June 2008 - Posts
We have been “off the road” now for almost two weeks. It time has gone by fast. We have tried to get some much needed chores done that did not get finished before we started traveling this spring.
We are settled in Denny & Brenda Lippert’s back yard. We have a wonderful view of the countryside and enjoy the long evenings. We have taken several walks down the quiet country roads around us. We have seen deer, pheasants, grouse and heard about a raccoon that got into a neighbor’s chicken house a few nights ago. We have enjoyed the horses too. No, we haven’t ridden them yet but when there is time, we will. We met the Lippert’s daughter Kia and husband Mark and their two children, as well as Brenda’s mother who also lives with them. We have also been to their church, Trinity Baptist in Spokane. This church has been very supportive of many of our long time WorldVenture missionaries. One retired missionary goes there and we got to meet her too.
We will soon be visiting the other pastors in the area and other churches as well. Kent will be trying to get to know them and their needs as well as ways that he can serve them better. Kent is busy almost every day though with new candidates as well. So there is never a boring day.
We did get another newsletter done and off to the mission for printing. They will be arriving soon for those that get the paper copies. We will be e-mailing the electronic copy once it is proofread.
So our days are full but we do take the time on weekends to look around the area. We went to downtown Spokane and found the beautiful and powerful falls there. They do use it for electricity. We had a nice long walk there and also found a beautifully restored old hotel in downtown Spokane, called the Davenport Hotel. It was very well restored and we walked around looking in all of the main rooms. It cost us nothing but the next time I’d like to stop for a coffee and dessert. It had a nice atrium that looked very nice for this.
We also found the Spokane Farmer’s market. One thing I did learn from living in Denver, is that the Farmer’s markets in the desert region of the country are a little behind in what they can produce so the markets are a little behind too. In Pennsylvania where I am from the farmer’s markets are in full swing long before this. So I had to learn. This was a smaller sized market but had some great food and even a good bargain. I found some excellent local honey for only $5 for 12 oz. I love having local honey when I can get it.
Kent was on the phone with a candidate for most of an hour while I browsed around. I even found a local baker that was willing to give me here recipe for Scones. We had made some on Saturday morning and found so many recipes on the web I wanted an expert opinion. She was so kind and friendly too. In fact I found all the vendors friendly.
I have found my own way to the local Curves, several grocery stores and even know how to find WalMart. but as we are 3-10 miles from most stores I don’t just go to look around. We are very near the town of Deer Park actually. I had to go to the Post office there one day and so had a look around the city for myself.
Our daughter, Kara and husband Nick are now in Italy. They left on Friday for a three week delayed honeymoon. Last summer Kara had gotten her teaching job and started to teach in July. They went to visit Nick’s missionary sister and family and also to go off exploring on their own. They will be having a great time I know.
I better go and get the potatoes to boil as we are having mashed potatoes and steaks tonight. I wish you could just stop by.
Love,
Roving Reimers
Our last night “on the road” for awhile was spent in a really nice campground just north of Missoula, Montana. It is actually at a rest stop off 1-90. Very interesting idea here! It seems that the Forest service either made a campground or had one and gave access from the rest stop for it. It is a for real forest service campground with the usual overnight fees of $10. But they had a paved driveway through the camp and several pull offs for big rigs like us. They had a fire ring and plenty of firewood. So I was content as I had been looking eagerly to having a fire and cooking over the open fire. First thing Kent got a fire going. When we pulled in, since we were the first visitors at 4:30 pm we startled a beautiful Mule deer buck. He was lying in the tall grass. I tried to get close enough to get a picture but he was very wary of me. So no go.
We had been seeing lots of wildflowers along the highway and I love flowers so I was glad to get close enough to see them. I think they are a type of wild yellow daisy or else I’d heard them called a small wild sunflower. Either way, they were beautiful and plentiful too. They added a stark contrast to the green grass, trees and the reddish rocks. Pretty.
We cooked our supper including a new way to make pumpkin pie on the grill and then ate while only dimly hearing the highway nearby. We had just settled back to have coffee and do some reading by the fire, (I had forgotten to get marshmallows so no smores) when it started to rain and in earnest. So in we went to our comfortable house and read, after about an hour with it still light outside, it stopped and cleared. Out we went again...opps as soon as we were all set up here comes the rain again. We did this “dance” three times before moving inside for good. It did rain quite a bit during the night.
