Grandma Henke

Our neighborhood here in Long Beach, Washington,is an interesting one.    When you live in a house on wheels you are part of the “hood” as soon as you get parked and set up your lawn chairs.    People even mosey over while you’re getting set up to offer advice, a hand, or a tool.   Striking up a conversation with a stranger here is as easy as walking into the foyer at church.

RV’ers are just a bunch of grown up kids … a lot of us are sporting gray or white hair … or have covered it up with color from a tube … but here, at least, the bunch of us enjoy flying kites, playing games on the WII’s, and cooking hot dogs on a stick.    Over half of us travel with a hairy, four legged room mate.    What surprised me about that, though, is how many of those pets are feline.    Lynn talked to a woman this morning who told him a lot of the people here currently have cats.   Apparently cats that have always lived in a house make pretty good travelers in a motor home.    Our little Lady is a Bichon who is often mistaken for a poodle because I clip her hair short in order to keep her cleaner.   She seems to love being on the road and has been fun to have along.

There is always a variety of styles and sizes in an RV neighborhood, but this past week ours has had an influx of beautiful, HUGE, Winnebego’s.  They are big and dark and came rolling in one day like an army patrol.     They make our 34 foot motor home look a lot smaller than it seemed before they arrived..   Besides being higher and longer, most of them have at least 4 pull outs.    They are part of a traveling club and it was a little intimidating at first when they all started setting up and greeting everyone like long, lost brothers.    However, they have been just as friendly and outgoing to those of us not in their club and we all seem to fit together fine.      There are a few small units here also … trailers, 5th wheels, and compact motor homes … all good, interesting people … and it makes for a pretty good “hood”.

This morning there was a low rumble as all but a few of our neighbors moved out.    They resembled a long parade of big, dark pacaderms with their babies towed along behind hanging onto their tails. (We wanted to take a picture but it was raining hard and neither of us felt like getting that wet so this one is through our front window.)

We are still bordered by two very large Winebego’s  who sit next to us like body guards. (We are on the left between the two large motor homes.    The rest of the place looks deserted, but I suspect it is temporary and will start to fill up once again this afternoon.     Since we are here for the month we should be meeting some interesting travelers.