Ahoy from Ocean Shores

We arrived at Oceana-TT, Ocean Shores, WA without any sign of transmission issues. Hopefully the last fix does the trick.

This is a fairly nice park that is actually about 5 miles north of Ocean Shores. A little tighter on elbow room than some other TT parks, but we have a space at the ocean end of the park that gives us lots of open space. We are a short 5 minute walk from the waters edge.

Both here and in Ocean Shores there seems to be deer everywhere. The real surprise was when going into town yesterday. About half way in, a medium size bear went galloping across the road about 50' in front of us. It happened too quick to get a picture.

Yesterday in Ocean Shores they had a number of events. One was chain saw wood carving. Another was a sand castle building contest. Most of the sand creations on the beach got destroyed before we got there but one of a car that they did off the beach survived.

The beaches here are less crowded than Seaside, so the dogs have been getting a lot of 'off leash' time, which they really enjoy.

We purchased a couple of kites yesterday and took them out for test runs this afternoon. They handled well and we enjoyed the activity. Some additional pictures are posted at: Ocean Shores

We've crossed over to the dark side...We're in Washington now.

We have spent the last two days at Pacific Power Products in Ridgefield, WA having them look at our intermittent transmission problems. Their diagnosis was that the transmission didn't have a good ground. So, another $1,000 and now we have new power and ground wires run from the rear of the rig where the batteries are to the front of the coach where the Electronic Control Unit lives. Sure hope that we've seen the end of this problem.

Our last several days at Seaside, OR included a lot of rain and not too much excitement.

Tonight we are in Kelso, WA for one night at Brookhollow RV Park. We stayed here about two years ago when we were headed north to Victoria BC for a week. Nice park here with good size spaces. No satellite issues. Verizon signals are weak, but the park has good WiFi so we are connected. Also lots of grass here for the dogs This park is on the road off of I-5 that goes out to the Mount St. Helens Nat'l Volcanic Monument. Not going back there this trip, but really enjoyed the exhibits and the movie at this facility when were here last.

Tomorrow we head west to Oceana-TT at Ocean Shores for about a week. It is supposed to rain there tomorrow in our honor, but hopefully it is time for the summer sunshine to kick in after that.

Coastal travels near Seaside

Today is our first day of steady rain since we left Yuma over a month ago. And, if the weather report is correct, we will have off and on rain through the next several days. Being in the motorhome, the rain seems a little more confining than when at home. We have to learn that this isn't any different than a rain day in Yuma.

On Wednesday we went all the way back to Junction City in the car to pick up an art piece we purchased last week. Its a steel wagon wheel with metal trees and an elk in the center. The artist needed a week to add 'Rainbow Acres', the name we decided to use for our Show Low lot. Theres a picture of the art piece and Wade the artist with pictures attached to this post.

We also stopped at Guaranty RV to pick up some drawer latches we need to fix ones that are failing in the rig.

On Thursday we drove to Tillamook and toured the cheese factory. Its a self guided tour with educational stations and view down into a working section of the factory. There were free samples of a half a dozen different cheeses to whet the appetite, followed by the ice cream store and cheese store. We succumbed to both. They also have a cafe restaurant in the same area. So, free parking.. free tour.. and free cheese. What's not to like.

The drive down the coast was very picturesque and enjoyable, but I'm constantly reminded that we're enjoying a part of their three months or so of summer and that it's a different world entirely during the other nine months of the year. I'm sure the winters are enjoyable as well, but probably not my cup of tea.

The following link includes some pictures from the last several days: Coastal Pics

More from Seaside, Oregon

We're settled in here at Seaside and scheduled to be here for almost three weeks. We've had mostly cloudy days ranging from the low 60's in the daytime to the low 50's overnight. A little drizzle, but no real rain. Yesterday and today have both been more sun than clouds and great days to get out and do things.

We have spent a little time doing our chores, i.e. shopping at Costco & Safeway, laundry & coach maintenance. We've also done a few scenic drives to Astoria and to Cannon Beach. Cannon Beach is the local equivilent to Laguna Beach and we're going to go back there when we have more time to visit the hundred or more small shops along the main street.

We've also been trying to go for a beach walk with the dogs each day. Rikki and Luci have never been to the beach before so they have really big smiles during these walks. Particularly when we let them off leash for a while.

Yesterday we met a retired couple on the beach who live in Phoenix in the winter and here in Seaside during the summer. They've been coming here for almost four years and love their retirement lifestyle.

A picture portfolio is available at: Seaside Pics

We are now in Seaside, Oregon

We are now at Thousand Trails Seaside, Oregon after a tough period of several days getting here.

