The Making of New Age Man, Chapter V, Cont2

Freedom

Following up on the above pictorial review of our travels, after Texas, we drove to Denver to visit with my daughter and family. From there it was on to the Tetons and Yellowstone, where we spent 10 days. Yellowstone National Park, the first national park in the world, and one of the largest with over 2 million acres, was voted in by Congress in 1872, and immediately became popular.

We watched Old Faithful spew steaming water high into the air, then walked through the adjacent thermal field of bubbling pools. Sitting in a rocker in front of the giant fireplace in Old Faithful Inn, with an ice cream cone, I read that construction was started in 1903 and continued through the long, cold winter. It was completed before the park opened for the season in 1904. We were impressed by the building's twisted log supports. It took 500 tons of locally quarried rock to build the massive fireplace. On it hangs a gigantic clock wrought by a blacksmith on the site. The original building, containing 140 rooms, was claimed to be the largest all log hotel in existence.

While on our way to Glacier National Park, out of Choteau, Montana a few miles, at the "dinosaur digs" a tour guide told us about the earth's history 80 million years ago. We saw enormous dinosaur leg bones partially exposed. Imagine animals with 15 foot legs. Nature knew she made a mistake. When you see what's going on today, it's something to think about

We parked in St. Mary Campground in Glacier National Park, near the east gate and spent a week. Going-to-the-Sun-road in Glacier is a spectacular drive. We had to stop on the road while a road crew blasted five hundred feet above the road and scraped the fallen rocks off the road, entertained by mountain goats. Nice of them, wasn't it?

When you are retired, and all the time you want enjoy the places you visit, an RV is the way to go. After Glacier, we spent a couple of weeks in the Whitefish, Montana area, in national forest campgrounds, six days in a site and one day in an RV park to grocery shop, dump the waste water, charge up the batteries on the park's power, and then back to a campground at a fourth the price per day.

The little we spent over our Social Security, we made back doing odd jobs along the way. And suffice it to say, it's hardly camping when you roll off a queen size Select Comfort mattress in the morning for a warm shower. We had a storage tank for fresh water, a tank for sink and shower water, and a tank for toilet water. We had gas central heat and electric air conditioning when hooked to an RV park's power. We had electric or gas refrigeration, electric or gas hot water heater. In our view, for what we gypsies were getting for the money spent, it was well worth the sacrifice of space.

From Whitefish, we drove to Banff, Alberta, and then to Jasper. The hundred plus mile trip between Banff and Jasper took us five days. We were in some of the most spectacular mountain scenery to be found anywhere, parked every night in a national park. At Waterfowl Lake, the view out of our fifth wheel's rear picture window was enough to make you feel like you had died and gone to Heaven. We walked on a glacier, the Columbia Ice Field, which feeds the Athabasca River, which empties in the Arctic Ocean. We were awed by a mighty waterfall on the Athabasca. In the campground at Jasper, we saw bears nibbling berries. Elk wandered around the park. Wild sheep grazed along the highway. We saw a moose eating aquatic plants in a lake.

After Jasper, we made our way through the western mountains of British Columbia, and northen Washington's North Cascades National Park, on our way to the Olympic Peninsula, where we parked in rain forests of 250 foot tall trees. We visited Bremerton, noted for ship building. A mothball fleet of World War II naval vessels resides at Bremerton, including the famous aircraft carrier Midway. We toured the destroyer U.S.S. Turner Joy, now owned by the city. Nearby Poulsbo is Norwegian. We lunched there. If you are in the area be sure to take in the Naval Undersea Museum.

Picturesque Port Gamble, the former home of Pope and Talbot, lumber manufacturers-the company still owns and maintains the town-held special significance for us. Looking across Hood Canal, we saw Squamish Harbor, which brought back our memory of anchoring there twenty years before on a charter boat. That's where I discovered that love was for the young at heart.

Port Angeles is on Strait of Juan de Fuca. We planned on taking the ferry across to Vancouver island. It was too expensive. We opted for Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic mountains, and Hoh Rain Forest, which boasts 300 foot tall Sitka Spruce trees.

