Hitting the Ground Running

We made it home.  Not much to today other than drive, drive drive.  So we’ll conclude with he trip data.

The plotted route looks like this. 

Three weeks to drive west, four days to drive back east.  6083 miles driven in all.  Time on the road, 58 days, or eight weeks and two days.

We got home late this afternoon, hoping for a little R&R after driving nearly 4 days straight.  But it was not to be.  Deb had put a load of laundry in the wash and when it was finished, into the dryer.  She called up the stairs asking me to come down and look at the dryer.  It was not working.  So my R&R time was spent taking the dryer apart and putting the belt back on, which had somehow gotten jammed in the eight weeks we were gone and had come off when I tried to start it up.

Maybe it was the dead chipmunk I found in the dryer vent.  Maybe not.  But, somehow, dead chipmunks and long road trips are starting to form a pattern.  At least this one was in a location where it couldn’t get into the house, even though it already technically was in the house.  Once I cleaned out the vent and figured out how to put the belt back on, we were back in business.

All Things Friend

It was 31 degrees when we got up this morning.  One of the things to repair on this RV is the JATO unit.  JATO is a military term for Jet Assisted Take-Off.  I used it to refer to the diesel heater booster that’s supposed to give us nearly instant heat on a cold morning when the engine is started.  Could have used it this morning.  Other than that (and a pesky little tie-rod failure early in the trip), this trip has been relatively trouble-free.

Another long day of driving, entirely on I-80, most of it in Nebraska.  We did take a break, however, from the monotonous Nebraska landscape.  We’ve driven by this location several times, never having time to stop.  On one of those trips, we even took a picture by the sign.  This time, in sheer desperation for something other than I-80, we took the exit towards the town of Friend, Nebraska.

This town is twelve miles south of the interstate, so it will add at least a half-hour to our driving, but we were beyond caring at this point.

And Friend didn’t disappoint.  Deb wanted a postcard so we stopped at the pharmacy in town.  The people there, once we learned why we were there, were super Friend-ly and we soon had a post card in hand.  I also spotted an honest-to-goodness local newspaper, the ​Friend Sentinel​, and we had to buy a couple copies of that also.  When was the last time you saw an actual newspaper?

One of the guys there grabbed a hat off the bargain table, which had the logo of the local high school sports team, the Friend Bulldogs.  They wanted to give it to me, but I insisted on buying it.  They also offered us cookies, hot dogs, and free drinks.  We felt like celebrities.

Deb wrote out the postcard to grandson, Alex, and we took it to the local post office and had it hand-stamped.

We drove around and took some pictures of a few named things in town.  One thing I thought was cool was a huge neon sign forming the name, Friend.  It stands right in front of the old train Depot.  The city web site has a picture of it lit up with the sunset behind it:

Some pictures of the town of Friend, Nebraska:

The Friend train depot

The Friend Country Club

The sign along US-6 on the way into town

The Friend sign.  I want one of those.

At the city park

The post office in Friend, Nebraska

I’m feeling really special right now

The Friend Historical Society.

We were just going to head out of town when we saw the local thrift store.   Why not?  We’ve already lost quite a bit of time.

We went in and asked if they had any Friend swag.  We hit pay dirt here as we walked away with three jackets, a shirt, and a visor.  We cleaned them out of Friend swag.  When I wear these back home, I will probably confuse a lot of people.  The bulldog mascot is identical to the image used by the Grandville High School.

What’s ironic is that the high school is combining with two other high schools next year, and the bulldog logo will go away.  So these will become priceless antiques.

We also had lunch in the city park.  We lost a good hour and a half, but it was well worth the diversion.  We’ll have to come back and explore some more.  We missed the tour of the local machine shop that was going on today, and the historical society building would be interesting.  And it would be fun to get more pictures with the name in it.  And to see the neon lit up at night.

Back on I-80 we made it all the way to just east of Des Moines, Iowa before stopping for the night.  Deb passed the time by reading the newspaper.

We spotted a Culver’s in Newton and stopped for ice cream.  Culvers = Midwest so we know we’re nearing home.  And that concrete mixer tasted really good.

