Our RV Adventures

Well, with 20° last night, we survived our 3rd lowest temperature since we’ve started RV’ing. But it was sunny and 52 today. So, nice.

And tonight’s supposed to be 29 with a 66 tomorrow.

The lowest temp we’ve encountered was in April 2008 when it was 6° while we were at the Riverfront RV Park in Garrison, MT. Not unexpected, as just a couple of days before we had this in Billings, MT.

Our 2nd lowest was 17° a few winters back when we were staying at Galveston Bay RV Park down in Dickinson, TX south of Houston. But with all these, we’ve never had any problems with anything freezing.

About 1pm I walked over to the park office to pick up our revised car tag and pedestal tag reflecting our one day extension to make our stay here a full two weeks. We lost a day due to our transmission problem down in Weed, but we had enough slack in our schedule to make it up.

The other thing I was trying to find out if they had any suggestions about how to receive Amazon packages here. The park itself will accept nothing, no mail or packages of any kind. And there are no Amazon Lockers in this area either.

Bend/Sunriver TT is completely at odds with the Las Vegas TT, which accepts any kind of packages, and even calls you when they come in.

I’ll check some of the mailbox stores in Bend tomorrow, but I’ve never had much much luck with that. It seems like they want you to get a PO Box for mail, but Amazon won’t ship to a PO address

And many of the mailbox stores are affiliated with either UPS or FedEx and won’t accept packages from the other one. So we’re stuck until I work something else out.

I do know that when we were here in 2011 and 2013 that they did accept packages, but don’t know when it changed.

Later in the afternoon I tried to take down the bracket that holds Sony rear camera so I could remount it using rubber washers to hopefully eliminate the rattle when we’re on the road. But as seems to always happen, out of 5 screws, only 4 would come out.

The remaining screw either came pre-stripped from the factory, or a previous owner had wallowed it out for me. So tomorrow I’ll have to take down the TV so I can get a better angle at it, or drill it out if necessary.

Friday I called Jay with Allison Transmission to thank him for all of his help, and to tell him that replacing the sensor had fixed the problem. He was really patient helping me work through the problem, and more importantly, didn’t question my sanity because I wanted to replace the sensor without hooking the transmission up to their diagnostic computer first.

I also made a couple of more reservations for our upcoming travels, all of them under Passport America. By the end of this segment of our trip finishing up back in Houston toward the end of June, we will have saved over $1000.

Not bad for $44 a year.

Several readers have asked for an Emma update.

She’s really mellowed over our last few months of travel. When we first took her in, she would run and hide as soon as she heard the rig engine start  up.

Now she is normally out and about when we’re on the road, sometimes sleeping on the rug on the floor between our chairs.

AOL News Headline Yesterday –

“Horse Wins Kentucky Derby!”

And they were expecting maybe, turtles?

dghdgh

It was down to 34° last night, with a high of only 47 today, but it was sunny and pretty nice.

Tonight however is probably another story. No snow, but depending on who you listen to, it’s either going down to 27 or 25°.  Either way I’m disconnecting shore water this evening before the freeze.

So for that reason I went outside and topped off our fresh water tank this morning to get ready for tonight. I also unloaded the backseat of the truck before we head out for lunch

As I said yesterday, blog reader Mary Burge had recommended The Sparrow Bakery up in Bend, so we had invited our neighbor Dina Pickens to ride along with us.

Dina was the Rv’er that I thought was trying to poach the site I was trying to move into yesterday, and she thought I was trying to snipe hers. So we ended up parked next to each other.

We picked her up about noon and made our way into Bend and the bakery.

It’s a small place and was pretty busy, but we were lucky enough to find an table immediately.

Jan started off with a cup of their Clam Chowder,

or maybe not. She was pretty sure she actually got their other Soup of the Day, Creamy Chicken. But she said it was good, anyway.

Dina and Jan both got the Chicken Waldorf Sandwich with grapes, apples, blue cheeses, walnuts, celery, green onion, tarragon, & greens served on a made-in- house croissant.

I started out with a large Cardamom Latte, the first latte I’ve ever gotten with the leaf pattern. And really good.

I got their Bacon Breakfast Sandwich with a poached egg, bacon, avocado, arugula aioli, Havarti cheese, and served on a made-in- house croissant..

As Mary had said, the food was delicious, and we had a great time getting to know Dina (pronounced like Dinah).

She’s a solo RV’er who drives a 36ft Gulfstream Crescendo FRED (FRont End Diesel) and tows a car and has been RV’ing for over 20 years.

What was really funny was all the same TT parks we had both been to, and all the same people we both know at Colorado River and Lake Conroe in the Houston area.

Finally coming home, we stopped off to get gas for the truck, enjoying the $2.55 price over California. And forgetting I was in Oregon, I started to get out  to fill up.

Oregon, along with New Jersey, are the two states that do not allow you to fill your own tank, for gas at least. Diesel RV’s are a different story.

About 9 this evening I went outside to disconnect shore water. At that time it was already 33°.

For dinner tonight we had mugs of last night’s delayed Bean with Bacon Soup.

It was delicious and worth the wait.

This afternoon I took down our Sony  rear camera monitor to find out why it rattles when we’re on the road.

Shaking it or wiggling it didn’t make a sound, nor does shaking the monitor itself. So I going to shockproof everything with rubber washers to see if that helps. I’ve kind of been waiting for it to die so I could replace it with a LCD monitor, but it just keeps rocking along. Now if I can just make it quieter.

Thought for the Day:

Beer Is Better Pain Reliever Than Tylenol, Study Finds

Comments found online:

They had to run a study to learn this?

It still hurts. You just don’t care anymore..

It makes women prettier too.

Is there anything it can’t do.

gsfgsdfg