Here we are, on the road: We’re in Wilsonville, Oregon

Sunday, February 20, 2011 Lorraine’s report

Hello from Wilsonville, OR, Woodburn RV Park, by the Woodburn Outlet Mall on I-5.

We are on our way north, with Birch Bay Latitude 49 Park being our destination this week and for the next several months. We will be there until Chuck finishes up his gig at the BP Oil Refinery.

I didn’t get a chance to write last weekend; I was very busy with my granddaughter, Kaitlyn. She had spent Saturday night with us, in fact we both went to bed fairly early, and I think I beat her to sleep. I was not feeling very well. Kaitlyn had gone home from school on Monday with the stomach flu, and I think I picked up a touch of it on Saturday. I did not feel very well even though we took it slow and easy at the San Jose Swap meet. That extra sleep was what I needed though.

Sunday found Kaitlyn and me up early; she wakes up about 7 or so and starts to want to do things by 7:30 am. We were busy doing art projects, school work, eating, watching her Sponge Bob Square Pants Show, etc.

Susy came over by 10:30 or so and we made plans for our day, not knowing that Chuck had other plans for his day. Susy and I had planned to hit the mall to spend time together, while we had hoped Chuck could take K to the park to play a bit. Chuck had to work on the hydro hot system, so we took K with us to the mall. Only, K doesn’t like shopping; we didn’t get as much accomplished as we had hoped to do, but K was happy, since we took her by the park to play. I cooked a ham dinner that evening, with Mark coming over in time to eat with us.

Monday was Valentine’s Day and Kaitlyn had been asking for “that yummy meat with gravy and rice” for dinner. I decided I would make her my pork chops in gravy and put on rice for dinner in the slow cooker. Afterwards, Chuck & I headed out to hit some of the stores we didn’t make it to the previous day. I hadn’t gotten much of anything for Susy’s birthday & Chuck had his errands to run. We picked K up from school. What an excited little girl that day. The kids had exchanged valentines and had snacks at school at the end of the day, so of course Kaitlyn was all bubbly and talkative. We had fun looking at all her valentines she received.

Mommy and daddy didn’t come until later on; after 6:30 so it made for a short family time of dinner and such.

Tuesday found me doing cleaning around the coach. Chuck and I headed out for more running, and then we picked up Kaitlyn from school. We went by Safeway to order Susy a birthday cake and headed back to the rig. We spent another evening eating in.

Wednesday was Susy’s birthday. I took the morning off and even rested a bit before we headed out to pick up Kaitlyn from school. We headed back over to Safeway to pick up the cake and then came home. Susy got off early and was here at 4:30. We took Kaitlyn back to the park for some play time and then we all headed out to the Black Angus for Susy’s birthday dinner. It was just the 4 of us since Mark works Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights at Stanford this quarter.

Dinner was delicious and we couldn’t even eat the dessert that came with the meal. Back to the rig to open presents, blow out the candles on the cake and open presents. I hope you had a nice birthday, Susy, I loved being with you and Kaitlyn. Thank You for letting us come and share it with you!!! It’s so hard to leave you and Kaitlyn, makes me sad, and I cried.

After Susy left, I packed up and put away stuff in the rig for leaving in the morning.

Thursday morning found us leaving the area. Chuck dumped the black and gray tanks and we were off. It was raining and blowing pretty hard, and the traffic was pretty heavy. This area has so much traffic day and night that it’s scary in a big rig.

Interstate 680 has to be one of the worst roads here in CA to drive on; the ruts will jar your insides to pieces. We took the 880 to the 680 to the 80 to the 505 to Interstate 5 finally and headed north, we started for home.

We drove to Corning, CA to the Rolling Hills Casino where we spent the first night. It rained and was blowing most of the way. It was raining and blowing hard while Chuck set up. To make matters worse, the heat wouldn’t come on in the rig even though we had power. Chuck worked on it for a while and even sent out a note on the forum, and got it to come on after a bit, but it was awful timing for that to happen, since it was so cold and damp for us.

We headed over to the casino for the buffet and a bit of gaming. The food was good and I had a little bit of luck. It was still cold, windy and rainy.

Friday we were up and off again headed to Canyonville, OR to stay at the Seven Feathers Casino RV Park. We had a better day for traveling, sunny and nice, but I woke up with a head cold, so I wasn’t up to par, just too much going on, I guess.

Driving through the Coastal Mountains and the Siskiyou Mountains with all the snow on the trees and right alongside the road was a sight to see. All the rain we had was snow up there in the mountains; I’m sure glad we didn’t have to drive through that stuff.

