Thunderstorms!

I should have known better then to tempt the universe. Yesterday while we were at the Suzuki shop, they gave Toad II a nice much-needed bath. Then when we got home I carried my basket of geraniums over to the empty site next to us and soaked it good. It went from being very light and easy to carry to so heavy I could hardly carry it back to its spot in front of Auntie Violet.

So, wouldn't you know it, it poured rain last night! We had three different bands of thunderstorms come through during the night. In addition to the thunder and lightening, it rained. And then it rained some more! It rained so hard about 2 AM that I got up to see if it was hail!

These storms moved clean across the state yesterday afternoon, during the night and early this morning. Today we went from overcast to a very nice sunshiny day to an evening with gathering clouds and forecasts of more storms. There is another flash flood warning for the Spokane and Northern Idaho areas tonight.

I was up early this morning as I had a 10:30 appointment for my routine mammogram. I went to the beautiful new Inland Imaging building on the South Hill. It is very nice and they only do mammograms there, so they are very quick and efficient. I had thought once I hit seventy, I would not need to get routine scans anymore, but my doctor believes otherwise. She has had patients that had life-saving mammograms in their eighties, so I guess I had best resign myself to keep getting them. I must admit, the newer machines are more comfortable then the old ones used to be...

Another Not-So-Calm Day

It started out as another quiet day at home. The only plans I had were to take a shower and then drive down to the nearby Haggens grocery store to drop the bills I had written checks for in their mailbox. I also needed to pick up some Half and Half for when I get inspired to make an onion pie out of the Walla Walla sweet onions sitting on the floor in my kitchen.

I got the first part done without a problem. We've been showering over at Daughter Mary Mae's as we don't have a sewer hook-up here and are conserving the amount of water we use. MM and the GKs were on their way to the library when I came over, so I had the house to myself. Forry came over after I did and got his shower as well.

Then it was time to go to the store. But when I got to Toad II, the clicker key thing didn't open the door. It didn't even make a noise of the locks unlocking... Thinking the battery in the thing might be dead, I opened it up (there is an actual spare key inside) and used -- for the first time ever -- the key to open the driver's side front door.

Got in and tried to start the car. Nothing! Put the key in the ignition and turned it, still nothing! (Normally if you have the key in your pocket, that is close enough to turn on the ignition...) At that point, I went to get Forry, who proceeded to try everything I had done all over before deciding that Toad II had a dead battery.

Now there is only one keyhole on the entire vehicle -- the one on the driver's door! You cannot open any of the other doors when the battery is dead as they all operate electrically. Fortunately MM had a pair of jumper cables in her van because there was no way we could get into the back of Toad II to get at ours (just a matter of lawn chairs and my trike in the way...).

I went back to Auntie Violet and let Forry and MM deal with jump-starting the rig. They got the job done; Forry drove it down the road and back; then let it idle for a while to charge the battery. It seemed to start fine at that point, but a light came on that said "status check." I looked all through the manual and couldn't find anything that said what that might mean!

I did make my trip to the grocery, feeling a bit nervous about turning Toad II off while I went inside. But I had no further trouble. Maybe tomorrow I should call the former Suzuki dealer in Spokane and find out what that persistent light means...?

Jiggling the Jello...

Oh, how easily our plans get changed. I had thought to have Forry go in to Moses Lake to pick up his Schaeffer Oil and get the oil in the Suzuki changed while I worked on getting more stuff ready to leave. But, I decided I would ride along with him. Partly because he decided he would drop off the stuff we had for the MDS trailer at our friend's house. I had not been down the road where they live in a long time, nor had I been by the little community of Ruff. So anyhow, I went along.

While we were in town, I was able to call Sister Sherry. Due to the poor cell phone connections at the ranch, I hadn't had a chance to talk with her since her birthday on the 2nd. I actually caught her in the house, so we had a nice chat.

We also stopped by Monroe House to have a last visit with an older friend before we leave for the winter. Dorothy moved into Monroe House yesterday and plans are for her to spend the winter there. It was good to see her lovely room and visit for a bit -- I will be able to envision it while we are gone. It was a beautiful day today, sunny and warm. When we drove out of Monroe House, we saw these little sparrows sitting in the bushes by the entrance --

There must have been forty or fifty sparrows flitting in and out of the bushes -- I think they were enjoying the sunshine as much as we were!