On Tuesday we packed up and went down the road again. Crossing the rest of Montana, across the top part of Idaho(I think this is called the panhandle part) and into Washington. We crossed several passes and the last one had snow on the top, beside the road I mean. In June at only about 3,500 feet I didn’t expect this. And needless to say it was cold. We stopped in a place called Post Falls, Idaho to unhook the car. We also were hungry and had seen an old looking Denny’s restaurant. so back we went for something warm. The temps were cold again and it was raining.
After that we drove on to Spokane and out into the country about 10 miles to a small farm that has horses. The couple that is hosting us, have a daughter,son-in-law and family interested in serving with WorldVenture. Their church also has supported several of our missionaries for many years. The Lipperts have graciously allowed us to park in their back yard and we hope to become good friends. We have a wonderful view with mountains and wonderful fields around us. Their horses are used in a horse co-op. I will learn more about this as we stay here. The smell of horse is in the air and wonderful to smell again.
Today, I finally got to clean really good. We have been in such rainy weather that you just can’t do it. Moving eery day also makes it hard to feel like my house is clean. Now it is. Kent also cleaned some of the road dirt off the outside this afternoon.
Kent has already made a contact with Moody Aviation here. One of the students that he studied with at Moody Aviation in Tennessee is head of the school here..so it was fun to see him again and hear how things are going here.
So all in all a full day. As I sit and type there was a severe weather warning. That hail might be on the way. I pray not but I am safe and secure in our little house on wheels. We thank God for this place and love living in it. I like moving, but I really like staying put for awhile too. So that is what we hope to do here and see how God can use us here in Spokane, Washington. it is always an adventure!!!
Love,
The Roving Reimers
PS I am sorry about all the typos in my last entry. I wrote that without my glasses nor contacts, not a good choice I can now see.
We parked in a city park in Idaho Falls, Idaho which is about an hour from Jackson, Wyoming and the Tetons National Park. We dry camped (no electric, water or sewer) for 2 nights there for free.
We did take our car and went to explore the Tetons. They were beautiful and we would have stayed all day but we got into some bad weather and the temps had dropped so that we even had snow. After a chilly picnic in the park we headed back to explore Jackson. While it has the historic side we were a bit disappointed to find so much of it touristy..and so when we found a coffee shop, we decided to stay and do some emails as well. Yes, we travel with our computer even on trips like this to explore.
We left Idaho Falls on Friday morning to go north still further..the temps continue to fall as we go north. We had to drag out our down comforter to sleep and long sleeved tops and even a jacket which had been stored for months, but it isn’t hard to find them..since they are just nearby but our shorts have been put away for a bit.
We drove to Butte, Wyoming and stayed the weekend in an RV park to get some laundry done etc. We have a membership in a camping discount place called Passport America and we think it is one of the best. i think is costs about $40 a year and we have already gotten our fee back for this year. There are not many parks that take it but it has been enough for us and the parks are adequate for our needs. So we stayed in another Passport America park just outside Butte.
We took Saturday to explore Butte. There was a Farmer’s Market which we went to but the temps were so cold and it was flurrying..we didn’t stay too long. We drove around and checked out the visitors center. Wow what a good one. It told the story of Butte. We had not known before that Butte is and was a big mining town. In fact there still are maybe 10 working mines there. I was impressed with how well the visitor's center display explained the history of the area too. We then drove around looking for the historic sites. This was easy to do and i got some good shots of the Mining derricks(that’s what I called them for they look a little like oil derricks. Apparently this was the “richest towns on earth at one time” I guess to date the take from it is about $48 billion worth of cooper, silver. gold, molybdenum. Amazing!
Saturday was also our son’s Josh’s 28th birthday, so we called him and had a long talk with him. When we look back on our lives..we realize more and more what a blessing our children have been to us. Josh’s birth really did change our lives and for the better in all ways. Now that he has a son (our only grandson Silas) he can appreciate what we mean as well.
