The last couple of Sundays have been reset days with no
driving, but we don’t have the time for that luxury today.
Instead, we hoped to make it to the Pacific
coast, having passed through the mountains and via Eugene.
We didn’t exactly rush this morning though,
using the connectivity to call some family before leaving at noon.
As soon as we left our overnight stop there were amazing
views of crisp white mountains contrasted against a pure blue sky (below).
Route 126 took us through the Three sisters
and Mount Washington wilderness.
There were more fast-flowing rivers and waterfalls, the water in
them was bright turquoise and extremely clear. We kept stopping for more
pictures.
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| A random house of denim... complete with legs in the chimney! |
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| Our lunch-time view |
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| The pointed peak of Mount Washington |
One concerning point – I have started smelling something bad
coming from under the bonnet of the RV.
It tends to be after we’ve been climbing a hill or breaking
regularly. I am worried that we have
really been pushing the mileage lately and we haven’t made time to get Harvey
serviced. The on-board computer states
that he still has 16% of oil life left. But the service sticker from our Las
Vegas friendly garage suggests that we should have got him serviced around
18500 miles, erm… about 3000 miles ago.
We made it to Eugene to top-up on gas at Costco and had a pow-wow. Eugene is the largest City around for
miles. Instead of driving another hour
today, ending up in a tiny coastal town with no servicing opportunity maybe it
would be better to stop here, seemingly the RV capital of The North-West?! Heading to an industrial area we found about
four separate RV sales and servicing businesses, including a Camping
World. The guy in CW was far more
helpful than the other day, however he explained that our timing was poor. Everyone with an RV was getting them ready
for the spring break so they had no window for servicing for about two
weeks! He did come out to take a quick
look at the RV, as his solution had been to drive miles further up north to
another Camping World, which we weren’t too keen on. His semi-professional eye couldn’t find any
problem at all.
Our next shot – Cummins – normally a coach building and
servicing company. Our helpful Allstays
app told us that they have hook-ups for six RVs. We rolled up and found there were three
spaces left. We asked the opinion of another
RV owner who was out walking his dog. They have an appointment at 8am tomorrow for
their bus, so they’re okay, but between us we agreed that we should just chance
staying here so that we can speak to Cummins first thing and try to get
squeezed in. Plus, he reckoned that with
our rare accents we could probably plead stupidity in the morning if it turns
out they can’t help us and maybe they won’t even charge us for the night?! A good example of winging it. So we’re hooked up and we’ll see what happens
in the morning. At least, by getting up before
7am, we are bound to fit more into the day and we need to get the RV sorted
before our next guests arrive anyway.
I was feeling like we’d missed out on having a nice hike in
the mountains today, by choosing to make ground instead. It wasn’t a bad evening, so I got my bike out
and went for a jaunt around the industrial estate. It may not have been as picturesque as I’m
used to, however it was very productive as I identified another RV servicing
business as a back-up and found a truck/RV wash which is another thing that
Harvey desperately needs! Fingers
crossed we can have a productive Monday morning and still make it to the
Pacific coast as we’d hoped.
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