On The Road with Jim and Pat

Our 2006 Inaugural Bus Trip Part 4

Saturday March 19, 2016

I am posting two parts of this inaugural travelogue today.  I am trying to get all of the posts done in the next two or three days (four more to go) so that I can get back to normal travelogues.  I will be on the road for the next three weeks teaching and then Pat and I will be doing some traveling in the next few months.

In the post below I talk about being a vendor at the big FMCA convention.  The photo below shows our booth at the show.

Hello from Pomona CA. Sunday evening March 19, 2006.  Fourth travelogue of this trip.

We are now in Pomona for the huge FMCA (Family Motor Coach Association) International Convention.  We left Sand Diego around 8:00 this morning and got here about 11:00.  The convention is at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds.  This is also the site of two big national drag racing events.  I have been to at least 15 races at this track and Pat has been with me at about half of those races.  Our bus is parked within 50 yards of the end of the strip where we spent most of the time.  Now, the parking lot is a sea of expensive motorhomes.  I would guess that there will be between 4,000 and 5,000 motorhomes at the event. 

We went to the vendor area and looked at our location.  It seems OK.  We are members of a group of “professional” vendors and they get a reasonably good location for their members.  I dropped a few large things in the booth, but we will spend some time tomorrow finishing setting it up.  The show will run for three days (Tues-Thur).  They have a ton of evening entertainment including Debbie Reynolds and Bobby Vinton.

After the show we will spend a couple of weeks of “down” time.  During that time we will attend the national drag racing event in Las Vegas.  The camping area overlooks the track, so it is a great race for us to attend.  I suspect I can talk my friend at Gates out of a one or two one day tickets.  The rest of the time, I will watch from the camping area.

Tonight we went to a great Mexican restaurant that all of the racers go to.  We have been there a couple of times and it is a great local restaurant.

Now to catch up on the Cruise.  We had quite a bit of fun is Cabo San Lucas.  We went on a whale watching boat.  We thought we would be skunked, but got to see a couple of hump back whales toward the end of the tour.  We were a bit disappointed, but the trip was still fun.  Of the three ports, we thought Cabo was the best.  We still prefer Cancun, but this was still a fun trip.

We liked this trip, because there were less ports and more sea time.  We thought that would give us a more relaxing trip – yeah right!!  Almost every waking moment had something scheduled.  If it wasn’t some ship activity, it was a Stampin’ UP! activity.  We did manage to make it to the spa every day and that was great and very relaxing. 

We disembarked about 10:30 Saturday and made a bee line for the Home Depot to get some items to work on the bus.  I had ordered a replacement water manifold and it showed up the day before we left the ship – talk about timing!  I installed it and we now have a fully functional water system.  In fact, we are sitting here laughing, because the icemaker in the refrigerator seems to be going crazy making ice cubes.

I had mentioned that I had to back down the driveway from where the bus was parked in San Diego to the road.  It is about a quarter of a mile of rather steep, twisting, narrow “trail”.  I was able to back down with no problem.  Pat drove the Durango ahead of me and we met down the road to hook it up.

We have both commented about how comfortable the bus is.  The heater is absolutely great and we have needed it most nights, as it is fairly cool in the evening.  The bed is very comfortable and we just plain feel cozy and secure.  All of the systems seem to be working very well (now that the water system is fixed).  Tonight we installed the curtains that Pat made for the bathroom and bedroom.  Since we are parked very close to a ton of motorhomes, we thought it best not to be flashing everyone. 

With the great generator, inverter (12V  DC to 120V AC) and our two way satellite internet dish, we feel very self sufficient.

Our Inaugural Bus Trip Part 3

Saturday March 19, 2016

I am continuing to post a series of travelogues from the first trip in our 1985 Eagle bus. 

In the original travelogue, I did not post a picture of our bus at our friends house in San Diego.  I thought it might be fun to show the somewhat tight fit.  You can see his house in the upper left hand corner and on the right is the driveway that is quite steep and curvy.  I had to back down that driveway!   It was an amazing stay.