545 miles traveled today, including the diversion into Friend, Nebraska.

A Twelve-Hour Day

Not a lot to write about today.  We were on the road for 12 hours, which is highly unusual for us. We made no stops for touring, which is also highly unusual for us.  We made stops for lunch and dinner, which is very usual for us, as we like to eat. And a stop for a snack, at Little America in the middle of Wyoming. This tourist trap was offering 75-cent ice cream cones so we had ice cream at 10am.  Couldn’t turn down a good deal.

Very windy day on the high desert of Wyoming, gusts of over 40 miles per hour.  But it was behind us, which gave us an assist and boosted our fuel mileage.  We made our stretch goal of Ogallala, Nebraska, for a driving distance of 613 miles today.  Stopped overnight at a Walmart parking lot, sharing it with four other RVs and probably a dozen or more trucks.  At least there won’t be any trains ... I think.

Farewell, Hope House

Another amazing sunrise this morning.  In the last several days, we’ve been served up some spectacular sunrises, with just enough clouds to set the entire sky aflame with color.

The heavens declare the glory of God,
      and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
       and night to night reveals knowledge.  Psalm 19:1-2

So true.

Last day of work, a day to tie up loose ends.  And tie up we did.  Steve and I finished the trim in the addition to the N house, and Deb and Sharon finished up some curtains for Donna’s office.  The curtains were made from several towels that Donna had, and Deb and Sharon accepted the challenge of making curtains out of these.

We finished everything we had left and had the tools cleaned up and put away by noon.  Since there were no other projects in the queue, we were told we were free to go.

We had one last lunch in the cafeteria, sharing lunch with several of the staff and nearly all of the kids.  We’ve gotten to know a few of the kids enough to share conversations with them, most of those were from the Sonrise House, where all those with developmental challenges live.  They may have some challenges, but a lot of them are happy to see you and love it that you take the time to chat with them.

Other kids we know their names, or they are familiar because we’ve watched them play volleyball the last three weeks, still others we don’t know at all.  I imagine that would come with time, however there are some here that would be difficult to get to know because of the hurt from a difficult past.  We are thankful that they have “a home to come to”.

Having completed the work, we received our payment: a certificate and a Pay Day Bar.  After all, this is volunteer work.

After lunch we filled the water tank, aired up a couple tires, bade goodbye to our Group Leaders, who so generously took us under their wing these last three weeks, and hit the road.

We avoided the Interstate for as long as we could, instead taking ID-78 south through Bruneau.  We were able to avoid the craziness of Nampa and Boise and the surrounding areas and had a nice drive at the same time.

Then it was I-84 into Utah and we finally stopped for the night just west of Ogden, at a rest area along the freeway.  Not our favorite place to stay, but there was little other choices.  Some Walmarts allow overnight stays, but that is even less desirable than a lot of rest areas.

This rest area seemed rather quiet.  We parked in the nearly empty auto area, away from the three trucks in the truck area.  We were thinking this was going to be pretty all-right when the first train rumbled by.  The tracks are on the other side of the line of trees next to the parking area, so about 30 feet from us.  This was a long train, laboring heavily uphill, long enough to require additional locomotives in the middle.  We could hear each wheel as it rolled by.

Twenty minutes later, another train rumbled by in the other direction.

Another twenty minutes, and another train.  Could be interesting sleeping through all this.

Miles covered: 363

Finishing Up

We finished the back bedroom today.  We just had the base trim to do and the trim around the closet door we hung yesterday.  There was one piece of trim that needed to be ripped the entire length and for that we needed a table saw.  The only table saw on campus was buried beneath piles of clothes and surrounded by racks of more clothes from Saturday’s sale, but there were volunteers doing some clean up after the sale so we figured the wood shop would eventually be emptied.

We went to the wood shop to look for another tool this morning and found that the clothes were gone.  Not a stitch was left.  So we were able to take our piece down there and make the cut.  It took all of two minutes.  It’s amazing what access to the proper tools can do.

