Visiting with Matt & Merilee

We've been having a great time visiting with Matt and Merliee this week.

Matt is a terrific cook and we have eaten well this week - spaghetti with his special sauce, lamb chops, bell peppers stuffed with ground turkey, grilled tri-tip steak, and tonight fried turkey breast with all the trimmings - just great!

From Visiting with Matt & Merilee

Monday Mike went with Matt to go shopping at Harbor Freight and to pick up Matt's new executive pickup truck with eco-boost engine.

From Visiting with Matt & Merilee

Wednesday Matt took us to see Merilee at their store, Idaho Bag Lady. It's a really neat boutique that specializes in handbags with exchangeable exteriors (Miche Bag), Lindsay Phillips sandals and shoes with exchangeable snaps and straps, and interchangeable watches and jewelry just to mention some items there.

From Visiting with Matt & Merilee

From Visiting with Matt & Merilee

Matt showed us a marker showing where the Oregon Trail went through their property.

From Visiting with Matt & Merilee

Yesterday Mike and Matt watched feed corn being harvested and mulched in the field across the street from Matt and Merilee's house. It was really interesting to see the corn being cut and then ground all in one operation. Mike took a movie of the operation and you definitely wouldn't want to get in the way of the harvester.

Then Matt took us to lunch at the Spurwing Country Club where we had a great lunch. Matt had the Dagwood sandwich and Mike and I had a chef salad - it was huge and very good.

From Visiting with Matt & Merilee

From Visiting with Matt & Merilee

Matt and Merilee have a Keurig coffee maker and we had decided that whenever our current coffee maker died, we would get a Keurig coffee maker. Well - we decided today to retire our coffee maker and we went to Costco and bought a Keurig B70 coffee maker. I cleaned our old coffee maker and we're donating it to the organization Matt and Merilee donate to - The Arc in Boise.

Today is our last day here and the time has gone by so fast. The last couple of nights we've shown Matt and Merilee some of the photos we took on our trip to Alaska. 

We're hoping to be able to have Merilee and Matt join us sometime on a trip - what a great time we would have together!

Unity Lake State Park to Meridian, ID

We got up this morning at our usual 8:00. Since we only have 125 miles to drive today, we took our time this morning getting ready to leave Unity Lake State Park.

Mike took a few more photos of the campground this morning.

From Unity State Park to Meridian, ID

We stopped at the campground's dump station to empty our holding tanks before driving south on SR-245 and then east on US-26.

We had driven about 20 miles from Unity Lake State Park and stopped at a pull-off on US-26 at 10:45 to have an early lunch. Once we cross the state line into Idaho, we will be in the Mountain Time Zone and we wanted to get our bodies used to a new schedule.

From Unity State Park to Meridian, ID

We're now again driving through the high desert

From Unity State Park to Meridian, ID

with the occasional farm or ranch.

From Unity State Park to Meridian, ID

We saw this sign for Oregon Trail Murals in the town of Vale, but the highway detoured around the downtown area so we didn't see many murals.

From Unity State Park to Meridian, ID

When we were just a few miles from the Idaho state line, we saw fields of onions  near Ontario, Oregon.

From Unity State Park to Meridian, ID

We got onto I-84 at Ontario and drove south and crossed into Idaho about 1:30. I wasn't able to zoom the camera out fast enough to get the whole "Welcome to Idaho" sign.

From Unity State Park to Meridian, ID

From Unity State Park to Meridian, ID

We exited I-84 at Caldwell and stopped at the Flying J to get gas in the RV and after our 2¢ a gallon discount, we paid $3.619 a gallon. Before leaving the Flying J we called our friend, Matt, and told him we were only a few minutes away from his house.

After leaving Flying J, we drove east on US-26 about 10 miles before driving north to our friends' house here in Meridian.

When we got to Matt and Merilee's house at 3:00, Matt was outside using his leaf blower to blow off the driveway where we're parking the RV while we stay here. We disconnected the Vue before Mike backed the RV up near Matt's barn. We leveled the RV and put the bedroom slide out. Mike plugged our electric cord into an outlet inside the barn, so we can run the refrigerator on electricity.

