We relaxed on Memorial Day at Bob and Carolyn’s, they always know how to throw a feast 🙂 It was a good chance for Roni and I to take our minds off of my medical issues and enjoy family and friends.

We are loving the Lake Pleasant RV Park as we settle into the Seattle environs. Lakes with campsites surrounding them, lots of green separation from the suburban jungle nearby 🙂

Timing is terrible but we are caught in Seattle for a month or more while my medical issues are dealt with. I wish this wasn’t the case, but it is better to get this worked out before we head out on our venture. I will use my camera in the Seattle area which is picturesque itself to entertain you while we find out the prognosis. We meet with doctors on June 3rd to hear what my options are for treatment of Prostate Cancer. It is a very early stage growth so there is no reason to fear we won’t make our journey around America. We will keep you posted as we get me well again. Please don’t worry, I am in good hands with my doctors at Virginia Mason 🙂

Finally got my 500mm lens out with a 1.4x extender to visit with the three Western Grebes that frequent the shoreline 🙂

Hope you enjoy 🙂

Mallory was in Northern California for a wedding, so we had a wonderful time visiting with her and Brittany. Roni had not seen these two daughters together in a number of years.

In addition to family, we had a great time visiting with Mark and Joan. They have been an anchor for us in this region and we see them as often as we can 🙂

We stayed at the Mountain Gate RV Park at the south end of Lake Shasta. The WiFi is topnotch and it is in a lovely setting, highly recommended for those wanting to spend time in Redding CA.

Let me start by saying we are fine but we probably had one of the first major “ventures” of our Precious Venture around America 🙂

I will start with the bad since it is short and sweet, our fine Ford F150 truck broke down on the way to Shasta Lake CA, just an hour south of Eugene OR. First the Navigation system stopped working so we drove to the Cabin Creek rest area and turned off the truck and see if it would reboot. It is a computer after all. The dreaded Fault in Trailer Wiring warning came on which I had seen 10,000 miles ago and the trailer brakes locked, due to the controller in the truck misbehaving. The problem was supposedly fixed the last time. Next smoke started to come out of the brake controller and I called it quits, please don’t burn down our truck…

Now the good news 🙂 We had AAA RV insurance and they arranged to have the truck and trailer towed back to Eugene pretty much as promised. They gave us timely updates with text and voice calls and it all worked smoothly. Gary was our driver of the Marshall’s Towing truck and kept our spirits up for the drive to the Ford Dealer to get the truck repaired.

While waiting at the Cabin Creek rest area a visitor perched on my open door with a message that all would be fine 🙂

Once we arrived at Kendall Ford in Eugene OR we were provided a red carpet of service by Jeff and Garrett. They helped us square away our trailer and got the truck in the que of immediate attention when the service department opens Monday morning (we arrived Saturday afternoon). More on both of their wonderful service in a future post about Kendall Ford.

We dined at Red Robin and had a Raman Burger, yikes, a nice flavor experience to sooth our jumbled nerves. Walking back to the trailer parked at Kendall Ford, I tried calling a cab company and got a recording 🙁 Frustrated I commented to Roni and she said why don’t we take that cab, I looked to see where she was waving and she had gotten the attention of Justin. He turned around and pulled in to meet us, with his friendly smile. He took us the short drive to Timbers Motel on Pearl Street in Eugene OR. The fact that he appeared just as we were getting frustrated with the search for a cab had to be using some of our good karma 🙂

Justin described the city as we drove and was downright a nice guy! He drives for the Oregon Taxi Company in Eugene OR. Oh, believe me, he had his eyes open when he drove, I just can’t take a picture worth a darn, lol.

Now we wait in Eugene on a sleepy Sunday, maybe time to do some laundry. I did leave out the reason for us staying at a motel. We have been living for three weeks in our Blackstone Trailer and have been making the adjustment easily to living in a smaller home. The shower is great for a trailer, we conserve water by shutting it off as we lather, the water is warm and pleasant. That said, there is nothing to compare to being in a motel where the water cascading over your body is warming every part of your body at once. The Timbers Motel on Pearl Street in Eugene OR has the best shower I have experienced since staying at the Grand Hyatt in the Roping District of Tokyo Japan. The Timbers Motel had a walk in shower with a rain nozzle on the ceiling and a hand nozzle to make the shower experience heavenly. The shower was a perfect way for us to relax and settle into a peaceful stay in Eugene.

