Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy.....

The weather lately has reminded me of the John Denver song from 1974.  I haven't thought of that song for years.  I remember one Christmas morning back in the mid 70's we were at Mammoth Mountain Ski Area in California taking our first ride up the chairlift on a beautiful crystal clear sunny morning around 9 am, and the ski crew had this song blaring over the outdoor speakers as we got off the chairlift at the top of Chair 9.  There was not a breath of wind, and it was one of those magical moments I will never forget.  As we headed off for our first run of the day I could hear these words and the melody gently echoing off the mountain sides as we carved our turns slowly down the hill feeling the warmth of the sun coming at us through the cool, crisp, still air that morning.

Since we returned from Dallas we have had clear blue skies with a lot of sunshine, and a little bit of heat.  It has been in the high 80's, and low 90's meaning we have had to turn on the A/C around 1 pm every day.  Looking at the forecast it appears this last gasp heat spell will end suddenly Monday as temperatures plunge about 20+ degrees into the 70's and 60's.  The temperatures in Sidney, MT (our destination for the sugar beet harvest) have been running 10 degrees cooler than here, and will also drop similarly.  

After writing Wednesday's blog entry I had breakfast, got dressed and drove into Spokane to see my mother, Virginia.  She has a 2002 Volvo  S80 2.9 which she asked me to detail for her before we left town.  We visited for a while, then I pulled her car out of her garage, put our 'Bird in its place, and then drove her car back to Coeur d'Alene where I spent the afternoon mostly trying to clean a few years of brake dust off the chrome wheels.  I think they turned out pretty good, don't you?  The rest of the car did not take that long because she keeps it garaged.  Of course when my Mom says "detail", she is really talking mostly about making the chrome wheels look pretty again, and I am happy to do that for her.

By the time I had gotten home it was after 1 pm, and right smack dab in the middle of the heat of the day, but  I was able to park her car in a shady spot here in the RV park, so at least I wasn't standing in direct sunlight all afternoon.  Nevertheless, by 4 pm I was ready for a shower and a nap.

I can't believe that in just a week's time we will be pulling up stakes and heading 700+ miles east to Sidney, MT.  We have a tentative arrival date of September 23rd, so we'll be leaving Coeur d'Alene by the 19th so we can spread 700+ miles over 5 days of travel, or about 150 a day, which is our preferred rate of travel.  We know where we will be staying now so it is just a matter of starting to put things away, clean up the exterior of the coach, then top off the diesel tank.  We've still got over 1/2 tank, and haven't spent any money on diesel in the past 5 weeks, so we'll top her off, and should be good until after the beet harvest when we begin our trek to Southern California to spend time with our kids and grand kids.

Thanks for stopping by!