Here we are, on the road: We’re in Santa Clara, CA

Sunday, October 28, 2012 Lorraine’s report

Hello once again from the Santa Clara Elks Lodge parking lot, aka “the RV” park in Sunnyvale, CA. We arrived here last Saturday, following a busy week in Oregon, mainly Eugene, where we had our refrigerator replaced. We were there from the previous Thursday until late Wednesday before we finished up.

Oregon Motor Coach Repair was a nice place to have work done; it’s kinda like Red Bay and the Tiffin factory. We had to be ready to pull the rig into the shop by 7:30 am, waiting for the nod from them to go on in. They had a small waiting room with coffee, a couch and a few easy chairs and a television. They would put your rig into a spot outside the shop when they were finished working on the rig for the day. The owner of the shop used to run the repair part of Country Coach Factory there in Eugene. They did pretty nice work, and were extremely busy every day we were there. They were replacing four more refrigerator change outs after us.

We love the new refrigerator; the only thing is we have the electrical box below where the refrigerator needed to go, and they lowered the refrigerator as low as they could, but the plain truth is I have to stand on a stool to reach the top shelf. But it is wonderful to have a working ice box, no more worrying about how to keep food from spoiling. As it was we lost everything in the little replacement refrigerator from Wal-Mart, it didn’t keep anything cold; the freezer worked, so that was good. We took that back to WM and got our money back on that.

On Tuesday I was sitting in the waiting room with some of the other people and Chuck and my laptop shut down. It just crashed and I could not get it to come back on. It kept saying “disc error”; my laptop died right then and there. Chuck let me use his for a bit the next day so I could check our financial accounts, but I knew he wanted to use his laptop as he usually does.

When the shop manager gave us the word we were going to be done, we went to Wal-Mart and Fred Meyer to get your basic food for the refrigerator. I had to replace everything from milk to ice cream; which is so hard to dish up now that the freezer works so well. And I love that there is plenty of ice from the ice maker. I bought the normal amount of food I was able to store in that old ice box, and it barely made a dent in the new one. Friday I made a potato salad for dinner, and the bowl looked so lost in all that room. To say I am happy with the new ice box is putting it mildly.

We left Wednesday afternoon and drove down to Seven Feathers RV Park. Chuck unhooked and set up and had to rest after. He is still having trouble breathing. After his rest, we headed over to the casino for dinner and a bit of gaming. Chuck came by me a short time after leaving me, and showed me a ticket of his winnings. He found a machine that liked him a lot; from the winnings he gave me $300.00 towards a new computer. Thank you Honey, I appreciated it. I had no luck there at Seven Feathers.

The next morning found us up early driving the car south to Medford, OR about an hour 10 minutes away. We have found some places we like to go to for things like Chuck’s shoes, and we added a new laptop computer to that list of stuff we were looking for.

Best Buy was where we found my new laptop. It was being cleared out, the Geek Squad loaded up what I needed and we were off, I had a new lap top. That was another long day for us.

Friday morning found us up and headed south again. We stopped at Rolling Hills Casino, got set up and went to eat their Friday night Seafood and Prime Rib buffet. It was delicious, neither one of us had much luck at that casino.

Saturday morning we were off pretty early, headed into the bay area. I have to say traveling into the bay area on Saturday is most definitely the way to go. Traffic was not at all that heavy like on any week day, it was so much less.

We have been busy with Susy and Kaitlyn, picking up Kaitlyn by 3 each day after school, bringing her by the rig, playing, reading and doing art. She has enjoyed it all. Mark took her up to Seattle for his aunt’s memorial on Friday and Susy and I had a chance to do a bit of shopping before we went to the Stanford/Washington State University Cougars football game yesterday. Stanford won in an exciting ending.

Chuck went to the Veteran’s Center here in the bay area early Tuesday. He met his doctor and she referred him to a lung doctor and he needs to have a sleep apnea test. We haven’t heard back from them when that will happen. Chuck tried calling Friday, but they didn’t call him back. Hopefully we will hear this week before we leave after Halloween.

That’s it for me. Until next time….

Lorraine

10/28/12 Chuck’s report

Yep, we’re in the Bay area to visit with our daughter and grand daughter. It’s good to be able to be here and yet still be in our own home when visiting, makes it less hassle for them too, I think.

We didn’t post a blog last week, we were still at the repair place getting our new fridge installed so wasn’t too much going on to write about. They got the old fridge out on Friday and got the new one in on Tuesday. They finished up Wednesday, just had a couple of things to do at our site, didn’t have to go into the shop.

We also had them install new house batteries for me, they sold us them for less than I could buy them at Wal-Mart and installed them for free too. Of course, I asked them to clean up and paint the battery compartment and they had to charge for that but it looks better now.

We ran a few errands on Wednesday morning while they were working on our coach. We got back and put stuff away, went inside to pay our bill. They were really good to work with, it took a few more hours to install than they quoted us but they stuck with their original quote. At $105/hour, that was a pleasant surprise.

By now it was early afternoon and we decided to hook-up and drive on down the road to Seven Feathers Casino RV Park, about 100 miles South of us. We made it there with no problems other than the new freezer door didn’t stay closed. We had Velcroed the fridge doors together but didn’t do anything with the freezer. I was able to figure out a way to Velcro the freezer door and contacted the repair place for idea. They said they mistakenly forgot to add a mechanical lock on the freezer and would send us one at our next stop. I gave them our daughter’s address and they send one to me.

While we were at the repair place, Lorraine was in the waiting room and her computer died. I’m not sure what happened but I was unable to get it to even turn on, usually not a good sign. We wanted to purchase a new one while we were still in Oregon plus needed to do more shopping so we decided to stay for two nights and drive to Medford to do our shopping the next day.

