Sam And Saundra's Year Long Adventure - Part 181

Sam And Saundra’s Year Long Adventure - Part 181

The End – The Beginning

9/28/09 - 10/08/09 – 10/23/09

The last chapter in Sam and Saundra’s Year Long Adventure.

We are home.  No ruby shoes needed – we have Brutus! The evergreens are still ever green.  The others have tired of succulent, water-filled green and are bursting out in shades of red – from pink to bright to burgundy – glorious yellows and oranges – even a few tropical limons. Getting ready for their dark, formal, two-toned silhouettes. In the midst of all this changing beauty --- our Granddaughter,  Samantha, is born. Tiny and perfect. Deep blue eyes. Ready to cuddle. Other family members ignored as we each personally welcome Sami into our lives.

We first heard of Sami on 02/09/09 in Isla Aguada.  We have seen pictures, set to music, of Sami swimming in her own cenote many months ago. We thought we were ready for her – old hat and all that.  But she has captured us anew. Sami has now joined her parents, brother, great grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. She has already started her own ‘Life Long Adventure’.

Samantha Lane Meyer

9 pounds, 4 ounces

21 inches

10/08/09 Happy Day of Birth – dear Sami.

Sam and Sami

I want to thank all of you for listening to me.  Writing and sharing this journal has helped me in so many ways. Poor Sam has been my first audience, sometimes for multiple out loud readings of each and every chapter. We have been so blessed to be able to experience this adventure. The best part for me is … this one right now…oh wait!  … ok, this one right NOW!  How Great Is Our God!!!! LOVE, Saundra

Sam And Saundra's Year Long Adventures - Part 180

Sam And Saundra’s Year Long Adventure – Part 180

Oregon

9/21/09 - 9/27/09  -   Newport, Lincoln City

We are getting close to the end of our Year Long Adventure.

Newport Bridge

I love Newport.  My sister, Grace, lived in Newport with her young family a few, very few – OK – a lot of years ago.  I have no idea how often I got to spend time with my sister (just a few years older), but I remember every time!  Newport was a favorite.  My parents then moved to Newport when my youngest brother, Mark, was in middle or high school. I loved it then.  I still love it.  The Newport Bridge is one of a kind to me.  I have no idea of its history or makeup – I just love it.  My Mom and Dad used to hunt agates, ran an agate/gift shop, and umpired or scorekept at Little League games.  I just visited and loved it there.  Sam and I got married in Newport over 30 years ago, on January first, in a snow storm that covered the beach - all the way to the water - in snow. Special!

Testing The Wave Action

For this visit, Sam, Owen and I started our week at the South Beach Camp Ground.  The weather was the most fantastic ever, with one day reaching 90 degrees and no inversion in sight. We stayed outside as much as possible the first two days, playing at the beach, beachcombing, building sand castles.  The only cloud was, we forgot to put Owens packed suitcase into Brutus or the trailer, so we had to start off purchasing him a suitable wardrobe. Sam and Owen rode their bikes to the jetty from the campground on a path built just for that. We played in the campground playground – roasted hot dogs, then marshmallows for some-mores. We spent a good afternoon at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, a very good aquarium experience.  Owen not only got to see all the different kinds of Oddwater (things that grow in extreme depths/conditions of the ocean), he pet a live shark and sting ray.  Hey! They said it was safe.  We crabbed and fished off of the Newport Dock.  Caught two crab and had a fine dinner. We visited the Marine Science Center – which is a must for anyone who visits Newport.  The cost is reasonable (free) and well worth the visit.  Petting tide pool and giant octopus are big favorites. We walked the beach, played and enjoyed ourselves. 

At The Aquarium

Then we moved to Lincoln City to do the same.  We fished at Devil’s Lake, where a great playground with turrets lives.  Sam and Owen flew kites (I took pictures), we went shopping at the outlet stores, and went a little nuts.  We ate pizza at Galluci’s – the best in Newport and a treat for Owen to eat where we had taken his mom, aunt and uncle when they were young.  We left for home reluctantly, but happy about the time we were able to spend with Owen.  Next year he starts school and won’t be able to come out and play with us as easily.  

Sam And Saundra's Year Long Adventure - Part 179

Sam And Saundra’s Year Long Adventure – Part 179

Oregon

9/5/09 – 9/20/09 - To Portland 

Space Needle From Freeway

We are getting antsy to get home and see the family again.  We have rested about all we can and want to get going – so we do.  The drive to Seattle and home, was uneventful, other than we started to smile a lot and tried to visualize how much our grandsons and granddaughter (still in pre-countdown stage) has grown.  With Samantha (Sami), we will have to guestiimate based on Tauna’s growth. We jabber away and since we know Owen is probably waiting for us, we call him.  Sure enough – he has been waiting in his chair all morning at the curb for us to show.  We assure him we are on our way and give him an ETA so he can eat a little before we get there.  We finally get there – park the trailer at the curb and rush to the front door.  No one home!  Our turn to wait.  We talk to neighbors, Ralph and Ellen and find that our other neighbors, Jim and Sylvia are in Colorado – welcoming their new twin granddaughters into the world, spending a while to secure that gamma/gampa bond.  Then it happens. Owen is home, along with his parents, Kirsten and Nic.  There is no place like family.

