Our next stop was near Santa Rosa, Petaluma, CA.  Such fun…we went to the Shultz Museum…Charlie Brown and Snoopy!!  We had breakfast there at the Warm Puppy Cafe.  Charles Schultz ate there  every day when he was still working.  He was an avid hockey player from Minnesota, but the area’s hockey rink closed.  He built his own and shared it with the community.   There were ice skating lessons when we were there.  How cute!!

Our Wagonmaster.

Our Tailgunner

 

The museum was very interesting!   There was a lot of trivia information about Charles Schulz, and Snoopy, and Charlie Brown, and Lucy, and Linus, and the whole Peanuts gang!

 

 

One wall was a mural of Charlie Brown and Lucy.  It is made with tiles, with comic strips on it.  Some are repeated so the shading shows up.

  

 

 

This one was in the Ladies’ Room stall!

 

Remember the Kite-eating tree?  Here it is!  With the kite in it!

 

Next was wine tasting in the Russian River Area!  (Happy face! Happy Face!)   We went to Sonoma-Cutrer Tasting Room.   They had a beautifully set table outside for us, with linen napkins and crystal wine glasses.  We got to taste 3 white wines and yummy red. (The whites were good, too!)  They served different cheeses and crackers along with the wine.   It was a very relaxing and fun afternoon.

 

      

            

 

The grape harvest is just getting started.   They are hand picked at this vineyard and put in these big crates.  If you look closely, you can see some green grapes hanging out of the crate.

 

          

 

 

The countryside is beautiful with all the grape vines growing.

 

      

 

        

 

The next stop was the Korbel Winery!  My favorite brandy, which they make nearby!!  They still have some of the original brick buildings, which make them unsafe in certain conditions.   Yikes!

 

    

 

       

 

 

 

We had an interesting tour, then wine tasting!  They included sampling a champagne that they made.  It was pretty good, for champagne!

  

       

 

        Here are some red grapes at the Korbel Winery.  Look closely!!

 

Our next stop is Napa Valley!  More wine country!!

 

And one more set of Redwood trees!!

 

We had a short ride to Klamath, California and only spent one night there.  But what a day we had!!   The Redwood National Park!!  Here’s some final pictures of the Oregon coast.

 

We stopped at the Trees of Mystery.  It was a walk through the Redwood forest.  How awesome!!

 

The trees are HUGE!!  Just think…some of them are about 3000 years old!!  They were on this earth when Jesus walked on the earth!!  Mind blowing!!

 

This tree is 19 feet in diameter!

 

 

We took a gondola ride up through the forest.

  

 

Other pics.

 

This is one of my favorite pictures…looking down the road  through the redwoods.

 

Onward to Garberville, California!  We are still in the Redwoods!!  Awesome!

 

We drove through, both ways, the Avenue of the Giants.  It’s a 31 mile, narrow road with 51,222 acres of magnificent redwood groves!!   Another “Wow!” moment!

Obviously, these pictures don’t do justice to the magnificence of the Redwoods!

 

 

One of the things we HAD to do is to drive through a redwood tree!  This is what it looked like when we drove through.

 

And what it looked like when John drove through!

 

This tree is called the chimney tree.  The inside of the tree burned out, but not the outside.

 

It’s hard to see here, but there are sea lions down by the sandbar feeding on salmon going up the river.

 

We took a drive over to Shelter Cove, on the coast.  It was quite the drive…curvy, narrow, hairpin curves,…for 30 miles!  But when we got there, it was worth it.  This was the last time we’d be on the coastline for several days.  Our trip is taking us inland.

       

 

One of the highlights was the Black Sand Beach.   Beautiful!

  

 

There was also a lighthouse.

 

Bigfoot has been sighted in the Redwoods several times!  Thankfully, we didn’t see him!

 

But,…we did see a bear in our campground!!  It came into the fish cleaning table.

 

 

Hydrangeas!

 

 

It’s impossible to show the full beauty and size of these Redwood trees.  We are still seeing them in our campgrounds and along the highway.  There’s only one way to describe it all.  This is by Michael W. Smith:

 

Our God is an awesome God

He reigns from heaven above

With wisdom, power, and love

Our God is an awesome God.

 

Yes He is.

