Visit Ending

Our final day of the visit to WA was yesterday. We really enjoyed being with Kristine and meeting her nice, new boyfriend, Philo and his 6 year old son, Cameron. The best part of the visit was the discovery that Kristine doesn't (yet) have cancer and is on track to head it off before it becomes a serious problem. If you ever want to misunderstand a diagnosis, that's the kind you hope to misunderstand. This is a beautiful part of Washington and we are glad we had an opportunity to see a good part of it and we now have it on our radar as one place to seriously consider buying some property for summer stays. Time will tell.

I had the truck serviced at the Ford dealership in Spokane and we are ready for travel. It's still hard to believe that the nearest Ford dealer is in Spokane, but that's the way it goes. Fortunately, we don't have to go very often.

We had hamburgers for dinner and said our goodbyes at around 7 PM:

We will miss them.

Our plan today is to make Missoula, MT and just stay the one night tonight. It is only a 260 mile drive, so we will leave around 8 AM in order to miss the Spokane work traffic. We should arrive sometime in the early afternoon. See you from Missoula....

Wheel Problem Solved

The "hard-to-find" stud for the broken RV wheel lug was installed on the new wheel yesterday afternoon. The fifth wheel is now ready for travel once again.

All of the final travel arrangements were completed yesterday for our stay in Jackson this summer. We will meet with our Supervisor on Tuesday the 24th at 11:30 AM to be assigned our space at the Gros Ventre (pronounced gro vont) campground and to complete our paperwork for the season. We will begin work on the 26th and expect to be ready to go by then.

Kristine and Philo were over for  dinner last night and we watched a couple movies before saying goodnight. We will see them once more today while Kristine gives Josie and I a haircut and we will say our farewells for at least the summer. It is comforting to know that the cancer scare is over and that Kristine is on track to get the proper care and has the best attitude about her future.

Once the truck gets serviced today, we will be set to leave tomorrow AM and head for our first stop in Missoula, MT...

More Wheel Woes

We kept our appointment at the Les Schwab Brakes Shop yesterday morning at 8 AM. It was a hassle getting everything organized and put away to tow the RV the 1 1/2 blocks up the street to get the broken lug replaced. The estimate from them was anywhere from 15 minutes to one hour to complete the job:

After waiting in the lobby for over an hour, I went to the RV to check on the progress. The wheel was still off and the broken lug had not yet been replaced. After speaking with the shop manager, I discovered that they have been calling all over Eastern Washington trying to find a match for the broken lug. Evidently, the lug is a unique one for RV's which they don't carry. To make a long story short, they agreed to get one overnighted from a shop in Seattle and come to our site at the Fairgrounds today to install it on the wheel. Sheesh! It is never easy.

Josie did some laundry and I washed the truck in the afternoon. I also washed the bugs off the front of the RV but I'll wait until we get settled in Jackson before washing the rest of the trailer. I also have a service appointment scheduled for the truck for tomorrow at 1:30 in Spokane. That is the closest Ford dealer to us - 70 miles. I thought every town had a Ford dealer.

Kristine and Philo will be over for dinner tonight as we are getting close to our departure for Wyoming...

Scare is Past

We wondered how such a serious event could have such little communication from the doctors and hospital. I didn't believe that such a serious surgical procedure could take place with no instructions on how to prepare. It turns out that Kristine misunderstood the schedule and the diagnosis. She has what is called high level three cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN3). That is the last step for precancerous cells to become cancerous. The visit to the hospital yesterday was for a consultation with her doctor on how to proceed and to discuss her options. It was very good news for all of us. The net of the visit was that she will have the actual surgical procedure in early June to remove the pre-cancerous cells and to ensure there are no cancerous cells in other parts of her body. At this stage, it is a relatively minor procedure and she will be in and out of the hospital in a short amount of time.

It was a long day as we left at around 10 AM to drive to Spokane - 70 miles away. We stopped for breakfast at a nice family restaurant where Philo got breakfast for all of us. Kristine's appointment was for 1 PM and by the time she got out it was near 3 PM. We stopped at an appliance store in Spokane where Kristine and Philo purchased a used washer and dryer which we hauled home for them.

