Envy

I envy those who find time to download pictures and post on their blogs daily. I wish I had that much to show or say.

How many use Groupon or coupons in your daily dealings with business?

Skykomish, Cars and Wood

Friday evening after a rather hectic and somewhat maddening week my grandson and I left and drove up to Gold Bar to our trailer in the woods. We had planned to stay and come back early Sunday morning as there is a picnic that I must attend with my wife in our condo complex. We enjoyed a peaceful Friday night, he with his friends in the park and me visiting friends and then reading a good book as I waited for him to return.

Saturday morning we left for Skykomish. A close personal friend is a wood turner and he was going to be demonstrating and selling his products at a car show. We drove up Highway 2 and about a mile past Skykomish. There were signs and two cute young ladies pointing the way to a long gravel driveway that wound down through the deep forest and came out into a large baseball field that was carved out of the trees. There were cars on the field and vendors along the tree line next to the kitchen facility with the river as a back drop.

Zach and I said hi to Fred and then went off to photo record some of the vehicles in the show. I'll post more about Fred later. Here are some of my favorite cars from the show.

Pictures of The Oregon Trail/Hell's Canyon Loop

The link below will take you to the pictures we took as we looped from La Grande around Baker City, across to Joseph and back to La Grande. A really fun trip, that really should take a couple of days. Just cut and paste to your browser. Be patient as it does take a few moments to load.

https://picasaweb.google.com/104502042592198572044/20110806?authkey=Gv1sRgCPLJ6YrK9JC9jgE

Previous Pictures

I tried to add tags to each photo in the previous post but none of them appeared to move from Picasa to the Blog. So I am still learning. Basically you see a lot full of units that are sold followed by a building that doesn't exactly say, "trailer manufacturer". Then you see the frame, they build their own. Inside for the first time we see the floor being built and installed on the frame. Then we move to the cabinet shop where they build all their own cabinets out of real wood. The next shot is a unit in progress with cabinets and some appliances installed. Electrical and plumbing are installed at this stage. On the larger trailers/fifth wheeler the walls are installed and you can see through the roof at this point. After the insulation is installed the roof is added and it begins to look done.

At another area are the wood framed units. Built the same until up to the walls. They have their own mill shop and each wall is built with in the factory. Once the wall is built and installed the wiring and plumbing are done just like with the bigger units. Then the roof and insulation. These trailers get the laminate side which is put on the trailer in one big chunk. Then a gentleman who is a master with a router cuts all the openings in the side before they staple the whole thing to the frame work.

The trailer then goes to the area to get all the trim, lights, chalking and details. All the time the work is being inspected and rejected as required by some pretty tough inspectors.

Hope you enjoyed the trip.

Pictures from Northwood Manufacturing

Evening Skies over La Grande, Oregon

The sunsets were beautiful. These shots were taken over the trailer park at dusk. I already miss being on road.
Enjoy, more to come.

Rain

So I wake up this morning in Gold Bar with every intention of washing the trailer and my filthy truck and what do I find.....RAIN. As Sue said, where the hell is summer on the west side of the mountains.

Since I can't wash, I decided to sit down and put titles on all of the pictures that I took. Great, that took a couple of hours to complete. It included deleting some of the obvious errors in judgement with camera. I love to take pictures as Mia drives and a majority of those end up edited to the recycle bin however I do get some good shots along the way.

Tomorrow I must go back to work. I feel that the vacation has given me time to rejuvenate. Lord knows I was in need. There are issues that must be addressed once I get back and as I understand it the market has had some issues since I left. I try real hard not to watch, read or listen to anything relative to the economy or my job during my vacation. I did start reading this morning and one of the blogs I follow does not have an optimistic outlook for the automotive spare parts business. But I will read and research it more tomorrow.

Have to fix breakfast and get going. We need to get to our stick and mortar home and get ready for returning to our jobs tomorrow.

I will blog more about our trip and add pictures and links as soon as I find a good Internet connection. Speaking of Internet connections, what do you use for Internet connectivity and what is your analysis of your provider or equipment.

Be safe out there....