Monday, October 26, 2009

We’re in Lincoln, California

 

Sunday, October 25, 2009                                                                                                    Lorraine’s Report

We’re here in Lincoln, CA at our friends, Bill & Jeanette’s home. We’ve had our usual week of packing up and moving on.

Last Sunday was a quiet day at home, with breakfast at the Elks Lodge there in Eugene. Chuck stayed home after breakfast and I went looking at the mall, while he watched football all day.

Monday, we left Eugene and headed to a repair place there by Eugene to try and have the coach repaired, the booboo from Alaska, and the stress breaks. This shop was a great shop, the owner worked for Marathon Coaches, and boy did he run a clean, efficient shop. He told us we should take the coach back to the Tiffin factory in Red Bay, since the fractures could involve a lot of warranty work, and he didn’t do warranty work, and his prices were $105 per hour. We left there and headed to Seven Feathers. We arrived and set up, then went over for dinner. Seven Feathers no longer has an everyday buffet; only Thursday through Sunday night buffet, and the prices are higher. They have a coffee shop type restaurant, which was very slow, and I’ve never had so tough a tiny lobster tail. It’s a good thing the steak that came with it was good.

Tuesday was the second day in a very long time I felt almost normal. So of course that meant I had to clean my part of the closet, which I did. Upon completing the chore, we had a call from Barb/Bill to go to lunch. They came in from McMinnville and were in the parking lot of Seven Feathers dry camping. They came over and we went into Canyonville for lunch. We had a nice visit and a good lunch.

Wednesday, I went swimming in Seven Feathers nice pool. We ate lunch and went into the casino. Now, I hadn’t been having very good luck, Chuck had, but that day I came out ahead as did Chuck. We really like this campground. It is very quiet, with long sites; it is just your really nice RV resort.

Thursday we packed up and headed to Medford. We had a time trying to get to the Elk’s campground. We never did find it; they moved it from the lodge to ten miles outside at their picnic grounds. The GPS took us out to a tiny dirt road with no place to turn around; we had to unhook, back the coach up and back up this tiny dirt road. I drove the car and Chuck took us to a private campground there in Phoenix called Holiday RV Park.

We parked, set up and took off back into Medford for specific shopping. In downtown Medford there is a hundred year old shoe store that fits hard to fit feet. We went there and got both of us shoes. We then headed into the mall for more shopping. We finished up this shopping trip going to Costco for more specific stuff. Dinner was baked chicken from Costco, brought home.

Friday we got up early, and since I didn’t finish all I had wanted to get in Oregon; the owner of the RV Park said we could check out late. So back into Medford we went. Chuck checked out four RV supply places for parts we need for the coach. I needed to shop at Wal-Mart, and we went back to the big mall for a couple of more things I wanted for presents. Then, back to the coach and we hooked up the car and headed south. You sure could feel a change in temperature when we crossed into CA. The temperature went up to 81 degrees in a few short miles.

We drove on into Rolling Hills Casino hoping to get into their RV camp; but alas, no luck. We arrived around 5 pm, and the camp was full. We pulled on into the big rig parking lot and found a spot to dry camp. We dropped the jacks and set out the slides. We then went into dinner for the seafood buffet. While they didn’t have any Dungeness Crab meat, they had a very nice buffet.

Saturday morning I saw a fifth wheel leaving the RV Park, so Chuck checked this out. We moved into a full hookup spot by 9:30 am. The dry camper next to us in the parking lot ran his generator all night long. I finally got to sleep around 5 am; Chuck was going to wake me at 8 to see the balloons leave, but didn’t; I awoke around 8:30. I don’t know why Chuck didn’t get the camera to watch all the balloons leave. The car show started at 10, there was around 100 plus cars, and there was a ribs cook off going on also; and the balloons were there too. That was why the RV Park was full. The temperature was in the mid 80’s, so sunny and warm after being in the mid 50’s for the past several weeks.

Sunday, we got up and headed here to see Bill and Jeanette. Please continue to pray for Bill/Jeanette and family, he’s in great need.  Thank you for all your prayers.

It’s only two months from today until Christmas. 