We finished up the bedroom by noon, cleaned it all up, and moved the tools to the N house, where there was more trim to do. We had to go to Home Depot in Nampa to buy more trim so that took most of the afternoon.  At home I’m used to having the big box home improvement stores under three miles from the house, so the half-hour drive into Nampa seemed like forever.

We attended the last volleyball game of the season this evening. The Hope House Heroes put forth a valiant effort, even tying the game a few times, but in the end they lost.  The other team had several very talented servers which made it difficult to return the ball at times.

Deb and Sharon spent their time making more curtains for the N House.  I wasn’t able to get any pictures so you’ll just have to imagine Deb making curtains.  Yeah, I know, hard to imagine. 

Tomorrow we will finish up any projects in progress and we will hit the road right after finishing work.  We are packed up and all we need to do is dump the waste tanks, take on fresh water, and go.  We’ve been mapping our route and it unfortunately involves a lot of Interstate 80.  I really don’t like I-80, but it’s the fastest way home and the priority is fast.  So, I-80 it is.  The only sightseeing we will be doing is watching the Nebraska Nothingness and Iowa cornfields roll by.

At lunch today we were talking to a couple of the kids here (yeah, “kids”, the youngest one in this group being 31) and they expressed a little bit of dismay that we are leaving tomorrow.  In just over two weeks we have shared lunches with them, we have worshiped with them, we have cheered the home team with them, attended a birthday party with them, and we have gotten to know them, even if only a little bit.  We’ve become familiar faces.  And even though we part ways tomorrow, our lives are richer because we were able to share some time with these special people, something we will always remember.

Beginning Week Three

Another amazing sunrise this morning.  I didn’t get a picture because we were talking to Steve and Pat, a retired SOWER couple who live on campus who were leaving on vacation.  Steve is retired but works every day here doing maintenance-type stuff.  For the last couple of days he has been burning piles of donated stuff that is not sellable, particularly furniture.  “People donate a lot of junk,” he told us, “and we gotta deal with it.”  So when the wind is right and the smoke will blow across the Snake River, he will buck a lot of it into a pile  with the tractor and light it up.

We were back in Bob and Mary’s double-wide, and the task for today was to hang a sliding closet door.  This and the trim is all that’s left to do in this room.

We got the doors hung, had to make a few adjustments, as usual.  The bottom and top track were an inch too long and needed to be cut down, and that took a while.  The steel-cutting band saw kept throwing its blade.  The reciprocating saw had two dead batteries.  I finally finished the cuts with an old hack saw that was missing a few teeth.  This is why many SOWERs bring their own tools along.  Finding the proper tool and then having it work properly can be a challenge.  Unfortunately, we don’t have the room in our RV.

By the end of the day, however, the doors were up and move back and forth very well.  We’ll work on trimming out the doors and the base of the walls tomorrow.

We had a conversation with Kit Kat over lunch today as we were sitting at the same table.  She is the self-proclaimed cat-whisperer.  We described some of the cats we have seen around campus and then she named them. She has a name and a story for each cat.  All 35 of them.   Lots of unique names.  Like Terminator.  And Muffler.  When we described the white cat we had seen by the goat pen, she told us that one was Terminator.  There are three white cats on campus, but Terminator is the one who hangs out by the goats.

Kit Kat has had a difficult past, but one thing she likes to talk about is cats.

We went out for our last ice cream outing with Steve and Sharon after dinner.  Our evenings seem to be all spoken for.  Birthday party yesterday.  Ice cream today.  Volleyball game tomorrow.  And Wednesday we leave.  Time is getting short.

Happy Birthday

Sundays are starting to fall into a pattern here.  But the pattern will be broken as this was our last Sunday here.  The pattern is the 10am worship service at the Hope House Chapel followed by a brunch at an area restaurant.  Today was a repeat of the first Sunday at the Breakfast Cafe in Homedale.

The afternoon followed a similar pattern: chatting with kids and grandson and watching our home church service online.

