Thursday, May 29, 2014

2014 Washington State Good Sam Samboree

We made it through the Memorial Day weekend. Wednesday the 28th, we drove over to the Moses Lake Fairgrounds for the 2014 Washington State Good Sam Samboree. It was a whopping 14 mile move day.

We got parked and settled in.

I had to use a 50 amp extension cord to get power, and 50 feet of water hose to get water from the other direction. Easy Peasy.

There are about 200 rigs here so far.


We are parked right next to my brother Jim. Him and his wife Eileen operate the Good Sam store at the 3 main outings in Washington State.

Donna is manning a table and doing any sewing that the members needs done. Jim sells them the patches and Donna sews them on their vest.

She is pretty busy. It is by donation and all proceeds are then donated to the Fisher House. The Fisher House is similar to the Ronald McDonald House. The Fisher House houses military folks and their families when visiting a VA hospital or clinic.


I, on the other hand, just roamed around and hob-knobbed.

Tomorrow is our big bean bag baseball game, and the next day is the craft/flea market sale.

Fun, fun, fun....

Friday, May 23, 2014

Memorial Day Weekend

My sister Karen, and her husband Cliff, arrived here at Crescent Bar Sunday, May 18th. They have a Sydney 5th wheel and when their house sells, they want go full time. We went to church that morning. It felt good to see all our friends again, not to mention that the service was great too. Getting back to Crescent Bar, we visited with Karen and Cliff and had them over to our place where I comenced to bore the heck out of them by showing our pictures we had taken since going full time on the road the last 8 months.

Monday we made another trip into town to have lunch with Bruce and Carol, our really good friends. Then over to our grandson Erik's to visit and see Oli too. Then Randi's that evening for pizza and games. Trying to see everyone before we leave the area for a while.

Tuesday, we visited with Donna's brother Roy and his wife Connie. Then back to Crescent Bar to kick back for the rest of the day.

Wednesday was moving day. We took our time preparing to move. Check out time was 12 noon. We were off at 11:45 AM. We stopped at Walmart in Ephrata to get a few things. I called Ron, a friend who was at Oli's 2nd birthday party, and he and Sue came out to the Walmart parking lot and we visited there. I gave him a DVD that I had copied with 130 pictures that I took at the birthday party. Then we headed on to Pier 4 RV Resort in Moses Lake. Check in wasn't till 2:00 PM so our stop in Ephrata worked out great. It was a 58 mile trip. A nice relaxing move day.

Pier 4 is a Sunrise Resorts park. It also accepts RPI (Resort Parks International) members. The RPI rate is $10.00 per day (plus a few little extra fees and charges). We are planning to be here a week before moving to the Moses Lake fairgrounds for the Washington State Good Sam Samboree.

They had us park in a nice grassy area backed up to Interstate 90. It is OK. We get to see all the weekend traffic fly by. And it really hasn't been a problem sleeping either! We did see a couple of mosquitos... boo! But it is all good.

Here is a few pics of our spot.





We are really just going to take it easy the week we are here. The park was pretty empty, but with the holiday weekend, it will be full up.

Lots of empty spots now (Friday).




But they are coming in hot and heavy today. Lots of families with kids, lots of tent campers. Lots of 'people watching' to do.

May has been a very good month for us, budget wise. Our full timers budget is located on our main page at www.thefergs.com. With only a week to go this month, we are under our monthly budget goal by $571.00. That is pretty awesome considering we rented a U-Haul and setup a mini storage for our daughter earlier this month and had Oli's 2nd birthday party. More '$$$' for our 'Emergencies and Unexpected Expenses' fund.

Happy Memorial Day!!

Saturday, May 17, 2014

What We Have Been Up To ... May 7 - 17th

After getting all set up here at Crescent Bar, we made a day trip over to Bothell to help Tim and Shannon move into their new house. They now have a beautiful house in Mill Creek.

The move went well and we were happy that we could help.

For Mother's Day, our daughter Candy and her son Chase came and spent a couple of days with us. Our Great Grandson, Oli (Oliver), had his 2nd birthday party. It was at Abby's Pizza in East Wenatchee. It was fun and he got lots of goodies.

Our daughter Candy and Oli.


Erik and Sarah helping Oli open his gifts.

  
Hot rod Oli!


Then we spent the day with Candy, Erik, Chase, and Oli at the park. He sure is growing up fast.

There is a big crack in Wanapum Dam on the Columbia River. It is 5 inches wide and 60 feet long. That is crazy big. So the PUD has lowered the level of the river while they figure out how to fix the problem. Here at Crescent Bar there are several resorts and condos that people flock to all summer long, with their boats and jet skis. Not this summer... there is NO water here!


The place is usually hoppin with water sports activities.



