We're home!

We made it all the way back to Roseville by about 1 p.m. and are almost all unloaded. Good to be home. Goofy Tule was so happy to be here she rushed into the pool so she is still wet. Elsie was smarter than that. No more mishaps so far. Now we will make an appointment to take the RV in for repairs---again.

One last Scrabble game last night and I finally won! Not by much, but at least I have one game in my favor for this trip. I didn't have to be totally humiliated. ; )

When we got here, Britta discovered a flat tire on her car, so she is in getting it repaired. Then we will get Erik to do Christmas with him and she will go home and it will be quiet around here. It will seem dull after our adventures on this trip. But right now dull sounds pretty good.

Happy New Year!

Almost home

We made it to Woodburn RV Park outside of Salem last night. Britta beat me at Scrabble again, then we went to bed to be awakened by a very loud wind and rainstorm. It felt like the motorhome was going to blow over. Elsie slept through it, but Tule was really nervous. It was too loud for Britta to sleep, but Gary slept right through it with no problem.

Today we have driven through rain and clouds with very little snow in patches way off the road. The further south we go the less snow we see. Rain has been the most prevalent weather with a big squall at Roseburg. It didn't snow until we got to Dunsmuir. We are now in a very cold, but only misty Redding.

When we got to Medford we discovered we had run out of water. Evidently a handle was bumped and it drained out as we drove. I neglected to mention that we had to call a locksmith Dec. 26. When Gary and Britta were loading the RV somehow the door locked with all the keys inside. This last few days have been less than fun. Someday we will laugh about all the things that went wrong.

In the meantime, we are enjoying relaxing this evening. Even the dogs are pooped. They did a LOT of running at Mom's. The horse and Elsie made friends and would stand nose to nose to visit, but that required a lot of running down to the barn anytime someone said "the horse is out". Tule would run out with Elsie then stand at the top of the hill and watch Elsie run. Our yard will be boring by comparison. But we will be happy to be home and unpacked tomorrow.

It Happens Every Trip

Yesterday started with rain, but soon turned to snow--almost all day. We did get Mom to the bank and in to pick up her repaired hearing aids, but otherwise stayed inside and did little things for her. We undecorated her tree and got it to the basement, cleaned off the steps again and ate a lot of leftovers for dinner.

Today we got up early ready to get on the road and as Gary put up the levelers the inevitable happened. The right rear leveler wouldn't go up. But this time it wasn't the shear pin, so it needed to be cranked up a quarter turn at a time. Gary rebelled and said this time he would let Good Sam do the dirty work. So I sat on the phone for an hour and they told us someone would be out in 3 hours. At 3 hours and 15 minutes we got their follow-up call and told them nobody had arrived. So they tracked the fellow down and he showed up two hours later. Then he discovered he didn't have the correct tool and Gary discovered the automatic wrench he bought doesn't work. So to make this long story a little shorter, we left Mom's a little before 4 p.m., determined to at least make it to Portland. Since we had everything loaded, it would have been a pain to unload and stay with her one more night. Got lots of little things done for her (she "needed" a batch of cinnamon rolls, we washed towels and sheets, etc). We don't have working levelers, decided it was enough to get them all off the ground so we could get home. We've certainly had enough experience traveling without levelers in this rig. It will go back in to the repair shop as soon as we get home. I think we need to be reimbursed for the storage area it hardly ever uses. Sigh.

So we are on the road in the rain with lots of crunchy snow along the edges that is slowly melting. The good thing about the snow is that we didn't track any dirt or mud into the RV or Mom's house. Everything was nice and clean until today.

I am able to receive email again. Britta gave me a wonderful Christmas gift of a new hard drive, installed by her! Of course, it took longer than expected to save all my data to an external hard drive because my computer had a glitch. But it is now done and I am very happy to be able to get at all the emails I got while it was out of commission. I went from 40 gigs of hard drive space to 233 gigs! Very nice!

With any luck we will get home on Monday. Sure hope so!

Merry Christmas!

We had a wonderful Christmas Eve with my family (except my brother and his family because he was afraid to drive from Bend --fear of getting stuck somewhere along the way). Today we woke up to more snow falling and looking so pretty. It was warmer today, about 37 degrees, so some of the old snow was melting while the new snow was sticking. We braved the messy roads and got to see Gary's brother's daughters and their families today. It was so much fun catching up on all the news. Then came the hair raising drive out of the neighborhood in Ballard and back to Mom's. It was a great day, although Gary was ready for a nap by the time we got home.

We hope you had a super Christmas, filled with blessings from above. Happy Holidays from the snowy Northwest!

