Things Don’t Just Come in Threes

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

August has not been a good month for us.  We started our bad luck off when our hot water heater in the motorhome bit the dust.  Then, the installer of the new tank knocked the pipe off the sink drain.  Naturally, we didn’t discover it until we tried to figure out why we were getting water all over our floor.  Now our floor really needs to be replaced.  Next, our awning ripped.  Obviously any ripped awning needs to be replaced if you hope to use. 

Wait --- we aren’t done yet.  Once we left the coast and arrived inland, we decided to swap vehicles so headed south on the freeway with the our Wrangler.  About two miles north of our exit, the engine just stopped.  We thought it was a fuel pump.  In hindsight, we wish it was a fuel pump.  It wasn’t.  It was the timing belt.  We’ve yet to find out if it also took the valves and maybe more with it.  Next, we returned to our little home base only to discover that our refrigerator had died.  Have you been counting the dollars ($$$$)?  We certainly have.  As I said, it’s not been a good month for us and then to top it off, I worry about Syria.  I worry about Justin being there.

Some RVers have roadside assistance with Good Sam and others with Coach-Net.  The fine print is a little different with both of them.  We know we understood it when we read it but it didn’t mean much until it was time to use it.  We’ve had Coach-Net’s road service for about 4 years. We’ve used it a few times and had mixed feelings with it – some okay and some just okay.

When we were stuck on the side of the road we discovered what “unlimited towing” really means and what “towed to the nearest facility” means.  It definitely doesn’t mean unlimited towing.  It really means towed to the nearest service center they select. 

Coach-Net would tow us to the Jeep dealership. If I said that dealership was 10 miles from our breakdown location, I would be greatly exaggerating the distance but I’m giving Coach-Net the benefit here.  However, their chart indicated it was 36 miles!!  Heck, we could have been downtown Portland in less than 36 miles.  They would not tow us three miles down the road to a semi-truck lot and they would not tow us five miles to our son’s house.  Of course, they also would not tow us to our own mechanic either.  Do these roadside assistance places get kickbacks from the dealerships for each vehicle they have towed in?  Well, I asked the representative that question.  Obviously, she didn’t answer and just read back what the contract said …. to the nearest service facility.

At one time the representative indicated we were only allowed one tow a year.  That’s not the plan we paid for.  Another time she told us the maximum mileage we could be towed was 25 miles and anything beyond that was an additional fee.  That’s not the upgraded plan we paid for either.

Arrival time of the tow truck was also interesting.  We were first told the tow truck would take about 1 1/2 hours to arrive.  Then, we were told about 2 hours.  Next, we were told if we decided to go to the Jeep dealership, it would be there in 45 minutes. 

We were on the shoulder of the very busy I-5.  We weren’t interested in hanging around there any longer than necessary.  We called Michael and he just happened to be on his way back from Longview.  Thus, I had a ride to pick up our Liberty.  We decided to be our own tow truck!  Lee and Michael waited with the Wrangler while I took Terry to get the motorhome. We hooked up the Wrangler to the motorhome and took it to our own mechanic.

Next we unloaded the kayaks from the Wrangler.  They were loaded into the back of Liberty and taken to our home base … one kayak at time.  We had planned on moving the motorhome back into Lee and Sabrina’s driveway while we worked on it but we since we were just a couple miles from the homebase so that’s where it went for now.

We were able to pull this off because we could tow the Wrangler.  Had it been the motorhome that would not have been an option.  That evening we decided to add a back-up to Coach-Net. We added a Good Sam Roadside Assistance card to that pile of cards we are already carrying.  Next year when Coach-Net runs out we’ll probably upgrade the Good Sam and go with it.

‘Tis life on the road.

Consider me very stressed!   --  USS Gravely DDG 107

RV Park for Fishermen

"Some of you young men think that war is all glamour and glory,
but let me tell you, boys, it is all hell!" -  General Sherman

I mentioned the other day that I’d comment a little more about the RV park we were at.  So, here goes.  We hadn’t been in a regular RV park for quite some time.  The RV parks in the north during the summer are very different than the RV parks in the south during the fall.  I know I’ve said that before.  Summer usually brings out the campers.  Winter brings out the RVers.  The parks are filled with families now and at times it’s even hard getting into a park because they overflow during summer vacation times.

When we headed to the coast the only park we could get a reservation at was the Columbia Shores Park.  It’s a membership park associated with Resort Parks International (RPI).  We have this membership through our Thousand Trails.  There’s a Thousand Trails in Long Beach and one in Seaside.  However, they were full so we booked the KM park instead.  It’s definitely a no-frills park right on Highway 101 and about halfway between Ilwaco and Astoria.  We had driven by the park before and I’d even commented that there was nothing there.  However, I have to admit it’s in a perfect location with great sites and a super nice manager.  We really liked this place but there wasn’t much there.  It’s a park geared to the fishermen. 