Of course, we were at a casino and that meant we would be going in for dinner and some slot playing. This time I had some luck on the slots and was able to give Lorraine some money towards her new computer. The one that died on her was also purchased with her winnings on slot machines, way back when we were in Springfield, Missouri a few years back. That makes it easier but she would rather have her old one as she had all her info and programs on it and has to rebuild everything on this one.

Friday we left 7 Feathers and headed South once more, this time planning on stopping at Rolling Hills Casino in Corning, California. We got there, got set up, washed the bugs off the front and went inside for a good buffet. We might have stayed for too long as both of us were down when we left but it was a good buffet, ha.

We only stayed there one night and pulled into the Elks here in Santa Clara on Friday. Once again we got set up (this time for more than one or two nights), washed the bugs then headed off to our daughter’s place. Our grand daughter was with our son-in-law and we needed to store some Christmas presents at our daughters and this was a good time to do that.

We then headed off to have dinner and met our grand daughter and SIL there. You could hear Kaitlyn all over the restaurant when we came in, she yelled “NANA, NANA” and came running over to get/give hugs. We all came back to our place and Kaitlyn talked everyone into letting her stay with us overnight, no surprise there.

Susy has been getting stuff marked and ready for a county wide garage sale at the fairgrounds. She has been buying lots of stuff for pennies on the dollar and had to volunteer there on Sunday. We went over to see her and check out the stuff they had, boy what a lot of stuff they had there but Lorraine didn’t find much stuff we wanted/needed.

After we left there, we stopped by a local playground so Kaitlyn could run and get some exercise. She hadn’t slept too well the night before and kept Lorraine up most of the night so Lorraine was able to catch a couple of winks in the car while Kaitlyn played.

Once we got back to the coach, Lorraine finished dinner for all of us, pork steak in the slow cooker with rice, one of my favorites. Everyone came by and had a good dinner and good time.

Next morning, Lorraine and I set up the GPS and headed out to find the VA medical center for my appointment on Tuesday morning. We wanted to find the route without fighting the morning rush hour traffic the next day. Good thing we did as the GPS wanted to route us through city streets vs. the freeway we wanted. I was able to reprogram it for the route we wanted.

We picked Kaitlyn up after school and returned to our place for awhile. Kaitlyn and Nana sure have a good time together, lots of laughter while they are playing. They also did some “homework” together, Kaitlyn read for an hour or so too. Later we stopped by the garage sale and helped Susy pick up her stuff that didn’t sell.

We then made it back to our place in time to watch the last presidential debate. We’ve watched all but one of them and have made up our minds, not that there was much doubt but there is difference this time. We had our absentee ballets so went ahead and filled them out and sent them in. So we’ve done our part, hope you vote too and don’t cancel out ours, ha.

Next morning we made it to the VA place by 8:15 for my appointment. We got to see a doctor who checked me out and told us we needed to have a pulmonary fit test and a sleep study done before we came back to see here in two months. So far I’ve been unable to get these scheduled but hope to have that taken care of tomorrow.

Once again we stopped by to pick Kaitlyn up after school. When Susy got off work, we met here there and unloaded her stuff into her garage to save until the next sale. Because we were up early and both were tired, we headed back to our place and called it a night.

Next morning we headed out to a local mall so Lorraine could pick up some stuff she had ordered, stopped by a grocery store then picked up Kaitlyn after school yet again. Susy stopped by In & Out on the way home for our dinner (thought of you again Steve).

Thursday we took Lorraine’s new computer over to Best Buy to get the new Windows 8 loaded. Guess what, we were a day early so we were unable to get it loaded, shoot. Guess we’ll have it done tomorrow, hope it’s not busy.

As we’ve done since Monday, we picked Kaitlyn up from school again. We came back to our place to do “homework'”, play games and watch a couple of kids shows on TV. This will be our last time for that as she and her dad have to go to Seattle on Friday to attend a memorial for his aunt on Saturday. They get back late tonight so we won’t see her until Monday afternoon when we will pick her up after school.

Friday we decided to stay home and rest. At least that’s what I did, Lorraine did laundry and fixed another good dinner, this time fried chicken and potato salad. Susy came over after work and she made plans for her and Lorraine to go shopping and for us to go with her to the Stanford football game on Saturday afternoon.

So that’s what yesterday was about, they went shopping, we attended a very good game then came back here where they played a couple of card games and watched a movie. A good day for us!

The place we are staying is like a parking lot but at least we have power and water at each site. There is a dump station close enough that we can run a hose over to drain our gray tank when needed but we have to move the coach over to dump the black tank. We can run the air conditioners or heat as needed plus Lorraine can do laundry at our place and we don’t have to load up and go to a laundry mat. But the biggest thing is we are close to Susy’s place and Kaitlyn’s school.

The weather has been nice, a couple of days of rain but not too bad. The temperature has been nice too, in the high 60s, low 70s. We got out of Washington in time as it’s been raining quite a bit there I hear. The forecast is for good weather until Wednesday, a storm moving in just in time for Halloween.

Our plans are to leave here on Thursday or Friday but that all depends on when I can make appointments with the VA. We will be back here for Thanksgiving one way or the other but not sure where we will go in-between. We are looking at 1000 Trails in Santa Barbara or possibly Laughlin, NV. We’ll make that choice once I get the appointments made this week. But we will be here for Halloween to be with Kaitlyn and back here for Thanksgiving for sure.

Lorraine has taken a few pictures and I’ll go through them and pick some to add here.

Nice sunset in Oregon.