Back in Rally Mode

We scheduled ourselves into a small rally in Albany, Oregon for the week before the big rally. It was in the fairgrounds where we’ve been before. So we got to relax and ease back into presenter mode. It’s been a while! Our last rally was back in Goshen.
Here’s our parking spot at the fairgrounds.

It was a nice little rally. We were able to sit with individuals at our table and go thru all their questions. One person had a new Galaxy Note 10.1 – just like mine – so that was fun. Then another person needed help with her iPhone. I always like that to see how much my iPad knowledge translates. Here's our table:

Then we gave a couple of our regular seminars, and last a hands-on smartphone/tablet class. The people in this group were in the perfect place, they all had a phone and used it for calls, texts, and emails ok, but were not aware of a lot of the other stuff they can do. By the end of the session, they were all talking so excitedly about how much they learned. That’s what we live for!

And we were so excited because we had a new toy. Have you heard of AppleTV or ChromeCast? Well, we have both of those also, and we use them at home to project our phone or our iPad’s screen to our TV, but they don’t really do what we want in a seminar presentation situation. Jim just got the Samsung AllShare Wireless HDMI Display Adapter. So, as long as the projector has an HDMI port, we can be standing anywhere in the room with either our Samsung phones or tablet and whatever we’re seeing on the tablet is being projected to the big screen. Our powerpoint presentations work on the Samsung tablet, we can show web pages too. But my favorite part is that we can tap the camera app on the tablet, then we’re seeing – and the audience is seeing – whatever we’re focused on. So … we can stand next to a student who has a question on their iPhone for example, and we can focus on their phone and their hands – as we step them thru the answer to their question, everyone else in the room is seeing it too! I love it.
One little rally down, one big one to go. Over the mountains to Redmond we go!

A Catch Up Day on the Coast

Thousand Trails parks are the closest thing we have to home when we’re traveling. We are members and that means you pay annual fees (approx $500), and you don’t have to pay anything when you stay. The problem is that “Home” also means “Office” and many TT parks are far away from good Internet. I had to have Internet for this stay because it was the end of the month and I had a newsletter to get out! Luckily, I remembered that Nick Russell had traveled this route last summer and stayed at TT parks, so I looked up the days in in his blog and found his reference to “decent Verizon signal” at the TT Oceana park. If you follow the link to his blog post, you’ll see some of the same pictures as ours from Olympic Peninsula! I know I recognize the one of a pullout along the road. Since he also works from his RV, I know that he often talks about his Internet connection. So, although I can look up Verizon signal on my coverage app, or check out location of cell towers, I most appreciate hearing from someone who has been there, done that.
But, with “decent” signal – I was still worried. We pulled into the park and, I had Jim drive around while I kept my eyes glued to the cell phone to see what area of the park had the most bars! It wasn’t pretty – 2-3 bars of 4G at the most, fading out to 3G in some areas. We really couldn’t identify any area that was much better than the others, so we picked a grassy spot at the beach end of the park. I did have enough signal to get my work done, but it was pretty slow going. Jim wrote one article for this month’s newsletter, then went out to do the work that really needed to be done … washing the motorhome and car!

Years ago, we started our monthly newsletter and I wrote it near the beginning of the month, then it started slipping towards the middle of the month. I finally decided that the newsletter was a way to recap the month past so I did it at the end. But, to be July’s newsletter, it had to get out by July 31, right? I clicked the “send” button at 11:30pm and felt quite proud of myself until Jim informed me that it was August by now on the East coast! :-( I know that nobody else cares if I get it done in time. I just hate it when the automatic archives show a newsletter in August and, when you look, it’s actually July. Wow – looking at those archives, I see that we’ve produced a newsletter at least once each month for nearly 8 years now!
On August 1, I deserved a treat! What is better than a solitary walk on a beach? I left Jim doing more chores around the rig, and took the short walk thru some sand dunes to one of the longest, most solitary beaches I’ve ever seen!

