Oh my, the things we take for granted until they’re gone. Maybe it’s not taking it for granted, maybe it’s just in life we become comfortable in our routines, instinctually anticipating results from the flip of a switch, so when it’s gone, it really stinks. Today I am talking about electricity, actually the lack there of! This past Tuesday the 17th, the electrical world of Spokane and the surrounding areas stopped running. We had wind gusts up to 70 mph, power lines were down and trees blocked roadways. Thousands of people lost power and days later, there are still those without electricity, and tragically others lost their lives during the storm. We just got a taste of what others in the Central States deal with, much more often than we do.
Our only source of heat is electricity, just like so many in this area but thankfully we have Harvey the RV! We went camping in our own back yard and were able to stay warm until the power came back on Thursday afternoon. Fortunately we’re able to share the warmth with friends who are going to be staying in Harvey until they get power back as well.
The last couple days I’ve been working in the dark at the post office, but with the awesomeness of a headlamp it hasn’t been a problem! I guess we could add that to the postal slogan, anyway we can, we’ll make do, to get the mail to you!
Best selfie ever ! We’re alway using headlamps when we’re working on the house, but wow they’ve really come in handy during this time of need.
Driving down the street the morning after the storm I experienced a sense of awe and relief when I saw this tree had fallen,
and it didn’t even leave a scratch on the house!
What a blessing that there was no damage and no one got hurt!
They say the storm was of historic proportion, and Avista, the utilities company hasn’t ever had a crisis of this magnitude in its 126 years of operating.
The best part of life is never knowing what’s going to happen next, well ok, it could also be said that’s one of the worst parts. I’d like to think it’s the former, even when times get tough.
It’s a dirty job, but if someone doesn’t do it, it’ll never get clean!
That being said, Mitch’s been burning the candle at both ends, working his fingers to the bone, while taking the house down to the bones so we can build it back up the right way.
custom built closets in the bedroom, needing TLC
We’ve all heard stories of people remodeling a house and finding a lost treasure, but we never thought it would happen to us. But it did! As I was attempting to clean out all the cobwebs from the custom made closet drawers, I leaned my head into the empty space where the drawers usually sit and I see rolls of coins!
Right where I found them
Hey, so maybe it’s only $2.50 but that’s more than what we started with at the beginning of the day.
The guys couldn’t be more excited when I run out to share the treasure I’d just found.
Going all out is what we’re about when it comes to fixing up a house, and this one hasn’t been any different. We began working on the house thinking it would be a new paint job, flooring and maybe a new roof. Since we’ve begun it’s been everything, including the kitchen sink! The plumbing, electrical, walls, floors, roof and even the sewer drain was completely busted up and needed replaced. We decided to reroute the drain, making it a shorter (more affordable) and a direct route to the newer drain put in during the 90’s.
The future path of the sewer drain.Digging this hole to access where the old and new pipes met was my job. I was darn proud of myself when I got done, especially since I wanted to give up a few times, but just kept on keeping on.Pops came to visit and with one scoop of the shovel he achieved what took me hours to accomplish. 🙂
What else can we expect from a house pieced together over the years on a poor mans budget, I’ll tell ya, we should’ve expected shoddy workmanship with parts of the house build on sand resulting in, da.. da.. da… rotting wood that had to be replaced! Such a big no, no!!
After taking barrels of dirt and sand out from under the laundry room and bathroom we could finally make room to get to the plumbing!
Thankfully we’ve build up enough credit that we are able to fix it right, and now to pay all our new bills I was blessed enough to get a part time job as a sales clerk for the Four Lakes Post Office. Having been a rural carrier with the Medical Lake Post Office, I knew it was a super physically demanding job out in the elements and I didn’t want that again even though I loved it. I was ready to do something different so now I’m working in the office.
Me and my love before a hard days work
The only thing we have to show you that is complete is us…. completely pooped, completely overwhelmed and completely full of hope! So as Big Smo’s Mama says, “Keep the faith, and keep on fightin”
When life’s given us opportunities we’ve taken them, including the risks and work involved! The good Lord made our latest adventure a no brainer, we bought another house to make into a rental. It’s just across the street from us and had been the home of our friend and neighbor, Mac who passed away last year. For us to get the house is nothing but fate and we are honored to be the ones to bring this little 1930’s home back to life.
