This was our first view of the beach at the park where we will be staying.

We have now moved south to Oregon for the next two months. We are staying in the campground at Cape Lookout State Park and will be working as tour guides at Cape Mears Lighthouse for the next month. We arrived at about 4pm on Thursday and while we drove in through showers the sky cleared out just as we arrived. We are on a temporary site for today and will be moving into the volunteer site later today. We have met the ranger that we will be volunteering for and today we will tour the parks. This is an absolutely beautiful park!

Pam may have landed, but she has not yet returned to earth! Cool

The perfect three pont landing.

A perfect three point landing! Right foot, left foot, buttocks!

Last Thrusday was Pam's 70th birthday. For many years she has said that "someday" she was going to try skydiving. About two years ago she began to mention that perhaps as a part of her "bucket list" she might Here we see Pam & her instructor departing the plane.just make that skydive to celebrate her turning 70. Our oldest son is a former paratrooper and when he got wind of his mom's wish, he took it upon himself to make that happen. Together with his two brothers he located a very good skydiving school and aranged for Pam to get her wish. On her birthday, our son persenter her with a gift certificate from Kapowsin Jump School for a tandem skydive with pictures and video tape. Yesterday was her big day. I do believe that it was a success as she is still glowing from the experience and pouring over the pictures.

They are in free-fall and still above the clouds.As an observer and sidline photographer, I find it very difficult to believe that one could find a better place for such a once in a lifetime experience. The only physical reminder that Pam has today from the experience is a slight tenderness from the straps of the support harness. Her instructor took her completely through the experience, talking her all of the way and protecting her from even the slightest bump. In addition, the photographer who jumped with them was a talented enough skydiver & photographer to get pictures from below, then above, then at the same level and back down from below again. They gave her a video of the entire free-fall part as well as more than 80 still photographs, all in digital immage and with no copy restrictions. What a marvelous day she had!

I was just thinking about things that might be of interest to some of my readers about the trip so far and it crossed my mind that there are some things that could be of great interest . In digging through our receipts, which I keep and record and so can verify some prices from, it may be of interest to make some comparisons.  The two that are probably of the most interest are food and fuel. Since prices of both are changing, the acual numbers may be slightly different today than when we started our trip, but they should still be somewhat valid.

I will give first the figures for fuel, which for our RV is gasoline.

We began at Linedale, TX, where the price per gallon was then $3.59.

Oklahoma City, where we paid $3.64.

Wichita, KS and $3.62  - - - Council Grove at $3.67,  Oakley where the price was $3.75.

Laramie, WYl at $3.65 and Evanston, WY where it was $3.71.

Mountain Home, ID  $3.79

Portland, OR,    $3.84

Sequim, WA      $3.76

Of course, the dates of purchase range over some two weeks so the early ones are probably now lower. What has been the major surprise is food prices. Over all, we would say that the total grocery cost here is about 40% higher. As an example, a can of Campbell's ready to eat soup which we buy fairly frequently:

Lindale, TX   $1.59 - - - Wichita, KS   $1.64 - - Sequim, WA  - - $2.79 at QFC & $2.39 at Safeway...

Other items are priced similarly but this was one item that I found on each of these receipts.

It is another cloudy day here in Sequim, with an expected high temperature of 58 degrees. This parenting thing is a lot more work now days that it was thirty years ago!

Just a few minutes ago, grandma called for all of us to look across the street. There among the landscaping was a doe and her new fawn. It looked to be only a few weeks old, at most. I slipped out and got a picture but even though they didn't run away, one good one was all I was able to get.

Mother and baby in the yard across the street.

Looking to the town from our son's deck.On Thursday, June 16 we moved into our kids house to begin our tour of duty keeping track of four grandchildren for about 10 days while their parents make a trip by motorcycle. Our son's house is on the hill at the south side of the community. It overlooks the town and the straits to Puget Sound, several miles distant. On clear days you can also see the mountains of Vancouver This mountain can be seen by looking to the south in the community. Island, Canada on the other side. When the sun shines, which really isn't that much of the time, tere is a great view from the deck of their house.

Looking to the south from the community you see the Olympic Mountains. Most of the mountainous area of the peninsula are inside of the Olympic National Park. This is probably the most diverse of our national parks with a rain forest, lakes, road-less mountains and even ocean coastlines.

We arrived in Sequim today just after noon and plan to stay here for the rest of this month.  We are staying for the first few days in Gilgal Oasis RV Park for the first few days. We will be moving into our son's house for a couple of weeks as We are now parked in Sequim for the next few weeks. they go on a motorcycle trip, so that we can chaperone the children while they are gone.

Yesterday afternoon, as we traveled down the Columbia River Gorge on I-84, we came upon a fatal motorcycle accident in the other lanes of the highway. It was not a pretty sight with three bike down, one badly damaged and against the guard rail and what appeared to be a covered body next to the worst bike. The news last night from Portland confirmed the fatality. It seems that something went wrong with the bikers riding very close to each other and one went down and caused the others to fall with one bike running over the first rider.  Not a happy site!

We have now arrived in the home of the big Pendleton Rodeo! It is an interesting town with some things that we wish to visit so we plan to spend an extra day here. Our trip in was one that could have beem much nicer, as we drove through showers off and on for most of the distance with very heavy rain across the top of Immigrant Pass and most of the way Pendleton as seen from a hill above the town.down. It made driving a challenge and then to add to the mess, the break-away switch on our "Brake Buddy" must have taken on water as it shorted and set the brake as we came off of that mountain. No major issues resulted, but we now are without the break-away feature of it.

Pam wants to visit the Pendleton Woolen Mill and there are a couple of museums that I'd like to see so we are spending an extra day here. I'll worry about the Brake Buddy once we get to Sequim with the kids. For now, I'll just leave it off.

It is cloudy here this morning but the rain seems to have stopped. We prefer to travel in fair weather so the extra day will not hurt and with the steady travel that we have been doing, we deserve a day off!
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