Day 59, 60 - Corvallis, Salem to Chehalis

Wednesday (59) - The activity of the day was a visit to Schreiner’s Iris Gardens just north of Salem. My back was feeling sore so I just relaxed in the garden typing this blog post. 

Since the morning was free, I went ahead and participated in another amateur radio test. The campground WiFi seemed reasonably fast but I still ended up switching to tethering the laptop off of the iPad for the session. Verizon bandwidth was sufficient. 

Tomorrow is the last travel day for this road trip. We are heading up to the TT park near Chehalis, WA. This will be our third time at this park. Here, we will be getting the RV ready for several months of storage at a friends home nearby. A lot of cleaning and sorting. Trying to figure out what needs to be taken back to Fairbanks.  

It’s been 1 year, 8 months and 9 days to this point since the RV was driven off the lot. Or add 16 days since I left Fairbanks with the Prius. That is a better date. So 634 days.  

Thursday (60) - Another short driving day and we arrived around 12:15. It took a while to set up as the site was kind of unlevel. The back is definitely lower than the front. But, it is a full hook-up site though it is 30amps. Not really a problem since it isn’t hot and/or humid. You may notice in the picture that the car is a real mess from the drive up. A task for this afternoon. 

Day 56, 57, 58 - Medford to Corvallis

Sunday (56) - I’ve heard about this mail order place but didn’t know that there was a store as well. It is based out of Medford and their specialty is shipping out seasonal fruit boxes. There was a lot of other stuff in the store and the old truck was pretty nice. Most of the day was spent with our friends and their family. 

Monday (57) - Today’s drive was about 200 miles up to Corvallis. We are staying at the same RV park as before. It’s part of the fairgrounds. We are here visiting family before heading north. It was an uneventful trip. Filled up in Coburg, OR, at a much more reasonable $2.94/gal. I remembered that finding TSD fuel opportunities around Portland proved to be difficult last year. 

Tuesday (58) - My sister and brother-in-law came out to visit and we walked to the OSU campus. This covered bridge was along the way. We just caught up on what’s going on as we hadn’t seen them since last fall when we were last here. 

There were these automated robots running around campus delivering food. Kind of cool. The campus was pretty empty with several small groups taking graduation photos. With all the flowers, it was a good day for pictures. 

Day 54, 55 - Medford, OR

Friday (54) - Another short driving day from Redding to Central Point, OR. The mooch-docking opportunity didn’t work out as the parking site was a bit too un-level for this RV. Fortunately, Bridget found a site, the last one available, at the Southern Oregon RV Park next to the Fairgrounds. It is really nice. The RV parks around Medford are full of FEMA trailers to house people displaced by the fires. The screenshot above shows our peak wattage at 512watts. A bit closer to the 630watt specification. 

Saturday (55) - Quite the temperature change from just a few days ago! I switched from the heat pump to the propane furnace in the middle of the night. From the forecast, this cold spell is short lived. Just a few days ago, it was 90°+ here in Medford.  

This is our back-in space at the RV park. The nice lawn and table are nice additions. The paved pad is around 75’ long which is enough to leave the tow dolly attached and still have plenty of room to park the Prius. This place is definitely on our list of nice parks even though it doesn’t have a pool. 

We are meeting with Dan after lunch to go mushroom hunting in the local mountains. 

Only 1 morel. But it was nice walking. 

Day 53 - Redding, CA

A short driving day. From Lodi, CA, to Redding, CA. We stayed at this RV park before back in 2017 when the truck needed the clutch hydraulics replaced. This time, we arrived under our own power. I was reminded that this park had a pool though it’s a bit on the cool side, it felt wonderful after getting set up. 

We filled up with diesel again at a T/A instead of a Love’s as it had a much better discount. At $3.52/gallon (post TSD discount), it’s still on the expensive side but not as painful as yesterday. 

Tomorrow, we arrive in Medford, OR, for a few days of mooch docking. The forecast is for very moderate temperatures in Medford. That’ll be a really nice change.