Meandering the Country

September 26 – October 3, 2021   A little background information… On October 3, 1866, Ferdinand Blaschke began quite an adventure!  Unlike our journey, Ferdinand dreamed of immigrating from Maria Elend, Austria to the United States of America!  Over three months later, on January 15, 1867, he finally arrived and started his life here in the US.  What I wouldn’t give to hear his stories of the journey here and the challenges and joys he encountered once he arrived!  Eventually, Ferdinand married and had three children, Anna, Theresa and John.  Theresa is Dick’s paternal grandmother.     Around 20 years ago, Dick was doing a little genealogy research on the internet and decided with the last name of Peterson, he wasn’t going to have much luck, so he used his great grandfather’s name (Blaschke), which is a bit less common.  It wasn’t long before he came across a post, requesting information on Theresa Blaschke’...

9/8-9/26, 2021   Big Oak Flat Entrance to Yosemite! Our next stop of interest had our eyes set on Yosemite National Park! To break the drive up, we stopped at Russian River RV Campground in Cloverdale, CA for of couple of nights. This campground definitely had its ups and downs! It is built on hills that must have taken some intense planning! Actually, they might have needed to look a little closer at some of the details when planning this campground! The sights were pretty tricky to get into. Between trees, hills, narrow sites with drop off edges, and curvy roads, Dick had himself a good challenge. One other complicating factor is that all the sites are available on a first come basis. Lastly, the sites are color coded on the map, indicating length restrictions. Sights were either designated green (for RVs less than 35 feet) or yellow (for RVs 35 feet or more). Our fifth wheel is 31 feet, so we were limited to green sites. After making numerous attempts at a site, we finally gave ...