Once in awhile-now and again-this is us

this is one of the largest missions we’ve been to. it’s been restored beautifully.

there are lots of swallows at this mission too.

I took so many pictures i’m going to put another post with more pictures. if missions don’t excite you, skip it. for the rest of you, stay tuned.

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we’ve been going to Lompoc to see the beautiful flowers they grow here for a long time. they grew them for the seeds they produced. all the big seed companies were here. we toured burpee many times. the flowers were always so gorgeous in field after field.

we were disappointed to find out almost all the growers have moved to peru now. we found a couple of fields with flowers but it was mostly produce.

it looked like they were picking flowers here.

there’s also a lot of grape vineyards. Lompoc is known as the wine ghetto.

this is looking toward Vandenberg air force base where they shoot up the missiles that sometime leave those beautiful trails we see in the sky.  you can see the fog creeping  in.

we drove out to the beach and made tuna sandwich’s. they tasted extra good with potato chips on them. and of course a cold beer.

the wild mustard is everywhere.

you used to be able to drive close to the Vandenberg gate and see the missile launch site. but you can’t get close to it anymore. 911 probably changed that.

we went to the mission next.

stay tuned

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we’re on our way to the ‘b-b-q boot camp’ at ‘alisal ranch’ again. we had so much fun last october, we decided to do it again.

we spent monday night at our favorite campground ‘thornhill broom’ in pt. magu state park. it was our first overnight trip in the coach some 24 years ago. that’s  unbeliveable. we had been getting rocks there since 1984 on our first and one of many trips to the monterey bay aquarium.

there’s one of the rocks I got. do you see it?

jerry always finds a dog.

you’ve seen a lot of pictures from thornhill broom over the years. even the time we rescued a pelican.but i’ve never shown you this, even though we see it all the time. for the faint of heart don’t look.

but isn’t it interesting? you can see the wishbone still attached. it’s all part of the circle of life. some other animal had a meal.

we spent the night in lompoc and today we’re hoping to see some of the flower fields here and then go to the mission.

stay tuned

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I had the pleasure of getting a comment from one of tony’s co-workers, maria. thank you maria for taking the time to view the blog and leave a very nice comment. I love it when something will spark a person’s interest.  and what good would it be to do a blog, if no one left comments? so thanks to all of you.

yes, we are living the dream. jerry worked all his life for us to be able to do this. well, of course I helped by budgeting and spending wisely and using coupons whenever I could. oh boy did I use coupons. and shop at thrift stores. (I’ve quit using so many coupons but still shop at thrift stores.)

now we have the luxury of splurging and getting to do the things we’ve always wanted to do.  I plan the trips and jerry gets us there. planning a trip is half the fun you know. I use every resource I can find. micrsoft’s streets and trips being one of the best. too bad they don’t sell the software any more. triple a is another good one.

we finally got the coach unloaded. I twisted my ankle and jerry caught a cold, so it took  a  l  o n  g  time to get it done. so now it’s all ready to pack up and go again.  can’t wait to see what’s next. we do want to see the rest of the California missions, more national parks and monuments, tracy’s brand new house in north Dakota, and while there see the last two capitol buildings. some day i’m going to get all those pictures of us on the steps put together in an album. I guess 50 pictures in one blog would be too much.

most of our travel now will closer to home now. the days of driving across country putting 10,000 miles on the coach in one trip is over. the coach has served us well the last 23 years. I think those long journeys are getting harder for her, as well as us.   we’ll save those for train and cruise travel. yeah, we kind of liked that cruise more than we thought we would.  and the ranch close to home was wonderful.

I wish I hadn’t accidentally deleted all those long trips on the blog so you could have seen those too maria. it was a nice way to look back on them for us too. we’ve done some amazing things. and there’s still more to come,

so stay tuned.

love, jill and jerry

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we stayed up until midnight, that’s when the show would start. we both started looking to the skies to hopefully see a meteor. and about 12:45 we both said “i see it” at the same time. it was brighter and lasted longer than a shooting star. it was magical in a way. it wasn’t a fireball as they said you might see, but it was definetly something we had never seen before. we were happy to go to sleep after that.

the next morning we went into calico to have breakfast. we walked through the town. not much has changed over the years. for us that is.

as it looks now

this is the way it looked at one time. there was no date on the photo.

look at the miner on bottom row, third guy on the left. he has a cat on his lap.

this looked kinda like an elephant.

this formation looked like wood.

there are three things we always visit on any trip.

#1  the bank

#2 the dump station

#3 the gas station. I didn’t take a picture of that, but the gas was a lot cheaper this year.

