Still in Vancouver, WA

The technician scheduled to look at our problem with the airbags didn’t show up at 9am…so we waited and finally got word that he would be here a couple of hours late.  He finally arrived at about noon and spent an hour working on the airbags and finally got them fixed to the point where we can travel again.  So…we’ll be looking into repairs to the HWH leveling system when we get back to Spokane.  While outside, Ken spotted a water leak that we needed to check out.  After some research, we discovered a leak from the back of the new residential refrigerator…most likely the ice maker line is the problem.  He shut it down so that wouldn’t continue…but it appears to be too late.  Water has been slowly leaking out from under the refrigerator into the living area and it looks like the subflooring has been saturated.  We’re not happy campers as it looks like there’s going to be some major expenses to get things fixed up again.

On a good note, we plan to head out in the morning and travel to Spokane where we’ll be located for a couple of weeks while attending our grandson’s graduation.  We’re really looking forward to that!

 

5/23–5/24 12–Vancouver, WA

On Wednesday we made plans to meet up with Ken’s distant cousin Donna who is very deeply involved in the genealogy of the Gear family.  On our way north last year, we met her for the first time after Ken had been emailing her for and exchanging files for quite some time.  We had already met up with her about 3 weeks ago in Santa Clara where she and Ken got to see an old family bible dated in the early 1800’s.  Donna was working today so we arranged to go to her house when she got home.  She had picked up a pizza and spinach salad for dinner which we ate when we arrived at her house.  While Ken and Donna got involved in their genealogy research, I visited with Donna’s husband John while watching some tv.  Around 9pm we headed back to the RV for the evening.

This morning we started making our preparations to travel for the day.  We held off eating our normal breakfast because we were expecting Ervin’s wife Kathy to be stopping by with some of her banana bread.  When she arrived, we heated it up in the microwave and it was very good!  Kathy and I visited for a while as Ken finished getting ready to hit the road.  We said our goodbyes to Kathy and I pulled in the slides while Ken went outside to disconnect the power.  After bringing the slides in, I tried to start the HWH jacks control panel….and NOTHING!…no lights on the panel no matter what we tried to do.  Ken made a call to HWH and was able to get instructions to manually store the jacks, but once that task was completed, the RV would not air up.  Ken made a call to Coach Net and explained what was happening and after a few back and forth phone calls, we found that a technician would show up here at 9am on Friday.  Since there wasn’t much we could do about the situation, we decided to go for a drive.  We headed south on I205 and picked up a couple of items at the Home Depot then headed west on the Marine Drive which follows the Columbia River.

There were several large houseboats along the river.

The Portland, OR airport is also adjacent to the Marine Drive and here are a couple of photos of the airport.

On the return trip eastbound I got this shot of the I205 bridge across the Columbia River.

We don’t know what tomorrow will bring, but we’re hoping that the technician that show up in the morning has a way to work around and air up the RV so that we can travel.  If all goes well, we’ll be on our way to Spokane, WA and plans on looking into repairs while there.  More later….

A Day in Vancouver, WA

It was a rainy and dreary day in Vancouver today and we spent the morning just hanging out in the RV surfing the internet and just taking it easy.  After lunch, we left around 1pm to run a few errands and got back to the motorhome around 3pm.  We had left our internet service on while we were gone and found that our available usage was down to about nothing.  In doing some research, I found that there was a download during the first hour of about 249MB and another 188MB in the second hour.  I checked both of our computers and there were no signs of any updates that could have caused the problem.  We have a secure network, but I suppose there’s also the chance that someone managed to hack into our network and have some fun.  So, I called Hughes technical support in India.  After some hard to follow discussion, they agreed to give us 3 restore tokens to use to help resolve the issue.  When I tried to use one of them, there was no way to be able to submit.  We weren’t down to zero MB of usage yet, so maybe that was the problem.

This evening Ken’s cousin Ervin and his wife Kathy came over for dinner.  Kathy brought a couple of vegetable side dishes as well as a wonderful raspberry cheesecake.  I didn’t take any photos of the food, but did get one of Ervin and Kathy just before they left to go back home.

