Summer 2014 Summary

This may be of little interest to anyone besides me.  Well, Trish maybe.  Here's the thing: I love to quantify, always want to know how many, how big, how old, how hot/cold, and on and on.  I'm a born analyst and statistician, certainly no surprise to folks who follow my blog.  Here we go.

1.  Total miles towing: 4551, close to what we'd planned.

2. Total miles driven in pickup, including towing: 7271; more than planned because we had 2 long stays in Portland area parks.

3.  Number of days: 106

4.  Best private RV park: Olde Stone Village, McMinnville, OR.  Well designed, well managed, well maintained.

5.  Best public campground: Merrill on Eagle Lake, Lassen National Forest, CA.  Quiet and peaceful, lovely setting.

6.  Worst public campground: El Chorro Regional Park, San Luis Obispo County, CA.  See blog post Poorly.

7.  Lessons learned:
        A.  Engage truck parking brake prior to raising landing gear on the 5W.
        B.  Running RV furnace when not on shore power quickly drains the batteries.

8.  What went bad: water heater stopped working on shore power but still works on propane.  I don't want to mess with it, will take it to the shop.

9.  Best surprise: Grand Teton National Park scenery and campgrounds.  I recall that my first time there, many years ago, it seemed blah compared to next door neighbor Yellowstone.  This time though, I was impressed.  It has a whole bunch of pretty!

11.  States where I played Pickleball: Utah, Washington, Minnesota, Oregon and California.

12.  Number of pieces of quilting material Trish cut out: 758, half of which were also sewn and ironed; pieces will ultimately be made into 2 quilts.

PS:  Here's a picture that should have been included in my July 19th post, Champoeg SP, OR.  In that post, I wrote that Champoeg Village was wiped out in a flood in December, 1861.

The 1996 Flood high water mark is slightly above my knees in this picture.  I lived in the Portland suburb of Lake Oswego at the time so was eye witness to the extent of the flooding and the damage it caused - which was relatively minor.  The high water mark of the 1861 flood is about 12' higher than the 1996 mark.  That's hard to even imagine!  The entire Willamette Valley was one big lake.