Hello again from aboard the USS Oosterdam

Wednesday afternoon March 15, 2006.  Third travelogue of this trip.

The Oosterdam is a great ship.  We took this ship on our Alaska cruise.  This time Stampin’ UP! has chartered the whole ship.  Slightly more than 500 demonstrators earned the cruise.  With spouses, children and other family members, that takes the “earned” folks up to around 1200 (guess).  The rest of the folks are mostly other demonstrators who decided to go on the cruise and pay for their trip. 

The Oosterdam was built in Aug of 2003.  It can accommodate a bit over 1800 passengers and 800 crew.  The ship has 11 decks, 16 elevators, is 935 feet long and 106 feet wide.  Ships are often rated in gross tonnage and this ship has a rating of 82,000.  We have been on bigger ships, but this seems like a nice size.

The sailing from San Diego was pretty darn rough.  Pat and I had no problems, but many folks were sick the first two days. 

Yesterday we docked in Puerto Vallarta.  I did a two tank dive and the dives were OK.  The water is not as clear here as it is in the Caribbean.  The second dive had several long tunnels and that is a lot of fun.  I saw lots of neat fish including some tiny sea horses.

The boat that took us out held about 50 folks.  About 16 of us did scuba diving and the rest did snorkeling.  The water was pretty darn cold (66 degrees during our dive at about 40 feet), so the snorkel  folks did not have much fun.  We had wet suits and most of us could handle the cold water.  On the way out to the dive area we saw a couple of whales and many dolphins.

While I did my dive Pat went into town.  She did not stay long and did not buy anything.

Today we landed at Mazatlan.  We did not have a tour scheduled.  We went to the dock area and decided to take a funny looking open taxi (based on the old Volkswagen “Thing”).  I have some pictures and will send them or post them on our website after we get off the ship (the ship system is very slow and quite expensive).  We paid the driver $20 and he drove us around old town for about an hour.  The driver spoke good English and he was a great guide.

Tomorrow we arrive at Cabo San Lucas.  There we will take a whale watching cruise, hoping to see a Blue Whale (largest mammal to ever inhibit the planet).  We are told they are in the area, but are not often observed.

Our Inaugural Bus Trip (2006) Part 2

Tuesday March 8, 2016

Well, Pat and I (and others) had fun with the first travelogue post from our  inaugural bus trip in the bus (2006) that I decided to post more of the posts of that trip.

Here is some background information.  This was a major trip with several planned events.  The first event was a Cruise to western Mexico that Pat had earned.  To date she has earned 10 trips/cruises as a demonstrator with Stampin’ UP!  We will be going on the tenth cruise in a couple of months – obviously we will blog about that trip when the time comes.

The other planned events for the 2006 trip were being vendors at the FMCA convention in Pomona, Sightseeing in Death Valley and attending a National NHRA drag race in Las Vegas.

So, over the next few days I will fill the electronic highway with several more posts from this amazing trip.

Hello from aboard the USS Oosterdam

Sunday morning March 12, 2006.  Second travelogue of this trip.

We made it to San Diego without problems.  We got to our friend’s house about 1:00 PM on Thursday.  His road is fairly steep and has some curves in it.  Going up was not a problem, but I have to back down the same road (about ¼ mile).  I don’t think that will be a problem.

Jim Stewart is such a nice person and great host.  It is very comforting to have a good place to leave the bus.  He has a great looking Prevost bus that he is working on.  It is kind of fun to see the two side by side.  Unfortunately, I left that camera in the bus, so I don’t have a photo with me to show you.  His house in on fairly steep hillside, with some great views of the surrounding area.

We were surprised to learn that San Diego (at least inland a bit) is somewhat arid.  They only get about 11 inches of rain a year.  You could not tell that from when we were there, since it rained most of the time and was rather cool (warmer than Denver, however). 

