Month: March 2011

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First Impressions of Eugene

My friend Joan came down to Eugene today to take me out for lunch (which ended up being brunch). We’d met briefly at the Seattle RV show. We talked about our current projects. She is at the stage I was at in late spring of ’08, on the cusp of major life changes and not sure exactly what shape they will take. How exciting!

After eating, she took me out around Eugene so I could get a feel for what there is around the area where I’m staying. I’m in a rather industrial and lower income neighbourhood. A lot of the homes are brightly coloured and buildings housing former businesses have been repurposed. Another thing I noticed is the large number of RVs permanently parked on the side of the road. I don’t have all the details about Eugene’s policy about RV parking, but it seems laxer than in other communities.

There are tons of restaurants, cafés, and art galleries within walking distance. If the weather is good tomorrow morning I will go for a long walk. I was going to do that this morning, but I’d been given the wrong gate key and was locked into the RV compound. Oops!

One of the places Joan took me that I would need to drive to is Trader Joes. I have heard so much about this chain of stores and now I can’t wait to go back there and get some groceries! Lovely products, and at very reasonable prices. I wanted one of every kind of cheese they had!

I’m really grateful to be able to park in this location for the week until my appointment. I’m just waiting for one more puzzle piece to fall into place before I’ll feel comfortable talking about that.

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Changing the Toad Windshield Wipers

I have a confession to make.

I am an independent, DIY savvy woman who can change a flat tire, install a new toilet, add an electrical outlet, and use power tools, but in my nearly sixteen years of driving, I have never had to change my own windshield wiper blades.

With my cars, I’ve always gone to Canadian Tire, where they install them at no charge. When I had service done on the vehicles in Campbell River, I let the service tech replace Miranda’s windshield wipers for me.

The blades on the toad’s windshield wipers were coming off, so it was beyond time to replace them. Being in the Pacific Northwest, good wiper blades are a necessity! So last night I picked up a pair at Walmart with the intent to install them the second I got a clear window of weather.

Figuring out what size to buy was easy. There’s a little computer in the wiper blade aisle. I used it to select the make, model, and year of my car and it told me “Driver: 22, Passenger 16.” The numbers are lengths in inches. Much easier method than the old one of looking up the information in my car manual or in a book on site!

This afternoon, the weather let up, so I went out. One of my friends joined me. We were stymied. The trilingual instructions on the back of the packages were too generic. I pulled out the car’s manual and the very clear English instructions were useless. But the French were worded just a tad differently and I figured out that ‘down’ actually meant ‘kind of up and sideways’ and I was able to side the old blade off the passenger side.

It took a bit longer to figure out how to fit on the new blade, with extra parts contained in the package serving only to confuse us. But I finally got the new wiper to click, and, oh, what a satisfying feeling! I had to relearn everything for the driver’s side, but it only took a couple of minutes to put together.

Such a small job, but it took about a half hour. Next time, it will go much more quickly!

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Chehalis (WA) to Eugene (OR)

I awoke to pouring rain that offered no promise of letting up. I try hard not to drive in those conditions, but the forecast told me that I could be camped out at the Chehalis Walmart until the end of the world. So, I took off, slowly and cautiously because of not only the pounding rain but also the wind. The worst was when the big rigs would pass me; the draft was nearly enough to send me into the ditch. It was tiring work and I pulled into each rest area I passed for a ten minute breather.

Croft advised me to take the I-205 bypass around Portland, so I was spared at least some potential trouble today. The drive into Oregon was easy, weather notwithstanding, and the rain finally let up around Salem, capital of Oregon. I was about forty-five minutes from Eugene when five cars passed me, making motions that there was something wrong with the kayak. I pulled over soon as I could to tighten the straps and went back to the rig to find that I’d locked myself out. Fortunately, I learned something from the last time I did this and had a spare set in the toad!

I made it to my friends’ place around 2 and waited patiently with a book until it was possible for me to get settled in. I’ll be here until the 17th.

