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Our life in a motorhome, our home, beginning with our trip from Everett, Washington to the repair shop of Fleetwood Enterprises in Riverside, California. Repairs on our defective 1998 Fleetwood Bounder 32K motorhome (bought brand new from Poulsbo RV in April, 1999) are scheduled to begin October 3, 2000. We expect to be stranded for at least a month while Fleetwood tries to repair Brownie.
Saturday, 9/9/00
This is our last full day at Harbour Pointe RV Park in Everett, where we've lived for more than a year. I put in an online reservation request this morning at DynastySuites.com. Just a few minutes later, a very nice lady named Liz telephoned me, confirmed our reservation and said she would bill Fleetwood direct.
Sunday, 9/10/00
Today we left the RV park. We slept over at the vet's parking lot so Snuggles could get a last minute pre-trip checkup.
Monday, 9/11/00
We slept overnight in Seattle so I could do one more Tuesday morning reading of the P-I and the TNT for the Evergreen Radio Reading Service, part of the Washington Talking Book and Braille Library.
Tuesday, 9/12/00
We finally hit the road , just in time for rush hour traffic in Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia. We arrived at McCleary, a little town south of Olympia, and pulled off in front of the city park to cook dinner. Two teenage girls stretched out on the grass doing their school work were happy to meet Snuggles. I wandered over to the library after dinner to check my e-mail and even had time to send one before closing. As I left, the librarian warned me that the road out of town was a speed trap for out-of-towners. I walked over to the police station to ask where we could park overnight. The policeman on duty said we could park all night on city property between the park and the fire station, and "be sure to park far enough back so the street lights don't keep you awake". Nice guy.
Wednesday, 9/13/00
An early wakeup and we left McCleary - no speed trap - about 6:30 A. M. We drove south on U. S. 101 to a great breakfast at The Corner Cafe ("We Do Breakfast Right") in Raymond. After lots of food - a ton of hashbrowns - and gallons of coffee, our next stop was Long Beach, where Snuggy and I checked out the surf. Then off we went south past Cape Disappoinment and over the lon-n-n-ng bridge spanning the wi-i-i-ide mouth of the mighty Columbia River. Most of the crossing is right at water level, but as you approach the Oregon side, you climb steeply to where the span is high enough to allow the largest ships to go up the river. We came down off the bridge in Astoria, kept heading south and ended the day at Nehalem Bay Campground, just north of Tillamook. That's where our northbound trip last year ended when we lost reverse. Around Seaside, we spied a red cross with an arrow pointing to The Minor Emergency Center and spent a few miles cleverly dreaming up minor emergencies we could take to the clinic - hangnails, dandruff, chapped lips, b. o., prickly heat - you get the idea, I guess.
Thursday, 9/14/00
Nehalem Bay Campground was so peaceful that we almost slept in. I got up with Snuggy at half past six. After some wake-up coffee, I fried bacon and eggs outside while Loie did the housework. Then Snuggles and I took another look at the ocean, we hit the RV dump, took on fresh water, and lit out a little after the one o'clock checkout. Off to Tillamook and then east to Portland. We couldn't stay at Wal-Mart on S. E. 82nd Avenue in Portland because the mall merchants don't allow it. So the Wal-Mart greeter directed us down 82nd to the second Fred Meyer (better neighborhood than the first, she said), where we spent the night.
Friday, 9/15/00
The Portland Oregonian ran some articles about a new Crooked River Bridge opening on U. S. 97 north of Redmond, so we're heading for eastern Oregon to check it out. The old one, built in 1926, will turn into a foot bridge this Sunday. We gazed at the new bridge from an overlook, then drove across the old one. We stopped at LaPine State Park where there's a free RV dump, then cruised south. Half way between LaPine and Chemult is the Mohawk Restaurant and Lounge with a big dirt lot and a sign saying "Truck - RV Parking". We grabbed a spot and sacked out after dinner and woke up surrounded by semis.
Saturday, 9/16/00
36 degrees this morning at Snuggles's six o'clock "I'm awake, I'm hungry, and I've gotta go!" time. Off again, heading for Crater Lake, we passed a billboard with a picture of a police car and "If you drink and drive, we'll provide the chasers". Crater Lake weather was beautiful. We unhooked the Jeep and drove around the lake - even found a dirt road for some four wheelin' on the way back to The Mother Ship. There was a a heavy rain at Klamath Falls, where we slept over at Albertson's. The dish wouldn't pick up anything.
Sunday, 9/17/00
I walked across the parking lot and stocked up on groceries this morning while Lois fried bacon. After a fine meal of grits, eggs, bacon, maple bars, and cinnamon twists, we lurched off for California, stopping first at the Oregon Visitors' Center to use the free dump and take on water. The woman working there told us the RV dump would probably be closed because of vandalism by local delinquents.
"Eat here now before we both starve to death", read the sign at the local cafe in Dorris, California, where U. S. 97 zigzags through town. We didn't - just kept on ziggin' and zaggin' and arrived at the Red Bluff Wal-Mart a little before dinnertime. We spent the night there with all the windows wide open. A strong, warm breeze blew through all night.
Monday, 9/18/00
We are in Napa this afternoon. The weather is so miserably hot and humid that we've cancelled plans to hang around a few days and drink free wine. The water heater quit working today. The light over the kitchen sink won't turn off, so I took out the bulbs. Of course with our screwed-up slide, the A/C comes with CO. I wonder what will break next. I chanced on a Canadian satellite called Bell ExpressVu tonight, and we watched local news programs from all over Canada. Interesting, but where are the regular birds?
Tuesday, 9/19/00
We pulled out of Napa early, about seven, heading toward San Rafael. We got there, too, but not without a struggle - gotta start reading and maybe heeding those darn maps. The road west out of Napa makes California Highway 1 look like a freeway. We hope to find a place to stay over and watch the Mariners game on Fox Sports Northwest if Dish Network comes in tonight. And here we are in Gilroy, sleeping over in a mall parking lot.
Wednesday, 9/20/00
Today is the first day of four in the Monterey area - we drove into old Fort Ord (now CSU Monterey Bay) by mistake, went to turn around in the parking lot of the administration building, decided to stop and cook dinner, and ended up spending the night there and watched the Mariners win.
Thursday, 9/21/00
We drove on just a short way today, stopping in Sand City for Costco and a laundromat. We had Snuggles show us around a beautiful beach that the locals use as an illegal off-leash dog park, then picked up some to-go clam chowder in sourdough bowls at a joint on Fisherman's Wharf and feasted by candlelight in our own home. Best sourdough I've ever eaten!
Friday, 9/22/00
I took apart the broken light over the kitchen sink and found a design flaw. One part of the switch was connected to the other by sitting in a "cage" made of four flimsy plastic posts, two of which were broken off. I threw away the posts and applied one drop of glue to connect the two parts permanently. Let there be light and darkness!
Saturday, 9/23/00
Lois shopped in the 1960s at a food store called Troia's on Pacific Street in Monterey. The butcher there used to weigh her first born, Glenn, on his scale every time she went in. We browsed there for something good to eat and found a big Italian sausage sandwich to split for dinner at the very beautiful Monterey beach. We parked there from about three until ten and then headed back for another overnight at the Costco parking lot, joining three other motorhomes.
Sunday, 9/24/00
It's finally goodbye to Monterey as we head down California 1 and a couple of nights at Pfieffer Big Sur State Park. Very nice and in the middle of the forest.
Monday, 9/25/00
This afternoon we took "Yeep" (our 1997 Wrangler) for a ride down the coast and decided that we would not drive the motorhome farther southbound on California 1. In 1998 we drove the Jeep up Pike's Peak (very wide road), me driving and Lois riding, and she had a huge panic attack caused by her multiple sclerosis. MS has the strangest assortment of symptoms. Lois drove on the way back down and was fine. At the bottom, a park employee took the temperature of our brakes and told us they were the coolest he'd ever seen. Hooray for Loie and her 5-speed! Anyway, we decided that having her riding up high in a motorhome on the ocean side of a narrow road looking over high cliffs might cause another attack. So we'll head inland.
Twenty-six miles south of Big Sur Ranger Station is a small National Forest camp called Kirk Creek Campground. We drove through and found a few sites where our 33 footer would fit. The fee is $16.00, but only $8.00 with Loie's Golden Access passport (free to the disabled). There's even a path to the beach.
We drove on, ending up forty miles south of Big Sur at a wide spot in the road where they were selling gas to idiots for $2.989.
Tuesday, 9/26/00
On the road again. We doubled back north on California Highway 1 to Carmel and took Monterey County Road G-16 through Carmel Valley. G-16, sometimes very narrow, even one way in spots, winds about thirty-some miles east-southeast through farms and desert on its way to U. S. 101. We saw maybe a dozen vehicles both directions. One was a loaded farm semi that we were lucky to meet on a patch of road wide enough for us to get by. Toward the end of the drive, there's a long downhill stretch ending in a sharp right turn onto a narrow one-lane bridge high over a river. Lots of fun with people down below looking up at us! Then south on 101 until we found a Wal-Mart in Paso Robles, cranked up the dish, watched the Mariners beat Texas, and headed off to bed.
Wednesday, 9/27/00
Well, we're one day closer to Riverside, where Fleetwood will either repair or totally ruin Brownie. I can't help feeling that we'll be worse off when this is over.