Salem, OR to Vancouver, WA

We left Arizona City about one month ago and today is the first day that we’ve driven in the rain.

That wasn’t exactly helpful for getting some good photos during our trip north from Salem, OR to Vancouver, WA.  The next photo is looking down on the Willamette River in Oregon City.

And the final picture is crossing the Columbia River on our approach into Washington state.

We arrived at the Vancouver Elks lodge around noon.  They have a few 50amp sites and most of them were already taken.  Rather than taking one that was right next to two other RV’s, we decided to leave some space and chose a 30amp site for our stay here.  After lunch, we ran a few errands that I didn’t get accomplished while in Salem.  We had been trying to call to let Ken’s cousin and his wife to let them know we were in town, but kept getting strange recordings, so we drove by their house and left a note on the door.  Back at the RV, we tried calling again without success and finally got another phone number to try from the cousin in Salem.  Ken finally was able to get a hold of Kathy and made arrangements to meet them at their house around 4:30pm.  We had a nice visit with them and the 2 and a half hours went by very fast.  We invited them to join us for dinner at the RV on Tuesday night and returned to our home on wheels for a quick microwave dinner.  That’s it until the next update!

5/18–5/19/12–Salem, OR

We extended our stay in Salem from 3 to 5 nights and have been very busy, but I haven’t been toting around the camera and taking photos.  After we got going on Friday, we went to see Janice and Gabby and I spent some time with Janice helping her get the new computer set up.  Her old computer is equipped with some very expensive software which she used for the Escapees magazine and that’s the primary software she used for everything.  She used Outlook 2003 for her email and since that was no longer available, I downloaded Mozilla Thunderbird to take care of her email.  It took some trial and error, but I was finally able to get her address book transferred from the old computer to the new one and tried familiarize her with the Thunderbird email program.  Before leaving that afternoon, I suggested she make a list with questions and things that needed to be accomplished before our next session on Saturday.  We returned to the RV and around 5pm, Ken’s cousin Frieda and her husband Dick picked us up to go out for dinner.  We had originally planned on going to Sizzler, but when they suggested McGrath (a seafood restaurant), we quickly agreed to that.  It was a wonderful meal, and as we were exiting through the lobby, we ran into cousin Don and his wife Stella waiting for a table.

Janice and Gabby stopped by and picked me up Saturday to go to their house to work on Janice’s new computer again.  It was a long, frustrating day as we couldn’t really accomplish anything.  She wanted to transfer numerous saved emails and attachments from Outlook on the old computer to the new computer.  After several attempts, I determined that there was no way to pick and choose email folders to transfer, and I think she’ll work with things on the old computer until her editing of the Escapees magazines is totally completed.  Ken joined us around 5pm and we were treated to a fantastic lasagna dinner.  Thanks Janice & Gabby!

Today, we planned to meet up with Don and Stella, and we received a call from this morning and found out we had to work around their schedule where they would be leaving around 2pm.  We went to their house around 11am to visit.  The guys watched a golf game on tv and I tried to help Stella get set up with her new Amazon Kindle Fire.  Unfortunately, for some reason, her MiFi network that she uses for her computer is not broadcasting it’s SSID, so we weren’t able to set up the Kindle.  Oh well…I seem to be striking out on my computer help.  So we returned to the RV after a quick Walmart stop and later had a happy hour with John and Linda.

John and Linda are looking at Ken in amazement as he talks with his hands.  I wonder what he said.

It must have been funny though.

I tried to get a few photos of the solar eclipse and they didn’t turn out too well, but here’s one of a plane flying over the sun.

And the progression continues.

The cloud cover was in and out making it very difficult to see much of the eclipse.

This is pretty much the end of the eclipse.

Back at the RV after happy hour, Ken disconnected everything but the electric in preparation for our travel on Monday where we will be heading to Vancouver, WA.  While there, we’re hoping to catch up with more cousins.

