RV Travels With Huggy

I'll go ahead and add the second seven photos from a week ago at the Christmas Open House at Skagit Valley Gardens (see the link in the last post.)


This photo shows Pat signing up for a drawing for something but it also has one of the largest toads I've ever seen in the foreground. Pat is a collector of toads and things toady but I'd not be sure where we could find enough space for this one.


These two were working the Cashier counter at the time we were by. I took two photos because we knew one had blinked in this first one but I really like the expressions and feeling of this one better, even with the blink. They look like they were having fun and I think they were.


In addition to the dinner that was available through the Garden Cafe, Skagit Gardens also provided a table with cookies and coffee (I think it was coffee- as it was just after dinner for us I didn't have any.) I was good and only had one cookie and I called that my desert with dinner.


This little still life photo has had the light color corrected. Yellowish angel hair just didn't look right, nor did the yellow casts on the crystal figures. This was on a small shelf and I just liked it. It is simple with only three components but to me it is beautiful.


This scene has been setup for quite awhile and it is one of the most interesting. The bear on the left, hiding behind a fir tree, has a fishing pole and has snagged himself a very large fish which is on the top of the tree to the right. I doubt a person would ever have enough space in a home to setup something like this but it is cute and works well here. Maybe outside in one's yard?


Pat is checking out an interesting Christmas tree with Santa behind her. This photo was hand held as I had put the tripod away after the photo of the bear so it isn't quite as sharp as it ideally should be but I like it because of the subject.


I guess you almost have to include Barbie in Christmas. This is one of the largest Barbie dolls I've ever seen but it does make a very nice display. My younger granddaughter may still be young enough to like these but her favorites are something called Webkinz where she logs onto a web site to register her menagerie of them. It is more involved than just registering them but I don't try to follow it.

This annual event is fun every year and this place sure goes all out to decorate for the Christmas season. The place looks good all of the time and they do a good job with whatever season it might be. Last spring we were there with hundreds of others for an Easter egg hunt all over the 20 or so acre place. Everyone was a winner of something and it was far enough into the spring planting season that there were a lot of plants to choose from. If you live near enough to Mount Vernon, stop in and see this place. It is right alongside the I-5 freeway just a couple of miles south of town. It is fun. And don't forget to eat at the Garden Cafe.

Labels: Christmas, Events, Holidays, Pat and I, Photos

Friday November 6th we went to dinner at the Garden Cafe and I've already posted a few photos from there in my last post. Garden Cafe is located inside a large greenhouse that is the retail outlet for Skagit Valley Gardens. Skagit Valley Gardens does a fantastic job of decorating for the Christmas holidays and this open house is a perfect time to come see the displays which look even better after dark. I took many photos and had a hard time trying to limit how many I was going to post here. I think that I will actually split the post into two. I'll do one now and another in a couple of days with the rest of the photos. They let me take my tripod and most of the photos are in available light, so it is generally pretty "warm" toned light as opposed to a colder, more bluish daylight that we are more used to. I decided to not make a color shift on most of the photos but instead just leave them as the camera saw them, with some cropping, exposure and contrast corrections. You will also notice that I am posting them in a little larger format. I checked it on my system and this size is fine with it, although I do have a wide screen monitor. Please let me know it it doesn't work well on yours. Anyway, here we go:


This is a general inside scene with their cashier station and a Welcome sign.


This old truck is one of a few that are around the area. During the warmer weather there are outdoor gardens to explore and in September the local dahlia society, that grows their display garden here on the property, holds their annual viewing and it is spectacular. In addition to this greenhouse there is a large building that is heated and comfortable that contains many gift items.


The shutter speeds on these photos are not real slow but you can still see some motion showing up in many of the people who are moving. I like the juxtaposition of the tree ornaments in this photo, both those in the distance that are in sharp focus and the nearby ones that are fuzzy. There were a lot of people here and it was very hard to get photos without including some of them.


There are many already decorated Christmas trees with various themes. They can be bought already decorated or one can pick decorations off the trees to buy individually. This is a closer view of a part of the Peacock tree.


This tree in the foreground would be perfect for an apartment or other fairly small place. It is tall and skinny. And, the trunk is lighted AND it changes colors! There is a more normal Christmas tree in the background.


This display was hanging from above so I lowered the camera and turned it upward for this photo. You can actually see the glazing that makes up the roof of the greenhouse in the background here.


Musician Marcia Kester provided live entertainment during the evening. We have heard her before and she is good, kind of a country western/pop artist. Notice the tall skinny Christmas tree from the previous photo to her right in this photo. This is a flash photo so the lighting is more like what we are used to seeing.