I remember watching Mac across the street painting away, making his dark green house even a darker green and me saying to Mitch, “He must really like green.”We decided to buy a sample of our chosen color and try it before buying gallons and not liking it. It’s on the left side of the door.
Our first order of business after purchasing the house was to change that color. Thankfully Mitch and I seem to usually agree on colors and we already planned on painting it yellow, now it’s just a matter of which yellow.
First to prepare the siding and the trim, good thing we have a pressure washerThe side of the porch after pressure washing and scraping paint. I started with white on the inside of the porch and it was taking forever
Mitch had mentioned getting a paint sprayer and I said, “I don’t think we’ll need one, it’s not that big of a house, it won’t take us too long.”
After doing the trim I was already over the whole painting it by hand idea.
I called Mitch and said, “Tell me again why you don’t want to rent a paint sprayer?” he laughed at my way of telling him he was right, and said, “right!” Mitch rented one that night from Home Depot.
Side note:
If you rent one yourself and are using a 5 gallon bucket please do yourself a favor and rent the “heavy duty” sprayer and not the “medium duty” one. The Heavy duty sprayer will stand on it’s own and fit into a 5 gallon bucket. It just makes life so much easier.
Just having white trim made it seem a bit brighterPlus I had papa’s helpWhile Feisty supervisedFeisty was Mac’s cat and she’s been keeping the house occupied since his passing but has a future home down the street with our friend Terri.The color of yellow is Meringue – Behr Ultra Semi Gloss from Home Depot. Mitch came home early from work and got the whole house done in 3 hours. Yes my people, he’s that awesome!I was able to have everything taped off and ready for him to start spraying, The anticipation of having it a new color was so exciting for both of us.The reward of seeing it complete was topped off with the praises of the neighborhood folks walking by saying they love new color!
Next order of business was to get a new roof! The previous roof was not only old, it had been put on wrong! Thankfully we already knew who to call, Mark from Premier Roofing.
Mark telling us what kind of trouble we’re looking at
He’d done our big house a few years back and impressed us with his hard work ethic, knowledge and skills of roofing.
A couple of the crew getting ready for the day. Yes, that’s a girl standing by the truck and she rocked at roofing!The plywood wasn’t even screwed down right! Its no wonder it had so many warps in it.There was so much more than just a roof to put on and Mark made sure all the repairs were completed right.Even Feisty give it a paws up after inspecting the work
There is still so much to tackle outside and we are trying to get it all done before it gets too cold, but we are also doing projects inside, and underneath.
The cobwebs after a year of being unused, are everywhere
Feisty hasn’t been the only one staying in the house, there’s also a family of skunks. Not to mention a strong musty damp dirt smell though out the house. Wow do we have our work cut out for us.
First one cobweb at a timeWe begin by pulling out the carpet, see all that dirt… it’s always under any carpet we’ve ever pulled up. It’s one of the reasons we will only put in laminate and allure flooring in our houses from now on.When it’s that dusty it’s best to wear a mask, otherwise you’ll be smelling that stinch for daysOnce the carpet was gone we found a sagging corner, to inspect deeper what do you do but cut out the floor since there is no crawl spaceIf its bad in this corner, what else is going on under the houseLets tear it out and seeThen we decided to dig a little deeperCome to find out, we weren’t the only ones digging a little deeper. Those darn skunksWe found out why the floor wasn’t level, They only did a cross beam on part of the floor. That dusty damp dirt smell was because there was no ventilation under the house and no vapor barrier over the dirt. It’s got to be one or the other in this climate.
To make things right we’re going to start from the ground up, beginning with digging out a lot of this dirt to make an actual crawl space. There was more than Feisty and skunks in this house, there’s huge spiders!