This morning we take our fifth wheel to the Brake Shop in town - 2 blocks from here - to have our wheel lug repaired that was damaged by the flat tire swap. It is a pain in the butt to have to disconnect and drive the 2 blocks for this fix that should not have been required in the first place. At least we are not paying for the work to be done.

There are some items that we need to take care of before leaving on Friday morning. I would like to get the truck serviced and washed - along with washing the fifth wheel - before leaving. I hope I can locate a Ford dealer nearby to have the service done as it is included in our truck purchase.

We are winding down our visit here in Washington and we are very happy about the results...

Hunting Memories

The drive to look at more properties yesterday took us through Rice, WA here I hunted many years ago. My hunting buddies - Ron Butterfield, his son, John and my friend Scott Harrison - and I hunted deer for three seasons at my friend's property in that area. We stayed in the barn on the property of Burt Nokes who owned 300 acres of fantastic deer country. Yesterday, we stopped at the property and I walked up to the door to find out whatever happened to Burt. It turns out that Burt's grandson - Brian Nokes - and his family now live on the property. He told me that Burt just passed away last August at the age of 91. I talked with him for awhile and then took these shots of the property. Starting with the barn where we stayed during our hunts:

We would stand outside the barn in the evenings and watch the deer romp around the open field that was just across the street from the barn:

This last shot is of Burt's house . You can see the barn at the far left with the red roof:

What a nostalgic moment yesterday.

We saw some more terrific properties and along the way we stopped to get this shot of the Columbia River/Lake Roosevelt:

The river is slowly rising for the summer season as the downriver dam releases water. Eventually, the water line will rise to near the tree line.

Today is the day when Kristine has her cancer surgery. We will drive her to the hospital in Spokane and stay with her for the day to make sure all goes well and she has the support she needs to get through this event...

Sweatshirt Recovered

We had a scare yesterday AM when Josie searched for her (WMU) Bronco sweatshirt and couldn't find it. She had worn it the day we traveled north to Northport, WA looking at properties and we stopped for lunch at a nice tavern in Northport. We presumed it was left at the tavern so we drove back up to Northport and, sure enough, it was there and the tavern employees handed it over with no problems. That is a very special sweatshirt that she bought while we were at Austin's football game a couple years ago and means a lot to her.

We took this shot of a cool dummy of Donald Trump (no pun intended) that somebody planted along the side of the road on the rocks:

There are some very enthusiastic Trump supporters in this area.

We drove through more beautiful countryside yesterday and are really getting tuned -in to the possibility of buying some property in this area for summer use of our RV.

Today we will meet Kristine and Philo in Kettle Falls for breakfast and possibly see a few more areas of properties. Actually, we wouldn't buy anything until the day comes when we would sell the house in Glendale, but we would like to have a plan for when that day arrives.

Tomorrow, we will accompany Kristine to the hospital in Spokane where she will have her first operation on her cervical cancer that was discovered a short while ago. Her spirits are high and we hope to comfort her through this phase of her treatment...

New Water Pump

Yesterday morning was spent fixing the remaining problems with our water system. I called the RV repair guy for the area - Mark Jacobs - and he came out to our location at the Fairgrounds within the hour:

It didn't take him long to discover that the water pump was a dead soldier and he replaced it with a new Shurflo pump - probably our 5th or 6th water pump since we purchased the fifth wheel in 2008. I'm not sure why we are so hard on the pumps or why they don't last. I do know that the cost is lower today than it was the last time we replaced it. We also had the water line repaired that was causing us to shut down the water system entirely for one whole day:

We hope we are done with RV repairs for now - except for the lug replacement scheduled for Tuesday AM which is not my financial responsibility.

Kristine and Philo came over for breakfast and we took another nice drive to a different area. It is such beautiful country in this part of Washington. We stopped at the "Kettle Falls" on the way home to satisfy our curiosity of why the city was named Kettle Falls:

Today should be the first day out of the last several that we don't have any issues with the RV. We are ready for a problem free day. We are enjoying our time here with Kristine, Philo and his son, Cameron, although he has been in school each day and has missed our drives around the area. Maybe we can somehow make up for that today...