It started slowly, as every obsession does…

Something we saw… something we experienced on the road…

Then a question or an idea that transforms what really happened into something else…

Soon,  a short story emerges…

And then another and another…

Before long, a collection comes together…

And I think about sharing it.

Then I realize, on the road, that getting mail is tricky. Getting mail when you’ve ordered something that has a range of delivery dates is even trickier.

What if we’re gone before our package gets here?

So an e-book becomes a possibility. Something that can be immediately downloaded, even read on a computer screen.

But how boring! All those words on the screen. I’d just want to print it out and read it that way, wouldn’t you?

That means getting the printer out. Stocking it with pages and pages of paper. Waiting for it to print. Getting rid of the paper when the stories have been read. Lots of stuff to tote around in an RV. Lots of time.

And what about all those trees, giving their lives every day?

So what if I found a way to make the stories readable onscreen?

Ah! I used to write for the Web! What a perfect match!

What did I learn?

Images.

Not a lot of text per screen.

Throw out the rules of paragraphing. 

Tinker tinker.

Toil and trouble.

Worry.

Would the files, with the images, be too large to download?

Maybe instead of packing all of the stories into one file they should be split up into smaller, “mini-collections.”

Voila!

Road Tales, Illustrated Stories about Full-Time RVing is born! Volume 1, anyway.

Available exclusively from www.lulu.com …

This first set of two stories (145 screens!) includes:

     –  “She Did What?!?” Listen in on a phone conversation between two sisters as they discuss their mother’s decision to sell her house and go with her husband on the road full-time in their motorhome. Did she make the right decision? One sister doesn’t think so….

     — “Letter of Deepest Apologies” When a couple decide to take their craft business on the road full-time to travel from show to show, they discover that full-timing is more than they bargained for. Will they survive the trials and tribulations they discover on the road?

These stories were fun to write — and have given me a chance to exercise my fiction muscles, among all the blogging and article-writing I’ve been doing lately.

If you’ve read my novel, None But the Dead and Dying, you’ll find something very different in these short stories.

I hope you’ll take a look — and will enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them!

We were in a long, early fall — leaving northern Washington and now northern Oregon at what felt like the same time, though weeks apart.

From the truck windows we followed the golden leaves along the route southward. Here a herd of alpacas plays and grazes in the fall foliage.

Across the hillsides, we could see the smoke from distance fires — houses burning wood to fend off the autumn chill.

We’d delayed our trip south by a day to let a big storm pass — one of several coastal weather fronts that sent us south along main interstates rather than along the coast as we’d planned. Oh, well — there’s always next time, right?

The Timber Valley SKP park was a beautiful spot to wait out the California storms raging to the south. We were greeted immediately by several of the deer that roam through the area.

The rules of the park are clear: no feeding the animals. And the deer weren’t the only critters roaming the land:

Sutherlin, Oregon, is a small town where we spent some time in Books Gallery, chatting with the mother of one of the owners, who was minding shop while to give them a little time off. The selection of books was excellent and the coffee and pastries delicious!

Thanks to her recommendation, we scooted south to the Lighthouse Center Bakery, located in the one building that comprises the business district of Umpqua, Oregon. A sign outside pointed to this same building for the Community Center, but where exactly within the building it is isn’t clear. Perhaps the bakery — which is also a cafe and health foods grocery — quadruples as the place for town meetings.

With just a couple of houses in the vicinity, this tiny community is an ideal place for someone who truly wants to get away from it all!

But with chilly temps closing in, and the weather ahead clear for the time being, it was soon time to move on to another autumn in another state.

We’re supposed to tell everyone it rained the entire time we were in Portland, Oregon. That way nobody else will move there. So…. despite the blue skies you see in these photos and reading about what we did while in the area, assume it rained while we were there in October.

We generally avoid cities except to pop in from the fringes, but we enjoyed our time around Portland, all due to Dave and Mary Jo.

Longtime residents of the area, they knew the best places to eat and shop — every city should have a place like the Four Seasons, which beats Whole Foods hands down in all ways, but especially with their extensive and delicious deli. Eating healthy never tasted so good!

Avid bicyclists, they took us once-around their practice route, which was ten miles around a reservoir outside the city. And we thought we were in shape!!