Back on the southbound highway, we jumped back over to California 1 and had a good breakfast at IHOP in Lompoc, where they cheerfully took our "Buy one, get one free anywhere in the Puget Sound area" coupon. I finally got tired, so we pulled off in Glendale and spent the night at Von's Supermarket. The darn satellite receiver died, so no Mariners game.
Thursday, 9/28/00
About 10:30 A. M. some guy from the shopping center invited us to vacate his hallowed, grease-stained blacktop. We'd have been gone by seven or so, but Lois wasn't feeling well and took a nap. We passed a Wal-Mart just a few minutes later, so we'll camp there next time we're in the area. By a little past one, we were in Riverside and checked in at Dynasty Suites, not a bad little motel-hotel.
We took our first showers in a while (Brownie's water heater, which we'd been nursing along, croaked ten days ago).
Friday, 9/29/00
We have rented a storage unit and we start unloading tomorrow.
Saturday, 9/30/00
Unloading the motorhome began today.
Sunday, 10/1/00
More unloading, sorting, boxing, sweating. . .
Monday, 10/2/00
We are finally done unloading and cleaning!
Tuesday, 10/3/00
"Brownie" has now been turned over to Fleetwood. We made it clear that what we want is to have the motorhome restored to what should have been its condition when we bought it from Poulsbo RV. We've talked to a few people that were talked into trading up to a higher-priced, trouble-free hahahahahahahaha model. As of today, Fleetwood is paying part of our hotel bill (but not the pet fee, which will be several hundred dollars). I am going up the Fleetwood chain of command to try to get some fairness on this (Note: I got nowhere.). We will lose about $1000 on this trip simply because we bought a Fleetwood product that was known to be defective before it left the factory and before it left Poulsbo RV.
Thursday, 10/5/00
Liz, the hotel manager, called me in a panic this morning because she had just had a phone call from John Meyke at Fleetwood. Meyke was angry because I had written some complimentary things about Dynasty Suites on this page and had also written the truth about our experience with Fleetwood. He threatened to cancel Fleetwood's corporate account with Dynasty Suites. Fleetwood puts owners of its many defective motorhomes (not only Bounders, the whole line) up at Dynasty Suites and is the hotel's biggest customer. So I removed references to Fleetwood's antics from this page to keep Liz from losing her job. Quite a tactic on Fleetwood's part!
Thursday, 10/26/00
We went to Fleetwood today to look at the motorhome. There is a target date of November third for all the work to be finished. They say they're on schedule.
Friday, 11/3/00
The motorhome has been in Fleetwood's repair shop one month today. Perhaps in commemoration, we received a call this morning telling us that it would not be ready November sixth, the date Fleetwood specified when we got here. Now the new date is November tenth. One of our neighbors, here since mid-September, has had two new completion dates. He's still here. We can only hope that the extra four days means they'll get it right!
Thursday, 11/9/00
We got a call today saying our motorhome will be ready to pick up tomorrow afternoon at 2:00 P. M. We are still trying to get Fleetwood to cover all of our hotel and storage expenses. (Note: forget it!) Our motorhome was defective when we bought it. We wouldn't be in a hotel in Riverside (43 days!) if Fleetwood hadn't sent our motorhome out of the factory in April, 1998 with serious defects and then failed to repair it when it was sent by Poulsbo RV back to the factory in June, 1998. Because of the way Fleetwood builds its products, we and other Fleetwood buyers are stuck with thousands of dollars of unwarranted expenses.
Friday, 11/10/00
Well, the three Bounder couples are leaving Riverside. We and one other couple leave with our coaches repaired (we can dream, can't we?), while the other couple, after nearly two months of trying to repair a twisted Freightliner frame, will be getting a new motorhome in a few weeks.
We still have some electrical problems (twelve volt surges) that they couldn't duplicate but promise to fix when we give them more specific information. We'll see how that goes - maybe the problem mysteriously disappeared.
In repairing the slideout room, they say they made some major changes, including cutting and reshaping the front end of it. They also put on all new rubber seals and squeegees which are larger than the originals and so should seal better. The slideout goes in and out smoothly for the first time since we bought the motorhome a year and a half ago.
The kitchen and bathroom floors were replaced, the linoleum was replaced, and the carpets were cleaned. Due to the fact that there was a bend (hump) in the bathroom floor when the jacks were in use, some steel bracing was installed below the floor to take care of that.
Other repairs included replacing the furnace (the old one quit more than a year ago), a headlight (the old one had water in it), water heater circuit board, bedroom wall (bulged out), bedroom curtain, water pump, kitchen faucet, bedroom door, refastening the shower to the wall. They put in baseboards, which we didn't have before, in the bathroom. On order for us are a kitchen window blind, a big middle stove burner, and a kit to improve the air flow in the front roof A/C (we were told later that the air flow kit is not available). All the work has a one year warranty.
After seven weeks in a hotel room, it is good to be home!
Sunday, 11/12/00
Our brand new furnace quit after about thirty minutes of the worst voltage surges we've ever had, so I'll be back over at the shop before seven tomorrow morning.
Monday, 11/13/00
After battling for a year and a half, we finally have a new 110 to 12 volt converter. And the furnace has been repaired. We'll hang around another night or two to see what else might go wrong. I pulled back into our parking spot, turned on the levelers so we could put the slide out, and the levelers wouldn't shut off until all the batteries were dead. Back to the shop early the next morning again.
Tuesday, 11/14/00
A solenoid was replaced in the leveler pump. It is supposedly fixed. We're gonna hang around another night to see what breaks next.
Wednesday, 11/15/00
We are leaving Fleetwood today. We'll do a few errands around the area before getting too far away just in case something else goes wrong.
Wednesday, 12/13/00
We arrived back in Everett, Washington today. Our return trip took us through Arizona (family and friends in Phoenix and Prescott), Colorado (friends in Durango), Utah, Idaho and Oregon. The highway out of Durango was sheer ice in spots so we slowpoked it for a quite a few miles in second and sometimes first gear, four-ways flashing.
We found two more places to go for great breakfast. Cortez, Colorado was our first meal stop after leaving Durango. El Grande Cafe in Cortez serves up the biggest sausage patty I ever saw. When we walked in, a waitress told us, "The food here's great. Go sit down." We found a booth and were standing there waiting for it to be cleared off. She told us we'd better grab it or someone else was gonna walk in and beat us to it. We took our seats, ate our eats, beat our feets back to Brownie and beat it on out of town all the way to snowy Snowville, Utah. There we bedded down in the white stuff right across the street from Mollie's Cafe.
Early Sunday morning, Snuggles and I left our pawprints around town. Then Loie and I tromped across the snowy Snowville street to Mollie's. We joined a flock of residents and a bunch of truckers who had Mollie's packed pretty full and we left packed pretty full of food and friendliness from Mollie herself. When I paid up, she handed over an official 2001 Mollie's Cafe calendar.
I recommend El Grande and Mollie's to serious eaters!
I-84 required chains a few miles out of LaGrande, Oregon. I have never developed an interest in putting on chains so we pulled over to ponder our next move. As we sat at the curb with our maps and puzzled looks, a man banged on the window. He told us about a route through Elgin and Tollgate which he thought would be plowed and passable. He also pointed out the Wal-Mart and the Oregon State Police office. The lady at OSP agreed that we might be able to get through that way and so off we went. The road was covered with snow almost the whole way and the Ford F-53 performed flawlessly.
Saturday, 1/13/01
We are leaving the RV park today. Tomorrow we'll have dinner with my cousin, Bob, and his wife, Carolyn. Maybe my son Steve will show up (tomorrow's my birthday). Tuesday morning, I'll renew my driver's license (forgot about the holiday weekend). Then we'll head out somewhere.
An interesting thing happened when I checked out of Harbour Point RV Park in Everett. Halfway through our month there, they read the electric meters and told the tenants that they would increase the rates the following day. When I settled up, the owner tried to charge me the higher rate for the whole month. He told me I was the first person who had complained about it. I told him I thought everybody in the park should complain about it. I said I would gladly pay the increase from the day he had said it would begin, but he wouldn't hear of that. He charged me the old rate for the whole month and told me to never come back. As if I would.
Friday, 2/23/01
We are back in the Seattle area after exploring the Olympic Peninsula for ten days. We spent the last two nights at Kalaloch Campground in Olympic National Park, where we pulled head-in to our campsite and the motorhome's nose was about ten feet from a bluff overlooking the ocean. Brownie's windshield makes about the best picture window ever. I walked down to the beach with Snuggles, but I would have had to pack her about a hundred feet over a huge pile of driftwood logs to get to the water, so we gave that up. The fee is $12 a night, but only $6 with Loie's Golden Access Pass.
We hiked some trails in the Hoh Rain Forest. If you've never seen a rain forest, you don't know what you've missed. Of course Leo Lassen, who did play-by-play for the Seattle Rainiers when I was a kid, used to say the same thing about being hit by a line drive. The world's only temperate rain forests, the Hoh, Queets, and Quinault, are in Olympic National Park.
"Brownie" got stuck in the snow for the first time as we were leaving Kitsap Memorial State Park. Yeep was in tow, so I got in it and gently pushed while Loie got in Brownie's driver's seat and gingerly gave it the gas. Once we got moving, we were on the highway and she couldn't pull off, so I just took "Yeep" out of gear, let go of the wheel, and sat back. Quite a sensation - following a motorhome down the highway at a distance of five feet!
