5C's Que Pasa

We had a good overnight at the Marysville Walmart and met a fellow BCer who winters in the Baja.

Colin picked up new toys for the girls, "Beg for Treats" & "Bark and Beg".

Just being silly after their final business for the night.

The morning started out at 53F and rain, welcome to the Pacific Northwest.

Our second international border crossing in 9 days and it was slow.  This is the first time in all our years of RVing that we had a 30 minute wait to get into Canada.

There were two lanes open and of course we were in the slow one. The line on the left just whipped the vehicles through and we began to wonder what the border agent in our line was asking that took so long. At least 7 vehicles in the left lane went through to our 1 vehicle.

Turned out that it was a very  young agent, perhaps new to the job.  He was more interested in asking questions about our trip and did we really drive the RV all the way down to Mexico.  He was very disappointed ( he shook his head and muttered under his breath that the Americans weren’t vigilant ), he thought that they should have boarded us at the Mexican/US border and done a very thorough check.  He couldn’t believe that all they seemed to care about was what we had in the fridge.  Now that was at the Lukeville crossing and he did feel better when we told him that they did x-ray RV’s at other border crossings.  Belatedly he remembered to ask what we had purchased and was bored with my answers, what were the big ticket items we had bought.  Just my camera for $180.00 I told him.  He wasn’t interested in the new dog collars or the Mexican plates I had bought.  A cute fellow.  Finally we were free to go.

First stop was Walker Heavy Duty in Delta. I got an email this morning from a reader....

Welcome home
I am thinking with all the service shops you travel past in the States and the ones where you live in Kelowna, why do you go to the one in Richmond? I am now in Abbotsford and would like to know the name of the service place you go to. Thank you
I have been home from south for 2 weeks now and still havnt got used to the cold

Walker Heavy Duty is in Delta and deals primarily with trucks.  We started using this company 13 years ago when we bought this diesel RV new and they know it very well and we trust them plus they are a bonafide inspection facility.  So when we moved to Kelowna several years ago we just arranged to do our annual maintenance with them on our return home each spring.  We have had occasion to call them while on the road in Mexico and they always have time to help us.  This is a heavy duty shop that you are allowed to walk around and talk to the senior mechanics working on our RV.  Colin has picked up a lot of great information from these fellows.  Maintenance is crucial to the running of your RV.  Eric, our RV tech from Mazatlan, suggested we get the belt tensioner checked and sure enough it needed replacing.  Good call Eric.

Blake is very detailed and did a great job.

We also had to make a trip to nearby Ladner to pick up some frozen tuna pies, a weekly favorite dinner at our house.  We sure miss the Ladner fish market.  Yes they have some in Kelowna but Ladner has always been our favorite place.  Once the RV is ready to roll, shortly, I hope,  we will be driving to friends Katie & Louie for dinner.

How come I can buy this carton of eggs in the US for $1.00 but here in Canada it is over $2.00 and often closer to $3.00?

I got this for $1.00 in the US but I know it is closer to $2.00 here in Canada. Just not fair.

Then early Friday morning we will drive home to Kelowna, about 197 miles.

Well that was the plan but Environment Canada has issued the following weather warning.

Now we have changed our plans...

It is 100 miles longer and will take 2 hours longer but we will take the Fraser Canyon route and avoid the snow and the kicked up gravel.

I don’t believe we will have internet again until we get to Kelowna.  You will next hear from us when we get back to our house on the lake.  Let’s hope it is an uneventful and safe journey.

Tags: RV repairs, travel, USA

We left our great overnight spot about 7:30AM as we continued the trek North.  It was 57F inside the RV.  Needless to say we are using the furnace these days.

Mile by mile it became cloudier and damper and cooler. We had the heat on and both the girls and I were under blankets.

For the first time ever we blew it in Portland and missed a turn off on one of the hundreds of overpasses and underpasses.  I had looked down for a second and the next thing I knew we were going the wrong way.  I managed to guide us in the right direction and at the last second Colin took the left fork instead of the right fork.  No big deal, a 15 mile detour and we were back on I5.  We never left the maze of overlapping freeways, just kept turning here and there.

Colin took this shot of the classic truck with all the added lights at our first rest area stop. It would be neat to see it at night.

Shortly thereafter the heavens opened and it rained.

When you can’t see in front of you I find it very unnerving.  You could barely see in front of you.  We followed that Target truck for a long way changing lanes when he did.  It was nice to have a guide.  Meanwhile Colin was happy that all the salt from the ocean was being cleaned off the RV from top to bottom.

By the time we got to Seattle we had better weather and made it through the city in record time.

