Bonjour!
It’s just around the corner, we fly out for Paris, France on May 6th! I am so excited, I think Jim is too, just doesn’t show it. I will be posting on Facebook during our trip, so check it out while we are there for 3 glorious weeks! We arrive back in Seattle on May 27th (Memorial Day), probably ready to sleep for 24 hours straight 
Another awesome trip with my hubby!
Kim
He did it, he actually did it! Today was Jim’s last day at Boeing, and this time for good. He starts re-retirement on May 1st! Isn’t that exciting??!! Now, I just have to flog thru a couple of months and I will be joining him with all the free time in the world.
We are going to celebrate by going to France. Well, yeah, we were going anyway, but hey, makes it just that much more special 
It’s time to have fun Jim, we’ll start with wine touring in France!
Kim
Jim and I both enjoy having birthdays in March, and it’s even better now that Spring looks like it might be here to stay. Happy flowers are blooming, Daffodils, one of my favorites! Sharing a few pictures that I took here in the RV park.
We have good news all over the place… Jim is retiring! YaY! or in this case, re-retiring his last day of work will be April 30th and start being a man of leisure on May 1st, just in time for us to go to France. We will be celebrating his retirement over there, what could be better? Not too much!
Enjoy the Spring, I know we are happy to see it. Happy Birthday to all of our friends that have March birthdays also!
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to one and all! We are still alive, still living in the RV, still in Issaquah, WA… It’s been 1 1/2 years since we landed here… at least another 1/2 year to go. We have plans, lots of plans for the New Year, the first on the top of the list is to visit France in May 2013! We had an awesome time last May in Spain and hope to continue the adventures.
Well, until I find the time to start the blog up again… Happy New Year and I hope it brings you lots of Joy and Happiness your way.
XOXO
Jim and Kim
Well, we made it safe and sound, we are in London. We flew the red-eye from Vancouver, BC, Canada and landed at 11:00am London time. We are lucky in that we are flying business class on the long leg, free drinks & meals, full laydown seats/beds, but sleep still eludes me for the most part. I think Jim got quite a few winks in.
We take the bus to our hotel, luckily, they have a clean room at 12:00 noon, because check-in is not until 2:00pm and we wanted to drop off our luggage and head to Central London to look around. We get on another bus, take it to the “tube” and head downtown. It’s England and London at that, so it is lightly raining. we get off the tube at Westminster so that we can take a look at Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Parliement, etc. We also wanted to ride “The Eye”, a huge ferris wheel. By the time we get off the Eye, it’s pouring! We are now looking for a pub to grab a bite to eat, but they are standing room only, no one wants to be out in the rain.
We change our minds, head back to the hotel for some dinner and to relax. In the meantime, we are now having discussions with 2 credit cards that are not working even though we called them to make sure they knew we were traveling. It took two long phone calls at 1.29 a minute to get them all cleared up, so keep your fingers crossed that they will continue to work.
Now we need to take showers, etc because we have to be at the airport at OH DARK 4:30 AM for out 6:35 AM flight to Barcelona. If we can stay awake, and we get into Barcelona at 9:30 AM, we will almost have 1 full additional day to enjoy the sites, food & wine of Barcelona.
Haven’t figured out how to get pictures up yet, so will head over to Facebook and post a few soggy pictures of London.
We got all set up in our new home in Issaquah, where we are going to be as long as we are in the Seattle area. It’s nice that we have family & friends in the area (including some right here in the RV park!), so we get to have lots of fun! Here is a sample of a couple of things once we got settled in.
We went to watch Mark play in his pool league (he plays for a team from the Rolling Log Tavern in Issaquah) in North Bend:
North Bend Tavern
crazy weather in North Bend
Mark playing in a pool league
We went to the local Wild Bird shop in Burien and bought LOTS of stuff to keep the local birds happy. I love sitting in my seat where I do my computer stuff and watch the birds flock to the bird feeders.
Yellow Finch
another view
We hung some fun flowers from the top of the bird feeder in hopes to draw hummingbirds. We finally did, but it took awhile. To begin with, mostly we had Yellow Finches, lesser Finches, Oregon Juncko’s, Black Cap Chickadee’s, Stellar Jay’s and a Downy Woodpecker. I will be sharing pictures in the next few posts because I took a LOT of pictures while sitting in my seat (out the window).
