July 4th, 2014

We will not forget July 4th, 2014. It started out great! We went to George, Washington which is about 10 miles from Quincy to go to their 4th celebration. How perfect to go to George Washington for the 4th of July!

George, Washington 4th of July

They started with the parade which started with presenting the flag and then came all the old tractors! Pretty cool.

John Deere

We meant some of the old timers in town. After the parade they had a vendor fair in the town square. Of course Patty had to get some Kettle Korn. :)

Vendor Fair

They also had a lot of food booths. We thought about eating here, but there were LONG lines at all the booths so we decided to pass. The advertised the "Worlds Largest Cherry Pie", with George himself serving it up. Free slices but if you wanted ice cream on top that was .50 cents.

Big Cherry Pie

Fireworks were not until late so we headed back to Quincy. Unfortunately, that was the end of a good day. We got T-boned by a Honda Civic car going at least 50 mph. The good news is that God was watching over all of us! Patty and I were completely unharmed.

The young man in the Honda was a little dazed and bit his tongue a little but other than that was completely unharmed also! We thank God for everyones safety. This could have been MUCH worse!!!

Here is the young man's car. As you can see the front end is gone. Both his airbags deployed and broke his windshield.

1997 Honda Civic

This is the Huntram. I saw him coming right into my door. Patty remembers hearing me say, "Oh No"!

Huntram

It doesn't look that bad in the above picture, but you can see the creases in the rear panel. The hood was also tweaked. This is because the frame was bent.

Bent Frame

Due to all the damage the adjuster declared the Huntram totalled. Within 7 days we received a very fair check and went and bought Huntram II.

Huntram II

Wenatchee Dodge did not have the truck we wanted. We wanted the High Output Cummins engine with 850 FP Torque and the new Aisin 6 speed Auto Trans. We wanted leather heated and cooled seats, and of course the 1 ton dually per our good friend RV Bill.

They had to get the truck for us out of Kellogg, Idaho. They still sold us the truck at $1000 under invoice and still we got the factory $3000.00 rebates which means in essence $4000.00 under invoice. We wouldn't have chosen this Western Brown color, but it is beautiful. We have had four people stop us in shopping malls to tell us how beautiful the color is.

Western Brown Dually Huntram II

As it turns out it matches up nice with our 5th wheel, and with more horsepower and torque and the MUCH better transmission it really pulls the trailer so much better!

Huntram with the Cameo

The day after the accident I got the call that my brother Bruce who is two years older than me had a major stroke in Pahrump, Nevada. He was now in a hospital in Las Vegas.  I spent two solid days on the phone with the doctors and nurses, my parents and of course I was still working on finding a truck.

After thankfully realizing that my brother would make it, my parents decided to fly to Vegas.This was a difficult time for family and Patty and I decided we really needed to be there. We had a rental car because of the accident so we decided to drive the 1100 miles trading off driving to Vegas. We left Sunday night at 9:00 and got to Vegas Monday at about 4:30 in the afternoon. We picked up my parents at the Airport Tuesday morning.

It was a difficult several days but it was right for all of us to be there. Thankfully Bruce is improving. I know everyone's prayer has really helped and I thank you for that. Time is on our side here!

Mom and Day in Vegas

On Thursday evening we took my parents back to the airport to fly back to California. Our son Matthew and his fiance Jasmine picked them up and drove them back home. We went back to the hotel and got to bed early so we could leave to drive back to Washington at 4:00AM.

Up at 3AM we did leave Vegas right at 4AM. There are fires all through Eastern Washington. When we were almost home we got turned around at a road block because of one of the fires. After 1000 miles we were forced to detour 75 miles out of our way!

Fire Sky

  We finally got home at about 11:30 Friday night.We were exhausted but glad to be back in our beds after the 1200 mile drive. Do not recommend it, but it was necessary.

God Bless you and continue to pray for Bruce.

Love you,

Brian and Patty

Crescent Bar, Washington

Crescent Bar is about 10 miles west of Quincy, Wa right on the Columbia River. Normally it is a big tourist resort area, but the river in this area is very low because they discovered a design fault in one of the dam's down stream from the resort. They are lowering the amount of water coming to the dam so they can fix the problem.

For us from SoCal it still appears that there is a lot of water here, but they are not allowing anyone on or near the water until it is fixed. This is severely hurting the economy here.

This is our campsite #54 at the Thousand Trails Crescent Bar campground.

Crescent Bar Thousand Trails

The next day we went to the Gingko Petrified Forest. We had been to the Petrified Forest in New Mexico, but had no idea there was also a petrified forest up here in Washington! 

Gingko Petrified Forest

Neat the visitor center there were some petroglyph rocks. These were real petroglyphs, but had been moved from their original site because they would have been underwater from the damming up the river.

Indian Petroglyphs

We went to the petrified trail. You start up the hill from the building you see below.

Hiking the trail

This is an Interpretive Trail. You take a brochure and follow the trail. There are many types of petrified woods here.

Interpretive Trail

We got to the top of the mountain and it started to rain. Who would have thought, rain in Washington!! Problem is we didn't have jackets or coats with us! We carefully started back down the hill because the gravel trail started getting slick.

Top of trail

We got down safely although a little bit wet. We did stay cool thought!

Bad Hair Day! :)

On Monday we decided to go to the Grand Coulee Dam. At 10:00 PM they have a lazer light show on the dam face, so we did not go early. On the way we stopped at Dry Falls.

Dry Falls is a dormant falls that was the largest falls in the world when it was active.

Dry Falls

At five times the width of Niagara Falls it is or was huge! 400 feet tall and 3.5 miles wide.

Dry Falls

We continued on to the Grand Coulee. This is a major piece of engineering. Here the water is not yet spilling over.

Grand Coulee Dam

We took the tour of the hydropower plant. Because they are doing some fixes right now it was not a complete tour. At least it was free. :)

Water Turbines

Usually about half an hour before the laser show they start spilling water over the top. Right now the water is only about four feet from the top, so to prevent flooding they starting letting water out about 4 hours early.

Water Flowing

The white of the water works as a screen for the laser show. Right at 10:00PM the show started. It is about a 45 minute animated laser show. Talks abut the history of the dam and the impacts good and bad. Pretty impressive.

Laser Show - Eagle Soaring

We really like Crescent Bar. Probably the only thing that surprises us is that we were not aware that the eastern part of Washington is a desert. Not at all green like we remember it on the western part that we have seen before. Yet there is still so much water here, even in the eastern part of the state!

Well that is it for now.

Next we will talk about July 4th and the accident that totalled our Huntram truck. 

Also continue to pray for my brother Bruce...

Love you,

Brian and Patty