It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

Since none of our family lives close by, for Mom, Dad and I, Christmas has always meant going somewhere.  For Mom and Dad it used to mean a plane flight to visit Mom's family or Dad's family.  I think I've mentioned before that I don't fly, so for me, Christmas used to mean a trip to the kennel.

Then, in 2015, everything changed.  Mom and Dad started traveling in the motor home and I get to go, too.  The last 10 days have been very busy for our new Christmas tradition. 

Thursday, December 5 - I got my Christmas visit to the spa for a bath, haircut, pedicure...  you know, the works! 

Friday, December 6 - Mom and Dad had several of the neighbors over to wish them Merry Christmas before we leave. 

Saturday, December 7 - We hosted our friends from the Rainier Ramblers RV Club for their Christmas party.  There were 19 of us for lunch, including me and Hans.  Hans is a service dog who trained at the Prison Pet Partnership, a charity supported by our RV club.  Hans now lives with and helps Bekah, who is a veteran.  Bekah told us all about her life with Hans.  Hans is really smart and helps Bekah with lots of stuff.  He may be smart, but he doesn't know how to Blog. 

Here is a picture of everyone in our club.  If you look close, you can see me in the lower right corner and Hans on the floor left of the coffee table.

Sunday, December 8 - My 13th birthday.  Here's me in front of our Christmas tree.

As soon as Mom took my picture, the Christmas tree came down.  Mom and Dad spent the rest of Sunday and Monday packing the RV.

Tuesday, December 10 - It's departure day!  We had a late start, but finally at 11:00 am we pulled out of the driveway.  This photo was taken shortly after we got on the road.

Mom took a turn at driving along the Columbia River.  It was cloudy, but it stopped raining.  I'm not sure if you can see in the background, but the river was a perfect mirror.  I've never seen it so calm.  I wish that we could have pulled over somewhere to get a good photo, but no where to do that along this stretch of road.

We spent our first night at our usual stop, the Wildhorse Casino in Pendleton, Oregon.  We got in after dark, since we got a late start.   

Wednesday, December 11 - Today we drove from Pendleton to Twin Falls, Idaho.  It was a pretty uneventful day.  We spent our second night at the Snake River Elks.  We stayed there in the summer of 2018.  It's a great place and we highly recommend it, if you are ever in the Twin Falls area.  We just spent a quiet evening watching TV.

Thursday, December 12 - Before we left home, Mom and Dad checked the weather and there was supposed to be a storm move into the Salt Lake City area this weekend.  We were glad that would be ahead of it.  Uh-Oh!  Mom checked the weather this morning and the storm is early.  It looks like we will be driving right into it!!  Near the Idaho/Utah border, we stopped at this rest area.

The highway was just wet and not slick, but we soon drove into fog.  It was hard to see when there were cars ahead of us.  It was a pretty scary for awhile.  Fortunately, by the time we got to Salt Lake City, it was just raining and visibility was better.  We spent the night at the Provo Elks Lodge.

Friday, December 13 - From Provo, we normally take route US Hwy 6/191 over Soldier Summit to I-70 at Green River, Utah.  The forecast for today is snow and probably a lot of it along this route.  There is already a wreck up there and the traffic cameras show the road looking kind of like the rest area did yesterday. 

The road reports look much better to the south.  If we continue south on I-15 to Nephi and then take Utah 28, we can can connect with I-70 at Salina, Utah.  This route is about 60 miles longer, but the road report says that the road is dry.  

While this route is longer, we think the scenery was well worth it.  I'll let you see just a glimpse of all that we saw.

Snow covered mountains just south of Provo

 

This is a very sparsely populated part of Utah.  When we left Salinas, there was a sign "No Services, Next 109 miles".  We were about 60 miles from Salinas and the motor home let out a couple of beeps.  Not a good thing on Friday the 13th.  

There is a little screen on the dash and it said "Low Coolant".  We'd just passed a sign that said "Rest Area 2 miles" and the engine temp gauge showed that was still good, so Dad decided that we'd go into the Rest Area to  check things out.  About 1/2 mile later, the engine quit.  Dad was able to coast us onto the shoulder and out of traffic.  Mom put out our orange cones and Dad checked and we did seem to be low on coolant.  Fortunately, this happened once before, about 2 years ago, so he keeps a spare gallon of coolant in the motor home.  With more coolant, it started right up again and we were on our way.  I'm so glad that my Dad can fix anything.

The yellow sign says "Runaway Truck Ramp"

When we went around the curve.  This guy was having a Friday the 13th day, too.  In case you can't make it out in the picture, it's an 18 wheeler on it's side.  The arrow point to the wheels that are still attached.  There are two HUGE wreckers working to try and get him upright.

A good reminder to pay attention to this sign...

We decided that, overall, we had a pretty good day.

Tonight we are in Moab, Utah.  Mom and Dad went to the auto parts store and bought more coolant.  Dad noticed that the seal on the radiator cap had a small crack, so he bought a new one of those, too.  Hopefully, the new cap will keep the coolant in the radiator and we won't have this problem again, but if we do, we have spare coolant to fill up.