Friday we went over to another bus nut’s place.  This was quite an experience!!   This person clearly qualifies as an eccentric genius.  He lives on site of about 1 acre that is covered by STUFF!!!  Most of you think I have too much stuff, but he has 100 times as much STUFF as I do much of it stored in huge shipping containers.  He has lived there over 20 years.  When he moved there, it was out in the country, but now is completely surrounded by multi-million dollar houses.  His property has quite a number of big trees that hide his STUFF from view of his neighbors.

His best skill is designing very unique electronic circuits, but he makes his living fabricating stills that extract “essential oils” from various plants.  This oil is used for healing purposes primarily.  He has perfected these stills and makes both glass and stainless versions.  We watched him make parts for the glass still and he is truly an artisan.  Later that evening we went to a great fresh fish restaurant.

Part of Friday was spent loading our suitcases and getting ready for the cruise.  We frantically finished up Saturday morning.  We drove to the harbor and unloaded all of the luggage and I then went to park the car in a parking garage.  We had to wait about 2hours for the gates to open (we were first in line).  Just as they opened the gates, we discovered that we had left the passports in the copy/printer in the bus!  We panicked, but were able to work things out to where they would let us board the ship.  At the present time you do not need to have a passport to enter Mexico (going to change next year), but you do need two forms of photo ID that shows you are a US citizen.  Pat had a birth certificate plus her driver’s license and they let me sign some sort of waver.  They said we would not have a problem getting back into the country, since we had copies of our passports in our luggage (the reason the passports were in the copy machine in the first place).

We were able to board the ship yesterday about noon.  Our room was ready about 1:30.  While waiting for the room to be available, we went to the SPA and took a tour.  We signed up for the therapeutic pool which also includes other services such as several versions of saunas   and some unique heated ceramic “recliners”.  This should help both of our tired and aching bodies.  Speaking of that, Pat encouraged me to get a special “healing session” which included being covered with a special mixture of “essential oils”,  wrapped in a very flexible tin foil and submerged horizontally in a very warm water bed.  This was followed by a full body massage.  It really seemed to relax me and did a great job of loosening up the horrible back spasm that has had me in terrible pain for the past few weeks.  Now that the spasm is loosened up, I think I can manage it with the warm water and exercises from my physical therapy  sessions from a couple of months ago.  The SPA services are very expensive, but we are not doing as many shore excursions this trip, so maybe the net cost of the trip will be about the same.  Besides that, we need to get our bodies back to feeling better.

The first two days of the cruise are at sea.  That is great, as it not so hectic.  Stampin’ UP! has some activities those two days, but it is not too bad.  Our first port of call is Puerto Vallarta.  I am scheduled to do a two tank dive.  Our next port is Mazatlan.  We do not have a shore excursion scheduled at that port.  Our final port is Cabo San Lucas, where we have scheduled a whale watching tour and hope to see some Blue Whales.

 

Ten Year Anniversary

Sunday morning March 6, 2016

No, not our anniversary –  we are working on 52 this year.

Ten years ago today we headed out for our first trip in our 1985 Eagle bus conversion!  And what a trip it was!  To this day, I can’t believe what a gutsy (stupid?) decision it was to take the bus on this trip.  We had a very tight schedule and had only driven the bus around the Evergreen area prior to this trip.  I had just completed a major engine conversion and had not really had time to test the reliability of all the new systems.  You can view the construction of the bus and the engine conversion here:  /beltguy.com/Bus_Project/busproject.htm

I have said many times that I write these travelogues primarily so that we can go back and recall all of the fun times we have had.  A bit later in this blog, I will post the first of several “blogs” that I wrote for this trip.  In those days, the format was emails to the family and a few friends.  Reading that travelogue really did bring back some fun memories!

Before I post the first blog of that trip, I thought I would update the statistics relating to our travels in the bus.   We have spent 870 nights in our home away from home, traveled a bit over 79,000 miles and visited 28 states (see map on the right).

Now, here it the first of the posts from the inaugural trip.

Hello from Holtville CA.

Thursday morning March 9, 2006.  First travelogue of this trip.

Boy, do I have a lot to write about!!

