Goodbye Washington/Hello California?

There's one thing about our current lifestyle we love, it's simple. It's easy to change our plans when we want/need to. We've decided not to take the part-time job in Castle Rock, Washington in exchange for RV hookups for the summer. The biggest reason is we were asked to sign a contract that we would stay through October 15th...! Uhhhhhhhhhhhh, no we don't think so. It was our understanding this was seasonal through the end of August only...had we agreed to stay, they wanted us there 'at least' thru October 15th. We wouldn't have been able to get back home until around November 1st, and we just don't want to be away from home that long.

So, after informing the RV Resort that we could not accept an assignment through October, we decided to leave Oregon and headed South to California. We've been in Redding, California for the last couple of days and leave tomorrow morning for an RV Park on the Klamath River, and is next to Redwood National Park, which has 7 of the 8 oldest trees on earth--that will be exciting. We also plan on heading back to Yosemite National Park (we went there with the boys 10+ years ago); We also want to see San Francisco and Fisherman's Wharf and the Winchester House; Check out the Napa Valley Winery area and maybe even take a tour of a winery and we'd like to see the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, if we get that far south into California.

We're not sure whether we'll spend the entire summer in California or head out in mid-summer to go back to Colorado and spend a few weeks there. Either way, we're excited to see what's around the corner. Of course, we'll take lot's of pictures and keep this site updated on our wonderings. So...stay tuned!~

Checkin' Out Our Summer "Home" AND Mount St. Helens

Wow, what a great day! We started out early this morning to check out our new summer 'home', the Toutle River RV Resort. We had a brief meeting with our 'boss' and he gave us a tour of the place and it's huge...much larger than we thought it would be. However, it's still not technically open to the public due to permit issues of some kind, so our weekly 12 hours of work should pretty much consist of Mark putting together picnic tables with the guys, and me watering the new shrubs, flowers, trees, etc. Ok...I think we can handle that! We won't be moving to the Workamper location until we've gotten our satellite dish fixed this week.

Since it was so early in the day and the RV Resort is at the entrance to Mount St. Helens, we decided to go ahead and make the 50 mile trek up the mountain...and wow was it worth it. The scenery was spectacular...(seems like I keep saying that about scenery, but it is!) We were trying to decide where Mount St. Helens would rate with our other top spots, including the Grand Canyon--and we would definitely put Mount St Helen in our top 5.

We learned lot's of interesting things about Mount St. Helens and the eruption and we took lot's of pictures. A few are included.

We Finally Arrived - Beautiful Oregon

We left Pendleton, Oregon early this morning for the remaining trek to our Northwest destination. We're staying at an RV Park in Portland thru Tuesday, to have our satellite dish repaired. We're planning on moving on to our final destination for the summer, Castle Rock, Washington, later this week. We're tentatively supposed to begin our "12 hour work week" some time the first week of June.

Now that we're settled in for a few days, we plan on taking the one hour drive from our present location, to check out the Toutle River Resort RV Park, which is located at the entrance to Mount St. Helens, where we'll be spending our summer while here in the Pacific Northwest.

The drive from Salt Lake to Oregon has been beautiful. We thought our drive into Salt Lake was beautiful, but after the 200 drive this morning from Pendleton Oregon to Portland, which included the 50+ miles along the Columbia River Gorge, we've decided that to date, this was without a doubt, the most spectacular scenic drive we've had to date. Unfortunately, no time for pictures today, but promise we'll have lot's and lot's of pictures in the coming weeks and months...so stay tuned.