After that, the pattern was broken by a birthday party.  Debbie, one of the residents of the Sonrise house, had a birthday, and we were invited to come to the party.  Debbie was arrayed in a white dress and a tiara and sat at a table in the cavernous living room surrounded by all her family and opened her gifts.  And the near-pandemonium from nearly a dozen special adult brothers and sisters and five dogs made for quite a party.  Each person there loves sports and is a fan of a different team, so lots of friendly rivalry going on.  Rebecca was showing me pictures of one of the players on the San Francisco 49ers, Debbie was batting several of the many balloons around, Tim was showing me all the games he had on his iPad.  I’m not sure that this kind of activity goes on all the time, but with that many living under one roof, it’s an active and noisy household.

And now it seems very quiet back here in the RV.

After a couple weeks we’re starting to get to know some people here.  Nearly all of the people at this party we know by name and some we’ve been able to talk to occasionally.  I’ve talked with Tim a few times as he shares my name and he also noticed that I carry an iPad to church.  Sarah works in the kitchen serving up the salads and likes heavy metal music and romance books.  She says the SOWERs take nearly her whole supply of lettuce.  She is warming up to us and I actually got a hug from her at the party.  Rosa sits next to us in church and likes to show us the new bracelet she is wearing. 

Tomorrow starts our last week here.  The week will be one day shorter as we worked the sale yesterday, so Wednesday will be our last day of work. We will probably take off and head for home after work on Wednesday.  Nearly 1900 miles to go, so it will take a few days.

Sale Day

A couple times a year, the Hope House holds a big yard sale.  And these sales are known far and wide as people will drive in for many miles to attend these sales, and even fly in from other states.  Today was a smaller version of one of those sales.  A bit later in the year than normal and perhaps not quite as publicized as normal, but it was still an event to prepare for.  We’ve been seeing volunteers busting about campus for the past week or so, getting things ready for today.

And now today was here.  Perhaps a bit chillier than desired, at a brisk 37 degrees.  We gathered together in the main sale barn at 7:30am for instructions and prayer and then deployed to our assigned locations.  

Steve and I were assigned to man the quonset building which housed the gun safes.  Six large safes for sale, scratch and dent, from a local manufacturer.  I don’t own a gun, but suddenly I’m an expert on gun safes.

The sun was rising over the hills beyond the Snake River as we were opening the doors, a beautiful sunrise on a cold morning.  I took a couple of pictures, one from the ground, the other from the air.  The color had faded somewhat by the time I got the drone in the air, but still a splendid sunrise.

Although the sale had steady traffic and a lot of stuff was sold, gun safes are a specialty item, high cost (even at a yard sale), and not the kind of thing you just throw in the back seat of a car.  So we sat around most of the day.  We sold one safe.  Later on, when the buyer came to pick it up, it took eight guys to wrestle it onto his trailer.  I didn’t help mainly because an additional person couldn’t fit around the safe.  So I participated by taking a picture.

Unlike me, Deb was busy most of the time.  She worked in the Christmas House which was full of low-cost items which will fit in the back seat of a car.  So she helped bag the items and wrap the ones that were fragile.

Traffic had dwindled after lunch and everything was closed down at 2pm.  All the volunteers that worked the sale were invited to The Spot, a pizza joint in Marsing, at 3pm so we joined them for an early dinner.  We were back at 4pm, having had lunch at 12 and dinner at 3 and now we’re all messed up. We grazed a bit at 6pm and then watched a movie.

Perhaps tomorrow will be a day of rest.

The Local Bucket List

We were up on time on this frosty Friday to make it to OC Coffee, where the group of SOWERs meets every week.  We spent an hour and a half talking over cinnamon rolls and coffee.  I’m appreciating more and more the wisdom that these older people have through a long and colorful life and through many years of service to the Lord.  I may be in my sixties, but others in their eighties and approaching ninety can teach me a thing or two (or many).  We were commenting afterwards about how our lives are so much richer by getting to know other people during these projects and their many and varied experiences and perspectives.  We’re not just being a blessing to those we serve and work alongside of, we are definitely on the receiving end of blessing as well.

Since this is a day off, we set about taking care of a couple items on our local bucket list.  First was Jump Creek Falls.  Located about 10 miles from our home base, this extremely popular area was a must-see.  And on this cool morning, we had the place to ourselves at first.