We still have a lot to see on the peninsula, including a steel bridge more than 400 feet above a canyon somewhere in Olympic National Forest.
Wednesday, 2/28/01
Shake 'em up day in the Pacific Northwest!
We are parked in a shopping center just north of Seattle, on Aurora Avenue North (Highway 99) at the King-Snohomish county line. This morning, the motorhome shook and it shook. Lois was sitting on the bed. I was in the bathroom. As usual when the motorhome wiggles, I yelled, "Are you doing that?", and this time, Lois said, "No". She thought someone was running into us. I knew it was an earthquake but wasn't too concerned because I had been through a few Seattle quakes before, some stronger, some not. I asked Loie what time it was. "Five before eleven". We were still shaking and jolting around. I began to worry a little, not from the violence of the movement, but because it wasn't stopping. After a minute or a little less, the shaking did stop.
The experts say the earthquake is a 6.8, classified as pretty strong.
It appears that Brownie is seismically sound. We were, and still are, up on jacks and stayed right where we were.
Tuesday, 3/13/01
We just spent two days exploring Mount Rainier National Park as much as we could. Most of it is still snowed in, although the snowpack is far below normal and there's a lot of worry about fires this summer.
I grew up in Seattle, just a short drive from Mount Rainier, but had never been there until now. This motorhoming stuff is exposing me to the world!
There are four interconnected ways to enter and drive through the park, plus one, the Carbon River entrance, that goes in just a short way and ends. And there are some primitive ways to get in.
First we tried the park's White River Entrance, which is reached via State Route 410 out of Enumscratch. No luck - snow blocks the road just past the turnoff to Crystal Mountain, where I used to ski in the sixties.
So a-backtrackin' we went, back to Enumclaw and then south through the turn-of-the-century coal mining towns of Wilkeson and Carbonado, to the park's Carbon River Entrance. Inside the entrance, we saw a sign advising RVs to go no farther, so we unhooked the Jeep and drove it in maybe four or five miles to the end of the road. We found a very pretty RV campground in there. Part of the road is washed out and, although I suppose someone could drive an RV in there, I sure wouldn't. The next day, a park ranger told us that certain groups are lobbying to keep that entrance closed to RVs permanently. The National Park Service hasn't made a decision but there's no money for fixing the road anyway.
It was getting late and we had to start thinking about a place to spend the night, so off we went, through Buckley (oops! wrong turn again), South Prairie, Electron, Kapowsin, Eatonville, La Grande, Alder and toward Elbe. Between Alder and Elbe on State Route 706 is the Mount Rainier Lions Club and that's where we pulled off, ate dinner and hit the sack. The next morning, off through Elbe and Ashford, the last towns before entering the park again. Some volcano professionals think Ashford will be buried or washed away the next time Mount Rainier erupts. Nice looking little town.
Less than five miles east of Ashford is the park's Nisqually Entrance. It has a museum, ranger station, hotel and store, open year round. The road is plowed open up to the lot at Paradise, and the scenery, all covered with snow, is really beautiful. We can't wait to go back when all the roads are open.
For now, it's back to somewhere else.
Sunday, 3/18/01
We spent a wild and stormy afternoon at Mukilteo State Park after giving the motorhome a sort of a no good washing at a coin-op we found.
Mukilteo is just south of Everett on the shore of Puget Sound. The wind was blowing hard and warm, not common in the Pacific Northwest. The sound was all whitecaps and the ferries were really bouncing around.
I took Snuggles out for a walk. She had a little trouble staying on course but kept on smiling. I closed the lids on a dumpster. The wind immediately blew them open. Seagulls were riding the air currents and going nowhere.
And what a dinner! Caesar salad and wine and freshly baked dipping bread with the most beautiful grey and red and blue sunset and the black clouds rolling north across the sky and our picture window. Loie took the garlic I'd been marinating in olive oil for the salad dressing and put it in a little pan on the stove, chopping it finer and finer while it cooked and browned a little. Then she mixed it with soft butter and we used it to dip our bread in. Good stuff!
It's a little after seven now and the wind has picked up. We are really rockin' in our 33-footer. It'll be time to head off somewhere to bed down pretty soon. Good night.
Tuesday, 3/20/01
We have a 6:00 A. M. appointment at SeaTac Ford. Brownie isn't steering just right. They think a toe set adjustment is necessary, no big deal. Also, I had bought a tire (we had a blowout) from Discount Tire and after they mounted it, they told me they couldn't balance a tire that size until an adapter arrived for their machine. I waited a month and they still hadn't bothered ordering the adapter, so SeaTac gets the job.
After the toe set, the motorhome is back to its old self and is an unbelievably great pleasure to drive. I have nothing but praise for the Ford F-53 chassis.
This afternoon, we did some housekeeping and then, a little after six, headed east on U. S. 2 over Stevens Pass to Eastern Washington. We have an appointment Thursday afternoon in Pasco for a Bounder dealer to repair the furnace that Fleetwood replaced last November when we were in Riverside at the factory. It's under factory warranty and they will bill Fleetwood for the repair.
We made it a hundred miles and called it a day in Leavenworth. I got a sleeping bag from the basement and unfolded it for an extra blanket. We slept warm and toasty until Snuggles woke us around quarter to six.
Wednesday, 3/21/01
The temperature in the house at wake-up time was forty-four degrees (thirty-eight in Wenatchee, according to KPQ) and we slept like a couple of old-growth logs (oops - Loie just slept like a log) without the furnace to wake us up. I think we've stumbled onto something!
Not a cloud in the sky - clear, cold, sunny and blue, and mountains close enough to touch!
Leavenworth has a Bavarian theme. All the businesses, even the Dairy Queen and the gas stations, have the look. I'm going to wander across the road and try to find out about an accordion festival a friend told me is coming in June.
The lady at the hotel told me where to find visitor information - "turn right at the light and look for the Pepto Bismol pink building on the left" - which I did, got the info, and drove off down U. S. 97. We made it to Richland and parked for the night at the high school.
Thursday, 3/22/01
Up and away at seven. The lot where we slept requires a permit from 7:00 A. M. to 2:30 P. M. It's another beautiful day as we head for Pasco and our appointment at Russ Dean RV. We checked in about eleven for our appointment at half past one. The furnace, water heater and stove were taken care of by afternoon with no problem. But another problem was found. The front of the slideout room, when we got the motorhome back from Fleetwood in November, had paint scraped off, and we were told that any dealer could paint it and bill Fleetwood under the warranty. The man doing the repairs found that the slide is still not in the correct position. Besides being crooked, it is as far forward in the opening as it can get, causing a gap at the back (where we always smell exhaust) and a scraping at the front. Color photos were taken and e-mailed to Fleetwood in Riverside. The dealer contact there will look at them tomorrow and decide what Fleetwood is willing to do about it.
In the meantime, we were invited to stay overnight at the dealer, with full hookups, while we await the next chapter.
Friday, 3/23/01
It's afternoon and we are on our way! We think a lot of the problems have been repaired. Before leaving town, we got Brownie a bath and headed up the street for dinner. We heartily and hungrily recommend Guajardo's Cafe, 2318 W. Court in Pasco, for darn good Mexican food and really friendly service. ¡Muy bueno! The tech who worked on Brownie told us about the place and we ate dinner there both nights we were in Pasco.
After dinner, we headed for Walla Walla because I've wanted to visit the site of the Whitman Mission ever since I learned about the Whitman massacre when I was in grade school. And talk about luck, we found the place first thing, drove in, parked and went to sleep.
Saturday, 3/24/01
Another beautiful day. The visitors' center and museum open at 8:00 A. M. and we walked in shortly thereafter. I had already walked out and looked at the graves of the massacre victims and some other people. Nobody, including us, said anything about us parking there all night.
Monday, 3/26/01
We are back in Seattle. The road through North Cascades National Park, Washington Highway 20, opened for the season just five days ago so that's the route we took. It's our favorite way to cross the mountains. The scenery is out of this world!
We are waiting for the next journey.
Tuesday, 4/3/01
We've just spent four days at Wenberg State Park northeast of Marysville, Washington. We pulled in Friday afternoon and found it peaceful and quiet which was just what the doctor ordered. We hibernated.
Most parks use volunteers, when they can get them, as campground hosts. There's an interesting story about the host - hosts, I should say - at this park. The family (husband, wife, four kids and two dogs) moved to the area a couple of months ago when the husband was transferred to Boeing's Everett plant. The new house they bought is still not finished. They got tired of living in a hotel so, even though she told me they were not "campers", they did some online shopping, bought a yurt to live in and became campground hosts. They've lived in the yurt for two months and brought it to Wenberg, their third park, on Sunday. He goes to work in Everett and she does chores in the park in exhange for a full hookup campsite. I don't know whether the kids go to school or are home schooled.
Loie and I got up at four o'clock this morning so I could be in downtown Seattle by seven for my weekly reading of the Seattle P-I and Tacoma News-Tribune. The Washington Talking Book and Braille Library has a radio station for the blind, Evergreen Radio Reading Service, where volunteers read the newspapers every morning and afternoon. My partner, Linda Takiar, and I read every Tuesday morning from seven to nine.