From the Olympic Peninsula down to Portland, Oregon, we spent a month visiting Karen's family. Julie, our best friend-our surrogate daughter-flew out from Florida for a visit.

We'd planned on spending our winter in southern Arizona. We headed south, and over to the northern California coast, where we visited Redwood National Park and walked through the biggest and oldest living things on earth. Near the Park, we took a dirt road down a steep drop to the ocean. There was a trail we wanted to walk. A large herd of elk was grazing on the tall grass. We walked a couple of miles up the coast and cut across to the beach after the tall grass. Laying on the sand, we were lulled to sleep by the sound of the surf. We must have slept an hour. The sun had set when we made it back to the car.

Driving south on U.S. 101, south of Eureka a few miles, we took a byway through dairy country and wandered into the nineteenth century town of Ferndale, lunching on hot chicken wings and draft beer in the nineteenth century bar in the nineteenth century inn.

We cut across the coastal range heading for Redding but were blocked by an overturned tanker truck on the highway. We spent the night in "Skunk Point Campground" and met a Canadian living in a camper on a pickup. He advised against southern Arizona. He'd been there. His advice was Prescott, Arizona for the winter.

As luck would have it, we found a place in an RV park on the side of a mountain near Prescott. The site had been reserved but cancelled. Our picture window gave us a view of the valley below. We parked during one of those glorious Arizona sunsets. Karen's comment: "This is heaven!" Jerome, on the way to Sedona, is an ancient mining town on the side of a mountain. Now a tourist attraction, we stopped and had the best pizza I've ever eaten. Sedona's attractive adobe buildings, backed by enormous red, pink and white rocks, offers something of a mystery: the "vortexes." The Sedona-Oak Canyon area was sacred to the Indians. The vortexes, so it is told, emit energy-and different kinds in different locations, some feminine, some masculine. We loved the five months we spent in the Prescott area.

I found a part time job for Karen working in an RV park office in Shady Cove, Oregon. The job started in April and ended in November. Karen would work three days a week. On the way to Shady Cove, we detoured to Hoover Dam. We crossed the dam, parked the trailer at Canyon Trail RV Park in Boulder City, unhooked and drove the truck back to Hoover Dam for the tour. Roosevelt named it Boulder Dam. He didn't give Hoover credit for putting people to work during the Great Depression. Hoover dam's workers were paid a whopping $4.00 per day, four times the going rate. Serving the electric power needs of 1.3 million people, besides the electric power, Hoover Dam provides flood control and irrigation. Lake Mead is a favorite recreational area. Can you blame Roosevelt for renaming it Boulder Dam?

In Las Vegas and pulled into Sam's Town RV Park for the night. A free shuttle bus took us to "The Strip." We gambled away all four quarters in my pocket, and then enjoyed delicious Mexican dinners and Margaritas seated next to a sure-nuff canal, serenaded by flamboyantly dressed gondoliers. The whole place is under roof and air conditioned. The ceiling high above appears as blue sky with little puffy clouds in the evening after the sun goes down.

On the way out of Las Vegas, Karen navigating, we burned a half tank of fuel making wrong turns. We spent a night in an orange grove in blossom on the way. In Shady Cove, we found a home. Karen was asked to remain for the winter. We remained in Shady Cove, parked on the Rogue River, four years, Karen working part time in the RV park's office. We spent another two years in the area after Karen quit her job.

With nothing better to do, I started writing my memoirs in April 2001. In August 2008, I'm still writing. Today's story is more personally involved and better received, I think, because it is unique. It's the natural thing when you think about your life as much as I have. We may think alike in some ways, but even as close as Karen and I are, we're two unique individuals sharing our lives together. Karen is much more individual oriented than I. I'm more into the big picture. Karen used to say I was on another plan. She felt left out. Not anymore. I've had an influence on her.

When I'm not writing, for one thing, I enjoy playing the keyboard. It's better to create music yourself than to listen to other people's creations. Like writing, the more you do it the better you get, and the more you enjoy it. Across the road from our RV park in Shady Cove, Karen and went to an antique auto show. Combing my "Golden Oldies" with antique autos, I've made a slide presentation for your listening and viewing pleasure.

To be Continued