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I grew up in Illinois and Minnesota. We didn’t have mountain roads. My Mom moved to Denver and kept trying to get us to move, too.  I told her, “No. We would be divorced if we moved there because Dave loves to drive mountain roads and they terrify me so I’d never see him.”

Now we live in a motorhome driving all around the country. I can look at most maps and tell what roads I want to stay away from. Switchbacks are danger signs to me. Interstate roads through mountains are fine because they have wide lanes and shoulders. It’s those narrow lanes, winding back and forth, with steep grades, and drop off shoulders that get to me.

But some places you can only get to by driving mountain roads. The north rim of the Grand Canyon is one of them and Dave really wanted to go to the north rim. Here’s another song for you, “The things we do for love.”

The road to the north rim, US 89A in northern Arizona past Jacob’s Lake and Fredonia, Arizona, is a mountain road. I made Dave drive less than 25 miles an hour and I was still terrified. I HATE mountain roads! To borrow a really good word from Nick Russell (http://gypsyjournal.net/blog/): snivel, snivel. I wanted to curl up in bed and whimper until I went to sleep but I was too afraid to do that, either. In case you missed it–I HATE mountain roads!

Take me HOME!

TTYL,

Linda

What’s there to say? Big Canyon. Big Dam. Big Lake. Repeat.

TTYL,

Linda

When we were traveling in our tent camper and VW camper we were on vacation. We had two or three weeks to go someplace and come back again. We did all our research and some of our cooking before leaving home so we were free to see the sights along the way.

When we retired then started fulltiming we acted as if we were still on vacation. Scurrying from one site to another trying to see it all as if we would run out of time. But we hadn’t done all our researching and none of the cooking. We got tired.

The Escapees had warned us about this. They said it takes most people one to two years to get out of vacation mode. Well, it’s been almost two years and we appear to be transitioning to living mode.

We’ve slowed down. We stayed in Flagstaff, Arizona, for a week and a half. Then we moved here to Page, Arizona, and registered for three nights.

I’m still not caught up on my research and our attempts to cook in the convection oven have not been very successful. But, we now have time to read for pleasure. And I’m not so stressed out when we do start driving. And we’re enjoying the sightseeing more.

Last summer I was afraid if we stayed in Minnesota very long I wouldn’t get Dave out of there again. This summer I’m looking forward to staying a month or so.

I think we are maturing in this lifestyle in more ways than one.

TTYL,

Linda

I love reading about different cultures. I often read historical fiction for just that purpose. Yesterday, in the gift shop at Wupatki National Monument, I found a different type of history book. One was about Kachina Dolls and the other about the Navajo Code Talkers. Here’s what I learned.

Kachina Dolls

Kachina Dolls are not gods. They are more like characters in a morality play. Some are good guys and some are bad guys. And, just like our Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, different ones are associated with different days. On those days adults dress up in the appropriate costumes and act out the plays as a way of teaching children about good and bad. Then they give dolls they’ve made representing the characters to the children to help them remember.

Navajo Code Talkers

I have been hearing for years about the Navajo Code Talkers and how they helped us win World War II by speaking a code the enemy could not break–their native language. I have always been intrigued by this story and wanted to know more. This book told an amazing story.

In 1942 the U.S. Marine Corps recruited 29 young Navajo men whose commander described them as, “…the first truly All-American platoon…” These men and the others who joined them, 400 in all, served in all six Marine Corps combat divisions in every campaign in the South Pacific. Each one was accompanied by a bodyguard lest these men, who were shorter and darker skinned than Caucasians, be mistaken for Japanese while speaking their “foreign” language.

Most of us are familiar with the military’s alphabet where the letters are represented by words: alpha, bravo, charlie, etc. The Navajo used the same type of alphabet but their words were things that were familiar to them like ant, badger, cow, etc.

Plus they had words for particular military items. For instance, an armored tank was a turtle, a amphibious landing vehicle was a frog, and a grenade was a potato.

The code talkers had drilled into them so firmly that they were NEVER to talk about what they did in the war that most of them were unable to do so even after their secret was declassified in 1968. I read a news story just the other day about a Code Talker dying whose grandchild said something like, “Grandpa talked about the war but he would never tell us specifically what he did in it.”

Since the code was declassified these brave soldiers, 14 of whom were killed in action, were finally awarded many medals, some of them struck just to honor them.

History is Everywhere

Oh, the books I learned all this from? Children’s coloring books.

TTYL,

Linda Sand

I’m angry. If you don’t want to listen just move on.

We pay to have our mail sent to us. No one can mail something to us without us paying again to have it forwarded to us. We choose to do this as part of our fulltime RVing lifestyle and we love to hear from friends and family who can’t email us instead.

But! I hate paying for advertising to be sent to us. Companies who send us birthday cards–often to Dave on my day and to me on Dave’s day don’t make us feel “closer” to them.

And why do campground organizations insist on mailing directories to us when that same information is all available in more current form on-line?

This rant today is prompted by having received a catalog from a company with which we have never done any business!  This company is located in the same town as our mail forwarding company. Why would they mail catalogs for a local store to people using a mail forwarding business as their address?

They offered no information as to how to contact them by email within that catalog but a Google search found them instantly. I ranted directly to them also so I expect to get no more catalogs from them. I hope.

In the meantime, if you need anything having to do with a bicycle, please do that business somewhere other than at Spoke-n-Sport in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

TTYL,

Linda