Austin, Take One!

There has been a lag since the last post and that is because our time here in Austin has been full of ups and downs.  We had thoughts that this area just isn't going to work for us, and we need to make a new move.  Things have settled down and we are beginning to find the joy in being in a new town and have started branching out from our RV resort.  So this post is about our take on Austin up until this point.  For starters the big downer was my job.  Things did not go as planned from the beginning, and was actually told to "go home", they couldn't use me.  Having spent so much time getting all of my certifications in order, I thought that I had everything that a job could want in a Labor and Delivery nurse.  Apparently, my advanced certification was too much for this hospital, and they wanted only intermediate, but didn't have a class for 2 weeks.  Needless to say, I have my "intermediate" certification, but have had a whirlwind orientation due to the mess-up.  Things have settled down work wise, and I am finding the groove of the hospital, staff and patient population.  Thank goodness!  I would hate to think that a job/hospital would send our whole family packing!  Although, we are pretty mobile, it is still unsettling how quickly things can go south.
And, South we are!  Let's talk about this weather in Austin....."it's never like this".  We have heard this saying just about everyplace we have been! (Hot weather in Salem,OR;cold winters living in Sparks, NV) Does the crazy weather follow us?  Most people we talked to said that it is unusual for it to be humid in Austin.  Even without the threat of rain, it was humid!  And with the humidity, comes the bugs.....oh, those bugs, they're bigger in Texas!  Jason is the lucky one that is the go-to guy for the pesky critters.  He's left with welts and scratchy bites all over his feet, legs and arms.  We are stocking up on the benadryl creme for him! We have experienced some great thunder and lightening storms so far.  One thunderous boom even set off our truck alarm at midnight (I thought it was the neighbors, so I ignored it...whoops!).  We are thankful that we are on high ground and are not having to deal with mud pits or threats of flooding.  But let me tell you, when it (rain) comes down it is deafening (especially in a metal box)....and drenching!
Austin has also made us appreciate our jobs in the past, and how close we were.  Driving to work takes 30-45 min with traffic.  All I think about is my wasted time spent seeing the same thing everday I go to work. Austin is a much bigger city than we thought.  It takes us 1/2 hour to get pretty much anywhere....
OK, OK, OK!  Enough!  We have turned a new page on our Austin chapter book, as seen in the photos below.....

Yum, Sweet Tea and Rum!

Skateboard swing

The time here is flying, we've been here 5 weeks already!  The boys are getting to experience some alone time from one another.  While one flies to LA to visit with Jason's mom, the other goes to Jason's grandmothers house, who lives 4.5 hours away.  Its a nice break for them as well as us.  Homeschooling is still going well, the 1st quarter grades our out and they are doing as well if not a bit better than when they were in city schools.  Go Jason! Andre is learning to shoot a bow and arrow, and getting pretty good.  The boys are also enjoying having a new skate park to ride.

Our explorations have taken us to Marble Falls (bust!), McKinney Falls (bust!), South Congress (yeah!), 6th street bar scene (wow-wish I was younger w/o kids), Stubbs restaurant and music venue (woohoo), San Antonio riverwalk (very cool), our friends Anne&Andres (good times!).  We have explored some hiking areas/trails all of which are very dog friendly (Elwood is especially pleased!).  Food, yes we've explored the food scene.  My red meat meter is going up!  Our favorite BBQ so far has been Rudy's, but we haven't been to the top ones yet.  Jason found his new favorite mexican restaurant and Andre is tasting his way through burgers and rootbeers.  (After looking at pictures, I guess I'm finding the drinks that go along with the food?!)

Stubbs music concert:Michael Franti

A "Dos-a-rita"

San Antonio Riverwalk...a beautiful day

San Antonio, Tower of Americas, 700 feet up!

Beautiful churches in San Antonio

Andre's Halloween costume

Family is coming this week and we will be doing much more exploring and a lot more eating for sure! The weather is supposed to hold out while they are here, so it should be "perfect" fall weather for Texas.  This next chapter should hold many more adventures and happy times!

