bobanddenisewanderlust

On the road again! We needed diesel, so Bob went online and found that the cheapest price was at the Loves in Troutdale. We knew that the Loves was small, so we did not hook up the car at the RV Park, we thought we would do it at the Loves. What we did not know was that they had dug up the center of the parking lot, right in front of the gasoline islands. The diesel island was to the right, but we could not get the motor home around the hole. Especially since two pick-up trucks parked in the way. So our only alternative was for me to stand behind the motor home and keep traffic out of the way while Bob backed up the motor home. Honestly, some people do not use the brains that God gave them! One lady in a mini-van just could not understand that I needed her to go around me to the right. She was so focused on me, she could not see a 40ft long, 13 ft. high motor home backing up! Finally, Bob just started backing up, again, he had stopped because he was not sure what she was going to do, and the light went on in this lady’s pea brain. We managed to get the motor home turned around and Bob headed out onto the main road. There was a TA next door, so we had to make a loop around the get into the TA.

We had another issue at the TA. The place was mobbed. Bob’s theory is that the truckers had been off for the holiday weekend so they had left their trucks at the truck stop. There were hardly any open space. We ended up just pulling to the side, in front of some trucks, and hooking up really quickly. Also, one of our portable radios was not working to we had to do everything with hand signals. Not sure what is going on with the radio, as it had been charging for 2 days.

We were finally on the road at about 11. We drove west on I-84, north on I-205 to I-5 north into Washington state. We stopped at a rest area for a picnic lunch. We arrived at the Chehalis Thousand Trails at around 12:45. Our next problem was finding a site. This was the first Thousand Trails in the system, so many of the sites are smaller. We had already been told, to really look for a long site before we decide on a site. The park is very hilly. Our internet is good, but we cannot get satellite. We asked the ranger for a site where we could pick up satellite. He told us F4. We were able to get into the site, but the electric did not work. So we ended up changing sites.

After setting up we drove north to the town of Chehalis. The town is named after the founding family. We drove to the “old town”, where it turns out they were having a Tuesday Farmers Market. It was 1 block long with about 10 vendors. We tried some homemade sausage, but did not buy any. We did buy some Rainier Cherries for $4.50 lb, half the price of the Rainiers at the Farmers Market in Portland.

We had not seen a Washington State visitor center, so we went in search of the Chamber of Commerce. We knew there was one, but it did not show up in our Garmin. So we decided to head for the Super Walmart, and low and behold, the GPS directed us to turn on Chamber of Commerce Way. The lady in the Chamber office told us that there is an ordinance against a Chamber sign, so the town named the road after the Chamber. Go figure! Anyway, we were able to pick up a lot of state brochures. We had been debating whether we wanted to go to Mt. Rainier or Mt. St. Helens. The guy at the Chamber office said to us, “Rainier is a mountain, St. Helens is a volcano!” So we are going to Mt. St. Helens tomorrow.

We returned to the motor home, grilled some corn and chicken, read our books, and had a campfire.

Filed under: Uncategorized |