"It must make the country a smaller place..."

I had been reading the blogs of full time RV'ers for years before we went full time to learn as much as I could about this lifestyle and all its myriad variations, complications, challenges, etc.  Quite aside from that desire for knowledge I discovered that these people kept crossing paths with each other as they meandered east and west, north and south.  I was amazed at how this happened so often when it seemed many of these people did NOT plan their travels very far in advance.  Well, now I know it has nothing to do with planning....it just has to do with serendipity.  

Monday evening I was cruising my "News Feed" on Facebook and saw a comment by fellow nomads and Nu-RV'ers Dan and Marlene of Mali Mish stating they were in Coeur d'Alene......wait, what?  I immediately added a comment to that thread "SO ARE WE!  WHERE ARE YOU?"  Within minutes they replied that they had actually pulled into our RV Park Sunday night (TLE says she saw an Airstream pulling out of the park that evening, but had no idea it was our friends), but decided since it was so late they would just go over to the Walmart in Post Falls for the night and then look for a place Monday.  They ended up at Blackwell Island RV Park, which, ironically is just across the Spokane River from us....a 3 minute drive.  Of course, Tuesday morning we drove over.....we would normally have ridden our bikes, but the weather looked uncertain at the time, and I wasn't going to "guess".....looked for a while like it might rain again......and visited for about an hour with Dan, Marlene and their three children.  We last spent time with Dan, Marlene and family in Cedar Key for a few days....click here for a link to the blog post about that visit back in January.

The Mali Mish folks!

Last night I got a message on my blog from Laura, one of our blog followers, asking if I knew Dan and Marlene were so close.  When I replied back that we did know, and had, in fact, visited with them that morning, Laura wrote back the response which I made the title of the blog entry.  Her complete reply was: 

"It must make the country a smaller place.  I'm amazed how many meetups there are on all the different blogs I read.  I don't think 20 years ago it would have happened, pre-internet.  Everyone knows where everyone is now."

And that is precisely the point....through blogs, through social media, e-mail, etc. we are able to keep track of where people are we care about, and if our paths happen to intersect, which they do more and more, it just adds that much more to our nomadic experience.  There is a real sense of community out here, and each time we cross paths it gets stronger.  I was telling TLE as we drove back to our coach that even though we have only met Dan and Marlene once before, we have been following their blog for years now, and we feel like we have known them for a long time.  They are very special people, and we are glad to count them among our friends.

Regrettably, we had plans Tuesday to meet other friends for a late lunch/early dinner (Dean and Carole) whom we have literally known since the late 60's....we went to college with them.....and were not able to get back together with our Mali Mish friends.....they are heading out toward Yellowstone Wednesday morning.  The great thing is though, they are from Southern California, just as we are, and will be "home" for the holidays, just as we will, so we have made tentative Jello plans to meetup in Ventura at our mutually favorite place, Rincon Parkway, where we will park right next to the Pacific Ocean for a few days.  In case you may not be aware, the masthead picture at the top of my blog is of our coach at Rincon Parkway back in October of 2009.

Rincon Parkway, Ventura, California

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we said our "until next times" to Dan and Marlene and lovely children to head out to take care of a few errands.  By the time we got back home I got a call from Dean (Dean and Carole) about the timing for our late lunch.....as it turned out the late lunch became more of an early dinner.......we headed over to Toro Viejo, a Mexican restaurant in downtown Coeur d'Alene, around 4:15.  Yelp gives this restaurant 3.5 stars......the food is okay, but not memorable, and the decor is really outdated....I would give it 3 stars for passable Mexican food, and decent service.  We last shared a meal with Dean and Carole last June when we were here visiting my sister.  TLE and Dean were both track stars at our college....Dean was a sprinter....TLE, being the accomplished and versatile person she is, ran the 100 yard, 220 yard (1/8th mile), 440 yard (1/4 mile), and 880 yard (half mile) races (before we converted over to meters), as well as high jumped and long jumped (I think we called it the "broad" jump back then).  At one combined track meet held in England for the three campuses TLE won every single one of these events.....yeah, I know, what a studly woman I married, huh?  She hated wearing track shoes, and would train barefoot, and only wore track shoes on the day of the various track meets.  Anyway, we had a ball talking about our college days, as well as our "current days".    Dean and Carole are off in the next few days on a trip down to Bend, OR, so we will probably not seen them again this time around, but it was so nice to sit and talk for 2 hours!

That was about it for Tuesday, except for the watching of the "finale" show for "So You Think You Can Dance".....next Tuesday we will find out who America voted for based on last night's performances.  On a side note, my Dodgers won again to go 28 games over .500 for a .601 winning percentage, and are now 13.5 games up on the Arizona Diamondbacks with just a few weeks to go in the season.....life is good!

Thanks for stopping by!