Indio, CA Square Dance Festival 2008

The Twelfth Annual Riverside County Square and Round Dance Festival held in Indio, CA was lots of fun! It was great to see old friends and make new ones, and the line-up of callers was spectacular. Over a thousand dancers attended, and many were in an RV. Marshall Flippo, Mike Sikorsky, Johnny Preston, Gary Shoemake, Wade Driver and Tony Oxendine called, and Ray & Virginia Walz, from Tucson, cued the round dances. (A second cuer Linda & Bill Maisch were also there, however we didn't dance with them very much.)

We arrived on Thursday the 13th of November, were assigned to a parking spot with power and water out under the palm trees on the entrance avenue. We found a congenial group of friends already enjoying 'happy hour', and joined them until time to get ready for that evening's dance. Milt Rogne gave us coupons for free date shakes in a neighboring burg, which we had at lunch time on Saturday along with Jim and Peg Opperud, when we needed a break from dance.

First picture is a shot taken in the Taj Mahal, the smaller of two ballrooms for the festival. You can't see all the squares on the floor, but I'm guessing there were about 20 or 25. This hall was mainly used for square dancers who have learned higher levels of dance than the "plus" level we dance.

Here's Eloise with long time friends Jim and Peg Opperud during a break in the action. This is the main dance hall and shows people out round dancing between the square dance 'tips'. On the left in the next picture is Marshall Flippo, who has called square dance for 58 years, still brings in the crowds on his world tours. On the right side is Johnny Preston, in my mind the most versatile caller I've heard. He can sing any genre of music, and make it sound great. During the after party on Saturday he sang "If I Were A Rich Man" a song from the musical Fiddler On The Roof.

Gary poses with Jim and Peg. Bill and Jerene Knicker we first met and camped with last year during the Yuma Festival, their photo was pretty dark but thanks to Adobe Photoshop we were able to improve it some. Next is the main hall with square dancers, and I don't know how many squares are there on the floor. [If there were 1000 dancing, and 25 squares are in the smaller hall, 800 people could be dancing!]

Lorne, Bill and Dean take a break. A photo of Ardith and Ron is a little blurry, and our Adobe Photoshop helped only a little with that. Jim & Val...the first time we've met, but hopefully not the last time we can dance together! Joan and Lorne are two solo dancers, but they seemed pretty, um, chummy. Let's start a rumor...Not.

Another shot in the main hall. Julia and Dean are big into rodeo's during the off-dance season. Ray Walz lives in Green Valley and cues in the Tucson area, and is the round dance cuer for Marshall Flippo at Rincon West RV park in Tucson. We can often get to dance with them when we stay in Benson, AZ where my brother George and his wife Wilma have lived for many years.

Here's a fun couple, Milton (Milt) and Carol Rogne. They're Canadians but we try to overlook that. They've rebuilt a wonderful 1928 Ford 1/4 ton Pickup, which is show worthy. Another fun couple to dance with is Fran and Ted Dusek even though they are tennis players. Callers Gary, Mike and Wade pose for Eloise.

Here's a group picture of many who were in the individual pictures. And, Richard and Nadene, excellent dancers who we are priveledged to dance with in Tucson. Ray and Virginia Walz perform during the after party on Saturday night. Mike Sikorsky during a singing call. He really gets to gyrating. Milt made the comment "Mike's the only guy I know that can wear his trousers out from the inside." Johnny Preston singing a solo at the after party.

All of the staff, cuers and callers perform a skit. It didn't make much sense to Eloise or I, but it was entertaining to see them doing such crazy antics.

We had a great time at the festival. The dance floor was really good. One night ice cream and different toppings was served, another night pizza, the last night cake and pumpkin pie. The facility was pretty torn up for interior road construction, but they made provisions so to cause the least inconvenience to attendees.

Thanks for tuning in on our blog!

Skagway to Home

Hi everyone.

The first two pictures were along the road after we left Skagway. It has been too long to remember just exactly where but thought you might enjoy them.

It has been a long dry spell, at least for the blog. We arrived back in the lower 48 on September 14. The first picture is of the fox we talked about before Stewart on the Cassiar Highway. It was a scruffy thing, but what a fluffy tail!

