Out of string.......

8:50 am - Wednesday - August 19th - Coupeville, WA - 60° F, 90% humidity, wind 3 mph out of the southeast......high clouds today with sun and a forecast high of 69° F.  On this day in 2016 TLE and I were at the Mono Lake Overlook at the top of Conway Summit on our way to Mammoth Mountain from South Lake Tahoe......↴

When staying in Coupeville at our friends' property we love to walk out to the point.....it's about 2 miles round trip and gives a little more perspective to our location.....

.....that house in the center of the picture above is Bob and Karen's home.....the Newell is out of sight behind the house and to the left a tad.....

 Harrington Lagoon

 The inflow/outflow of Harrington Lagoon

....we made the round trip walk around 9 am, and by 10:30 am I was again working with the Stihl string trimmer along the driveway, and when I ran out of replacement string I got out Bob's Stihl hand blower to clear all of the grass, gravel and sand debris from the garage area, and down the driveway about 1/3 of the way to Harrington Lagoon Road.....

 The edge of the long driveway is being exposed once again

 The Stihl FS-131 with new string installed

 The new spool of trimmer 'string'....that will last a while!

......that took me about 90 minutes, and then I turned my attention to turning our American trailer around utilizing the amazing Trailer Valet so that when we are ready to egress from Bob and Karen's property I can pick it up with the Newell more easily.  The tongue was facing due north, and now it is facing west toward the driveway that we will use to leave the property......we (the Newell) are on the east side of the barn in the background....

....later on in the afternoon Bob and I drove into Freeland (to the south) to the ACE Hardware Store to buy some more Stihl trimmer string so I may finish cleaning up the rest of the driveway, plus the parking area on the north side of the house before I begin pressure washing everything later in the week.

While I was working TLE went out and picked four cups of blackberries and made a blackberry crumble pie for dessert.....

....of which we partook with Bob and Karen when we went down to the house to watch another couple episodes of 'Travelers' on Netflix.....yum!

Thanks for stopping by!

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Getting trimmer.......

7:14 am - Tuesday - August 18th - Coupeville, WA - 60° F, 83% humidity, wind 11 mph out of the southwest.....heavy cloud cover today with a forecast high of 68° F....the view this morning.......↴

.....on this day in 2012 we visited Multnomah Falls (Oregon) for the first time........↴

Bob and Karen own a little over 5 acres here in Coupeville and there is never a shortage of yard work.  I love spending time when we visit doing things to help them keep their environment looking good.  When we first arrived I asked them if I could do some weed whacking, and perhaps pressure wash their driveway while we were here, and they gladly accepted my offer.  Bob has a barn full of late model Stihl power tools (weed whackers, tree trimmers, chain saws, blowers, edgers, shrubbery trimmers, etc.) that would rival, or exceed what most campgrounds in which we have toiled over the years have in stock, and a trailer with a state of the art commercial pressure washer replete with heated water, which I have used in years past to pressure wash their pavement, and even steam clean my radiator.

Around 10 am I met Bob at the upper barn and he showed me how to use the weed whacker.  Once I was oriented I was off to the races spending about 2 hours cleaning up the wooden stair cases on the property, trimming weeds around their three storage units, and cleaning up the edge of the driveway.......  

.....I even took time to clean the weeds out of the cracks in the pavement.  Once all the trimming is done I'll fire up the pressure washer and clean the rear patio, and all of the paved driveway down to Harrington Lagoon......

.....after that I took a long, hot shower, then retired to the 'Lido Deck' to read, and nap.  My current book is 'The Time it didn't Rain' (Elmer Kelton)....a very interesting book about the terrible west Texas drought in the 1950's which lasted some 7 years.

TLE and I ate in for dinner....we have a lot of leftovers from our past few dinners....and then joined Bob and Karen in their living room to watch a series on Netflix called 'Travelers'......very intriguing!

Life is good here on the banks of Harrington Lagoon, and we are loving the much cooler weather.....the next 15 days shows an endless string of days with highs in the mid 60's....so glad we are not in SoCal where I saw the temps are over 100° F the past few days, and more of that today (Tuesday) with a forecast high of 109°.  Our highs and lows here in Coupeville are about 8-10 degrees apart.

Thanks for stopping by!