 

Our next campground was in North Bend, Oregon, on Coos Bay.  It was another awesome setting!!  We were camped right on the shore of Coos Bay.  There was salmon fishing just a short distance from us!  Lucky was happy…there was a fenced-in doggy park, across from where we were parked, for him to run with all his new girlfriends!!    Don’t worry Maggie!  Lucky still loves you and can’t wait to see you in Florida!!

Well, kids, your dad and I did something I thought we’d never do.  Although Dad has always wanted to do it!   We went on the dunes in a dune buggy!!  Yee-haw!!  Did we ever have a blast!!  Those dunes are amazing!!  Thank goodness we had a driver who was a cop with the dunes as his regular patrol beat!  We had 4 of us in the dune buggy we were in, plus the driver.  A few of the other couples were able to go with just a driver.  Following are pictures!!

 

 

Mary, Dave and me in the back.  John was in the front with the driver.

Our wagonmasters, Annie and Wayne, with their driver.

What an awesome time!!  It took all day to shake the sand out of my hair!!  And out of our mouths!!

 

On to Gold Beach, Oregon.  More fabulous views of the Oregon coast!

 

 

We were camped on the Rogue River.  We walked about 2 blocks to get out to the beach.  It was so windy that our puppy dogs had troubles standing.  And so did we!

 

Our main activity there was a jet boat ride 30 miles up the Rogue River and back down!   Another Yeehaw!!  Talk about fun!!  The sites were beautiful as were the full 360 degrees boat turns!!  That boat could skim over 4″ of water, which is good!   There wasn’t much water in a lot of places.

 

We stopped for lunch at a quaint little restaurant up the river.  This restaurant was probably at least 100 feet above  the water line.  It almost covered the building in 1964!  They have had several floods since then, but not as high.

 

There were several egret nests along the way.  They have already started to migrate south for the winter.

 

We came along the Oregon version of the DNR netting fish.   They do it Monday, Wednesday and Fridays to see how many and what kind of salmon are swimming upstream.  This attracts a lot of sea lions as it’s easy food for them.   Unfortunately,  they didn’t pull anything up in the net while we were there.

 

We had a group campfire both nights we were there.  This was the first campground that would allow one, as there is a fire ban in most places.  It goes along with a beautiful sunset!

 

This was our last time in Oregon.  The Oregon Coast is unbelievable.  Any pictures taken just don’t do it justice.  One thing that bothered me, though, was the fact that most of the time we were in a tsunami warning zone.  They constantly reminded us of it!  There were always directions as to where to go and how long it would take you to get there (10 minutes, average) posted wherever we were. Thankfully, there weren’t any earthquakes to cause a tsunami!

  

 

God is Good!!

 

Following are some pictures of the awesome Oregon coastline!  Words can’t describe God’s awesome creation.  And pictures don’t do justice, either!

 

 

 

And then we pulled into the Port of Newport Marina and RV Park!  Oh my goodness!  What a beautiful place to be for a few days!!  Ocean, boats, RVs, fishing.  I got a personal tour of the facilities from the resident self-designated host!  He was quite a character!  I learned a lot about the area and the fishing they do there.  That is salmon that they had caught in the pictures.

 

This last picture is of the NOAA research ship that goes out of Newport.

 

 

These blue buildings are the fish cannery where the salmon, tuna, halibut and other fish are processed when they come in.

 

One of our side trips that John and I took was to the Heceta Lighthouse in the Yaquina Bay.  It is still operating with the light beacon.

 

 

 

On the huge rocks below the lighthouse are hundreds of birds.

 

This is a great whale watching place!   Newport has a resident whale pod of about 16 whales that stayed all summer and didn’t migrate to Alaska.  They were out there feeding when we were there!   We are a long distance from them, but if you look closer, you can see the backs of them and in the last picture, John got the tail!

 

We drove along the beach road and came to Agate Beach.  There is still a lot of agate there, but is covered by all the sand.  If the wind and waves are right, people have been known to find some.  The sand on this beach is in waves.  John is standing in front of one of the waves/dunes.

 

Another beach…

 

Further down the road is the VietNam Memorial.

 

And another lighthouse, which is a non-working one.

 

 

One of our tours was of the Oregon Coast Aquarium.  That place was awesome!!  What a great tour we had!

 

This is a monkey-face prickleback…yuck.