Journey to TX

WOW!, glad that it's done!
Ok, there's more to the journey than that, but on the backside of the trip, it doesn't seem so bad.....good thing I wrote things down!
Winding down in Salem was bittersweet.  We were able to say goodbye to family, new friends at work and at the RV park, but with the anticipation of new adventures in TX.  A few days before our long journey, Jason says, "Are you gonna drive when there's a straight road?"....Me: "uh,.....no!!!!"  I'm barely getting over ducking my head going under overpasses!  Although I've accomplished that, now I've moved onto cringing when we make tight turns, fearing we will blow-out our back window from the COW hitting it!  Always fearing the worst keeps me on the edge of my seat....so no driving for me, at least not now!  Knowing that we had long days of driving, I felt bad, but I'd feel worse if I got into an accident or made our trip even longer with going really slow.
We wanted to be in TX in 4 days, driving a total of 2200 miles.  We had figured that we would drive 12 hours/day.  Jason, being THE driver, pushed us 14 hour days, driving 760 miles the first day!  We left Oregon under stormy clouds and wound up having beautiful blue skies with puffy white clouds all the way to Utah.  Because of not knowing where we would end up at the end of the day, we didn't make any reservations at RV parks, but decided to stay at Walmart parking lots.  This was a first for us, but it turned out well.
Here's my "journal" of the trip:
DAY 1 - Oregon to Perry, UT.  8:30am-10:45pm, 760 miles, went further than we thought we would.
-Elwood peed on our bedding! (We had put Elwood in our bedroom when we started out, 2 hours later at our rest stop, we let him out.  I guess he freaked out with the bumps and moving of the COW because all of our bedding was wet!--we were really upset about our new pillows!!!)
-Boys are sleeping, eating and reading books (Alex is re-reading 2 of his books...Andre is semi-reading his book-not making much progress, mostly sleeping---maybe a growth spurt??)
-cold night for sleeping (40*, and we took all the blankets because all our stuff is wet and stinky!)

DAY 2 - UT to Lamar, CO. 7am-9:45pm, 745 miles
-beautiful sunrise in UT, fall is turning trees golden yellow.  Seeing red, flat-top mountains.  Asked boys if they know what "flat-tops" are (haircuts, I mean)----they don't know, but Jason and I remember those!

They looked much "redder" in person

Flat-tops!

Sunrise on the highways!--Beautiful!!!

Golden hues....at 65 mph!

-Stopped at Little America Travel Center in Wyoming.  .50cent ice cream cones at 10am---yes, please!  Huge travel area, a mini-city.  Very interesting!
-Bobble head discussion (we have bobble-head of Alex's that is sitting on the dashboard.  It's making it interesting to look at something else besides the vastness of flat lands or the highway.  The discussion is about different bobble-heads that we need to get (besides the coconut from Hawaii), such as a road runner or a cow---which leads us to discussing that perhaps in the future we can have a different kind of COW (condo on WATER), living on board a boat----very distant future!)

Bobble head from Hawaii---gotta find a new one for the road!

-In Colorado we tried to take ourselves out of the path of flooding areas, but no such luck.  On one highway, we got half way through and found the road closed, so we had to back track.  It added about 45 minutes to an already long day.  Especially since the roads we were on were HORRIBLE.  We spent this time saying to ourselves, "get us off this road!".  (the seams in the road made it very loud and bumpy, especially since we had a 18,000 lb load behind us that seemed to pull us back while it went over the bumps.  Also, the highway was rutted out, not from the rain, but more from use and just patchwork not repaired).  (the highway that was closed was due to flooding over the low part of the road, we should have looked on-line at CO roads, but didn't---lesson learned!)
-here's the JAAR blog highway ratings: CA,OR, ID, UT, WY, NE--mostly 5 stars. CO, OK and parts of TX-- 1-3 stars (at least they were paved!).
-stayed at Walmart parking lot again.  Thank goodness for our great heater and shower in our COW.