On our second visit to Cummins NW in Coburg they were still unable to find the source of our repeated transmission failures. They cleaned our somewhat corroded chassis battery connections and traced down every power wire related to the transmission, but found no conclusive issue.

So we left for Guaranty RV Junction City on Monday where we had a service appointment for Tuesday morning to repair our small electric awning. After talking with Service in the morning we took off to Florence to pick up mail. While we were on the road we discussed my former cold and now bronchitis condition and decided to buzz over to the VA hospital in Roseburg, OR. This took over five hours of mostly waiting around, but resulted in the expected RX for an antibiotic to treat my 'bug' which I seem to fall victim to about once per year. While in Roseburg, they called to say that the awning repair was completed. We returned to Junction City late and stayed at Camp Guarantee for a 2nd night.

We originally were supposed to go to Florence-South Jetty for about 10 days, but having had the first 3 days of that usurped with maintenance issues, we decided to skip ahead to Seaside a week early. On Wednesday morning we took off for Seaside and except for an accident in the Portland area that held us up for nearly an hour, the trip was typical Oregon. Lots of green hills, a little rain and four hours later we were in Seaside.

The entrance for the TT park is very short so they have you pull around this little 200' loop and walk back to the ranger station to check in. No big deal except that after we got back to the coach it wouldn't start. Same symptoms as before, except this happened after being parked for about 30 minutes instead of while we were driving down the road.

We were blocking the parks normal traffic flow, so understandably they asked us to find a way to get the coach out of the way. First I called Cummins NW to see if they could think of anyway to push past whatever the obstacle was. No immediate help. Spent a little bit of time talking to Country Coach support. At least they answered the phone but suggested that they would call Cummins NW offline and support them anyway they could. Spent about 2 hours on the phone with their service manager and a couple of techs trying to troubleshoot the problem. No joy. Everybody basically gave up and it was time to go into tow truck mode.

We have AAA Plus RV service, so I called them first. After more than an hour of back and forth, they didn't have anyone who would take the call until the following morning. Cummins in Ritchfield, WA had given me the name of the towing service they had worked with and he agreed to come out for $1000, so in desperation I told him to get on the road, and he said that he would be to us in about 2 hours.

About an hour later, one of our RV neighbors offered that he had experienced a similar failure and that it turned out to be a problem with his chassis battery. Well we had Cummins all over our batteries, checking the out and cleaning terminals, etc., so I was sceptical. The battery voltage was only a little over 12 volts, but I figured that the dozens of attempts to start the engine would have worn it down somewhat. Anyway we put the charger on our chassis battery for about 30 minutes and after that, Presto, Chango the transmission panel lights up and away we go.

So we immediately got the rig off the street. I think at this point the RV park people had given up on us, but it was a weight off of my shoulders to no longer be the activity focal point for Seaside Resort. The tow truck driver showed and we reviewed the situation with him and decided to not get towed. He mercifully reduced the bill to $500 and hopefully we will get reimbursed by AAA.

Today, Thursday, we went to Les Schwab's and got a replacement battery. I'm not 100% certain that this is the only problem, but the alternater and echo charger both seem to operating properly and I think this is IT. Time will tell and we are not scheduled to depart from here until June 29th.

Anyway, this is our most favorite Thousand Trails park thus far. On a scale of 1 to 5....

Satellite spaces - 5

Verizon Signal - 4

Elbow Room - 4

50amp power - 5

Grass for the dogs - 5

Friendly, helpful people - 5+

Weather (mostly cloudy so far) - 4 (for Chuck its a 5)

More from Seaside later.

FMCA Update & another Total Engine Failure

First, the good news. The four days at the FMCA Albany rally -were very enjoyable overall. The picture to the right shows us shortly after we arrived on Tuesday. However, on Wednesday they located new arrivals on both our left side and directly in front of us making us feel a little claustrophobic. Since we weren't going anywhere anyway we adapted to our close quarters. It was mostly sunny on our arrival day, but mostly cloudy and some rain and thunderstorms through the rally.

We enjoyed talking with our part time Yuma neighbors Erv Fleming and his wife, and Gary and Sue Tilley. The did a great job at introducing us around and making us feel at home. We will be sending in an application to join their NW Pacers Chapter of FMCA and look forward to participating in some of their future rallies during our summer travels.

We went to all the provided meals and enjoyed the many conversations we had with people from all over the country. We particularly enjoyed meeting Jerry and Kristi from So. California and hope to meet up with them again somewhere down the road.

Then on to the 'other news' as one of my business partners always likes to say.