We had planned to hook up Yeep, go dump, drive back to Seattle, find a place to park Brownie, unhook Yeep, and I'd drive downtown. But we decided at the last minute that I would drive down to Seattle alone and Loie would rest up a little and follow later in the motorhome. So I relaxed until about half past five, hit the road, and was at the library an hour and ten minutes later.
Sunday, 4/8/01
This is the weather that made Seattle famous. It's pouring down rain. But the sky is bright, the grass and trees are a vibrant green, and oh! what a beautiful morning!
Afternoon found us back at Mukilteo State Park. There's been a lighthouse at Mukilteo since 1906. When I was a Sea Scout in my teens, I toured the lighthouse, and Loie and I toured it again today. There've been no Coast Guard personnel there for a few years but the light, now automated, is still in use. The U. S. Coast Guard deeded the property to the city two years ago. A private group now gives tours, takes care of the property and raises money to keep it in good shape. There's also a gift shop and some historical displays.
Mukilteo has a Lighthouse Festival every summer with a parade and fireworks.
Thursday, 4/12/01
We pulled in to Dash Point State Park this afternoon and plan to spend a few days here. The park is south of Seattle on Puget Sound (almost to Tacoma).
Friday, 4/13/01
Our niece and her husband, Molly and Russ Holloway, are visiting from Maryland. Russ is in the U.S. Navy , attached to the White House Communication Agency. For the past four years, he's been in charge of setting up communications for the first lady whenever she takes a trip. In spite of several confused e-mails and disconnected cell phone calls, we were finally able to see them when they came to Dash Point State Park this afternoon and had dinner with us. They have two-plus-year-old twins, Katy and Josh, that we met for the first time. It was fun to watch Katy when she ate. She'd pick up some food, lick her fingers and let her hand hang free. Snuggles, sitting right next to her, would then lick her fingers. This was repeated a few times to my amusement.
Friday, 4/20/01
Continuing our state park visits, we pulled into Rasar State Park this afternoon for a night or two. The park is on State Route 20, the North Cascades Highway, six miles west of Concrete, Washington. It's heavily forested - forget watching TV. Many of the evergreen branches are totally moss-covered, reminding us of the rain forests over on the Olympic Peninsula.
Saturday, 4/21/01
Snuggles and I took a walk this morning and found that there's more than just forest in this park. There's a lush green meadow where a half dozen deer were spotted about a minute before we got there (oh well, next time). There's the Skagit River which, with its salmon run, provides one of the biggest bald eagle feeding grounds in the United States every winter. The river has a good sized sandy beach, too. And there are coyotes, mountain lions, and many smaller animals in the area.
It's a beautiful place.
Sunday, 4/22/01
We left Rasar this morning and moved a few miles east to Rockport State Park. This is another absolutely beautiful park, heavily forested and very secluded. All the campsites have full hookups. I don't know whether the park is on a river, but I hope to find out tomorrow. We walked about a mile over some trails through what looks like rain forest. We certainly haven't missed television! Did get to hear the far away radio broadcast of the Mariners as they won their fifteenth game today.
Friday, 4/27/01
Today
we're in Oak Harbor, Washington, home of Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, where the plane captured by Red China is based. A lot of Dutch
people settled in Oak Harbor back around the 1890's and the city
still has a Dutch character about it. As part of the city's
annual Holland Happening celebration, we get to be
in a parade tomorrow.
Our dog, Snuggles, is a Keeshond (kays-hond or kays-hund), a breed native to Holland. The Pacific Crest Keeshond Club has walked in this parade for at least sixteen years. I got in touch with the club last week because we want to get Snuggles her own dog. We've been invited to walk in the parade. They expect a dozen or so walkers with up to four dogs each. Ought to be fun!
Oak Harbor has a beautiful city park with 55 full-hookup RV sites. It was almost full, but we found a good spot.
Saturday, 4/28/01
Parade day. It's raining. Snuggles hates rain and said it better quit. It did. The Keeshond club and all the dogs gathered at the RV park where members Mike and Teresa Hall were staying in their motorhome with their four plus another they were taking care of for a friend. Mike asked if I'd walk one of their dogs up to the parade's starting point and handed me a leash attached to a big beautiful twelve-year-old boy named Roustabout. Lois walked Snuggles, who is about half Roustabout's size.
After a while, Loie sat down to wait for us to come back - she would join in the parade later. Now I had two dogs to walk and neither had any interest in my plans. We were walking the parade route from end to beginning. The sidewalks were filled with spectators who wanted to pet Snuggles and Roustabout, and that slowed us down.
Sirens started blowing. I looked up and here came the fire department, the first unit in the parade. I spotted a raised lawn and dragged the pooches off the street and out of the way and got them under a shade tree. Eventually the Keeshond club came marching along, thirty-first unit in the parade, and I dragged the dogs out and joined them.
After the parade, the dogs played for about two hours in the park. We headed back to Brownie, just in time for the first pitch of the Mariners' twentieth winning game of the year. The rain began.
We had a startling surprise about nine o'clock when a big fireworks show began about two hundred feet from where we were parked.
A great day.
Sunday, 4/29/01
Our day began early with a wind storm at 4:30 A. M. It was one of the biggest I've ever experienced and continued nonstop for more than six hours. The police even came through the park at about 5:30 A. M. with their public address system warning everyone to tie down their belongings. What a storm!
We watched a great baseball game this afternoon before bidding Oak Harbor farewell. In fourteen innings, the Chicago White Sox ended the Seattle Mariners' nine-game winning streak. The Mariners have now won twenty games and lost five. Next up, the Boston Red Sox at Safeco Field Tuesday night.
We hit the road around five, explored a few campgrounds and little towns, and ended up pulling off the road in tiny Edison, in front of the elementary school, next door to the fire station. We'll be back to explore this town and its zigzaggy main street sometime.
Friday, 5/11/01
We are staying for the second night at Birch Bay State Park, a few miles south of the Canadian border on the Washington coast. There was almost nobody here last night, but quite a few have pulled in this afternoon. Eighteen sites have hookups. It's a nice park with lots of trees and grass.
There's a footpath to the beach, or you can drive down if you want. Clams, crabs, mussels and oysters are there for the taking in season.
There are also other little paths leading here and there off the paved road.
And it's another good day for our Mariners. The game just ended and the M's beat the Toronto Blue Jays. Our guys have lost only four games on the road this year with fifteen wins!
Wednesday, 5/16/01
It's election day in British Columbia and we are in Princeton, where we spent last night in the Overwaitea parking lot. We arrived in Canada Sunday night on our first visit here since we bought the motorhome and we slept in a rest area on the Trans-Canada Highway between Abbotsford and Chilliwack. The next morning, after a stop at the Abbotsford CAA for maps, we began exploring the area. We ended up driving 44 kilometres (27 miles) east on a mostly paved dead end road to Chilliwack Lake Provincial Park. Only one of the 100 sites was taken. There was no sign of an employee nor a pay station so we grabbed one of the 99 remaining sites and proceeded to barbecue some Polish sausages. It was raining hard.
While we were eating, a car drove up, there was a knock on our door. A lady announced that she was taking the census, made some small talk, said "The weather was great last week, you should have been here", and was on her way.
Next morning, as I was doing dishes and getting ready to drive on, the park manager, a nice fellow named Joe Foster, came to our door to collect the camp fee. I told him we would be checking out, and he said, "Then please be my guest, and when you come back to B. C., please come to my park." He told me that he had surveyed this park in 1953.
We dumped, took on water, and headed back those 27 miles (44 kilometres) west on that mostly paved dead end road to Chilliwack and east to Hope. Gas in Hope was 69.9¢ per litre, about $1.77 per U. S. gallon after the exchange. We could have and should have bought it back in Chilliwack for 63.9¢ ($1.62 per gallon). We got on Highway 3, the Crows Nest Highway, a beautifully scenic road (lots of deer and elk) that goes through Manning Provincial Park to Princeton and beyond.
Princeton is a nice town of 2,800 friendly people. At the Overwaitea, the Work Wear, and the Radio Shack, they told us how overtaxed they are and that, no matter who wins the election, nothing is likely to improve. British Columbia has a provincial sales tax (P. S. T.) of 7%. In addition, there's a federal "goods and services" tax (G. S. T.) of 7%. Visitors to Canada can get a refund of the G. S. T. on certain items (including campsite fees and any charges for hook-ups) by mailing a GST176 Application for Visitor Tax Refund with their receipts to Ottawa after they leave the country or by stopping at certain locations near the border and getting a discounted refund right on the spot.
At Kelowna, gas was 78.9¢ ($2.00 per gallon); we drove east on Highway 33 to Rock Creek and pumped 155 litres @ 72.9¢ (41 gallons @ $1.85).
At about 5:30 P. M., we pulled off at a wide spot between Greenwood and Eholt, settled down for dinner, and cranked up the dish for some Canadian news from VTV in Vancouver on Bell ExpressVu. At 7:00, we turned the dish to get the Mariners game from Seattle on Fox Sports Northwest. The M's beat the Chicago White Sox again. Seattle now has won seven straight and has a 30-9 record.
Thursday, 5/17/01
We were sure that we'd get no sleep last night because of all the semis driving past our wide spot. We were both asleep in nothing flat. I woke up at five to let Snuggles ("I gotta go!") out and then we both went back to bed until nine. It's now noon and about time to travel on. Sure it is.