This gets me about half way through the photos I've got ready to post so in order to keep the post from getting too large I'll close it here. Look for the second half of the photos in a couple of days. In the meantime, go check out the Skagit Valley Gardens web site as listed at the beginning of this post.

Labels: Christmas, Entertainment, Events, Holidays, Photos

One of our favorite area restaurants is the Garden Cafe that is located inside the greenhouse at Skagit Gardens. Skagit Gardens grows many plants of their own and operates this location as a retail outlet for their plants along with those from other growers, and a very large gift shop. They go all out for Christmas, starting to set up the displays back in September. Then they have a one night open house to kick off the holiday season, inviting their patrons.

The Garden Cafe usually serves lunch daily. You are seated inside the greenhouse and get to enjoy all of the exhibits. During this once-a-year open house night, owners Ray and Katie stay open late to serve a by reservation only dinner. Their food is the best around (I LOVE his tomato bisque soup!) and we are usually there for lunch at least once a week. Last night was the Christmas Open House and their dinner which we attended. Of course I took some photos and will start today with a few of the folks from the Garden Cafe.


Owner Ray is at the left with a couple of the others who were there helping with a very busy night.


Here is a sneak peak behind the scenes into the kitchen area. Nearest the camera is Ray with his wife Katie next. They are the owners and Ray does most of the cooking. This photo has an odd mix of lighting. I used the flash but it primarily lighted the foreground (bluish daylight type light) while the background is lighted with the ambient lighting (warm, yellowish colored light) in the greenhouse. It was after dark so no daylight was coming through the glass from outside.


Here is my bride paying for our dinners (wasn't that nice of her!) and chatting with Ray's Mom who was brought in to help.


Todd is Ray's cousin and you couldn't find a better person to greet patrons than Todd. His smile shows how he enjoys meeting people.

I have a lot of photos of various things about the Open House and will post them next although I may split it into two posts as there are about 14 photos that I've prepared and I could easily have included more. This place is beautiful and if you have the chance to come to Skagit Valley Gardens between now and Christmas to see it, do so. And plan to eat lunch at the Garden Cafe. You will not regret it.

Labels: Events, Flowers, Friends, Pat and I, Photos, Toads, Trips to see things

So far it doesn't feel bad, what with it getting light earlier in the morning. That means on Mon, Wed & Fri when I go walking with the guys from my park it will be an hour warmer when we start at 08:30. But I know that at the other end of the "day" it will get dark an hour earlier and that is the part I am not fond of. The two things I liked best about Snowbirding was the warmer temperatures and more hours of daylight. In the north during summer our days are longer than they are down south but it is the opposite in the winter. And the winter difference between here and southern Arizona is about an hour, or the difference between having Daylight Savings Time and not having it. Oh well, in two more months the timing will start back the other way toward longer days.

We did go on a road trip last month in the Prius. We left home on Monday Oct. 12th and drove to Spokane, WA on the far Eastern side of the state. It is about 340 miles and most of the trip over was via I-90 with 70mph speed limits. I did set the cruise control for 70 and we averaged about 47 miles per gallon (mpg) going over. That is not bad but not as good as what I've heard these cars can do. I didn't do any extraordinary things like trying to draft behind semi-trucks or anything like that. Just driving at a pretty constant speed.

For our return trip we came west via US-2 which is a 60mph road most of the way, with some slowdowns for small towns. We didn't go quite as far as we stopped in Manson to visit friends but it was long enough to give a pretty good test. This leg didn't have us crossing any mountain passes (there is one on I-90 of about 3000 feet) but we did drop down to the Columbia River and climb back up. Our mileage average for this leg was about 53mpg. It does make a difference when you slow down a bit- 60 as compared to 70.

The last leg, home from Manson, had us on 60mph roads but also crossing two mountain passes, one over 5000 feet and the other just below that at 4800+, then dropping down to sea level. Out mileage for this leg was about 51.5mpg which I figure is very good, especially when considering the elevations we climbed to. To be fair, the area between the two passes is all at high elevation so the climb up to the second pass is probably less than 1500'.