DAY 3 - CO to Bullard, TX.  6am-8:45pm, 600 miles
-Gotta admire natures colors!  Beautiful sunrise sky through CO and OK plains.
-the drive has made it easier to acclimate to the time difference
-boys are starting to practice their "y'alls"
-decided that it's an actual town, if they have a Walmart! (just our observation)
-got a flat tire from BAD construction roads in TX....This made my heart beat faster, which made Jason drive faster!  He changed the tire in less than 15 minutes! (Of course this happened in the middle of rush hour traffic north of Dallas, TX.  Stopped at a red light a man pulled up next to us and said you had a blow-out on our trailer tire.  We didn't feel (or hear) anything!  It took us a little bit to find a place to pull into.  Using our hydraulic stabilizer jacks, Jason lifted the trailer and showed the boys how to change a tire-----a bit sweaty, due to the 100* heat!).  No damage though!
-Surprised Mamma in Bullard, TX. (Jason's grandmother).  (We were making such good time we decided to stop by to visit with Mamma---she had no idea we were coming.  The boys kept banging on her door, but she didn't open up until I called her and said the boys are waiting for her to open the door!  She WAS surprised.  The boys got to sleep on "real" beds and we all took a hot running shower, woohoo!)

sunset on the plains looking west

Nature's colors-sunset on the plains looking east

our morning shadow following us, we don't look too big!

DAY 4 - Bullard TX - Livingston TX, about 2.5 hours
 - in Jacksonville, TX---"Largest bowl of Salsa" billboard-----yum! (gotta check this out next time we are there---it's just south of Bullard, TX)
-in Livingston to get "Texafied" (got mud flaps on the truck (a TX requirement), had some sweet tea and BBQ.  Stayed at our Escapees RV park (where our mail is forwarded to/from).
-met a nice couple who used to live in Oceanside, CA, drive a white F450, and use Escapees in Livingston, TX (this was weird).  (We have met SO many people that used to live in San Diego area!)

DAY 5 - Livingston, TX-Austin, TX, 4.5 hours with a pit stop in Houston.
-decided to push on to Austin after having a long nights sleep.  We went to Houston to look at Smart cars.  (This is the only car that seems to fit in our toy-hauler area that is under our length and weight restrictions....and can be a great commuter car with great MPG).
-took 1 hour to drive across Austin (in traffic) to get to our RV park.  It's a huge park.  We found a local Mexican restaurant that is within walking distance....a new favorite probably. 

So after a LONG journey, it was nice to "open-up" our COW and put things away.  Nothing broke along the (bumpy) highways!  We did buy a Smart car the next day.  I've never been inside a Mercedes-Benz dealer, but they are NICE.  SMART stands for Swatch, Mercedes, art---now you know!
It's a zippy little car, very small looking from the outside, but actually roomy on the inside, especially if you don't look towards the back :) (because there isn't one!).

The boys are ready to drive it!

Yesterday we walked around downtown Austin...it was humid and hot!  The boys saw some UT Longhorn cheerleaders in their daisy dukes and cowboy boots.  All I heard was, "Oh, yeah!!!!"  The temp is 90's,with huge thunderclouds.  It did eventually pour, drenching rain!  We were all very cranky from the humidity.  When it did rain, it caused a "river" in our neighbors RV site.  Jason says it rained 2 inches yesterday!  The dog isn't too happy about the weather, or this trip in general.  He is being very difficult about coming back inside the trailer, maybe because of the thunder? (we left music on for him), or traveling has made him cranky too!  Either way, he wanted to stay outside while it was sprinkling on him. 
Tomorrow, I start work and the boys get back to the home-school routine.  As the weather cools off (hopefully soon!), we will get out to explore this area of Texas.  We are looking forward to reconnecting with our friends from Sparks, NV who live close by, and visiting with Jason's grandmother often (about 4 hours away). 

PS- things we learned:
-the new IOS version for iphone is not so great---new features I didn't know about got me frustrated with the map app.---ggrrrrrrr!
-the boys will read books if they don't have their electronics--:)
-we LOVE simple green---it took ALL the bug juice off the truck/trailer without having to scrub!
-Elwood cannot ride in the COW while driving.  There IS enough room in the cab of the truck for him, and he does well traveling. 
-Texas mud is very slippery with flip-flops.