We finally hit the road at about 4:00 P. M., cruising east on B. C. Highway 3 through Grand Forks, where we found a free dump at the recreation center. Onward and eastward on the Crows Nest to B. C. 395 and then southbound to the border crossing and the good-ole-yew-ess-ay! Right at the turn to 395 is a bridge over the Kettle River as it squeezes and boils and rages its way through a spectacular deep narrow gorge. What a sight!
At U. S. Customs, the agent confiscated our two limes and three grapefruits! Only cherries and berries may cross the border. He said next time he'd take our alcoholic beverages, too, whether we brought from the U. S. or bought in Canada. And he checked Snuggles' rabies certificate. He told us Canada Customs should have checked all the same stuff, but he bet all they asked us about was guns. He was right.
Off we went, thirty-some miles down U. S. 395 to its crossing of the Columbia River and Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake, and then we turned south on Washington 25. A few miles on, we crossed the Colville River and found a turnout just across the bridge with a river view through Brownie's picture window. We are bedding down among the trees.
Friday, 5/18/01
Sunny blue sky this morning as we hit the road about 8:30. It's been in the mid-70s today. We are spending the night in Yakima.
Saturday, 5/19/01
It's another beautiful morning. We stopped at a fruit stand on the way out of town for some "fresh this morning" asparagus and then headed west on U. S. 12 over White Pass toward Mount Rainier National Park. I've lived in Washington almost all my life and have never been over this road before. As we climbed, we could look over the cliffs and see snow below us. All of Washington's mountain passes opened early this year because of the light snowfall which is forty percent or so below normal. We met some strong wind gusts that wiggled Brownie a bit. The scenery is beautiful and, again, impossible to describe. When we got to the park, we headed north on U. S. 410 over Chinook Pass and up to Enumclaw where we stopped and fried some halibut Loie bought in Yakima. Then we headed north on back roads and wound our way to a King County park in Fall City, where we spent the night.
Sunday, 5/20/01
We were eating dinner at our favorite rest area in Everett when a man from Perth, Australia, Derick Johnston, knocked on the door to ask whether overnight stays were allowed there. He and his wife, Beth, are traveling the United States and Canada by motorhome. It's their fifth U. S. tour. They leave their motorhome with friends in California. So we spent a few pleasant hours together. Derick owns a company that makes pine boxes for various uses, everything from wine to pigs. We gave them a few of our local maps and tourbooks from AAA and showed them the way to Chuckanut Drive, which hugs the coast, for their drive north to Canada.
Monday, 5/21/01
It looks like we brought the nice weather back with us. Seattle will be in the 70s and 80s the next few days.
Loie ran the slide out today and a hunk of rubber sealing material about three feet long ripped off and ended up on the kitchen floor. Another trip to the shop. Not today, though.
Thursday, 6/7/01
We're browsing around Puget Sound. We pulled off Marine View Drive (State Route 509) on Tacoma's working waterfront last night to crank up the dish and watch the Mariners win their fourteenth straight. Then we sacked out with the waves lapping fifteen feet away.
This morning at eight, it's already hot sun and blue skies. The tide's out, exposing a few hundred feet of tide flats - ducks and geese everywhere and one Great Blue Heron.
Housework done, it's off to see the rest of the waterfront on our way to big, beautiful Point Defiance Park - lots of saltwater beach with views of Vashon Island and the ferry, a zoo and aquarium, the 1833 Fort Nisqually, and a five-mile drive with lots of places to stop and enjoy the sights.
We spent an hour or so walking the beach and Snuggles really enjoyed exploring. One curious thing we watched was a tugboat with a big load of logs. The tug was really throwing out the propwash but the load was going almost nowhere. Nothing strange about that, but after about half an hour, the tug just made a U-turn and was gone. I guess he figured going with the current was easier.
Along Five Mile Drive, we pulled off for a view of the Narrows Bridge. We had to step around a bunch of broken beer bottles and Loie suggested we sweep them up. Then we got carried away and cleaned up the whole area. Three big bags of trash. Several people who came through the lot thanked us. Three kids who came rollerblading through asked who stuck us with the job. When we told them, "Nobody, we're just doing it.", they said, "Gee, thanks!", as they zoomed away.
We eventually headed south keeping as close to the shore as possible, visiting Day Island, Steilacoom, and DuPont on our way to Olympia. Day Island is an island only when the tide's in. It's about a half mile long and two very narrow streets wide. I hadn't been there since I was a kid, when two aunts and four cousins lived there. I didn't recognize anything, but it is very picturesque with an atmosphere that grabbed me. I'd like to live there if I had to give up motorhoming.
Onward to the Kitsap Peninsula. In Olympia we found the 4th Avenue Bridge we were looking for was permanently closed after the February 28th earthquake. We spotted the detour a few feet away and left town. We sacked out in Belfair.
Saturday, 6/9/01
It's a windy morning at the Silverdale boat launch. Dyes Inlet is all whitecaps. Four fire engines, three rescue trucks and a lifeboat from Kitsap County Fire are having a drill on the beach. Good timing, too - the lifeboat was launched and almost immediately had to go out and bring back a drifting pleasure boat. One of the fire engines left on an alarm shortly after that.
We pulled in at this same spot last night for Loie's fajitas and watched the Mariners win again (fifteen in a row).
And we do meet interesting people. Along about the seventh inning, there was a knock and a "Howdy, neighbor!", from the owner of the nearby Old Town Pub, Fred Lanouette. He told us we'd likely be asked to leave here at dark and invited us over to park Brownie behind the pub next to his Damon Frontier Flyer. He and his wife live in Woodinville. He comes over here a few days a week and lives in the motorhome. Fred was a Las Vegas hotel owner, singer and promoter. He told us he once hired Jay Leno for a gig just before he (Jay) became famous. Later Fred owned The Backstage, a night spot in Snoose Junction.
This afternoon, after walking the pier and the beach again, we headed up the hill out of town. We stopped at a vacant spot by a railroad crossing with no gates, just stop signs, to watch the Mariners run the bases while motorists ran the stop signs. Maybe it's been a while since a choo choo went through. We spent the night.
Sunday, 6/10/01
We've decided to check out a couple of state parks, Potlatch and Lake Cushman, this afternoon. We also stumbled onto a U. S. Forest Service Campground up the Lake Cushman-Staircase road called Big Creek. Its campsites are more secluded than those in most of the state parks we've visited. All three parks are certainly nice enough. Most Washington State parks have some sites with full or partial hookups and some without. Forest Service Campgrounds, at least the ones we've seen, don't have utilities but they are less expensive than the state park sites without utilities. Big Creek is $10 a day, state parks are $14, or $20 with utilities. We can stay for half price with Loie's federal and state disabled passes.
Just south of Potlatch State Park, U. S. 101 goes through the Skokomish Indian Reservation. The big industries there are one casino and several fireworks stands, one named Ill Eagle Fireworks.
We had another first on the way back from Lake Cushman to U. S. 101. I took a wrong turn and dead ended at the local garbage dump, bureaucratically and dually dubbed the Hoodsport Solid Waste Drop Box Station/Mason County Solid Waste Facility. I now had two choices, the H. S. W. D. B. S. below or the M. C. S. W. F. up the hill. The low road looked roomier. I took it. It wasn't. As I unhooked the Jeep to turn around and get out, the man on duty up above happened to look down and notice us as he was driving out for the day. If he hadn't seen us, he'd have locked us in until noon tomorrow. The motorhome was hidden behind his giant trash masher and only Yeep's rear end was peeking out. Jim, our host and a nice guy, chatted and waited patiently for us to leave. He invited us to come back any time.
So it's been another interesting day and the Mariners began a new winning streak!
Tonight we are camping at Camping World in Fife.
Monday, 6/11/01
Heading toward Seattle on Interstate 5, there was a loud, startling BANG and a few minutes later I noticed that the windshield was broken. It's a little hole at the bottom of the driver's side glass with two vertical lines going up in a "v" shape.
The glass is on the way from the warehouse in Las Vegas. It should be a few hours to replace it and also repair a chip that the other side took.
Tuesday, 6/12/01
It's interesting how the two broken lines in the windshield keep growing. When I first spotted them, they were about eight inches long. Now they're about twice that.
Sunday, 6/17/01
It's a beautiful day for visiting the Ballard Locks. The locks have been a landmark attraction in Seattle since they were opened July 4, 1917, connecting the then landlocked Lake Union and Lake Washington with Puget Sound via the Lake Washington Ship Canal.
Monday, 6/25/01
The windshield was replaced this morning and the chip in the passenger side was repaired, if you call it that. It is still visible. The whole job took about two hours.
Sunday, 7/1/01
Where to enjoy the sunshine today? Off to Lowell, an old town that's now a historic old Everett neigborhood. We headed for Lowell Park and its off-leash area, but there was no room to park a motorhome, especially with a tow vehicle. So we drove on. Two or three minutes south and a left turn over the railroad tracks, right on the bank of the Snohomish River, we found the Lowell Riverfront Trail and Rotary Park. It has a big grassy area with picnic tables, and there's plenty of room to park a motorhome. We stayed until dark and we'll be back. A nice park. A good place to listen to the Mariners game. Yep, they won again.
Five or six or eight northbound freight trains passed by and there was a curious one going the other way. It was a BNSF locomotive towing an empty Amtrak train, engine and all.
