Salem for Shalom!

I am the self proclaimed expert of stealing my bride's peace. On an RV trip east a few years ago, I was showering at the campsite and heard a conversation between a young boy and his dad discussing the day ahead.

The boy asked, "dad, what's the plan for today?" And the awe inspiring answer that will go with me to my grave was, "The plan for today is to keep mom from freaking out!"

It is a fact, I am a bit impulsive and not afraid of too many circumstances. Neither of those attributes would be descriptive of my bride. Consequently, it is a deep faith that keeps Connie from freaking out on a regular basis.

A co-worker's brother offered their house to us as a respite along our path in Salem, OR. This generous offer was a bit freaky to Connie. Simply walking into another person's home while they were away was way outside her comfort zone, but not me. (Hey Dave, where do you keep the beer?)

We landed in their driveway and set up camp and discovered the top secret entry passage into their home and had a peaceful landing place where the kids could spread out, watch tv, surf the net, sleep and celebrate boy wonder's birthday! We even did a few loads of laundry. The hospitality offered some peaceful relaxation to our trip and mom is not freaking out!

The next challenge was the 5 mile journey to the Hertz office. Since we had a central place to park the rig, we opted to rent a van and cruise into Seattle with it rather than the big rig.

As we were preparing to navigate the small streets of Salem with the RV, I saw a neighbor and her daughter loading their car to go somewhere. As you might guess, I asked them if that "somewhere" might include Hertz. It was rumored in the van that Caitlin said, "that is so dad."

Once we left Salem, we navigated the rig to Astoria to see the world's longest truss bridge and through the forests along the Washington 101 to see some amazing work by Weyerhauser. Initially, we became tree-huggers because of the damage we saw to the mountains by logging, but the signs pointed out that 120 mile an hour winds in 2007 destroyed hundreds of acres of trees and Weyerhauser had invested in cleaning up the damage and replanting the forest. Go capitalism!!!

Remember the earlier discussion from Vance Air Force Base? Here are the official coins from our visit there. If you don't know proper protocol for RMO, you might end up buying drinks for kids looking for a root beer fix.

Now we smell COFFEE!!!!