Next is the last glacier we saw, named Bear Glacier, on the way out of Stewart. We made a special point to go to an area famous for watching salmon run. Stewart Canada and sister city Hyder, Alaska. Well, here's a picture of what we saw...three salmon! The ranger on duty in Hyder said it had been a dismal summer for the salmon run. They had a pretty elaborate walk way for the viewing. Too bad there were no salmon. There was a small grocery store in Hyder , we were in need of milk and thought we might be staying a couple of days. Milk was $6.00 per HALF Gallon. I don't know if it would have been any cheaper at the store in this picture, probably not but we thought you might like to see the store anyway.

The city of Stewart had this board walk for viewing wildlife I assume. We didn't see any but needed some exercise so we walked the entire walkway. Sorry the picture doesn't show it all but apparently they are going to build more. It came to this bridge and just stopped.

Later we ate at this "Bus Restaurant". We had hoped for a last taste of halibut and chips, but she was out of both. Now, 2 months later, neither of us can remember what we ordered except that she had macaroni salad.

This black bear was along the Cassiar highway on our way out.

The border crossing back into Washington at Oroville was mostly uneventful, the only thing they took from us was a lime! So much for my Corona beer. The Okanagan valley (highway 97 from Prince George to Washington) was splendid scenery. Since we didn't get around to making notes on our way home I will just briefly summarize our flight home. I say flight because it seemed like we didn't care about seeing much of anything at that point, we were just ready to get back to our bigger motorhome which we have named "Allie."

We bought a big box of apples in Washington (yum), and also spent a little time at Dry Falls (notice the moon coming up).

We stopped in Boise to see the capitol. We were disappointed to find that renovation was in progress on a very large scale. Of course we didn't know that until we had paid for 2 hours of parking. We spent some time walking around it, looking at the statues that were across the street and admiring the flowers. We have included a couple of pictures of the progress as well as one of the flowers. Be sure to enlarge them so you can see the man working in the top of the Capitol Building. I'm glad I didn't have his job.

We soon found out that it was a good thing it was cool all summer in Alaska. The heat suddenly became a problem. We might have mentioned, we had some problems when we first got "Gertie", trying to seal out all the heat and fumes from the engine compartment. We thought we had the problem pretty well solved until we hit the heat in Washington, Nevada and AZ. The worst was about the time we arrived in Las Vegas. We got into a traffic jam caused by construction. At that point we got out Street Atlas and found a way around the worst of it and headed out of town as quickly as possible.

We did stop at Hover Dam. The traffic still has to cross the dam and we were stopped but not for long. It is really incredible to see the beginnings of the new bridge that will eventually eliminate crossing the Dam. We have included some pictures, one that shows its location to the dam, a couple that show both ends of the dam.

We arrived in Benson on Sept 19th and were glad to be back in Allie, even if it did seem like everything needed work. The front A/C seemed to be running but the fan didn't come on. It was a couple of days before we got a chance to check it out but when we did it was just a matter of taking off the inside cover and turning the fan a few times. Lucky for us.

Then it was time to work on the water softener. Just as we were leaving we had found that there was a problem with it. After talking to Russ at the factory we decided it needed new seals. When they arrived and we opened it up we found the seals were okay but there was some other problem. Ended up sending it to the factory for service. It has now arrived and is working like a charm.

Another thing we found, just as we were leaving, was Gary's new camera didn't seem to adjust fully to wide angle. It was too late to get it fixed then and we knew we would need the telephoto on it so we suffered through. We just used my camera for the wide angle stuff and still were able to use his for the stuff that was further away.

Anyway, things are running pretty smoothly by now. We spent one day organizing the basement. Now it is time to pull everything out and really get organized inside while Gary spends his days cleaning and waxing the outside. Tonight he is off singing with the Barbershop Chorus.

We are certainly enjoying being back in AZ when it comes to shopping for fruits and veggies. I do sympathize with Alaskans when it comes to grocery shopping.

I got interrupted again and didn't get this posted. It is now Nov 9 and we are about ready to head for the Square Dance Festival in Indio, CA. We have moved to the Escapee Park here in Benson for a few days while they pour our new concrete slab. We are looking forward to using it when we return.

Since we came back we attended a couple of Antique and Custom Car shows and watched the parade during the Benson Stagecoach Days. Gary has enjoyed singing with his brother and the Benson Barbershoppers. Next year their sound at the Stagecoach Days should be much improved with their new amplifier and mikes. We are looking forward to the square dance weekend trip to Indio, CA, and then returning to Apache Junction for a winter of dancing.