Actually it was so long and solitary that it occurred to me I might not know how to get back to the park from the beach side! Yes, there was this interesting tipi style pile of driftwood marking the path, but when I looked down the beach I saw other similar markers! So, I decided to turn on Runkeeper on my phone. As the name indicates, Runkeeper is usually used to track your exercise. I had no intention of “exercising!” I was just going to stroll. But, Runkeeper lets you know exactly how far you’ve gone. So, I figured if it told me I’d gone a mile when I decided to turn around, then when I hit the 2 mile spot I’d be back! That made me feel really relaxed as I strolled down the beach.
At one point, I found a nice big driftwood log where I could sit and use it as a back rest. I don’t think I could be any happier!

Toe Meditation?

I don't know who wrote this in the sand, but I could have!

You can see all of our pictures from July on our monthly Web Photo Album.

Olympic National Park

“Alaska South Annex” is what Greg and Marilyn call the Olympic Peninsula. It does seem like a small corner of Alaska was chipped off and put here next to Seattle. Ocean, Mountains, Forest, and Farms.

Mount Olympus

Having the opportunity to visit and see all this beauty makes us realize just how lucky we are in this lifestyle. We have seen so much of America. Almost as out of the way as Big Bend park in Texas, Olympic National Park needs a special visit – you don’t just happen upon it, and no road goes thru it. I’ll bet the percentage of Americans who have been to this peninsula is pretty small. We put Washington State on our RVing map early on in our travels, but that was only because we stayed on the Washington side of the Columbia river once.
Sequim, where we were staying at Greg and Marilyn’s house, is so close to the Hurricane Ridge entrance to the park, we could take an afternoon ride to go there – so we did. That was our “Apres-Show” treat for ourselves.

View from the Hurricane Ridge visitors center

Panorama from the Hurricane Ridge Visitor center

Do we look happy? Hard to believe that we even worked for half of this day! But, when we get to play ...

When we left Greg and Marilyn’s we were bound for a Thousand Trails park on the coast, south of the National Park, but Greg made us promise we would stop and see Rialto Beach. Believe it or not, he really had to twist our arms for this. I had planned to get to our destination and get back to work because it was the end of the month and I have a newsletter to write.  But a promise is a promise! So we postponed our TT reservations for one day and stayed at a park in Forks. From there we could see two more attractions of Olympic National Park: Rialto Beach and Hoh Rainforest.

We decided the beach would be best at sunset, so we visited the Rainforest first. I happened to be a bright, sunshiny day, so it didn't seem quite like a rainforest! The "Hall of Mosses" trail is the must-walk attraction at the Hoh visitor center.

But, Greg was SOO right that Rialto Beach was the to-die-for spot! We gathered our camp chairs, a bottle of wine, and two glasses and settled in to watch the sunset.

We weren't the only ones enjoying the beach. I happened to catch this group as they posed for their special, fun picture.

Weekly Show–What Does This Button Do?

Have you recently acquired a Smartphone or Tablet? Do you wish you knew more about it? Or, have you had one for a while and know they can do more? Just thinking you might get one?
Every Sunday at 2pm Eastern time, we are producing a live half hour video broadcast on the web teaching about Smartphones and Tablets. This week is Episode Six!
Why? Because we can. It’s fun and exciting and a little scary. We are also learning a lot.
We want the show to be light and entertaining, but we want to teach our viewers, too. That’s what we do. We’re Geeks Who Teach. We divide the show into four segments.

Our show starts with a beginner’s lesson. Stuff we think is essential to enjoying your phone or tablet. We’ll demonstrate iOS on our iPad, and Android on our other phones and tablets.
Chris has been doing a feature segment on her Samsung Galaxy S5 because that phone is so popular right now. The next segment is about a fun or useful App o’ the Week from Jim. We will talk about industry news and things of interest to us. We’ll finish up with some review and viewer questions.

We’re not sure what this is going to turn into. Take a look-see and let us know what you think. We can have guests on. That is fun. We can even get a panel of viewers on as part of the show. Based on viewer questions we’ve received, we have already made tutorial videos on several subjects like printing from your Apple or Android mobile devices.
The show is done using Google+ Hangouts On Air (HOA) and can be viewed live at our Geeks On Tour Google+ Page for the event or on our YouTube Page. The links are sent automatically to everyone who follows us on Google+ or is in our Google+ Circles. Visit our Google+ Page now and follow us. We have a dedicated page for the Weekly Show with links to the upcoming show and an archive of all the past shows.
Something else relatively unique to us, is the fact we do our show live, from the road, using whatever Internet connection is available. That often means a cellular data connection. That’s a lot of the scary parts.
If you are interested in Google+ and Hangouts On Air, I’d like to hear from you. The real source of information for these HOAs is +Ronnie Bincer, the Hangout Helper. He is my guru and he has lots of info on his site and links to others. Check it out.

