2026-09-06 Road Trip

This week we have been driving.  1100 miles so far, and we are not done.

We stayed in Bend until after Norm's doctor appointment.  Kris went with him, as he doesn't always tell the doctor the truth, or remember what he said.  Norm quite quite mad at Kris as she spoke up in the doctors office about his driving, memory, and stumbling, so he came out with a few referrals to him him with all that, but he has no interest in doing any of that and quite angry Kris mentioned any of it.   Kris felt in all good conscience the driving needed to be mentioned, for the safety of others on the road.   

So with Norm mad at her, it was good timing to leave on Wednesday to go visit our friend Helene in Montana, and then see Dean's cousin also in Montana, and then on to Boise to visit Derek.

Nice drive from Bend to Seely Lake Montana.

Lots of windmills as far as you can see near the Columbia gorge

Tug moving cargo on the Columbia

Small marina with boats.  Even a small catamaran

Its onion and potato harvest time.  Lots of onion skins blowing off of this one all over the road

Potato storage sheds - or maybe onion - couldn't tell

Nice sign on a rest stop along the highway

Back in Dean's home state

We stopped on the way in Superior, Montana, to do a quick 2 mile hike on a trail.  Dean's dad Roger was honored by the forest service with a bench on a trail near where they had lived.

Dean on his dad's bench

The bench inscription is fading.  Dean let the forest service know it needed repair.

Part of the trail area where the bench is.  Very pretty walk

After stopping for the hike, we continued up to Seely Lake to see our friend Helene.  Tom and Helene worked at Boeing with us before we left, and have been good friends for a long time.  Tom recently passed, and will be missed.

They have a beautiful log cabin with incredible views of the Swan mountain range.  Tom was very artistic, doing pottery, painting, making custom guitars, poems and songs.  A very talented guy, and they certainly needed the large home to house all his creative activities.

Helene's cabin in the woods, They have 133 acres of mixed woods, stream and fields

Greeted by dragons on the drive to the house

Helene, has three dogs, two are very large Leonberger dogs

View from the house of the Swan range

Had a great visit with Helene, and left early on Friday and headed to Stevensville, Montana to catch up with Deans cousin Renee.   Had a good but short visit with Renee - forgot to take photos, and hit the road again to drive to Boise.

Nice rainbow on the road heading south 

Back in Idaho

Very twisty drive along the river for most of the way

Sawtooth mountains with mostly no snow near Stanley, Idaho

Lots of fires this year, now causing mud/rock slides along the road

We made it to Boise, and spent a nice day with Derek and Emma.  Will be here a couple more days.

2026-08-30 Still in Bend - getting some different projects done

Sunday was nice sunny day, and we enjoyed our daily walk, with more deer, and some geese.

Nice clear day with good view of the Mountains - not much snow on Mt. Washington

Dean worked on installing some booster spacers for the car. Kris is a bit of height impaired, and has been sitting on booster seats in the car when driving and as a passenger so she can see out comfortably and doesn't feel like she is sitting in a hole.   We found some blocks that will work with our car, so Dean installed them, and now she sits a bit higher, and can drive and ride without a booster.  She still might use the boosters for long trips, time will tell.

Special spacers to lift the seats

On Monday we got the call that the painters would be arriving on Tuesday, so we had a bit of work to get done to prep the house, and we still had to decide on the final color.   So a quick trip to the paint store for some small samples, which we painted on the house, and then we started removing all items from the deck, and decor from the exterior walls, and hundreds of old staples that were once used to hang Christmas lights many many years ago.

The deck doesn't look that full of items, until you start working.

40 year accumulation of staples, hooks and screws that were in the house.  Must be around 50 hooks we unscrewed from various places.

We got quite a surprise when pulling some art off the front of the house.  Behind a wooden hanging we found a small bat.

Judging by the poop, it has been his home for a while.

Was not happy to be exposed to the daylight and have his home removed.

Some species of bats in the eastern Oregon area do nest in groups, so solitary males are normal.  This guy flew off, but we bought a bat house for him which we will install in a nearby tree that gets lots of daytime sunshine.

We also disturbed another small critter while prepping the house.

We let this little Pacific Tree Frog hop off after putting him on the ground.

The painters got right to work, painting the new color on half the house, and then stopping to make sure we were OK with the color before continuing on.  

Think we will be very happy with the new color

We still needed to move a trailer Norm had full of scrap metal, so decided to finish loading up all scrap metal he had and take the trailer into the recycling yard.   Got $22 for the ferrous, and $200 for the non-ferrous metals.   Norm wants to help with projects - but as you might imagine, at 94 he moves a bit slower than us. So projects tend to go slower sometimes, but it gives us a break from the heavy lifting while we wait for him to check everything over.

Kris waiting on Norm to check to make sure we did not get any non-ferrous mixed with the ferrous.  (We didn't)

Norm decided that some old broken concrete needed to be broken up further, so he put on his normal work outfit, gloves and his pith helmet.  

Breaking up concrete.  He doesn't have the strength to lift the sledge much higher, but he did not want help.

