Being retired it was no big deal to just hole up for a few days and enjoy the beauty of it all. Having said that it’s been around long enough and time to go. The temperature never got about 28 degrees F yesterday and today it’s almost 45. Oh my what a difference a day makes.

Of course with the warmer weather comes the rain and wind. With all the snow melting and the rain coming there are lots of concerns for flooding in the lowlands on the mainland, here on the island not so much.

This winter we’ve had a heck of a time with our fish in the pond in our back yard. First the Raccoon’s got into it and reduced our fish count from around 43 down to about 10. Next came the Heron’s and they’ve been showing up with some regularity. We have an aviary net over the pond but that doesn’t stop them from checking it out. Today we saw a first, a Heron standing on the frozen pond trying to figure out how to get to what appears to be a dead fish floating just under the ice. The snow has weighted down the net and it’s frozen in the water. This picture was taken through the window and the red arrow points to the fish.

We’ll pull the fish out tomorrow when we can break through the ice and discourage the Heron from coming back!

Other than that things have been pretty quiet around here. The year is off to a slow start although the days seem to be zipping by. We’re not complaining as winter on the island is really that way, perfect!

We hope your year is off to a good start and continues that way for the duration. Be sure to check out our Weather Page to see what’s going on weather wise in our neck of the woods.

First of all we attended our grandson’s marimba concert on December 1st. I just got the video together and posted on YouTube. Here’s grandson Camden focusing on his next note.

Here’s the link to the YouTube video, 

As we had mentioned in and earlier blog we’ve been working hard on our landscaping and decks. We now have the decks done and most of the landscaping. Here are a couple pictures of the new decks.

This is the back yard as we were finishing up the siding around the fish pond.

This is the front porch.

There will be a planter around the porch when we are done and some sort of picket fence. Once we are done with putting down the sod we’re going to redo all the concrete as the almost sixty year old concrete we currently have is cracked and falling apart.

For Christmas we got a new weather station for our house. We get some pretty wild weather around here and thought it would be fun to keep an eye on it. One side benefit for all our readers is that the software allows us to post the Coupeville weather in near real time. This is what our new weather page looks like.

There are more screens than that on our RunnerDuck weather page as you scroll down. To see what our weather is doing right now go to, RunnerDuck Weather.

So that’s about it for 2012 so far. We hope you are having a good year and all your New Year’s wishes come true!

Thanks to all of you for making it fun for us to publish this blog. While we’ve been a little slow at updating since we got home from our long trip we hope to post a lot more in 2012. Stay tuned to see what’s happening on our little island.

Click on the link at the bottom of this blog to see all our “stat’s”.

Ken and Marilyn

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 8,700 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

These Thanksgiving Candles were carved by Marilyn

Today we find ourselves thankful for so many things and a good time to reflect on family and friends. Unfortunately we will not be celebrating with anyone but ourselves which is OK. All of our family has plans elsewhere so we’ll enjoy the turkey and all the fixin’s at home. There should be lots of leftovers to enjoy for days to come. It will actually feel really good to just kick back and do nothing for a day as we’ve really been busy getting ready for Christmas and working on our landscaping and new deck.

The bad news is that the winter rains have come and the working conditions are not to our liking. Here’s a picture of the progress on our new deck showing our contractor Ted in the middle of the pig wallow.

You can see the progress that’s been made on the patio in the foreground which is looking really nice. We hope to have the main portion of the deck done by December 10th when Marilyn’s family will be here to celebrate an early Christmas.

So there ya go, not a lot of news but a little update and a wish for a wonderful day.

This was the winning 350 pound pumpkin from our Saturday Market contest.

Well it’s been quite a while since we last posted an update but as you ‘ll see we’ve been busy since coming home from our two month trip around the United States. Being gone for two months put the whole summer on hold so we had a lot of catching up to do.

One of the first things was Ken’s band performing at the Ballard Locks in Ballard for a Sunday “Art’s in the Parks” concert.

It was a beautiful day and well attended. The audience was very appreciative and some even danced. After the concert we went to Sharon’s house, the singer in the band, and had a nice BBQ with all the guys.