Grandsons In Back Yard

We have a baby shower to help with on the 12^th to welcome Sami, church to attend (big hellos!), birthdays to celebrate, overnighter planned with grandson Jaron (his first away from home), night out with Kyra and Korbin to also celebrate Kyra’s 5^th birthday, doctors to visit, family to see - to pray with and for (Jerry and Judi with their ATV accident injuries in the forefront), my mom to contact and confide in, friends to talk to and hug, truck/trailer to get worked on and it all goes so very quickly.  We are happily tired, but.. oops… it’s time to grab Owen and go on our week vacation with him to the coast. 

Sam And Saundra's Year Long Adventure - Part 178

Sam And Saundra’s Year Long Adventure – Part 178

Washington

8/28/09 - 9/4/09 - Whidbey Island, Anacortes, Fildalgo Bay

Local Business Tribute

Sam and I chose to come to the Whidbey Island area to visit high school friends of Sam. We did and had a great time and fabulous meal. We stayed a little over a week, mostly because the weather was great!  We split our time between the Pioneer Trail RV Park, the Northern Lights RV Park at the Sonomish casino, and the Fildalgo Bay RV Park and Resort.  We enjoyed all three.  The one at the casino was just a railroad track away from the water, and provided a nice scenic view for an extremely reasonable price – with free wifi.  The other two were wonderful, had all the amenities, but we paid for it.  The Fildalgo Bay RV Park was hard to get to, but was almost in the water. It had a boat launch, beach for clamming and access to the walkway that goes from way over there to the left (where some factories factorize), over a long, long pathway bridge over more water, by the RV park and left all the way to Anacortes and beyond.  Nice, paved, wide path – big enough for walkers, bikers, skaters and even joggers.  We walked it, Sam biked it and we both completely enjoyed it. Especially the pathway bridge part.  Great pictures. 

Sam On Walkway - Some View Huh?

We drove to the ferry crossings, checked out the ferries to all sorts of places, and vowed to try and get our kids and grandkids to come back with us to this area.  We took a short boat sightseeing trip around the Fildalgo Bay area and under the Deception Bay Bridge.  Saw eagles, seals and several saw a whale (not me, sniffle). It was inexpensive and a great way to see and learn about the local area.  We mostly rested, ate lots of salmon, enjoyed shopping and Sam started the outside cleaning on the trailer and working on some of the little things that tend to go wrong in a year of travel on not the best of roads. 

Sam And Saundra's Year Long Adventure - Part 177

Sam And Saundra’s Year Long Adventure – Part 177

Canada to USA

8/27/09  – Abbotsford/Sumas Border Crossing

We have an uneventful morning and pack up and head back to Hope.  Trailer intact.  We are confident that Brutus and Brutilla are up to the task of getting us out of Canada and back into the United States without further problems.  We wave at Hope as we pass and enter the traffic headed towards Vancouver, BC.  We talk about taking a summer and traveling around the Vancouver, BC area onto Vancouver Island.  So much we want to see in Canada and it vies with all we have already seen and want to see again. Such hard decisions. Such anticipated decisions. We travel through Chilliwack.  This area looks so much like home.  We follow the signs and soon we are traveling through Abbotsford, and stop for a very short re-entry conversation.  Through Sumas and we are in Washington. 

Beautiful Even Close To The Border

We follow a country road to I-5, then take off at a dashing 55 miles per hour. We know that we can do this.  Our next issue is where to stay.  Sam and I are both native Oregonians.  Snooty sort.  Maybe not snooty. Maybe we have had really good blinders on for non-Oregon beauty.  Sam was born and raised in Portland and I was born and at least partially raised, in Ontario.  We both previously made no effort to know anything about Washington State, except for very isolated parts of Port Angeles, Spokane and Yakima, and that was only because relatives lived there.  We must have gotten there with Scotties help, as we paid no attention to anything.  Point? We had never been where we are now before. It’s only a few hours from home. Hard for us to believe.  We follow signs to a Swinomish casino that advertised a great RV Park near Anacortes.  We pull in and the spaces are inexpensive and provide free wifi. Perfect. They are full.  We made reservations for later and chose our next Park from one of our books.  We get a space at the Pioneer Trails RV Park on Whidbey Island and set up.  That would have been all there was to it in the past.  But our blinders have been skewed and we were able to see and appreciate Washington water and mountains and forest features, spotlighted by the setting sun.  This is a true island and we had to cross Deception Bay Bridge to get here.  This bridge provided a whole scenic vista of its own. 

Deception Bay Bridge

What was amazing is the difference we felt returning to the USA from Canada, as compared to returning to the USA from Mexico.  The people in both areas are wonderful, helpful, friendly people.  Both have different currency. I really think that the greater difference in economic wealth between the US and Mexico (which includes issues such as crime and drugs), along with our own personal failure to learn even a little more of their language, caused us to build up stress for reasons that we never really experienced first hand.  So we let out a mental sigh of relief when we made it to Arizona. We felt almost no change in our psyche or whatever, when entering Washington. I am almost certain that the name familiarity thing was in play again.  We went from Smithers to Nooksack, Samish and Chuckanut Drive.  Little change.