Monday, July 9, 2007

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Good

Donna and Livie


It was so nice to be near our daughter, son-in-law, and the grandkids (Bea and Livie) for a whole month! And yes, the time flew by. None of us can believe that the month is gone. Seeing Josh's parents, Jim and Judy again was also great. Thanks for everyone's hospitality!!

  • The dryer is fixed. I tried contacting several appliance repair places, but no one worked on Splendide...it figures that RV washer/dryer combos are made in Italy, and normal appliance repair places don't even know about them. I ended up contacting the USA distributor, and found out that they had a customer service department. The rep actually walked me through trouble-shooting the problem over the course of several days. We determined it was a bad circuit board, as the dryer fan was not getting 120V. Even though the unit was out of warranty, they shipped me a new board (and for free!).

  • Donna and I drove down to SoCal the last weekend in June. She and her sisters Gail and Cheryl attended a great family reunion, and learned a lot about their heritage. When our travels take us to Canada, we'll make a stop in Winnipeg, so that Donna can see where family businesses and homes were. While she was at the reunion, Abbey and I went and visited my Dad, who will be 83 in September. We took a casual drive down to Dana Point, had lunch, and then took a walk along the beach. If you know my Dad, you know that he is a walker. I definitely got a good workout!!

  • Little Olivia took some real steps our last night visiting them! She'll be leaving the crawling phase soon, so Jenna and Josh will be dealing with two mobile kids! Beatrice is talking in sentences now, and amazes everyone with her "smarts". She had a great time swimming with Grandma.

Grandma & Bea


Beatrice & Olivia

  • Farmers markets - there was lots of fresh fruit and veggies just about everywhere. And it was cherry harvest time, so we got our fill!

  • Donna and I attended an RV show in Santa Clara 3 days ago. We were interested in seeing some Class A motor homes, as we had never experienced them since we began full-timing. It wasn't crowded, so the manufacturer rep and a salesman took us for a spin in one. I drove it about 10 miles - it's definitely different than towing a fifth wheel! When we returned to the parking lot, they had Donna drive it around the lot and park it. She sped around the lot at "idle speed", and did a great job parking it.

  • The kids and grand kids came down on Saturday morning to see us off. It was tough leaving after being so close for a month. We made some tentative plans for next summer to meet at Lake Tahoe for some camping (OK, RV'ing) and off-roading (Josh's hobby).

  • Yesterday (July 7), we left Morgan Hill, and headed north. Oregon here we come! We had planned to stop in Redding, about 260 miles north of Morgan Hill, and 180 miles from our destination, Grants Pass, OR. When we arrived about 2:30pm, it was 105. No way did we want to pull over, get set up for one night, and then have to pick up and head out again. I called our friends in Grants Pass, and asked if "Rices' RV Resort" had a vacancy for a one-day-early arrival. Fortunately, they did (there is only one RV site at this private resort), so we continued north.

The Bad



  • Wind...wind...wind. One of Morgan Hills greatest assets. If it was from the north, it was HOT. If it was blowing from the south, it was cooler. But it was always there.

  • On the return back to Morgan Hill from our SoCal visit, an RV caught fire up on the Grapevine near Gorman. Besides being completely destroyed, it started a brush fire. Five lanes of northbound traffic came to a stop, then we had a 2 mile/hour crawl from Magic Mountain to Gorman...2+ hours. We didn't get back until much later than planned.

  • Calfornia prices are high, for just about everything. Fuel, food, you name it, things are expensive there. An example: a container of Yoplait yogurt, that we pay about 50 cents for just about everywhere, was 99 cents in SoCal (here in Oregon, where we are now, they are 48 cents).
The Ugly

  • As we headed north from Redding, the drive was hot, but uneventful, until I made a routine pass around a slow truck. Actually, there were 3 trucks going around 50mph. We had been traveling with a couple of RV's one of which had passed said trucks. I signalled, changed lanes, passed the trucks, signalled, and got back over into the slow lane. How longs does that take? A minute; two max? After I got into the slow lane again, a female driver in a silver Mercedes proceeded to almost side swipe us, then pulled in front of us and jammed on her brakes. We are talking serious road rage - it was all I could do to avoid crashing into her (I almost wish I had). She got me down to about 35mph before stomping on it. I laid on the horn and the brakes, but she ignored these actions. It happened so fast we couldn't get her license plate number to report it to the CHP. Nothing like leaving California with a taste of road rage. Enough said.

3 comments:

  1. Wow, that's quite an update. Now we're all caught up! :)

    I am jealous that you got to spend a month with Jenna, Josh and the girls. Sounds like you had a lot of fun.

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  2. We miss you already! Looking forward to the adventure next summer in Tahoe!

    We all miss you. Bea keeps asking to go to "Abby's house" and keeps talking about July 4th and how we had to hurry and that they are all gone.

    Livey will shout out "grandma!" every now and then thinking you are there somewhere.

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  3. JJBO - It was really hard to leave you guys! We miss you already too.

    T&V - I know you will really enjoy seeing J&J and the girls in November!!

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