New Year’s is a good time for appraisal, but I did mine in November. I celebrated a significant birthday, my 75th! I put in the exclamation point because it is significant to me. Certainly many others have reached and survived this number but it is my first time and definitely “significant!” with an exclamation point. My body understands hitting 75 and gives me the aches and pains to prove it, but my mind is having a hard time wrapping its tentacles around it. This e-mail didn’t exactly help: “To save the economy, the Immigration Department will start deporting old people to lower Social Security and Medicare costs.  Old people are easier to catch, and will not remember how to get back home!” 

I was the recipient of a very special Christmas gift via U. S. Airways this year. The package arrived a couple of months ahead of time but that was OK. This special 5-foot, 9 1/2-inch present was gaily wrapped in blue jeans, colorful shirt and many bracelets. It was called granddaughter and she was mine for two whole weeks. Becca discovered America in 1988 so I didn’t have to prepare baby food or change diapers this time around. I just listened to her accounts of recent adventures and all about her dreams for the future.

While traveling our amazing country, be intentionally aware of your surroundings.  How does it smell, sound, taste and feel? What is the history?  Don’t become insensitive or jaded to your surroundings. As one that this has happened to, I say that too often we become blasé about the blessings of travel. How much of what we are traveling through do we experience or remember? It comes under the heading of “slow down and smell the roses,” but it is deeper than that. For instance:

In the late 1980s, friends introduced me to this inspiring old southern Arizona mission, and I found myself stopping by whenever I was in the area. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I visited the mission several times while making trips in and out of Mexico, either for the winter months or for short visits. Each time the mission was in a restoration process. San Xavier del Bac Mission, ten miles south of Tucson, remains the center of a centuries-old Tohono O’odham (Papago) Indian Reservation, and is sometimes referred to as “The White Dove of the Desert.”

If you’ve been an RVer for any length of time, especially a full-timer, I’ll bet somebody somewhere has asked you, “But what do you do with all your time?” And I’m just as sure that you have replied in great amazement, “I’m busier than I was before I retired!”

Labor Day in Port Townsend, Washington, was dreary. Looking for some cheer, I stopped in the Lighthouse Café on Water Street, a pre-1880 building, for a quiet breakfast in a warm, gentle atmosphere. Fifties music played softly in the background. People crowded in out of the rain. Others walked dogs under drippy flower baskets. RVs glided slowly through town, on to the great unknown. People leaving historic downtown hotels dragged their luggage behind them. Trucks parked in the center lane to bring goods to merchants busy unlocking their shops. A biker pulled a really long trailer behind him, perhaps all his worldly goods. As I ate, I thought about the summer places I shared with three friends during my stay in Port Townsend.

The population of Port Townsend, Washington, is around 8,500 and one of the neat things about it is that they have kept RVers in mind. Driving north on State Route 20 and coming down the hill (Sims Way) into Port Townsend, you’ll get a magnificent view of Port Townsend Bay that I have never tired of seeing. 

State Route 20 in Washington State took me south along the length of Whidbey Island.  Pulling up to the Keystone Ferry kiosk on the Fourth of July at noon without a reservation, I asked, “Can I get on this run to Port Townsend?” The male attendant said with a straight face, “No, you’ll have to wait in line until tomorrow.” 

Aging is a word we dislike because we can’t escape it. When I took “aging” to the thesaurus, it gave me “sweetening and mellowing.” Gag me with a fork. “Near prime” was more like being prepared for the dinner table. “Seasoning” took me to spices.  Maybe that was closer, being definitely more salty and peppery than I once was.  “Ripening” brought to mind a melon in season. “Perfecting” was more like work ahead, probably accurate but I wasn’t going there either. “Maturing” took me to growing and spreading—waaay too true.