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Visitors to our RV Experiment
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My son Ben and Kim visited during late April on there return trip to Forest Grove, Oregon where both are attending Physicians Assistant school at Pacific University. They are getting married this fall and looking for jobs at the same time. The national PA exam is in mid-September then it is off to real life for both of them. Jackson is a new addition to the family. He is easy to like and already house broken.
While visiting we searched for good locations to hike, ride a mountain bike and ride road bikes in the mountains. This area |
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is full of great trails, paved and un-paved roads so lots of adventure awaits. I just need to get back into good bicycle riding shape to be able to enjoy where I'm living. Fortunately the restaurant has a soft-serve ice cream machine to satisfy the need for "energy" to ride these roads and trails.
Note the Mountain Hardware jackets worn by Ben and Kim. Ben also gave me one so any place we go we look like a Mountain Hardware advertisement. |
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Gwen has discovered HearthSong, a wonderful online toy store she uses to find gifts for the grand kids. Here is a link: HearthSong
Best sellers |
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Our second visitors, just before Mother's Day where Gwen's Daughter Lesa and Grandchildren Dustin and Courtney. Dustin and Courtney are enjoying dessert at the resort restaurant. Gwen gave the kids some spending money for the resort store and Courtney purchased the neckerchief that she has fashioned into a head scarf as she has seen her Hispanic classmates do. |
DogToys.com features
Toys-by Breed
selected especially for your
breed of dog. |
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| Dustin is in fifth grade and doing well in school. Note that Grandma has made everyone remove their shoes before entering our "King of the Road". It's difficult to see but Gwen is hold Morel mushrooms which can be collected in the late spring. These make a wonderful addition to sauces and in this case, were added to our spaghetti sauce that evening. Note the entry platform that Dustin and Lesa are standing on. Lesa is a new hair dresser in Klamath Falls, Oregon. |
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We had some visitors on Sunday, May 22, 2005. Betty and Alice are visiting from Grants Pass. Betty is Alice's mother, a very active 80+, and talks a mile-a-minute. Alice works at the local community college in Grants Pass. She has just been named the Grants Pass "woman of the year" by Zonta International. |
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Both Betty and Alice enjoyed a resort lunch and a short walk around the park. They also felt comfortable while visiting in our fifth wheel home (the photo was taken at our dining table). Betty is a "cat-person" which Annie sensed so she ended up near Betty while we visited. |
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Friday, June 3, 2005, My daughter Mindy came to visit for a three day weekend. Do you remember Jackson from his visit with Ben and Kim in late April (above). Well, Mindy was "dog-sitting" for Jackson and brought him along to visit again. Jackson, Morgan, Mindy and I were able to do some mountain bike riding on Saturday among some other activities. Mr. Sun played another dirty trick on the weekend campers including us. He disappeared on Sunday and Monday, in fact, Monday's high temperature was only 32°F with snow but that did not stop our activities. Jackson has written an account of his visit to Howard Prairie Lake Resort for the second time, this time, with Mindy. |
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June 26, 2005: Gwen and I had visitors today from Grants Pass, Oregon. From the left, Mike is a contractor while Connie is a health care provider. They were out for a "Sunday drive", stopped for breakfast at the resort cafe then visited our fifth wheel. They do not own an RV but found ours |
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comfortable except for having to share the recliner with Annie. |
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July 1, 2005: Jack and Carole are visiting from Oakridge, Oregon. Oakridge is a very nice little town to the east of Eugene in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. Can you believe what Jack and Carole have brought us to use for the rest of the summer? This is Pepper, a 22 foot Bayliner Buccaneer, fixed keel sailboat. Jack and Carole are not sailors, they acquired the sailboat without knowing how to sail first. Since I have owned two sailboats of this size from 1978 to 1990 and sailed them on Lake Tahoe in California, I agreed to keep the boat for him on Howard Prairie Lake and teach him to sail at the same time. What a deal! This coming Friday's What's New will be the first of a two part story showing how we got the sailboat into and out of the lake the first time. |
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July 3, 2005: Gwen's Uncle Norman and Jeanette came to visit at the lake resort. They are from White City, Oregon. Norman is Gwen's Mother's brother. A photo of Gwen's Mother is here. Norman was a Medic in Patton's Army and a World War II veteran. Both Norman and Jeanette love to play bingo. In fact, that is how they met, at the White City bingo center. |
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| July 7, 2005: Dale's parents are visiting from Lodi, California. You've met them before on Father's Day weekend. We chose to rent one of the rental fishing boats with a small cabin from the Howard Prairie Marina for a tour of the lake. Dale and Doris are on their way to Washington for my Father's high school graduation reunion and for a family reunion. A future "What's New" will detail all of the four day adventures we had during their visit. |