We pulled the trailer down to Richardson Park off I-5 near Eugene OR. This park is a bit off the freeway and is a gem. The large reservoir it is on is a favorite for sailing and the campsites are large and comfortable. We set up camp then drove into Eugene OR for our now firmly established tradition, stopping at Track Town Pizza near the University of Oregon. The place is always hopping with students, coaches, and vagabonds like us 🙂 The pizzas are unique and creative, the salad bar is wonderfully fresh with the Original Ranch our favorite.

The next morning while Roni slept, I went for an hour walk after the sun started shining.

While exploring the park I came upon a nice trail in the woods and got to thinking, what is around the corner for our Precious Venture?

Our medical issues are hopefully behind us. Headed south to Shasta Lake near Redding CA to visit Roni’s two daughters and our friends. I can’t lift anything more than 10 pounds so Roni is the muscle for a week. We stop in Eugene OR to camp and have a Track Town Pizza and salad, a ritual with us now, great food 🙂

So anyone contemplating pulling the umbilical and venturing out to RV around, be aware that the umbilical for internet connection is the hardest issue to solve, at least for us geeks 🙂 We have used 7 GBs of our ATT cell service data and 23 GBs of our Verizon Jetpack service, with only half the billing month gone. This will be a very expensive trip for us around America unless we can find ways to economize on our data usage. Starbucks and the public libraries are a huge benefit, I am sipping a coffee now at Starbucks 🙂

The second issue that speaks volumes on our hesitancy of pulling the umbilical, is digital TV can be very intermittent the further away from town we go.

So far we have only been visiting with family prior to starting our Precious Venture around America. We both hope that as we start racking up visits to National Parks, we can find other ways to spend our time 🙂

Having traveled a lot in a car, we are going to settle in on 5 or 6 hours driving while pulling the trailer, so that we can set up camp while still light and still fresh. Our OR State Park camp in Junction City called Richardson Park is an example, we hope to arrive with plenty of time to setup up camp 🙂

Happy Trails to everyone and we will have some nice pictures of Northern CA for everyone to enjoy soon.

Many have asked us to help them live vicariously in our adventure. Our photos have been few but our promise is to start building a respectable portfolio of our day to day adventures. Our posts have been more frequent, but still not hitting a stride worthy of this grand venture 🙂

We spent four wonderful nights in Riverside State Park, Pitcher and Bowl Site, WA state visiting with Roni’s daughter Haley and family. We camped on the Spokane river shore with our back window gazing across the peaceful flow, with geese, merganser, marmots, eagles, and other wildlife going about their lives. We recommend the campsites ( power and water only ) along the river, what a nice park so close to the city of Spokane.

How hard is it to pull a 26′ trailer? For me the first short drive was scary. Now that I have logged 500 miles I find it manageable with a few caveats. Wind was steady and mostly in our face as we headed back to Puget Sound from Spokane. The truck slows considerably from a head on wind and when it blows from the side you have to be on your toes to keep the rig moving down the freeway lane. Negotiating corners is mainly swinging wide to avoid clipping any structure or vehicle near the corner. When I pulled into a rest area and saw my rig next to a semi I realized, I had it easy compared to them 🙂

Living in an RV trailer necessarily means reducing the footprint of the belongings you bring with you. Roni and I share a 10’x20′ storage area for what we have left behind. We have gone through a laborious process of selling, trashing, and giving away a larger set of property; Roni over many years, me over half a year. Now we look at the bed of our pickup and our trailer as having the smaller set of property that we feel is essential for our year long trip. The feeling though is we are still overburdened with things that will prove to be unneeded and I am sure more will be whittled in our short excursion to Spokane today.

As I sit here thinking of this process of whittling down the accumulations of life, I can’t help but also think of the mental clutter that I have accumulated. We all have precious memories of our life that seem to evaporate with each passing year and we cling to the ones we can still remember. No one wishes to lose any more of them. We also have anxieties, nagging thoughts of things we never finished, and we keep them in our thoughts instead of thinking past them to our future. We accumulate worries, frustrations, and other things that are not needed for us to live, but rather they burden us. How do we whittle down these accumulated poisons in our mind to live a better life, a happier one?

Ha, enough of my philosophical thoughts 🙂 Today we move on to a lovely state park in Spokane, WA to visit with Roni’s daughter and grandchildren. This will be our first long distance trip in the RV and so we should learn and continue the adjustment to having our home on the road.