Dec 3 - Cold Snap

When I last wrote in this forsaken and neglected blog we had just arrived in Portland after a marathon week of 400 mile days, headwinds, cold nights, and junk food. In retrospect, it now seems like a quick and painless transit from the Midwest to our someday-soon new homebase in the Northwest. And we're certainly enjoying being close to the Northwest branch of our family - especially during the holidays.

As usually happens when we park and become preoccupied with family affairs, the old blog suffers. And that's just the way it is. Probably isn't going to change anytime soon.

We've been splitting our overnights between the "flat" (our apartment at Gage and Andrea's house) and the bushouse. Having our own more or less set up apartment at their place is a real convenience. Instead of driving back to the bushouse after a long day of chasing after the kids, we can just slip upstairs and climb into bed.

But after six and a half years simple momentum keeps us coming back to the old bushouse. There's a comfortable familiarity about the old 'wheel-estate" that's hard to describe... I mean... it's home, ya' know?

A couple Fridays ago we did take a day, just the two of us, and drove the Gorge - Hood River - Timberline Lodge - Hwy 26 loop around Mt. Hood. I'll do a separate post on that. And we spent the long Thanksgiving weekend with Justin and Kaytlyn at their home in the Seattle area.

Supposed to be cold this week. Some forecasts are predicting lows in the teens and highs barely making it above freezing. So I cut some extra wood for the bushouse fireplace, filled the propane tank and the fresh water tank, and stuck a trouble-light (hot bulb variety) down in the water bay. We dial-down the furnace when we're not staying over there but even if the power goes out, for whatever reason, we should avoid frozen water lines in any case.

The way things look now, we're delaying our train trip back to the Midwest until January. One thing I'm realizing is that life gets more complicated when you have two RVs.