"Properly practiced, knitting soothes the troubled spirit, and it doesn't hurt the untroubled spirit either." ~ Elizabeth Zimmerman

7/29/14

Our Trip

Our camping trip was wonderful. The weather was perfect, though a bit hot. That just made the lake that much more enjoyable. We chilled the whole time there. Didn't feel like going on big hikes, or drives through the mountains, or long kayak rides. I just hung around camp, floated in the lake, knitted, took Cable on walks, and relaxed. Cable was absolutely wonderful the whole time too.

Our trailer was not so cooperative. Before we even left home one of the tires went flat. So hubby got a new one. He got 2 new ones, so we'd have a decent spare. When we left, we discovered the trailer brakes weren't working. The drive to the campground isn't a hard one, though, so we went ahead and drove without them. After we arrived at the campground, we were greatly anticipating a shower. Our trailer has a tiny bathroom in it, and we filled up our water tank at a dump station on the way up. The water heater refused to work. ARRGH! I did not want a cold shower. I went and threw myself in the lake. I washed my hair under the water faucet across the road from our camp site. It was icy cold. My brain actually started to hurt it was so cold, but the clean hair was worth the pain.

A couple days after arriving at the campground my brother-in-law offered to help sweet hubby figure out what was wrong with everything broken in the trailer. Turned out to be easy fixes. The contacts on the brake connectors were corroded, so weren't getting good contact. After some cleaning, they worked fine. The hot water heater has a little circuit breaker switch thingy on it that had tripped. They reset it and it started working just fine. So we did eventually get a nice hot shower. It was delightful!

On Thursday we headed home to pic up our daughter and head to Newport, OR. We took two days to get there because it's a long drive. We spent the first night at the Deschutes River State Park. The drive down the Columbia River Gorge was grueling because the wind was blowing very hard and we were headed IN to it. The trailer bucked and waved the whole way. When we got to the park, we were glad to stop for the night. We had hook ups in the park. Yay! Real electricity in the trailer. That night we went to bed tired, but happy. The next morning we woke up to wet floors. A pipe in the bathroom had sprung a leak. At this point, sweet hubby sat down, put his head in his hands, and said "I hate this trailer." (Yeah. I admit, it's lacking in quality. But I still love it.) We mopped up the water, packed up and headed to Newport.

When we got to Philomath, OR (yes, that's the real name of that town) sweet hubby got hungry and pulled into a McDonalds. While trying to park the trailer in the terribly too small parking lot, he managed to side swipe a truck that was innocently parked in a space minding it's own business. I took pics in case the insurance company might need them.



The truck we hit had paint scraped on (white) and off (orange), and the frame around the head light got a bit broken off it. Our trailer got the worst end of it. The back bumper was bent, and there's a nice long scrape across the side along with a bright orange stripe. Some plastic things got scraped off, a door hinge bent, but really, the damage was minimal. Paint will be the main cost of repairs.



Insurance info was exchanged, phone calls were made, hubby bent the bumper back to it's proper position, and then we were on our way.

Our stay in Newport was good. We parked in an RV park located in the port of Newport. We had full hookups. Sweet hubby fixed the leaky pipe. But the park had nice showers, so we used them instead.

Mac and Alicia's wedding was awesome. It was held in a park near Newport. The weather was perfect for it and everything went beautifully. I adore his new wife and her children too.



Besides the wedding, while in Newport we visited the Oregon Coast Aquarium, and ate in some very tasty restaurants. I ate my first crab. I'd never eaten crab before. It was against the religion I grew up in. I've been missing out. It was very very good. We got to see lots of family we hadn't seen in awhile. Our daughter Sarah and son-in-law were there too, so we got to spend a little bit of time with them.

Phone selfie

It was a hectic 4 days. Through it all, Cable was an absolute angel. The reason we camped in Newport instead of getting a hotel room was because of Cable. I didn't want to kennel her. We needed to leave her alone and since hotels won't let you do that with pets, the trailer went with us. Cable was so well behaved I kept wondering who was this dog and where was Cable? It was one of those occasions where I felt so inadequate with our ability to communicate with each other. I wanted to tell her how so very proud of her I am, but she doesn't understand English. We did get an opportunity to take her to the beach and let her off her leash for awhile. She loved it! She ran and ran and ran and played in the waves and chased seagulls. She was so full of joy!

We drove home in one long 13 hour trip. The drive went much better. No wrecks, but we did have a flat tire. We were glad for the brand new spare. It took us just a few minutes to change the tire and then we were on our way. We were glad to be home. Then, to turn on the kitchen faucet and have water come out? That was awesome!

You may be wondering why so few pics. I didn't take many. I was a total failure as a photographer this time. I had the camera with me. Just didn't feel like using it. I was more into feeling the trip rather than photographing it this time. If it weren't for my phone, there probably wouldn't have been any photos at all.

Next post will be about the knitting I did while away.

Live long and prosper. \\//



1 comment:

  1. I'm glad to hear that you all had an amazing time during your trip. The adventure you all had sounds nice, well except for the part where the water heater stopped working. I would've hated having to take a cold shower as well, but I'm at least glad to know that the leaky pipes were quickly taken cared of. I hope you get to enjoy more days like those. Take care! :)

    Tommy Hopkins @ AccuTemp

    ReplyDelete