Wandering East & West

With the projects finished a day early, we decided to drive to Kellogg, Idaho just to see what we might see. My brother loves to visit car dealers and my sister-in-law is always up for a drive, so they picked us up and chauffeured us to Idaho. I was very surprised to see what looked to be a Spanish style mission along the way so we had to stop for a picture. Turns out, the mission is the oldest building in Idaho, built in 1850.

We'd introduced my brother to geocaching early in our stay. When we stopped at the mission, he said there ought to be a geocache around here so we checked online and then went to find a cache less than a mile away.

Our destination for the day was the famous Dave Smith dealerships in Kellogg. We spent a bunch of time with a measuring tape, and then discovered the RAM 1500 could be lowered 2 inches with a rear spring change which moved it to the top of our list. In spite of having nearly 500 RAM 1500 trucks in stock, they didn't have the combination I wanted. Most are configured for mileage instead of towing ability.

My brother was most impressed with our experience. Helpful without being pushy. I think the thing that really did it for him was the barbecued burgers that they serve every Saturday. The GM side of the street even has the grill built right into the face of the building.

While we were finishing up our free lunch, the phone chirped with e-mail announcements of new geocaches that we would pass on our way home. Turns out, we got the First To Find on both caches. They were challenging hides which made it even better experience for my brother.

Sunday, we pulled up stakes in Spokane and headed towards Ellensburg in the rain. Along the way we stopped at one of the rest stops to take advantage of the free dump station. The sign was nice, but the view was much more Western Washington style - low clouds and drizzle.

We tucked into "our" spot beside the garage at Glory Farm, returning for our third week-long visit. I was excited to see what projects they had on the list for me this year.

Salty

I spent over a week on projects at my niece & nephew's 1920's house on South Hill, and didn't get pictures of most of them. In addition to sanding and two coats of yellow paint on these garage sale finds, I did some work on the floor and the roof, and built a baby gate at the top of the stairs that can be removed later with just two screw holes to repair.

Feeling bad about not have pictures of those projects, I took lots of pictures of the shelf project for my sister-in-law and their new house. These shelves used the same concept as the shelf I built for our communications equipment in the Scamp. Even with this project I didn't start pictures until the shelves were assembled.

Each of the shelves is an empty box with one side missing. The tops and bottoms are made from 1/4 inch Baltic Birch, and the edges are made from Hemlock to match the woodwork in the house.

As is usually the case, the wood takes the stain differently. Three of the shelves got second coat of stain so that they would be closer in color to the two darkest ones that only got one coat.

While I was waiting for the stain to dry, I started putting up the pieces of oak that would provide the anchor points for the shelves.

The shelves got two coats of satin polyurethane finish, and a chance to air out a bit in the garage before we started to mount them.

The moment of truth - the shelves fit the mounts, and the color matched the window frame.

We even got them all lined up with the ends plumb.

All the shelves went up quickly, and

my brother was just as quick to grab a brown marker to apply some camouflage to the screw heads before the inspector arrived.

We figured with the eight shelves, there will be room for about 50% of the salt & pepper shaker collection! I'm sure glad I don't have to dust them!

One more project off the list.

And a last minute picture, all decked out.

South Hill

This was the first time that we spent any amount of time in Spokane. We didn't do any tourist sorts of things, instead I concentrated on some house projects for family. Our moochdocking spot on South Hill was great. We even had sun on the solar a couple hours a day, although we didn't need it since we were plugged in. We quickly fell in love with the neighborhood - mature landscape and lots of Craftsman style houses.

Brick was surprisingly prevalent as well,

and occasionally the local basalt rock was featured. Homes usually had a one car garage that might not fit a modern car.

There were a couple very nice parks within walking distance, apparently both designed by the same gentleman who designed New York's Central Park.

The ducks were so habituated that they weren't even bothered by Turk checking them out. The hen had to do a bit of preening but didn't make an impression.

As much as we loved the houses and the neighborhood, it was quite obvious that places like this wouldn't match with our traveling style. The grass was fast growing, and the weeds were faster, requiring constant attention to keep the landscaping looking sharp.

The streets in the neighborhood were brick. Some had an asphalt overlay, but it was still obvious they were brick. Others were still the original exposed brick surface.

We loved the mature trees and the shade they provided, We also loved our small rig - I wouldn't want to try to navigate the clearances with a bigger rig - both vertical and lateral. Some of the streets were narrower, leaving one narrow lane to negotiate when everyone was home from work and cars were parked on both sides of the street.

We loved walking around the neighborhood, but quickly discovered that we had to be cautious. We couldn't just gawk at the architecture, we had to watch our feet as well. Just about every block had multiple heaved sidewalks, complements of the tree roots.

In some ways, two weeks wasn't long enough. I'm pretty sure we'll be back.