Celebrating Christmas 2010 & Sketching Travel Plans for the New Year 2011

the altar of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church with elegant Christmas decor

a cute little manger with a cute little angel

Happy Holidays! We had a White Thanksgiving this year but Christmas was quite colorful! We transferred to the Travel Inn RV Resort in Elma, Washington (also about 2 hours south of Seattle but closer to Olympia, the state capital).  It specializes in planned activities. Tuesday nights are always poker nights. Then a Soup Nite, a Wii Night, and a Waffles Morning are all planned for the next days leading up to the breaking of 2011!

the celebrated choir and Fr. Jack singing classic Christmas carols

Bill beaming with his gift!

But we spent Christmas Eve with my granddaughter Krishna and her boyfriend Randy and his sister Diana. The following day we had lunch with Father Jack after mass at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in West Seattle and in the evening we had dinner with our good old friends Benjie and Fides before they left for the Philippines. Then on the 29^th I will meet my former ‘Estrogen’ Book Club pals for dinner.

the noche buena, a Filipino tradition after midnight mass!

New Year’s Eve will be even more colorful!  The ushering of the new will be accompanied by the roll of a thousand drums and the sparkle of a million fireworks!  Floating excitedly in our minds are thoughts of the next phase of our travels? First, we will be in Asia, specifically the Philippines, where my youngest daughter lives. Also we need to attend to some unfinished business regarding our properties there.

TRAVEL PLANS FOR 2011

Hopefully, we will be able to visit the famed powder beach in Boracay, the best dive spots in the world in Palawan, and the chocolate hills of sandy Bohol. Maybe we will even have the time for the most perfect cone of Mayon Volcano. We went to Baguio and Tagaytay the last time we were there. Then, we may even be able to visit the neighboring countries of Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore!

Travellerspoint Travel Community

Above is a link to the map of our Phase 1 travels, almost 25,000 miles! When we come back in Spring, we shall resume our cruising in our RV headed to the southeast through the Glacier National Park in Montana, Mount Rushmore and the badlands in South Dakota, where Bill bought the home in which all 3 children were born in Nebraska, reunions with former colleagues and somerelatives in Chicago, Illinois, the sights in Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky, Georgia, and then to another Florida winter!!! The link to this new map is below!

Travellerspoint Travel Community

TRAVEL PLANS FOR 2011 AND BEYOND

We need to cover about 23 more states in the next 18 months after we get back from the Philippines, about as many as we covered in the past 18 months before we stayed awhile for the 2010 Holiday Season in Washington. The plan is to cover 10 states in 2011, and the rest in 2012, including four more provinces of eastern Canada and of course, the clustered New England states.

By the time we finish this next half of RVing in North America in 2012, we would have completed 45 American states, 6 Canadian provinces, and, of course, the 6 Mexican states we did in the first half. Then we feel we would be ready for RVing in Europe!!! From research we have done, there are 10,000 campgrounds in Europe and that the best way to cover more of Europe is through these backdoors.

Who knows? Maybe we will even be able to cruise Australia and New Zealand in an RV! Our bucket list may be unbelievably long and we may be growing in years but our spirit is strong! After all, we dedicated this blog to the Z Generation, the ageless and ultimate generation that blooms in the lifestyle of cruising. Maybe I can even publish a book about the happenings behind the scenes!  

Next Thought: Wonderings on Wanderings! 

Staying Awhile in Washington-a Chehalis Christmas?

flocked Christmas trees at Carpinitos

Nativity in downtown Chehalis

On with our southward trek, the next campground we chose is where the Thousand Trails System started, the Chehalis RV Resort.  It is close enough to Seattle (2 hour drive) to see family and friends this Christmas and south enough to be a little warmer.  We put up our fancy little tree, wreath, garland, stockings and lights.  We even found a wonderful life-size Nativity Scene that really represented the meaning of Christmas in downtown Chehalis.   Homes there also featured awesome festive lights!

A Christmas Home in downtown Chehalis

Kenji in Christmas Toyland

Simbang Gabi reception

There were lots of festivities in Seattle for the Season. There was my grandson Kenji’s fourth birthday party. We also had dinner reunions with Sheila and Bill, former book club co-members, and Don and Susie, old friends of Bill who now manage our properties. We also joined Tita and Irene at annual Simbang Gabi of the Filipino-American Association of St. John the Baptist Church in Covington, our former parish. This is a  a Filipino tradition of early mass, with Filipino treats to eat right after.

poinsettias galore!

a different reindeer!

And as we drove around town we saw lines of flocked Christmas trees, a myriad of red poinsettias, and even little green mistletoes for sale at the famous Carpinito Brothers specialty store in downtown Kent.  We even saw a parked car that wore antlers and a red flower ball at Trader Joe’s, another specialty store in Federal Way, for its reindeer nose! The commercial side of Christmas was definitely all over the cities! And the Season’s activities quickly frittered away our four days of vacation from the country.

