Day 215, 216, 217 - Willamette Valley, OR

Monday (215) - A little more running around today. We picked up a recliner for my mom’s new place and moved our frozen and refrigerated food to the refrigerator in her old house. I will be defrosting the refrigerator today and will have it turned off while it’s in the shop. Tomorrow morning, I’ll be taking the coach to Peterson Truck which is a Caterpillar shop near in Albany. Based on my conversation, hopefully, we’ll have better luck from this place and get this thing fixed.

Today has been one of the warmest days at 90°+ and the rear air conditioner decided to stop working. It worked fine last night but it looks like around noon it decided that it had enough.

Then, around 10pm, the rear air conditioner comes to life just like it did last night. Odd.

Tuesday (216) - The smoke started to roll in on Monday evening. On the drive up to the CAT shop in Albany, it looked like we were driving at night. The picture is the ash on the Prius after sitting maybe 30 minutes. We are back in Corvallis for today before heading a bit north to meet up with some of Bridget’s family outside of Portland.

After hours of waiting on hold, I finally have a telemedicine appointment on Saturday. This is a requirement to get a COVID test with results in 24 hours. They were familiar with the Alaska requirement for test results no older than 72 hours of arrival.

Wednesday (217) - It’s still really smoky. This picture is just southwest of Salem. I believe the fire is in the mountains east of here. In fact, Waze suggested 99W instead of I-5 due to heavy evacuation traffic around Salem.

For the next couple of days, we will be in Sherwood, OR which is southwest of Portland. It looks like we will be barely out of the smoke. The prevailing wind is from the north so there shouldn’t be more smoke unless there are fires in Washington. But it does look better. There are a lot of fires in Oregon.