Beautiful Montana, lovely Idaho, gorgeous Oregon, & finally, our return to Portland!

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Well, we spent an awe-inspiring week in Montana! We went through Custer National Forest & headed west through the grasslands. Then north through the Swan valley, where we spent four days camped by the lovely Lake Inez, for free! :) We continued north up to White Fish, which was quite charming, & then headed south again past Flathead Lake, down to Missoula. Missoula is a darling town surrounded by stunning mountains, & we had planned on spending weeks there. Unfortunately, they had passed a city ordinance in 2007 that prohibited sleeping in vehicles overnight, so we split after only three days so we didn't get busted for being law-breakers! We went into Idaho through the Bitterroot mountains at Lolo pass, taking time to soak in the Weir hot springs. It's quite possibly the most beautiful hot springs known to man, with a rock tub perched on a mountain overlooking a little valley that has a little stream running through it. And no sulphur smell to assault the nostrils! We continued south through some amazing mountains in Idaho, past Hell's Canyon, & down to Payette for a long overdue visit with my niece (& brother & sister-in-law). We had a nice week there, doing chores and being showered with gifts for the bus, & actually getting showers, which we hadn't had since leaving Ohio! So now our bus has more carpet, a cute wood stove & some of the pipe required to hook it up, a toilet (oh god it's soooooo great!), a sink to eventually be installed, a real mattress for the bed, & more dishes! Tuesday we left Payette with my 13 & 1/2 year old niece & her friend & headed to Oregon. Took 26 through Eastern Oregon, went the slow scenic route through Sisters, stopped by Cougar Hot Springs, & out to the coast via Corvallis. It was a nostalgic trip up the coast for us, retracing our path, but on land. Now we are in Astoria, only hours from Portland, & comparing how different we are now from the last time we were here, on our little sailboat: Minor Key. So much has happened in 10 short months, & we never thought we would be coming back on a 40 ft school bus instead of a 29 ft sailboat! But life is full of surprises; best just to roll with it & keep your head above water...

Through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, South Dakota, & now Montana!

It never ceases to amaze me how much can happen in a week! We left Ohio on the second day of June, & zipped across Indiana and Illinois, spending that night just over the border of Iowa in the world's largest truck stop. The next day we crossed Iowa and stayed in a Walmart parking lot in Norfolk, Nebraska. Friday we left Nebraska and crossed into South Dakota, and stayed at the Cedar Pass campground in the Badlands. As fate would have it, a couple we had met on South Padre Island, TX, Dean and Mary, were hosting there. AND, as fate would have it, Dean was MC-ing karaoke [=-)] that night at the bar in Interior, SD (pop. 57), located 2 miles away, & needed a ride in. So we got to be heroes, AND do karaoke! There were cowboys, some dogs wandering in and out, a longer lived fellow named Bob, from SF, CA, riding his motorcycle home from a wedding in Chicago, an old cowboy named Roland that asked me to dance numerous times, and ended up showing Michael how to dance(let me tell you, THAT was something to see in a small town cowboy bar!), a beautiful Native American lady that had a great talk with Michael because they both used to drive flatbed semi trucks, and the owner of the bar with the best handlebar mustache you ever saw! As the night progressed, we also met a guy named Wade (our age) and his friend Mike (a bit younger, & a bit buzzed). We did some more dancing and ended up going outside with Wade to show him the bus and geek out on rocks (things were getting crazy in the bar). Wade was super cool, and took us out rock-hounding the next day. He also drove us around the Badlands on a fantastic tour. Sunday we left, sadly, for Rapid City, & stayed in another Walmart, where we ran into another couple we met in Quartzsite, AZ, Andy & Dianne. Monday we left and entered into Wyoming for 20 miles, then finally made it to Montana! We stayed that night at a free campground in the Custard National Forest, surrounded by red shale, & green pines and green grass! It was a stunning introduction to this beautiful state, where we plan to spend weeks! After traveling through miles of Montana grasslands, we crossed the continental divide yesterday, back in the west! Now we are camped next to the gorgeous Lake Inez, in the Swan Valley in western Montana, & planning on staying at our free campsite for a bit!

Beautiful times in Ohio!

