KOA Sux, Garmin Sux, Cricket Sux .....

Cheryl: It’s almost 10:00 p.m., and we’re safe and snuggled in at the KOA in Kent, Washington. The price here is outrageous, up $30 from last summer! The sign out front says UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT. Well guess what, they just lost a couple of good customers. We’re here for a couple of nights because I’m looking for a RV Park with monthly rates where I can stay for a month or two. I want to be with my daughter right now as she goes though a family crisis and I can use our camper as my home base if all goes well with the RV Park search. Hopefully we’ll find a spot tomorrow and move into it on Thursday. Then after we do some sightseeing and visit with kids and grandkids, Frank will fly home to Phoenix leaving me, truck and camper here with the two puppies. He’ll use my truck back in Phoenix and fly back to pick me up . . . eventually.

We’d like to do the Seattle underground tour while Frank is still here and make more visits to kids in Carnation, Bonney Lake, and on Vashon Island. With six grandchildren among the three families, we keep very busy when we’re in town!

Today we drove here from Leavenworth over some staggeringly beautiful terrain. Of course, Leavenworth looks like an amazing Alpine Village, and the mountains around it make that idea seem very real. We gasped at the craggy snow-capped mountain next to a rushing river on our way out of town. Then we drove miles through very lush conifer forest. It was a lovely, read NOT BUMPY WITH POTHOLES, road, it seemed newly paved, and there was room to pass other cars and trucks. We love the USA!!! Ok, so Canada was amazing, but so is home. God bless America.

Frank: Our old Garmin GPS died last year so we bought a new one. It’s a Garmin “Nuvi something or other.” Naturally it was the top of the line when I bought it. We used to refer to the old Garmin as “Jill-Bitch” after she took us 10 hours and about 400 miles out of our way. Today we adopted my brother’s name for his Garmin as our name for the new unit. It’s “BIB” and stands for “Bitch in the Box”. That’s what I called her after she took us within spitting distance of a requested Walgreens Drug Store while carefully guiding us into the far left traffic lane with four lanes of rush hour traffic between us and the Walgreens over on the far right side. It all had to do with our requesting that she take us from point “A” to point “B” “via” “point C”, where the Walgreens was point “C”. It’s a new feature where you can add a “via” point to an existing stored route. What we didn’t realize that “via” doesn’t mean (to her) that we wanted to stop at the mid-point. To her it just meant we wanted to drive past the mid-point. So I guess we’ll try to get back to that Walgreens tomorrow, and do it as a direct one-stop trip. Gosh, ain’t technology grand!

While I’m complaining about Garmin, I wish they had three additional buttons on the main display. The first one would be a “Mute” button so I can shut the BIB up easily when she gets to being obnoxious about me being off course, the second would be a “Speak” button that would cause her to speak a course update, or repeat the last direction she gave, and the third button would be a “Reassurance” button that would make her reassure me that everything is OK and that we are on the right path to our destination, with words such as, “You’re OK big guy, you’re right on track and right on time, so just relax and I’ll get you there OK.”

Yeah, that’d be nice.

Oh yeah, about my Cricket 3G "go anywhere" modem. Doesn't work. No service anywhere, not even here in Seattle! Cricket Sux and I can't find a way to contact them to cancel the service! Clever! They let you buy and sign up but don't have any way to complain or cancel. Ya gotta love those marketing guys!


‘Til later,
Love, Grams, Pop Pop, and the Kissin’ Cousins Peanut and Cleo