           

 

We also toured the Hatfield Marine Science Center.  No pictures from there…I guess it didn’t interest us very much!!

 

One afternoon we went over to Harbor Drive.  It’s kind of like downtown Wisconsin Dells.  We found an awesome restaurant that overlooked the harbor that we had supper at.   All the tables face the harbor, so there’s not a bad table in the place!  Sea lions have taken up residency there, mostly because of the fishing boats that come in.  They have become somewhat of a nuisance to the locals, but they sure entertained us!!  We were seated on the second floor of this restaurant and looked out over the harbor.

 

A beautiful sunset!

 

We found an awesome fish market and bought some fresh salmon and halibut.  YUM!!!

Up to now, we thought Newport was our favorite place, mostly because of the marina and water setting, but we’re not sure…

Next is a dune buggy ride on the sand dunes of Oregon!!

Our next stop for a couple of days was Warrenton, Oregon.  Our travel miles from Kelso, WA was only 61 miles, but it took us several hours to get there!  Lots of slower mountain driving and pull-overs to see the Columbia River, which we were following!

 

We had a tour of the Fort Stevens Historical Park.  It is an old fort that has some old military artifacts from the Civil War era through World War II.  We were fortunate to have the tour in an old military troop transport truck.  Interesting ride!

John in an old jeep!

 

We went out to the South Jetty Observation Deck.  There you could see the manmade jetty that helps control the water coming down the Columbia River and in from the Pacific Ocean.   The war between the 2 is pretty violent.  Ships that come up the river wait out in the ocean until a special trained Pilot comes out to get them into the river.  There are only 12 pilots that are qualified at this time!

The jetty is about 6 miles long!  Distance is deceiving…it looks shorter than that!

The view was absolutely awesome…wind blowing, waves crashing, salt air!!  What an awesome God we have!

On the way out of the park, guess what?!  Elk!

 

 

Our next stop was a shipwreck.  Because of sand bars and the fight between the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean, many ships didn’t make it into the mouth of the river to go upstream…shipwreck!  The beach was beautiful there!  But the weather a little cool for sitting there!

 

On one of the days at Warrenton, we had a tour of Columbia River Maritime Museum.  Wow!  Was that ever interesting.  They showed us a replica of the U.S. Coast Guard sea rescue boat.   There are special trained crew members that work the rescues.  They are tethered to the boat so they don’t go overboard.  And,… this boat can roll over and right itself!  We have former Navy servicemen on our tour…they said they now have a new respect for the Coast Guard!

 

 

The following is a working ship that had come up into the Columbia River.  The other boat is a pilot boat.  We thought they were going out to pick up the pilot that brought that ship through the mouth and drop off the pilot that would get the ship upstream to port.  We were wrong!  It pushed the ship so it could anchor with the current of the river.   It must have gotten in a shallower part of the river and couldn’t turn itself!

 

 

Weather is very important for marine navigation.  There were several displays pertaining to weather forecasting, but here are a couple of pictures of my favorite display!  Me and the green screen!!

 

 

We had lunch with some friends on the waterfront.  The restaurant was named “Baked Alaska”.  So, of course, we had to have dessert!  Baked Alaska!!  It was very good and made with a chocolate chip cookie.  But, my sister’s is better!!  We’ll have to sweet talk her into making it some day for all  of us!!

 

One last stop was the Astoria Column.  I honestly don’t know why it was built or much about it!  I must have been daydreaming about the beach and sea spray!

I think John is up there somewhere!

 

John climbed the Column and got these gorgeous shots.

As you can see, the weather is constantly changing from sunny to cloudy and sprinkles!

 

One final tour we took was fort Clatsop.  Lewis and Clark spent their first winter there.  From the looks of their quarters, it was pretty rough.

 

 

This is a Sitka Spruce that John is standing by.

 

 

Our next 2 night stop was McMinnville, Oregon.  We stopped at the Tillamook Cheese Factory on the way and had a self-guided tour and lunch.  It is a very big facility and very automated, much more than the cheese factories at home.

 

We also toured the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville.  That, too, was very interesting.  Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose is housed there.  We were amazed that this huge plane is built out of plywood.  At the time there was no metal available because of the war.   The plywood design was developed by Howard Hughes.  It was only flown once and  for about 6 miles and then put in storage.  One piece of information…the wings were filled with beach balls to help the plane float in case it crashed in the water.  This plane took up the majority of the museum and they built the building around it.