Time and Patience

Sadly, our time here in Salem is fading, but we are all excited about our new adventures to be had in......Austin, TX!  I have accepted a 13 week assignment in Austin at a Women's Hospital, which begins on 9/30 and ends 12/28.  Believe it or not, the only RV park we could find was 30 minutes outside of town at Lake Travis.  Well, we might have been a little-bit picky by wanting a pool, grass and level sites, but we are going to be there for 3 months!  Our new home will be at the La Hacienda RV resort, and the pictures look beautiful.  If we find in a month that something closer to town is more appealing, we might try to move. 
I was getting nervous about finding another position and finding an RV resort for us.  It is hard to wait around until a position is posted for the time frame we need.  Usually travel nurses fly-by the seat of their pants and go off with a minutes notice to a new position. I realize that I don't like that part of travel nursing.  I want a plan put into action as soon as I think about it.  Oh well, thank goodness for a great recruiter who keeps telling me to "be patient". 
I am finding that having something on the horizon helps keep us moving forward and gives us something to talk about, instead of getting on each others nerves.  In our tight quarters we are finding things that we like (having less stuff), we hate (small bedroom), things we couldn't live without (toilets (separate), doors and tv's), and things we don't use, but had to bring (the wii fitness board!---really, who thought that making a 5th wheel shake MORE was a good thing???---oh yeah, me!).  Being in constant contact with our stuff and having it in our face all the time, it might be time to change it up a bit.
This next week will be filled with getting rid of excess weight (food), making sure our things are put away correctly, securing our things (wine!!!), charting our route and prepping for LONG days on the road.  Here's looking forward to safe travels!

The past few weeks....

I'm looking through my calendar to see what all we have done since the last blog post.  Thank goodness that I'm writing everything down, I can't seem to remember what happened yesterday! (well, now thinking about it, I can remember, but last week....ah??)  The main reason for writing it all down is so that in a year or 5 years time, we can look back and see where we have been and what we have accomplished.  Oh,.... the places we have yet to see!!!
The past few weeks have been very fast-paced with family visiting (x2), home-schooling and a trip.  And now, figuring out where we go next and where I'll be working.  Our first family visit was from Uncle Tracy and Ted, who were with us for 5 days.  We took them to our favorite spot for waterfalls, Silver Springs.  Taking a little hike to see more than one waterfall was well worth the trip, especially the last one where we brought a picnic, wine included!

 On our way back home, we stopped by Bauman Farms, for some tasty produce.  Their hanging baskets of flowers are enormous!  I guess with the weather in Oregon, everything grows nicely and hugely.  Although, the weather at this present time was 85-90, HOT!!! Jason was the tour guide the next day taking them to Corvallis, seeing the sights of the college town.  Tracy and Ted took the train to Portland to visit with friends the following day, which left Jason to himself, sans me (sleeping for work that night) and the boys (in day camp all week long).  I bet he enjoyed the quietness!  We rounded out their visit with a picnic at Willamette Winery, taking home a few (or 12!) of their finest Pinot's to enjoy at home.
 The very next day we picked up Suzi/Vicki at the airport in Portland and had a quick lunch before Tracy and Ted's plane left.  Since we were in Portland, we took her to visit Saturday market, enjoying the many craft stalls and thinking about Christmas gifts!  And ice cream, we had to have some ice cream!  During her visit we went to Tillamook Cheese factory, about 1.5 hours away, but worth the time!  We tasted yummy cheeses, lunch specials and (more) ice cream!  There wasn't a tour going on, or them even making anything, but the place was so busy, almost like an amusement park, but it was Sunday, so I guess everyone else had the same idea.  We took our time heading home touring the coast.  After spending a quiet day around town, we headed out to .....you guessed it, Silver Falls!  This place NEVER gets old.  A quick hike, then a picnic lunch was the plan. 

