Some More "To Be or Not TV"

The Touring Show of the Skagit River Shakespeare Festival performed their To Be Or Not TV at Bakerview Park in Mount Vernon this afternoon. This amazing woman, Carolyn Travis, put together the vignettes that make up this little mock Shakespearean drama --

As TV's Jerry Springer, Son-in-law Scott tries to make sense of a romantic "trapezoid" of lovers --

Only to discover that the mixed-up lovers are the result of the mischievous Puck's (played by Granddaughter Claire) "love flower" accidentally misapplied to the wrong party --
 

Maybe not so accidentally?

Later, Scott plays an impassioned King Henry --

The Queen's hysterical rendition of the Hokey Pokey in Shakespearean English even had the honorable Mayor of Mount Vernon (in the pink top) up and dancing --

The Touring Company had a nice turn-out for their performance in the park today. Although it was publicized on both the local radio and the newspaper, it is hard to predict how many people might actually show up. Forry said he was "Shakespeared out" and didn't go with me this afternoon -- I think he missed their best performance yet. Claire has another performance of Hamlet out at the Rexville/Blackrock Amphitheatre tonight and both Claire and Scott will be in The Merry Wives of Winsor tomorrow afternoon. They have one more weekend in this year's season.

It was raining lightly both times I woke up during the night, but today turned out to be a beautiful sunny day with a gorgeous sunset this evening.

The "Busy Book" Project

One nice thing about spending time at the grand-children's home is the opportunity to get in on their projects and schoolwork. When we were last in Mount Vernon, I got to help with costume "fix-its" during Granddaughter Claire's play, Witches.

Granddaughter Kyra, who is a freshman at Canby High, has been working on a project for her Human Development class in which she had to make something to entertain a child. She choose to make one of the quiet books you often see with toddlers in church --

She put together several pages, like this one with zippers. There was one with snaps, another with buttons, one with Velcro, another with a crackly packet and one with something to lace.

This one is my favorite page. I just love the little pocket --

That has its own hankie stuffed in it (and sewn in so it doesn't get lost) --

Ky was going to lace the book together with yarn, but after some discussion and brainstorming, she decided to use shoelaces instead. After school, she and I drove into Canby to the Fred Meyer store where she found a florescent green pair.

While we were there, we also bought some art pencils and heavy paper. Ky is going to draw a picture of Auntie Violet for me to use to make new business cards. Tomorrow I'll need to take some pictures of the rig for her to work with.

On to Woodburn, Oregon

It took us a while this morning, but we finally got ourselves and Auntie Violet organized and ready for departure. It took both Rick and I to guide Forry enough to back around and get straightened out so that Auntie Violet could get through their gate. I think we only ran over a little bit of lawn...

The sun was shining at Sister Roxy's, but we drove down the road about a mile to where there was a parking lot that we could hook up in (we'd never have made it through the gate turn with Toad II connected...). Of course, then it started to rain again! By the time we got Toad II hooked up and we'd gone through the light check, I was drenched!

When you drive south on Interstate 5, you pass over lots of streams and various other types of water. I was never conscious of just how many bridges we crossed over! It's interesting how aware we have become since the bridge collapse near Mount Vernon.

We drove a few miles on past the turn-off to Woodburn to the next exit in order to diesel up. We ended up with diesel at $3.91 per gallon. We got back on the freeway going in the other direction and pulled off at the Woodburn exit. We are currently parked at the Woodburn/Portland RV Park. We've been here before. It's mainly grass with paved roads. Of course, we are getting great TV reception -- only to watch the Mariners get beat by the Padres tonight. We'll stay here for a couple of days, long enough to get a bit of shopping done and to make sure all of our tanks are empty before we head on to Daughter Dawn's.

We Move to Sister Roxy's - Skagit River Bridge Collapses

Today was another rainy, drippy day. We emptied the grey and black water tanks and flushed them out well this morning in preparation for a few days without a sewer connection. We left the Travel Inn Resort in Elma about noon and headed for my sister and brother-in-law's home just outside of Olympia.

Brother-in-law Rich had gone to Home Depot and picked up a 30 amp box for his shop, so we have electric and water. It was interesting to maneuver through the gate into their place and park over by Rich's shop. (It's going to be even more interesting to back out and get turned around when we leave...) It was raining pretty hard while we were getting parked. By the time we got the jacks down, the slides out, and the electricity hooked up, I was drenched.

