Liz and Mike loose in an RV: Liz : Iceland then Connecticut, Winnipeg, Journey up the West Coast

On June 14, 2015 we flew from Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport to Reykjavik, Iceland arriving at 1 am. When we booked our hostel 3 months in advance they'd given us a voucher to go to and from the airport on a large bus. Iceland was more spread out than we'd imagined. It did not seem like a little island since it is several 100 miles long and wide. Icelandic Air fares were $325 to Iceland and then $270 to NY and Mike's was $425 to Detroit, so low as to make it worthwhile to satisfy our bucket list. Also we adore how Icelanders stood up to their banks and arrested and convicted and jailed their banksters. Icelanders have so much spunk that we are proud to support their nation. After seeing the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty with a flattering clip about Iceland other Americans go there too. We spent a day in Iceland. It broke up our jet lag. 2 nights in a hostel and an all day Grayline tour cost a lot but the airfare offset balanced the cost of visit. Iceland offers better places to tour than the Golden Circle but they require more time.

Grayline's Golden Circle Tour is mediocre at best.

Airport Shuttle and all day tour

Gullfoss is Iceland's mini Niagara Falls

Strokkur is a geyser

Strokkur is to the Golden Circle in Iceland as Old Faithful is to Yellowstone, Wyoming.

Strokkur is the closest geyser to Europe.

Icelandic Church on Golden Circle Tour

Note the warm roof of thatch and grass

Viking Helmet:?

Viking Weapons

Thermal Power plant. Complimentary heat for Iceland.

Reykjavik postcard. Good weather in summer is rare.

Grayline's tour guide was pathetic. Mike accepted her excuse that she was new but believe me, the New Yorkers in our tour returned to write scathing reviews of how poor her script was, how bad her English was and especially about how she overplayed the few jokes she knew.

In the fine tradition of the Occupy Movement Iceland manages their banks. Unlike in the US where the banks own our political process the banks serve Icelanders. I type this just before I go out to meet Arizonans and learn how to make calls for Bernie Sanders for President.

From Iceland Mike flew to Boston and then Detroit. I flew to LaGuardia. I took the train to New Haven where married friends David O'Connor and Martha Rollefson met me. Martha and I met as single working women in 1994 at The Church of Today, now Renaissance Unity, a Unitarian Church in Warren, Michigan. Martha and I have remained friends ever since. She left Warren to work in Connecticut, then moved to Seattle with husband David and then returned to work and living in Naugatuck, Connecticut. She invited me to the Newport Rhode Island Garden Show. We met my sister Billie and her husband in Brookfield, Ct. Mostly we mulched Martha's flowerbeds.
Mike got a physical from his GP in Lansing. His blood test results came back even better than I'd dared to hope. Mike said that Dr. Varughese told him to thank me for sending him the documentary, Forks over Knives. Mike said that Dr. had apparently lost weight. Our 9 week trip did not cause harm so no guilt, only relief and gratitude. If we were to die tomorrow I would die with the satisfaction of a life well traveled.

1994 with Martha Rollefson at Fishbones Restaurant in Greektown

Gilded Age

2015 Garden Show held by Rosecliff in Newport

From LaGuardia I met Mike in Minneapolis. We flew to Winnipeg and were met by Gold Canyon unmarried friends together for over 30 years, Chuck Archambeau and Leigh Morton. They have influenced my life choices enormously. It was a privilege to visit them while we are all happy and healthy and never younger than on June 25, 2015.

Chuck and Leigh invited us to visit with the expectation that we would sleep in our 5th wheel. We expected to drive to Winnipeg in 2014, the previous year on our way to Alaska. Prostate cancer treatment got in the way so I made a point of stopping in Winnipeg via air. But that meant that they had us sleep in their home. They can count on one hand how many guests they've had sleep over. They were very gracious hosts. Leigh fed us very well.

Blessed are the peacemakers. A good reason to visit Canada is to support a nation of peacekeepers. The Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg is a recognition of conflicts, injustice and encouragement to work for a better world.

In Winnipeg Airport

Pioneer Museum with "Sister" Leigh

Remains of St Boniface Cathedral burned July 22, 1968

Chuck shared the drama of a horrific fire in his childhood church with us.

Mike and Chuck play pool in Gold Canyon.