After 8 days of visitors, we thought everything went pretty smoothly.  Everyone had a place to sleep (I didn't hear any complaints), the main showers at the RV park worked nicely, and everyone got to pick their own blackberries!  Even Elwood got in on eating the blackberries and convincing Ted that it was time for another walk!
After all the excitement of family, we needed to hunker down and get our schedule straightened out for home-schooling.  Jason got organized (and I stayed out of his way).  The boys schooling started 1 1/2 weeks ago, and everyone is still alive!  Jason had done a great job organizing everything and figuring out what a lesson plan is.  The boys are realizing the dad is no push-over and an "F", is an "F" in the books.  The boys haven't learned yet what the teacher likes, apples or chocolate chip cookies.  Actually, they know chocolate chip cookies, but have yet to make any for him yet! (hint, hint).
We recently took a trip to the Emerald City, Seattle.  We had been wanting to go to Vancouver, BC, but it was a bit too far, and our schedule couldn't accommodate it.  Seattle, it was.  Renting a (small) car was the way to go, especially for trying to manuver down one way streets and for street parking.  We laughed when we thought about our huge F450 dually going down some roads, we would have had to go on top of the cars or at least taken off their side mirrors!  Our first day was spent exploring the sites of Pikes Place (super busy on a Sunday, beautiful flowers, yummy food and the original Starbucks),

Pioneer Square (saw what the underground city was all about), the waterfront (ferry depot and ferris wheel, with lots of good smelling seafood), City Center (Space Needle, museums, and park)

and the Queen Anne district (quaint eateries and cute homes).  Our hotel was a couple of blocks from the space needle, so we always knew which direction to head if we ever got lost---with one way streets, that was a lot!  The next day we took a Seattle Duck Tour via amphibious vehicles from the war.  They first gave us a tour of the city, then by water. 

On board the Duck

It was fun to tour this way, but now that we've done it (for the sake of the boys), we don't have to do it again.  The one thing that I wanted to do on this trip that I thought the boys would enjoy was to drive our car onto the ferry, so we did.  We went to Bremerton, an hour ride away,  which had old Navy boats, but mostly we went, then turned around and came back. 

Map of the Puget Sound and surrounding islands and waterways

Blurry, but this is where we are heading.  

Seattle from our ferry

The quiet Puget Sound

Alex would like to thank his mom and dad for this award

One of the fountains at Fountain Park in Bremerton

The fountains explode with water

The views of the Puget Sound from the boat were great.  The boys had a good time running on the boat and scheming up disasters with the cars.  It was then off to see the Troll in the Fremont district, the Ballard Locks and the sights of Seattle from Kerry Park. 

Fremont Troll squishing a 1963 VW bug in its hand

This is the fish ladder next to the Ballard Locks

views from Kerry Park

We never did go up the space needle, but got the same if not better views from all the places around town.  The boys thought it, the Space Needle, was bigger.
On our way home, we stopped at the Mt. St. Helen's visitors center.  I don't know if we were cranky or cheap, but we did not pay the $5/person entrance fee to view the exhibit (about 40 feet long) and see a 10 minute movie.  We paid for Alex to go,... and got all the info from him, then went home and watched Dante's Peak and got the Hollywood version of volcano explosions.  It seems ridiculous when 85% of the people who visited the center, turned and walked out when they saw the fee.  Good 'ol government...and I pay taxes too!
So here we are today.  Currently we are counting down the days here in Salem, as my assignment is done 9/21.  We are looking at Austin, TX as our next adventure stop. I'm still waiting to see what Austin has available for work and if we can find an RV park that has space, and can accommodate our large size.  We have one more course of visitors coming in 1 1/2 weeks, but nothing else on the horizon.  Salem has been a great central location for all of our outings, but we still haven't seen all that's out there in Oregon.  We might just have to make a pit stop back through here down the road to finish our site-seeing.

Our bribes for doing well in school this week!

