Summer 2015 PNW

Hi guys! Better late than never.  My last blog was before my surgery, was I missed?  Don’t answer; I don’t take rejection well.

CB and I are ensconced at the La Conner Marina RV Park. This used to be called Potlatch RV Park and was pretty junky until the Port Authority took it over and now it is very nice.

We are overlooking the Marina where there are hundreds of boats;  most have undercover moorage.  The big ones are tied up along the perimeter.   Sailboat masts pointing skyward, ready to carry colorful canvas to propel them to ports thruout the West Coast and beyond.   All have names and home-ports emblazoned on the fantail (that would be the boats butt for the un-initiated).

La Conner is where my parents moved to when they retired.  CB and I spent many happy days visiting. My Dad had a large cruiser moored near their home on the Swinomish Channel.  Dad and I would navigate the channel and head out to sea by way of Deception Pass.

Many sailing ships made the fatal mistake of trying to sail through the pass on a changing tide, when water flowing thru reaches speeds of 25 to 30 miles an hour. Going through in a power boat can be very interesting, full throttle and moving forward very slowly while being tossed about due to the severe turbulence caused by a massive amount of water flowing thru a narrow and shallow pass.  It truly is very deceiving.  Those sailors sure were deceived.After negotiating the pass we would head north and spend several days crabbing and fishing around the San Juan Islands.  Lots of good memories.

But I digress. Our trip up from Az. to Wa. was a very long one due to the refrigerator door hinge falling apart.   Connie was thrilled;  she has wanted a new refrigerator since we bought the coach.

My problem was location, location, location. The damn thing fell apart in Jackpot, Nevada (the easternmost part of our trip) and the only place I trust to do the replacement was in Eugene, Oregon (the westernmost part), 615 miles of slow road and a weeks time. Did I mention Eugene was hot? But CB loves that new refer!

Blaine, Washington, finally! The Thousand Trails RV Park here old, in disrepair and open to the general public, half of which resemble something out of Dueling Banjos. 

After two weeks at the TTN Park, we move to my nephew Tom’s house on the Nooksack River.  Tom and Sonia have a backyard view to die for.  The river runs straight at the house and turns just below at a 90-degree angle. If that is not enough Mt. Baker appears at the other end of the river, Wow!

That back yard was party central.  Starting somewhere around 5, adult beverages were wending their way towards several tummies. Going to meetings was discussed. Gary’s 75^th birthday was fun for all, I have a feeling Gary will have trouble remembering putting the empty marshmallow bag on his head.

We did not want to wear out our welcome so we left Tom and Sonia’s and headed back to Blaine and the TTN campground.  After a few days Fran and J.C. Benoit came and camped near us, hoorah!  Great to see our old Happy Trails friends again.  Soon after we had to move to the Mt. Vernon TTN.

The Mt. Vernon TTN is worse than Blaine.  We could not find a space where we could get TV signals, even with 200’ of cable and lots of swear words and work to set up the remote dish.  Add to that the cell phone signal was not enough to get on the Internet!  If all that was not bad enough, the power went out!  If we left Cara in the coach, we were afraid the power would go off and leave her in an un-conditioned home.  F….. that, we’re out of here!  After looking for the perfect place we decided La Conner was where we wanted to be, and it is.  A vend, avidi viche; or something like that……it’s Latin for crying out loud!

Here in La Conner I feel a presence.  My Dad went out to fish from here and never came back; he is still out there somewhere.  On my next birthday I will be 70, a year my Dad never attained.   He was such an avid fisherman; he went out doing what he loved.

Besides my nephew Tom and his beautiful bride Sonia living close by, my niece Tracy lives in La Conner, as does my ex-sister-in-law Earlene.  floating in the air (or so it seems) above Skagit bay,

the coastline of Whidbey Island and the setting sun; it We still see Earlene as family, and better yet, a good friend.

We have had a lot of fun with Earlene and Kevin. We have sumptuously dined at their beautiful Skagit Bay Hideaway, while floating in the air (or so it seems)  on their beautiful deck above Skagit bay, with a background of  Whidbey Island and the red setting sun; the table covered with buckets of the Pacific Northwest’s bounty; crab, shrimp and salmon.  Paired with the perfect wine; it simply

Doesn’t get any better.  Kevin makes a cocktail unlike anything I have ever had before;  gin, lime juice and basil leaves, shaken and strained into a martini glass rimmed with salt and sugar.  Yummy!  It is no wonder the bed and breakfast apartments are constantly full.

All of us took the whale watching boat out of Anacortes.

         Also included were Cory, Emily, Jaidan, Makayla, and Cal, they complete our family on my Dad’s side.  My mom’s relatives are thankfully in California, I could go into that but there are limitations on expletives.  

What fun we had watching the Orcas cavort about; there were many from different pods, diving for food with their tails giving a final push. After awhile they would blast through the surface and let out a large blast of air and mist; what a sight! Talk about fish breath, yuk!

Cara leaves home and we head for ours.