Gundyville, Gardens, Weekly Show

By Friday, we had to decide where we would spend the weekend. Because we do our weekly “What Does This Button Do?” show on Sundays, that can’t be a travel day, and we need to be where there is good Internet.
We started checking RV parks in the Seattle area and found most of them were full – that happens around major metropolitan areas during summertime weekends. We could have extended our stay at Thousand Trails, but we’d have to take all our computer down to the beach in order to get and Internet signal and … there’s no place to plug in down there. Then, we heard (thru Facebook) from our friends Greg and Marilyn Gundy who we met RVing back in 2006. They recently sold their RV and settled down in Sequim, WA. We looked on the map and saw that it was right where we wanted to be … because we wanted to drive around the Olympic Peninsula when we leave here. They said we were welcomed to stay in their driveway … they even have a 50 amp hookup! Wow, that sounds good. But … we also need a good Verizon signal – I knew that would be too much to ask.

Greg said, “we have line of sight to the Verizon tower from here!”
Say no more – we’re on our way!
First, we had to get the RV on the ferry. Since we had pretty much walked right on earlier in the week, we paid no attention to making reservations. That was a mistake! This was weekend traffic. We watched two Ferries come and go before we got on. But, it was a beautiful day, so we didn’t mind the wait. The cost was just under $70. We unhooked the car and paid 54 for the RV and 14 for the car. It's more if you leave them hooked up.

Greg and Marilyn like to have fun! They have the same zest for welcoming guests to their home and garden as they do for exploring every inch of Alaska! They even had a custom-drawn park map for us.
The first order of business was to see their incredible garden. Rows of tomatoes outside, and vides of tomatoes inside the greenhouse. Greg points me to the raspberries and I don’t hear any more.
We ended up staying 4 days. I told them they might have a hard time getting rid of us, but Greg said he knew where the power shut off was!

No pesticides in this garden, so I enjoyed picking and eating right off the plants! And, Marilyn made such delicious, healthy things like Kale chips with Kale picked fresh from the garden, I watched and learned. All Greg had to do was point to the raspberry bushes and that kept me busy for a while!

Our weekly show went well. This was Episode 5 (http://goo.gl/ykCNDm). We covered how to synchronize your email between computer and smartphone, how to change the battery in a Samsung Galaxy S5, and Jim’s App of the week: Pandora.


We were very glad that the Internet connection worked well, because we had another Hangout on Air scheduled for Monday afternoon. This one was for the Quad-Cities Computer Society’s Digital Photo group. We offered to be at their meeting – remotely via Hangouts – and answer questions about Picasa. We usually stop by the Quad Cities group whenever we’re in the area and present a seminar or two. With this technology, we can present seminars anytime they want! And, using Hangouts on Air, it automatically gets recorded. You can watch it here if you’re interested. (http://goo.gl/3KGzuI) You may need to skip over the first few minutes where the sound was bad – but it clears up.
During our 4 days, we did take time for happy hours, and a couple of excursions. The main one being up to Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Park – but I think I’ll cover that in my next post.
We went for a bike ride one day, down to the waterfront in Sequim.

Then Greg and Marilyn showed us the waterfront in Port Angeles one night after we went to a buffet dinner with all you can eat Dungeness Crabs!

Here's the beach area - a place for gathering some art supplies for Marilyn. She makes baskets out of the kelp.

Greg's not writing in his blog anymore ...www.gundyville.blogspot.com. But from the time I first showed him how in 2006, to the time they got off the road this year, he kept one of the most interesting blogs around. Especially if you're interested in Alaska or gold mining. Just some samples:
One month during their first trip to Alaska - July 2007
Work-camping and Gold Prospecting in Chicken, Alaska 2007
Working the Gold Camp at Chicken, Alaska May 2009
What Marilyn does with that Kelp