May 14th - Painting

Nothing exciting today. It was hazy until mid-afternoon. According to folks here it has been warm "in the valley" (I guess the valley is the area on the other side of the coastal mountains). When that happens it "sucks" air over the ocean and across this area creating "fog". None of the "fog" has touched the ground while we have been here but the tops of the hills behind us were shrouded in "fog" this morning.

Kathy did camp laundry for around 4 hours today and then came home and did some for us.

My schedule:
8:00 Breakfast with the camp staff (scrambled eggs, cubed, fried potatoes & bacon)
9:00 Started painting the exterior trim on the remodeled handicapped camper building.
Noon Lunch with the camp staff (chicken noodle soup, corn bread, cheese & salad)
1:00 Back to trim painting
5:30 Quit painting, cleaned brush and paint pail and headed for supper.
5:45 Supper with the camp staff (ham, scalloped potatoes with cheese, rolls, cauliflower/broccoli and cake for desert)

Yesterday afternoon we could not get on the campground WiFi, for the first time since we have been here. We still couldn't get on this afternoon & evening. I did some checking and found out that I could access the Internet from other nodes(?) but not the one for the RV area. I went over to the staff housing area, which is just across the parking lot from the RV area, and asked one of the staff who was out playing with his kids. The node for the campground is in the laundry room of one of the other staff houses. We went down and he unplugged it and then plugged it back in. That was all it took.

Came back to the RV and took a shower. Kathy is reading while I am writing this. Bones comes on at 8:00 (another 20 minutes). We like it and will watch it. I might head for bed after it is over. (We can only get Fox here.)

Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.

May 13th - A Hike

The weather today was beautiful again. This afternoon I hiked up to Charlotte's Mountain. According to my GPS the total distance was 2.2 miles. The top of Charlotte's Mountain is 450' above sea level, which makes it about 430' above the RV parking area.
According to the GPS with all the ups and downs I went up a little over 900'. I'm quite sure I don't have any heart problems <grin>. I did find out that my GPS isn't worth a hoot in the Pacific northwest. The canopy from the tree branches is so dense in a lot of areas that it can't pick up satellites. I had played with it a little while at Mt. Gilead and had the same problem. Today it couldn't pick up satellites maybe 15% of the time.

One of the great places here is the building up on the side of the "mountain" that is used as a prayer retreat. It has a great view but isn't even half way to the top.

 This is a view of the twin rocks from the Prayer Outlook.

 And a zoomed view.

The trail up to the top went through this tree stump.

 Looking back from the stump. Off the side of the trail is DOWN!

 The stump in the center of the photo is the one I went through. The was switch back after switch back on the way up. The trail on the right goes up to the next switch back.

View from near the top. The bright area is the sun reflecting off the ocean. AS you can see the camp has allowed some logging to occur.

 I made it!

 This is looking back down on the camp. I could see some of the buildings but you won't be able to pick them out of the photo.

 Previously I posted some photos of the homes on the hill above Rockaway Beach. The homes are off in the distance near the center of this photo. They are on the top of the ridge.

 Most of the trail back down the other side was through the area that had been logged.

 I think I mentioned the putt putt golf course. Below is a photo of part of it.

 For supper tonight we got out the grill and grilled some steaks. It was a good day.

Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.

May 12th - Kites

We went back to Rockaway Beach again this morning to see the kites, it is only a little over a mile down the highway.

There were kites of all sizes and shapes. One of the ones in this photo is a guitar.

 How about some frogs.

 We saw this one last night. We never did see it get more than a couple of feet off the ground.

The tide was out while we were there. There was a lot of sand exposed.

We had lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Rockaway Beach and then drove to Tillimook to the grocery store, about 14 miles. We went to a Fred Meyer store. They are a lot like a upscale super Walmart.

We had supper back at the camp and then went for a walk. This weekend if "Family Camp" and there are a LOT of campers here. This was the first time we walked on any of the trails at the camp. I was quite impressed by this one. It started down by the lake and crossed a boggy area. There must have been at least a quarter mile of this "boardwalk".

 This was a path that led off the main path. It provided a great place to view the lake.

 Just another section of the boardwalk.

Once we got back onto "high ground" we followed the path for maybe another three quarters of a mile. It looped back to another part of the main camp.

The weather today was absolutely perfect. The high was around 70 degrees, there was a light breeze most of the day and there was only an occasional cloud.

Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.

May 11th - Back to Work

While out whale watching last Saturday and Sunday I caught a cold. It was not rainy, nor damp, just windy. Anyway I've been kind of puny. I worked Monday and Tuesday but only worked in the mornings Wednesday and Thursday. Today I'm still feeling the effects of the cold but did get in a full days work.

I ran two tanks of gas through a big weed eater in the morning and another tank full after lunch. I also spent a couple of hours painting exterior trim.

The bad news is that I passed the cold along to Kathy. Hopefully she is running a day behind me in getting over it. Yesterday was my most miserable day and I think today has been her most miserable so far. Lord willing she will notice a big improvement by tomorrow. I only worked a couple of hours each on the days I felt bad. She worked most of the day today.

The weather here has been mostly sunny, but cool. The reported lows for the past two nights were 34 & 33. I don't think it was that cold at our RV, but it was either in the high 30's or low 40's both nights. Tomorrow the high is supposed to be a sunny 71 and the low tomorrow night is supposed to be 50. That should feel quite warm.