First of all, I was beginning to wonder if I would live long enough to travel in the bus!!  I guess I made it, although my body is very tired from the big trash the last few weeks.  We took some pictures of my mangled hands to record how bad they got towards the end.  Too bad that a photo can’t be taken of my very sore body.  For that matter, Pat is very sore as well, as she had to do the lion’s share of the loading, since I was tied up trying to get the bus ready for the trip.  As you will read later in this travelogue it has all been worth it.

We ended up leaving Evergreen Monday afternoon (roughly 2 ½ days later than we planned).  Lots of last minute items to get done and each fought me all of the way.  The biggest was our water supply system valve body that leaked and then Mr. “if a little is good, a lot more is better” tightened up the fitting too much and broke the valve body housing.  This caused a major leak and no water supply.  The thought of living 6 weeks with no water just was not acceptable and I almost called off taking the bus.  However, calmer minds prevailed the next day and I did some temporary repair work.  That helped, and I did some more work on the system while we were on the road.  I now have it to where it only leaks a little bit and I am ordering a new valve body to be shipped to the place the bus will be parked when we are on the cruise.  The valve body is a great system, but it is sure not made very strong.  I have broken the system once before and it hurts each time I order one ($100). 

The trip down here went pretty darn well!  We made it to Trinidad the first day (200 miles) and stayed at a Wal Mart.  We then made it to Winslow AZ (500 miles) and again stayed at a Wal Mart.  Yesterday we drove 480 miles to Holtville.

We are at a BLM campground which is adjacent to the Highline Hot Springs.  There is some background to this stop.  For Christmas I gave Pat some books on hot springs in various regions of the country.  My thought was that this would be fun places to stop and would give Pat a chance to do some hot water exercises for her rheumatoid arthritis.  These are fun books that describe all of the locations for hot springs in various regions of the country.  This place was listed and so we decided to stop.  The BLM charges $30 for 14 days of primitive camping and has no other fee option.  The camp host was kind enough to let us stay the one night for free.  The hot springs is very primitive.  There are some small basic concrete “pools” that are fed by artesian wells.  They are surrounded by Palm trees (and this is in the desert where no trees are to be found).  There was no charge for the use of the hot springs.  It sure felt good on my tired old body!  Pat did a bit of exercising, but the pool was a bit hot for her. 

The folks at the pool were very friendly.  It turns out that over half the folks who stay here are Canadian (reportedly up to 80%).  There is a “yearly” fee of $140 and that gives the “snowbirds” a very inexpensive place to stay for the winter.  As noted above, this is primitive camping (no water/sewer/electrical).  It looks like folks have gotten pretty inventive with their ways to “boondock”.   Many of the women take gallon jugs to the hot springs and bring back warm water from the output of the well to wash the dishes. 

We are about 150 miles from where we will park the bus at another bus-nut’s house.  It sounds like it will be an adventure to get the bus into his place.  We will have to unhook the Durango and I will then have to drive up what he describes as a steep drive way.  I then have to back the bus down the driveway to leave.  I have met the person at one of our trade shows.  He responded to a posting I made on one of the bus bulletin boards and made the very kind offer.

There are lots of things to report about the trip down here.  Our first (and only) “gut wrencher” occurred on Raton Pass.  We were almost to the summit when were heard a loud pop and our engine power went to almost nothing.  It turned out that a turbo charger hose had come loose (probably one I forgot to tighten).  I got it all cinched up in a few minutes and we were on our way.  It took longer for my nerves to settle down that it did to repair the connection.

In northern NM we came across a bus fire.  It was close to a rest stop that I was going to use, so I walked back to the scene and took several pictures.  The bus was fairly new and was a commercial transportation unit (not a conversion).  The firemen were just putting the fire out.  I did a search last night, and could not find anything about the fire, so apparently no one was hurt.  My reason for taking the photos was to add to my collection of bus/motorhome fires for our business.