They even took us the opposite way around the lake than they usually ride, so we would have smaller hills to climb. We managed to make it all the way around — and got a great workout!

We’d wanted to visit Mt. Hood while we were in the area, and Mary Jo and Dave were game for that trip, so we headed east from the city. First stop, the Vista House, a beautiful old building marking the western edge of the Crown Point State Scenic Corridor.

“Vista” is right. The view from here was fantastic!

The scenic route through the Columbia Gorge parallels I-84 on the south side, giving access to a series of waterfalls. Thanks to our local guides, we stopped at “the best ones” rather than all of them, making the most of our time.

In 1929, Guy and Geraldine Talbot donated the land surrounding the Latourell Falls to the state of Oregon, one couple among many citizens and civic groups to donate land to the scenic highway and recreation reserve.  (We might thank the Talbots for the falls, but Mary Jo gets kudos for this photo of us in front of the falls!)

The short hike to Bridal Veil Falls was worth it. If only Ellen’s skill with the camera could really capture the damp smell and light spray that makes every waterfall magical.

And what’s a road trip without great food and shopping? Lunch at Celilo in Hood River was fabulous, followed by stops in local shops, with chocolates for dessert.

The day was going fast, so on up Route 35 to Timberline Lodge we went. At 6000′, the lodge sits pretty high up the mountain, but the summit for Mt. Hood is another 5200+ feet up — no short day hike for this trek!

But just as Mount Rainier had coyly hid itself behind fog and clouds for days before we glimpsed it, Mt Hood did the same. It seemed the closer we were, the harder it was to see, with the cloud line just past the ski lifts.

Chilly at this elevation, without enough snow for skiers, this was a quiet time to visit.

Eventually, back in the lower elevations of farmland, we glimpsed the mountain through the back window.

Not only were there great things to see and do around the city, Portland has its own set of attractions, which we barely explored in our short time there. (Don’t get me started on the chocolate shops!)

Thanks to Dave and Mary Jo, we navigated the public rail system into the city and to the Saturday market.

Booths of arts and crafts items, food vendors, and music of all sorts surrounded us! (Notice all the umbrellas and rain coats in these photos?!?)

Thank you, Dave and Mary Jo, for giving us your time and for your hospitality! We loved spending time with you and saw a side of Portland we surely would have missed. We’re already looking forward to seeing you again! (PS to Mary Jo — *Agnes and the Hitman* was a great read! Thank you!)

Eventually we left the beautiful state of Washington, heading south. Our plan was to steer back to the Pacific coastline but first we wanted to stop through Portland, Oregon, where Bob had the address and phone number of a long-time friend.

We didn’t realize it, but somewhere in our Washington travels we crossed a toll bridge and missed the toll booth.

How that can happen in a one-ton, long-bed, crew-cab dually pickup truck towing a 38′ fifth wheel with two bikes strapped to the back is a mystery. Everyone who knows us can tell you that we pay every toll (even the enormous ones for driving the NY Thruway, despite the fact that the state never prints those rates and slams you with them when you arrive at the booth).

We wouldn’t learn of our transgression in Washington until much further down the road when we got our mail, which included a traffic violation citation. Included with the ticket was a photo of our front license plate, taken from who knows where.

Bob called the number provided (“If you have questions, please call….”) for more information — mostly to find out which bridge (there are a lot of them in Washington), but he got a recording that said that due to cutbacks no one was there to answer the phone.

He tried the toll collection agency, and they said we’d missed a sign that said we needed to exit so we could pay the toll.

Huh?

We needed to leave the road to pay for the toll for a bridge that was on the road?

We follow our GPS and don’t remember seeing any such sign.

By the time we received the ticket, we were too far away to return in person, so we wrote to explain our situation to them. We offered to pay the regular toll ($4) but protested the ticket.

To make a very long story short, the judge ruled that we had to pay the fine, which we did.

Let’s be clear: we didn’t intend to avoid paying something that we lawfully should have paid.

Bob sent letters to the Attorney General and others, and we actually received a call from someone in the Tacoma mayor’s office. He was very nice, but said there’s nothing they can do.

He did tell us that the bridge in question exists. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge is one of those tricky toll bridges where you are charged heading in one direction, but not the other. We’d crossed it coming in on the non-toll end, which helps explain our confusion.