The car was very comfortable and easy to drive. We both like it, other than Pat often getting a static shock when she gets out. I don't know why it doesn't affect me the way it does her. I keep telling her that she is an electrifying woman. I don't think that helps.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet my younger son and my youngest granddaughter and go watch K play in a soccer game with her team. They are in a U-10 league and I think all the girls on her team are age 9. The other team sure has some tall girls for only being 9 but the two teams were actually fairly well matched. Our team lost but the score was 4 - 3 and it really could have gone either way. Of course it was raining- isn't it supposed to when the kids are playing soccer? I took some photos of the game and after a quick look through them, I setup one to post here:


My granddaughter likes to play defender which means that her position is to hang out in front of their own goal to help the goal keeper defend it. But K is quite fast and her coach has been working with her to move the ball forward when she has it and to even go as far as taking a shot at the other teams goal. Here she is moving the ball against a much taller opponent and staying in front of the other girl. K's team are wearing the gray jerseys. I think she might develop into quite a good player if she stays with the game.

Labels: Cars, Family, Photos, Weather

It has been awhile since my last post and we did make the trip to Eastern Washington with the Toyota Prius and I do have more to post, but just not enough time tonight. So, I thought I'd slip in something that a friend sent me from a book titled, "Disorder in the American Courts." There are quite a few others but this is perhaps the best. If I have any attorneys who read this, my apologies, although I am sure that this would not be you.....

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No..
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

Labels: Comedy

I thought I'd report back on how the Prius is doing for us so far. We have over 800 miles on it at this point and our average mileage for that distance is right about 51 miles per gallon. I've filled the gas tank and will soon do it again, but it wasn't real low when I filled it. The tank was full when we got the car and I've read that you do not want to let it run out so, not knowing how accurate the gas gauge is, I filled it at only about 3/8 of a tank indicated. Most of our current mileage has been here around town with a couple of short freeway trips of 20 - 25 miles each direction. But, next week we will be driving to Spokane, about 320 miles away, so that will be a good road trip to see how it does on the highway.

So far the only negative we have found is that every time Pat gets out of it, either from the driver or passenger seat, she seems to build up a static charge and gets a spark that is very noticeable when she pushes the door closed. I keep telling her that it just indicates that she is a very electrifying woman but somehow I don't think she appreciates those little (or maybe not so little, according to her) jolts. We did add a static strap that drags on the ground but it didn't seem to help very much if at all. She has a static spray that she sometimes uses on certain clothes like slips and she sprayed the passenger seat with it. That, combined with the static strap, did seem to help. Now we need to see how long it will last. I'll have to post this as a question on the Prius Chat forum that I belong to and see if anyone else has this problem and if so, how did they resolve it.

It does look like our fantastic summer weather is over. We have had some rain over the last couple of weeks and rather than temps in the upper 70s, most days have been in the upper 50s or 60s. Right now we are in a few days of sunshine and daily high temps in the mid-60s, which is sure something we can't complain about. I just kind of hate to see the summer end.

A Blogger friend asked after my last post if I was going to change the name of my blog, now that I don't have an RV anymore. That is something I've wondered about before as Huggy hasn't traveled with us in the RV since we bought this new one in March of 2007, so the name hasn't been totally accurate for two and a half years. I probably should change it, or maybe just stop posting. All of these blogs seem to eventually end and perhaps that time has come for mine. My original purpose for starting it was to keep my family and friends informed of where I was and what I was doing as Huggy and I traveled around the Western United States in the RV. That has all changed, totally. I'll ask those who still bother to check my rare posts what you all think. Should I end it now? Or maybe just rename it and continue with no real direction?

Labels: Cars, Huggy, Reminiscing, RVing

I told you in my last post that things were changing around this Phillips household. That is almost an understatement. We gave some thought to our vehicles. We are just not using the motorhome enough to justify the expense of keeping it. When we do use it it's for fairly short trips as Pat doesn't want to be away from home for more than about a week at a time. She also has never cared for the Smart Car ever since I bought it and won't ride in it on the freeways. So we decided to get one of these

and traded this

in on it. The new one is a 2010 Toyota Prius hybrid car.

When we trade in a vehicle we of course are getting a wholesale price for it, although in Washington State there is a sales tax trade off up to the value given for the trade in against sales tax due on the new vehicle. Since we got more for the RV than the Prius cost, we didn't have to pay any sales tax and that probably saved us about $2200. We still lost money on the RV as compared to what it should sell for on the retail market but we opted for this method for its speed & simplicity. The offer for the Smart Car was too low to consider so it is in a consignment lot owned by a family friend to see if we can get closer to its true retail value.

My son and I went to The Green Car Company in Bellevue, WA last March 13th to look at an electric car. I didn't think that car was a good buy but when they suggested that I try a Smart Car I liked it and went ahead and bought it. As I said, Pat has never liked the Smart Car and this Toyota Prius, as a hybrid car, is much closer to the idea of an electric car. And it is fun to drive, too.