Keeping track

We can't believe we have been in Salem for 6 weeks already!  The time has flown by, especially with us keeping busy every day.  Days that I'm not working, we are usually out in or out of town, doing something, going somewhere or exploring a new area.  The past week has been no exception.  After working several days in a row (augh!), we were rewarded with a week off.  We have been enjoying concerts in the park in nearby Monmouth every week.  Parking our chairs on the lawn and finding some food while listening to different music genres and people watching, is a great way to wind down after working.  Last week it was swing music, this week was Zydeco.  Best of all, it's free!
Last week, we explored the Oregon coast some more thanks to Uncle Dan.  Our first stop was to "secret beach", which was beautiful, but cold and windy.  We made our way down to Newport via the coast exploring sand dunes and seeing the "smallest harbor" (it was really small, but quaint).  The drive was beautiful, but it felt better inside the car than out in the wind/fog/cool weather!  In Newport, it was off to Rogue Brewery to taste some of their brews.  Our brew list is growing by 2-3 every week!  For our finale in Newport, we went to Georgie's.....ah, Georgie's!!!  They have the creamiest, chock-full of clams, clam chowder around.  It was definitely good for the soul and good to warm up the body!

We finally were able to meet up with Rosemary and spend some time with her.  She is a busy lady!  We went out for brunch and had the best ultimate french toast!  Cinnamon rolls made into french toast with cream cheese frosting!!!! Oh yeah!  We also took in the local Saturday farmers market, what a spread they've got.  We haven't visited a farmers market yet, but now will be sure to do so....everything looked so tasty.  In and all around the RV resort, we have been dealing with berry vines that have scratched us or we've been avoiding.  Not anymore!  After finding out that these berries are indeed edible and delicious, we are seeking out all the vines we see.  Even when visiting with Rosemary, we picked berries by her house.  For dessert we cooked up our yummy goods from the farmers market and had smashed berries atop grilled peaches, yum!

We have been seeing Mt. Hood from far away, and finally it was time to get up close to it.  We made our way there via the Columbia Gorge.  Uncle Dan gave us a wonderful guide to get in as much as we could on our drive.  We hiked to beautiful waterfalls, stretching our legs and letting Elwood explore and smell around.  We learned some history along the Gorge and found fantastic vantage points for taking it all in. 

Lunch was in Hood River, sitting at the river front park watching the kite-surfers.  There was a competition going on, but have heard that there are always a lot of wind-riders around.  Hood River is a place that I want to go back to and explore some more.  With the dog and the kids, we made a quick b-line to our final destination, Mt. Hood.  Unfortunately, we were in such a hurry that we didn't stop at all the great fruit farms and wineries along the way.  I guess another trip is in the makings!  At Mt.Hood we stopped in at Timberline Lodge, with it being Sunday, it was packed!  There were still snowboarders enjoying the mountain, as well as hikers taking in the Pacific Crest Trail. 

Ta-da!  Snow in July!

Timberline Lodge patio door!

Mt. Hood

Mt. Jefferson in the background

Beautiful views of the far off Mt. Jefferson and maybe 3 sisters(?) mountains could be seen.  We hopped on a hiking trail and found some snow for Elwood to enjoy.  The weather was perfect!  We spent the night in Government Camp, which is at the base of Mt. Hood.  It is a really small town with not a lot to do except enjoy the outdoor activities.  The next day was spent watching the boys bungee jump, zip-line, rock-climb, race cars, trampoline jump, tube slide, alpine slide and become human hamsters in a ball.  The adventure park offered so much for our adrenaline junkee boys!  After 5 hours, we were done and so were they (thank goodness!).

Bungee!!! They both did it twice!

They thought it would be more fun to roll down a hill, than just in a pool of water!

After resting up for a couple of days, we were off for a hike to Silver Falls.  We have been here before, but were unable to hike to all the waterfalls due to the dog not allowed on the trails.  So, sans the dog, we set out.  After hiking for 5+ hours and probably 10 miles, we traversed all the trails and double- treked to all the waterfalls.  It was a tiring day, but it was nice that the boys are big enough to endure and entire day of hiking, and then to our surprise stayed up on the ride home and still had enough energy to swim in the pool and soak in the hot tub.

We are finding our grooves living in close quarters, and knowing when to take a walk!  The boys homeschooling supplies have come and we are now looking for any extra storage space that we can squeeze out of our already packed COW.  We are going to have family visit next week, so that should be interesting, especially since I'll be sleeping during the day, working at night :(  At least we have plenty of outings under our belts that we can keep everyone busy!