Paling around in Polson Montana...

For years our friends Emily, Pat and Ian lived in Missoula Montana and every time we traveled nearby, we would be sure and carve out some time to pull into that area and visit.  A few years ago Ian married, and then eventually moved to Polson and had a couple of children...so, of course "grandma and grandpa" quickly followed!  Now, we make a day visit to Missoula because there still are a couple of shops we like, and then travel on to Polson for our visit!  Polson is the home of the beautiful Flathead Lake, and it's a little more pricey, so we ended up camping out a smidge further, but still close enough for easy access.  

We actually have another friend who also lives in Polson, one of our Happy Trails folks who used to just be here during the summer months and winter in Happy Trails (and was in Theater with me and along with Jack in the Sawmill) but last year decided to move back to Polson year 'round.  We were super lucky to catch up with Charlie as he had just gotten back from a two week fishing trip in Alaska just before we left, and got my phone message that we were in town and wanted to see him.  He called me back and we got together at his lovely home for lunch and a great afternoon of "catch-up".  After spending his first winter back in Polson, he's not so sure he wants to do it again and is looking at places to take off for at least a few weeks this year to someplace "without snow"!  I think Arizona spoiled him!

 We spent several days with our friends Emily and Pat, including our anniversary.  They were kind enough to take us to a lovely dinner to celebrate our 29th wedded year (forgot to take a picture!) as well as a great home cooked one the next day, yum!  We all drove together to tour Bigfork and see their beautiful Swan River community area.   

When we weren't with them, we were checking out Polson! Well, let me tell you, they have the most unique museum we have come across so far.  The Miracle of America Museum has just about everything ever made or even thought of, from the late 1800's to the 2000's!  ...and in all the details!  Over four acres outside, and I would guess over an acre inside as well.  It took us just about all day to look through it and I'm sure we didn't see everything.  I asked the hostess how long the owner had been collecting all this and she said since he was a very young child, and of course has gotten donations as well. The number of vehicles (of every kind) and weapons alone was mind boggling.  Jack said some of his WW2 collections were things he had never seen (and he's been to numerous museums) and worth quite a bit.  I took a ton of pictures, but here's just a few to give you a little idea...

Once again we lucked out in finding a great "food place"!  I had read some blog somewhere about "what to do and where to go" etc in Polson and it mentioned Betty's Diner, and being a diner, I knew we had to try it.  Just reading the menu, I knew it would be a "winner", and boy, oh boy was it ever!  One of the best burgers we've had in a very long time! YUM!!

Well, all to soon our visit needed to end, as there are only so many days until we need to get to Washington, so hugs were given all around and thanks to Polson for the nice sunshiny days!  We were off on a scenic route following the Bitterroot River along Hwy 200 through the rest of Montana to the eastern side of Washington...

...on the road, Marie

If you would like to see the rest of my pictures, they are on my flickr: Marie Beschen, Album: Montana

December Daze...

Where does the time go?  Being "stationary", it seems like time flies faster than when we are "on the road"!  Last blog, we just got back from Hawaii, and now, here we are at the end of December already!  What have we been doing?

After we painted the wall, and hung some of the art, it was time to "update" our couch.  It just didn't fit in with our new look!  I wanted it to be a plain (off) white.  I've gotten into Pinterest lately, so turned to it, and found a number of blogs on how to reupholster using cotton drop cloths.  Sounded easy enough.  So, two drop cloths, a bunch of Velcro, seam binding, and two weeks later...a "new couch"!   I have a love of 1950's tablecloths, and have collected a number of them to use in sewing projects.  I used several for the arm rests and pillows (reversible), and will again on seat cushions for my dining chairs when I tackle that project (soon).  It's not perfect, but we like it, and it beats spending hundreds of dollars on a new couch!  ;-) 

Thanksgiving brought my older sister Bette out to visit us for a week.  What a treat that was to have her here, even if only for a short time.  We invited another couple to join us for our very small feast and had a lovely Thanksgiving for our first one in our new tiny home.  I was so busy being the hostess, I forgot to take pictures!  But the day was lovely and we all had a great time!

 She and I went flower and plant shopping and had a ball!  She loves plants as much as I do, so I was saving that trip for when she was here.  I have a ton of pots & containers that needed filling, so, off we went to the store to gather up soil and various goodies to fill them.  Oh what fun we had!  Ran out of money before we ran out of ideas...

The week went by way to fast, the sun was shining brightly and each day I took her out and showed her our great park and tried to entice her to move here from rainy, cloudy, cold Washington...hee hee..

December brought the chance to sell some of our stuff!  Twice a year Happy Trails has a Yard Sale!  So...we drug out all our goodies and did our best to sell, sell, sell!  Well, I think the Goodwill did better than we did!  We did manage to sell some (about $100 worth) but not as much as I sure would have liked, but, what we didn't, we mostly hauled off.  My friend Delores has introduced me to "Swip Swap" and others, it's an online selling app that I've been pretty successful with.  I only use it for the larger pieces, as it's not worth it for me to to take pictures and then meet up with someone for items less than $25 (in my opinion).  I've sold about half my items this way...sure wish the other half would go, as I need the space!!  ;-)   It's fun though and you get to meet some nice folks too.  I've also held on to the cloths I'm selling as we have a big clothing sale in January and I'll give that a try next.  What the heck?  Right?

Did I tell you I joined the Theater Group here?  Well, we've started getting ready for the 2019 production.  The theme for it is "Starry, Starry, Night".  I'm in 4 spots.  At our holiday party, our costume designer was talking with each of us, then was asking around if anyone knew how to sew?  Of course my hand went up...next thing I know, I'm helping with reversible satin, 2 color vests!  Oh boy!  As my daughter laughingly reminded me, I have a tendency to "jump right in" and then the next thing I know is I'm in charge!  Oops!
Told her, "Oh no, not this time, I don't know enough about this stuff to ever be in charge, no thank you!"

We've still been working on projects.  The latest is my craft chest.  I inherited my Mother's amour.  She had it for many years, and I've had it for about 50 years.  It was a nice cedar one, but it's been kicked around from house to house and suffered a lot of heat and cold and abuse, and showed it.  It needed a lot of repair work.  Jack always was ready to get rid of it, but it's the only thing I have of hers.  I asked him to fix it, and to put shelves inside and thus, turn it into a craft chest for me.  He did a great job.  I then sanded the whole thing and then painted the outside and voila!  New craft chest!   I was then able to unload two very large boxes into the chest.  Now I can see, and get to all my wonderful crafts easily and joyfully!  Yea!  The only thing left is I want to decoupage a design on the front.  I just haven't found the right one yet. 

Being "alone" this year, it hasn't felt much like Christmas to me, but we did do one thing that was very special.  Our friends told us about a Christmas show called the Celebration of Christmas done at a church in Phoenix.  It has flying angels, live animals, singing, great costumes, etc.  I had shared that I had always wanted to go to the one in Garden Grove CA at the Crystal Cathedral and never made it (and now it's gone).  So, they organized a small group of us, and got tickets and we all went there and then afterwards all went to dinner.  What a great night and wonderful show!  The theme is, people are stuck at the airport on Christmas Eve, with all the flights cancelled due to weather...and various stories with various couples...ending of course with the story of Christmas.  Just beautiful.

We finally did put up a couple of decorations outside.  That's it for this year though, we will do more next year.  2019 will be a better year, for us and for everyone!  Cheers!

Marie

Visiting...

We’ve been doing something different for us…staying in one place for a 
l o n g  time and visiting with friends!  Our usual style is to constantly be on the move, traveling from place to place, seeing as much as we can, but this past couple of months…we’ve just been slugs, and have plopped ourselves down!  First in San Diego CA, then in Surprise AZ. 

We always visit in San Diego in January, as we have lots of family and friends there.  We just stayed there a lot longer than usual this time…although there never seems to be “enough time”.  We did seem to see almost everyone this time.  Being in Arizona has helped, because we’ve made several trips back and managed to see people each trip.

While we were in San Diego we managed a fun side trip to Palm Springs for the weekend with our friends who have a second home there.  We jammed a lot into those two days!  Spent one of them going to Joshua Tree National Park.  We hadn’t been there in years, and what a beautiful day that was!  So much fun to see all the various cacti and gorgeous scenery.  I had to chuckle at the memory of when I used to take my children there when they were little and they used to climb the rocks, and now those rocks are a “big deal” for rock climbers from all over to come to!  (A side note - for those interested, check out this guide: Complete Guide to Joshua Tree National Park by Scott Moses).

While we were visiting our friends, we were invited to brunch by another of our RV’ing friend who is staying at a nearby upscale RV Park in Indio.  Wow, nice to see how the “other half live”!  We’ve seen some pretty fancy RV resorts, but this one beats them all!  Now I know what we can do with our millions when we win the lottery!  ;-)

After leaving San Diego, we moved to Surprise AZ and have been parked next door to our friends who own a site at Happy Trails RV Resort.  It’s been fun being next door “sharing” their patio, friends and good times.  We haven’t ever done that in the four plus years we’ve been RV’ing.  I can see why people settle down in these RV Resorts.  There is a lot of comrade and a sense of community here.  They certainly supply you with plenty of options of things to do, from wood working shop to sewing to crafts to more common ones like pickle ball and golf.  They’ve got it all, and if they don’t, you can start a class yourself!  ;-)  Makes one think about staying…kind of…

We’ve not completely stayed put…we can’t.  We’ve taken a few day trips…

First was to Wickenburg.  That was a fun day!  Cute little western town with lots of great sculptures all along the streets.  Most, if not all, I think, were created by the artist Seward Johnson.  He’s done work all over the world, and his work here is no less remarkable.  His most famous piece here is The Jail Tree, it’s very life like (my picture doesn’t do it justice as the sun wasn’t doing me any favors, I’m sorry to say).

They had a great museum that we really enjoyed going through, Desert Caballeros Western Museum not only had a wonderful western art collection, but downstairs it had recreated the small town of Wickenburg back in the early 1900’s.  They give you headphones to wear that automatically are prompted when you approach a piece, so you don’t have to key it in.  Very nice.

Another fun trip was to see one of our other long time friends who now lives in Prescott.  We’d been here before, but many years ago.  We love this quaint town.  We came on their “4th Friday”, which is when all the galleries stay open late and serve beverages and snacks and socialize.  It was a lot of fun.  Our friend drove us all around showing us all the additions since we last were here, enticing us to consider moving here “one day”, had a wonderful lunch in the old saloon and enjoyed browsing through the galleries that night.  Prescott forest suffered a nasty fire a few years ago, and that was so sad to see the damage it left behind.  It was always my favorite part of the area.

Our friends took us to Cave Creek for a nice day trip.  Next door is the small town of Carefree.  Don’t you just love that name?  They have the “largest sun dial”, so of course I had to go see it and take a picture!  ;-)  It was in their Desert Garden, which was truly lovely and had some of the most unusual cacti I had ever seen.  Cave Creek had some fun shops that we enjoyed moseying in and out of.  We discovered an absolutely wonderful restaurant there, called Tonto Bar & Grill.  Hardly any parking, but boy was the food outstanding!  Beautiful place, right on a golf course so we sat on the patio and really enjoyed the view and the weather.

I’m sure we’ll find a few more “side trips” before we leave.  In the meantime we manage to read, to clean house, to take walks and to relax.  All nice things before we get back “on the road” again.  It’s been a nice re pass.  Something different for us, and different is good.  I think 2016 is going to be a different kind of year for us…I'm looking forward to it.

...kicking back in Arizona,  Marie

If you wish to view the rest of the photos from this trip, you can at my Flickr account at:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/74905158@N04/