We are here for awhile, so not so much traveling, but just enjoying family & friends!
Where has the time gone?!?! It’s the end of October and I haven’t even finished posting about July and the rest of the trip to Seattle. Well, here is one more post of pictures as we traveled across Montana with a stop in Missoula and then Billings. After Billings, we stopped in Idaho to say hello to family & friends. We leave Idaho on the 14th of July, getting to our RV spot for the winter in Issaquah late in the afternoon, I have to head to work the next day for the first time in 5 YEARS!
I don’t remember doing much in Missoula, MT other than relaxing and getting a good nights sleep. I was looking forward to getting to Billings so that we could try out another great brewery, Montana Brewing Company. I had asked my niece about where to go, she stayed in Missoula for awhile, but she and her husband also knew a brewer that had moved from Bend, OR to Billings, so we had to try it out.
Come on in, the beer is cold
dinner & the required beer tasting tray
I asked to see if Evan was there that day, he was the brewer that my niece knew. He was, he came out and we chatted for quite awhile. He makes some great beer, I would recommend giving it a try!
As we traveled from the Black Hills to Missoula, we crossed some beautiful country. Here are a few shots that I took from the RV as we were driving down the road.
crazy clouds
part of the Rockies
We had a really short trip from Billings to Hayden, ID, which gave us some time to catch up with family & friends. We spent the night in our favorite camp spot, the Bolam’s driveway. They are so generous with letting us stay awhile, use their electric, water & bath facilities. They also let us invite our daughter and grand-kids down to visit. Can’t ask for better friends.
me, Julie & Daisie
Lisa & Daisie
the twins giving us a concert
Kathy & Daisie
Jim & Bob
Jim, Kim, Bob, Kathy & Daisie
It was a short visit but a wonderful stop. Had lots on my mind, thinking about going back to work so this was a great way to relax and take a break! Thanks again everyone for everything!
2 nights, 1 1/2 days in the Black Hills of South Dakota just doesn’t do it justice, but that is all we could squeeze in and still make our schedule. Poor Jim, not only are we driving 6 hours a day in the RV, I then ask him to put that much time in the car to see the sights.
We checked out all of the following sites:
but we definitely didn’t spend enough time at any of them. We will be back!
We visited Mt. Rushmore in the afternoon and then the next morning. It’s amazing how the light can change things. We missed the light show at night, it would have been great to see, but the next day was a full drive day to Billings, MT. Everyone should take the time to visit Mt. Rushmore, it’s amazing.
We left Michigan with a set schedule of where and when we would make all of the stops along the way before we got to Issaquah on July 14th.
We would spend 1 night in Oshkosh, WI; spend 1 night in Jackson, MN and then 2 nights just outside of Keystone, SD so that we can check out Mt. Rushmore and the sights in that area.
Not much to see on the first night in WI, but we had a beautiful sunset the night we spent in MN.
Minnesota sunset
another view
one more view
If you haven’t noticed, we were parked right next to a corn field. We saw a LOT of corn along the route, but we were very happy to lay our tired heads close by for the night.
Not far from Pictured Rocks Nat’l Park is a picturesque state park. We didn’t have time to do them in the same day, so another long drive day to enjoy the scenic wonders of this great nation.
Tahquamenon Falls State Park is beautiful, lots of people on the day we decided to enjoy it. We stopped for breakfast in the little town of Paradise. The food was fine, but the service had a lot to be desired and it seemed to be only us. Oh well, we had breakfast for lunch and then took off to visit the park.
The water is something else. The tannins from the trees in the park make the water look anywhere from gold to burnt umber as it goes over the falls. The colors were amazing, looking like old amber resin. There are fishes in there though and even though it kinda looks like it, the water is not polluted. We walked a few trails, but drove from the lower falls to the upper falls. If we had planned ahead, we would have walked the 4 miles, but oh well, we still got to enjoy most of it. To enjoy a few of the falls, you really needed to rent a rowboat and see them upclose and personal. We chose not to do that, just to walk all the trails around either falls.
A great finish to the day was to enjoy a little beer at the local brewery right in the park!
Tahquamenon Falls Brewery & Pub
Tahquamenon Falls beer
another great day in paradise!