We took off for Florence on Sunday morning as scheduled. The first ominous sign of a bad day came when the small electric awning over the door wouldn't retract. Tried everything we could think of and finally had to partially disassemble the awning and mechanism and tie wrap the arms and the canvas to the side of the coach.

Then we got on the road and a couple of miles short of Coburg, the rig did the same thing that it did before we got to Albany. The engine went into 'limp mode' and the transmission display went totally blank. Since we were fortuitously only a few minutes away from Cummins in Coburg we crawled into their parking lot. After verifying that we only had forward motion capability, we PULLED into one of their RV slots. We kept trying to restart the engine occasionally, expecting it to start working again after about an hour like before. I was actually hoping that it wouldn't restart, but it did, this time after more than four hours. We got ourselves backed in and reparked and we will spend the night here. Tomorrow we will probably have to fight for attention competing with the other 10 rigs that are parked here. Most of them are on their way home from the FMCA rally and have scheduled appointments.

We are trying to treat this as just another part of our summer adventure, but engine reliability is one of those things that no one really wants to have to deal with. Hopefully this time they will be more successful at diagnosing the problem.

Visiting in Chiloquin

Sorry for the delayed update, but the last week has been a blur of activity.    We departed Susanville on schedule last Thursday morning and were enjoying the scenery about an hour north of Susanville on our way to Chiloquin, OR when the coach started to lose power.   The dreaded 'Check Engine' and ' Check Trans' lights came on and the rig went into what is known as 'limp mode' where it doesn't want to go very far or very fast.  We pulled to the side of the road, shut it down and began going  through our check list of what might have gone wrong.    

Nothing made any sense and so we decided to try and restart to see if the problem would clear itself.  No such luck, indeed the only panel lights to come on were the ones we didn't want to see.  The rig wouldn't even restart.  Fate put us in the middle of nowhere where we didn't have cell service so I decided to take all my phone numbers and go down the road in the tow car and start making phone calls.  

I talked to a tech at Cummins in Redding, CA who didn't have any clues and said we would probably have to be towed in for service.  So I called AAA who is our RV towing provider.  Despite being at least 60 miles from any town that might  be big enough to even have a post office, they said they would have a tow truck to us within 30 minutes.  I went looking for some gas because the tow car was low and if we needed to follow the rig into Redding we would need gas.  Never got the gas, because Chuck called me to tell me that he got the rig started and that he was on his way towards me.  At the same time, the tow truck driver called to say he was almost at our position.  I canceled him with an optimistic attitude that the coach might be OK to drive on to Chiloquin.

We couldn't reproduce any issues or see any ongoing problems with the rig so we crossed our fingers and headed on to Chiloquin.  

We got to our good friends Don & Don in Chiloquin a couple hours later than planned but without further incident.

As shown in the above picture, we parked in their front drive way as we have before.  The Don's are always the greatest hosts and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves at their house through Sunday.  Dinner with various 'family' friends in Klamath Falls on Friday, a BBQ at neighbors and good friends on Saturday and then another BBQ hosted at the Don's on Sunday.  Big Don is an incredible cook and Sunday was no exception.  We'll try and catch up with the diet later.

We had a little rain while in Chiloquin, but for the most part it occurred at night and didn't negatively affect our activities.  Rikki and Luci really enjoyed the grass yard to play in and the Don's three dogs to play with.

Thanks to Don and Don for their hospitality and we look forward to them getting down to Yuma this winter and spending some time at our place as they have before.

We left Chiloquin on Monday and had an uneventful and beautiful trip across the mountains over to Albany to get some work started on our coach.  We heard about an accomplished cabinet man who used to work for Country Coach who was now working at Lassen RV in Albany. We met up with him Monday to take measurements for replacing the wooden fascia ring around our new TV in the bedroom area, and some modifications to the computer desk.  He will be delivering a new TV ring to us at the upcoming FMCA rally, also in Albany.

After getting the measurements done, we retreated back to Coburg, OR where we had made an appointment with Cummins Northwest to look at engine and transmission and see if they could diagnose our Total System Failure last Thursday.  We spent Monday night at Cummins and on Tuesday, they got to work and told us that they only thing they could find in the diagnostic codes was a failing engine/transmission speed sensor that showed multiple failures and could be the culprit.  We had them replace it and headed back to Albany to check in at the Northwest FMCA rally for the next five days.

We were surprised to get 'parked' by several Yuma friends.  Actually they are all Washingtonians that we know from their winter visits to Yuma.  Good friend Kenny's father, Earv, parked us out in the grass lot and then other friends, Gary and Sue came over to make sure we had everything we needed.

Today was Chuck's birthday so we went out to eat at a local buffet.  The diet remains only a concept at this point.

I'll update more about FMCA Albany in the next few days.