Tag Archives: Memories

Mondays are for Memories, Pictures of the Adventure, The Adventure

Mondays are for Memories – Revisiting the Bucket List

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Yesterday when I was searching for a header photo for the Sabbath Rest post, I came across this photo (above) from our visit to Death Valley National Park in late March of 2010. Seemed like a good chance to take a stroll down memory lane!

Revisiting the Bucket List – 3/31/2010

Death Valley National Park
It wasn’t even on my “bucket list” of things I needed to do while on the West Coast. So when Gary said we were going there before we headed to Arizona, I wondered what there was to do there. I mean, with a name like Death Valley – sure didn’t seem like a very interesting place to me. Well, four jam packed days (and 700+ pictures) later, let me tell you, there is LOTS to see and do in Death Valley.
Did you know

  • The highest temperature recorded in the USA was in Death Valley (134 degrees)
  • The same year the highest temperature was recorded (1913), the lowest temperature (for Death Valley) was also recorded – 15 degrees above zero.
  • Death Valley National Park is the largest National Park in the lower 48 – 3 million acres of wilderness.
  • The lowest elevation in the Western Hemisphere (282 ft. below sea level) is found at Badwater in Death Valley.
  • The highest point in the lower 48 (Mt. Whitney at 14,491 ft) is just 100 miles from that lowest point.

Enough of statistics! I was expecting to see desert and desert-y things. What I wasn’t expecting were mountains of unbelievable colors, volcanic craters, a castle, moving rocks, and lakes of salt. I’ve pared down my pictures and tried to be at least a little organized, so here we go – the highlights of Death Valley National Park, Conrad-style!

Titus Canyon
Now there are two ways to see Titus Canyon. One is to drive to the canyon head (about 1/2 mile) and then hike up the extraordinary canyon. OR, you can drive all the way out of the park and approach it from the other side, driving along a “high clearance, 4×4 vehicle recommended” road for about 25 miles. Can you guess which one we chose?
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The road was one way (which I LOVED) and never really got too “technical”, but we did encounter something that we had rarely come across before –
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TRAFFIC!
And while we tried to stay back (mostly so we wouldn’t be choking on their dust),
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We did finally end up in a traffic JAM!
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Looking back while we waited for folks to start moving again….
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We eventually got around the crowd (they all stopped at various POI’s along the way), and made our way into the canyon –
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and after an amazing drive through the canyon,
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we made it out the other side! It was a great drive – and if you’d like to see a couple more pictures of the drive and canyon, Here you go! –
Since the drive took a little longer than we expected (you know, the traffic!), we decided to take in some of the areas that were close to our campsite.
Like the Harmony Borax Works –
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And the Salt Creek Interpretive Trail –
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The Salt Creek is home to the Devil’s Hole pupfish – an endangered species found only (so I’m told) here in the Death Valley region.
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Our final stop for the day was Mosaic Canyon – Amazing!
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A couple more Mosaic Canyon pictures are HERE

And that was Day One. I think I’ll split this up into a couple of posts, so you don’t get into picture overload (like that would ever happen on one of MY posts!) 🙂
Take a break – I’m going to make us some dinner!

 

I hope you enjoyed this little walk down memory lane – I know I did!

Steph

Family and Friends, Mondays are for Memories, Sewing/Quilting Projects, SOWER Projects, SOWER Projects 2020, SOWER Projects 2022

Mondays are for memories – Finding an old hard drive

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One thing about transitioning from full-time RVing into a house is you get the opportunity to sort through all of those drawers and baskets that you’ve been stashing random things in for the last 20 years. One of the items that turned up is my original back-up portable hard drive. And I found some treasures there!
This first set must’ve been the Thanksgiving of 2003. We (Gary, Josiah & I) drove the Lizzie (our new RV) to Ohio, Lara flew in from California (I think that’s where she was!) and we celebrated the holiday with Toby, Tammy and little Ellie (all of 9 months old). Some of the pictures were taken in T&T’s apartment and some in our new RV,  The one of the seven of us standing in front of the blank wall was in their still-being-built home!

This set is from our last Christmas at our home in Jamison, PA – not too many pictures, and none are very good – but they are oh so sweet to me!


Oh my – the memories!

And this final picture is our family in March of 2004.
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It might be the last time we were all together before we “ran away from home” August 1st of that year. I honestly can’t remember why we were all together. But I do know our family has grown in so many beautiful ways between then and now –

(And we’re missing DIL Abigail in this picture! Oh, and that’s Ellie on the end holding her little sister Everly!)

In the middle of sorting and deciding what to keep (and where to put it!) and what to donate, it was a very sweet walk down memory lane for which I am very grateful!

