Oceana, Ocean Shores WA 9/2/10 - 9/16/10

On to a park in western Washington and the Coast!

Yes, we are walking the beaches again! We love to be on the Coast, but I don't think we could live there--too much fog and rain. But it is sure fun to visit. We had typical coastal weather, mostly in the 60's, rainy, foggy, but with a little sunshine thrown in.

This park is another Leisure Time in the Thousand Trails System, called Oceana. It is on Grays Harbor, close to Ocean Shores, and the park is on the peninsula.

The park has only a few sites with sewer hookup, so we had to conserve on kitchen and bathroom water, but we made it the full two weeks and didn't have to dump our holding tanks. The park has a small clubhouse, but no pool or many other amenities.

There is a small laundry room, with two washers and two dryers. As we were carrying in our laundry in, another guest suggested that we could take down the tub and wash board if we needed it! Thank goodness I only had two loads of clothes.

On the peninsula, there are over 25 miles of fresh-water rivers and lakes. One of the rivers went right through the park. Someone said there were family of five otters that lived under the bridge, but we never got to see them.

The park is nice--small but with a lot of grassy spots. One whole side was down with electrical maintenance scheduled, so it didn't seem too crowded.

We parked quite close to the restroom and showers because we needed to use them a lot to keep from having to dump our holding tanks. It worked great!

There is a path that leads right down to the beach.

It was great and we did a lot of walking and looking for treasures. There were a lot of sand dollars, but they were all broken by the birds. We never did find a whole one.

The beach was close enough that we could hear the ocean sounds all night long. Sometimes it was so loud that it kind of sounded scary!

We did end up finding some pretty cool shells to add to our collection. We usually save them on our picnic table and then throw them away before we leave.

On the trail down to the beach there is a "finders' tree." It is a place to hang all of the treasures you find on the beach. There were already lots of things on it, from old sleeping bags to a toy truck. Terry found an old buoy and added it to the treasures.

One day we went for a drive and made the loop around the peninsula. There were lot of deer. They are darker than the ones in Idaho and they have black tails. You really have to watch out for them when you are driving on the roads.

The deer like to hang out in people's yards, like these are doing. We had some in our park and saw them quite often, but never got a picture of them.

We had several opportunities to put out our Scentsy products. The manager pretty much let me do what I wanted with it. So, we had a couple of open houses for it.

If the weather was bad, we would invite people to come into our Condo where we had the warmers displayed on the cupboards--

--and all of the scents to smell on the table. It was a fun way to meet and visit with people. We had a few couples who came and stayed for over an hour just visiting. We usually all trade "RV Cards" and will probably see them again somewhere along the road.

If the weather was nice, then we set the Scentsy warmers and scents outside, which was a really nice way to do it. I am not sure that too many parks will let us do it this way, but it was fun to get to do it here.

The day before we left we went we went towards Aberdeen, WA, to Lytle's Crab Shack. Someone had told us that they sold really good fresh seafood. They had a sign that said, "We shuck, you suck." Well, the lady there talked us into having our first "oyster shot." It is a raw oyster put into a shot glass (or a little paper cup if you don't want to buy the shot glass) with a little cocktail sauce (or hot sauce if you prefer) on it. You are supposed to just gulp it down and swallow it whole, but I wanted to taste it so I chewed mine. Terry thought it was pretty good, but I don't think I will try one again. We did buy some steamer clams to steam and some oysters to deep-fry (we also deep-fried some onions.) Terry liked both really well, but I preferred the clams. They were sooo good. I don't know why we hadn't tried them before, but I don't think it will be the last time!

Thunderbird, Monroe WA 8/19/10 - 9/2/10

We left Leavenworth and headed west to Monroe, WA. It was really a pretty drive. We thought Idaho had a lot of rivers and lakes, but I think Washington has more. There were rivers and lakes everywhere.

Thunderbird Resort is a Leisure Time Resort, which is one of the three parts of the Thousand Trail family--Thousand Trails, NACO, and Leisure time.

Thunderbird has a nice entrance at the Ranger station. There is a wood carving of two eagles on a nest with a large fish hanging from one of the eagle's claws.

The park is split on two sides of the highway. One side is right on the Skykomish River. But the sites along the river don't have sewer so we chose a site on the other side. It was one of very few sites left. The park was filled with soccer players and their families.

Needless to say, these great playgrounds, miniature golf and pools were filled with families. It kind of thinned out after the weekend, but lots of families came again the next weekend. There were quite a few activities for the kids, so it was great. They had water balloon tosses, pool volleyball, cupcake frosting, coloring contests, candybar bingo, and movies.

We caught a little time in the big swing set when there were no kids. The swing sets in most of the parks we have been in were not quite as heavy duty as these. They were great for adults too--if you didn't get sick to your stomach swinging like we do in our old age!

A stream came down through the park (from which they got all of the water for the park) so we had to cross a little bridge to get to the clubhouse, pools, and country store.

The clubhouse is a big red barn. I think that at one time it had been a real barn.

It was quite nice inside. They had activities and served meals in here on the weekend, but not much went on during the week. They allowed me to set up my Scentsy products both weekends we were there and we did pretty good.

The pools are beautiful. There is a family pool that was almost always busy, a wading pool for the little ones, an adult pool, and a hot tub.

There is also a little country store. They rented small little outside fireplaces--the only way you could have a fire outside. We didn't rent one, but it looked like a fun thing to do.

This is a picture of the clubhouse from across the road where the rest of the resort spaces are located.

That is also where the laundromat, office, and adult clubhouse are.

