{Here: let me say it for you. Sheesh!}
OK, first of all, after a full year back in the Florida Keys... yes, we are alive and well and living in Maine.
As in, blueberries and lobstah... Maine?!
{ah yup}
More on THAT move in the next post... or maybe the one after that. I dunno. Plans are very fluid for us, as I am sure you have appreciated. Or not appreciated, quite possibly.
So, let's hop in the "way back" machine and go back to December 2014, for a visual trip down memory lane and across the country, the longest way you can possibly go: from the Pacific Northwest to the Florida Keys!
And, away we
So, first, here is what our little cozy corner spot for Baba G looked like, back in Bandon, next to our favorite neighbor ever...
You can also see Fink & Tigger's favorite cob cottage hangout, off to the right. Solar gain = cat heaven.
And here is our favorite neighbor, Nelson, helping Nate test out the new exhaust system for the generator, to ensure we didn't carbon monoxide ourselves to death on the return trip (a real danger):
{Nelson, you see how dangerous it is to prompt us for blog posts: you may just end up IN them!}
We miss you!!!
So, on December 1st, despite the fact that I was still {ahem} teaching online, we pulled our wagon train of two into a circle and hit the highway, in a DRENCHING downpour... that turned to snow showers as we summited the Cascades:
Yes, that's me up in the trees-- SNIFFING-- because the whole summit smelled like a giant Christmas tree. Mmmmmmmmmm....
After that zen little olfactory interlude, we started downhill and discovered there was this RED STUFF all over the road, which is apparently how Oregon handles their slippery roads in winter.
What AWFUL stuff: it ended up CAKED all over poor Baba G's backside and-- worst of all-- blanketed the generator, which we only discovered when we stopped to camp at Water Wheel (below), just on the west side of the Cascades! =:-O
Woke up the next morning and drove through hail and brimstone. OK, maybe just hail. And I guess the brimstone goes with hell, not hail. But, you get the picture.
Camped the next night at a place called Honey Lake. Drippy wet and COLD... but cheap electric hookup. Hooray-- heat!
Made it through the northeastern-most corner of California, somehow getting past the {surprise!} agricultural checkpoint with our two "undeclared" philodendron houseplants (oops!)... but we never stopped... until we came upon a "shoe tree" in Nevada. Check out this weirdness:
That's for you Moxie: Nate wearing his Captain Black's tee! :)
Then we hit Reno.
Disgusting little town... with a dicey (though somehow highly-rated) little Thai restaurant, where we foolishly ordered SHRIMP (in the desert!) Pad Thai {ok, that was all on me... Nate had nothing to do with it}. Now, if the menu had actually called the dish "Shrimp-- In the Desert, You Fools!-- Pad Thai," I am certain we would have passed.
Instead, we ordered it, ate a few bites before returning it, and then promptly got a mild case of food poisoning. :{ FYI-- if you ever eat shrimp and then your face turns BEET RED and you feel HOT... that was some old-ass shrimp. {ugh} Also, take some Benadryl... tout de suite!
We also reminded ourselves in Reno that we are NOT urban RV-ers. Poor Baba G was parked like a sardine on pavement. But we were determined to go skiing, since we were so close to Lake Tahoe, so we threw caution to the wind, locked the cats in, and drove to Mount Rose for some frozen fog-in-the-face, controlled-skid-on-ice skiing:
TOTALLY worth it, by the way, even though it meant we had to stay another night on the parking slab in Reno. ;)
But then we made up for it by driving a LONG day so we could reach every après-skiers dream: a hot spring! Bailey Hot Spring, to be exact... in Bailey, NV:
While the water was LOVELY, and we stayed to soak for THREE days (!), we only discovered after the fact that the we had been soaking in water laden with ARSENIC (eek!) and ANTIMONY (also toxic, though not as famously so). The transdermal absorption is supposed to be low for them both, so it shouldn't have really done anything bad to us... but I started feeling just off on our last day at the springs. I never did figure out what happened to me, but it lasted another month at least, accompanied by fever, malaise, and high blood pressure! =:-O
Perhaps it had something to do with the magnesium content of the water... ?... which Nate described as "relaxative"... heavy on the laxative!
Or maybe it was because we went to Vegas next. :-P
There was apparently some crazy rodeo in town, so all the late shows were canceled... and Nate didn't even get to see any ta-tas with feathers and sequins. So sad. We told Vegas to "bring it," but Vegas had nothing:
FYI, if you ever find yourself in an RV near Vegas, you should definitely camp at Lake Mead, which is really nice... and, when we were there, was also nearly deserted, so the kitties got to stretch their legs a bit!
After Lake Mead, we stopped to see the Hoover Dam: pretty dam impressive! Ha!
{Mom, you would have HATED the walkway out to this view:}
And then we lost our minds and drove 304 miles-- in ONE DAY!-- in Baba G!-- all the way back across the INSANELY STEEP and LONG approach to the Kaibab Plateau (which we had NO IDEA was there, until we found ourselves climbing... and climbing... and climbing...), and over it...
back to Winslow, Arizona! Such a fine sight to see, especially since Baba G hadn't just up and died on the way there. ;) Look familiar? Yup, that's our exact same spot from October 2013:
But, the caretaker's house at the park was GONE! =:-O Just GONE! Razed down to the foundation slab.
???, and also !!!
What the heck happened to the caretaker and his family?!
We didn't know it at the time, but this was definitely dramatic foreshadowing...
NEXT UP: The Big December Relocation Road Trip -- Part 2 (Bad Stuff Happens)