Tuesday, 7/3/01
We're back out at Alki, sitting in the parking lot at the municipal boat ramp on Harbor Avenue S. W. Tomorrow is Loie's birthday. This neighborhood (and Brownie's picture window) has Seattle's best view. Miles of Seattle skyline across Elliott Bay. It'll be perfect for watching the fireworks tomorrow night. My sister, Sandy, is up visiting from Phoenix and came out to have dinner with us in our roving palace. So we had a good time visiting for a few hours. Even watched the Mariners win again.
At closing time, we left to find a spot to sleep over at the curb just south of the Seacrest dock. The parking is unrestricted and we found a perfect place to hit the hay with an open view of the harbor and downtown Seattle.
Wednesday, 7/4/01
Happy Birthday America and Loie! It's sunny and warm and heading for a hot one! Every parking space on Harbor Avenue is taken. There are quite a few motorhomes, including from Nayarit, Mexico and British Columbia, Canada. Lois rose early with Snuggles and I slept until about nine.
The sidewalk here is extra wide so strollers, bikers and rollerbladers have lots of room. Everybody gets along with everybody else. Beyond the sidewalk it's all grass out to the water, where there's another sidewalk winding its way along the shore. Three beaches are within a five minute walk or less. The grass is packed with people, chairs, tables, barbecues, dogs, food, drink, and friendly party atmosphere.
One of the pilings sticking up out of the water has been the perching spot for a bald eagle for the past hour or so. Some fellow admirers pointed out a tree on a high cliff just across the street and told me that the eagle's family lives up there. Just before I got there, the eagle dived for a fish, but a seagull beat him to it. He chased the seagull away.
I put our chairs out on the grass next to another family. The man asked about Snuggles. He told me their family dog had just died and this was their first Fourth of July fireworks trip without him. I left Snuggy to visit with them while I did some other things. They even went over to one of the restaurants later and brought back some dog biscuits for her.
My son, Steve, came over for lunch. One of Loie's sons, Glenn, phoned from California.
About ten, the fireworks started from Myrtle Edwards Park on the downtown waterfront across the bay. A few minutes later, more fireworks started from Gas Works Park on Lake Union. But before that was something I don't think anybody had ever seen before - a jet plane leaving a trail of fireworks as it soared and swooped over the bay for about ten minutes. Really something!
We've been seeing flyovers all day. Picture the Blue Angels or the Thunderbirds, only not jets, but fairly small propeller-driven planes, each one a different color. They would fly over six or nine at a time in various patterns, and were usually followed in a minute or two by a lone prop-driven transport plane. Who are they?
Saturday, 7/7/01
Just off Tenth Street at Marine View Drive in Everett is Marine Park. We're here to watch the Mariners play the Dodgers on the hard-to-receive channel 13. Last month we found that the station comes in pretty well up here, so we are back.
Late in the afternoon, an s.u.v. pulled up beside us and the driver asked if our name was Ellingson. The man, Skip Swanson, had found our website when he was looking for motorhome information, saw a Bounder towing a Jeep as he drove by, and made a pretty good guess. He had even a little more interest because he is married to Marie Ellingson. Skip is an engineer on the Mosquito Fleet vessel Saint Nicholas. Way back when, the original "mosquito fleet" carried passengers and cargo between ports all over Puget Sound. The Saint Nicholas takes passengers on whale-watching expeditions to the San Juan Islands.
We keep meeting interesting people because of our website and motorhome.
Wednesday, 7/18/01
We're back out at Alki in West Seattle for the day. This afternoon, a fellow walked up to us and said he had a few questions about motorhomes. He had just bought a 1983 27-foot Pace Arrow about two weeks ago and is a fulltimer. He left it in Oregon because of shock at how much gas it burns. Where he's living, with his "house" in Oregon, I don't know.
He told me a disturbing story that reinforces my long held opinion that motorhome drivers should be required to have a special license. He drove over one of our mountain passes and he was towing. As he related it, once he hit the summit and started down the other side, the motorhome "felt like it had about five motors and really took off". It didn't occur to him to shift down and he was surprised when I mentioned it. I don't think he'd ever heard of downshifting. He had already told me he could hardly keep it on the road under the best of conditions.
I really believe that every motorhome driver should at least pick up a copy of the commercial driver's license (CDL) manual and read it. It's free at any driver license office and it's filled with good ideas for maintaining and safely maneuvering a large vehicle.
Click here for Washington state CDL information
Click here to download a copy of the Washington Commercial Driver's Guide
Another good Mariner win and a beautiful sunset on Elliott Bay.
Tuesday, 7/24/01
A week or so ago, I bought a digital camera so we could put some photos on our web pages. It's a Polaroid I-Zone Combo, part digital and part instant camera. It cost a hundred bucks, but has $70 in rebates -- pretty darn cheap. Here's a photo I took of downtown Seattle from across Elliott Bay at Alki.
I also found out a few days ago that there's a Seattle Street in Seattle, not far from here. Funny what you find out by prowling around your home town.
A local artist, Lezlie Jane (below right), has undertaken a project along Beach Drive Southwest. She draws constellations on the sidewalk. Holes are then drilled in the position of each star and bronze stars are cemented in place. Sponsors (at up to $6,000) also get a larger bronze plaque inset with their name and a few words of their choice.
Kevin Hallman (below) drills the holes and etches the lines between each star as designed and drawn by Lezlie, who then fills in and finishes the project.
Here is her latest addition, Perseus, finished Monday, July 23rd.
Each constellation is positioned so that as you stand at the curb and look down at it and then look up at the sky, you will see the stars in the heavens as they are portrayed in the sidewalk, depending on the time of year. Leaflets are available at several points along the drive, telling which constellations can be seen during each season. It's a very nice touch.
Wednesday, 8/1/01
One of our sons, Michael, spent four days with us this week. He lives in Thousand Oaks, California. We picked him up last night at Sea-Tac Airport and headed back to the beach at Alki to spend the night.
This morning, a man knocked on our door to ask if it was okay to park here. He (also named Michael) was driving a pickup with a 19-foot travel trailer. We ended up visiting for about four hours. He told me he'd been living the so-called "ideal life" with a big house, big cars, and big career on the Big Island of Hawaii not far from Hilo. He felt that there was something missing, so he sold everything, came to the mainland, bought his trailer and pickup in Oregon, which has no sales tax, and he's been driving around the country since, visiting friends and relatives from Oregon to Florida to New Jersey.
He plans to go back to Hawaii some day and build another house, about 800 square feet, but doesn't know when. His new house will be solar powered, as was his previous. The setup is not much different from a motorhome, using deep cycle twelve volt batteries and an inverter for the few things that run on 110 VAC.
Michael said it's not uncommon for contractors in his area, because of the expense, to build houses, and even subdivisions, without running water or electricity down the street. His other house had an 8000 gallon tank for collecting rainwater, and a 12 volt pump.
Friday, 8/3/01
We are at the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle's Montlake district. We pulled into the parking lot around 7:00 A. M. The museum opens at ten. Snuggles and I walked around and explored. The museum is right on the shore of Lake Washington next to the Highway 520 floating bridge. Later on, we watched the Blue Angels practicing for their show this Sunday during the hydroplane races. They flew over low enough that I could read the writing on their wings.
Among the displays is a recorded narration about the settlers arriving at Alki, which I found out should be pronounced "Al-kee", not that anyone actually says it that way. I was taught by Mrs. Miller in fourth grade Seattle history class at Olympic View (click to see a picture of me in grade school) that it was not "Al-kee". She also pronounced Shilshole as a three-syllable word. And she was good enough to warn me, when I swallowed my gum instead of spitting it out per her order, that the gum would coat the inside of my stomach and I wouldn't be able to digest my food.
Saturday, 8/4/01
We got son Michael to the airport for California by 5:45 this morning and then hunted for a place to get breakfast. We ended up at one of the dirtiest restaurants I've ever seen, Denny's, 5110 Pacific Highway East in Fife, just outside of Tacoma. Believe me, we should have cooked in the motorhome, but sometimes you just don't use good sense. The first clue was the garbage can outside the front door, filled to overflowing and trash on the ground. The glass front door had so many greasy hand prints on it that you could hardly see through it. I could have written my name in the grease on the counter by the cash register. Directly behind it was the glass pie case, which was wide open and covered with greasy prints.
We felt sorry for our waitress on her first day. Our order took more than thirty minutes to arrive. Lois advised her to find a better place to work.
There was a comment phone number on the wall, which I called and found nobody is there on the weekend. On the way out we saw that the garbage can had been emptied and the lid was on the ground.
Sunday, 8/5/01
There's a Keeshond Club meeting today in Kent, so we parked here overnight. The city has a little spot where RVs can park, dump, and take on water.
This afternoon we watched one of the screwiest baseball games I've ever seen. The Mariners were leading Cleveland 12-0 after the third inning, then 14-2. Both teams used every pitcher they had and the Indians went on to score thirteen straight runs and beat Seattle in ten innings, 15-14. It's not much fun watching two good teams play so poorly. Especially when our guys lose.
After that, we were ready to head out and bed down. I did my regular light check and the tow lights aren't working right, so I guess I'll troubleshoot them tomorrow.
Monday, 8/6/01
I phoned the Denny's comment line this morning. After seven minutes of bilingual recordings about how all the "specialists" were busy helping someone else, I decided to move on to other things. Never again will I eat at Denny's!