GARY'S FINAL THOUGHTS ON THE ALASKA TRIP: This was without a doubt the most spectacular adventure I've ever had. Canada is indescribably lovely. Alaska is a heck of a place. If you haven't been there, get there as soon as you can; everything changes with time. Our choice to take up an old small RV was the best choice for us. It was easy to park...anywhere! No toad to hassle with. Cheap to put on ferries. Down side was that it was a little tight inside, and it required more maintenance than costlier/bigger rigs. The fact that we went without time constraints, without reservations anywhere, without any idea where we would be the next week, gave us the flexibility to not get excited when we had some mechanical problems. Actually, I miss Gertie!! My brother, George, has her now, and we hope he has as marvelous a time with her as we did. Fuel was terribly expensive the whole trip. Food was extremely high in both Canada and Alaska. But consider that we seldom had to pay for an RV site in a campground. That really offset somewhat the high prices. It was one of the high points of the trip to find a scenic place at the end of the day, and just stop over! How great is that!? We won't likely make such a trip again, but it was super fun to do once! The memories will be with us both forever. Thank you for coming along!

SKAGWAY

Skagway

I think we mentioned that we would be leaving Haines on the 10 pm ferry, September 4^th. With no glitches, we made the ferry, it cost $138 for the two of us and Gertie. I think she enjoyed the rest and it cost about $100 less than it would have cost for gas to make the trip from Haines back around to Skagway. Ferries at night are really different. We had been waiting a half hour or so, thinking we would never get underway when Gary finally went to check things out and discovered we were moving. You just couldn’t feel it. Until we got where we could see the lights of Skagway you had no sensation of movement.

We found a parking space and settled down for the night. It wasn’t nearly as cold as the other places we had been. The next morning we decided to go out to breakfast…a mistake! I guess there are normally 2 restaurants that serve breakfast but on this particular morning there was only one. We had hoped to have sourdough pancakes, we had seen them advertised in lots of places. Whoops, we waited too long. This place didn’t have them so we settled for buttermilk pancakes and an omelet.

The Park Service has purchased several buildings in Skagway to provide a National Park. They had a movie about the early days and provided guided tours. One of the buildings was a museum, showing the amount of supplies that were required by the Mounties to cross the pass, and one was a saloon that had been restored. The restoration of the saloon was done without any pictures, just using period materials, things found within the building and descriptions from people that had been around during that era. They found wallpaper within the structure and were able to identify it, even found the manufacturer still had the plates and were able to copy it exactly. The bar & bar-back was found and been brought in from Kansas. After the restoration was completed someone came across an early photo and they had really done a great job. There weren’t any differences that we could see between the picture and the restoration.

The log cabin was the original one, built by Captain Moore and had been his home. He had homesteaded the area, predicting there would be a gold strike and had built the first trail. Because of the numbers of people coming through Skagway, then onto the trail and because of the weather that year, it didn’t hold up. People came into the area and started building on Moore’s property. He told the people that the property they were building on was his, but they built anyway. A pretty shrewd guy, he was the one they had to buy their lumber from! Shrewd, because later, he got compensation of ¼ of the appraised value of every building in town!

He later built along the side of the log cabin. That home was furnished as it would have been at that time. The most interesting piece of furniture was this table. The legs were made of horns. At some later date the cabin was moved over a little to better display the original cabin.

Another building still in town is where “Soapy” Smith. The ranger was pretty good at telling stories about him even though the building was nothing to brag about. He was real sleazy guy. He was killed in a gunfight with one of the town’s citizens by the name of Reid. They both fired at the same time, and Soapy was killed outright, Reid died a week or so later. The town was so proud of Reid, that they put on his tombstone: “Gave His Life For The Honor of the Town”. At the cemetery is another tombstone put up in honor of a Lady of the Night: “She Gave Her Honor For The Life Of The Town”

The lady with the horses & buggy were all around town. I assume she was doing rides but we never saw anyone riding. Maybe she was the Madam, they had tours of the brothel. The three story building was called to our attention on the National Park tour. It appears to be 3 story but in fact is only 2. They did that to make their businesses show up. When people came in and asked for the 3^rd floor corner room they would just tell them that room was already rented but the 2^nd floor had a room available. I guess their guests never saw if from the angle we did.