After Ken’s cousin left he got busy building the shed on the back of his woodshop. It is now complete and the additional space is used for garden tools and wood storage.

Since this picture was taken it has been painted and looks like its been there forever.

While this was going on we also had a shed built at Port Susan where we keep our trailer for the winter and camp from time to time.

Along with all of that we started landscaping all of the grounds around our house, starting in the back yard. We have landscapers doing the work so no worry about our backs. So far they have the patio area done and most of the planters.

We think it’s looking great and can’t wait for it all to be done. Along with that we are starting to rebuild all the decks as the boards on the old one are starting to rot. The new deck will be out of a poly wood material so they’ll never have to be painted or replaced, at least in our lifetime. We’ll post updates as the project proceeds.

We did manage to fit in a little fun by going to our grand kids soccer games. They have really gotten into the sport and are doing quite well. Here’s Hudson playing goalie, his team won!

Camden is playing on a bigger field and with more players this year and really taking it up a notch.

Unfortunately his team lost but it wasn’t for lack of a great effort!

Emerson is still a little young to participate in the sport but she like going to the games. She’s entered the “extremely shy stage” of life but is cute as can be.

Marilyn has started wood carving after many years away from it and made a terrific looking Santa Clause.

Now that some of the summer projects have been beaten back Ken is back working on his RC sailboat. He hasn’t been to the lake yet with the other sailors but working on his boat is a step in the right direction.

So there ya go, you’re caught up with our life in Coupeville. Have a great Halloween and then on to Thanksgiving!

Here’s the scene looking down toward the wharf. Notice the two tall ships docked behind the wharf building.

During the afternoons of the festival the tall ships will take people out for a cruise and during the cruise they have a mock battle where they fire their large cannons. You can see the smoke in the picture but you should hear the booms, they are really loud.

Also during the weekend we celebrated Ken’s birthday along with Marilyn’s sister Sandy’s at our house. A good time was had by all.

Ken has started a new project to build an addition to our storage shed behind his workshop, you can never have too much storage or maybe it’s just a matter of too much stuff We’ll have some pictures and updates and the project progresses. The first step is to bring a stump grinder and remove a stump and some serious roots that are in the way.

This past weekend we had the pleasure of Ken’s cousin Cindy and her husband John visit us on our little island. They are from Pennsylvania and they seemed to enjoy our cooler weather and the slow pace of life here on the island.

Unfortunately it rained for the first time since July 25th but it didn’t dampen our spirits. We showed them around the island including the Coupeville ferry landing which just happened to have a ferry coming in for a landing.

And on up to the northern most end of our island the Deception Pass Bridge.

Coupeville has some wonderful restaurants and we made the most of them. We’re now afraid to get on the scales until we have some time to work it all off.

They are off on an Alaska cruise and we are settling back into our quiet and simple lifestyle. We’ll post again when we have something worth boring you with

We thought we’d summarize our trip with observations from around the country.

-Trip Stats-
50 Days
7,848 Miles
8.5 MPG
43.2 MPH
183 Hours Driving
924 Gallons of Gas
$3,300.00 for Gas

-Disclaimer-
These were our observations for the parts of the country we drove through. All states have their beauty and their sore spots and we can only comment on where we went. Don’t take any of these comments as a “put down” of any particualr state. We loved our trip and all that we got to see.

-Observations-

Interstate 90 needs a lot of work. Eastern Montana, all of Minnesota and Chicago were the worst.

Chicago had the worst drivers and the area around Washington DC a close second.

The tallest thing in Nebraska is the corn.

Why are people always calling their dogs when there are leash laws in the campgrounds?

Campgrounds that cater to big rigs like ours with full hookups are not campgrounds.

Sightseeing is not much fun when it’s over 90 degrees F and 90% humidity outside.

Small museums in small towns are a lot of fun to explore.

The faces on Mt. Rushmore are not as large as they were when Ken was ten years old.

Crossroads makes a very good fifth wheel camper.

It takes a long time to drive across Montana.