We hope to get a few pictures of our new summer 'home' during our trip tomorrow, I'll post them tomorrow night. So, until later...~

We're Now in Salt Lake City, Utah

Well, it's been a Long few days since we left the Dallas area. We drove from Dallas to Amarillo on Tuesday. Wednesday we drove from Amarillo to Cheyenne, Wyoming...now that, was a long day for sure. During our stay in Cheyenne, we stayed in a cute little RV Park called Terry Bison RV Ranch. They had Bison on the ranch, along with Camels, horses and several other things. It was a cute little park and we took the dogs down the railroad tracks so they could get a first hand look at the Bison...they sure weren't interested in getting any closer than the fence, that's for sure. Duffy looked 'worried' and Clyde just looked away like he didn't see 'em at all! I've attached a few pictures of the little park.

The drive from Cheyenne Wyoming to Salt lake was breathtaking. As we moved to the outskirts of Salt Lake, the views for miles were just beyond words...pictures nor TV do them justice. Unfortunately, the camera was in the RV and we didn't have time to get it out as our satellite internet dish apparently broke in Cheyenne, and we were hoping to get it to a local repair shop in Salt Lake yesterday...but they couldn't squeeze us in. Unfortunately, after 1 1/2 days here, it's become apparent this afternoon we aren't going to get the dish fixed until after the Memorial Day holiday...so we're planning on leaving Salt Lake tomorrow morning and heading on towards Washington and will get it repaired in Vancouver.

We hope to stay in RV Parks with Wi-Fi internet until we can get our dish repaired. As for our current travel plans, we have 800 miles to go and plan on making half that distance tomorrow and the remaining distance to Castle Rock, Washington on Sunday, Lord willing of course. We'll keep our progress updated here...so stay tuned~

Leaving Dallas/Workamping Stint - Castle Rock, Washington

We've been back in the Dallas area a little over a week now due to an unexpected emergency at home. A few days ago we were contacted by Toutle RV Resort, which is located in Castle Rock, Washington, inquiring as to whether we were interested in taking on a Workamping position for the summer. (I had put our resume out on the workampers.com website just to see if we'd get any 'bites', but not expecting much since neither of us have any background in this type of work. But, we've had 3 - 4 job offers within the last 3 - 4 days...from Maine, to Texas to Washington. Wow, so much for worrying whether anyone would hire us, huh?!)

For the Washington offer, we'd only work a total of 12 hours weekly (6 hours Mark and 6 for Myself), in exchange for an RV spot with full hookups--free rent/utilities for the summer. After discussing the pros and cons for several days, we decided it was probably a good idea to take these guys up on the offer...it would reduce our monthly expenses considerably and our only expenses would be for groceries, diesel, insurance and cell service.

Mark got out the Atlas and we spent a few hours checking out the location and researching all the things we could do during our 4 - 5 off days each week. This place is basically an hour from Portland and Seattle, as well as an hour from the beach. It will be much cooler there this summer and we could avoid the hot Texas weather. And of course, the Pacific Northwest is beautiful in the summer. This particular 'job', would give us several days a week to take off exploring the area. There are 9 other Workamping couples in addition to us that will be onsite as well and the work will rotate. I'll most likely work in the office area and mark will do odds and ends outside.

This RV resort is at the entrance to Mount St Helen as well and the pictures of the place are just gorgeous. In addition, a little less than a mile down one of the RV Resort paths, is the Toutle River...there's another river that pours directly into the Toutle at this private location and the fishing is supposed to be phenominal. That means Mark can fish for salmon, trout and steelhead the entire summer! Heck, I might even grab a pole and the dogs and join him occassionally! Fishing combined with all the other activities and things to do within a 100 mile radius, along with the huge cost savings, pretty much makes this a 'no-brainer' for us. The only drawback is that we're required to stay thru the entire summer, no trips back home during the summer--but it's such a long drive back, it wouldn't be feasible anyway unless we flew back, which we couldn't do anyway unless it was an emergency of course.

Since it's about a 2300 mile trip from here in Terrell, we're planning on giving ourselves at least 10 days to make the trip, throwing in a few extra days for cushion just in case. We report June 1st, so we'll be leaving the Dallas area some time between May 18 - 20. We'll let everyone know as soon as we've figured it out! So, stay tuned~