Another big item that was on our list to get accomplished while we were here, was to clean out and get rid of our mini storage unit. We were sharing a 5 X 10 unit with our daughter Kim. Most of the stuff was hers, but we did have a pretty good amount too. When we go to the Washington State Samboree in Moses Lake at the end of the month, they will have a craft/flea market sale and I am going to try to unload a bunch of stuff. And that will really lighten our load. The only things we kept are some children's books that have been in Donna's family for many years, and me and my dad's military uniforms.

My dad's 2nd Marine Division uniform.

My Army 'suit'.


We rented a u-haul trailer and hauled Kim's stuff to Pasco, where she has been living after graduating from college. She has rented a mini storage there and we moved all her stuff to her. She is even going to hold on to the uniforms and books for us.

I did place some items on Craig's List, a kingpin tripod, satellite tripod, mini refrigerator, Iphone 4, and a Samsung Galaxy S3 phone. We did sell the S3 phone so far. Everything we own is now in our 5th wheel. No more storage unit. Feels good!

We met a couple of soon to be full timers here at the park. Lynn and Pat were telling us that they will probably be doing some work camping when they get on the road. They mentioned a couple they had met that sold advertising on the resort/campground maps and were doing pretty good. We were just about to mention that Donna's brother Gene (who we spent the winter with in Arizona) had done that very thing. They said the couple's name was Fuzz and Red... or something like that.  Click!  Did you mean Da Heat 'n' Red? Yep. It was Donna's brother. Gene and Cyndi. He was a Police Chief and she has blazing red hair.

What a small world!

Tomorrow, we will go into town to church and see many more of our friends. Looking forward to that.

We did have visits at the park from our very good friends Bruce and Carol, and from my brother Randi. Other than that, we have been enjoying the warm (hot) weather here. It has gotten up to 87 a couple of days.

Oh, and Donna did get a haircut (while I washed the truck).


That's my darling.



Looks pretty good huh?

I, didn't.


I spend a lot of time playing with Microsoft's Streets Trips and dreaming about places to go and see. I am thinking instead of traveling on to Maine after our stop at Niagara Falls (after the RV-Dreams rally), maybe head toward Arizona via the old Route 66 route. I know we can't go see it all at once, but there are so many places on our bucket list .... we are going to be doing this for quite a while.

The hitch is starting to itch.....

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Good Sam Rally, Casino Boondocking, to Crescent Bar

The Good Sam rally is over. It was a fun 5 days. One day, Donna got to set up her craft table and sell some of her wares. We have been cleaning out and re-organizing our storage areas and this worked out great. She sold a lot of purses/bags she had made along with aprons, pot holders, pin cushins, and other items she had made. Our load is lighter and even have a few more dollars in our pockets.




Sunday, the 4th, we moved on south in Interstate 5, 78 miles, to the Tulalip Casino in Marysville, WA. We packed up in the rain and it rained almost the entire trip. But it did stop long enough to get set up at the Casino for 2 days of boondocking.


Jim & Eileen spent 1 night there as well. We had dinner at Bob's Burgers & Brew, hit the casino to use our 'free play' credits, and that night, we played Mexican Train Dominos. It was fun...Donna won too!

The next day, we just kind of hung out and relaxed. The rain finally stopped and I walked next door to Cabela's. I good store to kill time in. I didn't need anything, but saw lots of neat stuff...and animals too.

Tuesday, the 6th, we headed over the mountains on Interstate 90, 204 miles later we pulled into the Thousand Trails park at Crescent Bar along the Columbia River between Quincy and Wenatchee. We found a beautiful spot with our big window overlooking the river.



We will be here 15 days, while we do some visiting.

Friday, May 2, 2014

The Lynden Campout - A Good Sam Rally

We moved from Beachwood Resort, 17 miles east, to the Northwest Washington Fairgrounds for the annual Lynden Campout. This Good Sam event is held every year and has great participation from our Canadian Goos Sam neighbors.

The staff always arrives one day early to set things up. All the staff gets to wear the new colored uniform this year. Donna made all the vests. Fifty of them!

My brother, Jim and his wife Eileen, operate the Good Sam store at the rallies, and we set up right next to each other.




We have a nice 50 amp service, water, and are using our green hose to dump our gray water down a sewer pipe.

This is our third year at the Lynden Campout. The weather couldn't have been better. Temp in the 80s. Mount Baker nearby was beautiful.

The fairgrounds at Lynden.


We watched as the rigs began coming in.

There are over 80 rigs here this year. Around 30 from Canada. These are all chapters of the Good Sam club.

This is Jim and Eileen setting up the Good Sam store where people can buy patches, shirts, decals, hats and other Good Sam stuff.

Donna manned the registration table handing out goodie bags, first timer ribbons, and pins.

Donna and one of the area Directors posing in our new uniforms.

And the happy couple......us!