Hiking in the Boise National Forest

About half a mile from our "dispersed" camping site we found a trail for, of all things,  dirt bikes.

There weren't any other trails available so we figured what the heck and tried it.

We are so glad we did.

The trail ascended rapidly for the first mile. Steep climbs.







Then we reached an area of flat meadows surrounded by mountains. We took a side trail that had not been used by dirt bikes, or even hikers for many years, and hiked another mile or so until we lost this trail. This trail seemed to be an old mountain road, but for what use we couldn't tell. Who built it, why, when, lost to history. This made it all the more fun.

We find the stillness of nature: Start of Roadtrip 4

All of that work, all of that time, all of that planning, and now we have found it, once again. In the Boise National Forest, beside a small stream, far away from any town and yapping dogs.

We have discovered the pleasures of "dispersed" camping a type of camping on national lands that is away from campgrounds. Just find a spot, and it is yours. It is also free.

Tomorrow we will hike around here, come back to the camper, have a nice meal of salmon, and sleep well. This is why we bought the camper, and this pickup. So we could get to this type of place.

Last night, on our way here, we stayed, by necessity, at a state campground. It was like sleeping in the median of I5. It was a campground that was developed by the Civilian Conservation Corps, so we had a fondness for it immediately. But the CCC had no idea that 25 years later someone would build an interstate right next to it. All night, cars and trucks roaring by.

It was inexpensive and clean. And for a place to stay for a night on our way to somewhere else, it was great. But what surprised us was the number of people who were there for a long stay. People playing music, loud talk, dogs walking around unattended, lights, etc. And the roar of highway noise. Oh, and did I mention dogs? Those folks whom were there for the long stay are getting what they want, and they all appear happy and contented and friendly. There isn't "an" RV world. Instead, there are many RV worlds. That's super.

Our RV world is in this dispersed site in the Boise National Forest. Tonight we sat outside, me drinking a glass of red wine, listening to grasshoppers buzzing and the gurgling of the small stream, feeling like we were exactly where we wanted to be.

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Camping with grandsons Ian and Adam......boom!

We just returned from a 4-day camping trip with the boys.  We went to a campground between Mt. Rainier and Mt. St. Helens.  It was on a small river, so in addition to visiting those two sites, they also got to play in the river.

Our plan had been to do something similar with the other grandchildren, but it was not to be for this year.  For one thing, I HAVE TO HAVE MORE SURGERY.  That's right.  In 10 years, I will have had 10 surgeries, including three foot surgeries, three shoulder surgeries, three eye surgeries, and surgery for a double hernia.

I have a torn rotator cuff.  I had the right rotator cuff repaired about six years ago, and now the left one needs the same repair.  So, we will be postponing Roadtrip 4 until the end of October so I can have it.  My body is a good one, except for its joints.  Everybody has something.  So no need to whine about it.  All I will whine about is missing camping with other grandchildren.

We did three hikes with Ian and Adam.  The first was on a trail through the mountains, near our camp grounds:

The next day we went to Paradise Lodge at Mt. Rainier.

The next day we went to Mt. St. Helens.

We established a rule, which was whenever anybody said "Mt. St. Helens" everyone else was supposed to yell "Boom"

In the top left corner of Spirit Lake can be seen two small islands.  The Mt. St. Helens (Boom) Lodge was about 250 feet below this spot.  It is where Harry R. Truman decided to stay, despite warnings to leave. 

We did a couple of hikes around the area.  One of them involved walking to a lookout point, up 432 steps (Adam counted).

The views from the top of the stairs were outstanding.

You can see Mt. Rainier peeking over the top.  Spirit Lake is filled with logs from trees blown down by the explosion. 

See our camper down below?

Vicky taught the boys how to cross a stream.

Victory dance!

Meanwhile, I took the easier way out and showed the boys how to throw rocks:

We had so much fun at the campsite, hiking in the woods, hiking around Mt. Rainier, and hiking around Mt. St. Helens.........BOOM!

Saying goodbye to a hobby

And what a hobby it was.

Been collecting and selling vintage toys and collectibles for over 20 years.