Until next time…..Be well…..Lorraine

 

10/25/09                                                                                                                                 Chuck’s Report

We are still working our way South for the winter, have made it as far as Northern California.  We spent over a month in Oregon, I think we did the same last year.  We didn’t follow the coast all the way down this time, however but still had a good time in Oregon. 

We started the week in Eugene, staying  at the Elks club.  They have a very nice campground at their club and dinner is served most nights.  It is pretty handy to the town yet pretty quiet, almost in a residential area.

I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned the stress cracks we have developed on our coach.  Tiffin (and other manufactures too), have a problem with cracks developing in the slide cutout.  Well, it appears we are not immune to this problem as we have a small crack on the driver’s rear slide, front bottom corner.  We also have developed one on the driver’s front slide, back top corner.  This are still covered under our warranty, Tiffin will pay to have a shop of our choice repair them or they will repair them if we return the coach to Red Bay, Alabama.  We found a nice reputable shop in Eugene that works on coaches and had them look at our problems.  I wanted an estimate on repairing our fiberglass damage from out accident in Alaska, adding an outside vent to the microwave and repairing the two cracks.  They checked out the cracks and suggested the repair wouldn’t be too easy, might even require pulling the slides out for the repairs.  They said they could do all the work but recommended we return to the factory instead. 

So - - -  we are now back to our original plan to spend part of the winter in Texas.  As usual, we make plans and God laughs.  But we have pretty much been rolling with the flow since we started full timing just over two years ago and this isn’t a big hurdle for us either way.  At least we now have the starts of a plan for the winter. 

So, after that news, we decided to head on South to Canyonville, Oregon to Seven Feathers campground.  We have stayed here before and think its one of the best campground on the West coast.  The problem is there is a Casino here too, ha.  But we fooled them this time, both Lorraine and I left with more money than we started.  In fact, when we were getting ready to head back to the coach on the last night, I asked Lorraine if she had any comp play on her player’s card.  She checked and had $5 so we stopped at a penny machine on the way.  She entered her code, got the free $5 and on the third spin came up with $88.  Now that was a good spin, she had two more spins and then we left.  We stayed there for three nights, spend part of the second day with Bill/Barb who also left Eugene area and stopped here for one night. 

We left there on headed to Medford where we wanted to stay at the Elks club.  We never found it, even after calling them and getting a different address.  In fact, we ended up driving down a small, dirt road where we had to unhook the car and back out for a ways.  We decided to give up trying to find the Elks campground and headed for a private one we have stayed at before. 

The main reason we were stopping in Medford was for Lorraine to do some shopping, after all, Oregon doesn’t have any sales tax.  So we did our running around the first afternoon and next morning.  We then made the compass read “S” once again and headed for California.  We stopped for the evening at Rolling Hills Casino campground but it was full.  Seems there was a classic car and hot air balloon show over the weekend.  We decided to spend the night in the truck stop parking lot along with at least 30 other RVs.  Wouldn’t you know it, the guy next to us was the one that ran their generator all night, right outside our bedroom.  Between the generator and trucks coming and going, neither of us got a very good night’s sleep.  We were able to move into the campground the next morning  so it was only for the one night.  

So Sunday was another of the more common lately traveling day.  We headed out to our friends place here near Lincoln.  They have a very nice spread, still out in the country but town is moving ever closer to their place.  We met Bill/Jeanette in Quartzsite last winter, traveled with them to Mexico and stopped by their place on our way North this spring.  Unfortunately, Bill is going through some serious medical problems and we request everyone to include him in your prayers. 

Our plans for the next week have firmed up enough so we will make reservations at a campground.  Lorraine wants to spend Halloween near our daughter’s so she can be with our grand daughter, surprise, surprise.  We will be in the area until Tuesday after Halloween.  I found a coupon for a place in Laughlin, Nevada that will give us a full hookup site for one week, two breakfast buffets and if we stay before Dec., they will throw in another free week.  So, we will head to Don Laughlin’s for the following two weeks.  Ah, two weeks along the Colorado river, in a nice looking campground, enjoying the warm, dry weather.  Looking forward to that!

So, once again, that was our week, hope you had a good one too. 

Thanks   Chuck

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