This guy was hanging out in the kitchen giving me a preview of what lurks below
One day while Mitch was at work I decide to take on the underbelly of ol’ yeller and clear it out. The plan was to crawl from the living room under the kitchen and beyond pushing dirt out and sucking up spiderwebs with the shop vac. I wasn’t going to dare venture below without the proper spider, skunk poop protective gear.
Excited and geared upReady to take on those creapy crawly’s
As usual, it was much more challenging than anticipated. Everywhere I turned a shiny scary spider was crawling, I’d brought spider spray down with me but it didn’t kill instantly and I would begin to panic and try to squish them. I tried to shovel out dirt from under the house as I lay on my belly, shop vac in one hand, spider spray nearby and a little hand held rake to push the dirt out from under the kitchen.This task just got to be overwhelming and my steam ran out, then I realized my white overalls had a huge tear in the inner thigh area and spiders could be crawling on me! In frustration and determination I crawl back out from under the house, found Mitch’s overalls, shook off the fear like a dog that just got out of a lake and back under I went with a vengeance. Come on spiders, skunk poo, feisty poo, whatever’s under here, it’s showtime. I dig, I scoop, I push the dirt, then I look to the left of me…eeeeks a spider,
These are the spiders that were under the house
I look to the right of me….eeeks another spider. Ugh. seriously! I look straight ahead and staring back at me was a frog. This frog must be a sign from my mom that she’s with me under this house, she loves me and knows what a hard time I am having. Why a frog you ask, well days before my mom passed we’d talked about how hard it will be for me not to see her and how much I would miss her. She said, ” Don’t worry, I’ll be with you, if you see a mountain that you love, I’m there, if it’s a butterfly or even a frog, if you think of me I’ll be there.” The day of her funeral, it rained frogs in Oklahoma, literally frogs! Everything is going to be ok now, I stare this frog, loving the special moment of peace I’m experiencing when I realize that I could actually pick up this frog right now and not freak out because I am completely safe with all my gear on (yes I know frogs don’t bite, but they still scare me a little). I also wanted to move the frog because I realized there was another spider behind it that I wanted to spray. I put one hand under the frog and lift it up onto the palm of my hand. So special is this moment that I can hold this frog and think of my mom….EEEEEKS. Right towards my face this little fella jumps. I pull my head up as fast as I can, in turn bumping my head of the floor joists. Really life??? ever so comical it is, I’m frazzled beyond return and get myself out from under as quickly as I can, throwing in the towel for the day.
The look of temporary defeat
After such an experience Mitch put bug bomb on both ends of the house and he promised to help me finish up the job.
The corpses of those awful scary spiders after the bug bomb!
When the weekend came Mitch and I, along with the help of a friend got 7 wheel barrels full of dirt, tons of dead spiders sucked up in the shop vac, a few shovels full of feces, brick, concrete chunks and kitty poo to, out from under that house. I would like to think the worst is now over. (Yet amongst our digging we found that the main water line running to the house as well as the sewer line exiting the house have both rusted away) Amazing the things you find when you do a little digging. More about those adventures later.
We have a long way to go and a short time to get there. I will be posting more as we finish our house projects, lets just hope the weather cooperates with us!
Vacation time, wahoo! Let’s go to Yellowstone National Park! Mitch got 3 days off from work last week and we were excited to take Harvy the RV on our first real camping adventure. I tried to think of everything, even contacting Dad’s VA doctor to get him set him up with a wheelchair so he wouldn’t miss any of the views. I hauled load after load into the RV until I got everything I thought we would need, and more. Prior to heading out, our dear friend Terri surprised us with a little bouquet of flowers and well wishes. A wonderful start to a memorable adventure!
It says, “Harvy RV and crew, have a fun ride!”
We started our 8 hour drive Tuesday evening the 25th of August around 6 pm after Mitch got home from work.
First potty stop for the dogs, State Line, Idaho near Walmart.
The silver lining of smokey skies, amazing sunsets
The plan was the drive the majority of the way Tuesday evening and arrive at the park around 8 a.m. Wednesday morning to get a campsite. There are 7 first come, first served campgrounds at Yellowstone and it’s posted that they can fill up by 9 a.m. during the busy season.