What bothers us this:

 – The Washington folks never took a look at Bob’s driving record, or they would have seen that this is his first ticket in probably 40 years.
 – So a good driving record apparently doesn’t count for much in this state.

We know how hard up the states are for revenue — we started out from Michigan, remember.

But to squeeze every retiree driving an RV for an extra $48 just seems cold.

Our image of what a great state Washington is was certainly marred by this incident. If the mayor’s office hadn’t called, we still wouldn’t know which bridge it was. And their insistence that we pay the fine instead of the original toll left us feeling like we’d just been had for an extra $48.

Though we like to spend as much time as we can hiking and bicycling and exploring the areas we’re visiting, there are things that always have to be done that just weren’t on our list of chores when we had a house that didn’t move.

Waxing it, for example.

And of course there was that tire issue we had (see Ashes, Ashes)….

Sometimes it rains (!) so we find other things to do… usually grocery shopping, picking up supplies, or other errands.

Learning addicts, we like to find out all we can about every area we spend time in. Sometimes Ellen takesphotos of interpretive signs so she can zoom in on the details later to get correct information about the things posted in this blog or in her journal.

Sometimes we’re confounded by what we find, but — of course — Ellen takes photos anyway, just in case she can figure it all out later.

Including pictures of scat….

We had a couple of great pictures to show you of the truck getting its tires rotated (imagine that!), but the man at the service center told Ellen she had to erase them because they don’t allow photos at their place of business…

..so imagine here a picture of the truck at a service center we won’t name (why give them free advertising if we can’t use the photo?).
And, being on the road, staying in shape is always a challenge. When we find a great place to get a good workout, we like to take advantage of it. (More on this location to come!)

So behind the scenes, we’re doing all the stuff you have to do anywhere — grocery shopping, meal prep, stocking up on supplies…

But we’re also doing things like arranging to have mail sent, following up on all the stuff we get in the mail (like sending in a response to Ellen’s jury summons notice), figuring out where we’re going next, how we’ll get there, and where we’ll stay.

Then we’ll start all over again — orienting ourselves to a new town, finding the organic foods and farmer’s markets, then discovering that the best cottage cheese we found can’t be had in the new place, that there’s not a single ice cream parlor in town that serves hard-packed (old-fashioned) ice cream, and other minor disappointments.

Every place is unique… every town has its own personality. But no matter where you are, you still have things you need to take care of.

Some things in life just don’t change!

From our desert to your homes and hearts

Dungeness Spit is the longest natural sand spit in the nation, a super place to birdwatch, and one of the best places around for a great hike along the beach (11 miles round trip to the lighthouse at the end and back).

Designated as a national wildlife refuge, one side of the spit is off-limits to humans, so hiking the full spit means gauging your timing to the tides. You won’t get stranded along the spit, but the hike over huge, beached trees and logs would make a return hike much slower and more arduous.

Stretching out into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the spit was busy with birds, many of them floating the day away on loose logs adrift off the shore.

But seagulls roamed nearby…

…cormorants perched within view…

…and a pair of loons swam just close enough to see them in the strait.

The spit is a great place to wander, relax, and watch the ships sail by.

Olympic National Park takes up most of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State and 95% of it is designated as wilderness. Even with an extended visit to this part of the country, we knew we wouldn’t be able to see it all.

Thanks to an article by Richard and Ellen Thane in Travel Life (August 2004 — Bob saved this article knowing we’d come out this way eventually!), we narrowed our focus to day trips to the Hurricane Ridge area near Port Angeles where we hiked Hurricane Hill — elevation 5757 feet.

After walking trails in single file to pass streams of people coming the other way, the relative emptiness of this trail was invigorating.

We rested at the top…

…and peered throught the binocs to see Port Angeles and Victoria, BC, in the distance.

It’s always fun to discover the survey markers on these mountains, though this one, surprisingly, didn’t include the elevation.

Bears were in higher elevations, the rangers told us, but we did startle this grouse….

…though this deer, which grazed along the trail, posed for the hikers who edged past it.

Though we’ll have to save the coast and rain forest areas for another time, we drank in all that we could of the mountains during this visit.