From Visiting with Matt & Merilee

Merilee had been out shopping when we arrived and she came home a little while later. It is so good to see them, we had visited with Merilee 2 years ago when we stopped here with our friends Al and Symphony, but Matt had been away on business then.

Matt is a terrific cook and for dinner tonight we had spaghetti with Matt's delicious meat and clam sauce with duck and lamb sausage he had made and wine, of course.

From Visiting with Matt & Merilee

We spent the rest of the evening catching up with each other's news. Matt told us about his new job and how much he enjoys being able to work from home. Merilee told us about her new business, Idaho Bag Lady, which she's had since last year.

Prineville to Unity Lake State Park, OR

We didn't take any photos yesterday of the campground, so I took photos while Mike was breaking camp.

From Prineville to Unity Lake State Park, OR

We stopped at the Shell gas station in Prineville and got gas in the RV ($3.899 gal). On our way out of town we passed by the Crook County Courthouse.

From Prineville to Unity Lake State Park, OR

The terrain changed from prairie

From Prineville to Unity Lake State Park, OR

to mountains.

From Prineville to Unity Lake State Park, OR

We drove through Picture Gorge (here's a short movie)

From Prineville to Unity Lake State Park, OR

and then back on to prairies and farms.

From Prineville to Unity Lake State Park, OR

We drove through the town of Dayville and took a photo of the post office there that had been a stop for the Pony Express.

From Prineville to Unity Lake State Park, OR

We next drove through the town of John Day and passed by the Saturday Farmers' Market.

From Prineville to Unity Lake State Park, OR

There are towns named Dayville and John Day, the John Day River and the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument named after the early frontiersman John Day.

When we were about 2 miles west of the town of Unity, we turned north onto SR-245 and drove about 2 miles out to the Unity Lake State Park.

From Prineville to Unity Lake State Park, OR

From Prineville to Unity Lake State Park, OR

We arrived at the campground around 12:30 after driving 167 miles from Prineville. We chose campsite #17 which is a pull-through and parked the RV. We filled out a registration form and wrote a check for $22 for 1 night's stay.

From Prineville to Unity Lake State Park, OR

After we leveled the RV and put out the slides, I fixed lunch. There are several RVs here and there is a group of people having a family reunion here this weekend.

We have electric (30 amp) and water hook-ups and we're on a paved pad that is level and grass on both sides of the RV - Tinker REALLY appreciates that.

We are able to see Unity Lake from our RV.

From Prineville to Unity Lake State Park, OR

The state park is a pleasant break after driving through the high desert that we've seen most of today.

The Dalles to Prineville

Since we only had about 140 miles to drive today, we took our time breaking camp at Memaloose State Park this morning.

We stopped at the Safeway in The Dalles to get gas in the RV and to get our 10¢ a gallon discount which we had earned yesterday after buying groceries. Of course, the 10¢ discount is only good for 30 gallons but we still got our 3¢ a gallon discount for the rest of the fill-up. However, the pump cut off at $100 so we got 26.889 gallons for $3.719 (our 10¢ discount) and we got 7.984 gallons for $3.789 (our 3¢ discount).

We left The Dalles at 11:30 and headed east on US-30 through downtown.

From The Dalles, OR

After about a mile we connected with US-197 and headed south through farmland and rolling hills.

From The Dalles to Prineville

A little after 12:00 we found a large pull-off and stopped there to fix lunch.

From The Dalles to Prineville

We drove through the town of Maupin and crossed the Deschutes River.

From The Dalles to Prineville

About 20 minutes south of Maupin we were able to see Mt. Hood to the northwest of us - it was real hazy, but I did manage to get a photo of it.

From The Dalles to Prineville

We arrived at the Crook County RV Park at 3:00. When we went in to register, we also took Tinker. Mike had talked with Karen when he made our reservation and told her we had a Bichon and she said to be sure to bring Tinker in to the office when we registered. Karen has 2 Bichons (the standard Bichon size) and she wanted to see Tinker (who isn't standard Bichon size).