There is a kite flying contest at Rockaway Beach tomorrow. We went there for supper tonight, tried out the Mexican restaurant. We saw that quite a few stands have been set up for tomorrow. The Mexican restaurant was OK. If all goes well we will go back tomorrow and check out the festivities.

Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.

May 8th - Tired

I spent the morning, and for a part ofths afternoon, power washing the newly remodeled handicap building. After that I spent about an hour, mowing areas I had misssed yesterday. Finally I spent the last 3 hours with push mower. It will take me about a half hour to finish the push mowing. There is still hours and hours of "weed eating" to do.

This is the newly remodeled handicap accessible cabin.

 The cabin has a folding divider that can split it in two. There are two bathrooms in the cabin. The following photos are a "panorama" of shots taken on the inside.

 The other bathroom only had a shower. This was has a tub/shower.

 Each sleeping space has a reading light that is switched on and off from the sleeping space.

 This is one of the cool old Hemlock trees on sit. The tree sprouted from and old stump and grew around the old stump. The old stump is rotting away and there is a large opening through the base now.

 It is a pretty good size tree.

Time to close. I fell asleep trying to write this.

Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.

Mar 7th - A Very Interesting Day

Lots of things happened today. The entire morning (9-12) was taken up with a staff meeting. Below is a photo of maybe three quarters of the people at the meeting. Summer staff doesn't show up until the end of the month. Several of the young people are interns.

 As part of the staff meeting we moved to a different building, suited up, and cut up a shark. The exercise was done so that staff members had a better idea of some of the activities available to campers.

 This was our shark, after we were done dissecting.

The staff meeting was quite interesting. The staff was brought up to date on the general state of the camp finances (which could be better but aren't all that bad, especially considering the economy) and camp construction/building plans. We toured the former home of the camps executive director. It is going to be remodeled into a coffee shop, office area, and the main reception area for the camp. We also toured one of the "cabins" that has been converted to really be a functional handicap cabin. It is NICE! I should have taken some photos. If I think about it I will go back over and do that. There was also a hymn sing, recognition of some staff for going "above and beyond" their duties, and some personal thank yous from one staffer to another.

After the staff meeting we were treated to pizza. The dining staff went way overboard on the pizzas. There were many different types and I think we only were able to eat half of what they prepared. The rest will be stored in one of the refrigerators and staffers/volunteers can take what they want to warm up and eat.

In the afternoon I spent a little over 4 hours mowing. The mower was SWEET! It was about a 72" cut Toro "zero turn" model. I almost finished what could be mowed with the big mower. I should finish in less than an hour tomorrow. The grass was wet, and the ground was wet in areas, but it is probably about as dry as it ever gets.

80 campers (elementary kids and their leaders) came in this afternoon. It sounds like they are having a ball. For supper we had chicken strips, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, good rolls, salad and ice cream for dessert.

It was a full day.

Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.

May 6th - Sunday

It got down to 36 degrees last night. We went outside around 10:30 PDT, to see if we could see the "big" moon. It still was not high enough to be able to see it. To the east of us, an pretty close, is a big hill covered with trees. The moon/sun had to be pretty high before we see it.

I went over and had breakfast with the "guests." It was a buffet line again today. Scrambled eggs, really good link sausages (not smokey links, but still pretty good <grin>), waffles, several types of melons, and strawberries. I'm sure there was hot cereal some place.

After breakfast we attended church at a church in Rockaway Beach. The Pastor had just returned from a conference on youth issues. He passed along some information that while horrible, was nothing that people with any common sense don't already know. The vast majority of young people who fail to get an education have no father figure, the vast majority of prison inmates had no father figure in the home, the majority of teens suicides had no father figure in the home, etc. He quoted statistics on the number of kids in foster care, and the amount of times they get moved around. It was quite sad.

His push was that Christians should be doing more to take these troubled kids in and to give them a stable home environment. I agree with him but that is just one element. I also think that a little vigilante action might be in order. Society lets these dead beat dads get away with not supporting the children they produce. My guess is that if a town took these dead beats "behind the barn", where some negative reinforcement administered while it was pointed out that they better get to work and support their kids, things might change. If one job wasn't enough then they better get two. Perhaps if word of such actions got out the incidence of dead beat dads might decrease. But that is just the rantings of an old conservative who thinks people need to be held accountable for their actions. We are now in the "land of change" where such people are not only to be tolerated they are to be rewarded by being given what others have worked to obtain.

We came home after church and I took a nice nap. After the nap, and lunch, we went back to Rockaway Beach and walked on the beach.

Kathy had on a coat and a sweatshirt. I had a sweatshirt over a long sleeve shirt. It was 58 and the wind was blowing briskly. I'm not sure about the temperature of the water on the shore but I was told that the ocean water is only around 50 degrees. These kids played in the surf for a LONG time.

About a mile down the beach I noticed an area where a stream came out and rain out to the ocean. The water in the photo was about 6" deep. It was clear and flowing right along.

 After our walk we came back and sat on one of the benches. In front of us was a wall made of irregular large rocks, typically around 18" on a side. There were squirrels playing in the rocks. It became obvious that someone must sit on the benches and feed them. They didn't actually touch either of us but they did get close.

 A little while later this guy came out and started feeding them. There were at least 5 of these squirrels that would come up and take nuts(?) from his hand. Some of them would climb up his leg, like the one in the photo below.

Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.