Well, as we sit here in Nebraska, it is blatantly obvious that a really good blog update is definitely in order. Whether or not this one will fit the ticket is still up for debate, but I'll give it my best! We arrived in the Cincinnati area (Mason, to be exact) on May 22nd, the day after Michael's birthday. His parents were only too happy to play the most perfect hosts, especially after having a four year hiatus between visits! So, I believe it is safe to say, they absolutely spoiled us rotten in a wonderful rendition of the return of the prodigal son. You wouldn't believe the fantastic meals his mom made (she comes from an Italian family; I literally gained seven pounds in a week & a half!). And they were gracious enough to take us sight-seeing all over the place. The (live) butterfly exhibit at the Krohn Conservatory, Connersville for trains and Metamora for the grist mill, Jungle Jim's World Market (like WOW!) to name a few places, plus sampling local food (La Rosa's, Skyline, Graeters, & more)! Cincinnati & the surrounding areas offers much to see, do & eat...chili on spaghetti noodles! Crazy, but delicious! And we had our first radio interview, with the Brian & Joe show! (they are completely awesome, hilarious and fun, & we could have talked for many more hours!) The interview is available on-line for those not within the radio's waves at: www.brianjoeshow.com, if any of you get curious. The show airs Tuesday, so that's when it will be available on the web! Anyways, I could ramble for hours about how much fun we had in Ohio, but...well, you know, gotta go! We'll write more later!

The surprises continue & now we are in Ohio!

It has been quite a long time since we've done an update of our adventures! We had confortably settled into a routine on the island: we got kayaks and started kayaking in the bay a couple of times a week, we were going to a drum circle every Tuesday night and the farmer's market every Sunday, we were making friends and making money...it was good! But the winds of change never really stop blowing, and we have been especially sensitive to them this year. Little signs started showing up: rust on the bus, mosquitoes, sand, & weird things adding up to? The need for change. The straw that broke the camel's back was having a friend in Portland tell me his cancer had come back and that we should come home. That tipped the scales, and suddenly we were springing into action and two weeks later on the road again! We left South Padre Island last Tuesday, the 18th, and arrived at Michael's parents' house north of Cincinatti on Saturday, the 22nd. It has been four years since they have seen each other and the reunion has been very sweet! Today we have a radio interveiw on a local radio show, called the Brian and Joe show! And in a week, we will get back on the road and start heading home to Portland!

Tropical Tip Of Texas and its Offerings

Hey folks, It seems to be the perfect time for an update of our South Padre Island experience...its been awhile, so hello again out there. Cathy and I are doing well and still living on the beach, a very exciting and relaxing endeavor. We still have not left the island since we arrived. The tiny island of South Padre is so skinny in some spots that you can look from one end to the other, yet it is the center for so much celebration and life. Some of the celebration and "life" is very texas like and some of it is very nondescript, feeling as though you could be very far from texas. It is very tropical here and it does feel like we have somehow reached our tropical island...even if it was in a very unconventional manner. But either way we are here and enjoying our time here , the weather is warming up quite a bit mostly in the 70s and 80s...soon though it will be in the 90s and 100s...dred. It is just past Sea Turtle mating season the Kemps Ridley Sea Turtles and others are about to start laying their eggs on the beach soon. The Island hosts the largest population and the only nesting area for these endangered turtles. We visited Sea Turtles Inc. a rescue center here on the island. They had pocket sized baby sea turtles and huge elders. We will include photos in the future( forgot the camera!). All in all its very laid back island and people are good , the only crazy times so far were on texas spring break week and Semana Santa , the Mexican Holy week which just finished. Both were apparent reasons for huge parties on the beach ...our beach and huge amounts of trash on the beach...our beach, and complete lack of awareness of how ones actions influence everyone around you. But thankfully the beach is ours again and is almost completely empty aside from our lovely RV friends , Dean and Mary. They have been down on the beach for a bit longer than us and have been host to numerous movie nights and fires and Kareoke!!! Outside on the beach....Cathy is in love! They have been quite fun , we will hate to see them go at the end of the month ...off to the Grand Tetons. We have finally gotten a pretty good hang of our new jobs at Naturallys. It still is little odd having a steady job aside from New Seasons , but the skills learned working with New Seasons so long is fully helping things out at Naturallys. We Do Miss the Northwest and will be happy to return Portland. So much to say about what we are seeing and doing now ....words cannot do it justice , so I will let the pictures talk a little. Enjoy ...and Thank you all and remember its spring , so Plant Seeds and Sing Songs!!!!

The whirling, twirling tour comes to rest on South Padre Island!

