We’re on our way home!

Debbi’s assignment in Tualatin Oregon is over, and we’re on our way home. We’re going to toddle slowly, not trying to sprint home. Immediate priority is to get out of areas with snow potential, and that means we drive south to California, then east over the lower tier of states. We had great advice from the Escapees RV club on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/escapeesrvclub), and their combined experience led us to this route. Our dear friend Fred, who has road-tripped all over the county, added his experience. Then, we block the trip by daily distance and use the RV Life Trip Wizard to find campgrounds. We’re able to use the military campgrounds, which are good value and quite secure.

So, on November 1st, we departed the Sun Outdoors RV park in Wilsonville OR, where we’ve been planted since mid-June. As usual, our tracks are viewable at https://share.garmin.com/cfogoose.

We rose late and got away just before noon.  Had to finish breaking down and connecting the F150 to the tow dolly in the cold rain.  Jim forgot to take off the F150 parking brake, so we dragged the truck 100 feet until Jim said “something’s not right!”  We stopped three times in the first 90 miles to tighten straps, get fuel and food, so this distance took us three hours.  This is shakedown day, after all.  That’s a term from Jim’s shipbuilding and shipyard days, when you take a new build/ repaired ship to sea to shake down (to the deck) all the things that should have been better secured! After the first three hours, things moved smoothly. We started to approach the mountains that we would cross the next day.

We stopped for the night in the Phoenix OR Holiday RV park, after driving about 260 miles.  Quite nice, family owned for 35 years.  Our designated site was occupied, so we moved down a few.  Walked to strip mall, but the wait for food at the Thai restaurant was 45 minutes.  Instead, we ate at Los Portales.  I had a seafood platter a la Mazatlan, very good.  Couple of Negra Modelo’s and I was set.