Cara decided to run away from home and join the circus. She saw her chance as a golf cart passed in front of our motor home and took a flying leap aboard only to be thwarted in her escape by Jose who stopped the cart. After a few hugs between the two I put her back in the motor home; she soon fell asleep dreaming of her next adventure.

 Connie and I have spent the last few days deciding whether to go to Washington or simply go back home. Common sense prevailed, so, due to health issues and a new house we head back to Happy Trails. Yipee kiyiyea little doggies.

Did I tell you it is hot in Colorado?

hello from Towac !

Hello from Colorado. We are staying at the Ute Mountain Indian Casino and RV Park in Towac (toyak). $412 with tax, and $150 to play at the casino, What a deal. Just outside Cortez and Mesa Verde State Park. We did the park including hiking into and out of a box canyon to get up close and personal with the remains of the home of Anasazi (ancient ones). I made it without any problems. I am feeling stronger and stronger every day.

Here is the rest of my journey.

This is my first try at writing since my surgery three months ago. I hope that I can still put down on paper what is floating around in my mind and make it somewhat understandable. 

What most people don’t realize, open-heart surgery can affect your brain and thought process, especially so with me since I had a surprise for my Surgeon. They opened me up and “surprise” found a very large aneurism close to the heart valve that was the original reason for my surgery.  

Changing horses in midstream is not something doctors or cowboys enjoy. The anesthesiologist had to increase the poison that keeps you hovering somewhere between sleep and death (this stuff stays with you a long time).  My hero Dr. K  had to harvest more vein from between my knee and groin (what fun it was to remove that stuff they put on that wound).

Then they went about shutting off my heart and putting me on a heart-lung machine (am I now officially a robot).  Replacing my heart valve took some time and fixing the aneurism took longer, so I was doing the robot thing for more time than Dr. K had planed, but what did I know, I was watching a bright light.

Connie said when I came out of surgery they had a hard time waking me up (better part of a day).  This is what caused my “fuzzy brain”, it is still with me, more on that later.

It took me about two days before I realized they were not “out to get me”. It was very weird, I thought everything around me was fake, nothing was real; someone was trying to trick me. I had to pee and tried getting out of bed, to my horror I could not and alarms were going off and someone said “stop fighting and just lay back”; easy for her to say.

Then she (female voice) unhooked most of my tubing (still part robot) and hands grabbed me, lifting me upright. I can sit, wow! This nurse seemed real to me, she asked me question after question, when she was satisfied with my answers, more hands came and helped me get into a wheel chair. She rolled me into what I can best describe as a very large shower.

This is when more reality crept into my mind. This nurse was a very cute young lady; she was taking off my hospital gown, very strange. She turned on the water and started to very carefully wash me from head to toe, very thoroughly, everywhere. Yes; very, very carefully, everywhere. She dried me off. She was asking me more questions the whole time; I guess she was making sure I was still on the same planet. I wasn’t sure. I do remember wondering if she were going to take her cloths off, it would only be fair; I was naked.

Back in bed sleep came easily; I was worn out! I awoke wondering where Connie was; it wasn’t long before I heard her voice as she rounded the corner into my room. I heard angels singing, I have never been happier to see her smiling face; at that moment I knew I was going to make it.

The pain throbbing in my chest helped to bring me the rest of the way to reality. I was still hooked up to various bags and monitors. I was then introduced to my constant companion and savior, the pillow! Any time I had to cough or sneeze I would squeeze the pillow against my chest. Without that pillow, I would experience severe pain (One time I suddenly sneezed without hugging the pillow, I thought sure my chest had exploded and was laying at my feet) and could possibly damage my breastbone. It was severed by the surgeon and then sewn back together with stainless steel wire, the skin over that was stitched and glued together.

The nurses showed me how to get up and out of the bed (I used to think it was easy), then came walking; a few steps at first, then once around the nurses station, what a triumph!

Finally I was back home. My son Bryan had taken two weeks off to help Connie while I was in the land of Oz; he was a great help to both of us. Once I argued with him about my doing some task, he looked at me and quoted the famous line from the movie Captain Phillips, “Look at me, look at me, I am the captain now.”   I wanted to laugh but it hurt; love that kid.

Back to my “fuzzy brain” issue. Our house in festival is a single story, no basement. Connie asked me why I didn’t use the master bath, I told her I didn’t want to go downstairs, it was dark down there. My brain was a little scrambled..,no, a lot scrambled.

I was looking forward to sleeping in my own bed, but it was not to be. Even with a step stool it was too painful getting into and out of.  I lived in my recliner for about a week, when I was finally able to get into and sleep in my bed, it felt like heaven, even though I had to sleep on my back. I was on no schedule; I slept a lot and watched tv into the wee hours of the night.

Connie washed my back and legs when I showered; I asked if she wanted to get naked, no luck. She also put on my special stockings, which was hard to do.

I went to physical therapy three times a week for two months before we took off for the summer. The Doctor said it would be about a year before I totally returned to normalcy. As a parting shot he said, “You should be fine, just stay below 9,000 feet.”  Drat, we are spending the summer in Colorado where everything is high.