St. Boniface

View from Winnipeg's newly Human Rights Museum

Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg

Inside the Human Rights Museum

Great architecture in Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg.

Stadium in Winnipeg

We went to the Winnipeg Zoo too.

Polar Bears are the star of the Winnipeg Zoo.

Growing respect for native culture. Great carvings.

We returned to LAX on June 27. We returned in a state of enormous uncertainty and trepidation.
On May 7 our RV had been broken into and 2007 Chevy Silverado had been stolen from a secured storage yard in San Bernardino. The truck was recovered and impounded by the Southern California Auto Theft Task Force. Daughter Libby and sister-in-law Pat Thelen made calls from Michigan to California and assisted us as much as possible while we were in Europe but now the moment of truth was upon us.

LAX

We rented a Chevy Cruz from Enterprise at LAX and drove to an Airbnb in Loma Linda for $35 per night for 8 nights. Mike waited a day for an insurance adjuster. On Tuesday we took it to Tom Bell Chevrolet. Work was complete on July 15. We had a timeshare for 10 days in Big Bear, a ski resort area a few hours north of San Bernardino. Our 2007 Chevy Silverado had no tail gate. Rear bumper was buckled beyond repair. One bedside had to be replaced. Taillights were smashed. Nonetheless the timing worked well. An undercover detective met with us twice in Loma Linda. He told us that someone pled guilty and was in county jail. California counties can't afford to keep nonviolent offenders in jail for very long so our tweaker will not be off the street for long. We will keep an eye out for more identity theft.

View in Big Bear

Classic Cabin in Big Bear

New computer inside Snow White, a timeshare in cool Big Bear.

Every single possession in the truck was stolen including toolbox, hitch, jack, owner's manual, spare eyeglasses, atlas, GPS, manicure kit, insulated grocery bag. Tools Mike had owned all his life were stolen. Gone from inside our trailer were our Trek bicycles, 2 laptops, TV, my jewelry including 2 really good gold rings, a bathroom scale, tax returns, diplomas and the generator. Luckily thieves didn't take Mike's cue stick but it was sitting out and obvious that they'd considered it.

I feel compelled to finish this Blog now because 14 people were killed and 21 wounded in San Bernardino yesterday, Dec. 2 in a terrible shooting. Loads of wounded were treated in the ER in Loma Linda according to news reports. We watched Rachel Maddow's map showing San Bernardino, Loma Linda and Redlands as the key towns affected. The married shooters lived in Redlands.

On the 4th of July we went to a car show and watched fireworks in Redlands. Wayne Head, our storage yard owner and now friend lives in Redlands. To Mike's enormous relief Wayne spliced trailer wires that the tweaker thieves cut. GMAC Insurance is now National General. They covered the truck repairs to Mike's satisfaction. They sent us their maximum $3000 for comprehensive theft insurance (after they fired our first agent for apparent incompetence/unresponsiveness).

When we arrived in Loma Linda Airbnb nephrology (kidney) researcher Henri Qazi PhD greeted us graciously. He shares a house conveniently located near a 7th Day Adventist hospital. 7th Day Adventists Loma Linda is a Blue Zone meaning residents are exceptionally long lived. I enjoyed internet conversation about 7th Day Adventists diet in context of Bible verses.

Roommate and ER Doctor Damian is a single dad of Isabella, age 6 and friends with a beautiful female physician colleague. Damian is from an Argentinian family in Los Angeles. Henri's father is physician from Pakistan and his mother is a Hindu from India. Henri said the men in family would make her cook meat for them. How they did that, I wonder. Henri spent his boyhood tending goats on an oasis in Libya. Henri's legal name was Honey. When his family moved to New York his middle school's security officer had to speak to Henri's mother about how they could not adequately protect an adolescent male named Honey. Now Henri develops software to monitor kidney disease. He also follows the stock market. His spreading middle, junk food in refrigerator and poor sleep hygiene display lack of insight. A previous roommate left lots of books including a 2005 physician's guide to nutrition which Henri gave me.

I enjoyed having the run of a kitchen, laundry room and yard. I'd open the doors in morning and let in the cool night air. Summer in southern California is scorching and 2015 was compounded by a drought and water restrictions. We took walks in the mornings enjoying houses and their citrus trees, pomegranate trees and tropical flowering bushes. We watched green lawns with sprinkles and brown lawns without and wondered at the cost.

