Well, I guess we are getting old because we just haven't done much of note and the year has slipped on by to June 3rd as I am starting our chronicle of 2014. Time sure flies when you're having fun, and even when you're not.

We did start off in February with our annual trek to the Crab Feed in Charleston with our friend, Louise. Nothing new there - look back a couple of years and you'll see photos we're we are eating crab and a few years younger.

On March 1st we attended the sidewalk dedication for the Egyptian Theatre which is undergoing renovations. This is another exciting step towards getting the theatre open this summer. People were invited to "Walk Like an Egyptian" across the new tiles. These can be engraved as dedications for yourself or loved ones - for a price. We are passing on that as we bought plaques on a couple of seats inside.

At the end of March we started our RVing with our group and headed for Heceta Beach in Florence. It is always good to see everyone after 6 months off and Heceta Beach RV park is very accomodating to our group. We took a trek up to the Heceta Beach lighthouse to see how it looked after the renovations that were done on it over the last year or so. It looked great and continues to be one of the most photographed lighthouses in the United States.

We also had some new rigs to christen and time to say goodbye to our friend, Marilyn, who had to give up RVing due to a long time battle with cancer. She passed away on May 10th. She will be missed.

In April we visited Washington, DC during the Cherry Blossom Festival. Janet had never been there before and I hadn't been there since high school.

The Washington Monument wasn't open yet, but the scaffolding was down. I took a lot of photos of it, but most of them are crooked. This was a good one with the beautiful cherry blossoms.

This one of the Jefferson Memorial also seemed nice. In four trips to Washington, this was as close as I ever got to this memorial.

Our favorites were the FDR Memorial and the Korean War Memorial. Martin Luther King was also good. For some unknown reason, neither of us were that impressed with the Vietnam Memorial though I liked the statues that were nearby.

We enjoyed our week there, but we found once again that being a tourist is hard work! We were very glad to come home again and Buddy and Sandy were also glad we came home and got them out of the kennel.

The FDR Memorial is a series of outdoor rooms, walls with quotes of FDR's, some sculptures like this one of the breadlines during the depression. We really need some of these programs now like the CCC to rebuild our infrastructure and put people back to work. I wish President Obama had been able to get something like this going again.

And of course no trip to Washington is complete without the Capitol. We didn't get to tour the building itself, but we went in the Visitor Center which was built underground in front of it around 2002. There was plenty to see and do there and we were quickly "Stendalled".

Of course this is only scratching the surface of what we did see and the photos we have, but these are enough for a sample. We had a great trip and made some good memories.

A few days after we got back we were off to Sutherlin for our next Oregon RV Women weekend. This time we were in Sutherlin for Easter weekend. The highlight of the weekend was a trip to the Winston Wildlife Park where one of our members, Beckey Beckey, arranged for us to have a bear encounter with the grizzlies and then narrated a bus tour around the park for us. As a docent she has many great stories about the park and its animals.

Our next adventure was a birding weekend in the high desert of southeast Oregon in a town called Lakeview. This is an area that migratory birds pass over and stop at on their way north or south. Even though we were there the second weekend in May, it was very cold and even hailed on Sunday with the hail setting. Brrrrrr.

We enjoy the birds in our area, but I don't think we will ever qualify as serious birders. I like it when they come to me, not the other way around. Nevertheless, we did see quite a few different birds though I don't think I can name very many of them now. One of the gals was keeping the official list and we were supposed to get a copy, but that hasn't happened so I can't identify most of the photos I have. I do know the white pelicans with the male having the nob on his beak, the yellow headed blackbird, and the magpie. We did see an eagle that others said flew by every day at 6:30 in the morning and 6:30 in the evening on its way to hunt ground squirrels. I didn't get a photo of that one though.

Also in May, we decided to go off on our own for a few days and we headed north to Seal Rocks. One of our ORVW friends told us about a park there that she really likes so we stayed there for four days. The park was delightful - quiet, we got to pick our own site from those available, excellent wi-fi and a nice walk down to the beach. Seal Rocks is named because seals used to come ashore on the rocks there. Now it seems to be a home for birds more than seals - mostly gulls.

We played golf in Waldport one day at a nice 9 hole course where we got a deal for 2 9-hole rounds with a power cart and dinner with a bottle of wine for $99. It was very nice. We haven't played much yet this year so we had some good shots and some bad, but we had fun.

Sunday we went up the road a few miles to Newport and visited the aquarium again. They have done a lot of work to develop children's exhibits since the last time we visited. It is very nice.

June 18th was the Sneak Peek at the Egyptian. The real Grand Re-Opening was the 20th. We were there for both. It is so exciting to be able to be in the grand old dame once again. We were at a sound test viewing of the equipment last week and saw "Across the Universe". They discovered there were a lot of speakers in the theatre that had never been hooked up. We now have Dolby Sound Surround and it is fantastic. Who knew?

Paul Quarino, the fellow who maintains the Mighty Wurlizter, found out yesterday that I am a musician. (I told him.) I had indicated I was interested in helping with the organ when I first signed up to volunteer - back in 2006 or 2007. It was another 2 years before anyone called us which is when we started selling concessions. I thought the organ was off limits and never pushed it. It turns out he is delighted to know I want to help. I will only be holding down keys for him while he is in the organ chambers tuning pipes, but I'm so happy that I told him and that he is becoming a friend. What a talented musician he is and a genuinely nice guy.

The Grand Reopening of the Egyptian was June 20th.

The opening was very well attended and movies since then, have also been quite well attended. We went to a sing-a-long version of Mamma Mia and I have to say, I haven’t had that much fun at the movies in years! We sang our hearts out, danced in the aisles and cheered and clapped at the end of the movie. It was a “pajama party” and lots of people came dressed in their pajamas.

Because of the opening, we were late getting to our RV rally in Bend. As we drove over from Springfield, we thought we would take a “shortcut” through the lava fields – big mistake. We hit a chunk of stone going around a corner on the narrow road and blew a back tire. We didn’t know it until we got there. Then the challenge was getting it fixed. We called AAA and a nice couple came out and in the waning light, he wrestled with that tire. While we were chatting, we found out she was from Coos Bay so we told them both all about the grand reopening of the theatre.

Sunday we went to the High Desert Museum with our friends, Linda and Tully. It was a lovely afternoon. After that we went to see the Big Obsidian Flow in a park near there. The whole area is a volcanic mountain range and resulting plateau. Oregon is just full of interesting geology.