Aug. 11-18, 2019 – Lake Chelan State Park, Chelan, Washington

On Sunday the 11th, we made the trip from Gig Harbor to Chelan, Washington to spend a week camping with the family. They had pulled their trailer over the day before since their reservation overlapped ours. We spent the week doing all kinds of fun things. Here’s the week in pictures.

All set up and ready to camp

Chalk drawing on the patio

More chalk drawing on the patio (safety first)

Goats at a nearby produce stand

Violet feeding a goat

Lake Chelan

Floating in the water

Someone (Malcolm) didn’t use enough sunscreen

Licorice ice cream, anyone?

Or cotton candy?

Chasing bubbles in the sprinkler

Mini Golf

Family Portrait with our matching shirts

We had a fun week, but alas, our time to pack up and head back south and east arrived on the morning of Sunday, August 18th. We said our goodbyes and headed on down the road. Our next blog post will summarize our trip towards home.

Aug. 4 – 11, 2019 – Gig Harbor RV Resort, Gig Harbor, Washington

Prior to driving out west to visit with family, our daughter told us that our oldest granddaughter, Violet, was going to “big girl camp” for the first time this summer. The idea came up that we would host the younger granddaughter, Scarlet, for the same week at our RV for Camp NanaPa.

Sunday, August 4th

Shirts were designed and made up with our Cricut machine and fun activities were planned for the week. On Sunday the 4th, after dropping Violet at big girl camp, Elizabeth and Cole dropped Scarlet off with us at the trailer.

After Cole and Elizabeth left, we discovered that they forgot to leave Scarlet’s booster seat for the car. So, we drove (carefully) to the local Target and picked one up.

Having a car seat meant we could then drive safely to the local Papa John’s, where we picked up dinner for opening night of Camp NanaPa.

Monday, August 5th

On Monday, our fun activity was making tie dye shirts. Each one of us did a different design. After tying up the shirts with rubber bands and dying them with the dyes we bought at a craft store, we wrapped them up and put them in baggies to set for a couple days.

We went out later to get ice cream at DQ. Afterwards, Scarlet wasn’t too impressed with their outdoor playground (nor were we), so we set out in search of a nearby park with children’s playground equipment. We found one in Gig Harbor that was fun to play in and fun to explore.

Of course, no camp would be complete without sharing in the responsibilities of keeping things neat and clean. Taking the trash to the dumpster became a daily ritual.

Tuesday, August 6th

We spent most of the day just hanging around camp, but headed over to Elizabeth and Cole’s house in the afternoon for some swimming time.

That evening, Malcolm and Cole went to a movie while Nana and Scarlet headed back to Camp NanaPa. Cole dropped Malcolm off at the trailer after the movie.

Wednesday, August 7th

Wednesday’s fun outing was heading over to Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium. We spent most of the afternoon there, visiting all the different animals and aquatic life. Malcolm got a bunch of pictures on the big camera and put them on his photo gallery. Click this sentence to go see them.

A trip to the zoo wouldn’t be complete without some ice cream.

Or playing in the sand.

Or seeing your picture on the wall at the aquarium.

After our zoo trip, Val washed and dried the tie dye shirts.

Thursday, August 8th

We all put on our tie dye shirts and walked to the entrance of the RV park to wait for the trolley (a bus that looks like a trolley) to ride to downtown Gig Harbor for the farmers market.

Scarlet got a mermaid balloon sculpture at the farmers market and we picked up a couple items there to take back to the trailer.

Friday, August 9th

Since Violet’s camp ended on Friday, we decided to take Scarlet home on Friday afternoon. We waited until Elizabeth, Cole and Violet were on the way home before we left, so they would have time to hear about Violet’s week before Scarlet arrived home.

Once at the house, we looked at some of Violet’s pictures and heard some of her camp stories before we left. Elizabeth, Cole and the girls were heading out on Saturday morning to Lake Chelan, so there were still things to pack in their camper. We would head out there on Saturday to camp with them. That’s the next post, coming up soon.

July 14 – Aug 8, 2019 – Gig Harbor RV Resort, Gig Harbor, Washington

Laziness strikes again. So here’s a bit catch-up post.

We’ve generally been visiting with family up here in Washington state. We’ve either been going over to our daughter and son-in-law’s home or sometimes the family’s gathering spot out on Fox Island. We’ll touch on some highlights.

July 15

We headed over to Elizabeth and Cole’s house to visit with the family. Malcolm wandered across the street to visit with an old friend.

Of course we caught up with Cole and Elizabeth. (Photo credit: Scarlet)

July 17

We headed over to Fox Island to visit with Cole’s grandmother Shirley. Elizabeth and the girls came over, too. Malcolm worked while we were there, along with one of his buddies.

July 18

We stayed at the trailer while Malcolm took care of some important maintenance. When we were unhooking in Florida to start our trip this way, Malcolm found that the end of our power cord had a burnt looking terminal.