They had an interesting setup for sewer.  A special cap is used and you connect it to a hose for grey water only.  A black water dump is at the park but not at each site.   Grey water sewer is dumped through a garden hose at each site.  We’d never seen that before and it sure beats no sewer.

Grey water only

The park is mentioned as a park for fishermen.  The little town of Chinook was obviously the place to be.  Since salmon were running and fishing was great, the local marina was packed as was every place else these fishermen could park their vehicles and boat trailers.

Most parks have quiet hour rules.  Traveling RVers are normally very courteous about these hours.  The hours vary from park to park but normally run from about 10 - 11 PM to about 8 AM. Our neighbors at the park were fishermen.  About 5:30 they were up.   There was no way one could sleep through their racket.  Yikes!  Then, of course, it was party late at night.  On Sunday this group was replaced with older guys coming in to fish.  I think the 5th wheel was used for a family and friend fishing cabin. 

Would we go back?  Definitely.  It was nice having Long Beach on one side and Astoria on the other. We took day trips northwest to Ilwaco and Long Beach.  Then, we took day trips southwest to Astoria and Seaside.  Where are the pictures of our adventures?  Oops … I didn’t take many.  However, we figured it was time to leave the beach behind and head inland.  That we did.

 

I used to be really good at .blogging.  Heck, I even looked for things to do or pictures to take just so I could blog about them.  That was in the early days I guess.  There were times I even tried to post daily.  Then, I’d slack off and post every other day.  I’m really getting lax because every third or fourth day lately seems to be the norm.  Am I getting lazy?  Has blogging just gotten old? 

Actually, it’s neither of the above.  We’ve just been busy doing other things.   I like to blog because I know down the road I’ll want to look back so I look at it as a kind of diary.  I’ve been lax at writing and I’ve been lax at reading. Maybe, I’m just getting old …..  or maybe I’ve been getting sidetracked.

I’d like to say I’m getting sidetracked so let’s just leave it at that.  Other addictions have kind of taken it’s place for now.  No … not bad addictions just time consuming, mind boggling stuff like DNA especially when I’m now monitoring DNA accounts for ten people!!  Yikes!

USS Gravely DDG 107

‘Tis life on the road.

Washington Coast – Delayed Homecoming

 

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

We pulled up those levelers and headed to the coast just as planned.  The weather has been cooler but other than waiting for the morning clouds to burn off, the sky has been blue.  We discovered that our timing was perfect.  It had rained cats and dogs just before we arrived.

There was no early start to leaving for the coast. We casually drove by a garage sale just by the Elks park in Kelso. I said casually.

For Me

For Lee

The time we spent there wasn’t casual though.  First of all we found a lawn mower for our son.  He needed one and here it was just waiting for him.  Next, we found a must-have toll painted little cabinet.  Then, I made the mistake of sending a couple pictures of the items to Tammi.  That was definitely a mistake.  She wanted every item I sent.  That meant we needed some way to transport this stuff to their house before we left the area.  We coerced Michael into helping us.

All of these for Tammi

Once that was taken care of we were finally on our way.  It was Friday and we knew traffic wouldn’t be light.  Cars tend to pack the roads to the coast over the weekends and especially when the weather is nice, fishing is good and festivals are around.  This was definitely the case on this Friday. 

We couldn't figure out how this accident happened.

We pulled into a nice site, set up and headed down to Dooger’s for oyster stew and clam chowder.  (More on the park, our site and the neighbors in my next blog.)  This was the weekend for the largest kite flying contest in the world.  You can imagine how packed those roads were.  We still intended to check out some of those kites but we weren’t interested in attending all the competition – too many people for sure.  The beach was definitely packed!  Not only were people here for the kites but also for the fishing.  The salmon were being caught and the fishing was fantastic.  All the marinas were packed, boats and trailers and people were everywhere. 

During the summer in Ilwaco you can usually count on a great Saturday Market.  Leaving the Long Beach area that’s where we headed.  We’ve been to Ilwaco many times in the past.  Sometimes it was just to visit and other times to go on one of their many fishing charters. We were here this time to check out the market since we were close anyway.  Saturday Markets can be so much fun.  You just never know what you might see.  Our wallets didn’t see daylight but we enjoyed looking.

