family and friends
When RVing full time, it is important to keep in contact with family and friends, anyway for me it is. A part of this trip is to reconnect with family and friends that I have not seen in over 30+ years and for some I will be meeting them for the first time.
Working my way up the West Coast I finally make it to Portland and am so excited to see my nephew and BIL. This nephew participates in the sport “buhurt” which is like medieval MMA fighters. I got to watch him in action. We then met up with his dad, stepmom, and girlfriend for dinner. It was a fabulous dinner; amazing view and the company was out of this world!
On the way to see another nephew and his family I got to see Mt Hood and Mt Rainier, although the excitement to see my nephew and family was overshadowing the excitement of these beautiful mountains. My nephew and I spent a day playing tourist but not doing the normal tourist things. We saw Snoqualmie Falls, Rattlesnake Lake and a 200 year old Douglas Fir which was the largest tree cut and removed from the North Bend area. After a visit to a hardware store where we found needed items for the RV, we then went home and played dominos! My great niece is a senior this year, so it is a very stressful but exciting year for them. She will be attending the National Cheerleading Competition at Walt Disney World in February so that is making it even that much more exciting. My brother and his wife will be attending as will I. * I wrote this blog a while ago so am updating after attending the February Cheerleading Competition. There were so many people and schools there that it was almost overwhelming. It reminded me of many of the events that we would put on during my years at different Universities. The excitement, the stress/tension, the extreme highs when a school performance would go really well and the extreme lows when there was a performance that didn’t go as planned. The dedication, strength, and drive of these participants was eye opening for me. They were practicing every minute they could (or so it seemed.) There was one team that didn’t like the results they received after their first performance so they completely changed their next routine. They worked on it all day and into the night and right back at it the next morning. It worked as they performed a perfect routine that was breathtakingly beautiful and had a large number of difficult stunts. The reactions from the crowd that was watching (it didn’t matter if it was their school or not) if someone fell on a lift or missed a step. The whole room would hold their breath until they knew the participant was ok then there was a collective sigh. If a team left crying you could hear sniffles coming from the crowd. If they left hugging each other, talking and laughing because they performed really well, the crowd was also riding a high, unless of course, they were with a competing team then you could see the worry and the whispered discussions taking place. The Mount Si team, my niece’s team, made it to the finals in both their categories, yea! They placed 3rd in one and didn’t place in the other. Win or lose, these teams were all so outstanding and the things that they could do just left me sitting there with my mouth open and my eyes wide wondering how in the world they were able to accomplish what I just saw. Just outstanding!
I then got to visit a good friend in Walla Walla. What a wonderful town! It was so good to catch up with her and what her family has been doing since they left the University of California, Riverside. I could tell that she loves where she lives and what she is doing and that makes my heart sing!
Next stop held a HUGE surprize! I got to my niece’s house and she and her daughters had just finished helping their dog deliver 11 puppies. They were the cutest things (my niece, her daughters and the puppies!) I could see that they had their hands full and while I did fill up my heart with puppy cuddles and human conversation and cuddles, I did need to get back on the road.
Landing in Cody, WY I picked up my niece (another one) and her kids and we headed up the Big Horn Mountains. We met up with my sister, my niece’s husband and some friends who had all been up hunting. My great niece and nephew and I spent the weekend exploring on the can-am while the rest were hunting, although I think we saw more wildlife than any of them saw. Then it was back down the mountain in the snow. The Big Horn Mountains are absolutely beautiful! If you get a chance to visit I highly recommend it and have family in the area that can give you pointers as to where to stay and what to visit, while I lived in the area for a few years that has been over 30+ years ago.
Another sister, her husband, daughter, children and I traveled to Spearfish, SD for a fundraiser for her BIL. While there we met up with another niece and many families and friends. This is where I grew up and went to school, so I got to catch up with many classmates while I was here. It was wonderful!
Then on to North Dakota: Theodore Roosevelt National Park, Dickinson State University, and International Peace Garden. While in ND I was able to catch up with a couple of other classmates and good friends. It is these connections that make traveling so much easier and fun to look forward to.
While in Watertown, SD I moochdocked at my cousin’s farm. When we were young, my cousin and I were best friends so staying with her gave us time to rebuild that bond and strengthen our family bond. She and I were also able to spend some quality time with my dad’s only living sister. This was so much fun! My aunt is 96 years old and goes nonstop. We looked at pictures, most I had never seen before, she told stories about when they were growing up, and she took us around town to show us important locations. We stopped and had lunch with a couple of cousins, while we are friends on Facebook, this gave us the perfect opportunity to catch up in person. My aunt even had a scrapbook from when my dad, his sister and a nephew were in country school. The scrapbook included photos, handwritten school papers, articles, and handouts from school programs. We visited the farm where I lived for the first eight years of my life. A cousin and his family now live there and run the hugely expanded farming program. There were several things that brought back fond memories and filled my heart with joy, but I think just seeing it so lovingly cared for was the best thing! We then visited another cousin and had a wonderful visit, even got to see his long horn cattle! Sadly, my time here had to come to an end, and I had to move on to another town and you guessed it, more cousins!!
I made it to Sioux Falls, SD and had lunch with a friend from High School. I won’t say how long it has been since we had seen each other except that it has been too long! After lunch I met up with my cousin and we toured Sioux Falls. During my stay here I got to meet several of my cousins’ children, including one that I didn’t know at the time we were related. Now everyplace I go I wonder if we could be related. You may think that is silly but let me explain.
My dad was the youngest of eleven children and he had nephews and nieces that were older than he was. We knew our cousins from the families that were close in age to my dad, but the older cousins were long gone by the time we came around. Some of the older cousins we met as they stayed local but then we moved and only came back maybe once a year. Thus, I have cousins and their children that I have never met. I was once at a football game and the guy sitting next to me looked familiar, but I didn’t know him. I asked if he was a DeBerg and sure enough he was, our grandfathers were brothers. It is such a small, small world!
After leaving SD I met up with a cousin’s daughter and her family. Previously we had only met on Facebook, so it was so much fun to actually meet in person. I then moved on and stayed with a brother and his wife in Indiana. They belong to a card group, and I learned a couple new card games and met many new friends. We had a blast, and it was so hard to leave but I had to move on.
Next was Hot Springs, AK and my BIL’s aunt. It had been many years since I had seen her so once again it was great to spend time with her, her partner, and her poodle. We toured the mountains, went to the hot springs and ate!
After leaving AK I headed for OK to meet up with another classmate who has a Blueberry Farm. He runs quite the operation there. We traveled some of Route 66, finding the Blue Whale and the Auto Museum, and toured Oral Roberts University. If you are ever close during Blueberry season stop into Thunderbird Land Cattle and Blueberry Farm. He is a great guy and runs a first-class operation.
As you can see making those connections is important to me. My next trip will be filled with more meet ups and hopefully more new connections. Ancestry.com and 23andMe are becoming good friends.
You will find photos from some of these visits in the gallery.
“In the cookies of life, friends are the chocolate chips.” unknown