More Sorting, More Cleaning...

I think you could almost say "ditto" from yesterday about today. Except we worked on the bays on the passenger side of Auntie Violet. We combined some maps and books into one container and actually ended up with some empty space. We have quite a few construction books that we used at Mennonite Disaster Service sites along with our tool belts that we will be taking over to the church for the new tool trailer that the Washington State MDS unit is putting together. (I only wish that we were still physically strong enough to tackle volunteering for MDS. I guess that is a chapter in our life story that is pretty much finished...)

The man who actually farms our ranch stopped by tonight with some sausage and some apples for us -- looks like we've got some good eating ahead of us! We've been extremely fortunate to have Jeff and his family living on the home place. He and his boys are good farmers.

We had hoped we would be heading out tomorrow, but in the usual nature of jello, that plan has changed. Forry wants to take the Suzuki into Moses Lake tomorrow to get the oil changed and have his Schaeffer Oil used. He also wants to pick up enough Schaeffer Oil for another oil change for Auntie Violet.

We have been watching the election results on television tonight with great concern. It was a great relief when the electoral votes finally added up to enough to re-elect our president. If only now we can start converting those blue and red states into purple ones where we all start working together!

Dinner With My Bro --

We weren't terribly ambitious today. It rained hard during the night. It's great sleeping in a house with a metal roof when it's raining. ;-) It's even nicer to not have to get up early and just snuggle in...

We did spend some time this afternoon moving Forry's old van away from the front of the storage unit -- we had to find a rope and tow it with the Suzuki... We spent time looking for some of the old pictures we had stuck away a few years ago. I want to scan some of them and upload them to to my family tree on Ancestry.com.

My brother Pat had called a few days ago and suggested we meet in Moses Lake for dinner one more time before we leave for Arizona for the winter. It was a delight to meet him and Sister-in-law Cindy at El Rodeo for some Mexican food tonight. Pat had Diablo shrimp (the hot version) while the rest of us had some very tasty crab enchiladas. While we really enjoy spending time with their kids and grandkids, it was very nice just to visit with the two of them for a change (since Halloween was last night, none of the kids were up for another night out tonight.. Granddaughter Claire sent me a note on Facebook today saying today was National Vomit Day post all of last night's candy)

This is what we saw as we drove home tonight --

Off to Spokane Again

We got ourselves organized this morning, getting ready to head for Spokane -- hopefully for the last time this year! The tow bar package from RoadMaster that was back-ordered for the new Suzuki finally arrived at Camping World and we made an appointment to have it installed tomorrow morning.

Since we have no way to tow Toad II, I followed Auntie Violet. I really like driving the new rig. Maybe because I have had a chance to drive it so much lately...?

After I opened the gate for Forry, I parked across the road to watch him come through --

I shut the gate behind him, then watched him head up the hill, out of the coulee --

We stopped on the way and got some VERY expensive diesel -- $4.32 per gallon! And that's with the Flying J discount! We've seen it for around $4.16 in Spokane. Looks like we should have waited!

We came on out to the new Camping World in Liberty Lake. We had made arrangements with Larry, the service manager, to park overnight in their lot so that they can get started on the rig when they open at 8 AM. They are also going to install the Air Force brake system we got a couple of years ago at the Gypsy Rally. This is a new store with a new crew, so we'll see how it goes... We do have a 50 amp hook-up, so should be able to spend a comfortable night.

Since we will most likely be heading south once we are finished here (though we'll go back to the ranch to load up), we thought we'd take Son Sean out to dinner one more time before we left. He wanted Mexican food, so we went out to Casa de Oro, one of his favorites.

Now we're back at the Camping World  parking lot, watching the first go-around of the National Finals Bull Riding from Las Vegas.

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!
 

Journey to Touchet

This morning I packed my suitcase and my computer; loaded up assorted items I had picked up during the last year's travels; and fixed a bag with various groceries and headed for Touchet to spend a few days with my sister. As I drove down Highway 395, I realized that in all the years my sister had lived near Touchet, I had never driven there by myself!