 

 

This is a Huey helicopter used during the VietNam War.

 

And a Cobra helicopter.

 

 

 

 

McMinnville is well-known for their wineries.  So,…we went with another couple on a wine tasting tour!!  We went to 2 separate tastings and did not come home empty handed!!  The vineyards aren’t open to the public until the grapes get riper and ready for harvest.

 

Some flowers!  And a double rainbow!

 

On to Newport, Oregon!

 

Our 40 Day Grand West Coast Adventure has finally started!  We are with a great group of people.  15 rigs, in total.  That includes the Wagon Master and the Tail Gunner, whom we know!  (They were our Wagon Masters on our Alaska trip.)  We had a Welcome Dinner the first night and headed to Mt. Saint Helens the next morning!

Our first stop on the bus trip was the Visitor Center.  From there we got our first glimpse of Mt. Saint Helens.  We were in typical Pacific Northwest weather…drizzly and foggy!  So the following pictures don’t show off the volcano very well.

 

 

From there we went up to Johnston Ridge Observatory.  Mr. Johnston perished/died when the top of Mt. Saint Helens blew off in 1980.  It was expected to erupt and he was the person that notified the authorities that it was erupting.  There had been several earthquakes that indicated activity below the surface of the earth.  It formed a bulge on the north side of the mountain, which is what erupted.  It blew down and scorched everything in its way.  It caused lava flows and mudslides.   Lakes were filled with lava and some no longer exist.  New lakes were formed from the melted mountain snow.   The rock and ice crossed a ridge 1300 feet high and roared 14 miles down the Toutle River.  About 150 square miles of forest was either blown over or left dead and standing.  Gray ash fell over eastern Washington and beyond.  It turned the day into night.  The eruption lasted almost 9 hours!  What chaos it caused.  People had been evacuated up to 2 weeks before the eruption.  Air traffic was affected.  The jet stream caught the ash and carried it around the world!  The landscape was forever changed.  It is beautiful now, with plants and animals adapting to their new world.  The volcano continued to erupt  until 1986!

I just told you a whole lot more than you probably wanted to know!!  It’s so amazing how God created this interesting earth!  I wish our pictures were better, but we were happy to see as much as we did!

 

 

From Kelso, Washington, we were off to Warrenton, Oregon.  As  we crossed over from Washington to Oregon, there is a huge lumber mill.  Lumber is shipped to all over the world from there.  The Columbia River is a working river, like the Mississippi River.

 

More later!

Just to let everyone know,…the motorhome is now fixed.  And we have made it to Kelso, Washington and started our 40 Day Grand West Coast Tour!!  Of course, we didn’t get here without some last minute drama!!

As we left Kelso, we went 4 miles and the check engine light went on.  Ugh!  So,…back to the repair shop.  Something was not hooked up correctly, so we were on our way within the hour.  We  were on I-5 in California, heading north.  There is now a new fire just north of Redding.  It grew from 2 acres to over 200 in a matter of an hour or so.   And it has closed I-5.  It has been closed for almost a week as the fire is on both sides of the highway and not under control.  We got north about 1 1/2 hours before it broke out.  God is definitely in control.

So, we have made it to Kelso!

While we were waiting for the motorhome to be repaired, we went to Lassen Volcanic National Park for the day.  It’s another one of our fabulous national parks!  Lassen Volcano is pretty active.  It hasn’t erupted for a long time, but there is a lot of earthquake activity there.  There was a small earthquake south of the mountain the day before we were there.   Yikes!

 

 

Following are pictures of various stops we made.

 

This is a hot, bubbling, stinky sulphur spring.

 

 

And, here’s Lucky!!

 

We had planned on spending 3-4 days at Mt. Rainier National Park.  That was one place we really wanted to see!  Lemons were still being turned into lemonade!  We got to Kelso a couple of days before we were to start our tour, so we took a day trip to Mt. Rainier!

 

Mt. Rainier is so majestic!!  It’s 14,410 feet at the summit.  We got close enough to feel like you could reach out and touch it!  We were at 5200 feet at the Henry M. Jackson Memorial Visitor Center.

