Garden

Now that we're doing all this fair weather motorhome travel I'm having a difficult time with the garden.  The last thing before we leave and the first thing when we come back I spend a good part of the day out there watering and deadheading.  If I'm lucky, the deer don't move in and feast while we're gone.  It's hard to keep deer spray on things that are constantly growing and blooming.

I'll share a few recent blooms that survived, some of which are done blooming now (click to enlarge):

And because the garden isn't complete without a Golden:

When we came home from our most recent trip the deer had chomped down all my Impatiens.  The next day they'd nipped off a few blooms from another plant.  I'm moving more and more flowers to pots in the fenced-in dog yard.  The hydrangeas aren't doing well this year and that's not because of the deer.  Some of them do not have a single bloom.  Weird.  At the rate things are going, the garden will be all evergreens and ferns soon.  I persevere, sigh...

You take care, now, and enjoy the remaining days of summer.  I'm stretching it out as long as possible.  See you here next Saturday!

Picking up where we Left Off

Driving through Oregon's hot, high desert country... I have bunches of pics, but will limit to a few.  LuLu was happy to keep on exploring...

(Click on all pics for enlarged view.)

... but after a quick sniff around, Wally was ready to return to the air conditioning.  I'm with Wally!

Pictured below is the severely salty Lake Abert.  Getting saltier as the water level drops.  Do not enter!  It's so caustic it will eat the bottom out of a boat, so you can imagine what it would do to your skin.  Water birds don't seem to have a problem and there are always a few swimming around feasting on brine shrimp.

After a long drive we came to a desert oasis.  Yep, that's what I look like when I'm saying "LuLu" -- goofy -- but LuLu's plenty cute with her little furry paws reaching for me.  Speaking of paws... notice behind the sign.  It looks like I have dog feet, tee hee!  That's Wally.  Too funny.
 

Pictured below is the first thing I saw when we drove into town.  Tiny and cute!  I was impressed by the level of civic pride in this itty bitty town.

We were so busy being enchanted by the diminutive city hall and library that we almost missed the RV park which was the true desert oasis.

They were full up when we arrived, but the owner put us up in a temporary spot for the night and moved us into the best site in the park the next day.  Actually, all the sites were large, shady, and beautiful, but this one on the end was amazing.  We had all this...

... and much, much more.  Wally and LuLu had the run of the place.  Jump in the river any ol' time and have a roll in the grass afterward.  The structure you see in the background is a vintage dwelling the owner moved to the park.  The only thing dwelling there now is bats.  At night we'd watch them swoop through our site and over the river accompanied by the sound of coyotes howling in the hills.

The picnic table beyond us is not an RV site.  It was used only once in the four days we stayed, and that was by an older couple who stopped for lunch.

Some days we were the only campers in the park.  Everything on this side of the RV is ours.  Are you getting an idea of how much I loved this place?  We're going back in September.

On the road again:

Looking back the way we came:

A quick stop at the Painted Hills on the way home.  For real.  What more can I say?

Well, friends... as this post goes live we're returning from yet another little getaway.  Just an hour's drive from home, but idyllic nonetheless.  It sure is nice to have a chance to slow the pace now and then.  We'll visit again next Saturday.  Take care!

Road Trip!

So... I mentioned we traded our trailer in on a motorhome and went on another trip.  It was a good, old-fashioned road trip -- we had a route planned, but no reservations.  Just come what may and keep our fingers crossed that we could find some good places to camp.  Here's our new digs in our first campsite of the trip :

(Click for enlarged views.)

I know!  Can you really call that camping?  Why, yes you can.  We've camped with nothing more than sleeping bags on the ground and the stars overhead.  We've camped in tents, vans, and trailers.  At our age and with two Golden Retrievers, this is the best kind of camping yet!

There are two slide outs, so it's very roomy.  Looks long, but it's surprisingly easy to maneuver, and it's actually about 12' shorter than our truck and trailer combo.  It doesn't bend in the middle and it's super easy to back into a space (a rear camera helps).  No hitching up.  We just load up and drive away.  I can't say enough about how awesome it is.

Our first stop wasn't too awfully far from home.  We stayed two nights at Lake Lomolo's brand new KOA campground.  They were very relaxed about the dogs, and there was lots of space to run free and do what Wally and LuLu love best.

Awesome views.  Unfortunately, the cloud in the photo below was partly smoke:

On the road again...  We've traveled most roads in Oregon, but I don't remember Hwy 140.  It was pretty and very rural, isolated.  We stopped here for lunch.

Love that we can fire up the generator for a cup of coffee, relax in the shade...

We met another traveler there:

We spent the night at a plain old RV park before we crossed into Oregon's desert country the next day.  I'll wait till next Saturday for the rest of the trip, but here's LuLu investigating a desert find:

It's been a great summer for us.  I hope your's is the same.  One doesn't have to travel far to enjoy nature, but it's been fun getting out there.  See you again soon!

Best Friends in Beautiful Places

Just a few favorite pictures left over from our June trip.  I really like this photo... not sure why other than that it's my two favorite subjects.

On the drive home we stopped whenever possible so Wally and LuLu could stretch their legs and we could all get up close and personal with the scenery.  The next two are in Deschuttes National Forest, Oregon.

Wally:

LuLu:

The last two are in the Willamette Pass.  The closer we got to home, the greener the scenery.

After we got home we said "goodbye" to our cute little trailer, sniff sniff.  Now, don't worry about us, nosiree.  We enjoyed the experience so much we traded up to a motorhome.  Oh, my gosh, I have a feeling we'll be away as much as we're home now.  LOVE it!  More on that next Saturday.  See you then, I hope!

Bandon

Hello, friends!  We've been on another trip.  We crossed mountains, green valleys, high deserts, and grassy plains -- all in the state of Oregon.  I'd like to share pictures, but those will have to wait as my desktop computer crashed the day after we returned home.  I'd just downloaded the pics, grrrr.  I'm on my laptop today with some photos I took a couple of years ago in the town of Bandon, just south of us.  These were on my blog as a draft post, but I never got around to writing it up.  Shame on me.  They're fun pics and they certainly show our local color.

The giant fish in the first two pictures is pretty amazing, I think.  It was made entirely of debri collected from local beaches.  Extremely clever and skillfully crafted.  Our beaches are kept very clean, but it takes a lot of effort.  Might as well put the garbage to use!

I like this brick and rock wall.

There were several of these cute biking figures lining one of the streets.  Love the hair on this one.

An itty bitty lighthouse which I've photographed dozens of times over the years.

The beach as the inevitable fog came rolling in.

Lots of driftwood.

Lastly, the only kind of selfie I look okay in.  That's me on the right.

There's not a single Golden or garden shot in this group, but hopefully I'll be back with some of that soon.  Wishing you a beautiful day!