Well, we are still within about 50 miles of Junction City, Oregon. After all of the trouble shooting on the slide last Monday morning, Bob stopped back by in the evening and related that HWH did not have the ram in stock, and it would be 7-11 days to get one made and shipped here. So…what is one to do? Relax, and enjoy where you are planted, that’s what!
Tuesday was a slow day for the most part. I headed into the Firestone shop in Eugene to get an oil change and tire rotation. When Terri got new tires put on in Albuquerque, even though it was at an Air Force facility, the tires are backed by Firestone, and we get free rotation and balance for life, and discounts on oil changes. I got the oil changed and tires rotated for less than $20…and that is using a synthetic blend of oil. Not bad. One may ask why I had the tires rotated already…in fact, so did the tech at Firestone! He said, “You only have about 600 miles since you got the tires put on, what gives?” I had to explain the whole thing about there being a lot more miles on the tires than the odometer displays because it’s a “toad.” After that, he kind of understood, and made no bones about the rotation. I have to keep a separate log on how many miles the tires actually get so I make sure to rotate them on time.
Wednesday was a work day for me, and also windshield replacement day!! Everything got worked out between National General, Duncan Systems and Coach Glass in short order. The people I dealt with were all awesome. The tech that showed up replaced the whole thing by himself. I was so enthralled with what he was doing and how he did it, that I forgot to take any pictures! In any case, the repair was great, and didn’t cost me a dime out-of-pocket. Now we will see if my insurance rates go up or not!
On Thursday we were up pretty early…I think it was before 10:00 anyway:) Terri had scoped out a bike trail south of Eugene in a town called Cottage Grove. This is another “Rails to Trails” type location, where they have re-purposed old railroad tracks into bike paths. The trail head was right in town, and we parked at a city park and took off. It was a 20+ mile round trip for what we wanted to see, and it was a blast.
Great shot of a farm in the country. The landscapes here still awe us every day.
The trails are well marked and in great shape. We also saw some covered bridges along the way, but not enough to get a good pic of one.
The prize is making it to Lake Dorena, and we made it.
It is another 6 or 7 miles to the other end of the lake, and Terri was ready to go.
Again, awesome views!
Terri insisted on this pic of me on the way back. She said you can take the kid out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the kid…she’s right!
After that long ride, we did some shopping for groceries, then treated ourselves to pizza at a little place in Coburn that had outstanding pizza.
On Friday, we decided to go to the actual country Coach plant and see what was going on. We had a great time, and they let us wander and check things out and just poke our noses everywhere. It was kind of sad and happy at the same time. I could only imagine how busy this huge facility was when they were in full production. But…the good news is we were able to go into the prototype they are using to build their first Coach in several years. They plan to build it this year, then the CEO of the company will take it on the road for a year to see what needs to be changed here or there. They also had several Coaches on consignment, and we walked through about ten of them. It was neat to do, and convinced us more than ever that we love the Coach that we have. There were many newer and bigger Coaches there, and it was good to see that several of the items we have in our Coach were in the newer ones. Also, we feel we have more storage and space in certain areas than the newer ones do, even though we only have two slides. That extra living room slide sure opens things up though! We then drove to a few parks that we might have wanted to move to on Sunday, as that is when our time is up at River Life…good thing too…it is an OK park, but rather tight and not in good repair with all of the construction and changes they have going on. We found a county park that we really liked, but they didn’t have any cell reception, which I need for work. We also made it to Corvallis, home of the Oregon State Beavers…nice place. We will see what Saturday brings as far as finding a place to live.
We were actually up early on Saturday (for real), as we were headed to the Strawberry Festival and Parade in Lebanon, Oregon. What a great time!!
About as hometown America as you can get.
All the kids were so excited, and I was really proud of how well the whole crowd respected our National Flag when the local American Legion Color Guard passed by.
Terri insists this is picture of the Festival Queen and her Court…I took a picture of an AWESOME tractor…how does one get a job like this??
I think those are Longhorns?!?!
And they are being ridden?!?!?
Why yes, they are…and they appeared to handle quite well actually. I don’t think I’m in Texas???
We felt bad that we missed the old car show in Junction City last week, but there were at least 30 nicely restored old cars in the parade.
It was a great parade…lasted about three hours! Everything you can imagine in a good “hometown” parade. We then headed out to the festival grounds, got our free strawberry shortcake (the largest one in the world) mind you! It was really hot and we didn’t spend too much time there. We have a bit of a heat wave going on here…it has been in the 90’s the past few days, which is unusual for this time of year. In between the parade and the festival, we checked out a little City Park in Lebanon called Gills Landing. It is right on the Santium River, only has about 20 spots, and is real nice. They had room for us for a week starting Sunday, so we booked a spot. After that we took some side roads on the way back to Harrisburg, and saw some great sites.
Bees, bees, bees…everywhere! Nice to see. Oregon grows over 60% of the white clover for the US and no matter it be clover or whatever, there are bees everywhere. I would love to catch some of the keepers in the field to chat with them about how they operate here.
When we got back to the Coach, we learned that there was a farm near by that grows their own food for sale and they also have a family friendly brewery on site, so we decided to take a drive. Who knew there were breweries in Oregon??
Nice place, nice people, and great music.
Tons of families out and about enjoying the festivities.
They really cater to the family thing here, which we love. It was quite late when I tool this shot, so a lot of folks had gone home.
Sunday was move day, and we got the tanks dumped and everything stowed and ready to go and then realized the office didn’t open until 11:00, so we took our time. Once we checked out, we made the short, 40 mile drive to Lebanon.
Our new site at Gills Landing, Lebanon City RV Park.
Much nicer and “roomier” than where we were before.
The camp hosts here are great, and they’ve added some real nice touches around the park.
We got settled in just in time to jump on the bikes and take a ride around town. About the only thing open was a new store that specializes in everything sewn…or art, or whatever. It was great to talk with the owners who are trying to get a new business off the ground. Terri spent a great amount of time comparing sewing secrets, so I politely excused myself from that and stepped out on the porch…and what did I see???
A dwarf goat being walked on a leash! Sheesh…thought I’d seen a lot in Oregon, but I guess not. The owner is raising her for milk and is also planning to harness train her to pull a cart to bring the groceries home from the store. Hmmmm…Longhorns being ridden in the street, Goats on leashes….where am I???
Today was chore day for the most part. Terri got caught up on a lot of her Bible Study and other chores, and I made a trip to a few places to check out some new chairs for outside, took care of some mail and some Coach cleaning. I also managed to finally get that pesky latch replaced:
A bad pic, but this is one of three that I got from Kevin last week. Took about 20 minutes to install. Now I don’t have to worry about the electrical bay door coming open while going down the road!
We had a nice relaxing evening tonight, and we grilled out again. If you don’t have one of these for your grill, get one:
It’s a Grill Daddy (this one is a Grill Baby really.) Water flows through the brush, and will clean a grill like you’ve never seen. About 20-30 bucks on Amazon. Check it out.
That’s all for now folks. Hope and pray our part comes in so we can head East soon! As always, we hope this finds you Happy, Healthy, and Living Your Dreams!!
ronandterrirvlife 