It turned out to actually have been caused by what was probably a loose connection at the trailer’s connector. The red insulation on one of the hot wires was fairly burnt.

On the way west, we ordered a replacement cord end and trailer connector, upgrading to a heavier-duty SmartPlug setup that others have recommended.

Malcolm took his time, but was still done in a little over an hour. We really like the new setup a lot better. It is touted to have much better contact area and seems very sturdy. It is also marine-rated, so very well sealed.

July 20

Elizabeth drove over to the campground from Fox Island, leaving the girls with Cole. The three of us wandered around the art festival in downtown Gig Harbor.

We browsed the arts and crafts, had lunch and took advantage of a photo op.

After that, we all headed back out to Fox Island to visit with family for the rest of the afternoon. Malcolm kept Lulu entertained.

We took the girls for the night. They came over and made cupcakes with Nana.

July 23

Malcolm got the new wheels we ordered on the way out here and put them in the truck. He also took the wheels and tires off the trailer and threw them in the truck as well. He took the whole setup over to the local tire place for them to switch our tires over to the new wheels.

Besides our one wheel that had cracked and allowed air to escape, Malcolm found another wheel on the trailer had a cracked spoke on it. That pretty much made our decision to switch to steel wheels seem like a pretty smart move (we hope).

The tire store had the tires done in a couple hours.

We headed back over to the trailer and mounted the new wheels back on the trailer and put our spare back up in the spare tire carrier.

We hope the steel wheels work out a lot better. We think they will. They carry the same ratings as the aluminum rims. Several days later, we decided not to mess with the aluminum rims (sell them to someone or whatever) and just took them to a local metal recycler.

July 24

We met Cole at the Museum of Flight over in Seattle. The family had a special pass so that we all got in free to see the Apollo space exhibit.

Violet wore her “space suit” to the event.

They had several interactive things the children could do. Violet had fun with the 3D printer pens. (Dad and Grandpa may have also joined in the fun).

Scarlet insisted on one more picture before we left.

July 27

Elizabeth and Malcolm had a daddy-daughter birthday thing by heading to the Goodguys Car Show at the Washington State Fairgrounds.

Malcolm took his camera and got lots of pictures of Elizabeth posing with various vehicles.

Malcolm and Elizabeth also got to cruise around with some of Cole’s cousins in their vehicles that they were showing. It was a long but fun day. They went to the car show in lieu of the traditional horseback ride and Elizabeth’s allergies won’t allow her to do that activity any more.

August 1

Even though Elizabeth couldn’t go on a horseback ride, Violet was more than willing to go, so she and “Pa” had a grandfather-granddaughter horseback ride for their birthdays.

After the ride, you can feed carrots to your horse so we brought a fairly big bag of carrots. Since there were so many, we split them between our two horses, the horse of the trail guide that went with us and the resident pig.

August 4

Violet celebrated her birthday by going to “big girl camp” for the week at the local YMCA camp. Cole and Elizabeth dropped her off at camp, then brought Scarlet by our place for a week of “Camp NanaPa”. We’ll fill you in on our week of hosting camp in a couple days after camp is over. But here is the happy camper with her two leaders all in their matching camp shirts.

July 14 – Gig Harbor RV Resort, Gig Harbor, Washington

Today’s trip was somewhat uneventful, but very rough. I-90 from Snoqualmie Pass to east of Seattle is very rough and bouncy. A lot of things shifted in the trailer but nothing appeared to be worse for the wear.

We arrived here just after 1:00 PM PDT. We checked in and backed into our site. We spent a while arranging and unpacking stuff after the trip, then loaded things into the truck and headed over to visit with Elizabeth, Cole and the girls. We ate dinner with them and headed back to the trailer afterwards with a stop by the grocery store on the way home.

Now that we’re here, we’ll post about once a week to let you know what we’ve been doing while we visit here.

July 13 to 14, 2019 – Sprague Lake Resort Campground, Sprague, Washington

As mentioned yesterday, our stop in the Idaho panhandle didn’t pan out, nor did a stop in the Spokane, Washington area. We ended up about 35 miles west of Spokane at this little campground at the east end of Sprague Lake.

Our Lakefront Property

The campground is small and is run by one lady that lives in a house on the grounds. She met us at the front as we pulled in and walked us around to choose our site. When we arrived, there were two other RVs here. She decided we should have the corner spot since the way our RV would angle in, we would have a good view of the lake not only from our back window, but the door side windows as well.

The only downside to the place (aside from the cost of $50 a night) was the smell of goose poop. There were approximately 100 Canadian Geese roaming around on the adjacent property and have obviously been hanging around the campground at different times. Fortunately, it was a breezy day, so the smell was carried away pretty well – well enough to sit outside and enjoy the afternoon.

Today’s trip was 468 miles – about 120 miles further than we planned for today. However, tomorrow is our last travel day and we now have 120 miles less to travel on to our destination in Gig Harbor, Washington.