5/10–5/17/12–RV Maintenance and a Side Trip or Two then on to Salem

One of the main chores I had been wanting to get to was removing all items off our countertops and giving them a thorough cleaning and discarding some excess paperwork and whatever else was just lying around there.

This is our campsite and Guaranty RV’s service area.  With warm weather during the week, it worked out really well being under a tall tree for some shade.

On a drive around the area one day, we noticed several fields with white flowers and were kind of curious as to what kind of crop it was, but never did find out.

Off one of the country roads, we followed signs to a greenhouse and took a tour.

On Monday morning we were surprised to get a call from Shane in the service department to let us know there was an opening that morning for them to start on getting the roof sealed.  We got ready as quickly as possible and drove over to the service department.  Knowing that the work would take all day, we decided to make a day trip to Florence, then up the coast to Waldport then back to Junction City.  Here are a few pictures from our day on the road.

It’s always interesting to see barns in all shapes and conditions out in the countryside.

The Florence area is known for it’s sand dunes and there are many places for off road vehicles to drive out on the dunes.

And the bridge in Florence.

And there are some rocky shorelines along the Pacific Ocean.

This bridge came into view as we got nearer to Waldport.

We returned to Junction City and the RV came out of the shop around 5pm, but there was more work to be completed yet on the roof.  We were asked to have it at the shop at 8am so they could get that completed.  But, they were short staffed and unsure if they would be able to get the oil changes completed on Tuesday.  Regardless, we were definitely scheduled for Wednesday and it the work would be done that day for sure.  We ran a few errands around town and returned to Guaranty RV’s sales office for their barbecue lunch.  After lunch, we returned to the service center and were told that they would try very hard to get us in for the remaining service jobs so that we could be on our way.  All of the work was finished by 5pm, and we decided to stay another night before heading north.

We drove north to the Salem Elks lodge on Wednesday.  This is a familiar sign as we get close to Salem.

When we arrived at the Elks, we spotted John and Linda’s RV in the lot.  We met up with them later and made plans for happy hour and dinner at the lodge with Gabby and Janice joining us.  We had a nice visit with all of them that evening and are trying to get together with Janice later to help her with setting up a new computer.

Today we drove to Art and Caroline’s house to visit with them for a while before meeting up with Ken’s cousins.  We hadn’t seen Art and Caroline in quite a long time, so it was really great to be able to visit with them and catch up on what they’ve been doing.

We returned to the RV for lunch and Ken’s cousin Don and his wife Stella showed up to visit.  Another cousin, Don’s sister Frieda and her husband Dick also dropped by to visit.  Dick and Frieda had plans for the evening so we’ll be meeting them for dinner tomorrow, but we did go out with Don and Stella this evening.

Back at the RV, I decided it was time to do a quick catch up with the blog as I’ve been ignoring it all week.  That’s it for now.

5/9/12 - Canyonville to Junction City, OR

We left the boondocking area of Seven Feathers Casino in Canyonville, OR and headed north to Junction City.

In the final few miles to Junction City, we drove north on Hwy 99.

Our timing wasn’t too good and we arrived at Guaranty RV’s service area during their lunch hour.  We told the receptionist that we would have lunch in our RV and wait for Shane to contact us.  After his lunch, Shane came out to look at the roof and give us an idea of what would be involved in resealing the seams on the roof.  Since we had planned on an oil and filter change on the RV and generator when we got to Spokane, we decided to add that to the service work here so that we would be done with all planned maintenance for the summer.  After parking and getting set up for our stay in the service area campground, we went into the office to talk to Shane and set up the appointment.  From previous conversations over the phone with Shane, we were hoping to get things done by Friday and be on the road.  Unfortunately, they’ve been very busy and we were told it would be Monday or Tuesday before they could get started on the work, but we were welcome to stay in their service campground while awaiting our service.

We considered taking a trip to Florence leaving Thursday and returning on Sunday to be ready for service.  After much consideration, we decided to just hang out and finish a few projects we’ve been avoiding for some time.  More later….