We watched fireworks with locals in Redlands and they told us to visit the kitschy McDonalds' Museum in San Bernardino so that's where we went the day after July 4th.

First McDonalds is a museum in San Bernardino

Tofurky

McDonald's Museum tribute to Dorothy Ingram, African American teacher and finally superintendent for San Bernardino.

We collected our nerves and began to repurchase only essentials that were stolen. Since Oregon has no sales tax we held off to make purchases later. Mike replaced tools with purchases from Harbor Freight and a mostly Mexican swap meet. He replaced sewer fittings, fixtures, lubes and hoses that were in toolbox. We joined Costco to buy the laptop I am typing on. We heard many stories about suburban robberies and wondered where our stuff was being sold/fenced. In the RV Mike replaced a cut blind and damaged cabinet hinges. After descent from Big Bear we spent a night in an RV service yard in upscale Rancho Cucamonga. The RV service yard made repairs on high end coaches broken into in a nearby storage yard. Break-ins seemed ubiquitous not just limited to economically depressed San Bernardino. With freshly greased trailer bearings we headed up north resuming our RV lifestyle by July 17.

See Mike's relief picking up repaired truck. I am relieved too!

Lassen is Best National Park in the West.

Destination : Alaska via roads through National Parks on the east/volcano side of West Coast.

Lassen National Volcanic Park

We became friends with Paul and Jan Burnett in Lassen National Volcano Park.

Naturalists capture, count and release small song birds in Lassen.
How do we know how many birds we have lost unless we count them?

From southern California we drove up through the blazing hot Central Valley. Mike drove until after 6 pm since it was too hot to stop sooner. We drycamped in a truck stop south of Redding. Lassen is 3 hours from 100+ degree Redding. So let's go there! If only Lassen had had a gas station.
Lassen has a micro climate and was downright chilly. We got their last campsite for a night and then found a different one for the next day. In contrast to Yosemite with its 4 million visitors per year only 400,000 visit Lassen. We agree with Sunset Magazine, that Lassen is the West's most beautiful and least visited park. Yellowstone is much bigger but within its 166 miles Lassen has geysers and fumaroles like Yellowstone.

Lassen has features found in Yellowstone.

While attending a ranger guided talk and hike focused on song birds we met Paul and Jan Burnett. They live in suburban Portland and stopped in Lassen after visiting Jan's widowed father in Sacramento. Jan's to-do list for Portland and her friendship helped me plan time in Portland while Mike went to his family reunion in Lansing and again when he returned an on our return from Alaska.

After Lassen we knew we had see the other parks north of Lassen. Mike drove two lane roads up to Bend, Oregon and along the way we saw Lava Beds National Monument and Newberry National Volcanic Monument. Mt St. Helens was already on our horizon but Lassen, Lava Bed and Newberry were delightful surprises.

See tiny Mike in this huge cave?

Dressed warm for a cold cave in July

On our way to many famous mountains.

Sustainable and renewable energy

Trees scared by lava.

We are in Lassen Volcano Park on the Pacific Ring of Fire.

We camped for two weeks in Viento State Park along the Columbia River Gorge, east of Portland, Or. and just west of charming Hood River, Or. On July 27 Mike flew from Portland to his family reunion and spent 5 solid days in Lansing while I entertained myself with Portland's mass transit, shopping at new Carhartt store, touring museums and eating in vegan restaurants in stylish and progressive Portland. When temperature hit 105 degrees I swam in the Columbia River. I met Jan and Paul and we went to the ocean for a day. Finally rains came, dissipated the heat and weather turned perfect. On my birthday we took a river cruise with Jan and Paul. We went to Thai restaurant and Powell's Bookstore where Mike bought me Wild by Cheryl Strayed for my birthday. Wild was a fitting gift as we had paralleled her trek up the Pacific Crest Trail and crossed the Bridge of the Gods.

Japanese Garden in Portland, Or.

Japanese Maple trees in Portland.

Veggie Grill is a chain with a restaurant in Portland

Portland Museum of Art has Fun Art

My sister gave me this Ansel Adams print. Original is small.

