Day 18, 19 - Corvallis, OR

After the weekend, the RV park really empties out. We need to plan our stays accordingly. You can see the oak trees towering over the trailer dropping acorns on the roof. On Tuesday, I finally put the valve on the fresh water tank overflow hose this morning. How is this for procrastination. I picked the valve up in Edmonton last June. To test, I’ll fill up the fresh water tank before heading to the coast. If we still have a full tank upon arrival, then the repair worked. Normally, the overflow is routed to the fresh water fill point. When water starts coming out of the overflow, then the tank is full.

That afternoon, I met up with Scott, the CW (morse code) instructor from the online class that I took last Spring. We met at the coffee place that his office is located. How's that for convenience. I participated in the Alaska DMR (digital mobile radio) net last night. This is the first time since we left that we had sufficient Internet to use the hotspot on a Monday evening since we left Fairbanks. (The Alaska DMR net is on Monday evening)

Wednesday - Spending time getting ready to hit the road again. I used Chirp to download the 2M repeaters for this area and Florence, OR. Already received some traffic reports on congestion on the road between Eugene and Florence. I had forgotten all about that feature within Chirp.

The weather app claims that it's only 63°F but it feels a lot warmer than that to me. What am I going to do when it really does get hot. Oh well. We picked up a bunch of groceries here in Corvallis. No Costco here but I can't think of anything we need from there.

There is some hint of color on some of the trees around here. I don't think that it's even gotten close to freezing yet but we don't plan on sticking around until it does. We ran through another 30 lbs of propane. This time it took 9 days. It only lasted 4 days in Sunriver. The furnace really does use a lot of propane. I am thinking of a Mr. Buddy heater and installing a valve and hose off of one of the low-pressure lines feeding either the water heater or the furnace.

Our water heater has always only run off of propane. Even though there is a circuit breaker labeled as "hot water heater", it has never worked. I removed the wooden panel behind the stove and saw a single outlet with the water heater cord hanging next to it. I didn't check the outlet but just plugged in the cord. There was also a power switch on the water heater but it was frozen in the "Off" position. After several attempts, it moved but I still don't know if power was flowing. I left the gas water heater off all day and we'll try the electric option when we get back to the trailer this evening. Hopefully, it works.

Update - Success! Arrived back at the trailer, turned on the breaker for the water heater and the shore power current jumped to 12 amps. Which means that the electrical element in the water heater still works!