Sister Roxy had a cup of hot tea ready for me when I got to the house -- along with a towel to dry my hair! So good to get to visit with her and see all the treasures she has accumulated from their travels to Africa, Panama and Italy (all since the last time I had been here!). We spent most of the afternoon catching up on both activities and family. Roxy made a crock pot of white chicken green chili for supper. It hit the spot on this rainy chilly day.

While we were talking and sort of half watching the news after dinner, we saw the news about the collapse of the I-5 bridge across the Skagit River between Mount Vernon and Burlington. The news broadcast said there were cars and people in the water. So of course, I immediately got on the phone and called Daughter Mary Mae, who lives in Mount Vernon with her family. The house phone line was busy; her cell phone immediately went to voice mail; but I finally got through on Son-in-law Scott's cell phone. They were all at home and fine -- in fact, they hadn't even heard about the bridge collapse yet.

From later reports, it sounds like there were three people rescued from the collapsed bridge and two were taken to the hospital and are in stable condition. It also sounds like an oversize truck load may have hit the upper portion of the bridge.

Proud Grammy!

Granddaughter Claire's school is presenting "Rock Around the Clock: A 50's Musical Comedy." Claire (in the polka dots) is playing the role of "the snotty girl." The play is being put on in Mount Vernon last night and tonight.

Our daughter Mary Mae is the producer. We're so proud of both of them! I understand that Grandson Varick is tending to the sound. What a family!

Drippy -- Inside and Out

This cold is not fun! We've stayed cooped up in the house all day -- decided not to attempt church to avoid spreading our germs. Though, that's probably where we picked them up in the first place.

It would have been a fairly quiet day if it wasn't for the two of us coughing. I still have some of the cough pills given to me by the Nurse Practitioner at the Mini-Clinic last year in Florida. They take the edge off the coughing, but don't stop it entirely.

Forry's been content to watch football games while I read, but he's NOT happy about not being able to watch the Seahawk's game. (Since our billing address is Mount Vernon, Direct TV assumes we're in the black-out local area, so won't let him watch it.) Siri on my iPhone kept us up on the score, so we can at least celebrate their win.

If it isn't bad enough that we're dealing with runny noses inside, it has now started raining outside. There was no rain forecast for today. In fact, the area is still under a "freeze alert." In spite of all that, it is coming down pretty hard outside.

With all the rain we've endured in the month we've been here, I'm sure glad the first thing we did was to get the roof sealed!

Trip to Othello

We've had our insurance for the ranch through the same company for many years. The agent we used to have bought/leased some additional farmland and gave up the insurance game for full-time farming. The new agent our policy was assigned to has been wanting to get together with us to review our policies. She went by our mailing address and thought we were in Mount Vernon. While talking to her on the phone, she finally realized that we were actually in eastern Washington. She offered to find her way out to the ranch to visit us, but we told her it would probably be easier for us to come into her office in Othello.

We made an appointment with her for this morning at 11:30. It's been a long while since we had driven to Othello. It was interesting to see all of the growth there has been in both Othello and Warden in potato sheds and processing plants. After yesterday's lovely rain, the sun was shining and it was a beautiful day to be out and about.

We spent a few hours with our new agent Anna and made sure everything was adequately covered. She turned out to be a very bright and competent woman and a delight to work with.

On the way back to the ranch, we stopped by Monsanto's plant in Warden and surprised my brother Pat. We just caught him coming out the office door with his hard hat to go check on something in the shop. It was good to get a couple more hugs from him before we leave for Arizona.

Odds and Ends

Daughter Mary Mae's home is on a wooded ridge in Mount Vernon. There are lots of big beautiful spruce trees with many birds and squirrels. But Sunday morning it wasn't the little critters that were visiting. First we saw this little fellow along the drive --

Then another one came along with his Mommy --

The twins went on down the road, but the Momma Deer stayed around and posed for the camera --

This is the pot of ivy in the little witch container Grandpa and I gave Granddaughter Claire following her Opening Night performance --

This bouquet is the one MM picked out for her daughter using the colors of the Slave Tituba in "Witches, the Musical."  The black feather plume is a copy of the one that Claire, as one of Satan's minions, givesave to Abigail to sign Satan's book.

 

One of Claire's friends also gave her this lovely bouquet of gladiolas --

The wind began blowing early this morning and the gusts just kept getting stronger and stronger. It was definitely bringing in a new storm system. Sure enough, in the early afternoon it started to rain. It rained very nicely for several hours.

