La Grande Oregon

We are finally at the Northwood RV owner's rally in La Grande. There will be 50 rigs and about 100 people here. We will get to tour the factory, which I am looking forward to. The trip northwest from Salmon went through some very beautiful country. The trip was not hard because most of the time it followed rivers, which meant the grades were not steep... just long at times. See some of the above photos. Remember, just click on photos to see them full size.

We will be here until Sunday. Then we will head towards the The Seattle "area".

We saw lots of pronghorn antelope.

Caught Sandy eating a chocolate frosted cake doughnut.

My cousin took me on a jeep tour of some of the back dirt roads around Salmon Idaho. There was always a stream in any valley we were in.

One of the dirt roads in a remote valley.

A beautiful stream.

Another road

We visited a memorial for two slain smoke jumpers (fire fighters)

Little stream by memorial.

View from the top of one of the local mountains.

Some Alpint flowers on the top of the mountain.

Interesting rock formation

Mountain view in Colorado

Air Force Acadeny near Colorado Springs

An actual volcano in Wyoning

Our rig

Greetings! It has been several days since I have posted. We spent those days in Salmon Idaho visiting my cousin there. He took me on a jeep trip to see "his" mountains. It was spectacular, Sandy couldn't becauwe of her back and the rough roads. That afternoon, we played golf, and my cousin (who plays golf barefooted and in bib overalls) slipped on wet grass and really blew out his knee. No more golf or other physical activites after that. Except he got the injury on the sceond hole and went on th play the last 7 holes. We were walking. My cousin is a local vet who is also a county commissioner. I posted a lot of pictures above of the surrounding area.

We drove across Wyoming today on I-80. It has been raining out here, and the praries are green for the most part. Lots of "hills". I have one of those mpg gauges in the truck that gives average gas milage since the last time it was zeroed. I usually get about 12mpg while towing the trailer, but was only getting about 8! Eventually, we passed a sign that named some pass and it said the altitude was 8700 feet. We had climbed 2700 feet that morning. In addition, there was a 20 to 40 mph head wind. I saw the reason for the poor mileage.

We are camped tonight in Rock Springs, WY. Tomorrow, we will head into Idaho and some real mountains. Then we should have some nice photos to post. We took a few shots today but I haven't put them into the computer yet. More later. Dutch

2009 Trip to the Pacific Northwest

We finally have WiFi. We drove to Wichita Falls, TX the first day to visit Sandy's aunt. After a day's visit, we headed northwest. We were both astonished at how beautiful and green the scenery was going up US 287 toward Amarillo. After Amarillo, it turned more desert-like as we had expected. We stayed just inside extreme northwest New Mexico Sunday night and then drove to just north of Pueblo, Colorado on Monday. Today we will go to Cheyene, Wyoming.

The park we stayed in last night has a great view of Pike's Peak. There will be more photos when the scenery gets better.

Dutch and Sandy

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Summer Trip 2009

Greetings!

We leave tomorrow for the Pacific Northwest. Generally we will head northwest from Houston, and visit relatives in Wichita Falls and Salmon, Idaho. Then we will head west to LaGrande, Oregon where we will attend a rally for Arctic Fox and Nash RVs. These rigs are manufactured there by Northwood Mfg. After that, we will head towards Seattle. No firm plans past that, except we want to see the best of that part of the country, including Vancouver Island. There won't be much in the way of daily entries or pictures for a while until we get into some pretty mountains, probably in Colorado. We expect to return home in late Augusst or early September.

OFF WE GO!!! Dutch and Sandy