Lots of Exercise

We began the morning by stuffing the turkey and getting it in the oven. Had to haul water to the horse that Mom boards because the water at the barn froze. Then Gary, Britta and I started shoveling snow. Mom's handyman had cleaned the snow off her roof by just dumping it where it landed. That meant we couldn't move any vehicle because there was a mini-mountain of snow behind them. When Mom told us they'd plowed her driveway, she meant they didn't leave snow in front of it and scooped out the very bottom. It is a long driveway, full of 8" deep snow.

Elsie loves running around in the snow, but Tule has decided it is too cold on her feet and will only go out if we go with her. The picture shows her on Mom's patio. The barn and the pasture are such a beautiful view from her patio and family room.

There will be twelve of us here for dinner tonight for our family Christmas Eve celebration. Tomorrow we still hope to see Gary's nieces. His brother and sister-in-law decided it was too scary to drive so we are really happy we saw them in Newport on our way up the coast. We hope you have a wonderful Christmas wherever you are.

Merry Christmas!

We Made It!

After a hair raising trip from Astoria to Longview, we drove on a nice clean freeway all the way to Seattle. Didn't have to go up the coast, although the information the gas station attendant gave Gary wasn't exactly correct. He said the roads were totally clear all the way. As you can see, that isn't quite true.


We dawdled thru the morning so the roads would have more time to thaw. One of Britta's friends emailed her about the Pig 'n Pancake (locally known as the Pig and Pan), so Gary suddenly had a need to eat there. I had wonderful Swedish pancakes, Gary had his usual, but Britta had something you don't usually find on breakfast menus--fried clams with pancakes! She thought they were great, I thought it sounded gross.

We made it to Mom's with no difficulty, but once we arrived the RV got stuck in her backyard. We found some boards and between Britta and Gary it is now unstuck and the dogs are having a ball in the snow. Tule gets cold and wants in eventually, but Elsie never seems to get tired of running in it. You can see that there is a lot of snow on Mom's patio in this photo of Elsie trying to decide where to pounce.

The Coast is Clear!

As we left Sutherlin we had no idea which route we would take heading North. After several phone calls from most of our relatives in Oregon and Washington we ended up leaving I-5 at Corvallis and headed for Newport.
This photo shows the views on our route. Roads had been plowed and were not icy, but you can see plenty of snow--a beautiful sight.

We had a nice lunch at a pizza place with Gary's brother, Alan and his wife, Karen who live in Newport. We hope to see them in Seattle on Christmas Day, but it was nice to have this unexpected visit in case either of us can't get there.

We left Newport and headed up the coast--check out the sunshine and lack of snow after we left Tillamook.


We are so glad we left I-5. The snow was getting pretty thick at Corvallis and we heard Salem had an ice and snow storm today. Portland has a total of 14 inches by now and they are running out of the de icer stuff they use on the roads. There is no way we would have gotten through that. Now we just have to wait to see if we can get through Astoria tomorrow. They had over 6 inches of snow (Seaside has had none) and the roads were closed. Tomorrow is supposed to be dry and slightly warmer. If we can get thru Astoria, we plan to head up the coast to Hoquiam, then over to Olympia and up I-5 from there. My brother-in-law found some website that shows the temperature of the road beds. He is keeping us posted on the best route to avoid ice.

A very nice thing happened. The snow plow cleaned off the road in front of my Mom's house AND came up her hilly driveway and cleaned it off for her! The city and police all know Mom's age and they take good care of her. We are so happy that she actually decided not to drive in the storm! There was an accident right in front of her house last night and that scared her a bit.

So tomorrow we have high hopes of getting to Mom's eventually. It will be a long day, but should be safe. We have been very lucky so far. Thanks for all the prayers and good thoughts!

On The Way to the Storm of the Century

It may be stupid, but we decided to gamble that the weather will warm up and melt the ice before we get there, so we headed out to Seattle this morning. I thought we were leaving at 6 a.m. so I was ready, but Gary and Britta had a hard time getting up, so we left at 7:30. Gary had a really long driving day, but kept his sense of humor and got us all the way to Sutherlin, north of Roseburg, OR. by 5 p.m.! No really bad weather until just before we drove into the RV park. Then the wind and rain hit.

There was snow in the Siskiyous, but the road was clear--no snow or ice. The only problem was that the curvy roads and long day were too much for Elsie. While I was in signing up for our site, Elsie lost her breakfast. I came back to Gary muttering and Britta doing the dirty work, with a sad looking Elsie leaning against her. Now she's fine because we are no longer moving and I took both dogs out for a walk in the beautiful rain.

Right now we have no idea which route we will take from here. Portland has chains required on every road and Astoria is still getting snow. We will talk with Gary's cousin in the morning to see if the coast weather has changed to rain. I'll let you know more tomorrow night. I had a beautiful photo of the snow for you, but blogger won't let me upload it. Maybe tomorrow.

Wish us luck!