I took the tow light wiring harness apart, cleaned out the rust, burnished the wires and contacts as good as I could, and the lights are working again.
Thursday, 8/9/01
A new adventure begins tomorrow. I've been hired by Metro Transit as a part-time driver, so we're parked out in front of Metro's training center in Tukwila. Twenty-two straight days of training begins tomorrow at 7:00 A. M. Then I'll be driving a morning commuter run somewhere in King County Monday through Friday. Retirement's lotsa fun, but this job will give me medical insurance, put some bucks back in our pockets, and give me a chance to do something I've wanted to do ever since I was a grade school kid - drive a transit bus. When I was a kid, I used to get on a Seattle Transit bus, put in my dime or a token, get a transfer, and see where I'd end up. I'd sit up front by the door and watch the driver do his job.
Saturday, 8/11/01
This is the second day of training. Yesterday was classroom, today we drove a forty-foot coach around for about six hours, with three students and an instructor to each coach. We started in a parking lot where I ended up having to back up in the middle of an intersection because I didn't make my right turn correctly. I would have been in a heck of a predicament if it had been on the street. Each of us climbed a curb or two and did a few other things we'd just as soon not repeat. No buses were wrecked or damaged.
Sunday, 8/12/01
On the road again. Today we practiced entering and exiting bus zones, as well as some narrow and winding roads and steep hills including The Counterbalance. I'm stopping a little too far from the curb, the same as when I parallel park the motorhome. We had to change coaches halfway through the day because the brakes weren't working too well. At the end of the day, we were evaluated and we're still employed.
Monday, 8/13/01
Of the original seventeen in our class, four are gone. I don't know why. This evening, we drove the motorhome out to Saltwater State Park to dump and take on water, and then headed for dinner at Red Robin at Southcenter Mall. This is the first time since Thursday that I've driven Brownie. It's almost like a new experience after spending the weekend driving a 40-foot transit coach with the driver's seat a few feet in front of the front wheels.
Tuesday, 8/14/01
Our first of three written tests was today and I take my road test next Tuesday. We picked our first routes today. I'll be driving a 60-foot articulated coach in morning rush hour on the Route 251 Express from Woodinville through downtown Seattle via Stewart Street and Westlake and Fifth Avenues. That assignment will last three weeks or so. Then comes the "shake-up", when each driver, based on seniority, picks a route (known as a "piece of work") to do until the next shake-up, which happens three times a year.
Thursday, 8/16/01
Loie and I got in the motorhome this afternoon, towing the Jeep, and drove my assigned bus route, the 251 Express, from the transit base in Bellevue out to the starting point in Woodinville, and then through Redmond and Kirkland and over the 520 floating bridge into downtown Seattle and on south to the industrial area where the trip ends and I return the bus to the base. I scouted for bus zones along the way and drove past two before I spotted them.
After that, it was off to the beach at Alki to watch the Mariners game (oh well, they can't win 'em all) and spend the night. Fall is sure on the way -- it was dark by nine o'clock.
Friday, 8/17/01
I'm off today. Tomorrow and Sunday, it's coach practice all day.
Sunday, 8/19/01
We spent the day driving the route that will be used to qualify us for our CDL. Road tests will be tomorrow and Tuesday.
Monday, 8/20/01
Off today and memorizing the walkaround for the CDL test that I take tomorrow morning at 8:30.
Monday, 8/27/01
I passed the CDL test last Tuesday. I spent yesterday and the day before behind the wheel, driving regular routes with an instructing operator. Tomorrow through Thursday, I'll be doing the same, but on the route that I'll take over next week.
Tuesday, 8/28/01
I'm back from driving the bus, a beautiful articulated 60-foot 1999 New Flyer. The training supervisor of the base rode along today to see how I'm doing, what I need to improve, and so on. Follow this link and watch me drive by at 5:57 A. M. Pacific Standard Time!
Friday, 9/01/01
Three short weeks ago I couldn't even spell "prat time tarnsit operator" and now I are one! Today was graduation day and we who didn't change our minds and quit are now Metro Transit bus drivers. One woman and eleven men will be out on the roads of King County this Tuesday soloing for the first time. Yikes! Hop on and ride with us!
We also got the assignments we'll begin driving at the end of September. I'll be driving the 311 from Duvall to downtown Seattle. For the month of September, I'm on the 251 Express from Woodinville to downtown Seattle.
Tuesday, 9/4/01
I soloed today and all went well. Even got an hour overtime when a wreck on I-405 clogged up the freeways for miles around.
Sunday, 10/28/01
Since 9/11, I haven't been in the mood to update this trivial little page. However, we are still at it, still fulltiming and alive, and I'm still driving the 311. We hope all of you are o.k. and that you'll check back.
Wednesday, 11/28/01
Winter has come to the Pacific Northwest. Yesterday morning there were just a few ice crystals in the rain on the windshield. But this morning there was heavy snowfall and heavy wind and the visibility was almost zero at times as I drove my bus into Seattle from Duvall. None of the snow stuck but a couple of our routes in northern King County switched to snow routes as a precaution. Olympia, sixty miles south of us, had about six inches on the ground which quickly melted. The bus ahead of me, the 311/2 (I drive 311/3, simply the third trip of the day on that route), broke down so I had to pick up all of his passengers as well as my own. We were packed to the gills--not even standing room. All those warm bodies fogged up the windshield so I not only couldn't see what was in my right hand mirror, I couldn't see the mirror at all. It was great sport trying to move a sixty-foot-long bus three lanes to the right on a crowded freeway with no idea what was in those three lanes. So I put on my blinkers (all ten of them), waited a few seconds, and began to ease over while listening for the sounds of honking horns or (I hope not!) crunching steel. We made it and I cleaned off the glass at the next stop.
Sunday, 12/2/01
Last night we had one heck of a windstorm. The motorhome rocked around as never before. And this morning the weatherman is forecasting rain and snow for the next couple of days. I hope it snows.
Thursday, 12/6/01
We had a little excitement on the bus this morning. One female passenger has been harassing another, verbally and physically. It's been going on for a month or two at the Brickyard Park & Ride. I filed a report and two supervisors came to the scene last week, but the troublemaker didn't show up. This morning she did. As I pulled up to the zone, she tried to shove the other woman away from the door while I watched. I radioed in for help and the troublemaker was taken off the bus by a Metro supervisor at a stop about five miles farther down the freeway. Two Washington State Patrol cars with four troopers responded. We were delayed about ten or fifteen minutes, so I guess everybody had something to talk about as they gulped their $3.00 lattes at break time.
Friday, 12/7/01
Pearl Harbor Day. God bless those who fight for America.
No work excitement today. The State Patrol was at the Park & Ride when I pulled up in the bus. The troublemaker was not there.
The weather this afternoon was absolutely beautiful with sunshine and blue skies and it might have been up in the 50's. So I did some spring cleaning (spring of '01, not '02) and even climbed up on the roof to clean all the grease out of the kitchen exhaust fan.
Friday, 12/14/01
We found out
Tuesday that Snuggles has diabetes. Not only that, there seem to
be serious problems with her kidneys. She hadn't been acting like
her normal happy self for quite a while, but the change had come
so gradually that we had attributed it to her arthritis and the
fact that she'll be fourteen in February. Then, last Saturday, we
decided to have a complete blood test done on her. The
veterinarian called us Tuesday morning with the results and told
us to bring her in immediately for treatment. He was very
concerned for her survival. So I grabbed Snuggy, jumped in the
Jeep, and we hit the road full speed ahead for the vet's office
in Mill Creek. Snuggles ended up spending most of Tuesday,
Wednesday, and yesterday getting intravenous fluids (lactated
ringers) to flush out her kidneys, and also getting insulin,
while her blood was tested every two hours. The change in her,
following the treatment, is absolutely impossible to describe!
Snuggles is her old self again! She is now on a special diet,
Prescription K/D, for her kidneys. We also learned this morning
how to inject insulin, which we will do twice a day from now on.
I bought 100 single-use syringes and a special container for
their disposal. We'll be injecting her twice a day, at four
o'clock, and feeding her twice a day, at eight o'clock. I get up
at 2:55 A. M. five days a week, so that seems the best schedule
for the time being. My shift will most likely change at Metro
Transit's next shakeup, so Snuggy's schedule might change, too.
In doing some research on the internet, I found that Keeshond is the breed most predisposed to diabetes. There are four classic signs that a dog has diabetes: weight loss, increased water consumption, ravenous appetite, and increased urination. Snuggles displayed none of these. She had lost interest, two or three days earlier, in her regular dog food that she'd been eating for seven years, but was still gobbling up favorite stuff like lettuce and licking plates, pots, and pans like mad. The vet had no answer for that. Maybe the kidney problem and diabetes together made the dog food taste bad, who knows?
When we got the call from the vet, we were in Renton, about thirty miles south, having the generator in our motorhome worked on at Cummins Northwest, which is the Onan outfit in the Seattle area. Our generator has been speeding up, slowing down, and sometimes shutting off for no reason. The mechanic called our symptoms "bizarre". He found that a connector from the carburetor to, I believe, the governor had broken and been replaced with a twist tie like you use to close up a loaf of bread. What idiot would have done that? The generator has only been worked on by Poulsbo RV.
Saturday, 12/15/01
Mean and nasty outside with hard rain and 34 degrees at 10:00 A. M. Where's our snow?