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July 31, 2005: Gary and Jeanne are visiting from Grants Pass, Oregon. Gary and Jeanne have built their own kayaks. Aren't they beautiful? Notice Tiller sitting with Gary? Tiller loves to kayak too. After looking at this photo I realized I needed to wear a shirt to hide my Oregon "tan" and flabby body parts. Too late. We had a good paddle to a small cove on the other side of the lake. We had to be careful to avoid the Howard Prairie Regatta. This kayaking day was quit a bit different from when my daughter was visiting. The day was in the 90's in the sun, hence, no shirt. |
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August, 2005: Courtney is Gwen's Grandchild and visited in August for a week. She did many activities and one of those activities was to help Grandma at the restaurant. She learned to roll utensils into napkins plus clear tables and help customers. She actually made a number of tips and seemed to enjoy her first working experience. Perhaps Gwen will do a more detailed report of the week Courtney spent at the resort. |
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August 10, 2005: Alice is a friend visiting for a few days. This is her second visit. She'll be living in a tent next to our trailer. As you can see, she is a blonde. She is a good sport about putting up with my blonde jokes but she truly fits the definition of a "blonde". How many blondes does it take to blow up an air mattress? If I survive this week, perhaps we'll find out. Alice is visiting from Grants Pass and is the Zonta Woman of the Year. She is very proud of that and should be, she works very hard to make Grants Pass a better place to live. |
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| August 26, 2005: Dale's son Joe and Joe's lady-friend, Kim, visited the lake. They rented one of the resort schooners. They also brought their "city" dogs, Tahoe, Joe's dog and Kaia, Kim's dog. The lake was particularly stressful for Kaia so she wrote a story about her adventure to the lake which will appear in What's New later this week. Joe and Kim are from Roseville, California where all bugs, dirt and spiders have been eliminated. Bugs, dirt and spiders are still common in Oregon, especially at the lake. |
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September 1, 2005: Dustin visits his Grandmother (Gwen) and Howard Prairie Lake Resort. While visiting, his goal is to work at the restaurant long enough to earn the money for a new video game.
Grandma, Dustin and Morgan rented a Prairie Belle to take a short tour of the lake and go swimming off the boat. The most difficult part was getting Morgan back into the boat. |
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Of course there is time for recreation at the lake, not just work. Morgan joined all the recreation. Click the photo to the right for a nine second video of good times swimming in the lake.
Courtney is Dustin's sister. She visited a couple of weeks ago (see above). |
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Sunday, September 11, 2005: Terry and Kathy visit from Medford. This was a very special visit because Terry and Kathy stayed here at the resort next to us a couple of months ago and that's how we met them. They have been following our reports at RVeCafe since that week and drove back |
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| to the lake for a Sunday meal at the restaurant then came to our trailer to visit. Terry and Kathy are planning to begin full time RV travel next June in their motor home. Just like Gwen and I, they are learning much before beginning their full-time RV life by researching the Internet. (Note: the new vinyl lettering I applied to the front of our fifth wheel above Kathy's head.) |
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| September 12, 2005: Sheila and Glenn Simpson arrived with our satellite Internet connection. It is so great to be able to create and email on the Internet now from our King of the Road fifth wheel. I can now sit in my back window, look at the mountain resort and create Web pages, stores, email and do my research. I will be making a detailed report of the challenges we faced during installation when I get the chance. That will happen in a few days. In-the-mean-time, take a look at the tree stump Glenn spotted as the perfect site for our tripod. Also note the trees behind the satellite dish, they are just a thick in front of the dish and we happen to find a good enough opening in the trees to "shoot" right between the branches. Finally, note the RVeCafe.com on the dish ... if you ever see that, you'll know you have found us ... or you can just go to the Datastorm Users Group map and find #2476 on the map. See if you can find George, he's number 105 on the map. |
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| Rudy and Diane came to visit on Wednesday, September 28, 2005 to go fishing. Rudy and Diane are friends from Grants Pass. Morgan loved playing with Sidney, a Jack Russell Terrier. Diane is Gwen's "best friend ever" so while Diane was here they went for a long walk and caught up on the whole summer. Rudy is a great fisherman but didn't catch anything today (darn). Rudy and Diane met at Slopes and Trails, a singles activity club. That's the same place Gwen and I met. |
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| October 3, 2005: I guess you can't call this "wildlife" so they must be "visitors" (so they are on the visitor page). Looking out my back window while working on the next Webpage (computer screen on the right), I saw cattle looking for little treats of grass in the campground. Since this is "open range" the cattle have found their way to the resort several times but I've not seen them before. They seem to be in a hurry, grabbing what they can and continuing to march. |
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