Travels with Stanley: Headed West

The snow finally melted enough that I could get the RV out to the road, and I spent most of yesterday packing and loading the RV and prepping the house to be gone for a few months. I won’t be back in California again until May. I will be in South Dakota for most of April, for your First Communion and your birthday, and between now and then I am taking the “long” way home, looping down through Southern California before either scooting back up to Reno, Nevada and across the Rocky Mountains at Salt Lake City, Utah, or I may decide to stay on the southernmost route in the U.S. and take I-8 out of California and then go across southern Arizona, New Mexico, and some of Texas before heading straight north to Grandma and Papa’s house. I do all my work on the computer, so it doesn’t matter where I am, and I’m really starting to take advantage of that now. And with Stanley along, I suspect I will be stopping at a lot more of the sightseeing places than I might usually do.

Last night I took Flat Stanley to a milonga, which is an Argentine Tango dance party. Argentine Tango is my favorite dance and the one I taught the most before I had cancer.  I still have lots of friends that are tango dancers, and though I don’t dance as much as I did before chemo, it’s still fun to see all my old friends. I even had a picture taken of Stanley and I with one of the tangueros, Bill.

After the milonga, Stanley and I stayed in the RV right there in the parking lot of the tango salon (dance studio).

Then this morning we drove further West just past a little town called Winters, CA. Now we are at the Canyon Creek Resort not far from Napa, CA. It’s very beautiful and our campsite is on the river (Stanley thought the water was too cold to swim for long, so he’s on the camp pole being patriotic and drying off). This campground at Canyon Creek is in the bottom of a steep canyon that was divided by the building of the Lake Berryessa dam. The campground is literally right at the bottom of the dam. I don’t remember ever seeing a dam from the bottom before, only from the top looking down. It’s a bit odd seeing a dam from the bottom up!