Have a great week, friends! Stay safe – I hear there’s lots of snow going on around the country!

Steph

Mondays are for Memories, The Adventure

Mondays are for Memories – The Grand Canyon!

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The header picture from yesterday’s Sabbath Rest post was from our time at the Grand Canyon back in late April, 2010. And it reminded me of that great “Rock Tour” we did way back then! So here is one of the posts from our time at The Grand Canyon –
4/24/2010 – I Better Get This Posted
WOW – what a great day we had at the Grand Canyon! And tomorrow promises to be just as lovely – and just as exhausting, I’m sure!
So, let me say that yesterday’s (Friday) snow
Road to Grand Canyon-8
and threatening skys
Grand Canyon Day One-5
gave way this morning to bright blue skys and warming (well, up to the mid-50’s anyway) temperatures!
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Grand Canyon-5
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So – of the almost 200 pictures I took, I whittled them down to about 50. And that was HARD! So, if you’d like to see the rest from today (with a couple from yesterday thrown in), you can check them out here.
I haven’t even downloaded the ones from the sunset tonight – and we’re planning on getting up for the sunrise tomorrow.
Yikes!
And that’s why I’m leaving this short and sweet tonight. Bed is certainly calling!
Sunrise – 5:45 (and we have to figure out the whole shuttle bus schedule!).
G’night!
******
If you’d like to check out the original post (or maybe have a look at some of the neighboring posts that are all about our fabulous time in the many National Parks we enjoyed during our Rock Tour, you can check it out HERE!

Family and Friends, RV Life, The Adventure

Helping Out

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There’s nothing like planning a housewarming party to motivate you to get your house in good order. And when the party is TOMORROW, it’s all hands on deck! Gary and I arrived in the morning with fresh bagels and joined daughter Lara (whose party it is) and DIL Abigail (who was able to fly in for the weekend!) in getting the house party-ready! There were boxes to empty, dusting to do, floors to vacuum, and some mac and cheese to make! One of the most enjoyable chores of the day was helping to put together some of the decorative items in the living room.
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Abigail has a wonderful eye for arranging items on the wall, and then we had the great fun of opening up all the treasures Lara had carefully wrapped as they were transported to their new home.
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Such a collection! Many of those items came from the home where we raised our kids (especially all those little shoes/boots – I had quite a collection!), so it was like a sweet walk down memory lane. Before too long, the shelves were hung and then filled!
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One final vacuum, one last furniture placement, and voila –
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A cozy living room emerges!
The Mac & Cheese is ready for the oven tomorrow, and almost all of the boxes have been emptied. This house is just about ready for it’s official ‘opening’! To add to the delight of the day, my niece and family from Michigan arrived just in time for some delicious Chinese take-out!
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It was a busy, productive day. But we were working alongside precious family members, so it was all good. It was all Very, Very Good.
…But man, am I ready for bed!

Sweet dreams, friends!
Steph

Family and Friends, The Adventure

Whittling down the memories

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When we set out on our RV adventure, we essentially moved from a 3500 sq. ft. house to a 300 sq. ft. tin can. Needless to say, we got rid of a LOT of stuff. But still, there are always things you hold onto. For a while our ‘need to keep’ stash lived in our friends’ basement. We thinned it out considerably when we moved it to our son’s house in Ohio. When Lara moved to Ohio and had a little more room at her house, we thinned out the remnants one more time and moved everything into her basement.  Now that we have a small home in Texas and she was in the process of moving, we thought it was the perfect time to finally take possession of the Grams and Pops tubs.  Yep – after all this time we had reduced our ‘need to keep’ items to three large blue tubs and one smaller clear one.  One and a half of those tubs were filled with T-shirts. (Pretty sure (someday) I’ll be making a T-shirt quilt (or six).)  The other contents were old pictures (including some wedding albums!), memorabilia from college and our dating years, baby books (ours!), goblets that were wedding presents to my parents, some teddy bears, and my wedding dress!  This afternoon we sorted through the bins,  found some things that could be thrown away, and moved the remains into four watertight bins.

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After all, these need to travel with us for two more months until we get back to Texas.  I’m leaving it to Gary to figure that one out, but I know it won’t be inside the RV!
We also found a birthday card the kids gave to Gary back in the 90’s. Aside from two cards Gary sent me when we were engaged, it was apparently the only other card that seemed worthy of saving.
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and inside…
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Truly a classic!

It was a quick sort, but it while Gary was repacking all those T-shirts, I was having quite the stroll down memory lane.  Once we get those bins to Texas, I’ll be giving things a more careful review. I guess if I can’t figure out who the folks in the pictures are, our kids never will!

But for now, it’s late, and Gary really did go to bed hours ago! Better head that way myself!

Steph