Colin had an appointment in Everett with a chiropractor he had been seeing for over thirty years.  Only he has moved since the last time we were here and we had very carefully asked about parking for our big rig and car.  We explained to the receptionist on the phone that we could not back up and were like a city bus that needed to turn around.  No problem she said.  Not true!  There was no parking on the narrow street and we ended up in an unmarked dead end.  So Colin unhooked and found parking for the RV and I found a spot for the car about a block away.  I guess most people drive a car to an appointment, not a bus.  After the appointment we simply stopped in the middle of the road and rehooked and off we went to find a spot for our last night in the USA.  Walmart in Marysville, WA.  Today we drove a total of  331 miles.  I have a few photos that never made the blog in the past few days.  I like to call them, scenes from I5.

I love these surprising bursts of color every now and then. I like to think that a bird dropped the seeds along the freeway and one day there were some beautiful flowering trees.

Every year these trucks get more and more colorful.

This is how we travel. Taken a few days ago when it was warmer. Now the girls are covered in blankets. They dislike the cold and shiver for the first hour or so of the day. Now that we are back in the rain, they will only go out as necessary and very briefly at that.

Someone put a lot of love and creation into the cow made of metal scraps.

Lots and lots of lumber trucks along I5.

Our plan is to cross the border Thursday morning and drive to our truck service facility in Delta, BC ( about 97 miles ) where the RV gets it's annual checkup.

Tags: RV repairs, travel, USA

Before I share the secret of the perfect overnight stop I want to share Colin’s photos of the lunar eclipse.  While I went to bed early Monday night he stayed up and took some wonderful photos.

Blurb taken from the internet. The last one was in 2004.

This is before the eclipse started and was taken with my new camera set on manual focus, manual shutter speed and manual aperture. Nice that the camera is not just a point and shoot.

The start of the eclipse.

I am showing just a few of the many shots taken.

These shots were all hand held.

Sadly my camera could not pick up the low level of the moon at this phase, so here is a shot from the 2004 eclipse. You can see the moon is shot from a different angle. Colin did see the red color with his naked eye.

We took out time getting going Tuesday morning and never left until almost 11:00AM.  It was a relaxing day with only 225 miles to drive as it turned out.  A beautiful spring day on I5.

Today Carmeh sat between my legs as we drove. She usually sleeps on the dog bed between us but today she was seeking the warmth of my body.

As we crossed the various passes today we saw a lot of these signs, many indicating the 6% grade of 6 or 7 miles.

That's our road way down there.

The first truck with the bike in the back is towing a smaller truck with yet another bike in the back 😯

Here we are at the end of 225 miles at the Eugene Valley River Center.

This beats Walmart or any local RV Park and I am eternally grateful to Jean and Skip of Travel with Jean and Skip.  They featured this place on their blog a few years ago and I emailed them for the directions.  This is our second year here.

The view out our front window. You are allowed to overnight here for two nights and it is so very quiet and peaceful.

We are actually parked in a back parking lot of a mall but you are so far from the mall that you have no idea of the existence of the mall nor the traffic coming and going. This is just a tiny bit of paradise in the middle of Eugene. A bit of heaven on earth. The sign reads "Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it." by Norman Maclean.

There are five miles of paths for bikers, runners and walkers. I would love to live near here.

There are over 145 species of wildlife along these walkways. The new camera had a fabulous zoom.

Love those colors.

Mamma sitting on her nest, very well hidden.

To her right, Papa stands guard.

Yes, spring is in the air.

A real cutie.

Well we think this is the perfect overnight stop. What do you think?

Wednesday is a 325 mile drive from Eugene to Marysville, Washington.

Tags: travel, USA

We started driving Monday morning at 6:45 AM as we suspected traffic through Sacarmento would be heavy.  It was and we came to a rolling stop several times.

We arrived here at 7:45AM. They opened at 8AM and knew we were coming in with an emergency repair. After waiting 45 minutes they told us that they had no idea if they could even look at the RV today and could not tell us until about 2PM. We left.

Last Saturday I had also contacted another repair facility in the area.  It was listed at Village RV.  It should only have taken 15 minutes to get there but it took closer to 45 minutes as I directed Colin to get off the freeway  too soon and we wondered around on side streets for 7 miles.  I knew the direction we were going but it just took a long time.  When we arrived we discovered it was a Camping World.  I wish they would have told us earlier as I would have been able to find it quicker.  Regardless we arrived and they had the RV in a bay within 40 minutes.  The service technician assigned to our RV came into the customer area to tell us that he could not replicated the problem with the jack and the hydraulic fluid problem.  He did say that the problem could be caused by a faulty solenoid but he wasn’t sure.  We instructed him to go ahead and put in a new solenoid.  This particular jack has had recurring problems off and on for years.  We were already here and we had invested so much time into getting here that we decided to just get it done.