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Blaine to Chehalis (Washington)

I had a typical pre-departure night filled with strange dreams, with a particularly vivid one waking me up to the sound of pounding rain at 6AM. Weirdly enough, I’ve been on an ‘early’ schedule since I got to Blaine last month, with bedtime between 10 and 12 and wake up around 8. If this had been a normal morning, I would have just gotten up at six. But since I had a full day ahead of me, I plugged in the electric blanket against the chill and went back to sleep.

The rain had turned to a gentle mist when I woke up again at 8. I didn’t have much left to do since I’d taken advantage of yesterday’s warm and sunny weather to dump the tanks and load the car. I lingered over breakfast, then went out to top up the fresh water tank and put away the water hoses. I continued to putter until I saw the park manager entering the office and went to see her to finalize my stay.

I’d given a $100 deposit for power and was shocked to learn that I had used $62 worth of power this past month!!!!!!!! I didn’t even run the dehumidifier. The only explanation is that I’ve had the 12V lights blazing in the evening since I’ve been working on my embroidery project. I really do need to convert to LED, but I don’t find that LED lights up a room as well as the incandescent bulbs do.

The manager wanted to give me my refund by cheque, but I talked her into giving me cash since I wouldn’t have been able to do a deposit for four weeks.

I’ll finally mention where I’ve been staying the last four weeks: Lighthouse by the Bay RV Resort. Lovely park and well managed, with clean washrooms, a club house, and three washers. When I arrived there was a welcome package waiting for me by the door, with everything I needed to get settled in, plus tons of local info. A lot of people there are permanent residents. If I can’t afford the gas to go south next winter, I will happily consider going back there because of the affordable monthly rent, location, and lower cost of living.

I pulled out of the park at about 11 and went down to the Texaco to fill the on board propane tank. I had a third of a tank of gas left so I decided to wait to get fuel; I’d be due at about the same time I’d be glad to have a leg stretch and pee break.

It continued to rain gently as I headed south, but by the time I hit Marysville, just north of Seattle, the rain had stopped even if the clouds were still black and swollen. I saw a highway sign announcing ‘Donna’s Truck Stop’, so I figured that’d be an easy access station, which it was. I took on $125 worth of fuel at $3.76 a gallon, so 33 gallons. That put me at almost full, with more than enough to get to Eugene.

The sky continued to clear and there were patches of blue when I hit Seattle. I stuck to the centre lane and made it through the city uneventfully even with the construction. It was the same thing through Tacoma and Olympia, capital of Washington State. I saw the capitol from the highway.

I’d asked around about good options for overnighting between Blaine and Eugene and was told the Walmart in Chehalis is RV friendly and exactly halfway. Croft says that it is his first stop after the Port Angeles ferry. That was good enough for me, so that’s where I headed.

11AM departures are a pain; too early to have lunch before leaving, but arrival is too soon after lunch to make it worth stopping for food. So, I just drove straight through and had a snack on arrival at 3.

I think I may set up camp permanently at the Chehalis Walmart! What a perfect overnight stop! Besides the Walmart supercentre, there’s a Starbucks with wifi, an Applebee’s, a Home Depot, and more. I must mention my love affair with the Applebee’s chain: awesome food, cheap prices, and portions so huge I always get two meals out of my order. Since I wasn’t driving tonight, I splurged on a ginormous mojito. *hiccup*

The weather this afternoon and early evening has been gorgeous; sunny and warm. Except for a cat who got very RV sick today, it has been a perfect day. I love my life.

 

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Haven't Had to Think About Internet In a Long Time

I’m all set to pull out of Blaine tomorrow morning and am wondering what sort of internet access the next month will bring. Obviously, for such a short period of time I don’t want to invest too much. If I manage to come south next year for three months or more, I will look into getting a US SIM card and air time for my modem, or whatever the best option is at the time.

There appears to be an abundance of wifi hotspots in Eugene, so the plan right now is to find the nearest one to where I’ll be staying and visit it once a day. I really can’t go for more than a day without internet, so now that I have a laptop doing a hotspot run isn’t going to be too onerous.