Click on a photo to enlarge it.
On Monday, we queued up for nearly 2 hours to get an oil change at Wal-mart. The guy didn't want to do Winnie and kept saying we were too high or
wide to get into the bay. The real problem was that he had to drive Winnie into the bay himself and was really nervous about it! He was also
embarrassed to admit it as we are two women who obviously have no problem at all driving our 3 ton home around!
Then we drove into Portland, Oregon and searched for ages trying to find the Thetford service station to try and get our toilet fixed. We
eventually gave up and drove to our friends Phyllis and Russ who live in the outskirts of Portland.
We met them in January 2004 on a whale watching tour in Baja California and have kept in contact via email since then. Unfortunately, Russ had
come down with a viral infection and the medication was making him feel a lot worse than the infection itself!
We stayed in their lovely guesthouse with a kitchen and bathroom for the next 5 nights. We even had our own TV!! That evening Phyllis had cooked a
great lamb cobbler with salad and we tried to catch up on whats been happening - we had a lot to talk about!
On Tuesday, we phoned up various places to find out about getting our toilet fixed but ended up just getting the run around. In the afternoon,
Russ got us some sealant and we spent 3 hours re-sealing our alcove window.
On Wednesday, we went for a drive along the Columbia River Gorge with Phyllis and Russ. The weather was a lot better than when we drove along the
Washington State side of the gorge a few days ago. We saw lots of waterfalls, the largest being Multnomah Falls and then went for coffee and cake.
Later we drove to the fish hatchery and watched the hatchery salmon returning "upstream" through artificially built sloping ladders to get back
"home" to spawn. It was fascinating to watch them struggling with all their might even though they must know that they will die! We went to the
holding pools which were already full. The gates where the salmon jump through to get into the pools had been closed for the night, but that didn't
stop the salmon from trying to jump the enormous height to get over the walls into the pools. A lot of the salmon had some nasty injuries from
trying to jump so high and hitting the concrete walls. We also went to see some huge sturgeon fish. The largest was about 8 feet long but they can
grow up to 20 feet in length!
Salmon and sturgeons in the Columbia River.
To finish off a great day, we went to an all-you-can-eat restaurant with a huge salad bar, pasta, soup and desserts. We also got 15% off as Kirsten
and I were first timers! 2 hours later we were stuffed! We definitely got our moneys worth.
On Thursday, Russ wanted to sort our toilet problem out and rang a friend at Camping World. It turned out that it probably wouldn't be a warranty
problem after all and there was just something stuck between the rubber seal and the toilet frame which meant that it wasn't sealing properly. All
we needed was a coat hanger to run between the seal and the toilet and get rid of the blockage.
That evening, we went to watch a film about China with some friends of Phyllis and Russ. The film was all about the places we had already visited
and some new sites that had only recently been opened. We really enjoyed it.
On Friday, we drove into Portland, had a walk around a lovely rose garden and went to look at the art museum that had just opened two new floors to
the public. We got in for free as Phyllis is a member. Art and museums are not really our "thing" as we find it difficult to appreciate what is
classed as art - a couple of painted bricks, a stack of TV sets continually showing the same sunrise, an old fashioned coolbag that was set on
automatic to continually self - inflate and deflate. What happened to good old fashioned paintings by famous artists? They're in the National art
galleries that we avoid!!! But we still wandered around for a couple of hours.
That evening we had pizza and salad and some yummy brownies and ice cream with our friends and spent nearly 3 hours talking to them about Mexico
as they know a lot more about the west coast where we will be heading. It just so happens that they will be going to the west coast at the
beginning of December and so we may well be able to meet up with them again.
It's not very often that we meet people who have seen more of the world than we have but Russ and Phyllis are two of them. Russ is building his
third boat and they have sailed extensively along the shores of Mexico. Russ has even circumnavigated the world in a boat!
On Saturday, we had pancakes and started getting ready to leave. After some group photos, we left just before 2pm and headed up to Mount Hood, but
it was in the clouds. We drove south across a high plateau which was surrounded by volcanoes and through a canyon. We stopped at Spring Rock State
Park for a few photos and then stopped on a supermarket car park for the night.
Kirsten managed to fix our toilet and found out that she just needed to hook the seal back into place! We could have done that months ago!! Thanks
to Russ we saved ourselves a lot of time and money and managed to fix it ourselves!
We went to bed early but got kept awake for 5 hours by the car park cleaner and his various machines. He seemed to drive continually around our
motorhome - probably on purpose! The area around Winnie must have been spotless!
On Sunday we stopped off at Newberry National Volcanic Monument and did a short walk through a lava field. Then drove to Pauline Lake and did a 1.5
mile loop walk across an obsidian lava flow (black glass).
Then we drove to Crater Lake National Park. It was slow going up the hill to the crater rim but Wow, what a view onto the caldera, created when the
volcano collapsed 7,500 years ago. It really is a spectacular sight. It was already 5-30pm by the time we got there but we spent 2 hours driving
around the western edge and stopping off at various viewpoints. This meant that we ended up driving out of the park in the dark and ended up going
to Burger King because it was too late to start cooking!