Yard Birds!

But we still stumbled upon other interesting sights around our campground.  Yard Birds, originally a surplus store started in 1947, has become more of a large complex with many shops including a full-service grocery.  In the middle was a featured Christmas crafts fair where we found great collectors’ ornaments to add to our tree.  A large black bird with a yellow beak (a la Heckle and Jeckle) sits on the spacious yard.  Still operating today, Yard Birds is probably where supermalls began!

Mima Mounds

Next is an intriguing nature preserve called Mima Mounds, which has low, flattened, circular to oval, domelike, natural mounds. Found in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, they range in diameter from 3 to 50 m; in height, 30 cm to 2 m; and in density from several to 50 per hectare.  They also occur outside the Northwest in three other regions:  in California, in the Great Plains and in an area around Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Missouri where they are commonly known as "pimple mounds".

Fort Borst Blockhouse

the library in downtown Chehalis

Then at Fort Borst Park in nearby Centralia I saw my first blockhouse. This one was erected by Oregon volunteers in 1856 for storing supplies Chehalis River for troops engaged in the Washington Indian Wars. You can see the small openings where the guns were installed for protection of the blockhouse.  I would also like to mention the library in Chehalis, a member of the Timberland Region, which stands as the most beautiful building at the center of downtown and is staffed by paragons of customer service.

all alone for Christmas

But we were actually disappointed with the campground because much of the area is actually closed for the season.   It is a wonderful woodsy setting with lots of roaming deer and winding trails, but those are best in the spring, summer and fall.   There must have been just ten of us in the small area that was left open. And even if there are many amenities, we could actually only use the spa and sauna. During our stay there, there were also several nights of flood scare from the overflow of Chehalis River.  

So we decided to spend Christmas and New Year at another campground in nearby Elma, even if we had to take down our Christmas décor so soon! That will be the subject of our next post. See you again then!  

Staying Awhile in the Evergreen State-White Thanksgiving, Monroe!

Mother Nature decided to give Western Washington a White Thanksgiving this year!  Record snowfall blanketed our campground in Monroe, Washington, leaving us without the traditional turkey dinner and a sexygenarian’s (sic) birthday night out. With two special days in one, Bill had planned something special and we had chosen to go back south to the Thunderbird RV Resort in Monroe, closer to family and friends.

Courtesy of Benjie and Fides, friends from the Philippines, we were first treated to an ‘intimate’ tour of the Microsoft Campus in Redmond, Washington where Fides works.  We had lunch at The Commons and visited the Microsoft Museum. There we had a photo with the Founders, went crazy on space tables, and had our first encounter with Kinect, the new game protocol that uses your body as a controller!

The Microsoft "campus" is a decentralized, 300-acre corporate park with around 40 buildings housing 14,000 offices. There are over 78,000 employees, 35,000 of them in the Puget Sound area in Washington, at the headquarters, at the nearby and smaller RedWest Campus (located on a former chicken ranch), and at other leased and owned spaces in the region (total of 15 M sq. feet in 127 sites).

Fides also took us to hot opening of The Microsoft Store in the posh Bel-Square mall, Bellevue, Washington.   It is the seventh such store in the country. With Fides’ employee discount, Bill bought a brand new 3-lb.Toshiba Protégé for my birthday and Kinect promo bundles as perfect Christmas gifts for each of our kids’ families.  Our Christmas shopping was done in an instant! Expensively, I might add!

But we endured four days of freezing temps in the evenings and soon November snow covered the entire campground!  We were forced to scrimp on the water in our tanks because management could not risk their pipes bursting from freezing. We were just so glad we still had power! Unfortunately, we had very little propane in our tanks so we were forced to confine ourselves to microwave meals.

Instead of celebrating my birthday with a Thanksgiving Dinner, we had to do separate lunches and dinners with family and friends later in the week.  Bill had planned to take me to an Eat-Drink-Watch place in Mountlake Terrace in Washington.  Called Cinebarre (there are several in the country), it is a place where you can watch movies while dining, restaurant-style. Could have been a lot of fun!

Although our sight-seeing activities were severely limited this time, we still discovered a few gems: the curious restaurant on Stephen’s Pass with those tall human trees inviting you in; the bright golden pink Cascade peaks framed and seen through our window at the end of the snowstorm, and the intense chess match being played at a giant chessboard we came across at the Crossroads Mall in Bellevue.

But we quickly decided to continue our trek south in search of better winter weather (is that an oxymoron?)in the state.  Shall it be a White Christmas in our next stop, Chehalis, Washington?      

Staying Awhile in the Evergreen State-Blaine

M'A'turn @ Beachwood RV Resort

Our stay in Ponderosa Falls in Spokane was so nice we thought nothing could top it…that is, until we reached Beachwood RV Resort, another K/M campground (K/M stands for Kevin and Mike, co-owners of around 7 sites in Washington). Our stay there was memorable for a nice string of visits, parties, and recreation. So the three weeks we were there I have named our Sing, Eat, and Dance weeks.