When we checked in at the Evergreen Coho SKP Park in Chimicum, Washington, the manager asked if we wanted a weekly or monthly spot. We opted for the weekly site and ended up staying a month!

We became regulars at the Saturday morning farmer’s market in Port Townsend, where we stocked up on fresh, organic fruit and veggies, stuffing our bags full before lugging them back to the truck. We discovered how good a well-made fish taco can taste, and supplemented what we couldn’t find a the farmer’s market by stopping at the Food Co-op.

Port Townsend was holding the Wooden Boat Festival while we were there, and we watched boats of all sizes and shapes as they passed by the pier.

Busy town! A few weeks later the kayakers arrived with their festival.

    

Walking the beach was a great way to explore while getting some exercise.

Salmon fishing was good on this day, at least for this man.

As we walked, we saw an intriguing sign with a warning about safety, so of course we headed right over to see what was there. We didn’t see much at first — a cement rectangle in the earth that looked like a foxhole, then a platform:

We roamed the crumbling site, intrigued and feeling as though we had been the first in years and years to discover the place.

We eventually found our way to the “front” of the site, and found out we were standing in the remains of Battery Kinzie.

Located within Fort Worden, the battery was built “where it could protect the entire entrance of Admiralty Inlet from shore to shore.

Its beachside position allowed it to cover the waterway below the fog that often lay just above the surface of the water” (from the interpretive sign).

    

The warning signs? Reminding people like us that there were no railings to keep us from falling off the edges, and that the walls, ceilings, and stairs could be weak and fall out from under us at any time.

It was nice to be someplace we could explore as we wanted, rather than moved along some fenced pathway nearby!

Our discoveries included living, breathing animals, too. These otters were napping (or seeing what woke them up) on the wharf near the marine interpretive center.

It’s easy to see why so many people like to call this part of the country home!

…are in Seattle! Ellen travelled to Seattle for work and thought it would be a great place to visit again with Bob, so they made sure to get a ferry schedule and venture across Puget Sound to the big city.

On the ferry from Bainbridge we met a helpful local man named Sean who not only took our photo but helped orient us to the terminal, the return-ticket process, and the best walking routes to and from the Pike Place Market. Wherever you are, Sean — thank you!

 

 

 

 

He pointed out Mt. Rainier and it was great seeing it this way, knowing we had hiked so close to it it seemed we could touch its snowy peak. We also looked at each other and said, “Looks like they’ve had more snow there, doesn’t it?”

The Park Place Market was even more crowded than I remembered it, so we did a quick walk-through, and got back out into the (relatively speaking) more open space of the sidewalks and shops in the neighborhood. Amazing how lunchtime in a city can be claustrophobic after so many months of smaller towns and open country!

We happened upon a recommended restaurant — Etta’s — and were lucky to get a table by the window where we watched people in the park across the street have their lunches on the lawn or rush along the sidewalk, some of them carrying bags with French bread loaves sticking out, others with bunches of flowers in their hands. Friday shopping before the weekend — or maybe it’s always this way.

We didn’t buy much, despite being psyched for some shopping, but were glad we picked up some rolls and muffins at the Alaskan Sourdough Bakery near the terminal building on the waterfront. The marionberry and blueberry muffins were especially good. Paired with coffee from the ferry terminal, noshing on them made our wait for departure (delayed for some reason) go by much faster.

On the news that morning we heard about a scare in Washington, DC, where the Coast Guard conducted training without notifying the general public.  We were glad we’d heard the report when suddenly some CG boats zoomed up on our ferry, big guns at the ready.

Not usually a big deal, but on 9/11 it’s easy to get nervous when you see the military out and about. And as the guns on the boats shifted angles and crossed our path, a chill ran through me, too. The ferry service made an announcement about the training exercise, so we didn’t experience the scare that those on the East Coast felt. Before long the CG boats zoomed away from us to trail a ferry heading toward the city. (Does this mean that in the case of an emergency everyone in Seattle would be safer than those on Bainbridge Island? Just askin’.)

If we could fly like the birds into the city, we would have gone more than once during the time we spent in the Olympic Peninsula, but with a busy, hour-long drive to the ferry, then another thirty minutes on the ferry to get to Seattle (plus a return trip), we opted to stick around the Peninsula instead.

And there was plenty to do there!