Portland is a great city because the leading employer is Intel, followed by Boeing (just like Detroit used to be great because of the Big 3). Also Oregon has no sales tax so we shopped there rather than pay 7.5% in California for toolbox and other stolen items. I think that it is unfair to have uneven sales taxes and that we need to have a conversation about fairness.

Paul, Jan and Haystack Rock at the chilly beach in Oregon on the Pacific Ocean.

Riverboat view of Portland, Or Aug. 5, 2015

Intel works hard to attract great minds. Culture matters to those they seek to employ. Its museums afford rich collections. Moslem couples were eating at the Veggie Grill. City is so progressive that Bernie Sanders rally overflowed.

We attended Bernie Sanders' Rally with 19k in Portland. 8000 outside.

Portland's water fountains were endowed by the estate of a resident.

Note from the Portland, Or. Water Dept:

"Benson Bubbler Legacy In 1912, Simon Benson, a local businessman and philanthropist, donated $10,000 to the City of Portland to purchase and install 20 bronze drinking fountains, now known as Benson Bubblers.
Local folklore tells us that Simon Benson donated the 20 bronze drinking fountains as an effort to keep loggers out of the saloons at lunchtime. Others say that Benson was inspired after seeing a little girl crying at a 4th of July parade because she couldn't find a drink of water. Either way, the Benson Bubblers have become a historical and enduring legacy here in Portland. "

Between Portland and Hood River dramatic Multnomah Falls plummets 620 feet and is the second highest waterfall in the US. We also toured the US Army Corp of Engineers' impressive Bonneville Dam and saw salmon runs and hydro-electric power generation. The tour is free just present the same card as in a national park.

US Army Corp Engineers Bonneville Dam

The Corps of Engineers provides for counting of adult salmon, lamprey, shad, sturgeon, and bull trout.

Multnomah Falls plummets 620 feet.

Himalayan Blackberries are an invasive non-native species that grow in abundance in Viento State Park.

Windsurfers at the Columba River Beach in Viento State Park, Oregon

We hiked to the top of Multnomah Falls

Not only do Himalayan blackberries grow in abundance but we ate them in abundance. We try to take a walk after dinner but we'd wind up stopping to pick and eat blackberries instead.

Hood River is an affluent town that draws windsurfers from the world over. Our Swiss neighbors shipped their windsurfing boards in their trailer to Los Angeles. "Brilliant" is how they described the windsurfing on the Columbia. We enjoyed the Antique Automobile Museum for an entire Saturday when they had an antique snowmobile competition.

Riding in the rumble seat

Snowmobile from the past.

We owe a debt of gratitude for the dramatic drive along the Columbia River Gorge to Sam Hill, a gifted railroad bond salesman and road builder who recognized that outstanding scenery is like money in the bank. He took his road architect on a Rhine River cruise with ambition to build likewise along the Columbia. We stumbled upon Stonehenge on our last day. A lady said told me to go to Maryhill. I asked her if it was any good. Lots of places overcharge to see common place artifacts or just sell kitschy junk. But she said that Maryhill was worthy. We share details as proudly as if Maryhill were in Europe or Alaska.

We stumbled upon Sam Hill's Stonehenge.

Sam Hill built his own Stonehenge.

A lady in this group persuade us to visit Maryhill.

Maryhill is Sam Hill's forlorn gilded age home, now a museum on the Washington side of the Columbia River.

Sam Hill collected Rodins.

A whole room full of Rodin's sculptures!

Mike was thrilled to find a room filled with Rodins.

Great native culture captured in early photographs.

Sam Hill knew great culture when he saw it.

Waterproof jacket made of Seal Intestines

We headed up to Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument where it was cold and even dreary.
Then Mount Rainier, Camano Island and Bellingham. Fires closed the road to Cascades National Park so we stayed on the waterfront. Then we stored the RV in Bellingham and flew Seattle to Fairbanks.

Typical hiking picture, anywhere in Washington

Big trees in Washington

Mt. Rainier

Mt Ranier has great hiking.

We visited Paul Allen's Flying Heritage Collection in Everett, Wa. Mike was surprised to see a Japanese Zero and a Russian Sturmovic. Sturmovics were the most produced plane of WWII. Mike did not believe that any existed until tour guide explained the lengths taken to recover one for the collection.