September 4, 2004 - Lake Sawyer, Black Diamond, WA - 2 (On the way here)

My brother Ken and his wife Nancy live in Colville, WA, which is only about 60 or 70 miles from Spokane.  Since we had the Road Abode in for service at Spokane after the LOW conference, we decided to pop over and harass them for the day.  Ken had let the battery on his truck die, so when he needed to start it, the Jeep came in handy.  We're picking up the trailer to haul it back to his place so he can do some work on it for a fellow.  And naturally, lunch was on the menu for the day.

DJ's is a good place to find the forge Ken needs in his shop.  Sure enough, he found one!  He'll come back later to talk about buying it, because we were in the Jeep and it doesn't carry forges nearly as well as the truck will.  What an amazing place!  We could have spent an entire day there trying to figure out what it was we were looking at.  Like that very well used machine that looks like a spreader or bailer or ??????.

Ken and Barb are watching the black lab watching them.  He wandered around the place like he owned it, and the ice cream was GREAT!  But isn't it always?  Then back to their place, you can see the yellow trailer that made it home just fine, and Ken's shop.  Couple of years ago we visited them, and Ken let me help him put a couple of sheets of metal on the roof with him.

The woodshed with the log splitter (what a great invention that gadget is) and the tool shed.  See that boat in the foreground?  Well, someday if we both live long enough, Ken is going to take me fishing in it.  But we're both going to have to get a lot older at the rate we've been using it!

Among his several talents, Ken is a wood carver.  He made that sign for our folks when they moved from the big house to a mobile home a very long time ago.  Since the folks don't need it anymore, it now graces the porch here.  Ever seen a cat massage?

Well, now you have.  That cat would just roll around letting Ken give him a serious deep massage for all he was worth.

OK.  I'm a creationist, not an evolutionist, alright?  So, how's it that every cat every born was pre-programmed to get up on cars?  Now I can understand the guys climbing up on the hood to get warm, but on a hot day they don't need warming, and yet they still climb up on cars.  This one's not near as fat as it appears, it's just real fluffy.  And why's it up there on the roof?  To get revenge for all the cats killed by cars?  Who knows.  Drives me nuts, but I can't help but grin.

Here we are at our all time favorite restaurant for Mexican food--Rio Blanco, in Auburn, WA.  Every time we go out for Mexican, we always compare it to the Rio Blanco, and every time Rio Blanco comes out on top.  And what better treat than to share it with good friends.  On the right are Burke and Sally Barlow.  Burke was the Group Leader for our very first SOWER project in Phoenix, AZ, and on the left are Jim and Elaine Lander and Jim was the Group Leader for our second SOWER project at Lake Retreat about 6 or 7 miles from where I'm sitting at the moment.  Jim and Burke had ordered chicken, and as you can see, they got it!  And then even though she hadn't ordered it, Barb got the Porker!  What fun!  And what great food, too.  We've been coming here since 1998, and many of the staff have been here since then too.

One of the big draws for us to come back to this area at least every two years, and annually if we can, are our friends.  Some of my best friends are these two guys.  I used to work with both of them, and the guy in the middle, Bill Mast, was the guy that got me back into the shooting sports and has been storing my "toys" for the past seven years.  On the left is Steve Pribnow, one of the best shots I've ever messed around with  Steve and his wife Karen had us all over for dinner, and it sure was great swapping stories and telling each other lies about what we used to do some 10-15 years ago.  Then we got a call from Joyce Shultz (formerly Joyce Jenkins) and her husband Peter.  They were in town and wondered if we had time to visit.  Did we!  They'd come down from Petersburg, AK, in their 65' foot Norwegian built yacht.  Isn't she a beauty.

If you peer a bit, you can see Barb sitting up there in the cockpit, and I couldn't resist a shot of "O'Vation".  Modern boat built on very vintage lines.  We both love stuff like that.

Peter and Joyce and Barb peeking through the wheel.  And isn't that hat great on my bride?  She normally doesn't like hats, but that one of Joyce's seems to really suit her.  We've begun to search for one.  You can see a bit of O'Vation over Barb's shoulder.

Never did get the cat's name, but that big guy is Max.  The similarities between living aboard and being full time RV'ers are many.

Not positive, but I think we have just about as much counter space in our 40' motorhome as they have in their 65' floating home.  This isn't their only home.  They also have a beautiful house we've not seen in Petersburg, Alaska.  Peter was in the printing business before he sold it, and Joyce was the librarian in Petersburg before she retired.

On the left is a little example of the quality of workmanship on this yacht.  That corner protruded a bit over a stairwell, and could have simply been rounded off, but no, it got treated the way we like to see things treated.  It was great fun to see them, and Peter even treated us to dinner in a nice Italian restaurant we remembered as having been a pizza parlor when we used to live near here in our own boat.  And see that "treasure" on the right?  Yeah, it's an old cruddy coin.  The very first find Barb and I made with our new metal detector.  I sold most all my "toys" that Bill has been storing for me all this time, and took the cash and bought toys we can take with us.  Anyway, we were parked in a Thousand Trails park in Silver Creek for a week, and one evening we went to the playground to see if I could remember what the owners manual told me about turning the gadget on, and Barb was armed with the digging tools.  Our very first find was this 1979 penny.  Worth exactly one cent.  But it's a coin, isn't it?  And wasn't that what we were after?  We also found pop-tops, nails, wire, and some aluminum.  We'll learn, we'll learn.

Well, you can guess where we are.  Long Beach, WA, for the kite festival.

First articulated fire truck we'd seen.  Seems the older we get the more we see things we'd never seen before.  Flying pigs and cows--as kites!

You ever heard of the Long Beach Kite Festival?  Well, enjoy.  We'd just gotten out of the car, parking in the public lot on the beach at Long Beach, WA, and already I was overwhelmed by the variety.

Not all the colorful things were in the sky, either!  Gotta love the ability to express yourself, eh?

What can I say.  The variety was almost unbelievable.  The number of multiple kites on a single string sort of surprised us.

See that guy with his arm in the air?  The one with the killer tan?  He's flying three separate kites all at the same time.  Each kite has two lines to control it.  Busy guy.

The fellow with the colorful shorts (Square Pants Sponge Bob?) had a kite to match.  And those three kites standing at attention on the beach belong to that guy with his arm in the air.

The guy was amazing.  I wished I'd been able to go out to talk to him, but walking in the sand isn't fun when you've got a torn meniscus.  The two fellows working on that six-sided kite are part of the competition for kites (home-built) of this style.  There were all kinds of competitions going on.

Kites all over the place!

Well, as you can tell, we liked the Kite Festival a lot.  But not as much as good times with friends!  Tim and Vicky, and Bill (taking the picture) and Liz were neighbors of ours when our house had a foundation in Federal Way.  Bill and Liz have since moved into this house, and we got a chance to see it and get caught up a little on what's been going on with everybody.  Is this a great lifestyle, or what?