 

5/8/12–Grants Pass to Canyonville, OR

The work on our RV was completed by Henderson’s Line-Up in Grants Pass, OR early and we were on the road north to Canyonville.

And here is a unique name for a trucking company.

Their largest competitor is YRU Trucking, LLC.

We continued to the Seven Feathers truck stop to add more diesel to the tank, then went across the freeway to the casino’s boondocking area where we set up for the night.  Ken’s cousin didn’t answer her phone, so we had lunch in the casino and were able to get a hold of her later.  We drove up to Laura and Richard’s farm and visited all afternoon and took a ride on their ATV to see other parts of the farm before we returned to the RV.

Here’s Laura dusting off the mule for our ride up the hill.

Ken is talking with Richard and Laura up by the pond in their upper field.

One of the new calves is resting.

While up on the hill, Laura pointed out these unusual flowers called cat’s ears due to the shape of the blossom and they appear to be furry.

And there were also some torch flowers in the garden area.

We rode the mule over to Laura’s son David’s house to see his weekend project he built for is son Caleb.  Here is Caleb in is fort with Ken and Caleb’s mother Lorna looking on.

After our visit, we returned to the RV for the evening.

5/7/12–Crescent City, CA to Grants Pass, OR

We left the campground in Crescent City and headed north on Hwy 101.  After a brief stop to take on some additional fuel at an outrageous price, we continued on and turned west on Hwy 199.

Hwy 199 was a very scenic drive following a river at times and the road seemed much narrower with more twists and turns than Hwy 101.

We drove through a tunnel.

There were narrower section of road than this and thankfully weather was warm enough that we paid no attention to the snow zone sign.

This road took us past the entrance to Oregon Caves.  We visited there on a previous visit to Grants Pass.

About another 30 miles down the road, we arrived at Henderson’s Line-Up around noon.  We weren’t on the schedule until Tuesday morning, but they were able to get it into the shop in the afternoon and got started on the work to be completed.

5/6/12–Eureka to Crescent City

Sunday morning we continued north on Hwy 101 to our destination of Crescent City.  Although we were headed for Grants Pass at about 190 miles away, Ken knew it would be narrow and windy roads all the way and chose to break the trip up into two days.

We followed the Klamath River for a while.

We passed the Trees of Mystery and decided we would return later in the day to check it out after we got the RV set up in the campground.

We passed a section of the Pacific Ocean shoreline.

And then there were some more narrow twisting roads through the redwoods.

After getting parked in the campground, we returned to visit the Trees of Mystery to explore their museum.  We were greeting by Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox.

We expected the stop to be a tourist trap which in part, it ways.  However, they did have a very interesting museum that we went through.  We returned to Crescent City and drove around town.  Here’s a photo of the Crescent City Lighthouse.

After the tour, it was back to the evening for the evening.

5/5/12 - Our Last Day in Eureka

In our time here in Eureka, we had occasion to travel north on Hwy 101 through the downtown area several times.  This sign caught my eye on our very first trip through town and I finally got a photo of it.  Hmmmm…

Once again, we saw large herds of elk in a couple of spots along the highway.

We turned off onto Bald Hill Road which also goes to the Lady Bird Johnson Grove of redwoods.

Our first stop was at the Lady Bird Grove which was a mile long hike through some very old redwood growths.  The trail starts on this bridge crossing the road.

Following are a few more selected photos from our walk.

And a couple more photos as we continued up Bald Hill Road.

We returned to the Eureka Elks lodge for a happy hour with Don and Sharon and then the four of us went to dinner at the Samoa Cookhouse.

At the Cookhouse, they serve three meals a deal family style at long tables.

We all enjoyed a very good meal there and afterwards drove around the Samoa Road on the west side of Humboldt Bay.

There was some pretty strong wave action.

And the beginnings of a beautiful sunset.

Back at the Elks lodge, we said our goodnights and that ended our day.