We are in site #68 with full hook-ups (50 amp), wi-fi and basic cable - with tax our site is costing us $29.57 for tonight. I cranked up the satellite dish and found a spot through the trees where we could receive satellite TV reception.

Sightseeing in The Dalles, Oregon

We ate an early lunch today and left the campground at 11:30 to go sightseeing in The Dalles. We pulled over onto the shoulder on I-84 to take some photos of the RV and the Memaloose State Park.

From Ft. Lewis to Memaloose State Park

We arrived at the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center and Wasco County Historical Museum a little before noon.

From Columbia Gorge Discovery Center

The cost of admission for seniors is $10 each. One of the first sights we saw was Pearl, a female American Kestrel or sometimes called a Sparrow Hawk. The American Kestrel is the only kestrel found in the Americas.

From Columbia Gorge Discovery Center

The first exhibit we entered was the one for the Lewis & Clark Expedition. We saw a display of weapons

From Columbia Gorge Discovery Center

and one of navigation tools - sextants, compasses and telescopes.

From Columbia Gorge Discovery Center

The next exhibit was on the Ice Age on the Columbian Plateau. We saw a painting of a Giant Short Faced Bear

From Columbia Gorge Discovery Center

and a comparison between a Giant Short Faced Bear skull and a Black Bear skull. I REALLY wouldn't want to meet up with a Giant Short Faced Bear!!

From Columbia Gorge Discovery Center

We saw exhibits on the Oregon Trail

From Columbia Gorge Discovery Center

and on the history of Wasco County.

From Columbia Gorge Discovery Center

We stopped in at the Basalt Rock Cafe for some coffee while we waited for the Live Raptor Exhibition at 2:00. We sat outside of the cafe on the patio to drink our coffee and Mike noticed these ants that had crawled into the salt shaker and died.

From Columbia Gorge Discovery Center

At 2:00 we walked back into the River Gallery to watch one of the volunteers with "Killer", a female Red-tailed Hawk,

From Columbia Gorge Discovery Center

and "Junior", a Great Horned Owl.

From Columbia Gorge Discovery Center

Both raptors had suffered injuries as young birds and are unable to fend for themselves in the wild. We learned about their different life habits and styles of hunting.

After leaving the Discovery Center, we drove into town to go to the Fort Dalles Museum. On our way to the museum we took some photos of some houses

From The Dalles, OR

and of old St. Peter's (Catholic Church 1897-1970) Landmark which was built in 1897 and can now be rented for weddings.

From The Dalles, OR

From St. Peter's Landmark we drove up some fairly steep hills until we reached the Fort Dalles Museum, which is Oregon's oldest historical museum.

From Fort Dalles Museum

After paying the $4 senior admission for each of us, one of the volunteers gave us a short orientation on the exhibits in the museum.

One of the first things I noticed was this custom-made Hoosier cabinet with all of the compartments and drawers labeled sitting in what had been the kitchen in the Surgeon's Quarters.

From Fort Dalles Museum

We walked through the first floor rooms with exhibits of period furniture and clothing.

From Fort Dalles Museum

We next went upstairs and saw exhibits of more furniture, clothing,

From Fort Dalles Museum

saddles, and this beautiful window.

From Fort Dalles Museum

We walked outside to view the antique vehicles that are stored in a separate building. Unlike the WAAAM museum we visited in Hood River, the autos and wagons here are not restored.

From Fort Dalles Museum

From Fort Dalles Museum

The Anderson Homestead is just across the street from the Fort Dalles Museum, but because it was now 4:00 and the museum was closing we just took photos of the 1895 Swedish log house.

From Fort Dalles Museum

We stopped a couple of more times to take photos of houses we saw on our way back downtown.

From The Dalles, OR

We stopped at the Safeway in town to buy some groceries before we drove back to the campground.