Last Thursday was a day filled with starts and stops; many
attempted travel plans along with as many revisions.
The first big “plan changer” was the lack of
hot water this morning.
We had plenty of
hot water last night, but none this morning.
Our water heater can be run on either electricity or propane, but
neither would heat our water today.
We
left a voice-mail for a local RV service agency and waited.
After an hour or two without a response, we
found an alternate service group that might be able to inspect our system
within 2 days and plan a repair later.
While
setting an appointment for this second choice, the first one called back.
He was a mobile service and came right to our
door.
His diagnosis was spot-on, and he
had the repair part we needed on board his truck.
We were fixed by
1:00 PM but had lost a good part of the day.
We chose to use the rest of the day to pick up our mail
which was being held for us at a post office alongside Interstate 5, near Mt St
Helens. Both Microsoft and Garmin
suggested we cross the Columbia River into Oregon
and take US30 to the Interstate, then cross the river again, back into Washington. Crossing the Columbia
near its mouth means using the Astoria
Bridge. Here is the lower, northern, end:
The southern end rises high enough to allow ocean-going
ships to pass underneath. Just our luck,
it was down to a single lane for repairs so we had the chance to park near the
highest part and wait our turn to use it.
For Bob’s traveling, Oregon
is the 49th state he has been in.
Only Hawaii remains, and
the bridge there hasn’t been scheduled for construction yet.
We again crossed the river at Longview
Washington and joined Interstate 5 for
about 10 miles. This was the first
official Interstate travel since we left Minnesota
over 2,000 miles ago. After picking up
our mail, we went to the Mt St Helens
Visitors Center
which is run by the state of Washington. We got there 30 minutes before it closed, and
the national Seniors Pass
isn’t accepted here. The National Park
visitors center was another 45 miles away.
This view is as close as we got:
We returned to the motorhome, back on the coast, by using Washington
highway #4 which was a very pleasant alternative to US30.
Before leaving the Long Beach
peninsula yesterday, we explored the north end and found the Ocean
Park Retreat Center. This church camp has often hosted Nomads
groups but their scheduled project for 2013 didn’t happen due to lack of
volunteers. It sure looked like a nice
place to work in the future.
On Friday we both received our formal confirmations from
Amazon that we have been scheduled for the same day shifts starting November 12
so we are now committed to manual labor: four 10-hour days per week for 6
weeks. This should help pay for the
water heater service and the new satellite TV system. We can play tourist for another 3 weeks, then
report for duty.
Once again we crossed the Columbia River
into Astoria, then continued south
on US101. Here is a view of the
shoreline we had during a lunch stop.
We stopped for the night between Bay
City and Tillamook. We found a seafood-fix for dinner
at the Fish Peddler which is part of Pacific Oyster Co. It’s right on the ocean and you can watch
them clean oysters and clams while you eat.
Plans for today include sampling cheese and ice cream at the
Tillamook Cheese Company plant nearby.