When you shop Amazon, please use our link (below) to access their website.......we will appreciate every purchase you make using our Amazon Affiliate link, and  remember, using our link will not add one penny to your purchase, plus we will receive a small commission which over the course of a year adds up to enough to by a tank of diesel for which we thank you very much!

PBY.......

8:13 am - Monday - August 17th - Coupeville, WA - 61° F, 81% humidity, wind 7 mph out of the southwest......clear, blue skies today with a forecast high of 71° F.....the view this morning.......↴

....on this day in 2014 I was riding my Intense 5.5 MTB at Mammoth Mountain Bike Park....I had a funny crash (not really hurt).......↴

I haven't had my trailer set up for full use since May when we were still in Wittmann, AZ, and since we are going to be here two weeks I decided to pull everything out, including my Cannondale Bad Boy, which I have not ridden since I got my eBike........

....I still need to deploy my Black & Decker Workmate, and bench grinder, but I'm getting there!  While I was toiling in the trailer TLE was defrosting our Dometic Classic refrigerator.  Back in May when we were at Goosenecks State Park she had me recoat one of the wire shelving units with Plasti-Dip (I wrote about that here).  It worked so well I bought 4 more cans from Amazon and had them delivered to our friends' home in Meeker, CO (John and Lisa) expecting to do the rest of them, but other things intervened, and I never got to it.  Well, no time like the present, so I asked her for the worst one, which wasn't nearly as bad as the first one, and I got to work spraying a new coat of white rubber on the rack......

.....it only seems to take about a third of a bottle to do one rack, so I may have way more Plasti-Dip than I will need the rest of my life......lol.......

......by the time I finished it the flying conditions were still perfect so I relaunched our Holy Stone drone to get more pictures and video......I managed to get the drone up to just under 100' and got some pretty spectacular pictures.......

 
....we needed to run a few errands in Oak Harbor so after putting away the drone we headed out in the VW.  We visited Walmart for a few things, then Ace Hardware where we picked up a few wasp traps to deploy around the area where the Newell is parked.  As we were walking out of the hardware store I suddenly realized there was a PBY parked in the lot across the street.  This is a World War II flying boat used extensively in the South Pacific, and was the most widely used seaplane in World War II.  The first two letters stand for Patrol Bomber, and the 'Y' was the letter designation assigned to Consolidated Aircraft, its manufacturer. Why is this a big thing for me?  Well, my father was a Machinist Mate, 2nd Class in the Navy, and he was trained specifically to work on PBY's.  He was stationed in the South Pacific at a rear base helping keep these planes flying.  The last time I saw one of these in the flesh was when I was 10 years old......

 The 'PBY'

.....to make it even better there is a 'PBY' museum across the street.....none of this was here the last time we were in Oak Harbor pre 2014

.....these planes were slow, but had an effective flying range of over 5,000  without refueling....

TLE snapped this picture of me in front of the plane

....we went in the museum and talked with Wil, one of the docents, and he advised me if I came back on Wednesday they would take me inside the fenced area to get a closer look at the plane.

From there we hit up Autozone for some coolant for the Beetle....yup, VW's require special coolant.  Finally we did some grocery shopping at Haggan's (owned by Safeway, but a little higher end).  We didn't arrive back home until after 2:30 pm.  After putting away our purchases I retired to the 'Lido Deck' to read, and enjoy the ever amazing view.  Around 5 pm Bob came up from the main house to watch me fly the drone one more time......

 Bob and I (Karen is seated next to the Newell)

 ...ultimately TLE came out with Karen to watch the pilot in action

......at Haggan's we had purchased a beautiful Coho Salmon filet to grill for dinner.....TLE wanted to introduce our hosts to her marvelous Celantro/Lime grilled Salmon.  I grilled the filet around 6:45 pm, and then took it down to the main house where we had a wonderful, slow paced dinner and much conversation.....we bid our adieus around 9:15 pm and headed for the barn.......the tail end of a beautiful sunset was in progress.......

.....thanks for stopping by again!

When you shop Amazon, please use our link (below) to access their website.......we will appreciate every purchase you make using our Amazon Affiliate link, and  remember, using our link will not add one penny to your purchase, plus we will receive a small commission which over the course of a year adds up to enough to by a tank of diesel for which we thank you very much!