 

Here is our first glimpse of Mt. Rainier, from about 30 miles away!  It was the only mountain that had a “halo”/”spaceship” cloud around it.

 

Finally to the park!

AWESOME!!

 

 

There are many waterfalls and several areas where there have been rock slides  and avalanches.  Parts of the park are kept open all winter, depending if they can get the snow plowed.

 

In these next few pictures, there are hikers on the glacier.  If you look toward the top, you should see a trail and little specks.  It gives you an idea as to the massive size of the volcano/mountain!

 

These pictures are taken at the visitor’s center, the closest we could get without hiking up the mountain!

This is the Camp Lodge that is being rebuilt.

 

A few more pictures of majestic Mt. Rainier from another angle!

 

 

On Saturday, we drove to Des Moines, Washington, south of Seattle to see my only living aunt, and my cousin and his wife.  We had a great lunch visit and could have talked all afternoon!  We hope it won’t be too long before we see them again!

 

We also caught up with some good friends that we met on the Grand East Coast Trip!

 

Sunday we were able to worship in Vancouver, Washington.

We have seen everything we had on our to-see list, except the Columbia River Gorge.  Not bad for being held up for 10 days!  We have been able to do all these marvelous things, only by the grace of God.

Now we are ready to start our Grand West Coast Adventure!!  A little sneak peak…we saw Mt. Saint Helen’s today!!  Another one of God’s great creations!   Stay tuned!!

An update…I-5 is has 1 lane open in both directions for non-flammable carrying vehicles!

This is Sunday, September 2, 2018.  So far our time here in Redding has been very interesting, very hot and very smoky.  It’s 102 degrees out right now…1 PM!!  Guess we’ll be inside until the sun starts to go down and hopefully the smoke will lift and drift away!

Our mobile repair guy came out Monday morning and fixed what he could.  He found a major problem with some hose that carries coolant to the engine.  Evidently it was about to burst and we wouldn’t know it until the engine was ruined!  He called around and found a repair shop, but they couldn’t get us in until Thursday!  The campground we were in was gracious to shuffle things around so we could stay until then.

We thought we’d make lemonade out of lemons, so we decided to make the most of our time here!

The first thing we saw was the Sundial Bridge that goes across the Sacramento River.  The floor is made out of glass and metal.

 

It was a semi-smoky day, so all the exhibits weren’t open at this park.  

 

One interesting fact that we weren’t aware of is that salmon run up the Sacramento River to spawn!

 

 

We took a drive out to see Shasta Lake and Shasta Dam.  We ran into some of the fire damage from the Carr Fire.  There are hot spots and a fire now burning not too far from the north end of Shasta Lake.  It is a huge lake and several miles from us.

There are signs around town thanking the firefighters and first responders for all their hard work.

Shasta Lake was pretty impressive!  The smoke was pretty thick so we couldn’t see a long distance very well.

The last 2 pictures show a hot spot the rangers were watching.

 

I wondered if John was going to miss his deer hunting this year!  I think he would have done pretty well if it hadn’t been for these does at the dam.  And then, around the corner…guess what?!  Buck fever is now in full force!!

 

 

One of the reservations we had to cancel was our trip to Crater Lake.  But this little glitch didn’t stop us!!

On our drive to Crater Lake we could see the smoke hanging in the air like a cloud.  We finally drove out of it and saw the sun for the first time in a few days!!

 

Then we saw Mount Shasta.  There’s snow on it!

 

We had a great drive to Crater Lake.  Lots of scenery.  Then we arrived…OH MY GOODNESS!!  What a beautiful sight!!  Our God is an awesome God!!  His creation is mind boggling!  It was so quiet and serene there.  The lake is much bigger than I had thought it would be.  It was formed when a volcano collapsed.  It is 1943 feet deep and 4.5 -6 miles wide. Annual snowfall is 43 feet!  And the last time it froze over was 1949.

 

 

We did not take our rv up there!!

 

  

 

 

This is Wizard Island.  You can take a boat tour to get over there.

 

 

 

 

What a wonderful day!

 

On the way back to Redding, we went through a town called Weed!!   I wonder if they sell those t-shirts??