Then, it was time to get away from the traffic and all the people.  So, back to our site and to Duchess.  The rest of the day was spent doing absolutely nothing except what we wanted to do and getting out our Weber for our evening dinner.

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Our ears have been listening to the news recently.  Our plans are changing and it's not our fault.  I’ve posted before how excited we were as our grandson asked us to attend his homecoming in Virginia when his ship's deployment ends.  It appears his homecoming will be delayed.  We don’t like his ship to be in the news.  We don't like that at all.   Start those prayers flowing.

From one of the many news postings.

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‘Tis life on the road.

Making Winter RV Travel Plans

The ocean is a central image. It is the symbolism of a great journey.

Three days ago I ended my previous blog not knowing where we going or what we were going to do.  The only thing I knew is that Terry had another doctor’s appointment and we needed to be there …. about 160 miles away.  Now whether we would be there for just a day trip or whether we would actually move the RV, we didn’t know.

We moved the RV.  As you can tell, it wasn’t planned.  We just woke up the following morning and decided to go.  That we did.  Along the way we checked out a few RV parks but none of them really grabbed us so we just kept going.  We ended up at another Elks but this time in Kelso.  The price was right and the location worked great too.

I had to go back to previous blogs to add pictures to this one.  I had none!  Love the diary of a blog! Of course, I was looking for beachie pictures too.

In the meantime, I’ve detected “chatter” from our RV group.  The push is on and winter travel plans are being discussed.  Gads!  Do we really have to think about where we’re going to be and when?  Do we need to get out the chalk or are these marks on our calendars supposed to be made in ink?  Who has their winter plans in place?  I know dates need to be decided and location determined. Folks need to know which direction to head and when or they might be on the wrong coast.

This isn’t everyone …. some folks showed up later and other folks were on that wrong coast.

Every year our  RV group organizes a reunion.  The meeting place has usually been Quartzsite but we’ve also had a gathering or two in Yuma.  Just because it starts one place rarely means it ends there.  Folks tend to wander off together.  However, with the Big Tent Show in Quartzsite, having any get together at the same time someplace else means our numbers are decreased.  It’s a tough, tough thing to compete against.

We also do a lot of this …. eating out that is.  What strange folks we have here including Deb and Mike and Paul and Marti … not in the pictures above.  -- same time but just a few days later.  That’s how it works.

So, the other day I sat down to start my research.   One thing we do know is that we will probably start our journey south just as soon as Justin’s leave is over.  That should be around the middle of October.  We also know we’d like to spend Christmas with the kids. 

I  discovered this picture .. about 2010.  I love the color of my hair on that old blog.   It might be time for a change …. yet again. I’m good at that!

Our tentative plan is to meander a little south with friends, Toni and Doug.  How far are we going?  We don’t know.  We’re hoping to leave the motorhome in a site for the approximate ten days or so while we’re gone.  That’s going to take some research for sure finding a place that will let us do that within the distance we’re willing to drive back.  Then, of course, we have the weather to contend with at that time.  Nope …not ready to stress about this.

It’s hard to think of where we’d like to go.  Some of the places we like the best are on the beach.  We’ll probably plan some of that.   We know we’ll visit Parker and Quartzsite …. even though I said we’d been there, done that enough and probably wouldn’t go back.  Okay, so I lied.  We’ll probably go back and it’ll probably be in January of 2014.  Besides that I don’t have a clue. 

I have learned if we want a good site during the time when snowbirds merge on the southern states, that sometimes we need to think about reservations depending on desired location.  I do know how to make reservations and I know how to cancel them.  I do that often.

 

I also know traveling to southern California and the San Diego area requires traveling through through busy Los Angeles with its stop and go traffic.

Oceanside, CA Elks is in a great location with a short drive to the beach.

With all the confusion about where we’re going to be and when months from now.  I did start my research and actually made a real reservation.  However, the reservations were for today (Friday) and not for 3 months down the road.  That’s just about as far as I got.  I’m not good at making plans this far out but I’ll work on it. 

Anyone have their winter plans already worked out for them? 

This is beachfront property though.

We do have a very favorite park in San Diego.  When we were there it was just boondocking on the the waterfront. Then, they closed it down in order to add utilities.  Rumor has it that it might open again in a few months.  Did that get us excited?  It did.  However, we also know those utilities they’ve added will probably greatly increase the price.

  

What are we willing to spend a night?  

What are you willing to spend a night?  

We aren’t quite sure yet.  

One more thing …. we need to get a new awning sooner than later.  Our first thought was to have the whole mechanism replaced when we get south … savings there would be hundreds of dollars.  However, we can’t wait that long.  Anyone ever just replace the fabric?  That’s probably next on our list of things we need to do.