We’re goinroadtrippin!
We all settled into our spots to begin the long drive, and made plans to stay over at a Walmart , or a truck-stop close to our destination.
Milo staked his claim on Mitch’s lapCharlie had a harder time finding a place to lay at the start of our journey.Once we laid his blanket on the bench, he jumped up, laid down and was content.Even the flowers found a comfortable traveling spot
As it got closer to midnight we were feeling pretty tired, so we stayed at a rest stop about two hours from Yellowstone.
This is the route we took to Yellowstone.
As we went through the last town conveniently called West Yellowstone, Pops says, “Shawna, will you look at my inhaler, I think I’m out.” A sinking feeling instantly hits my stomach, the one thing I didn’t think I needed to check for him. Turns out I should have. I searched for the nearest pharmacy and just as we see the sign that says left to Yellowstone we turn right to find the Silvertip pharmacy.
After learning that we had to have his doctor call in the prescription, it wouldn’t be there until the next day and it would cost $300, I began searching for something we could use off the shelf until we got home. There was nothing on the shelves for people with asthma, emphysema or any other COPD! You’d think there would be something on the shelves since breathing is so important. Ugh! We opted to see if there was a VA nearby with a pharmacy…no luck. We called the VA nurse in Spokane, told her our situation and hoped she would have a better answer. After driving 8 hours in two days we couldn’t turn around at the entrance, so I asked if she thought Dad could make it couple days without his rescue inhaler. She said probably so, just don’t let him exert himself at all and keep him in the RV a lot to stay out of the smokey air. No longer had I hung up the phone when Pops says, “Shawna will you look at my other inhaler, I think its out too.” Yes, not only was his rescue inhaler empty, the Sybicort Inhaler that works throughout the day to relax his muscles and improve breathing was empty as well. I knew Pops had become more forgetful, not remembering to take his pills or forgetting what he had for dinner the night before, but I didn’t realize that the one thing he always remembered, he would forget. What a time to learn that he no longer could be responsible for keeping track of his breathing meds. I felt completely responsible for the situation and just prayed that that the nurse and Pops were right about him being able to make it a couple days without his “breathers”.
By now it’s a little after 9 in the morning, and we are all worse for the wear. As we go through the gate, we see the sign saying that a few of the campsites are still available. The Ranger lady says, “Old faithful is only about 30 minutes away just go south”. We weren’t sure how much time we would have, considering our predicament, so we headed straight for Old Faithful. But wait, there’s something steaming along the way. Lets stop there first!
Letting off some steam at the Fountain Paint PotHot SpringsEven hotter springsWhite mud bubblesThese popping bubbles reminded me of the movie the Labyrinth with David BowieThe one with the wheels got to hold the banana peels, but hold the excitement!The water is so hot that it kills the trees and any other vegetation in it’s path
We loaded back up and were on our way to see the most popular geyser of Yellowstone; Old Faithful. Finding parking was a bit more challenging than we had anticipated, not that the Harvy the RV is too big, its just that the place is FULL of cars and people! We get the wheelchair back out, load Papa up and begin heading in the direction that we think Old Faithful is. Suddenly far above the buildings I see water shooting straight up into the sky, it was happening and we were missing it! Not knowing how often it erupts, I begin running, pushing Pops in his chair towards the action, we were still in the parking lot so we had to hurry! As we approach the sidewalk there is lowered area designed for what you would think would be wheelchairs, so I am still running and not until we’re almost on it do I realize there is still a lip on the sidewalk, WHOA, the front wheels slam into the cement and the momentum begins to pull Pops forward lifting him out of his seat. With all my strength I pull back on the handles, trying to prevent him from flying out of the wheelchair onto the cemented sidewalk. As quick as he was lifted out of the seat, he falls back down into the chair, WHEW! Crisis averted. That was close, my bad, yikes. With the relief of nothing bad happening, I began laughing uncontrollably. It was only funny because it didn’t happen, yet there would have been never ending tears if it had happened. Note, never assume because it looks like it’s a dip or lip for wheelchairs that it will be a smooth transition.