In Flagstaff yesterday, we ran into a huge snowstorm.  The bus did fine, except I had disconnected the windshield wipers to do some work on them.  They are driven by the bus air supply system and tend to leak.  Anyway, I drove several miles with snow accumulating on the windshield.  I finally pulled off and reconnected the wipers and then everything was fine.

During nearly the entire trip, we experienced very heavy gusting winds (a part of the big weather front that dumped some much needed snow on Denver).  The bus did pretty darn good in even the worst of the wind conditions.  I had to work the steering wheel pretty good at times, but it never approached the “white knuckles” driving of the motorhome.

Pat and I have been very happy with living in the bus.  The systems have all functioned well (with the exception of the water problem).  Even with the water problem, Pat was able to take a shower last night and said it sure felt good.  Even more important, we have a large water supply and holding tanks, so we don’t have to be quite so careful of our water use.  With our large inverter, we have 120V power all of the time and I don’t have to run the generator to make coffee or watch TV, or be on the internet; like we had to with the motorhome.  The heat in this unit is hydronic and is very comfortable.  Now that the carpet is in, it just feels like home.  The only systems we have not tried are the washer and dryer.  That will come later in the trip.

I have attached two photos.  One is of me installing the very special eagle emblem that Pat gave to me for Christmas.  The second one is of the bus and Durango at a rest stop in AZ.

Editorial note:  that is the end of the first post.  In days to come I will add additional posts from that trip.

Hello from Centennial, CO

Wednesday evening — December 16, 2015   (First post of this travelogue)

I am in Centennial, CO for an NTT assignment.  This was a public class held at the NTT office.  I am teaching my favorite class:  Mechanical Drives.  We only have two students in class, but that is still working out well for me.

NTT recently purchased all new training equipment and our lab manual had to be revised to reflect this equipment.  I was retained to re-write the manual and this is the first test of the document.  It is about 100 pages long with lots of pictures of the equipment and processes.  So far, there have not been any significant issues with the lab book (thank goodness!!!)

This is a three day class and we finish tomorrow.

NTT has always been good to put me in a hotel when I teach at their facility.  This time I am at the Staybridge Suites.  It is a good hotel and part of the Holiday Inn organization.  Their breakfast is better than Holiday Inn. 

It was a good thing they had me stay close to the office.  I arrived Monday afternoon and the weather was fine.  However, overnight it snowed very hard – so bad that they closed all of the Denver area school systems.  I made it to the office reasonably easily – thank goodness I had the Durango.  They closed many of the roads in the Denver area at various times and I would have had a terrible time getting to the office from home.

I was originally scheduled to teach a class in the Las Vegas area this week.  I was not looking forward to flying this time of year.  With all the snow, DIA had several hundred cancelled flights and I might not have made it to the assignment.

That is all for this trip.

Hello from Sacramento, CA

Thursday evening  — October 22, 2015   (First post of this travelogue)

I am in Sacramento for an NTT assignment.  This was a public class held at the Holiday Inn Express (see map below).  This was my favorite class to teach:  Mechanical Drives.  To make it even better I much prefer the public class as opposed to our on-site classes for just one customer.  The class was from Tuesday though today.  It went well, except that only half of the hands-on equipment was shipped.  That created some significant logistic problems, but we made it work and the students seemed to enjoy the class.

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I flew out a day early (Sunday) and stayed at the Holiday Inn Express in Grass Valley, CA so that I could visit an old friend who has a racing parts machine shop up in the “back woods” of the gold mining country (see map below).  He is a good customer of Gates (blower belts for drag racing vehicle) and we became good friends over the years that I called on him for Gates.  Indeed, folks say we look like brothers and we certainly think a lot alike.  Monday afternoon I traveled back to Sacramento so that I could get prepared for the class.

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The weather out here could not have been better.  Very sunny and temperatures in the  70s and 80s.  You can sure tell that they have a drought here and it is sad to see that some of areas are so brown.  They are hoping that the el Niño will provide some much needed moisture this winter.

Tomorrow morning I will fly back to Denver. 

That is all for this trip.