Campgrounds are really getting expensive, $35 – $50 a night.

We are very compatible traveling partners.

Of the sixteen or so channels we could get near Washington DC only two or three were American channels all the others were from foreign countries. No wonder the politicians have no idea of what’s going on in the United States, jezz!

The Pine Beatle is killing hundreds of thousands of trees.

It only takes a split second of memory lapse to screw things up.

Waiting fifty years to reconnect with old friends is too long a time.

Seeing a good part of the country really makes us appreciate where we live. Fortunately everyone else feels that way about where they live so it all balances out.

There are a lot of nice people who run campgrounds as well as the people who stay there.

Finding small out of the way restaurants is generally a lot better than eating at big chain restaurants.

The denser the population the poorer the roads are and people drive more aggressive.

The further east you travel the less recycling we saw.

Coal burning plants aren’t green no matter what they try to tell us.

With gas prices between $3.50 and $4.00 why won’t the gas pumps let us put more than $75 or $100 worth of gas in at a time? Our truck has a 33 gallon tank.

Why do truckers still let their diesel engines run at rest stops?

The lower the economy of a region the more people smoke. These same areas still allow smoking in bars and restaurants.

Good planning and preparation for an 8,000 mile trip makes for a good trip.

Driving across Minnesota with the state government shut down, which means all the rest stops closed, made for some blader busting driving.

It would appear that climate change is real, we saw flooding in areas that shouldn’t be flooded and record high temperatures for most of our trip. Many of these events broke 100 or more year old records.

We did not see any people using reusable cloth shopping bags once we got out of Washington State, apparently the rest of the country still thinks plastic does not harm the oceans and environment.

Hooking up water, electric and sewer at campgrounds would be much better if trailer manufacturers and campgrounds could get together so where they attach to the trailer was close to where they are located at the camp site.

WiFi is dirt cheap to supply to campers so why do some campgrounds charge for it?

It appears that Wal-Mart and Fed Ex trucks travel in pairs.

Most campgrounds do not allow you to wash your trailer. After 8,000 miles it takes a lot of work to get it looking good again.

Traveling 7,848 miles in 50 days is too much!

The deer and antelope really do play on the range.

Animals must try to cross the road at night as every morning we saw lots of roadkill but only once did we have a coyote run in front of us. Oh and armadillo’s don’t squash!

Trying to find your old home in a growing town that you haven’t been to in fifty years is all but impossible without an address, everything has changed.

So there ya go, some thoughts about traveling across America. We really enjoyed our trip and were glad that so many of you were able to tag along via our blog.  We will now return to our quiet little life in our seaside village on our island in Washington State. Our blogs will not be as frequent but we’ll keep you updated as we find things worthy of posting.

Here at Port Susan things are very quiet and we’ve been lying low and enjoying our time. The weather is cool with low 50′s in the morning and only warming to the high 60′s in the afternoon. While that may not sound like very appealing summer weather to some of you we are really enjoying it after almost two months of driving and camping in near 100 degree F heat. We’ve had a campfire going every afternoon and can actually sit outside and enjoy it.

We mentioned the other day that Port Susan is heavily wooded and here’s a picture of our camp site to prove it.

What you see is mostly cedar trees and rhododendrons. In the spring it just explodes with color as the rhodies bloom.

We have a small lake called Weallup which is only for rowing, no motor boats. There’s a nice dock where kids will often fish for trout.

There’s a big green belt around the lake so you can’t see any campers from the lake giving it a nice secluded feel.

Yesterday we visited Ken’s brother Ron and wife Lolli at Lolli’s mom’s cabin at Elger Bay on the west side of Camano Island. It’s a fun place to sit and watch the tide go in and out.

The island you are looking at off in the distance is Whidbey Island, our home. We live around to the right just a few miles.

At Elger Bay there is an Eagle that likes to sit in a particular tree and keep an eye on things. I zoomed in with my trusty Canon and caught this nice picture.

It’s hard to believe that after fifty days we’ll finally be home and getting things back to normal. We’ll be taking our trailer home to unpack and clean it up. In a week or two we’ll take it back to Port Susan where it will stay until our next big adventure.

