really impressed with this Blackbird.


I was impressed with this corvette...looked just like the one I used to drive.



.....prior to digital.......




Gerald really enjoyed the museum. I enjoyed the gift shop and got some souvenir ice cream in the cafe.


Some of my cactus have been blooming.


This little guy bloomed in May.....



And has a bunch of buds that will be popping out any day. Pic taken today.



My African Violets.


My Orchids.



I also have live lavender that smells so nice!

May June 2010 - Oregon Coast

During May and June, it rained 90% of the days, so when it was sunny, we went to the beach to get some pictures.





In this picture, they were fascinated by a kite someone was flying.



In June, the Rhodo's were blooming and they are beautiful. Click on pictures to enlarge them.

Spring 2010

When we got to Dallas, we had several days enjoying visiting with the grand kids. We stayed at Hickory Creek COE campground, near Lewisville, TX and right on Lewisville Lake. These geese visited us daily.

Traveling again, we stopped in Dumas, TX for the night. A hailstorm had just passed over before we arrived and these were on the ground. Now, they were probably 30-40 minutes old!

During the night, another hailstorm came through and our motorhome shower skylight and both fantastic vent covers were broken. The Jeep has multiple dings on it.

Our next stop was Durango, CO where we are planning an off-road Jeep rally in September.

Then, onto Oregon. A few days in Bend, OR to plan our HDTV upgrade* and then onto the coast.

While in Bend, we also picked up a new camera - so I've been learning all the features. Nikon D5000. They sure aren't like they used to be!

We arrived on the coast May 28.

* We are going to have the front cabinets replaced with a 40" HD tv. They are going to take out the cabinets that go across the top/front and build a frame to hold the tv in place. RV Outfitters in Bend does an excellent job.

Update for 2010

We spent November and December in Texas, visiting family for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Then we headed to southern California to Indio to the Western Area FMCA rally held at the Date Festival grounds. It was a great rally and we got to see a lot of friends.

From there we went to Quartzsite to another BAC rally and spent a couple of weeks dry camping in the desert and loving the shopping at the hundreds of vendors in town. It rained a couple of times, which is unusual for the desert and one storm came through where we recorded 66 mph wind on our Davis Vantage Pro2 weather station. There were quite a few damaged tents in town from that storm.

When we left Quartzsite, we headed northward to Bullhead City, AZ for a few days. From there, we went to the Thousand Trails park in Las Vegas, where we stayed for 2 weeks. We really enjoy the area and the shopping and the buffets! It's nice to be in a big city for a while, and being 6 miles from the strip means less traffic, but close enough to visit it.

We spent one week in Pahrump NV at Charleston Peak RV Resort. Our view was nice and we were able to see Mt. Charleston a lot of the time. It is usually covered with clouds and you don't see the crest very often.

Then, back to Las Vegas for 3 weeks. We were preparing for the BAC Int'l Rally in Albuquerque where I was teaching a couple of craft classes and we were co-rally masters for that rally and had a good bit of things to do to get ready for it.

When we drove to Albuquerque, we went through a snow storm that wasn't fun at all. Several hours of driving on ice and sand on I-40 west of Flagstaff. We were going 15-20 mph a lot of the way.

In Albuquerque, the park was great, tents were set up for our rally and we had about 60 motorhomes attending. The rv park had a fenced dog park that our dogs loved to run around in.
We were there for a week and it snowed twice!

After the rally, we stayed at an rv park east of Albuquerque and attended the FMCA convention in town to shop at the vendors there.

Then, we headed to Texas, stopping at TT Lake Whitney, which we love. We drove to Dallas a few times to visit the girls and grandkids before heading to Farris Ranch in Midway TX.

We got to Midway March 30 and enjoyed spending April there. The flowers are blooming and the weather is beautiful... sunny, cool and breezy.

We are leaving on May 9th to head to Dallas for a week and then onwards to spend the summer in Oregon.