California Trip: October 2010

Just as the trees started to turn and remind us of winter's creeping proximity, we again headed south after Ted returned from a wonderful trip to Japan and China. He spent 3 weeks in Asia, 10 days in Japan and 10 in China. In China, he and friend Tony Lamb had a great time together attending the FCCFA Friendship conference in Shanghai and Jiangxi province.
He had two weeks to get over jet lag before we headed out in the RV to what we thought would be the sunny south. We visited some new places in Idaho, went down along the famed Snake River but ran into some minor RV problems and cool, wet weather the whole trip. We enjoyed the drive through S.Idaho and Nevada, over the Sierra, which is really a part of the Rocky Mountain chain. Camping that time of year is easy as the kids were back in school and the snow birds had generally not yet left.
We returned to S. California and beautiful old missions at San Luis Obispo and San Luis Rey. The coast was breezy but full of great seafood. Windows On the water had oysters at 65cents on Tuesdays so we followed the Cosandiers' instructions and went then. After that we headed north to meet Ushi & Dieter in Stockton, just east of California capital Sacramento. What started as a couple of days together turned into 6 nice days. When we saw the weather north and snow already in the passes, and the weather in Palm Springs (which is where they were headed for the winter) it was not a difficult choice. We headed south!
Just in time to catch a night with Dorothy & John in Palm Desert. We enjoyed a week in the desert, only 2 hours drive from San Diego or LA. However, it was 100 every day so we were not inclined to do a lot of anything, except visit the pool and mineral hot pools. The 55+ Caliente Resort is home to several friends this winter so we enjoyed some downtime there before taking off on our big trip. (see photo)
We found good, safe storage for Lupita (our RV registration is LUP111), found good seat sale prices on air fares, so booked to return home Nov 2 and return Feb 2 for the rest of winter.

NW USA Trip: June 2010

Where does the time go? Life is good and we are back on the road in our RV Lupita.
We spent a month in June traveling in Idaho, Washington and Oregon, with the intention of visiting the Olympic mountains. It was cool, rainy and suffice to say we are still waiting to see the Olympic Mountains.
We visited the scenic Snake River canyon area and Boise, Idaho's historic capital. We did find some nice wine areas in Lake Chelan, where we spent my birthday and found a Karma champagne to celebrate with! Then to Yakima valley, a beautiful scenic area in southern Washington, which has expanded to many more and better wineries than when we first visited a few years back.
After waiting two weeks for the weather to improve, we bit the bullet and traveled to the coast via the Oregon Willamette wine area, where we found many old and new good wines. We headed inland to Washington's capital Olympia, a neat small town with excellent oysters and crabs. We had one glorious day on the Oregon coast then rain set in again. Heading back through Widbey Island in the Puget Sound, we came back to N. Washington, crossed the Cascade Mountains in, yes, cascdes of rain, and snow at the summit! This in June no less.
It was nice to see some different parts of the NW States but good to be back to Calgary for some serious sun, although summer was a bit disappointing there too.