The Skykomish River is really pretty. You could tell there has been quite a bit of flooding because of the large trees left out in the middle in some areas. The river was quite low while we were there. This is a view from one of the sites on the river. Maybe it would have been worth it to stay on this side and not have sewer hook-ups!

Terry found some fishermen who told so many "fish stories" that he stayed and visited for about an hour while I went to do some laundry. One of the guys caught a big fish and was excited until Terry told him it was just an old sucker! The guy was disappointed and said he was going to take it home anyway and tell his wife it was a salmon. Later, we walked by their rig and they were sitting outside eating. Terry asked them how the salmon was! Everyone had a good laugh.

There was a nice laundry room. It only had three washers and three dryers, but I didn't have to wait too long for my turn.

Terry even got back from talking to the fishermen in time to help!

My brother, David, gave Terry this black powder pistol. He has been working several months on refinishing it and finally got it done while we were at Thunderbird. He did a good job!

On the Road Again--LaGrande to Leavenworth RV Park, Leavenworth, WA 8/4/10 - 8/19/10

After Lorrie and I had our "annual" yard sale, we took off from Idaho for our parks in Washington. We have only been in one park in Washington and there are sixteen, plus some affiliate parks. So, we chose four of them to stay 8 weeks before we head down the Oregon Coast into California and Arizona for the winter.

Ryan and Lori moved to LaGrande, OR, in June. Ryan is planning to go back to school and become a PA and work in orthopedics. Lori's family live in LaGrande so it works out well for him to go to school there for a couple of years.

We had room to park out in the street in front of their house and spent the night there. It was fun seeing their home. It is really nice and spacious. Lori always decorates their homes nice. We spent the evening outside playing with the kids. Lori was there, but Ryan had to work until about 11:30 pm. It is so nice when we visit the kids and can bring our own bedroom with us. I hope it takes a little strain off of them not having to worry what to do with us.

The kids found they could ride the skateboard down the sidewalk because it has quite a slope. Our electrical cord had to be raised up to keep them from crashing. Wesley is going so fast he is just a blur!

He even gave little brother Chaz some rides. Ryan and Lori's kids get along really well. It was fun spending a little time with them.

Our first park was Leavenworth. It was a nice park, but about 20 miles from the town of Leavenworth. There is a small store in Plain, which is about 3 miles away. The park actually has three areas--Timber View, Meadow View, and this one is Lake View. We stayed in Meadow View, which is about 1/2 mile from Timber View and the clubhouse and pool, and almost a mile away from Lake View. We were glad we had our bikes. It was a great place to ride.

There are some nice open areas where activities are held and families can hold activities. It is a pretty family oriented park. The pool is huge and we loved the miniature golf course. We played it several times.

They have just redone the clubhouse in the last year and it was really nice. They don't use the fireplace too much in the summer, but the park is open year-round and they use it a lot in the winter when the snowmobilers come in and use the park.

Downstairs is a nice activity and game room. They also have a young children's room with toys in it for them.

As you enter one side of the store, there is a little ice cream parlor that is fixed really cute.

We got a really good spot. There is basically only one area where there is sewer hook-up. We didn't think we would ever find a spot in that area, but we did! Quite a few of the Thousand Trail Parks in Washington, where Thousand Trails started, are older parks and either the laws prohibit or it is cost prohibitive to put in more sewer. We were glad we got a spacious spot because my brother Ron and his wife, Kath, and daughter, Destiny were coming for a few days to stay with us.

Ron and his family made it. They brought their bikes and we spent a lot of time riding and also did some hiking, swimming, and lots of other things. Here we were on a hike.

Ron and I were trying to decide which way to go. We decided to take the medium difficult one and then he and I would come back another time to try the more difficult hike.

It was a really pretty hike, following water a lot of the time. Thanks to Kath and her camera (I figured we would be taking pictures of the same things, so she offered to to share hers. That is why I am in so many of them!)

One day there was a kite making/flying contest and Destiny entered. She make a really cute kite--drawing pictures on it of all of us and our activities. With Ron's help, it even flew a little.

We sat and gave moral support.

Lo and behold! Destiny ended up with a prize with her kite. She just loved her pink spiked ball. She played with it in the pool later that evening.

The next day there was a "duck race." We all signed up and got a duck with a number on it. They were all dumped into a little stream and we all cheered our duck on. We couldn't believe when Destiny's came in first and Kath's came in second, out of about about 30 ducks! They each won a free ice cream sundae at the ice cream social that afternoon!

One day we rode with Ron and Kath and Destiny into Leavenworth. A couple of the streets they have fixed up really cute to look like a Bavarian village. It was fun to walk around it.

Ron and I did end up going on the more difficult hike. It really wasn't too bad. At the top there was a memorial where there was a huge flagpole and an American flag on it. Down a steep hill there was a garbage can. Ron couldn't stand it until he climbed down the hill to see what was in it--nothing! But, he got his exercise climbing the hill! Further along the trail there was a scout gathering area, with a fire pit with benches around it and a big, neatly stacked, pile of wood. There were also flags flying there.

We had to have a picture sitting on this big rock near the scout camp. It was a fun hike.

Thanks to Ron and Kathy and Destiny! We had a really good time with them. We liked the campground, even though it was a little ways from civilization. Actually, there was a logging crew that started working every morning at about 5:00 am. A few campers actually left because of getting wakened every morning so early.

I am selling the Scentsy wick-less candles and warmers as we go into our parks this year. I plan on putting up a table at the craft sales, but Leavenworth didn't have craft sales. One evening I heard my neighbors talking about burning candles, so I invited them over to see my wares. One of the ladies bought her whole Christmas for her family from me! It was a great start for my new little venture. We will see how it goes.