Hello from Evergreen, CO

Thursday Morning  — September 10, 2015   (Second post of this travelogue)

I decided that I want to document a few more items from my trip to Page, AZ

My hotel in Page was the Best Western View of Lake Powell (there are two Best Westerns adjacent to each other).  Here is a map of the hotel location.  If you zoom out a bit, you will see how close the hotel is to the Glenn Canyon Dam.

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I have not been a big fan of Best Western hotels, but this one was excellent.  As I noted in the first travelogue post, I had a view of the dam from my room.  The room was a handicap room which is often better suited to our needs (e.g. shower rather than a tub).  The  room was well equipped and the furniture was quite modern.  I had been told that the hotel was recently remodeled.

The class had 9 attendees on Monday, but on Tuesday one of the three generators went down and they called three of the students out for the rest of the class to work on the repair.  This is still the peak demand period and they needed to get the generator on line as quickly as possible.  When I left Thursday, late afternoon, the generator was still down.

Thursday, after class, I drove to Cortez – a bit over 200 miles.  Arizona does not go on daylight savings time, so I lost an hour of sunlight.  Even though the last hour of driving was in the dark, it was not bad.  I stayed at the Holiday Inn Express.  Friday I drove to Evergreen via Durango and US 285.

Both of the stays during the drive (Moab and Cortex) were at Holiday Inn Expresses and both were in the $150 range.  Both towns are tourist towns and the hotels charge accordingly. 

The driving trip was through some of the most beautiful scenery in this country.  I have told Pat that I want to duplicate this trip when she can go.  There were other things that made the drive enjoyable.  I had rented a standard car, but they upgraded me to a Jeep Cherokee.  That was a fun car to drive.  It had a USB plug which made it easy to connect my phone and listen to my music.  Over the past several years I have honed my music library – and now have nearly 700 songs.  Recently I have concentrated on classical jazz and jazz guitar – great listening.

That is all for this trip.

Wednesday evening  — September 2, 2015   (First post of this travelogue)

I am in Page AZ for an NTT assignment at the Navajo Generating Station (info).  Trying to get to Page via plane is not easy.  We looked at the limited alternatives and it just made sense for me to drive here.  I rented a car and left Saturday morning and drove to Moab, Utah.  Our son-in-law, Damon, mentioned a picturesque route to get to Moab that follows the Colorado river.  The route turns off I 70 at exit 204 in Utah and that is highway 128.  At the start of the route, I thought it was not all that great.  That quickly turned to an amazing drive though a fairly deep red rock canyon and then out to beautiful rock spires (see pictures). 

The photos above are from the drive along Utah 128

Navajo Generating Plant

The view from the Holiday Inn in Moab of the surrounding rock formations was wonderful.

View from the Moab Hotel

Before I continue, I need to mention that Pat would normally jump at the chance to make this trip, but it came up fairly quickly and she had already scheduled an event that could not easily be changed.  Worse yet, her 91 year old father became very seriously ill and has been in the hospital and rehabilitation center for over two weeks.  We can only hope that I get another assignment at this facility and that she can join me for this fantastically beautiful trip.

Now back to my travels.  Sunday I drove from Moab to Page.  It was a bit over 4 hours and when I arrived at the hotel they would not let me in the rooms until 3:00.  I had wanted to visit the Glen Canyon Dam (info), and that seemed like a good time.  I was able to get into a tour group fairly quickly.  The tours are great!  You go into the dam (down two elevators for a total of over 600 feet.  There is an observation area in the bottom of the dam where you can observe the eight  huge turbines/generators

The photos above are from my tour of the Glen Canyon Dam

Glen Canyon dam construction started in 1956 and was completed ten years later.  It is a reclamation dam that controls the flow of the Colorado River and supplies electrical power to a considerable area of the southwestern part of the US.  It is only slightly smaller than Hover Dam.  The reservoir behind the dam is known as Lake Powell and is a famous recreational lake.  The dam is visible from my hotel room and is about three miles from Page.  Indeed, Page was built in 1957 as a town to support the building of the dam.