Martha this is what it looks like driving through a cloud.

we ended the trip to a visit to the capri deli in Covina. home of the best pastrami.

sorry we didn’t call you Sharon, it was a last minute decision.

we’re all settled in now. i’m glad we got the coach unloaded before what looks like rain coming our way. I see on the news carol, you have a major storm headed your way. good luck with that. hope you got a chance to check out the blog.

thanks again to all of you for comments. I had fun hope you did too.

don’t know yet when the next trip is so stay tuned.

love, jill

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after doing the post at starbucks yesterday, jerry looked at the msn news page. he read that the 11th was a good night to see the ‘north taurid meteors’. we decided to go back to calico where it is pitch black at night and try to see them.

but first we went to the route 66 museum and it was closed. darn. the railroad museum was right next door, and it was closed. darn. but they had some trains out we could look at. great. it’s at the amtrack barstow station.

we went over to take a picture of the bridge and found some neat rocks and railroad spikes where we parked. we’re just rockhounds at heart.

we drove back to calico and checked in.  we had the campground to ourselves again.

here’s to you ted for a great visit. thanks for everything. we wanted to call you but we didn’t have any signal. we bought some more cheer beer.

let’s get this party started.

sorry midas. be patient, we’ll be home tonight for sure.

again I might do one last post.

stay tuned.

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like i said it was very windy here yesterday. it was hard to do anything so we checked in around 3 at the texas spring camp. (one time we were here we saw the northern lights.)

this motorhome looks like the first one we ever camped in. it was jerry’s parent’s winnebago. we went to clear lake in the late 70’s. look familiar tracy and tony?

we watched this tent flap and fly in the wind for a long time before the owners came back.

jerry went ove to help them get it back up. it turned out they were people we had met at the vendor’s area earlier in the day. i had bought something from them. they were from quartzite. we tallked for a long time about all the changes that have happened there over the last 20 years. they are very unhappy with what the city has incorporated.

i watched this cloud as it stayed in the same place all evening. it went from this-

-to this.  it looks likes a blue whale to jerry and i.

we ended the night with a game of scrabble. i won, but look at one of my tray of letters i had at one time. try to make something out of that.

we headed out yesterday morning and stopped at one last point of interest. I wish my pictures could do it justice.

we stopped at the campground in calico last night. we didn’t go in the town, we’ve been there so many times.

we are at the starbucks in Barstow now. we might check out the ‘route 66 museum’.  our neighbor, kara, has had a lot to do with the club and has a lot of stories about the road from childhood on.

it was another good trip. we saw a lot in a short time. but it ends this evening.

I might do one more post,

so stay tuned.

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it seems we came to death valley at a bad time. it underwent major storm damage last month. a lot of the roads are closed and you can’t get to some of the things we wanted to see.

we did see the sand dunes. ted said he has walked all the way out there.

we walked to here. I think we’ve taken our picture on the branch before.

I guess this is what a mirage look like. there is no water.

this is the old borax mine.

we didn’t get to see this. i took this picture in the visitor center.

that’s why we didn’t go see it.

a few more facts from the visitor center.

the young men from the civilian conservation corps who helped develop the parks.

it is a very stange and mysterious place. it’s very quiet and calm. except when it’s windy like it was yesterday. we checked in to our campsite and watched as the tent next to us did a dance in the wind.

i’ll put that in the next post.

stay tuned.

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we saw snow on the landscape all the way to mono lake. also strange and beautiful clouds

this one is a cloud we’ve never seen before. it was floating on water.

.and you could drive through it.

we saw patches of color but mostly it was all gone.

people filming a movie with dozens of trucks.

and a military jet that buzzed us three times. actually i think it was part of the movie.

in this picture the little speck in the air is it. it’s hard to catch a jet in a picture.

the valley is filled with unusual rock formations.

we drove into the park and checked in at stovepipe wells campground.

stay tuned for more of death valley,

if your interested that is.

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we woke up to ice on the windshield. ted had it too. i guess you know that means it was cold.

we went in to get ted and enjoyed seeing all teds crystal doing their thing on the walls.

ted had to scrape off his windows as he’s done thousands of times before we could go to breakfast.

look at the speed bumps in ted’s neighborhood chris. there not as high as other ones. it makes you have to slow down but doesn’t give you that bounce. something to shoot for on our block.

last year we had brought ted the Chinese fortune sticks, and we all picked one.  this year we did it again at homage as ate our delicious quiche. this is jerry’s.

mine.

and ted’s.

i liked mine the best.

we sadly left ted and headed south down highway 395.

a few more days left though..

so stay tuned.

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