The Skagway Visitor’s Center is in the Arctic Brotherhood Hall It’s façade has almost 8,833 pieces of driftwood sticks in a mosaic pattern with the Brotherhoods A B symbols and letters, a gold pan with nuggets.

The town is absolutely full of jewelry stores. It seemed like about every block had 2 or 3. One of the interesting points was the sign, painted on the side of the mountain above the town. It was for a Curio/jewelry store. The sign was much more impressive than the store itself. The sun did come out while we were there, it was a very pleasant visit. Here is where we spent the 2^nd night in the edge of Skagway. From there we walked up along the railroad tracks to the cemetery. As we were headed there we got this picture of the train. We also saw this machine and the operator was taking a break. We stopped to talk to him a bit. You have probably all seen shredders. Well, this one was the daddy of all shredders. It belonged to the railroad and they had this big pile of stuff to be shredded, including railroad ties. He said it would take a week or two to finish that entire pile. I was curious about the metal that is always involved with shredding a pile like that and whether the railroad spikes had to be removed. He said it doesn’t even phase it and showed us some of the stuff it had spit out.

The next morning was again a pretty day and we started to drive to Dyea, we wanted to see the famous Chilkoot Pass that the men had to tote a ton (literally) of stuff up the steep mountainside. They had to make many trips toting their belongings up that mountain. As we drove out of Skagway toward the ghost town, there was a beautiful overlook, it looked down on the airport as well as the Skagway. We even saw a helicopter, it looked like he was going to land on the water, maybe they were seeing whales, just don’t know, that is a guess. When we stopped at the overlook there was a pickup stopped, headed back toward Skagway. We asked about the road to Dyea, about whether you could see the pass, etc. They said you just see where the trail goes into the woods, and that the road was not very good. We decided we had seen enough, we were still having problems with our coughs so didn’t want to try to do a vigorous hike. So we headed out of town, toward Carcross. The picture with the waterfall was along the road just outside Skagway. If you enlarge it you will notice a pipe to the right of the falls. That is the inlet for the hydro electric system that powers all of Skagway. We also thought you would enjoy the bridge. It is totally supported from the one side and was also built entirely from that side.

After we passed the border we started having some problems with Gertie. It seemed to be fuel starved. After limping along for a while we remembered we had a new fuel pump tucked away. We found a place along our route where we could get off the road far enough to work on it. After several hours we finally read the directions and got it on. Gary couldn’t get gas to flow with the new pump and we finally gave up. Gary had to hitchhike back to Carcross, about 6 miles, to call for a tow truck. It was Sunday so it took several calls before we finally had a truck on its way. The man who had picked Gary up on his way in had been going in to make phone calls too. When he finished, he gave Gary a lift back to the motorhome. We gave you a picture of Gertie while the driver disconnected the driveline. It was a pretty spot but hard to enjoy with what was happening. The nearest shop was in Whitehorse so our route had a little deviation since we had intended to take a cutoff and head south. We spent Sunday night at the shop parking lot, and when we went in to arrange repair the manager was less than friendly, telling us that it might be the next day before he got to us. They did get to us that day after all. The first task was just to get it to run. (Not only had it quit, but the generator had also stopped running.) They were convinced that the gas tank was empty so we walked to the station and got a can of gasoline. He got it started quickly then so they were really convinced that it had simply been out of gas. We only had about 90 miles on that tank so we knew it shouldn’t have been dry, but since it was now running we went to the station, filled the tank and started up the hill to leave town. Well, we were right, it was still doing the same thing. We went back, had to wait awhile again before they could get to it. This time they changed the filter in the carburetor and everything is okay now. We finally got out of Whitehorse about 3 pm and drove until around 6:30 before we called it a day.

The trip from Whitehorse to Stewart/Hyder was pretty uneventful. The weather was crappy and we had miles and miles of wet dirt/gravel roads. The vehicles all looked like they had been out 4 wheeling in the mud puddles. The mud on Gertie went all the way to the roof. Once Gary figured we were past the dirt/gravel sections, we stopped along a lake where there was a boat launch and gave Gertie a bucket bath. I think she was relieved to have all that mud off, must have made her load a lot lighter too. We did see several foxes along the Cassiar Highway. The first two were kind of a mottled black with a white tail tip. The third one was a beautiful red fox, also with the white tail tip.