I guess I have gotten rather lazy about driving. It is so easy to let Forry be my chauffeur. He likes to drive and it's not really my favorite thing to do, so it's just easy to let him drive. I'd much rather be checking in on Facebook or reading my Kindle or just watching the scenery as we go. It was actually a very pleasant drive. Toad II handles the road well and the Suzuki is very comfortable. I had bought some of Sherry Farmer's CDs last week, so I listened to them most of the way down.

One of the fun things about being at Sister Sherry's is cooking with her. My Brother Pat and his sons and his Brother-in-law Gary and his sons were going to be here for supper (deer hunting season starts tomorrow), so she had already made bread pudding and pumpkin bars. We ended up making hard sauce for the bread pudding and frosting for the bars. Then put a ham in the oven and made some scalloped potatoes (Patrick brought fresh potatoes from his garden).

It was fun to see the young men that Pat and Gary's sons have turned into. Nephew Nick went back to Walla Walla for the night (he'd already gotten his deer during the black-powder hunt.), but Nephew Jared and his cousins Matt and Mike are staying here along with their dads. They are planning to be out in the field by 6 AM, so they headed for bed quite early.

I had bought the largest collar they had at Margaritaville for my favorite mastiff Deacon, but it just barely fits. He is four years old now and though he's no taller, he's gotten much more massive through his chest and shoulders. I'll take some pictures tomorrow.

A Tale of Two Dealerships

 If you remember, I mentioned last Saturday that Forry had spent the day at Barton Jeep having some work done on the Toad's brakes and other parts. While he was there with nothing really to do, he started roaming around the lot looking at some of the newer Jeeps. They had a couple of 2011 Liberty Jeeps that had been traded in -- quite a bit newer than our 2005 one!

Forry didn't like the feel of the alignment they had done on Toad, so we went back out on Wednesday to have the shop re-check it. While we were there, he showed me the Jeeps he had been looking at. Since Toad has over 117,000 miles on her, we had been talking off and on for the last year about possibly replacing her. We talked with the salesman John who Forry had talked with on Saturday, but he was busy with a another customer, so turned us over to his partner, Lane.

We spent most of the afternoon there, but could never get an answer from him as to what it would cost us to trade the Jeep in on one of the 2011. He acted like the kind of old-time sleazy salesman, insisting that WE TELL HIM what we thought the price should be, then pointing out how ridiculous he thought our price was (I was looking a Blue Book prices on my iPhone). He would go back to the "boss" and then come back and tell that the offer he had made on the trade was NOT acceptable. This went on for so long, that we finally decided to just give up on it and leave.

Then the first guy John cornered me and told me how foolish we were being, that if we didn't trade now, we would regret it as Toad would continue to lose value and would be starting to cost us "real" money.

Now, I am 71 years old and this guy was talking to me like I was a rather stupid teenager! Then after we had gotten home, he called us on the phone and repeated his rationale as to why we weren't being very smart. He offered to meet us again the next afternoon, saying he could really make us a deal!

I started thinking about the fellow we had bought one of our Neons from many years ago. I had sort of kept track of Thomas Suwanmaneedang ever since on Facebook and knew he still worked for a car dealer (we used to see him and his young family at Spokane Indians games back when we lived in Spokane and had season tickets). I decided to give him a call and see if he had taken any Jeep Liberty's in as trade-ins. When he asked about the price for the Jeeps we had been looking at, he said he could probably make us a deal on a flat-towable Suzuki at a better price than that.

So the next day we went out to see him at Hallmark Suzuki in Spokane Valley and looked at a couple of very nice new Grand Vitara Suzukis. He told us the price, told us what they would give us for Toad, and offered 0% financing for 72 months! So this is what we have ended up buying:

Thomas is one of those people I like to deal with. He was upfront about what they could offer and didn't denigrate our concerns or what we wanted to trade. There were no games of running to a back room to see if his manager would approve (Thomas said he wouldn't think of taking a deal to his manager that he knew he wouldn't okay.). He actually made buying a new vehicle fun -- even though Forry can't quite believe he has purchased a foreign made car!
 

So this is our new tow vehicle. Not sure if it will end up being named Toad II or Suzie Q...?

I did call John back at the Jeep dealer and tell him we wouldn't be trading our Liberty to them after all -- and would you believe I got the same lecture about how we weren't being very smart?!!