i recognized an autograph on another document that brought back more pleasant memories.
and we had just seen him on this trip.
we didn’t’ have a formal wedding so we had two witnesses. the first witness as you can see, is jim eddington. the very same jim we saw in concord. we haven’t seen bridgett for about 5 years.
over the years we have talked about the occasion with jim. he said he might look at the blog so i wanted to include this especially for him.
this is a post i wanted to do a while ago, but never had time. i think most of you will know why i enjoyed it so much. the painstaking detail work involved to re-create these barbie doll size dresses for the first ladies of south dakota – oh – and one first gentleman, made me smile. it was hard to get good pictures though. if you are interested – the individual pictures and story behind the project – are all online.
these dress were all dark because of the war
this dress reminded me of my wedding outfit – see below
my dress was white brocade, with the fur on the sleeves. i actually made tracy and melanie barbie doll outfits out of it. even made fur coats. i sure wish i would have saved some of those clothes, with tiny little buttons and zippers.
this picture has been in a frame in different places in the house for 1week shy of 59 years ahhhhh-we’re holding hands💗
and this is where it sits now
i’ve included this picture of the newspaper clipping of granted marriage licenses. and there we are.
and we paid a whopping $2.00. it’s now $85.00.
i had no idea this post would end this way. i’m glad i didn’t get it done on the road. this was fun adding a personal touch to it. i wonder if any of those other couples are still married.
thanks again for following the blog and commenting once in awhile. it’s been lots of fun putting my pictures out there for you to comment on.
we had a wonderful, fun, and somewhat educational trip to north dakota and home again, well the last 100 miles home were not much fun. there was a fire on the 101 freeway and both lanes were closed as we were coming to santa barbarbra.
we wondered what this was, until i googled it – the alisal fireoh noooo, let me out
so they were detouring traffic to the road that goes around santa barbarbra up by lake cuchuma, a two lane road with all that traffic from 101 on it. when we finally got out of that mess and back on 101, we got into this mess. at least we had the water to look at.
otherwise it was a great month in the coach. we got to eat at the cracker barrel multiple times. saw family members we don’t get to see often enough, saw spectacular landscapes, had good weather. made lots of friendly acquaintances and petted lots of dogs,
we saw our last two capitals, pierre and bismark that last one being in tracy’s state.
also two new national parks, two new national monuments, and drove through two new national forests. we didn’t have to do dishes, or laundry. not even once for a whole month. and we probably only got a half dozen phone calls. and we found $12.36 to add to our found money jar. i started putting found money in here years ago. my mother got this princess house picture for us, i think back in our sangria drinking days. it sits on this shelf in the dining room now. it is very heavy.
we didn’t have to worry about the house or midas. both were being well taken care of by frank and linda. we often got texts filled with pictures of him. our gardener kept good care of the yard, and all our wonderful neighbors kept an eye on things too. and thanks to all of you i got so many great comments. 😊 we hope to travel within california as long as the coach will take us there. we have a lot of things we would like to do again and lots of new things to find. so if that happens i will be posting again. i do have one more post to do from the bismark capital.
we got to teds late afternoon. it’s always nice to visit with ted. but this was going to be a short one. we’re anxious to get home.
we talked and laughed and had a beer before going out for chinese food. there is a nice restaurant near his house that has the best egg foo young, my favorite. when we got back to his house, ted and jerry had a special cognac ted had bought for the occasion and we talked and laughed some more. if you remember bob, he is now in the living room
the next morning we got on highway 80 going through truckee in the sierras. we hit our first rain. and even saw snow on the ground.
we got to jims’s saturday. he made homemade cornnread and chili for dinner.
thats me – jerry – rob – his wife holly – who is jim and janets daughter – janet – jim
we went out the next night for mexican food.
we left monday morning planning to eat at the hitching post in casmalia, near santa maria, and we did. we got the ribs. my hands were too greasy to take a picture. we stayed in their parking lot overnight. started for home this morning.
we are just now getting off the freeway and heading to our house.
its interesting, when i had finished the draft on this post, we went out to eat and i didn’t publish it then. when we got back and came out to the coach to publish it, i saw your email sharon. let me see if i can get it to post here and i’ll add it.
you can learn about life in a cemetery
there was a cemetery across the street from the truck stop we spent the night at, so before we left wimmemuca we walked through it. like i said you can learn a lot about life in a cemetery.
here are a few pictures
i think the whole hammond family were buried here
women seem to outlive their husbands
and some babies die to soon
this wasn’t as elaborate as some cemeteries we have seen, but the feelings you get while there -are the always the same.