Usually we have been allowed to stay inside the RV during past repairs but not here so with only 5 minutes to pack and move out we grabbed whatever we thought we might need. It was freezing in there due to the A/C.

So another large bill, over $500.00 and we were ready to leave.  By the time we got the car hooked up and hit the road it was 12:30 and I was ready to call it a day.  However we had 250 miles to cover.  We are on a schedule as we an appointment on Wednesday afternoon in the USA and on Thursday morning in Canada.

I really wish we were heading to San Francisco. Maybe next year. After so many years of back and forth to Mexico we are thinking of spending less time on the Isla and perhaps taking 3 to 4 weeks to do more exploring in each direction. Much as we love the Isla it seems that it is the right time in our lives to be doing something a tad different. Three to four months is long enough to be on the beach. Of course over the past 13 years, we have travelled over much of Mexico in this RV, but felt we needed to stay put for the past 5 years due to a variety of reasons. Change is good. Who knows what the future will bring? For certain we will still be spending some months on the Isla.

As we headed North along I5 I noticed lots of smoke all around us for miles and miles. I finally figured out that the famers were doing some burning. They must be getting ready to plant.

We finally stopped at a lovely rest area about 2:30 for some much needed lunch.

The weather was perfect for a nice family walk among the eucalyptus trees.

There was a huge field off to the side that we let the girls go running in.

Shasta Lake goes for miles and is very picturesque.

The shutter speed on my new camera is so fast. I could never have caught this shot with my old one.

It was hard to capture earlier distant shots of Mount Shasta as the sky was white. Suddenly the sun peaked out and there it is.

We pulled into the Walmart in Yreka about 6:10PM making for a very long day on the road. We only drove 333 miles but it was the time stopping here and there that tired us out.

It was actually in the mid 70’s and very pleasant to walk around.  Last year it was 21F.  We decided to put the jacks down and open the bedroom slide.  All went perfect so we hope for continued success with the jack repair.  We purchased this RV knowing that the bedroom slide was curbside making it easy to open no matter where we stop.  The living room slide does not often get opened while on the road but it sure is nice to have access to the cupboards in the bedroom.  It was also nice to not have to run the generator for cooling or heating.  Dinner was chili I had made a few months ago and put in the freezer for one of dinners on the road.

Caeli found space to play with her favorite toy, a sprinkler head.

What we drove Monday, not too bad even with the extra stops.

Where we are headed Tuesday, a short, for us 224 miles, give or take a few.

56F at 6:30AM  was a good way to start the day.  Colin thought it was cold and started the furnace to take the chill off!!  I have decided that 80F is my preferred temperature but I am good to 90F.  It was a normal day that included the usual glitches.  First off the fridge would not stay lit on propane but Colin sorted that one out.  Yesterday we had arranged for an 8:00AM appointment with Reye’s Truck Polishing to polish our chrome wheels.  We arrived at 7:45 AM and waited and waited.  Finally we left at 9:30AM as we had some miles to drive.  The price at $10.00 per wheel was fantastic but it was not to be.  Maybe next year.

Lots of lovely yellow flowers all along the edge of the highway.

Funny looking trees along the road but as we came closer to the Mojave area it turned to low brush and sand.

If only the entire world could run on energy collected by wind turbines.

Very picturesque.

By 1:00PM it was only 75F inside the RV with the windows closed.  I can safely say that the heat wave is over.  As drove just North of Bakersfield along CA99 we noted diesel prices that ranged from 3.71 to 4.19 per gallon.  Yes fuel can be expensive in California but there are options.  When it was time for us to fuel up we found a place for 3.83/gallon and were happy with the price.  The road just seemed to go on and on.

As opposed to I5 this route has a much more natural look.

I quite liked the flowers that divided the median.

I believe that these are called ice plants and they cover a good portion of the sides of the road, making for a pleasant drive.

We are spending the night in a Walmart in Stockton, CA and we are the only RV here.  Tonight is the only night that we will set up the satellite dish on our way home.  Once in eleven days is not so bad and although doing it in a Walmart is not ideal we just did it.  It was up for only three hours while we taped the two shows we did not want to miss.  Tomorrow will be an early day as we are heading through Sacramento with a few detours to find the RV Repair place by 8:00AM.  The plan is to cover 332 miles tomorrow by 4:00PM but we will have a few diversions first so you will just have to check back and see how we managed.

Tags: travel, USA