~Sunday, August 16, 2020~
Day 63
A rarity. I got up at 5:00 a.m. this morning with the roosters crowing, and the cows mooing away. But I managed to go back to sleep until 9:00, which was a good thing since bedtime was 1:00 a.m. As I write this morning, I am digging the sights and sounds of the cottonwood trees at our place. Would love to plant those someday! Jeff took Sadie on a little walk around the park and met someone FROM NAPA also walking their dog. What?? They still live in Napa, but came to Joseph, Oregon to check out a town nearby they’d like to move to called Baker City. Wow, what a small world to meet someone that lives only minutes from our old house in Napa (they live out on Third Avenue).
Our plan today was to take the Wallowa Tram Ride but we got immersed in more trip planning, so we didn’t get to do it. We’re not even sure if it was running today, since the skies looked a bit ominous. Very overcast this morning with light sprinkles.
We’re still getting used to all of this trip planning with the goal of booking most things 1 month in advance, and an average timeframe at each site of about 5 days. In the past, Jeff has been the main planner, but because of there being so much to plan out with a year adventure, factoring in weather, budget, etc. we’re both tackling it. This is a new lifestyle for us, not strictly a vacation, so you really need to be in that mindset. The thing is, the planning, the driving, and factoring in things that don’t go according to plan affect the free time. I bet you when the travel year is up, the reality will be that we spent ⅓ of it, planning. Jeff’s been following a lot of people on Instagram, and a lot of travelers already have their winter accommodations booked, since “snowbirds” head south between November thru March. Hope to get our bookings dialed in for Florida, in the next few days.
We finalized our stay at the Matchwood Brewing Co. in Sandpoint, ID. Well, we didn’t really finalize it since they do not accept reservations. But when I spoke with the manager, she noted that we were coming and said it’s never been a problem finding a spot in their large parking lot. Next, planning out Montana. The goal is to spend about 2 weeks in Montana before heading back to California for Ken’s wedding. We found one of our planned stays on a new site called Boondockers Welcome. It is so new, they don’t have an app yet. Boondockers Welcome has a screening process where you contact a host, who reads your profile, then decides if you’re a good fit for their private property. They’re basically letting you stay at their house for free, but in your RV. We contacted “Montana Chickee” at “A Little Piece of Heaven” near Flathead Lake and she responded within 5 minutes. We’re in, and for 5 nights!. Now we’ll just need to find a dump station nearby. From there, we would like to stay at Finley Point Campground, but it was full on the dates we were looking for. However, they do have walk-ins at 5 sites. We’ll have to see. Our backup will be Big Arm Campground also at Flathead Lake. As you can see, we really want to be near Flathead Lake.
Since we are leaving tomorrow and heading to national forest land, we needed to stock up on groceries and fill up the truck. We originally had 5-gallons each of diesel and regular gasoline. But we needed to make sure we had enough gas for our generator, so we transferred the diesel from the can to the truck, then filled the can with regular gas. Then we came back, picked up Sadie and went to Wallowa Lake to simply enjoy dusk and let Sadie have some playtime in the water before dinner. We even saw a hang glider landing on our beach. Of course they make it look so easy. The evening temp was lovely (around 70’s) so again, we ate outside. Again, more light rain this evening before bed which sounds so nice inside the trailer.