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What is this?
If you come to this website, you might be wondering what is going on here. Well first off, welcome to my site. It is a collection of stuff about two primary things, our travels in our RV and about my Role-playing Game hobby, which at this point I am attempting to do some stuff while we traveling.
Last 5 Travel Journal Entries
September 15, 2021
Took a few days off this last week to do stuff and scout around the outskirts of Portland. The first thing we did was go to a Boondockers Welcome about 10 min from Wilsonville. It was a nice place although we had a little scraping getting in and out of the drive. Certainly need a smaller rig or something to go back. The host there was a wonderfully friendly guy. Like many of the gardeners in this area, we got some produce from his garden both when we arrived and some when we left.
We did have issues with our battery bank while we were there. I think all of batteries went bad and the Autozone tested all three batteries. Two tested bad and the third they couldn't test because of a low charge and was assumed bad. Luckily at least one of them was under warranty, so we got that one for free and purchased a second one. So we are down to two batteries right now. Since we had two 65 amp-hour batteries and one 85 amp-hour battery, and you only get 50% of that marine batteries it was only 107.5 amp-hour effective. The new bank is two 85 amp-hours which gives us 85 amp-hours effective, so we only lost about 22 amp-hours. We shall see if that's Okay or we need more. I think we will get a third battery at some point, but hard to say when.
We also had some wiring issues with the charge controller when I switched out the batteries, hopefully, I have that sorted.
We arrived at out new Boondockers Welcome host on the September 13, 2021. This place is crazy. Full hook-ups including a dump. It is some sort of farm or ranch or something. There are chickens, llamas, peacocks, and we saw at least two rabbits. They have a huge enclosed backyard area that the dogs can run around in and a huge outdoor cooking area / eating area with an outside toilet. I have to say this is now the nicest places we have stayed at.
Well we are only here until Saturday and then right now who knows where we are going. We need to plan that this week.
September 7, 2021
With great sadness, we left Old Mill RV Park on September 3. Since this was a three day labor day weekend, it did not matter were we went as no internet signal was needed. After a quick stop to finish up work in Fred Meyer parking lot in Tillamoor, we headed to the state forest to stay for a few days.
The iOverland spot was pretty interesting. It was a little hard to get into because of the steepness of the drop but the wife got us in no problem. We stayed there until Sunday afternoon. During that time there was no Internet and no TV but we managed to take in a small hike and just enjoy the rest.
After we left there, we went to the French Pairie Rest Area for the night. It was pretty good. We didn't do much since we arrive late and we left late on Monday.
Monday we spent some time doing a few stops and we happened upon this park that labels itself the End of the Oregon Trail. So we stopped there for just a little while until it was time to come to our Boondockers Welcome stop in Oregon City. wife had to back the trailer down the road for several house and then into the driveway. Happily we fit. We will be leaving later today since it was only a one night stop before we hit the BW in Sherwood, where we will be for a week.
August 30, 2021
We headed out towards Astoria, Oregon. We made a stop in Longview, Washington for groceries and I worked in the WInco parking lot during that time. After wrapping up work for the day, we crossed over to Oregon and headed down the road towards Astoria once more. We did try to find a boondocking spot on the way but it was not to be.
First, we found the road very narrow with pretty big dips. Second, we could not find a spot that suited us. The wife had a hell of a time get us out of a round that we went down. It took us about an hour to turn around the truck and RV at one location. One location that had a bunch of trash in it, we could not even back into because there just was not enough road width to do it.
So we gave up that spot and head to the Dismal Nitch Rest Area, just on the other side of Astoria. Unknown to us, seems our trailer cable came slightly off and we were without trailer lights. We only found out about it after we pulled off in Astoria to let people pass, some really angry women came up to the car and yelled at us for about 5 minutes that we did not have any lights and she had been following us for “50 Miles”. Not sure why she had to be nasty about it. We were able to pull into a parking and look and yes, no lights. Checking the cable, we quickly discovered that the cable was not all the way in. Afterwards we just hit the rest area for the night crossing over the four mile long bridge.
Waking up a bit late, we then headed back to Astoria, where we spent a little bit of time before heading to Seaside for the afternoon, as I had taken Friday off work. It was a little difficult to find a parking place with the RV but we did manage to find some street parking. We walked down the beach front bit and went to the small local Aquarium, where we were allowed to take the dog with us as well. Overall, it was nice afternoon. Finally about mid-afternoon, we headed to Old Mill RV Park.
We had no issue checking in and our new landing gear had arrived, so I spent the afternoon getting it installed. Took a little doing but I am happy to report that we got the landing gear on. We put the legs down some but did not detach yet as we were still a little nervous about the setup. We did finally detach on next day.
On Saturday, we head towards Tillamook, and to one of the state parks that has the Octopus tree and a light house. It was really pretty and the wife suggested that we could spend hours there and maybe we should come back with food and just hangout for a while. I agree. That would be really nice.
Well that was a lot of information to get out for this entry, but we did a lot in just four days.
August 26, 2021
Well we finally moved on from our location in Chehalis Washington. That was a wonderful 5 night stay. We really needed it. It would have been nice to detach there but that will have to wait until we get the landing gear fixed. Instead we left around 11am and went to do some laundry while I continued to work. Then another stop at the Baydos RV for a one dollar RV dump (which honestly seems the most reasonable price I have seen for charged dump. Not sure why some places charge like 15 dollars for a dump with no water.
The hardest things after that was finding a place to be. We did not want to show up to the rest stop too early. We finally just pulled into a parking lot, stopped and I worked for a few last hours. Never quite sure if a business might say something but they did not. They were not very busy, so that was good.
Finally, we made our stop at Toutle River Safety Rest Area. It is not the best one but it was not busy at all and it certainly was not the worst one we have been out.
August 23, 2021
Where to begin? I guess I should begin with the major issue we had while trying to leave on Friday. We were raising the RV up so that we could attach to the truck and we heard a pop and then the RV stopped lifting. We go and look and it seems the rod that connects the motor to the leading leg sheered off. We were able to get the RV attacked by using some wood, and the jacks we had in the truck. So the immediate issue was resolved. But now what do with the gear?
Well found out there was a repair kit you could buy for 50 dollars, so we ended up ordering that location of our new BW host to arrive Sunday. Spent Saturday afternoon and part of Sunday tearing out the old gears, only to find out that that leg is clearly seized up and we will need to replace it. Luckily we didn't using the parts yet, so I can return them to Amazon. We found all new legs on etrailer.com for about 200 dollars, so those are going to be shipped to the next location that we are out. Hopefully, that will only take me about 2 hours to install when we get there.
In other news, on Saturday, we finally ran out of propane on the one tank we been using since May. We really don't use much propane at all since the fridge is all electric. The only two things that we use that use propane are the stove and water heater.
Finally, this latest Boondockers Welcome site is another place like an RV park, they have like five sites that you can stay at. We are at Site #2, which has electric and water. We didn't need the electric until yesterday since the wife used the crock pot all day. Later today we have to dump the tanks but that's pretty easy and should only take about an 30-45 min round trip.