Short quarter-mile hike to the falls along Jump Creek, this is an oasis in a dry land.  Just a narrow swath of green amongst the dry grass and rock, but it contains really sweet picnic areas under the tree cover and next to the creek, and lots of little paths leading off towards the creek or towards the caves in the canyon walls.  Probably a lot of fun for older kids who love to scramble on rocks.

Next was Lizard Butte.  Right outside of the town of Marsing, this rocky outcropping looks like a lizard crouching on a rock from one angle.  I believe this land is owned by the local Baptist church, which holds Easter sunrise services on this hill.  A large cross sits on the very top of this hill, which is probably the first thing that gets illuminated as the sun comes up.  The slope of the hill forms a natural amphitheater and the church built a stage about midway up the hill. It would be really neat to attend an Easter service here.

From the top of this rock, there is a commanding view of the entire valley, a portion of the Snake River, and the town of Marsing.

Then on into Nampa to get some supplies and to hang out before we met our companions for this evenings gala, called Equus & Overture.  Greg and Lyla met us in the Walmart parking lot across the street where we parked our RV.

The’ve never been to anything like this, we’ve never been to anything like this, so it was a new experience for all of us.  This was part of their 50th anniversary where they will be doing 50 things they’ve never done before.  I asked Greg where we are on this list and he said this was number two.  So not much of a history yet but a cool idea nonetheless.

Turns out this is an annual fund-raiser for the Idaho Horse Park Foundation.  So a lot of the program was geared towards separating the attendees from as much of their money as possible with a silent auction, a live auction, sale of the table centerpieces, and more.  But in return for the privilege of getting rid of lots of money, they put on a good show and a good meal.  A local jazz band played some familiar jazz tunes and some of the horse demonstrations were set to the music from the jazz band.  It was all very well done and we had a near ring-side table to watch all this.  It’s something we never would have done on our own had we not been invited and it was a chance to get to know another couple who were complete strangers just last week.

We didn’t roll back in to our space at the Hope House until nearly 10:30pm.  Long day, and it seemed we lived a lifetime in a single day.

A Tactile Experience

We arrived bright and early to Bob and Mary’s house, where we’ve spent quite a bit of time fixing up the back bedroom. Today’s task, lay the carpet.  Donna had procured 40 24-inch carpet squares, which should be enough to do the room with not much left over.

After measuring and fitting and trimming the first row of squares we were ready to start slathering the glue on the floor.

We soon found out that this is no ordinary glue.  It is glue that sticks with a vengeance.  The first row of squares went easily enough, but by the end of it there were little dribbles of glue on the handles of the trowels (and, by extension, our hands), little dollops on the floor, and little spots that somehow managed to make it onto our clothing.  And because this, all the aforementioned items tended to stick together.  We could lift a trowel without grasping it.  Our fingers started to stick together.  Clothing stuck to the floor.  Despite our best efforts, this stuff migrated all over the place.  And the more you worked it in an attempt to pull it off, the stickier it got.

Occasionally, a little bit of glue made it onto the carpet.  The best way to get rid of it was to wipe it off with a finger.  Now the finger was sticky.  Attempting to wipe it off the finger with another finger made both fingers sticky and usually stuck them together.  Pretty soon, your whole hand was involved.  It felt like pulling dirty taffy.

We managed to make progress, one row at a time, until break time.  Three rows done and it was time to head to the SOWER room for a break.  Then the problem of cleanup presented itself.  The instructions recommended mineral spirits.  Not having any, we chose the next best thing: gasoline.  Unfortunately the only gas we could find was a nearly empty gas tank from a boat.  The little bit of gas in it was probably a couple of decades old and was a dirty brown color.  But it did take the glue off our hands.  We just smelled like the inside of an oil refinery.

We were up to the closet by noon.  Another bath in bad gas and we had lunch.

Closets are a lot of fun.  Everything needs to be cut and fit.  And there’s no place to put a sticky glue bucket. But we prevailed and when the last tile was laid, we almost gave each other a high-five.

We would have had some explaining to do...