In addition to selling at shows and in malls, for most of those 20 years I sold through my web store, vintage-toys.com, and through eBay, because of vintage-toys.com.  Jules set the web store up a way that I could send items from the store to eBay, and I did pretty well for several years.

It was a hobby/business.  And it was reasonably successful, given that it was what it was, and not my primary source of income.  But then the business part of the hobby/business started failing.   The reasons are due to eBay becoming more interested in retail businesses than in the little guy who built the company, and placing more demands on the small, individual sellers like me.  Fees increased from about 5% of sales to close to 20%.  You need a lot of volume to compensate for this amount of overhead. 

I used to get a lot of action through Google searches as well, but that fell off the table about a year ago.  Google wants businesses that will pay for ads, and with my little business, ads didn't make sense.  The items I sold were often one of a kind.

So then it became, for a few years, a hobby and not a hobby/business.

So many fond memories.  The items I sold often had special meaning to people--a decoration that had been in one woman's father's dentist office in the 1950s, a toy truck that a man bought as his son's high school graduation gift to replace the exact one he ran over when his son was five, postcards of motels in which people had their childhood homes, and it went on and on.

My most meaningful experience with an item was actually not through the web site, but was in the late 90s when I was selling at a show.  I had a toy Mattel gun lying on one of my tables.  A man of about 60 stopped, looked at it, picked it up, and started talking--sort of to me, but sort of just talking.  He talked about how much the gun was like what they called a "Grease Gun" when he was fighting in Korea.  He said they would have to drive the North Koreans out of caves with this gun--they would be far back in the caves watching for the American soldiers to expose themselves in the light of the opening of the cave.  So, to prevent this, the American soldiers would fire short bursts in to the cave. The short bursts were necessary because, according to him, the gun often jammed.

After reminiscing for awhile, he sat the toy back down on the table, looked at me, said "thank you," and slowly walked away.  I stood there stunned.  He was thanking me?  After what he did?  I have wished so many times since then that I had kept my wits about me to be able to tell him what his story did for me.

These were the things I sold.  Items that brought back memories.  People would send me their stories, seeing me as a friend who had helped connect them with something meaningful from their past.  I loved it.

I also loved buying the items at auctions.  Auctions were a game.  You were trying to beat the auctioneer and the other bidders.  The rules were clear and open.  I loved the challenge.  Sometimes I really "won," and sometimes the bear got me.  But it was always fun.

I loved the smell and feel of old items.  And the graphics on boxes, bottles, toys, and so on were much better than what one currently sees.

But after I moved to Whidbey Island I stopped buying more things, just planning on selling for 10-20 years.  I would have too except that, as I said, the selling landscape for me changed.  And more importantly, I found other activities that I enjoyed equally.  I didn't really get tired of doing it so much as I ran out of time with all of the other meaningful things I do--Vicky and I cycle, hike, fix up our home, take road trips for much of the year, and dance.  And a biggie is that I now have grandchildren.

So in another week I am taking all of the rest of my inventory to an action.  Everything is packed in boxes ready to go:

Jules shut down my web site.  One minute it was there....

and the next minute it was gone, forever, and this is what is there instead:

Store room after the boxes were taken to an auction house:

 

A lot of life is saying good by to things--to people, to experiences, to jobs, to things, and to hobbies.

Good by vintage-toys.com.

Dinner dance cruises

Something we have really enjoyed is a date on a dinner dance cruise that leaves from Seattle and goes out into Lake Washington.  We did several 2011-2014. 

The first one pictured was for our anniversary, July 28, 2014.  We did this one after Vicky had skin surgery on her nose, so we couldn't dance so the stitches would heal correctly.

She was disappointed, so a few weeks later we did another one, where she could dance.

Little did we know that this was the final outing of the dinner dance cruises.

We really miss them, and miss dancing to Mary and the Rave. 

 August 10, 2014

 You can see Mary and the Rave behind us. 

Kathy and Tonia at Butchart Gardens

Kathy and Tonia came out and we went to Canada to see Vancouver and the Butchart Gardens.