 

On Thursday, we took the motorhome in to the repair shop.  It became evident pretty early that a part was going to be ordered.  Now what?  The campground we were in was full for the Labor Day Weekend.  We did find one that had room for us for as long as we needed.  They have been very helpful!  And they have green grass here!!   Lucky is much happier!  (As we are!)

While we were waiting for the repair guys to do their thing, we went to Burney Falls.  Everything is within an hour or 2 drive from here, so it’s been easy to take day trips.  Burney Falls is a very pretty falls at a state park.

There is a second falls above the big one in the previous pictures.  Look closely!

 

 

 

At the time we thought we’d only need an additional night or 2 here.  But,…the part didn’t come in on Friday, like we had hoped.  We’re still making lemonade!!   So, we’re here until Wednesday.  Hopefully they can get it done on Tuesday and we’ll leave Wednesday.  We’re missing our time at the Columbia Gorge and Mount Ranier, but “Oh, well!”  Worse things could happen.  Like the Carr Fire.

We drove out to Whiskeytown, near where the Carr Fire started.  1300 families have lost their home.  The mandatory evacuations were within 1/2 mile of the campground we are staying at.  It is terrible.  The fire is 100% contained, but they are still trying to put out hot spots.  The national park is only partially opening for the weekend.  It smells and there is a ton of ash on the ground.  And the smoke continues to hang.  We have spent a lot of time in the motorhome this week.

The following pictures don’t even touch what the devastation looks like.  But it is in our minds forever.   Thank God for the brave men and women that saved this town, and all the other towns around.  We should be very grateful for them to put their lives on the line for everyone.

  

 

 

The national park has updated all their signs at the visitor center with information about the Carr Fire.

 

 

 

We found a church to attend this morning!  Mount Calvary!  What a friendly congregation!  It was so good to be able to worship this morning!  We thank God for the many blessings he has given us, for the opportunity to worship him and receive His holy body and blood, and for keeping us safe!   God’s blessings to all of you!  Love you!

 

On to unknown adventures!!

 

The sunrise!

 

 

 

From Salt Lake City we headed across the Utah desert for Elko, Nevada.  Hot and dusty!  But it cooled off that night for a good night’s sleep.

 

But…does anyone know where our Morton salt comes from??  Just west of Salt Lake City!!

Salt Lake is salty because it doesn’t have an outlet.  With the desert temperatures, the water evaporates and salt is left as a residue.  Morton Salt extracts the salt from the lake and salt ponds that have formed west of Salt Lake City.  Morton Salt and other salt companies bring over $1 billion to the Utah economy every year!  As we’re driving, it looks like snow out in the desert!  With snow (salt) drifts!

If you look closely, you can see the drifts!

 

 

Copper mining is also a very big industry in the Salt Lake City area.  This smoke stack is 30 feet shorter than the Empire State Building!  Some day we hope to take a tour of that mine!

Great Salt Lake is in the distance in these pictures.  The lake is lower than usual, so it was difficult to get a good look at it.

Some pictures as we’re leaving Salt Lake City.  Mountains, desert and smoke, which made for hazy pictures.

We stopped at a rest area in the salt flats.  How interesting!  John was able to walk out onto the lake of salt. There was a Mustang driving, ramming, doing donuts out there!  It looks like you could sink into it, like snow.  But it’s as hard as rock.

Of course, we need a flower!

After Elko, Nevada, we planned a couple of days in Reno, Nevada.  No, Mari, I didn’t even spend my $20!!

The first thing we had to do was to find an Emergency Vet clinic that would be open.  Between the wind, smoke and dust, Lucky got an eye infection.  Our poor puppy…!  We found a clinic close to the campground.  They were fantastic and took good care of us.  Lucky got some medicine and is doing much better!

One of the reasons for Reno, was that we could drive down to Lake Tahoe.  What a beautiful area!  This is a big ski resort area in the winter.  And lake recreation in the summer…boating, scuba diving, kayaking, swimming.  We went into Sand Harbor State Park to check things out.  It is a perfect example of God’s creation!

Following are some pictures of our day spent in the Lake Tahoe area.

It was a bright sunny day, but the smoke made it a hazy day!

Onward to Corning, California for an overnight stop.  The first part was mountain driving…up and down…down and up!  John has gotten real good at mountain driving!  I only had to use my “Fred Flintstone” brakes twice!!