The glorious month of February flashed by in a flurry of fun frolicking and travel! We departed from Quartzsite, AZ on Feb. 4th and spent the night in the wilds outside Bouse, AZ. The next day we headed into Pheonix to pick up a trailor, and three passengers, Patrick, Kieth, & David. Slept in a Walmart parking lot outside of Tucson that night. We had hoped to have a chance to explore Tucson a bit and pick up three more passengers, but we didn't anticipate how crazy the gem & mineral show would make driving (and parking, especially with at least a 10 ft trailor attached to an already 40 ft bus!). And after our first night, we realized there was no space for more riders to sleep on the bus. Finally found parking on the outskirts of town, only for Michael to notice that the trailor was so heavy it was cracking our trailor hitch. So THEN we had to call Hiedi and tell her she needed to come retrieve it, and wait for hours while she drove down from Pheonix to get it. So we ended up leaving Tucson & camping at some caverns east of town. Didn't get to see the caverns (too expensive), but we got to hang out with the very cool camp host, also named Michael, also from Portland. Next day we headed out to BLM land near the New Mexico border. Beautiful & remote. A passing RV told us about Hot Dunes recreational area, with hot springs, down the road, so the next day we headed out to see it. It was an amazing little oasis in the desert, and I soaked four times! Then we set off for New Mexico! Went over incredible mountains and entered the land of enchantment (honestly, that's what the sign said!). There was snow on the ground, and an abundance of mud, as well as the first pines we had seen in months. After an attempt to drive down a muddy road to a campground that almost got us stuck, we ended up sleeping in the hotel parking lot in the tiny, charming town of Reserve, New Mexico. The next morning, we met some of the locals; they were all delightful! Then off to Three Rivers and petrogliphs! We stayed there a couple of days to soak in the magic of ancient art, met a cool traveler named Josh, & then back to the road! Went to Roswell, saw no aliens, so we kept on going & found some more gorgeous dunes near the Texas border to camp for the night. Our first night in Texas found us staying in another Walmart parking lot. Then we finally made it to Austin! A city bursting with history and coolness, we made camp in a CVS parking lot (it was surrounded by two empty buildings, & the employees of CVS said it was fine to park out of the way), and proceeded to explore. We left for one night to go camp at the Emma Long Metropolitan Park; we found and ate many pecans. Woke up there on my birthday, Feb. 17th, to frost and the marvelous little lake. Went back to CVS parking lot. Got to hang out with Sarah from Portland; her husband, Tim, was in school. It was good to see a familar face in a strange town. Kieth had left Monday for Corpus Cristi, so the rest of us went out to celebrate Mom popping me out 32 years ago. The next day we headed for Corpus Cristi, and another Walmart parking lot for the night. Finally, the next day, we made it to our destination: South Padre Island. As fate would have it, Michael's photo job fell through due to the lack of students signing up for spring break. And, also as fate would have it, the health food store on the island, Naturally's, had just lost two employees. The manager, Laura, wanted both of us, but not just for a month, for the whole summer! So we're staying here through Labor Day! Spreading the word and making money on a beautiful tropical island in one fell swoop! Life is very good, and this nice universe seems to like us a lot, because it definitely showers the blessings on us! Thank you nice universe!

Into the Wild Unknown ...again

Well we are getting ready to pull out of lovely Quartzsite, our sunny home for the past 2 months. We are heading eastbound as the plans goes . Into the unknown again ...a very exciting prospect indeed. We have stayed in this part of the desert longer than any other place on our journey. And yes it has been very magical and serendipity has been in the air since we arrived, but its time to move on. We have been introduced to our new home here and have came to know many kind folk down here.
We will be cruising east to Mesa to pick up a passenger bound for Houston and possibly other eastbounders in Tucson. We have time to see some things on the way now , we have 3 or 4 weeks until South Padre. We have settled into our new digs nicely and are really enjoying the room and privacy the bus offers. And while we are on the subject of the bus I would like to take care of some possible misconceptions about our new chosen method of travel. First and foremost I will adress the safety and structural integrity of busses in general . They are designed to transport people...children to be more specific, so they must pass stringent inspections to remain on the road. Your standard issue RV is designed to look good and be light ...
not to be strong , or safe. The bus came straight from the school district and has been maintained well , the perfect platforn to build a home with a motor. It is an International Amtrans bus with one of the cleanest and most efficient diesel engines made...the International DT466, well known as the workhorse of the fleet as well as one of the cleanest burning and fuel efficient engines ever produced for busses. And it has the direct capability to run off of recycled cooking oil. We have basically been driving it and parking it and Bicycling everywhere ..Major Key just sits at the campsite with the solar panel on the roof charging up the batteries while we do our stuff in town , we have driven our bus maybe 60 mile in the past 3 weeks , not too bad. Well anyway I am rambling , I just wanted to give some more background on Why we now have a 40 foot bus! Thanks again folks for all your support and for keeping in touch ....We shall see you down the great open road.