Oregon and Washington September 14 - October 1, 2003
Lots of stops planned for this trip. First will be at the Monaco/Safari factory service center in Harrisburg, Oregon, for warranty service on the transmission (programming issues). Then up to Stevenson, Washington, where we will stay several days at Wind Mountain RV in the Columbia River Gorge. Back down to the Oregon State Fairgrounds in Salem for the annual Safari Homecoming, September 23-25, immediately followed by PNWCO6 in Ft Canby. We attended PNWCO4 last year at Deception pass, but missed PNWCO5 last spring. The Pacific NorthWest CampOuts are get-togethers of regulars from the group rec.outdoors.rv-travel.
On the trip home we will stop at Davis Cabinets in Junction City, Oregon, to have custom cabinetry installed which we ordered a couple of months ago.
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We spent the first night at Beaver Creek RV park in Merlin, Oregon, which has turned out to be a good way-point in our many travels between Eureka and the Eugene area. Monday we arrived at the Monaco Service Center in Harrisburg around 2:30, and had to wait a couple of hours to get a space. They have 40 spaces with hookups and 40 service bays, so in theory there is always a space for someone with an appointment, but I guess it doesn't always work that way.
Tuesday morning we had our service writeup, and the coach was taken into the shop. It was a rainy day, so other than a walk through Harrisburg we settled in for a long wait in the lounge. It is a 3000 sq ft facility with a variety of amenities, and pets are allowed. The shop is open, so you can go back and forth to the coach for anything you might need.
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Wednesday morning we toured the cabinet and carpet-inlay shops, lots of pictures here. We took Holly into Eugene for a swim in the river and then a walk up Skinner Butte.
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Here's an extreme example of taking all the toys with you! |
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We finally got out of the service center Thursday afternoon. We had a lot of small things on our secondary list of warranty items taken care of, but the transmission programming issue we were there for was not handled. Oh well, there's at least a chance that it will be done next week at the Safari Homecoming in Salem.
We traveled up to the Wind River RV park, a few miles east of Stevenson, WA. To get there, exit I-84 at Cascade Locks, cross the Bridge of the Gods, and then east on Washington 14.
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Friday was a wet one, so we didn't do much. We did spend a bit of time at the Columbia Gorge Quilt show, at the Skamania County Fairgrounds in Stevenson.
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Saturday we got some long walks in, and swimming for Holly. We visited the Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center/Skamania County Historical Museum, which is quite an establishment for a low-population county.
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Sunday the weather was beautiful, so we spent a good part of it exploring US 30 from Corbett to Cascade locks. This includes the view from Vista House on Crown Point, and the waterfalls at Latourell, Bridal Veil, Wahkeena, and Horsetail. The trail to Bridal Veil was good exercise, up and down hill about 3/4 of a mile. We skipped Multnomah this time, as the crowd was fairly large and we had spent some time there in June.
We toured Bonneville Dam and saw a lot of salmon (Coho and Chinook, mainly) in the fish ladders there.
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Monday through Thursday we were at the Oregon State Fairgrounds in Salem for Safari Homecoming, an annual event. About 300 Safari coaches and owners in attendance. We spent a great deal of time hanging around our coach waiting for techs to work on our one unresolved problem, which was finally resolved late Thursday. Our engine and transmission have never communicated with each other, and the problem of course turned out to be as simple as a connector on the communication bus that was never connected to the engine computer. Glad to have that one behind us!
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Friday we moved up to Ft Canby for Pacific NorthWest Campout number 6 (PNWCO6). 19 of us had dinner at a seafood place in Long Beach, WA. I've got my wireless Datastorm setup for sharing, and so far 3 other attendees are connected. |
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Here is the traditional PNWCO group picture. Larger format links: 1024x768 161K and 1600x1200 429K as it came from the camera.
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Left to right: Pat, Ralph, BD, Joy, DonB, Wade, Meep, Roger, Bob Rick(bk), Chris(frnt), Mike(bk), Carol, Jackie, Gerri(frnt), Wayne(bk), Delores, Kevin(frnt), Alan, Grace, DonM, Cecil, Sam, Mary Linda, Saundra.
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Most of the PNWCO attendees left on Sunday morning, so we spent the morning exploring the park. It was a good 1-1/2 mile round trip on the trail to the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse (built in 1856), but just a short walk to the 1898 North Head Lighthouse. The new Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center is built above the North Jetty on the parapet of an old 3-gun harbor defense emplacement known as Battery Harvey Allen. The campgrounds at Ft Canby are in the trees behind the beach, as seen from the North Head Lighthouse. There are about 200 sites hidden in those trees! The area is all natural fill that occurred after the North Jetty (of the Columbia River) was built.
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Our last stop this trip was back in the factory area, this time at Davis Cabinets, in Junction City. We had scheduled Tuesday as the date to install a custom piece for the passenger area a couple of months ago, and decided to have them do two cabinets for the bathroom. With motor homes, storage is always an issue. We have never maxed-out the storage in ours, but have run into issues of where the cabinets are and aren't located. Our bathroom is large, but has a small vanity and medicine cabinet for storage. In the pictures below you can see the progression of each project.
All of these cabinets were built from scratch, finished and installed over a 24 hour period from 3 pm Monday to 3 pm Tuesday!
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