We sure have enjoyed all the wonderful comments during our trip and having you all along for the ride. It sounds like you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed sharing it with you. We are still putting together our “observations” during the trip and will share them soon.

In Northeastern Oregon we started getting into more farm lands.

We drove along the Columbia River and knew we were getting close to our home state.

Sure enough a short time later we were crossing the Washington/Oregon state line.

High above Prosser, Washington we got our first glimpse of the majestic mountains of Washington State. Ken put this panorama together of the beautiful Yakima Valley. Click on the picture to see what we are talking about. Mt. St. Helen’s is on the left and Mt. Ranier is near the middle.

Here’s a write up about what you are seeing.

We had lunch in Yakima and then continued on up into the mountains. We really got excited when we saw the Stewart Mountains also know as the Washington Alps.

Not long after that we were over Snoqualmie Pass and into the beautiful green pine trees of the Cascade Mountains.

We arrived at Port Susan, http://portsusancamping.org/default.aspx, around 4:30, pooped but not beat. Port Susan is a camping club where you own a lot that you can park your trailer on and camp. It is heavily wooded and on a small lake. Peace and quiet abound. No TV as it’s so wooded that our satellite dish won’t work and poor internet and cell phone connection, perfect

It’s seems amazing but after 45 days traveling over 6,000 miles, staying in numerous campgrounds, we are finally “CAMPING” in our own spot 1 1/2 hours from home, Marilyn is a Happy Camper! That’s not to say that we didn’t have a great time and got to seem many things that will stay with us forever nor that it wasn’t a blast to see family and reconnect with old friends but like Dorthy says, “there’s not place like home”.

This is not our last post but for all you wonderful people who have been following us you may not find our ongoing posts as exciting as in the past as we decompress and reflect. We are going to put together a list of “observations” from our trip that we’ll share in the next few days. Stay tuned!

They were all exact replicas that were built about 20 years ago and very authentic. The wagon to the front left is a real wagon from the mid 1800′s. It was not a wagon used to travel the Oregon Trail but more likely used for traveling locally because it had smaller wheels and a lower ground clearance. There was a very knowledgeable ranger at the wagons that shared lots of information with us.

Inside the center were many well done, life size, diorama’s such as the one below.

Here’s a map of the 2,000 miles the settlers traveled from near Kansas City to Oregon City. Click on the map for a bigger view.

Outside was this fantastic view of the valley. If you look very closely you’ll see a white spec just above the sage brush below the word “WAGON”. If you click on the picture it might help.

I love to show off my little Canon SX 30IS camera. Here’s the wagon above a little closer. Can you imagine traveling across this valley in a wagon like that with your family?

Still a little hard to see? How about this?

Just to the left of the wagon is part of the actual Oregon Trail that still can be seen with the ruts from the wagon wheels.

We never miss an opportunity to have a picture of the two of us taken when someone offers to squeeze the trigger on the camera. These rocks that were covered with very colorful liken were out in front of the center.

After our visit to the center we filled up with gas and washed the truck. Ken’s still sick about the dented bed but at least it shines again.

For lunch we went to the Geiser Hotel in historic downtown Baker City.

And what a grand hotel it is. Built around 1889 it was the most elegant hotel between St. Louis and Portland. Gold is what put this town on the map and obviously the wealth was not wasted. Here’s the atrium inside the hotel.

Over the years the town started to decay and many of the old buildings were covered with plaster or sheet metal. In the 70′s a revival took place and they started renovating many of the old buildings to their original state. Here’s a tiny piece of the historic downtown that’s been restored.

While there is a whole lot more to see and do around here the decision has been made that we will move on. Today we will either drive 225 miles to Yakima, Washington and spend the night or hit it hard at 400 miles and go to the Port Susan Camping Club that we belong to just outside Marysville, Washington. If we stop at Yakima it will only be for the night. We plan to spend almost a week at Port Susan relaxing, recouping and reliving our adventure before actually heading home.