Wandering West.

After a long visit with our families we pulled up stakes and pointed west. Seemed like a good visit. We stayed lomger than we planned but the last 2 weeks were spent working on the bus. Aura and I took on the ambitious task of putting a new floor in the bus. We had to remove all the furniture, tables, benches, etc. and pull up all the old linoleum strips. Man what a job. Not only did we install new vinyal plank t&g flooring but we built a new couch and new stove cabinet. We re-upolstered the bench seats and couch backs. We floored all the back into the sleeping area which had never been done. I was nervous about pulling the old floor and discovering rotting wood and rusting metal however most of the chip board was in decent shape. There were 2 little spots that needed patching but all in all sub floor was in better shape than I thought. We found some boxes of new flooring on Facebook marketplace for 300.00 so it was worth doing and Aura was a big help. She stayed with it till the end and became the decider when a row of planks needed to be re-done! Trying to put a floor down in a 40’ school bus and not having any gaps at the seams was super frustrating. Nothing is level on this bus, even though the sub floor wood was fine the metal underneath is thin and wavy and made it hard to get tight looking joints! Anyway she was a trooper and we had fun working together. The floor looks great and a everyone loves it.

During our visit I also painted my brothers house. Kinda of bit off alot on that house but it felt good to help him and his family out. The house is an 1800’s farm house in rural Pennsylvania. It has a colonial style with old cedar lap siding. Most of the sides had peeling sheets of paint so the prep work on this one took almost a week. I also did the garage ang out building. They choose a deep green color with white trim and it turned out well. We parked there in their yard for the length of the project and enjoyed the peace and beauty of that area. Mostly farms and fields with stretches of hardwood forest in between. I also painted my mother kitchen at rhe last minute. I loved doing that for her. Aura choose the color for her, a bright yellow. My mother has always had a yellow kitchern as long as I can remember but this yellow is super bright. My dad now calls the kitchen the “sun room”. So after a nice summer visit we packed up the ol’ bus hitched up the trailer and said our goodbyes.

Travelling west we set course for Wounded Knee, South Dakota. We took US highways and tried to stay off the interstate. Most of the highways are in good shape but it can be slow having to go theough so many small towns especially around bigger cities and populated regions. Once we got around Chicago the road opened up and driving on the US highways was awesome. I felt called to visit Wounded knee and see if there was any work that needed done enegetically. We pulled into the national monument area eatly in the morning. We were met by a younger native couple who were the only ones around. They had just harvested some white sage down along the river. We bought the bundle from them and asked their permicssion to walk around and do some healing work on the land. They gave us the go ahead and then showed them around the bus , they really liked it and I coukd tell it sparked their imagination. He said they needed to go check their mail and took off soon after. We scoped the landscape and noticed a cemetary up on a hill across the highway. The dowsing rods took us up there, me , Nowa and Inanna. We were drawn to the entrance to the site and felt an enegy blockage at that nodal point. We laid some tobacco and asked permission to work there. I used the rods and a blessing intention to help open the vortex and after a few minutes the blockage opened. I checked the spin with the rods and it seemed clear. I brought along the flute and felt like playing so pulled it out of the bag and began to play . The wind was up so the first few notes rang dry and it was hard to coax a melody and the proper sound. I moved around a bit and was able to play what came into my body and heart. I felt a little self consciouus because there was security guard parked there with her windows down. But after a minute of playing I let go and could feel this shaking in my body and tried not to let my mind get in the way. I’ve never really felt that shaking before it was a strange feeling but I just tried to obsrerve it and keep playing. After the tune I remembered I had a quartz crystal in my pouch that I’ve had for years, given to me by a dear friend in Oregon. I left it there in that burial ground.

We decided from there to head up into Montana. We wanted to drive through Glacier national park. The thing is we only had so much time because Aura did not come with us. She choose to stay back in NY with her grandmother and take her driving test to get her liscence. She had a train ticket to Tacoma and we were supposed to meet her there . If we drove some big days we could still go through Glacier and pick her up on time. We stopped in Billings to saty at a Walmart and ended up adopting a cat in the parking lot. Not sure if its a boy or a girl yet, I mean I looked but couldnt tell. Still young, with sparkling blue eyes, the cat camre into the bus and just starteed loving on us. I think it jumped out of a camper that looked abandoned and was wandering the lot. I went up to knock on the camper and got no ressponse. There were other cats too wandering around from the same camper. A dog too was inside but no owner. We decided to “rescue” the cat and left a note on the windshield for the owner. Oncce we made it up to Glacier we realized we were too long to drive through the park. There is a length limit for vehicles and we were way beyond it. Dang. It looked like a really sweet drive, the road to the sun. Another time perhaps and another vehicle! So we booted it for Tacoma. Going through Idaho middle of the day in 90 degree heat the bus overheated and we had to stop at a summit and cool down, after that all went well to the coast. We picked up Aura and said goodbye to Nicole and Leif in Tacoma and made our way up the Port Townsand for our next festival. If all goes well we’ll do another show in Port Angeles and then who knows ?? Stay tuned.