We made it around Sacramento just fine.  Driving north on I-5 gave us a good glimpse of the farming in California.  Lots of fruit trees, strawberries, almonds, sunflowers.   Those we could identify!

And organic rice!

 

We know there were mountains to our east, because we had just come out of them, but the smoke from the wildfires was too thick to see them.  We did find out that the Carr fire is now 95% contained.  We knew we would be driving east of that area, so we were glad to hear it was under control.

Where are the mountains?

 

We arrived in Corning safe and sound.  Corning is the Olive Capital of the World!  Some of the orchards we couldn’t identify, but now know what was growing!  The campground had olive trees/bushes growing there, with olives on them!

 

We left Corning this morning, Sunday, August 26th, after watching Immanuel Lutheran Church service on FaceBook.  We are thankful for this opportunity to hear God’s Word when traveling.  The smoke is heavy and burning our eyes,  noses and throat.  Please pray for the people who have lost their homes and property.  This whole area has suffered.  We were hoping for a quick trip up I-5 to Klamath Falls, Oregon, but God had a different plan!  Alternator problems…!  We are safe and sound, with a mechanic coming in the morning, in Redding.  Of all places!  The Carr Fire is just west of here!  But we know who is in control, and will roll along with whatever happens!  God is good!  We’ll keep in touch!  Everyone have a blessed week.  Love you all!

There are mountains out there somewhere!

One more flower!

After we left Ogallala, NE, we spent one night in Rawlins, WY.  Not much going on there!

Following are some pictures of our trip after we left Rawlins.  It was a beautiful drive through Wyoming.  Lots of smoke for most of our trip, so far.   That is really interfering with my picture taking!

Another truck runaway ramp…

 

Our next stop was Salt Lake City.  We spent 2 nights there.  On Tuesday, we took a city tour of Salt Lake City.  It was very interesting to learn how the Mormons settled there.  Actually, it’s the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.   Some refer to it as the LDS.  There are about 1 million Mormons in Salt Lake City.  That’s about 30% of the population.  They originally settled in an area that is now called Pioneer Park.  There’s not much to see as they are trying to renovate it.

All the trees in Salt Lake City have been planted by the residents.  None of them grew there naturally.

 

We went past several landmarks of the city.

Home of the Utah Jazz.    

The University of Utah

The Family History Library.   Anyone, of any religion, can use this facility to look up their family genealogy.  It would be interesting to have time to go in and look up our family’s history!

 

One of our stops was the Heritage Park.  “This is the Place” where Brigham Young decided that he and his followers would settle.  There were original buildings, and also recreated ones.

 

From there we went to Temple Square, where the Mormon Tabernacle, the Temple, and all the Mormon administrative buildings are.  It is referred to as the Vatican of the Mormon church.  There is a concrete wall around the square.  It covers 35 acres and is in the downtown area.  All the streets in Salt Lake City are configured from Temple Square.  That is the center of the grid and addresses are figured from there.

 

We were hoping to hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but it wasn’t to be!!  Rats!!  We were there on the wrong day.  We did get to go into the Tabernacle and see the absolutely beautiful organ!

 

There was to be an organ recital there that afternoon, but it was moved to the Convention Center.  It didn’t matter as that organ was just as awesome.  We heard a recital by Andrew Unsworth.  It was awesome!  (John won’t quite agree, but he stayed awake for it!)  It was only 1/2 hour long, but showed all that that organ can do.

The choir sits  just below the pipes.  The orchestra is on the front of the stage.

 

The grounds are beautiful!  Lots of flower beds!

 

The Temple is off limits, especially to tourists.  The building is beautiful and has a gold angel on the top spire. We were told that this gold angle is the only statue ever displayed by the LDS.  The second and last picture shows the reflecting pond in front of it.

 

One house on the property is The Beehive House, where Brigham Young lived and had his offices.

 

 

The Lion House was built for Brigham Young’s wives and children.

 

After spending some time in Temple Square, we headed to the State Capitol.  What an awesome building, too!  This is the second largest capitol building in the US.  Following are some pictures of the rotunda, different sides of the building and parts of the interior.

One final picture, for now anyway!  This is the Temple from the Capitol.

Our next stop is Elko Nevada, on our way to Reno, Nevada.  More later!  God’s blessings to all of you!