04-18AUG09 - Monroe, WA (bears oh my! - part deux)

Tuesday, 04AUG, the last full day for the kids to be with us, we voted on what to do their last day of their visit. Tubing at “camp Morris” in Leavenworth, WA, won out over everything else. So Tuesday morning we headed back to Leavenworth & camp Morris. This time Sheila rounded up free inner tubes, unfortunately there was not one for Gumbo the one eyed Jack. So he had to ride with one of us the whole time. We also bought a waterproof camera; unfortunately it didn't have a zoom. See below BOLG entry for our first tubing trip in Leavenworth.
http://theryanrvexpress.blogspot.com/2009/08/31jul-02aug09-monroe-wa-bears-oh-my.html

This time we put our inner tubes in at the Icicle River vs the Wenatchee. We immediately discovered there is a reason why it is called the Icicle!!! But once we got used to the coldness of the river, we had a great three hour float with Sheila and her daughter Tessa. We even saw close up views of the wildlife, including deer, Canadian geese, bald eagle and coyote. And we even saw a very big black bear on the banks of the river trying to get into the river, thank goodness for barbwire. Dan and Rebecca had gone all their lives without running across bears in the wild, and now they have seen two in three days! Since the disposable camera didn't have a zoom, we couldn't get a picture of the bear.

Sadly, Wednesday morning it was off to SeaTac airport to get the kids to their airplane and say bye-bye. It was a fast and adventure packed five days, but seemed like only one day. We don’t know about the kids, but we will need three or five days of sleep to recover.
For the followers of this BLOG nothing much has happened on our property other than our water well appears to be finally done. It is FAR deeper than we ever imagined, and it smells like sulfur and tastes like iron.
Also during this time period Dan took a business trip to San Francisco. While there he looked-up Jim & Shirley Garrett. They are friends of ours from when we lived in Virginia, and we used to visit them with the kids in the spring when they lived in Hawaii. It was a great but short evening telling sea stories and looking at pictures on each others computers! Dan also found an unique restaurant/bar called Eddie Rickenbackers. Supposedly the owner, Norman Hobday, created the first “fern bar” called Henry Africa’s back in 1970 in San Francisco. Unfortunately the owner was not hanging out on his couch sucking oxygen like he normally does.
http://www.eddierickenbackers.com/Site/Home.html