Old faithful erupts on average every hour and half.Another way to tell when it’s about to erupt is when the seats fill up!The longer it erupts, the longer it takes for the next eruptionup, up and up it goesShooting high into the skyGiving all the people the show they came forThe coolest geezer by the geyser sign
Great stuff, we got to see a couple sights already, and Pops is still doing well, so onto getting a campsite for the night.
Our first Elk sighting on our way to find a campground
We didn’t really want to back track, so I suggested we do a loop and make it to Tower Fall campground. I’d read it was a good site, not many people and in a good location.
Beautiful drive
It took sooooo long to get there, probably 4 hours, seriously.
This park is no joke when it comes to how big it is and how much driving there is involved.
Click on map to see the route we took
We made it to Tower Fall
Close up view of the top of the waterfallThe whole view of the waterfall at Tower Fall
The campground was on the other side of the road and by the time we got there it was 4 pm, the sign said the campground was full. According to the map, there were 2 other campgrounds within the vicinity. We decided we’d try and hope for the best.
Click on the map for more details about where we stayed and where’s best to see wildlife
There was no vacancy’s and there’s no sleeping on the side of the road in your RV. There was no cell service to even see if the other first come first served campgrounds were full, and to drive another two hours just to find out that there’s no spaces available would be awful. Needless to say, thats what we did and the other two were full as well. With our tail between our legs we reluctantly exit Yellowstone at the Northeast Entrance and stop in the town of Cooke City. Dad was getting hungry and suggested getting something to eat. We stopped into a Bistro, sat down, looked at the menu, and the prices and thus opted to just make sandwiches in the RV. Yes, after she had brought us waters, we just stood up and walked out. Glad we did too, especially after reading other peoples reviews!
Whatever, at least you guys get a variety of food!
We now had to figure out where we were going to be able to stay for the night, or should we just go home? We even talked about just driving up to Glacier National Park. We’d been driving so much, and had no where to stay the night. Our bad, for wanting to see sights before snagging a campsite! Arg, lesson learned. We decide to just head East, sooner or later maybe we’d find a place to park for the night. Not any sooner had we went up a hill out of the town of Cooke, there was a beautiful brown sign saying Gallatin National Forest campground and it wasn’t full! We all sighed with relief, thanked the good Lord and put er in park for the night. The campgrounds come available again at 7 in the morning at Yellowstone and we weren’t going to miss this opportunity a second time. We were all ready to go at 5:30 in the morning, Pops was still feeling pretty good so off we went to get a campsite for the night in the park.
The Soda Butte near the Northeast Entrance
Along our way towards Tower Fall campground again to check for vacancy, we see Pebble Creek campground is still full, as is Slough (pronounced slow)Creek campground. Yikes, well, worst case scenario we drive back in the evening and stay in the same place from the night before. We were passing the part of Yellowstone called Lamar Valley, well known for the best area to see wildlife, and we thought that all the people who were out of their cars with the super fancy massive lenses, were taking pictures of bison. I even said, “Wow, what is it about the bison that would make them all stop at the same spot to take pictures?”
Doing the wild thing in the wild
We later learned there are wolves and bears that frequent the area as well, and that’s what they were probably photographing.
If there are masses of people, know it’s something more than bisonJust might be a bear in this picture, if only we knew what to be looking for!
We were so involved with how big they were and the cuteness of the babies, we didn’t think to ask the people in crowds what they were looking at.
After the bison took their time crossing the road, and giving us ample time to take some pictures, we were ready to find our campsite. Not more than 2 miles down the road Pops says, “Antelope!”. What? Really? We pull over and turn around to see them standing on the side of the road, in the wild, in real life, ANTELOPE! That was a first for all of us.
If the saying goes; does a bear poo in the woods? then we got a new saying ; does an antelope squat to pee?
So happy to have seen wildlife, we load back up and head for our campground, at Tower Fall. Finally we arrived at the campground, grateful to see there’s not a sign saying FULL, we drive up the road to check out which site we would like. It was small, sites were really close together and we felt cramped just driving through the campground. It was not what we’d hoped it to be, so after seeing the sights around the area we decided to try and stay somewhere between things we still wanted to see.