and speaking of love, we loved our visit with tracy and daryl. tracy does come to california sometimes to see us. she happened to be coming when jerry had his heart surgery. what a blessing that was, to have both her and tony with me.
i posted one of tracy’s presents was a blue spruce for their yard. she sent me picture of the planted tree. i’ll let tracy tell you why they named it ’frank jr’.
let’s all think good thoughts to help frank jr. grow big and strong
i love you too tony, even though you don’t comment very often hint-hint💗ha-ha💗
we made it to lovelock. finally! i’ve had it in my radar for a long time now. since we visit my brother in reno, and its only 93 miles away, i thought we would make it there before this. i’ve had something in the coach to leave there. a lot of people leave the same thing. different sizes, shapes, colors, and cost.
but first we went to a safeway to buy some groceries and ice. it saves a lot of room in the fridge to keep beer in a cooler. 😉 i like poking around grocery stores in other states for things we don’ have at home. i found the m-m’s at a walmart in utah. haven’t seen them since. of course i gave one to tracy too. the cat’s out of the bag, you are both my favorite🥰
the store wasn’t crowded as we were leaving town
we found a park and had sandwich’s for lunch.
then we set out to leave our item where many other’s have.
any guesses?
now?
we sealed our love💗
we did it. yay. somethings take awhile to come true. never give up ok, grandgirls.
it’s a long story why and where people put their lovelocks. too long for here. so google it. we put a lovelock on the brooklyn bridge the first time we walked across it also.
we didn’t quite make it to lovelock. jerry got tired of driving at winnemucca. we still have one hour to lovelock. and then another hour to reno.
the drive from jackson hole to here was so boring. they were working on the road, repaving, so it was slow going in some spots. there were those orange cones for miles and miles and miles. what a job that was. it was probably 50 miles all together.
this is so boring
it must be rough and demanding to do this kind of work
finally something to look at
hummmmm
i see a gorrilla
do you
maybe it will be better on the other side
nope
we take getting electricity fo granted. it took a lot of people a lot of time to do this in a harsh enviornment.
and then in the middle of nowhere – horses on a farm
we woke up to a beautiful day for a drive. we passed a what i thought was a thrift store, but it was a consignment shop for women’s clothes. they were having a sale so i looked around. i found 2for$5 pink blouses. what a bargain. i also found another cute top. it was on this hanger, so i asked if i could buy the hanger too when checking out. she said no, she wasn’t the owner, and didn’t want to do it. i asked if she could call the owner and she hummed and hahhed. as we were paying i said if you knew me you would know why i want it. so she said ok you can have it. she asked where we were from and found out her husband was born in long beach, and later moved to wilmington. we meet a lot of people like that. anyway here’s a picture of that hanger and the top that was on it. look close.
we were only going through a part of yellowstone. we have seen old faithful twice, so we were bypassing that road..
i liked this picture
the road we took was where the fires had been. so many trees were burned. but you can see why they let it burn, in order for the new growth to flourish. most of my pictures are taken from the coach and its hard to get a good one, there’s so much glare, and the mirror, the top of the coach get in the picture.
we didn’t see a lot of color going out of yellowstone, it was mostly pine trees.
you are immediately in the grand tetons when you drive out of yellowstone
these mountains are so majestic. the light wasn’t very good to show them off. we have been here before and they were much grander.
it was about 5:00 when we got to the town of jackson hole. it’s just a big tourist trap to us so we didn’t get out. we drove on and took the first campground we came to. well this in the most we’ve ever paid for a campsite. $92. we’ve gotten so many nights free, we’re still way ahead. it was a very nice, right on the snake river.
we are headed to reno next. we will probably be there thursday. are you ready for us ted? we’ll only spend one night there and then go to concord to see jim, our cousin we used to go camping with. we have some homemade beer waiting for us there. our next highway takes us through idaho. we’ll be passing twin falls celia. and the b-b-q was really good in cody. we got two meals out of them. i liked the baked potato as much as the ribs, it was the first on the trip and it tasted so good.
this is a national momument on hwy 94 between custer and billings montana. it has a signifiant historical past.
we didn’t walk out there. there are stairs to climb and my feet aren’t liking stairs right now. i would have loved to see the carvings.
the visitors center looked very impressive. but it was closing as we got there. a group of boy scouts were camping in tents nearby. the history of lewis and clark would be right up their alley.
don’t you think these varieties of sumac would look good in your yard tracy? did daryl get the blue spruce planted?
these trees weren’t marked, but i loved the contrast between them.
i guess jefferson was right.
our campground tonight was right next door
to a b-b-q roadhouse restaurant. guess what we had for dinner?
Once in awhile-now and again-this is us 