Scenes from our soggy week, with unmitigated gratitude for in-laws who share wine.
Our campsite overlooks Padilla Bay, with a view of several of the San Juan islands. Every 25 hours, the tide goes out, and the bay turns into something like 8,000 acres of mud flats. Mud. Flats. I literally can’t even. Also, nobody would buy shoes called mud flats.Regardless, I stepped into my big girl boots (Not my cowgirl boots. OMG, no. Not for this. For this I’ve got an old pair of snow boots.), and took a walk down to the shore when the tide was in. This is a typical Washington beach in winter. Want to know what it looks like in summer? Keep staring.I kept staring. And as if to slap me with a big old neener-neener lesson on life, Mama Nature rewarded me with this bit o’ magic. Sorry, Puget Sound. I get it now. Again. But probably only temporarily, I’m thinking.Later that day, look what else I found!But the sunshine shut down 15 minutes later, and once again I was back to, “Seriously, why did I even bring these?”Meanwhile, back at the park: a common sign to which I have no objections. If I had to clean a public restroom, I wouldn’t allow pets in there either. But…… lookit what’s conveniently located outside! Now that’s dog-friendly. I wish more public places would offer hitching posts for pets. Thanks, Bay View!We have no Christmas tree inside. Plenty outside, though! And thanks to Tim’s mom, we’ve got a string of lights there across the front of the house. All is calm. All is… OK, mostly it’s gray, but the twinkles help. A little.
Due to highly compelling reasons*, we’ve broken the first rule of RV travel: park where it’s warm in the winter.
So for the next three weeks, we’re dealing with forecasts like this:
That’s… yeah. That’s gonna be a problem. Also? Happy hour in the dark.
Tim’s dad to the rescue!
Normally when I refer to Rohrer & Son RV Repair, it’s Tim and one of our sons. Today, we go up a generation instead, to Doug Rohrer & Son! He and Tim bought, cut, and installed insulation between our plywood bed platform and our mattress, to help make it less drafty under there. Because Pacific Northwest cold is not a dry cold. It is soggy, and it seeps in through every crack, going straight to your bones, and making them shrivel in protest. We were stationed here for two winters, 2002-2004, and I swear they were the longest six years of my life. But I digress…
“Measure twice, cut once.” It’s a father-son thing, repeated through the generations.
See? It fits.Taping in preparation for second panelNot snow. Styrofoam insulation turds.I was not rolling in the “snow.” Nope. Never happened.But not only did our helper clean up the mess…… he gave us an early Christmas present to help keep us even warmer.
Happy and warm holidays to us!
* It’s the first Christmas season since losing our niece, Maddie, and we haven’t seen our older son since March, so western Washington felt like the right place to be for the holidays.