Right now it’s time to think about getting on the road again. We’re heading to the coast …

‘Tis life on the road.

Bremerton, Ferries, Seabeck

Diet rule #1: If nobody sees you eating it, it doesn't contain any calories.

As mentioned in my previous blog, we did move.  We moved a little closer to the dive site that Sandi was going to be visiting over the weekend.  However, we still were close to 50 miles away. That didn’t stop us though.  Off we went from the Bremerton Elks to just north of Tacoma and Redondo Beach.  Our route to the beach was via the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

This beach is definitely set up for dive classes.  The waterfront was marked off, divers scattered over the beach and canopies were set up marking the different dive schools.

Congratulations to Sandi.  She's now a certified scuba diver !!

Right next door was Salty’s Restaurant.  That’s were we decided to have lunch and chat before we headed back to Duchess and our RV.  The location was fantastic.  The food so-so and not what you’d call especially inexpensive but then again, have you ever known a restaurant with a great location being cheap? 

After a little lunch and lots of talk, we decided to head back via the ferry.  We had two choices on ferries.  We could take the one from downtown Seattle directly to Bremerton or we could take the one from West Seattle to the Port Orchard area.  Since we had taken the Seattle-Bremerton ferry many times, we opted for the one we hadn’t taken before. 

That decision was not a great one.  Even though the distance was about 12 miles shorter, it probably took about ten times longer as the freeway was packed, the route through West Seattle slow with red lights, city speed limits and traffic hampering our travel.  We actually missed the first ferry by several minutes.  Thank goodness they run often. This ferry is definitely different than any we'd been on.  There were two stops on the way to the Kitsap Peninsula and the Southworth Terminal.  The first stop was at Vashon Island.  Cars were loaded depending on destination.  I figured they’d just unload and not take more cars on.  That’s not how it worked.  They definitely had a system.  Cars were loaded heading both directions.  I’d never seen this before but then again, we’d never been on this ferry before either.

It ended up being a much longer trip than we had planned … definitely, but we made it back and didn’t do much else the rest of the day.  Duchess was sure happy to see us.

I’m always amazed at how different each Elks RV park is.  We really like the Elks.  They are inexpensive and usually in great locations. Some of them have Camp Hosts and some do not.  Not all members realize that it really is an RV park. There are specific sites and the RVs are pretty close to each other.  It's not the BLM.  

We had two neighbors with dogs.  The one on the right had a long, long leash.  Their dog was tethered to their motorhome and could run across road, into our site and just about anyplace else it wanted to. The owners?  Well, they were huddled up inside.  Needless to say, if we were outside, their dog was in wanted to be on our patio.   Then, there was the neighbor on our left.  Oh, sure they’d be outside with them but the dogs were free roaming … everywhere ...  peeing on tires, barking on our patio and just about anyplace they wanted to roam.  Needless to say, our patio was not our own when we were outside.

Out comes "Mom" with the free roaming "kids".

Where's "kid 2"?  Peeing on a parked car's tire.

Well, we paid for a week but that didn't really matter.  We had another doctor’s appointment in less than a week.  What were we going to do?  We had no idea.  We have discovered we’ve not been able to do a lot of kayaking and also a lot of sightseeing.  We’ve spent way too much time driving someplace.  In a week’s time if you take a couple days to travel to Portland and back for doctors, a day to move the motorhome and another day to rendezvous, there isn’t much left in the week to discover anything local.  Then, of course, you’ve got to add in laundry time.  That in itself can be a pain.  We’ve either got to wash the dirty ones or buy new ones. Maybe we can just turn the dirty clothes wrong side out and no one will notice ??  Hmm … not good choices for sure.

In the meantime we decided to do nothing and stress about that later.  Again, we’re saying we’ll be better at planning next year but will we?  There were a couple little day trips we wanted to take before we thought about the 160 mile trip to the doctor’s office. We had gained a few miles by moving the motorhome south again so it was no longer over 200 miles but still a long ways. What to do? What to do?

We had been in this area before and knew that Eagles frequent here.  We also knew that this wasn’t really the best time of year to see them at their feeding grounds.  However, there are always eagles around this state.  You just have to find them.   We were off to Seabeck which was only about 10 miles away and a feeding ground for birds. Did we see any?  Well, no but we did have a nice drive and it was blamed it on our poor timing.

We also took a  ride through Scenic Beach State Park.  There used to be a time we liked all the trees when we’d put our little tent or tent trailer in.  However, those days are long gone.  You definitely have trouble seeing the trees through the forests here.

‘Tis life on the road.

