So I’m nine (nein?  That sounds too much like denial!) and a half weeks into Journey #1 – aka TJLDC1 on my Good Sam Club Trip Planner – and I have only written two sentences of the first paragraph of my blog about the first stop East of Vancouver, BC.  Bad LDC!  Bad Boy!  As the heading says:  It’s my fault – Writing just seems too much like work!

What do I have to show for the journey so far?

• @1900 photographs, comprising 7+ GB of storage on my laptop – gotta get the danged things backed up!  And that doesn’t count the pics I have yet to upload from my phone and Darling-Darling’s phone.  It’ll be 3K+ photos by the time I’m done next week.
• – 5400+ miles on the trusty Allegro 36LA motorhome (http://www.tiffinmotorhomes.com/allegro) towing the ’05 Grand Cherokee, plus another non-towed 4K+ miles on the Jeep
• An Alberta, Canada provincial sport card with a slightly-used 1-day fishing license
• A Montana 10-day fishing license, new in the envelope – never used
• An Arizona 1-day fishing license, slightly used
• An Oregon 7-day license, with 3 days remaining.  Hope reigns eternal!
• A couple of note-filled coasters from Moab Brewing Company (http://www.themoabbrewery.com/)from my visit to their local craft brewery (so-so) and restaurant (excellent!).  Also, a stainless steel 24-oz water bottle that sucks for keeping coffee hot, but works really well for keeping water cold.
• Numerous t-shirts and gifts for the kids and grand-kids in Washington and Oregon (sorry for the Texas clan – yours may appear during subsequent journeys when I happen to stop through the Dallas SMSA).
• Many, many pages of memories that are waiting to be put down in electronic format and shared with my friends.

Progress toward achieving my vision as stated Home Page as demonstrated by the following metrics:

• States and Canadian Provinces visited:  11 (Washington, British Columbia, Alberta, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, California and Oregon)
• Fish Caught:  Zero
• Golf Rounds Played:  Zero
• Local Craft Breweries Visited:  One (sampled 6 beers, 2 not so bad, 4 totally unmemorable).  I met some good local brews in bottles and cans, though, and I’ll try to talk about those as I go.

Our itinerary (TJLDC1) looks like this.  When I drafted this article, we were at stop #23, visiting Darling-Darling’s sister in Anaheim while staying at a membership campground in Menifee that’s associated with one of my campground memberships.  It was about 65 road miles to the Southeast of Anaheim.  Bad decision, that!  Should have just sucked it up and gone for the Anaheim RV Park even though it costs @ 5 times as much – $50+ per day versus the $10 per day fee for where we’re staying.  We’d been in the rural Rockie Mountains for so long, I forgot what traffic was like!  And even Phoenix metro area wasn’t enough of a wakeup call.  The itinerary stops at #25 because that’s the max number of stops that can be planned for one trip in the GoodSam Club Trip Planner.

Having gone on from there to spend a few days in the Medford, OR area visiting and cleaning up family grave sites and checking out where I lived for about 3 years (ages 4-7) prior to moving to Washington, we’re currently  in Eugene, OR (Trip # TJLDC1-2 at stop #3) where our youngest boy and his family recently moved for career advancement.  We’ll spend the weekend here, and go on home on Monday in time to greet the Trick-or-Treat crowd – if a handful of kids over a 2-hour period can be called a crowd.

Rather than go into any detail, I’m getting this out on the site and I’ll get to work on writing up each of our stops, reconstructing memories associated therewith, and posting photographic evidence to support “been there, done that!” stories.

As always, may you never stop learning and may your journeys always lead to new and exciting destinations!
LDC

Highlights and Teasers: