Cathy & Jan's Travels: December 2014

We revisited the first lighthouse that got us started on our passion with lighthouses - Admiralty Head Lighthouse - Whidbey Island, WA

We are now back in Dickinson, TX in our usual winter RV Park for 2 months for our annual doctor visits etc. In the last 6 months we have traveled from Oregon thru Washington to Montana and thru Wyoming and Colorado on our way back to Texas. Here are some of the highlights of our travels:

We continued our multiple visits with relatives and friends and made over 20 stops this year to visit with various friends & relatives in the Western USA.

We attended our first National Park Travelers Club annual meeting (held in Seattle area this year (next year it will be in El Paso, TX) – This club promotes visiting National Park Service Sites and provides a list of all of the locations where one can get National Park Service Passport Stamps. They also give out awards to those that have reached various milestones in their quest in collecting the Passport Stamps. One new award this year (The Flat Hat Award) is given to a National Park Service employee that goes out of their way in helping a visitor. We were fortunate to visit with the first awardee when we later stopped at a site in Ohio.

We revisited the following great and beautiful National Parks:

North Cascades in Washington State.
Glacier - we again took the shuttle up the Going To The Sun Highway to Logan Pass to see the mountain goats.
Yellowstone - quite crowded since we visited there in early August
Grand Tetons, and
Rocky Mountain - we again drove over the great Trail Ridge Road

We visited 15 National Wildlife Refuges and have now collected at least one National Wildlife Refuge Passport Stamp in each of the 49 states (only one left is Hawaii). The one that we liked the best and saw the most wildlife was the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge in Utah (where the Bear River empties into the northern end of the Great Salt Lake)

One of our major goals in our travels is to visit and get passport stamps of the National Park sites (especially all of the sites in the lower 48 states). We almost reached our goal in 2012 when we visited Cumberland Gap National Historic Park on the border of Kentucky, Tennessee, & Virginia, but the Cesar Chavez National Memorial had been newly designated in California just 3 weeks earlier. Then, in 2013, three more sites were designated in the east (Delaware, Maryland, and Ohio). This year we visited the Cesar Chavez site in California, but still had the 3 sites in the east left to visit. Since we do not plan to go east for a couple of years and thinking that they may designate a new site at any time, we decided to make a quick 4 day / 3 night trip from Denver (by air) to visit the remaining 3 sites in the east. So at the beginning of September, we flew to Washington, DC & visited the First State National Monument in Delaware, Harriet Tubman Underground National Monument in Maryland & then flew to Ohio to visit the Charles Young & Buffalo Soldiers National Monument. Fortunately, no new sites had been designated before our last site and now we can say that we have reached our goal of visiting all of the 365 National Park Service sites in the lower 48. It has taken many miles to see all of these places, but we have learned so much and have been places we probably would not have gone in this great country of ours.

After Denver, we attended our 9th consecutive rally of the New Horizons Owners Group held this year in Amana Colonies in Iowa. This group is made up of people that own New Horizons 5th wheels made in Junction City, KS. We are still living our original 5th wheel made in 2002 & have no plans to get another one since we still enjoy what we have. We did provide some unplanned excitement when a dust devil (whirlwind) came thru on a clear day and broke our awning arms and then laid the awning over the top of the rig. It was really weird since there was no wind before or after the dust devil and no other trailer was affected.

This next year we are going on our long planned first trip to Hawaii for 3 weeks in April and visit the 6 main islands - of course we plan to visit all of the six National Park Service sites, visit the National Wildlife Refuges that are open to the public, and take photos of as many lighthouses as possible. Plus, we might even get to see a beach or two. After this we plan to travel less than usual and spend most of our summer and fall in Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico.

Hope that all of you are doing well.

Sunset at Haystack and Needles Rocks at Cannon Beach in Oregon

Tillamook Rock Lighthouse - Oregon - Note: At one time this was turned into a columbarium (place to store a person's ashes) - but this venture has since been abandoned.