HAPPY DAY! TWO YEARS CANCER FREE!!!

YES, THIS IS A CAPITAL DAY!!! FIRST THING THIS MORNING TOM WISHED ME A HAPPY TWO YEAR ANNIVERSARY OR BIRTHDAY FOR BEING CANCER FREE. I HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO QUIT SMILING. LIFE IS GOOD AND I'M SOOOOO LUCKY!!!! YAY!!!!

Tom here...later in the day. We went to dinner to celebrate our good fortune. When we came home we each got a piece of Dove's chocolate for desert. You know...the one with the message on the inside of the wrapper. First of all, these were the special edition breast cancer month chocolates with the pink outer wrapper. The one that Donna got had this message inside "I thrive because I haved survived" Really a very special message on this very special day. Wow! God is Good All The Time!

Pumpkinfest and Other Stuff

Misc. Pix

We've been in Ukiah a week already! Time flies by as we all know. It was a busy week with pickling, freezing and dehydrating vegetables from Beth's garden. Donna, who is NOT fond of kitchen work -especially cooking - spent a couple of days helping with that. They have beautiful harvests from their garden. Julia is in school half days so Grandma Donna and Bubba have been helping out with the driving back and forth. It's fun to see her classroom and how she interacts with the other kids. Then when she gets home, she's ready for the pool and hot tub. What a rough life! We went to the Harvest Festival on Saturday - tons of people and fun things for the kids to do. Julia had a great time. We love watching her dexterity on all the different challenging things they have. She is such a climber. Sunday Tom did a salmon fish fry with a recipe he had received from his Hawaiian friend. It was delicious and everyone ate their fill. So, as you can see - busy, busy, busy. Don't know what the plans are for this week, but we're up for whatever happens. We are having much cooler weather this week, thank goodness. Last week it was in the 90's every day. Hope all is well with you.

Flowers, Abalone and Beautiful Views

Mendicino County Abalone Cook Off

We have really enjoyed our week here in Ft. Bragg. We saw the botanical gardens, a couple of movies, had some great food and Tom went to an Abalone cookoff. He has some pictures as you can see. Abalone are sea snails and divers go after them. They can only dive for them two seasons a year, spring and fall. The shells are very large and here in Mendicino County they have the most abalone in the WORLD. We didn't have a taste of them, but Tom enjoyed seeing the cooks and watch them prep anyway. We made a trip to Little River where "Same Time Next Year" exteriors were shot. Unfortunately, the place was closed. It had been made into a B & B and the owners failed to pay their taxes, so the bank took it over a couple of years ago. We were disappointed to but that's what happens sometimes. We didn't even get a picture! Oh well. There were so many other beautiful things to see. We had a nice drive again today south down the coast a ways. The ocean views are spectacular. Tomorrow we head back to Ukiah to spend time with the kids and animals. How fun!

On the road - AGAIN!!!

Leaving Portland Fairview Park and Visiting Ft. Bragg, CA

We left Portland, OR, on Friday, Oct. 1, and headed south. We had our extra passenger, Cookie, traveling with us. I'm happy to report she did very well on the trip and is now in her new home with our granddaughter. Julia was very surprised and thrilled to get her new cat and they are already best friends. Cookie loves to be loved so she will fit in well with them. I don't know if she's met Hazel (the dog) yet, because we dropped her off and then headed for the coast. They have company for the week and we thought it was better to let them enjoy their company and we'd spend more time with them next week.

We are in Ft. Bragg, CA, and it's beautiful here. We are going to start exploring today. We were lucky to find a beautiful RV park amongst all the really awful ones in the area. There are some of the worst RV parks here we've ever seen! This one reminds us of the Wilderness RV Park at Disney world in Florida.

To back track a little - on Friday we decided we'd head for Hwy 101 and travel the coast down to Ukiah. Remember, I'm following Tom in the car now. We were heading west across to Florence, when suddenly, Tom turned south on a little road. He said that our GPS told him it was a bypass of Florence to go to Coos Bay which was our destination for the first night. The "bypass" started out as a two lane asphalt road. After about 10 miles, it narrowed to a one lane road. A few miles latter it turned out to be a dirt road for about 25 miles.It was very winding, very steep in places and slick as it was misting that day. Following Tom, I Kept seeing his curb side going so close to the edge of the "road" that it was scary. I called him on the walkie and told him he needed to make wider turns. He said he was already on the top of the crown of the curve when he went around it. One time he actually slipped off the side. toward the ditch! I thought for sure we were going to have to call out a wrecker. There was no place to turn around and no other cars the whole time - which was a good thing because it was a very narrow, one lane road. What should have taken less than an hour to get to Florence from where we turned off, took us almost two hours as we could only go 10 to 15 miles an hour. I was so glad I wasn't in the truck with Tom as he was not a happy camper. He was so mad at himself for following the GPS! We decided to stay in Florence that night because we were exhausted from our trek along the mountain ridge. We decided to get up early on Saturday to make a little better time. As we attempted to put the TV antenna down, there was no sound of the motor running. Tom had to climb up to the roof, check it out and then finally, take a screw driver to loosen the screws to put it down. We didn't get on the road until 11:00 am. The rest of the trip to Ukiah was uneventful (thank goodness) and we arrived early afternoon on Sunday at our daughter's house. Now we have a week to just relax and enjoy the coast - very beautiful and wild here. There are a lot of cliffs that overlook the ocean and the views are spectacular. We plan to go to Monticello this week where "Same Time Next Year" and "Overboard" were made. There are plenty of things to see here so we're sure we'll run out of time before we run out of things to see and do. My knee is doing so well now - no pain at all - so we'll be able to do some walking. We're calling this our vacation - yes even though we live full time in our 5Th wheel, we still need a vacation now and then. Life is so good for us!