We arrived at Seven Feathers RV and set up. I had started laundry in Corning and I continued in Canyonville. Chuck was now working on the lights in the bathroom. The lights over the sink didn’t come on and he was trying to figure out why. We didn’t head over to the casino for dinner until after 6 or so. We played a bit, saw a gal win $21,000 on a nickel machine, and then headed home.

Saturday we headed out again in the rain. We drove over an hour and a half before we drove out of the rain, the rain got thick for a bit, almost snow. I have to say, the temperature has been slowly dropping and tonight it’s suppose to be 27 degrees. It is sure cold for me, my blood is still thin from Yuma, I think.

We arrived here around 1-1:30, set up and I started cleaning the counter tops, they were in dire need of a good scrubbing from all the desert dust. Chuck continued to try to figure out the lights in the bathroom.

I finished up and headed over to the outlet mall to look for some great sales since this is President’s Day weekend. I wasn’t disappointed with what I found at the mall, and was it ever packed with people, all looking for great sales. We spent a quiet evening in.

We should be home in a day or two, and we don’t know when we will be back on the road, Chuck will start his job on February 28; we are not sure when it will be done. So once again our lives are like Jell-O, nothing is set. Hopefully, the weather will not be too cold for me and spring with its warmer wind and rain will arrive shortly.

With that I’ll say see you down the road…..Lorraine

2/20/11 Chuck’s report

Yep, we’ve started the trip back to Washington, heading North much earlier than we would have wanted because of the upcoming job.

This past week we once again tried to spend as much time with Susy and Kaitlyn as possible. Lorraine and Susy went out shopping on Sunday, they didn’t get much opportunity to do that together this trip.

We did pick Kaitlyn up from school everyday we were there. It’s funny but she doesn’t like to shop, not for clothes, shoes, groceries or even toys. She definitely missed a gene there, Lorraine and Susy sure enjoy it. We did have to stop by a store a couple of times, Kaitlyn and I either stayed in the car or roamed the store just looking while Lorraine did the shopping. On second thought, maybe she got a good, non-shopping gene from me??

Monday was Valentine’s day and Lorraine fixed a very good pork steak dinner, Susy, Kaitlyn and Mark we all able to spend the evening with us until it was time for Kaitlyn to head home to go to bed.

Wednesday we took Susy and Kaitlyn out to Black Angus for Susy’s birthday dinner. Mark had to work that night so he was unable to attend but we did “toast” one to him. Our dinner’s came with two desserts that we all shared, a bad thing as Lorraine had ordered and picked up a cake for Susy’s birthday and we had it at the coach for after dinner. So after dinner we headed back for Susy to open her presents and sample the cake. We didn’t make a big dent in the cake after the big dinner and the desserts we shared but we split what was left so we could sample it again in the next few days.

After presents and cake, we packed up Kaitlyn’s things, both what we keep in the coach and what she had to take home. It’s amazing how much “stuff” one little girl can accumulate in just a week. All too soon, it was time to say our “see ya laters” to our daughter and grand daughter. I think we were able to spend 8 weeks in Santa Clara with them this trip, one of the advantages of our lifestyle. But it’s still hard to leave them, especially when we aren’t sure of when we will see them next time. At least this time, Lorraine knows she will be flying in to spend time with them during Kaitlyn’s birthday in April, my next visit is unknown at this time. In fact, we’re missing them already and it’s only been three days.

Thursday morning started out cold and clear, looked like a very fine day to travel. It had rained hard the night before and we were hoping for a good day but before we got packed up and ready to go, it had started to rain once again, shoot. About the time we got to the freeway it was a total downpour, not the day we had hoped for.

We drove in heavy rains for at least three hours before the rains slowed down some, it never did really stop raining for the whole trip. We stopped for the night at Rolling Hills Casino RV park in Corning, California. We had a couple of problems getting set up but once we did, we found our heat pumps didn’t work. The heat pumps are actually just our air conditioners that “run” backwards. The air conditioners would run but when we switched them over to heat pump mode, they wouldn’t even attempt to start, much less run. I tried troubleshooting the problem for a couple of hours, I couldn’t figure it out, all I did was get soaked from the rain. Lorraine took advantage of the fact we had full hookups and started doing laundry, we didn’t do any for the past week we were at the Elks.

