As it turns out, most cruisers do not spend the summers in Mexico.  To avoid the hurricanes, you pretty much have to stay north of Latitude 27 deg N, which means you are in the northern Sea of Cortez, where it is really hot.  Some hardy souls do brave the summer on their boats, but it is difficult to stay cool when even the water provides little relief.  So we took the opportunity to return north to visit family and friends and get in a little North American consumerism.

We arrived in Portland after a lovely jaunt through Phoenix, Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe, the spectacular ghost town of Bodie California and Lassen Volcanic Park.  We stayed with a good friend in Portland (thank you Linde), while we went through a steep learning curve on the road to motor home ownership.  Yes, it’s true. We’ve become RV’ers.  We purchased a 1984 33-foot Winnebago Chieftain as our new “home base”.  Our rationale is that we could live aboard for this summer and next, plus use “the MoHo” to drive back and forth to Mexico while carting the tons of stuff that seems to be required of cruising.  It is also much easier to travel with a dog in an RV. 

It is very much like living aboard a boat, so once we got ourselves organized we settled in easily.  We spent a month at an RV park in Vancouver WA, then moved to the “back forty” of Marcia and Les Books, cruisers friends who live on a beautiful property in Ridgefield, Washington.  Here Catharine got in her daily gardening fix, and we both got a chance to work on boat projects in Les’ huge state-of-the-art workshop. We also thoroughly enjoyed the camaraderie.

Mike had lots of work to do on an arbitration that was outstanding from his UMA days.  He spent mornings Monday through Friday at the lawyers working on this and the subsequent claims, then went to his cruisers job at West Marine, forty hours weekly.  This meant he was nearly always working 7 days a week.  Who says retirement isn’t fun??

With all this, we did get a chance to have some fun.  In August, we had a “Bah-Bah-Cue” where we roasted a whole lamb.  Thirty-two people – friends of ours and the Bookses friends and their neighbours – joined us for the fun and festivities.  It was lots of fun and a good way to see lots of people at once.

In September, we took a vacation from our vacation.  We spent a week in New York City, and four days in Washington DC.  We had a blast. Mike had never been to NYC, and we tried to take in all the tourist sites.  Our hotel was a few footsteps from ground zero, a sobering site.  The anniversary festivities took place a few days after we left, so the hotel was overrun with broadcast types.  All the coverage you saw on TV was taken from the roof of our hotel. We felt like we had an inside track. 

We did the Circle Line ferry around Manhattan, walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, went up the Empire State Building (once again the tallest building in NYC), checked out the great architecture and neighbourhoods, went to the Guggenheim and The Met’s “The Cloisters”, went to a Broadway play, enjoyed terrific restaurants and an authentic New York deli.  The weather was superb, and we walked Central Park and went bar hopping.  We visited friends who are expat Vancouverites currently living in Brooklyn and heard all about the New York state of mind.  All in all, a grand time.

Neither of us had ever been to Washington DC before, and we hustled our way through the Smithsonian’s spectacular Air and Space Museum, visit the Lincoln, Washington, Vietnam War Veterans and Korean War Memorials, eyeballed the White House and visited the National Gallery of Art.  We tooled our way around Georgetown and Dupont Circle and enjoyed a couple of great ethnic restaurants.  We also spent a day in the civil war battlefields of Virginia and colonial Fredericksberg, plus another day driving the Skyline Drive of the Blue Ridge Mountains and back up the Shenandoah Valley.  Spectacular scenery, it reminded Mike a lot of the English countryside, no wonder the pilgrims loved this part of the world. We tried to do a bit of everything of interest to us, but we could easily spend another week in DC and months in NYC.  It reinforced our reasoning for cruising – there are just too many interesting places to see to be able to get to any of them in two-week vacations while working.  Life is too short for a full time job!

Once back in Portland, it was becoming time to get ourselves organized for the return to the boat.  We got our last minute To Do lists finished, packed up the RV and attached the “toad” (our car which we tow behind the RV) and headed south.  On the trip back to Mexico we visited Lassen Volcanic National Park again, as we had been snowed out of the trails we wanted to hike in May.  What a spectacular spot!  Then we tooled down to Yosemite National Park, as neither of us had visited before.  We were awestruck by the place – really magnificent. 

We had had enough of driving the mountain passes by this time (and our gas mileage in the RV was pathetic on the steeps! Between 5-7mpg) so we worked our way down to Palm Springs and into the Arizona desert to Tucson.  Then it was back across the border and into Mexico.  We arrived in San Carlos to find Breila in good shape, having weathered the summer heat well.  We painted her bottom (raised the waterline 3 inches!) and installed a new cutlass bearing, plus washed every possible surface and locker.  Catharine was delighted to discover no cockroaches or critters aboard, and the only casualty was a tub of honey, which cracked and dribbled itself into the bilge – yuck!

Once back in the water we painted the treadmaster, installed our new SSB radio, and the new chartplotter, sewed spray curtains and put back all the stuff we had taken off for stowage.  It is great to have the boat back in Bristol trim again, and we are looking forward to setting sail shortly for some serious time on the hook.  Our next major adventure will be a tour of the Copper Canyon area.  Details to follow…

Its now October 16, 2002 and we should get away from the dock today. We spent last night on the boat as Les and Wayne, friends from up north, stayed on the RV last night as they are starting to work on Indigo today. The weather has taken a little change for the worse, well worse is not quite the right word for it. It’s overcast and about 90 deg, the humidity has gone up again and everything was soaking wet this morning. All this said it was nice to spend a night on the boat after 4 ½ months away. We will do last minute provisioning get ice for G&T’s and be gone …..

Back at ya soon!

 Photo Album for Leg 10