The Hope House took us out to dinner again this week. What a treat.  This time it was Mexican food at the Cafe Ole in Boise.  Great fellowship with several former SOWERs and some of the staff from the Hope House. Again, we are treated well here.

A beautiful harvest moon was rising as we were driving back from Boise. The skies were nearly clear, so it’s going to get rather cold tonight, probably in the upper 30’s.  It’s supposed to be 57 tomorrow. I think our hot days are over.

Descent Into Darkness

Around this time of year is what I have called the descent into darkness.  It has been happening ever since the summer solstice, but right around now it becomes very noticeable.   It’s that time when you notice that the days are really getting short.  It’s dark in the morning, it gets dark early in the evening, and eventually it just seems to always be dark.  When I was working there came a point where I would go to work in the dark and come home in the dark.    It’s one of the downsides of living in the North.

I feel for the Canadians.  Their entire country is north of the 45th parallel.

Today it was particularly noticeable because it was our first rainy day since we’ve been here.  We were starting to get used to abundant sunshine every day.  Then, bam! Cooler and raining.

So it was good that today’s work was mostly indoors.

We were going to start laying the carpet squares but the HVAC guys were there installing a new furnace, and that would be just too many people occupying the back corner of the double-wide.  So we went to the N house and installed blinds.  And then installed light fixtures.  Seems like nearly everywhere I go I end up installing light fixtures.

Deb and Sharon continued to make curtains for the N house.  It was kind of a rare time when we were working in the same place at the same time and I could get a picture.

The HVAC guys left at noon because of the rain, so Steve and I carried supplies into the room to be carpeted and started laying things out.  Neither of us have ever laid carpet squares before and it seems fairly simple but it took some thinking and some conversation to figure out how we were going to approach this and which corner of the room to start laying the carpet.  By the time we were done planning and ready to start slathering the glue, it was a half hour before quitting time so we figured we would start in the morning and knocked off a half hour early.

Seems like this happens frequently on these projects: taking on a task that you’ve never done before.  A lot of the time, another person in the group has done it before,  but, if not, you just have to figure it out as you go.  And it usually works out.

Cheering on the Home Team

We had a fun little project this morning.  Donna has a small desk she uses in her bedroom that really doesn’t work all that well for her.  She was injured in a fall down a flight of stairs about six months ago and currently makes her way around in a powered wheelchair.  The chair doesn’t fit under the desk.  So she requested that we use the top surface of the desk and place it between two upright cabinets that will be in the office of their new home in the N house.

So we hauled it down to the N house and managed to pop the surface off easier than we expected.

We then fashioned supports on either side of the cabinets and placed the desk surface in between them.  Donna wanted it two inches higher than before to accommodate her chair so we did that also.  The result turned out rather well.

Then we turned our attention to the flooring in the room where we had just finished the drywall and the painting.  We found a whole stack of carpet squares in the I building (where all the supplies are) and figured we would use those.  We were told the flooring guy in Marsing might know where we could get some adhesive for these tiles, so we drove down there.  We found him in the back and explained that we were from Hope House and were looking to do a small carpeting job and wondering if he knew where we could get some adhesive.

We followed him into his cluttered shed and he soon found a couple buckets.  “Just use this up first and then use the new one.  Then bring back the rest,” he told us.  Hope House has a lot of supporters in this area.

We carried all the supplies and the carpet squares into the room and then set about separating the squares from each other.  We soon found out that these were used tiles that were pulled up from another building.  To keep them from sticking together, there were layers of paper towel between each piece.  After spending 30 minutes removing the paper towel that was stuck to one piece we began to rethink this plan.  There were 50 more tiles laying in a pile on the floor.  We weren’t able to contact anyone in command so we ended the work day early.  We’ll figure this one out tomorrow.

After dinner we went to the gym to cheer on the home team in girls’ volleyball.  The Hope House Heroes won all three games (I’m told that’s a first).  The last two games were quite close.

When we arrived back at the RV, Ron and Donna had just arrived and delivered a small stack of brand new carpet squares to us.  I guess I know what we are doing tomorrow.