Port Townsend

There cannot be a crisis next week.  My schedule is already full.

Our drive to Port Townsend was a short one.  Short drives are always nice.  Well, sometimes long ones are too.  Our original thought was we’d pull into the Elks RV park.  However, as we are certainly known for, we changed our mind and decided we wanted full hookups.  Then, the closer we got we even changed our mind back to the Elks.  After all we knew they had a dump on site and that would work too.  At least we remembered there had been a dump on site the last time we stopped.  When we arrived we realized things weren't as they had been.  The dump was closed.  It wasn’t just a temporary closure.  The city had closed it permanently.  Ugh, ugh, ugh.

View from Point Hudson RV park.

After pulling into a site at the Elks, we took a little trip four miles down the road to check availability at the SKP park.  We had been there too.  It’s a very popular park and fills up often during the summer months.  Needless to say, it was full.  The only thing available was boondocking.  We had recently done our share of boondocking ... well, kind of but figured we'd sure like full hookups.  After all, it was about time.

I've wanted a new paddle but thought I had picked out the one I wanted.  I've now changed my mind.  I want one of these!!

Pygmy Boats in Port Townsend.  Lightweight boats you build yourself!  Of course, Terry would love, love, love to do this.  Wonder how much the class costs?  We know what the kits cost.

There are several great places to stay around the Port Townsend area.  It’s a nice place to visit so those great places fill up.  Next stop was the Point Hudson RV park which is directly on the water with a fantastic view.  We would have loved to have stayed here.  However,  that didn’t work either.  Instead of wasting our time wishing we’d made reservations, we walked around the Point and checked out the Pygmy Boats before heading to the Bayview Restaurant.  At least at the restaurant we got to enjoy the waterfront view with kayaks paddling by even though we didn’t get to enjoy that scenery out the front window of our motorhome window.  We also got to watch the ferries dock, load up and take the travelers over to Whidbey Island. I love the Washington State Ferry system.

We had one big hiccup in our plans though.  Our arrival in Port Townsend was on Tuesday.  Here we were about 200 miles north of Portland and Terry had a doctor’s appointment there on Thursday. We needed a secure place to leave our motorhome and the kayaks while we scurried down for that appointment.  It ended up being the Elks even though we really wanted a place with a dump for a change.  

Elks – Port Townsend – A very friendly and nice place to stay while there.  They were expecting to be packed in over the weekend as they had a group coming in.  Great host too!!

Wednesday rolled around and we  loaded up Duchess and headed south, spent the night at our little “cabin”, took care of the doctor the next day and headed the 200 plus miles north again.  It was a long drive and now we had another doctor’s appointment scheduled the following week.  What did we do?

Our own little resort

The deer didn't take long to show up and beg for food.

Another place we like is Rest A-While RV park. It is just north of Hoodsport on the Hood Canal.  It's not like there is much there but the view out the front window of the motorhome is awesome.  We drove by it again on our trip to Portland and back.

Rest-A-While

The best place of all on the Hood Canal is the Waterfront at Potlatch.  Well, in our opinion, it looks like it just might be.  It’s pretty popular and usually very full.  You really have to plan ahead to stay.  Such was the case this time at the Waterfront. It is absolutely gorgeous and right on the water. Again, maybe next year. Check it out and see what I mean.

 

After the doctor appointment was behind and we had returned to Port Townsend, we knew we needed to dump.  Since we had to load up anyway, we decided to move.

Our first stop was back at the SKP park just down the road.  For $5 we could use their dump and that’s just what we did. 

Finding a place to stay in this area during August is not always an easy thing to do.

There are lots of State Parks in Washington and also on the Kitsap Peninsula.  There are lots of places to kayak too.  However, many of the state parks are in heavily wooded areas.  I remember there I enjoyed that.  That’s not the case today.  If it’s heavily wooded, you aren’t going to find us there.  The summers are rarely so hot in Washington that you need the cover of the trees.  Let that sunshine shine through and warm us up!  Besides that, our satellite antenna has a heck of a time when we’re under the trees.  If needed, our solar wouldn’t do a great job either.

We had to move. Sandi was scheduled to take her open water dive for her scuba certification north of Tacoma over the weekend. We hoped to be closer so we could meet up with her and Tammi.

Next year we have to be better with our planning and making reservations so we don’t seem to be running all the time. That’s the plan for next year. However, this summer is going by very fast. I don’t like that. I wish it’d slow down. Before long ….. we’ll be heading south for the winter. 

There’s so much to do and so little time to do it in.

Am I caught up with my blog yet?  Heck no!!

‘Tis life on the road.