View from my hotel room in Page
The dam is in the left center of the photo

There have been a huge number of Europeans at the two motels I stayed at.  It turns out that Moab and Page are in a loop that tour buses take that includes the Grand Canyon, Bryce, Zion, Arches, and the Canyon Lands.  The beauty of that whole area is beyond my ability to find proper descriptive words, so it seems natural of folks from other countries to want to enjoy some of the beauty of our country.

I hope to do some more documentation of this trip, but I am getting tired and need to crash.

Hello from Prescott, IA

Saturday afternoon  — August 8, 2015   (First post of this travelogue)

We travelled to Iowa this week primarily to celebrate Pat’s aunt and uncle’s 80^th birthdays.  More a bit later in this post.

We left Evergreen about 4:30 AM Monday and drove straight through (in the PT Cruiser) – arriving in Prescott about 4:00 PM.  With the time change that is about 10 ½ hours – pretty good for us since we have to stop a lot to walk around and exercise the tired old bodies.  

Getting ready for this trip was a bit hairy.  The air conditioner in the PT Cruiser had been getting weaker over the past few weeks and heading to Iowa in August demands a pretty good AC.  I worked on the system about a week before we left and it only improved a bit.  Finally after a lot of research on the Internet, I got a clue about a control switch that many folks had problems with.  It did not seem like a logical solution, but for $20 I thought why not.  After installing the switch (pretty easy) and topping off the Freon, the system works good now.  I have to add that the AC system in the PT is the subject of a huge number of threads, all complaining about how strange the plumbing is and how hard it is to work on.

As a backup we thought about the Durango, but its AC is not all that great, and renting a car.  Sure glad we got the PT working great – until we got to Omaha.  In the middle of town the engine really acted up and threw a code.  I pulled over and shut the engine down and restarted it and it seemed to run fine, but the code remained.  Once we got to Iowa, I connected the computer and determined that the “cam position sensor” had thrown the code.  I ordered one and put it in yesterday (not too bad of a job).

The weather has been good since we got here – fairly cool for August.  However the day before we arrived, a tornado destroyed several buildings and farm equipment less than 10 miles from Bill and Jeanne’s house (see photos).

Thursday was the surprise party for Jack and Janice.  That morning we, along with Pat’s cousin and her husband, went to their house and had a great visit.  They took us for quite a driving tour of the area including driving to their son Dan’s house.  Dan and Terri were hosting the party that night and there were several tables set up and the family was out picking sweet corn in the nearby garden.  Apparently Jack and Janice figured it was a party for a visiting granddaughter.

That night a huge number of people gathered for the celebration.  Jack and Janice were completely surprised.  The food was great, and the weather could not have been better.

Today we went to an auction of the contents of the Prescott Community School.  It is sad that the school is closing.  I think it is a great looking building (see picture).  The board is meeting in the next few days to decide what to do with the building, but the options are very limited and it will likely be torn down.  Jack and Janice, along with their  family,  are the auctioneers, so it is always fun to see them in action.  We are taking a break from the auction as I type this and we will go back later to see if we can snag a couple of things that Pat has her eye on.

That is all for now.

Guest Travelogue

I thought it might be fun to document a trip that our grandson took.

As background, Thomas recently graduated as a Geologist (this blog post).  He is participating in an internship at Antero Resources (link) at their main office in downtown Denver.  We are thrilled that he is staying with us during this internship.  It is so refreshing to see his enthusiasm for his assignment and to witness how mature he has become.

Monday (7/27/15) he, and some other Antero folks, took the business jet shown below from Denver to Bridgeport, WV where Antero has a field office.  It was trip packed with great exposure for Thomas.  Over a three day period, he got to tour a fracking operation, a gas gathering compressor plant, tour a drilling rig, and inspect a new field site where Antero will be drilling.  Antero went to great lengths to make sure that Thomas, and the other interns, received maximum technical exposure to their field operations.

Last night (Wed. 7/29) he got home about 8:00 PM.  He was dog tired, but so enthusiastic about his experience.