The 2010 model Prius is what Toyota calls the Third Generation of this car and there are quite a few fairly big changes. So, I guess it was better in that way to wait until now than had I bought one last March when it would have been at the end of the Second Generation production run. We have a lot to learn about this car and all of it's systems but I think that will be fun. And it will actually get about the same mileage as the Smart Car on the road and better than the Smart in town. Here are a few more photos. By the way, I took these photos this morning at the Lions Club Park along the Skagit River here in Mount Vernon. We got the car on Friday, a day after my birthday, so I guess you could say it was a birthday present. They are very popular and we have been waiting for it since ordering the car on August 19th.


This is a three-quarter view from the rear. The tail lights are all LED units so are bright but use very little electric power. It has four regular passenger doors plus a hatch back door to load things into the back of the car.


The car has five doors counting this rear hatch. It will seat four adults comfortably and there is a seat in the middle of the back seat that a child could use. Those seat backs fold down flat and I can actually carry my RC airplane and its wing back there. I couldn't do that in the Smart Car.


This photo was taken with my 10mm extreme wide angle lens and I see that I should have straightened the steering wheel before taking the photo. The cars come in four models, called II, III, IV and V. I don't know what happened to model I. We ordered a III which is very well equipped from the factory but we did add a Navigation System and floor mats.


Here is a closer view of the Navigation screen. The map displayed is showing the current location of the car. I didn't realize how dusty the small screen below it is until I saw this photo! This small screen reports on the car comfort system that sets the inside temp, using either heat or the AC to maintain whatever temp it is set for. Many of the buttons along the left side of the big screen relate to the car sound system.


This is the main instrument cluster. It displays the vehicle speed, odometer, gas gauge as well as some Prius specific things like your current miles per gallon as the vehicle is being operated, which system is moving it (electric or gasoline), what the mileage has been for the last 5 min, 10 min, 30 min, current tank of gas and total overall average, plus some others that I am still learning. I am having a hard time deciding which screen I want to leave up most of the time as they are all interesting. The car gets an overall mileage average of about 50 mpg and used regular 87 octane gas while the Smart Car works better on higher octane fuel.


The steering wheel has buttons to control a lot of the functions of the car. There is a built in Bluetooth system that really seems to work. We have tried to use those little things that clip on your ear but they don't seem to work well, for us at least. This system does and it integrates well through the car voice control system and the Navigation system. If, for example, we are driving someplace that we are not familiar with and decide we want to find a place to eat. Using voice commands we can get a display of restaurants that are close or ask about a specific one, like Olive Garden. Then we can have the phone call the restaurant to get a reservation and have the Navigation System direct us to the place. Isn't that fancy?

Pat has been in on picking out this car from the start. She likes it so it will be a keeper for us. When we ordered it, the dealer suggested we list more than one choice of colors as we might get it sooner. Pat wanted to list blue, blue and blue but Ed, our salesman at Foothills Toyota in Burlington, WA said he didn't think that would help a lot. We listed blue, silver and a darker metallic gray in that order. This was on Aug 19th when we were told it would probably take 4 to 8 weeks for the car to arrive. On Sep 3rd they told us that a silver one with pretty much what we wanted was on its way and that could be our car if we wanted it. We told them we would take it. The paperwork they gave me told the ship name that it was coming from Japan on and I found a way to track that ship. It arrived in Portland, OR to unload cars for the northwest on Sat, Sep 5th, so then it was just a matter of how long it would take to get it up here and cleaned up ready to deliver.

I go walking with some of the guys in our park on Mon, Wed and Fri mornings and I guess our salesman called while I was out doing that Friday morning. He told Pat the car was here and they setup an appointment for 13:00. Then Pat got called to work the rest of that day at her job where she is a substitute receptionist for the school district (this funds her "lipstick account") so she wouldn't be going with me to see Ed. She told me to drop her at the school district after lunch and go see Ed as he had a question for me. I got there and Ed said the car was ready. I texted Pat with "It's here!" and she texted me back with, "I know." The sneaky little rascal!

We've had it now just over two days and love it. I have a lot of friends with earlier editions of the Prius and they ALL say that they love the car. I think that will also be our experience. In fact, I'd guess that Pat will like it well enough that when we do sell the Smart Car, she might want to trade in her beloved VW New Beetle ("Baby") on a new Prius for her!

Labels: Cars, Electric Cars, Pat and I, Photos