**Let me apologize for the delays in posting. Its been hectic and often there isn't a good connection. I will post more photos when I have a better connection Last night I slept well, but in spurts, waking up every few hours. At about 6:30am, Manoli woke me up and we started packing. We had to be out of our room by 8am, but the host said we could leave our backpacks by the door as long as we wanted. We were all packed and ready to go soon after 7am. We stuffed our lightweight backpack with the heavier, less needed stuff, put 8 Euros in the envelope, and left it by the door. We'd decided to leave casually around 8:30, so we walked into town, looking for a cafe. We'd about given up, when we ... read more

First of all, let me apologize for the delay in my blogs. Between the intial rush, and trying to do everything we wanted to in Paris, then the train trip to Saint Jean Pied de Port, and the fact that our first night on the Camino was at Refuge Orisson which does not have WiFi.... Since I'd fallen asleep so early, at 2am I couldn't keep my eyes closed I got up and went downstairs to the patio to work on the blog and photos for a while. After about an hour, I was bored, so I returned to bed thinking just to lay there, but I fell back to sleep. At around 6:30, Manoli got up, so so did I. We took showers, changed clothes, transferred the stuff from the suitcases into the two cardboard ... read more

My daughter Tanya and her boyfriend Ben came at 8:30 to take us to GSP Airport. We arrived at GSP and checked in. I had been worried about my passport, since it expired right around the 6 month time frame I read about. Apparently I was wrong or it was okay. The other thing I was worried about was our backpacks being too big, but apparently no problem there either. We then went up to go thru TSA. I had to be padded down because I didn’t think I had to remove any non-metal items, but the rule was to remove everything. Oh well. I had it easy compared to Manoli, because her bar of laundry soap keyed off the scanner and she had to have everything taken out of her backpack. We found our gate, ... read more

We'd already pretty much packed up the night before, so with our 5:30am alarms, we were downstairs waiting for our ride by 5:45am. Finally, at almost 6:10, our ride showed up. The nice gentleman apologized for running late and took to Boise International Airport, dropping us off out front. We checked in, got our tickets and were boarding pretty much on time. I make this statement because almost nothing was on time or easy after that! We arrived at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport around 11am Central time. Since our connecting flight was not until after 7pm that night and wouldn't show up on the boards for a while, we settled down near the gate we'd arrived at, after a long walk around Terminal C. Manoli got out her book and I hooked up my PC and settled ... read more

Last night the cabin was very warm, and the fan we had didn't help much. Sometime late in the night it cooled down and I had to shut off the fan. Still, I guess we got an okay night's sleep and were on our way to Crater Lake by 7:30am or so. Crater Lake National Park is just over 50 miles from the KOA, but that is just to the entrance. We arrived at the Masama Village area by 9:30am. Masama Village is still a ways from Crater Lake, but we were ready for another hot coffee. After getting our coffee, we got back on the road to Rim Village. Here, besides another place to eat and a gift shop, there were some great views of Crater Lake. We didn't realize how lucky we were until ... read more