Birch Bay State Park

 The Resort has two large pools (one heated and enclosed with a bubble during cold weather), three hot tubs (one of which is indoor), a dry sauna, an adult lounge with billiard, pingpong and other tables and a youth lounge with billiard, pingpong and fusbol tables, a nursery area, and a video arcade. Outside are tennis courts, driving range, and a playground. And the general store is a good-sized grocery.




me on a beachwood at Birch Bay

   A nice 10-minute walk through the beautiful (especially the change of colors in Fall) Birch Bay State Park behind the store leads you to Birch Bay, with lots of big, artsy driftwoods adorning the beach (hence the name). At the bay are various recreational activities with kayak, bike, and golf rentals, and a large mini-golf course. Famous for sinful, tasty fish and chips, Birch Bay is a touristy community of vacation homes.



the Aberions in front of the cabin

  The first week, Deejay’s family (Tavy, his dad, Darlyn, sister, and husband Paolo) and Trisha and the two kids Yeye and Kenji were in a cottage beside our RV. I call the first week Sing because Tavy is an avid karaoke singer and so we had a great time singing at night after the morning sightseeing trips and afternoon recreational activities as the resort. An avid karaoke ‘performer’ myself, I had loads of fun!




the spit that splits

The second week I call the Eat week. Our friends Benjie and Fides Alviar came to visit us again. On the first day we toured them around Birch Bay and could not help but feast on the famous fish and chips! Then we went to Semiahmoo (meaning half moon) Bay. Beachwood is in the city of Blaine whose harbor is separated from the main body of the bay by a Spit, on which is the Semiahmoo Resort. The spit splits the bay such that it looks like a half moon. From there one can see White Rock, a city in Canada.

a view of White Rock from the parkway that leads to the Resort

Blaine’s northern boundary is the Canadian border. The city is home to the two main West Coast ports of entry between the United States and Canada, the Peace Arch Crossing, the primary passenger vehicle port of entry, and the Pacific Border Crossing, about a mile east, the primary point of entry for heavy truck traffic, and thus is known as the Truck Crossing.

admiring the kiosk of the concrete factory



trying to unsettle the pigeons



So the next day we went to Vancouver, BC, only about an hour away where we again could not help but sample exotic fruits and other goodies at Granville Island where my most favorite public market in the world is located. At the boardwalk are dozens of pigeons waiting to be fed. In the middle of one-of-a-kind shops a man dressed in a ballerina outfit was entertaining crowds. We even found a concrete factory that told its story in an interesting kiosk’ near its entry.

 


the ballerina on Granville Island




with Bolet, in front of Pinpin

   Then we went to meet another friend, Bolet, who lives in Vancouver, at the famous Pinpin restaurant where hordes of Pinoys and Pinays (what we fondly call people from the Philippines) eat because of its many authentic Filipino dishes. And, though we had a lunch that our tummies could not carry, we still went to the Newtown Bakery in Chinatown to buy our siopaos and other Pinoy treats. 



playing billiards???



On the last weekend our guests were Krishna, my eldest grandchild, Randy, her boyfriend, and Diana, his sister. However, the teens were not interested in sites! Instead they frequented the hot tubs and lounges. On Saturday night we all went to the crab feed where I finished two whole crabs and two pieces of roast chicken! But I call this last week our Dance week because after the Feed there was live band music. Bill and I danced the night away with another couple from Canada, members of the resort.

Mt. Baker in all its glory



a sighting of an American bald eagle

 In between these weekend visits were trips to Bellingham, Mt. Baker, and the towns of Concrete (yes, they make concrete there) and La Conner (in the heart of Skagit Valley, the tulip country in America and, although the flowers are not in season until spring, that is where I saw my first bald eagle by the road), Washington.  Bellingham is the largest city in, and the county seat of, Whatcom County. Situated on Bellingham Bay. 

a nice spot on a city ridge overlooking Bellingham Bay

a strikingsculpture on WWU campus

Although Bellingham is smaller than neighboring metropolitan areas such as Seattle, Vancouver, or Victoria, the city and its surrounding region offer many attractions which are popular for both residents and visitors. The city’s scenic splendor is appreciated by residents and tourists, mainly from Canada. Cliffside views of the San Juan Islands and the glaciers of Mt. Baker can be seen from the city. Even Western Washington University is a tourist destination for the countless sculptures around the campus.

the entry to Concrete, Washington

Certainly those three weeks of Sing, Eat, and Dance make it into our book. We were in Beachwood the latter part of October and early November. What more could we have enjoyed if we were there during spring or summer??? But the holiday season (Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year) is about to begin so we went on to Monroe, Washington to be closer to family and friends!

the Cascades with an urban foreground