We seem to have developed a leak around the vent in the hallway near the bathroom. The pan Forry put under it had a good two inches of water in it after the storm (that doesn't mean it rained that much as it is most likely running off a large area of the roof.). We'll have to have it checked out when we stop by Uhlmann's in Chehalis on our way south.

The parts for the tow bar for the Suzuki have finally arrived at Camping World in Liberty Lake. We've an appointment on Thursday to have the tow bar and the Air Force brake installed. Most likely we'll go up the day before and stay in their lot so that they can get an early start on the installations.

Over the Mountains

We drove over the Cascade Mountains to Mount Vernon today. There is a great deal of construction on Snoqualamie Pass and they have been warning about the fact that there is only one lane of road open each way -- long delays are to be expected. So we decided we would take Highway 2 over Stevens Pass instead. We came home the last time we were on the coast over the North Cascades Highway which is a gorgeous drive, but long. We hadn't been on Stevens for several years. It's a slower drive because much of it is only two lane highway and it also goes through many small towns with 25 mile per hour speed limits.

It was still a bit cloudy and hazy from all of the summer fires, but the colors of the trees were beautiful. We probably caught them at their height as many of them were just beginning to drop their leaves...

This is Palisades State Park on the other side of Wenatchee. It's where all of the rock climbers come to play and test themselves and their gear. As today was a week day, we didn't see any climbers, but in the past we've seen large parties of them on the rocks.

The reds, oranges and yellows of the orchards are in sharp contrast to the dry hills above them --

As we got further into the mountains, the colored undergrowth showed quite brightly against the evergreen trees --

Even on the steep rocky hillsides, the brilliant yellows stood out --

 

And yes, that's fresh snow over there on that mountainside!

It was raining when I snapped this picture. It's fascinating to see the colors of the scrub brush on otherwise barren rocky walls...

By the time we got to Mount Vernon, it was already dark and raining very hard. I had been talking to Daughter Mary Mae on our cell phones and found out that they were all over at the Lincoln Theater for tonight's dress rehearsal of "Witches, the Musical." It was an open rehearsal, so we grabbed a quick sandwich and drove to the theater to watch. This is a World Premiere of an original screen play about the Salem Witch Trials. There are over thirty people in the cast -- including our Granddaughter Claire who is one of the three little girls in the play.

What a treat to get to see this preview of the Opening Night we'll see tomorrow. It's a long play and it was after eleven when it was finished! I was very impressed by Claire. Her part involves singing and dancing -- and she's on stage most of the time.She plays a little Puritan girl and is also seen as one of Satan's minions in a dream sequence.

Grandson Varick is working with the sound crew while Scott is working backstage changing scenery and MM is helping with costumes. Quite a family production!

Getting Ready --

I spent most of the day today dealing with laundry. Folding and putting away what I washed yesterday and washing a few more. I got most everything I had taken to Sister Sherry's earlier in the week cleaned up and put away. I started organizing what we might need to take with us over to Mount Vernon tomorrow.

Seems like even though we are back at the ranch after our 11,000 miles driven during the last year, we are still doing a lot of running around. It's a great deal easier to travel with Auntie Violet as everything we need as far as clothes, etc. is with us. Since we are still awaiting the arrival of the new tow bar for the Suzuki, we either have to leave her behind or one of us (me) has to drive Toad II while the other drives the motor home. So what we've been doing is packing a suitcase and traveling without Auntie Violet. NOT fun!

At least the wind was fairly quiet today. I think the cold front or whatever weather system it was, came through last night. The thermometer showed that it had gotten down to 29.3 last night after several night without frost. I could look out and see frost on the tips of the sage brush this morning!
 

Finally, the Mail!

Daughter Mary Mae checked with the Post Office in Mount Vernon where Son-in-law Scott had dropped off the box of smail mail last week. They said the package had been picked up by the USPS truck and hadn't come back. They thought perhaps it might have made it to Ritzville and put in a "Postage Due" bin instead of with the General Delivery mail.

I called the Post Office in Ritzville. The lady who answered the phone sounded pretty skeptical, but said she would go look. Several minutes later she came back on the line and said that indeed it was there! Since I had made trips to Ritzville the last two days, we decided that it was Forry's turn. He came back with a nice fat box of mail.

I spent a good share of today putting together the packet of materials that the bank needs for the renewal of our ranch loan. We'll make a trip to Spokane tomorrow to take them the paperwork and to pick up the cross bars for roof-top of the new Suzuki (got to have a place to carry the ladder, you know.).