Thanks for your patience but your wait wasn’t for much. You see, we haven’t made it out into the high lakes wilderness, although I did do a reconnaissance trip there one day to note where we might fit. The Cascade lakes were lovely, the sky blue, the fishing not so good but it still would have been relaxing.
Instead, we are still parked at my folks’ place in Bend with Marc involved in a vast array of projects and maintenance. Most recently, he finished putting in a new toilet and vinyl flooring into my parent’s bathroom. Next on the list is fixing the shingles that have blown off their roof. We’ve been getting some hellacious evening thunderstorms with high winds and well over 2500 lightning strikes an evening. It’s been putting on quite a show.
Before all that, having limped back with nearly dead batteries on the RV, we decided to make the financial sacrifice to replace all five batteries. In 2001 we had installed three of the largest AGM batteries to feed our inverter and they had about reached their life’s end. The house batteries weren’t doing much better so Marc decided to replace those two wet cells with AGMs as well. After an easy phone order to a place in Salem, four days and $2300 later, all five batteries arrived directly to our doorstep. Because the batteries weigh so much—165 pounds each—Marc fashioned a lever as a way to help get the old ones out from under the front end storage where they resided. I can recall back in 2001 when the batteries were new, he and I both lifted all three of those suckers into the compartment with much straining and grunting; eight years later it is beyond both of our capacity to do so. Oh, what age does to a person!
Now, we await some part Marc needs for the Freightliner, which was due its share of maintenance too. Tired of not having any internet connection, we’ve also recently sprung for a Verizon air card, a painfully slow process to deal with surfing the web but better than nothing. The Wilson antenna and amplifier Marc needs to vastly boost signal in marginal areas is, of course, stored over in Coos Bay. So, later this week Marc will make a speed run there to pick that up. If we’re lucky maybe we’ll get out of here by week’s end. My next update will cover our upcoming plans. We are definitely going back on the road!