Wednesday, 12/19/01
Great news today! Snuggles is in much better condition than the vet expected. He gave her a blood test today and her blood sugar is normal, so we've cut back a little on her insulin, from twelve units to ten units. And her kidney function is normal! So we get to put her back on her regular and favorite food.
That's the good news. On the other side, our furnace quit working at just over one year old. Fleetwood replaced it when we were at the factory in November 2000. It seems that RV furnaces are made to last through the warranty and that's that. We go in for repairs Friday morning.
Friday, 12/21/01
The furnace is fixed, two hundred and some bucks later. We just finished putting about three-and-a-half c-notes into new batteries (one for the engine and two for the "house") and are hoping that the major motorhome expenses are done for a while.
Monday, 12/24/01
Have a cool yule and a frantic first!!
Monday, 12/31/01
We hope your Christmas was merry and that your New Year will bring you lots of fun and good memories.
Saturday, 1/26/02
Snow finally! It started at about 3:00 P. M. and came down pretty hard for about an hour and a half.
Wednesday, 3/20/02
I haven't done any updating for quite a while. Other things have taken up my time, the most important and time-consuming being Lois's serious illness. After spending eleven days in the hospital in January, she continues treatment and is on the mend, although not as fast as she thinks she is and we want her to be.
Spring officially arrived here at 11:16 this morning. Eight minutes later, snow was falling. Our winter has been more like winter, the later it gets. The night of March 7, the Seattle area got a pretty heavy snowfall and it was cold enough that it stuck on the roads. I was an hour late starting my bus route the next morning, Friday, March 8, waiting for chains to be put on my bus. The whole Metro Transit fleet was chained. Almost all the buses were on snow routes. By afternoon, the roads were pretty much back to normal and chains were being removed.
Friday, 3/22/02
My son, Steve, turns 24 today. Happy birthday, Zeke!
Saturday, 3/23/02
It's the fourth day of spring and we actually have spring weather! Sixty-eight degrees, blue skies and sunshine and a warm little breeze. We're ready for some decent weather.
Friday,
3/29/02
My bus.
Tuesday, 4/2/02
Today marks three years of fulltiming for Loie and me. We took delivery of "Brownie", our Bounder, April 3, 1999. The three-year warranty on the Ford F-53 chassis expires tomorrow.
We took Brownie in for her under-the-wire-end-of-warranty checkup yesterday morning at 7:00 A. M. Our service writer (and he's much more than that), Brandt Pendleton, who had quit SeaTac Ford to take another job eight months ago, returned yesterday morning. Talk about a happy coincidence! SeaTac Ford is now Horizon Ford after being sold last summer. The dealership is located just south of Boeing Field in Seattle. The address is in Tukwila. We met Brandt in April, 1999, when our rear axle and springs had to be replaced due to a recall by NHTSA. It was Fleetwood's screwup in overloading the chassis that caused the recall. Fleetwood supplied the parts and SeaTac Ford installed them. Brandt walked us through it and has helped us many times since then. We heartily recommend him to any owner of a motorhome on a Ford chassis.
Our steering gear and headlight switch will be replaced under warranty when the new parts arrive. And our squeaky springs are going to be fixed. Some other problems they found and/or we complained about were fixed yesterday. We are still in need of some transmission work and it will be done under warranty as well.
Sunday, 5/12/02
We have changed our lifestyle a bit. On May 1st, we moved off the road and into an RV park, twenty miles from downtown Seattle and seventeen miles from work, a twenty minute drive. We have lived on the street for sixteen months and it's nice not to have to figure out where the heck we're staying tonight. We're sure the time will come when we hit the road again, but we'll be going somewhere then. At least that's the plan.
And spring seems to be here -- 80 degrees today.
Monday, 6/17/02
I had a phone call today from a man who said he is a lawyer for Poulsbo RV and he would like to have a meeting with me. I told him any dialogue regarding Poulsbo RV would have to be in writing. We said goodbye. I didn't catch his name.
Thursday, 11/14/02
Our Keeshond, Snuggles, was diagnosed with diabetes about eleven months ago. She has lost almost all of her vision due to cataracts caused by the diabetes. For a few months, we have been investigating what could be done for her.
Now we have an appointment for her to have surgery to remove one of the cataracts. The surgery is scheduled for next Tuesday and she'll be under an anasthesic for about an hour. Our regular veterinarian and the opthalmologist agreed that Snuggles shouldn't be under long enough to do both her eyes because she has become extremely sensitive to the anasthetic. Maybe in the future we'll have the other eye done.
She may have an artificial lens implanted. It depends on what the doctor finds while doing the cataract removal. We are very pleased that the overriding consideration for both doctors is the danger to Snuggles.
We just want Snuggy to enjoy life as she used to and we are very fortunate and thankful that we are able to afford this.
We'll let you know how it turns out.
Friday, 11/15/02
I'm published! I occasionally send my rants in to the local papers. The Seattle Times and the King County Journal have recently used their precious paper, ink, and bandwidth to share my opinions with their readers.
Thursday, 1/16/03
It's a sad evening at our house. We just came back from burying our beloved Keeshond, Snuggles. She has been burdened with diabetes, arthritis and cataracts. Her doctor thinks she had a stroke. She lived with us for more than eight years.
Saturday, 1/18/03
I have written a tribute to Snuggy and invite you to read it.
Tuesday, 1/21/03
Loie and I went to the animal shelter today. We wanted to visit some dogs and cats to get our mind off the loss of Snuggles. Well, we did more than visit -- we adopted a Siberian Husky. Visit Kenai's page and admire him!
Saturday, 3/8/03
We've had a bit of snow. It's gone, doggone it. Quite a snowstorm yesterday, though. We hope for more. There's nothing like snow to make me feel like a kid. Snoqualmie Pass is getting quite a bit on the ground. We went up there a couple of days ago and I ran around in the snow with Kenai. Fun!!
Tuesday, 7/8/03
Beautiful summer has arrived in style here in the Pacific Northwest. So we took a little vacation last week, my first since I went back to work almost two years ago.
Loie had a physical therapy appointment Wednesday, July 2nd, so we left after that. We fired up Brownie, gassed up, dumped, took on water, and hit the road. That night, we got as far as Darrington where we pulled off in front of the Bluegrass Music Park. I didn't get much sleep what with the traffic and the cold weather. And it was cold -- 39 degrees when I got out of bed. Once we raised the shades, we noticed that the windows were wide open all night!
Off we went,Tommi navigating! After a stop in Concrete where I cooked breakfast and Loie practiced hooking Yeep to the mother ship, we ambled over the North Cascades Highway (SR-20) to the Methow Valley, and found ourselves at Early Winters Campground, which is about fifteen miles west of Winthrop and a mile or so from Mazama. The campground, I later read, is a Methow Indian cultural site. Artifacts have been found over the years. The site was used by the Methows up into the 1930's as a staging area for hunting and gathering trips into the high country. The highway along Early Winters Creek is an old Indian trail. But none of this is evident to campers.
It's a primitive U. S. Forest Service campground with just thirteen sites and no amenities; just a vault toilet (genteel name for an outhouse), a dumpster, and a water faucet. We found site #2 vacant, the only one that's right on the creek, which is really more like a river. Each site has a fire pit and a table with benches. Other than putting up with a little bit of dust when people drove through, it was just fine. And it was only $2.50 per night with Loie's Golden Access Pass.
One
interesting thing we saw in the campground was a bunch of trees
that had been chewed to a point by beavers. Some were chewed four
or five feet from the ground. We looked over our shoulders for
giant mutant beavers, but to no avail. All we found was a sign
explaining that the beavers had been hard at work while the snow
was deep.
Kenai
and Tommy played in the river
creek together.
Tommy jumped from rock to rock while Kenai waded around.
Friday was July 4th, America's and Loie's birthday. We went into Winthrop for dinner. There was no sign of Independence Day anywhere in town.
Thursday, 7/10/03
We got a phone call this evening from a woman in Olympia named Shelly McGregor. She and her family had been shopping for a travel trailer at Poulsbo RV and were close to making a deal. Then she happened on our Poulsbo RV web site and changed her mind when she read about the way Poulsbo RV treats its customers. Shelly then sent an e-mail to Carl Hultenberg, Internet Sales Manager at Poulsbo RV telling him the deal was off.
Tuesday, 8/5/03
Lois was outside and I heard her talking to somebody. I walked out to see what was up. There was one of our boys, Gene (her son, my stepson), standing there totally unexpected, all the way from Pasadena and on his way to a wedding in Helena, Montana. So we enjoyed the afternoon yakking with him, as well as new neighbors who pulled in from Alaska, Eric and Dee and their ten-year-old boy, Sam, a Golden Retreiver/Beagle mixture. After dinner, Gene headed for Vashon Island. His great uncle lives there (actually on Maury Island) and Gene wants to be found asleep on the front lawn tomorrow morning when the uncle stirs and steps outside. His house burned a while back, so he bought a shipping container to live in -- one of those boxes you see on semis and railroad cars or stacked up on docks all over the waterfront. We don't know whether or not he cut a window in it. I suppose the tale will be told in full someday.
Wednesday, 8/6/03
Well, I'm published again! The Seattle P-I saw fit to commit some paper, ink, and computer space to my mini-rant.
Dick and Lois's latest adventures
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Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, healthy, free, the world before me, the long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Walt Whitman