Day 2 Marysville, Wa to Canyonville, Or.

We were up early. Our baggage pull was set for 8 am and the bus leaves at 9 am.  We went for breakfast, (we each had a food voucher) then checked our room to see that our bags were gone and got on the bus.

It was nice to drive through Seattle on a Sunday...not so much traffic and because Bart was doing the driving we could look out the windows and see the scenery.  It's been several years since we've driven through Seattle so really enjoyed it!  We usually stop for two "coffee breaks" (30 minutes) and a "lunch break"(1 hour) then stop for the night. Coffee breaks were usually McDonalds or something like that. Today's lunch stop was a Ilani Casino. 

They had neat seat guards on their toilets.  You push a button and a clean plastic sleeve slides around the toilet seat.  We first saw these years ago when we were on a Riverboat Casino in New Orleans.

 

Our stop for tonight is Seven Feathers Casino in Oregon, again very nice rooms.

Hit the Jackpot...Bus Tour...Day 1

Last December we received a brochure from the company we went to Haida Gwaii with.  The tour that caught my eye was a 14 day tour to southern Nevada and Arizona and back...a big circle.  We booked it and so did my cousin who lives in Chilliwack.  It'll be nice to spend some time with her.

The cab came and picked us up and took us to the bus, my cousin and several other people were already on board.  Stopped at the West Coast Duty Free store at the truck crossing and picked up the rest of the people who would be travelling with us and our Host.  Stephen is the same fellow who hosted our Haida Gwaii trip, so we're looking forward to a great holiday.


Our first overnight is at the Tulalip Casino.  They have beautiful big rooms with a fridge and an interesting shower with 3 showerheads!

They also gave each of us a $15 food voucher and a $20 slot play.

My and my husbands' dinners....yummy!

 My cousin had a light dinner but splurged on dessert!

Gambled for a bit, we were both up a little bit, then went to sleep in our very comfortable king size bed!

Snow Bound - Keeping Busy

The snow has certainly kept us busy cleaning our sidewalk and stairs and even raking some of the snow off our roof so it doesn't break the gutters.  When we lived in the old house the snow was wet and heavy...out here it's dryer and lighter, plus we get quite a bit of wind so it tends to drift and accumulate in certain spots.  Half our roof can be clear...the other side has all this snow piled on it.

When we're not clearing snow we do a lot of jigsaw puzzles.  Here's two that we started at Christmas and finished recently.

Lots of Snow

We had such a sunny, spring-like winter, I was beginning to think that we'd missed winter, but February made up for it big time!!!  Our neighbour cleans all the driveways in the neighbourhood, which is very much appreciated.  One day his tractor slid into the ditch.  He hooked his truck to it but couldn't tow it out.  Next thing we know Quiring Towing is there.  It was so neat how they got it out, but then, they are true professionals.  They are a local company but you may have seen them in action on "Highway to Hell", a series on TV that shows them clearing all sorts of wrecks off major B.C. highways.

Winter

Winter Finally Came

This morning a friend of ours had to take her husband to the local airport so she stopped in here after she dropped him off and went to church with us.  It was cold and snowing very lightly when we left.  During the service it had snowed a bit, but after we had lunch it really started to come down.  About 2:00pm our friend thought she should head for home before it got too bad.  Would have loved it if she could have stayed longer, but it was good she left when she did.  It had been quite breezy all morning, but after she left it really started to blow hard.  The snow was so light and powdery the wind whipped it off the roofs and everywhere else and created total white-out conditions...I couldn't even see our neighbours' house across the road!

It was -7 degrees Celsius and the wind continued to howl, our lights flickered several times then went out just before we went to bed.  By next morning the electricity was back on and you could see the grass and roads were fairly clear but had icy spots on them and it was still windy but nice and sunny.

It had been so spring-like the past couple of weeks but winter did come and leave rather quickly!  Yeah!!! Snow is nice when it falls on the mountains! 

Orchid

I've never been known to have very much luck growing house plants, but 2 years ago a friend bought us an orchid plant.  I put it on the kitchen island and it flowered, grew a couple more leaves and was really looking healthy.  I told everyone that I WASN'T going to move it or it might die on me!!  Just before Christmas a different type of shoot was growing out of it...could it actually be a flower???? I talked to it, put it aside when people were in, so it wouldn't get bumped and put it right back when everyone left, and lo and behold look what happened!!!!