The weather has turned cold, so our walks our not as enjoyable.   Kris was bundled up for the walk yesterday, it was only about 54 degrees F.  Not sure if we will be able to handle the Trinidad weather after getting "climatized" to this.

Today is quite cold, only 42 degrees this morning - so we won't be walking today - we just don't have clothes for that cold of weather.  Dean is even wearing sweats and a sweatshirt inside the house.

2026-08-22 More of the same in Bend - trip down memory lane

Not much new.   Another week in Bend.  More of the same - seems like the more we sell, the more Kris's dad Norm is willing to get rid of more stuff which is great.

Sold Norms canoe, he only used once, but nice Kevlar canoe.  The new owners were super happy to get it.

This week was more sorting and organizing, and selling.  This week Kris tackled researching and pricing items from the China cabinets, full of glassware and collectibles.   A lot was family stuff, which we set aside for Kris's sister to look at.   So far we have sold 55 items for a total of  $39,000 for Norm, We have another 54 items listed we would like to get rid of ranging from $10 to $1200.

We took in our gold nugget to get assayed, but won't know for a few weeks how we did with that.

Tuesday, Kris went in and got her blood drawn, just to do a health check, and have a baseline before she turns 65 in 3 plus more years and has one through Medicare.   All her results look good - but Kris being Kris is not happy, and wants to improve on her cholesterol numbers.

Wednesday we took a drive down memory lane, and took Norm up to Elk Lake.  It's about an hour outside of Bend up in the mountains.   Norm used to keep his Catalina 22 sailboat there, and Kris used to work there during the summers.   It was a nice trip, and Kris and Norm both shocked at some of the changes that have happened in the last 20 years since they were last up there.    Water levels are very low, so that changes the looks of things, but still a pretty drive, topped off by ice cream at Elk Lake Resort lodge.

Elk Lake lodge on left

Elk Lake Marina where they kept the boat

Elk Lake undeveloped end

On the drive, nice scenery - Sparks Lake in the background - water used to be up to where the photo was taken many years ago.

Friday Kris's sister Kay came over to look through all the family items, and take those items she wanted, so we could look at selling the rest.   Had a good visit, and Kris was happy that her sister took quite a bit, reducing how much we have to sell.

Still doing our daily morning walks, enjoying the varied wildlife.

One of Norm's neighbors decorates the wagon and "horses" for every holiday and season

Kris gives the cows a moo - but they don't always pay attention

We let this guy meander along the road unmolested.

Another week of working on selling, then we will take a break and go visit more family and friends.

2026-08-16 Sold the boat - more time in Bend

Another busy week in Bend cleaning, sorting and selling.  It takes some time to figure out how much something is worth, then clean it, take photos and list the item of Facebook Marketplace or eBay or Craigslist - or a combination of all three.   We currently have about 20 items listed on Marketplace, and about 8 on eBay.  We have already sold about 50 items.

This week was a good week, as the boat sold.   A very nice young couple who were super excited to get the boat.   They drove down from Seattle, WA and arrived around 12:30 in the afternoon.   We got to work right away going through the boat, and putting up the mast so they could see how everything worked on the boat.  It was close to 6:30 p.m. before we were done.   Kris spent most the time with them walking through the boat, and they had lots of "living on a boat" questions as well, about power, water, sewage, electrical systems and such - that she also talked with them about. 

New buyers learning how to raise the mast

Kris showing where all the lines go

Buyers Matt and Kristina with Norm

We also took a full trailer load of garbage to the dump.  Norm has a tilt trailer, that he loads with his household garbage, and takes to the dump about twice a year.  We had a full load, so got rid of that, and then have taken 4 trips to the recycling center with odd items like old butane bottles, paint, batteries, paper and electronics.   

We are ready now to start with some of the harder items to price and sell, and there are two china cabinets full of collectible glassware to price and sell now, as well as the china cabinets.

The China cabinet packed with collectibles, not china

In addition, there is a small collectibles cabinet on the wall, made from an old printers case.

You can see we have our work cut out for us, researching, pricing, listing and probably shipping all the items.    All the items are things Kris's Mom has picked up over the years, and Norm doesn't care about - so trying to sell for the best value while we have the time to do so.

We still take our daily walks, as it has not been too smoky here from all the wildfires around.  Enjoy seeing the local livestock as well as the wildlife.

Friendly cow along the walk

One special project this last week was to take all the gold leaf, and mixed gold items that had no marks, or no sale value and melt them all down.   Dean's brother Lee has a small kiln for just this purpose that we borrowed.   Interesting process, and in the end we ended up with a small nugget.

Norm and Dean monitoring the gold melting kiln

Our gold nugget - maybe 1/4 ounce of gold

We have also spent time getting quotes and figuring out paint color for Norm's house, which needs to be painted.  Have been using AI to try out different paint schemes, which works pretty well.

House and shop as-is

One of the AI generated paint schemes we are thinking about.

We have another full week of work ahead of us, and then we might take a break to visit friends in Montana and Washington.