Driving west through Mammoth Hot Springs
Our next stop would be Indian Creek Campground!
It’s a larger campground and it’s awesome! Come to find out, they weren’t full the night before! Had we only known!
Beautiful and peaceful, besides hearing one very heated verbal altercation later in the day, from a neighboring camper. It’s not to uncommon to hear in campgrounds, unfortunately.We stayed at site #4
Finally, a place to call ours for a day! What to do now? Go see the stuff of course! Off we went to check out Mammoth Hot Springs! Pops opted to hang out at the campsite, relax in his chair and keep the bears away.
First we had to stop and check out the white rocks along the waySee Harvy from Mitch’s viewSee Mitch from Harvy’s view. Hello Yellow….stone!!!!
After driving another few minutes a beautiful waterfall caught our attention.
If I knew the name of it, I’d tell you. Lets just call it pretty and is on the side of the main road between Mammoth Hot Springs and Indian Creek Campground
Onto check out what all the steam was about at Mammoth Hot Springs.
The steam, the sulfur smell, and the surrounds are surreal
A good amount of the hot springs are all coming from this one areaA tree branch after years of being exposed to the elements of the hot springs
Look, something is starting to grow again at the bottom of the dead tree
Be prepared, because depending on where you start, there is A LOT of walking involved, and A LOT of stairs. When it was all said and done, we walked up and down half a mountain. Walking up, I was so focused on just making it to the top I didn’t realize how steep it was. On our way back down, we were passing people going up and we could see the determination in their faces, the wondering of how much further and hear their labored rhythmic breathing as they worked their way up the stairs. We headed back to camp after all that adventure for much needed relax time.
Making it back to camp we put out our flowers to enjoy the summer rain. The sign talks about food and the bears.There are bear proof food storage bins at every campsite
After having a couple hours of down time we took the bikes out for a ride around our campground.
Views along our bike rideThe creek close upeven closer
Dinner time and we were going to make hamburgers on the new charcoal grill Mitch got. Wait, we have to assemble it? Oh no! I opted instead for ramen noodles, I was too hungry to wait.
Get your grill on baby!
Finally, camping! We started a fire, roasted marshmallows, and enjoyed the night.
Things were working out well.
Pops was still feeling pretty good!
We made plans for the next day to get up early once again in hopes to see more wildlife, check out a couple more sights and then head back home in the afternoon. Getting to bed early, we were all ready for a good nights sleep, and turning the heater on since it had gotten in the 40’s at night already. We wake around 4 in the morning to Charlie whining, his nails clicking on the flooring as he paced, there was another noise we weren’t familiar with, a rhythmic fast paced sound. We get up to see pops sitting on the steps of the RV with the door open, trying to catch his breath so he could go outside and have a cigarette. Yes, even though he couldn’t breathe, all he could think about what having a smoke. Thankfully he didn’t fight me when I took it from his hands and helped him back into the RV. No time to waste, we gotta get pops home. Dad slowed his breathing, relaxed and fell back to sleep while we were driving home. Frantic in my head, think and knowing that there are millions of people with COPD, there has to be someone willing to give him a shot of their inhaler! While I am going through any and all options if he has an asthma attack, I just keep praying that the Lord helps us through this time. We stop at a gas station along the way and I get a cup of ice and begin making small talk with a lady getting coffee also. I decided to ask her if she knew of any all natural ways to help relief symptoms of COPD and tell her our story. She wasn’t familiar with any all natural ways but she did have a nebulizer in her car!!! She’d gotten it when she had pneumonia last year and kept it with her just in case. Yes, a complete stranger, sharing much needed medicine to help us out!
Betsy our Montana angel!Finally, the struggle to breathe is over!
Thank you Besty! You saved the day, bless your kind heart for helping us, we were in dire need.
Pops slept almost the rest of the way homeAs did Charlieand milo…. and myself
Thankfully, being the reliable wonderful man Mitch is, he drove the whole way home after a long three day vacation while everyone was out like a light.
Goin' Road Trippin' 