We stayed over Sunday and went to a very friendly little Baptist church in a town nearby called Anaconda. We enjoyed being there and stopped and had lunch at a nice little mom and pop kind of place. Kent had a famous pork chop sandwich, which the diner was known for. The rest of the afternoon we hunkered down in the RV as it was still cold and cloudy. But about 6 pm it cleared and the sun came out and warmed up a bit..I think to 60 degrees..so we went for a walk in the sunshine. Most of the folks parked in the park also were out gathering sunshine.We leave in the morning for one more stop before our destination of Spokane, Washington. I would love to see the temps rise a bit.. In June I like to get the shorts out...we’ll see.
Jan for the Roving Reimers
We were to leave Kent's uncle’s house in the morning but when Kent went to warm up the truck, apparently it had an air leak(we can’t go that way!). So he did some running around in our little car to find the part etc. I just sat in our house and read and waited. Actually Kent’s cousin’s daughter. Madison aged 10 stopped by to say good bye and her brother was pretty sick so we prayed for him. So we had a good visit while Kent diagnosed and fixed the problem on the truck. So after lunch we took off.
Now we had been having some small problems with our refrigerator and had called ahead from Phoenix(about 3 weeks before) and made an appointment to have it looked at before we left Grand Junction. So off we went for that appointment. It should have been a simple 30 minutes at the most job but, unfortunately it turned into something more. When they pulled out the wiring to put in a new switch apparently the welding didn’t hold that held the switch to the motherboard.And of course the dealership didn’t have our motherboard nor the proper switch. Well, there where calls to the factory( no more new motherboards until the end of June. We really can’t live without our refrigerator that long!) So again more calls, in the end they soldered the switch back in place with the old one..but it was make shift. So maybe we should have it checked out later on.
By now it was 3 in the afternoon. We had dry camped at our uncle’s so we decided to go to a nearby campground and stay overnight... We needed to do some laundry and dump our tanks, needed air conditioning for the night and we wanted to watch our frig.
We also had a musty smell that we had noticed and wanted to empty the basement of everything and check it out. So off to the campgrounds around the corner. It was a Good Sam’s member so we got that discount. It was easily big enough for us and we soon were settled in. After starting the laundry I got into the basement. IG got it entirely unloaded into the sunshine and slight wind. I could not find the source of the smell. We wondered about it some but after airing the basement for 3 hours decided to clean it up and then reload. At least I got it even more organized than it was and everything smelled good then.
So we had a sort of different day but we thank God for the beautiful house we live in and the good strong truck to pull it down the road,and don’t forget that cute little Suzuki SX4 that gets us to the store and lots of other places.
That was our day,on Monday. After a good night’s sleep we got up on Tuesday and headed off “down the road” again. We drove to Salt Lake City and dry camped at Camping World. Of course we went inside and bought the things that were on our list while there. We left there by 8:45am and were on the road and into a rain storm. I was much relieved by the time we got out of the big city traffic and the rain had also stopped by then. We are now camped in a beautiful city park in Idaho Falls, Idaho. We are right on the Snake River. Quiet and very green here, a little cooler tonight but I am enjoying having long sleeves on again.
All kinds of days come our way and we just are thankful for God giving us wisdom on how to get past obstacles and move on...as for all of us, right?
On the road, Jan for the Roving Reimers
This was written on May 20th and I thought I posted...but didn’t, sorry about that. I was ready to move when the time came in May. We are going north leaving Phoenix and will end up in Spokane,Washington to park our house for a few months.
We drove the first day to Kayenta, Arizona, it is a town on an Indian reservation. We stayed in an empty lot right across from the Police station. It was nice to have a cool night. We have seen some beautiful scenery and last night parked in a RV park in Moab, Utah. This is a gorgeous part of the world. Warm enough in the daytime to have some fun times but cool at night. It seems to be a place where many adventure tours start from. We aren’t too far from the Grand Canyon, Canyonlands National Park, also Arches National Park and several others. It has a reddish tint to the rocks around here and that makes it pretty as a contrast to the barren desert around it. We are in the spring here and so many desert plants and cacti are blooming and some green grass. Very pretty!
We drove on to Grand Junction, Colorado. Kent’s Uncle and Aunt live there and after a visit with them, we left our house there for a week. We went to Denver to see our daughter, Kara and husband Nicholas. We also saw our headquarters staff and had meetings in our department while there. We do have a few supporters there and also in Grand Junction and saw them as well. Kent also spoke at Calvary Bible Church on Sunday June 1st. So it has been a busy 10 days, but fun too.
Have a great day.
Love,
Jan for the Roving Reimers
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