Finally Lorraine said she wanted to go over to the casino for their buffet. We also managed to play the slots for a couple of hours too, I didn’t have any luck but once again Lorraine won about the same amount as I lost so I guess together we broke even?? When we caught the shuttle back to the rig, I tried the heat pumps once again just for grins and low and behold, they worked. Not sure what happened but they’ve worked for the last three days just normal, must have been a gremlin.

Speaking of gremlins, when I got back from walking Misty, Lorraine told me the lights and the fan in the bathroom weren’t working. By this time I wasn’t in the mood to do much more troubleshooting so I left that until the next morning. Then I found the lights not only didn’t work but when the light switch was off, the fans worked but the fan switch would turn on the lights too. I decided to let it be until we stopped for the day once again, hoping it would be like the heat pumps and heal itself. Maybe these problems are just the coach showing it’s displeasure about driving in the cold and heading North too soon or it could have been something shorting out from all the rain we drove through.

The morning started out cold and clear but once again our luck wasn’t to hold, it started raining shortly before we got on the road, nothing like the day before however, this time it was just a rain, not a downpour. It only rained for an hour or so, just about the time we reached the mountains. There was lots of snow alongside the roads and in the trees and hills but the road was mostly bare and wet for the rest of the day. I’m not a big fan of snow, but it isn’t too bad if it’s not on the road as in this case. I know Lorraine took lots of pictures, I’ll add some at the end of this post.

We stopped at 7 Feathers Casino RV park in Canyonville, Oregon for the night. We try to stay here whenever we’re in the area, this is one of the nicest parks we’ve stayed at throughout the whole USA. Once we got set up, I spent a couple of hours troubleshooting the electrical problem we have, this one was over my pay grade too and I couldn’t find the problem. Lorraine did a couple load of laundry here too.

So we headed over to the casino to eat dinner and try our luck on their slots. We had a good dinner, no buffet this time as we just couldn’t do two in a row. Once again we broke about even, together that is, as once again Lorraine won about as much as I lost, getting to be a habit here. And this time when we got back to the coach, we still had our electrical gremlin, the lights and fan problem didn’t fix themselves.

We weren’t sure if we were going to stay at 7 Feathers for one or two nights, that decision would wait until morning after we checked the weather forecast. So yesterday we got up, checked the forecast and decided to head on out, one of the few times we’ve traveled three days in a row. This may have been the first time we’ve stayed here that Lorraine didn’t go to the swimming pool/hot tub. Lorraine said she felt like she was coming down with a cold or something and by the time we got ready to leave she almost felt like staying instead. But once we got on the road, she started feeling a bit better.

And once again, it started raining, this time with a bit of snow mixed in just for good measure, as we were getting ready to go. We kept checking the forecast and it showed the weather to be much better the farther North we travelled. So once again we took off, traveling though the mountains with snow alongside the road but none on the roads. It was about an hour before the rains stopped and soon thereafter we were in mostly sunny skies, even thought the outside temperature was showing high 30s.

Our destination this time was at Woodburn RV park, in Woodburn, Oregon of course. This place is right next door to the big Outlet Mall that Lorraine likes to shop. After we got here, Lorraine cleaned the inside of the coach, it’s amazing how dusty everything gets, even when traveling in the rain. I finished with my setting up chores, unhooked the car and washed the windows, they were filthy from being towed in the rain.

Lorraine started the last load of laundry, and then she took the car over to the mall and I once again worked on the lights/fan problem we have. Well, we still have the same problem, I still can’t figure it out. Wish I understood this mysterious, magic stuff called electricity better but it isn’t my strong suit for sure.

We did decide to stay here for two days for a couple of reasons, one to rest up for a day before traveling on and another so Lorraine could hit the mall again tomorrow. I must be getting old or something, three travel days in a row and I’m beat! I can remember making the trip from Bellingham to San Jose in one day, by myself, back in the day. Here we’ve only travelled about 700 miles in three days and I have to have a day off, what a wimp.

So our plans now have us leaving here tomorrow, making a couple more nightly stops along the way before we get back to Bellingham on Tuesday or Wednesday. We will stop by Al’s RV in Bellingham to have our Hydro Hot repaired before we head on up to our final stop at Latitude 49 in Blaine. Our friends, Joe/Alice, have two lots there and have kindly offered us to stay on their empty lot for the duration of my job. It is only a few miles from the refinery and we won’t have to move every couple of weeks like we would have if we were to stay at 1000 Trails and Beachwood. Thanks Joe/Alice, see you up there in about a month or so.

Now for the pictures and get this posted. Here’s hoping it warms up and we have an early spring once we get into Washington.

Happy Birthday Susy!