Author Archives: Pauline

• what the hell are we doing today? 2013-03-23 http://t.co/0KHdsyZQOX 00:49:07, 2013-03-30
• Jumping into the deep end. http://t.co/xuPq6BmG1i 17:07:56, 2013-04-01
• Just left our comfort zone of Daphna & Allen's in Everett, heading to our dealer for work on our braking unit of our tow. 05:27:04, 2013-04-02
• We are very lucky to have friends like Daphna & Allen, letting us live in the rv spot for almost 5 wks 05:28:59, 2013-04-02
• Letting us get setup, let us vent, and gave us time to practice our rv training wheels. =} 05:30:42, 2013-04-02
• Back in Oregon. http://t.co/P5hEF4k5Vg 18:15:30, 2013-04-02
• Furnace not working again….totally not happy about it, but I'm trying to remember the good thing, we are here to see our dealer…~P 22:18:10, 2013-04-02
• BUT totally not happy with the more time spent here….the even brake is still not working….and no fault of theirs…trying to remember that ~P 22:20:09, 2013-04-02
• The RV park next to the dealer is very nice, but we wanted to be making progress to AZ and not spending money so far north =( ~P 22:21:11, 2013-04-02
• Living in a box in the back alley of my best friends house http://t.co/h4oRkOYroC 19:33:24, 2013-04-03
• Ackbar's maintenance update http://t.co/d2qUynxql5 22:38:57, 2013-04-03
• The few days we've been down here in McMinnville, everyone has been so nice and friendly……. ~P 12:37:12, 2013-04-04
• Talking about it to hubby & it clicked, we are back in Oregon!!! I love how friendly Oregon is, not going to have it soon, we'll be in CA ~P 12:37:39, 2013-04-04
• We are finally on the road, I'm waiting for the bank account to load so I can take care of a few company bills. ~P 11:35:55, 2013-04-05
• Olde Stone Village – McMinnville, OR http://t.co/9wlWATD6Oa 16:45:12, 2013-04-05
• Valley of the Rogue State Park – Near Gold Hill, OR http://t.co/fRHh4oXghz 19:54:34, 2013-04-05

Valley of the Rogue State Park

I5 South exit 45B

Pauline here, Torn uploaded the pictures, the time consuming part as far as I’m concerned….grin  Now, I’m adding my little bit.

Found this place using a handy little app called AllSays Camp and RV….it is one of the most pricey apps I’ve brought, but so far, it has been worth it.  Do NOT use GPS device for this park, it will take you to town and exit 48.  Google maps had it dead on for my iphone app…..grin

The RV sites are $20 a night, they will be going up to $24 night in the next few weeks when the season hits.  Overall, for what you get, it’s very good value.

The park is also a rest stop.  So when you pull off the highway from the southbound, you go left for the rest stop and right for the camping.  They have both tent and rv camping available.

Right now, they have a few of the loops closed due to work and the park fills up pretty fast on the weekend due to that, even with it being off season.

At this time RV accessible loops that are open are D & E.  The RV ones all have electric and water and some have dump.  If no dump, there is a dump in the park. The dump ones aren’t clearly marked.  I’m not complaining, just noting

They have both pull throughs (up to 50ft rvs) and shorter back up sites. Each site has a fire ring and picnic table.  There are showers and restrooms in our loop.

They take reservations from 2 days to 9 months out.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t make any, because we didn’t know what was going on with our schedule due to warranty work.  We had to do first come first serve, got one of the last pull throughs.

The park is quiet overall, people wise, but is right off the I5, so you do hear the noise from that.  There were a lot of the big and some really fancy class A’s.  Almost felt like we were at a RV show….lol

Each loop has it own camp hosts. I didn’t meet the husband, (yet…may tomorrow) but the wife was very nice and helpful.

We would recommend this for base camp and chilling out for an overnight.

OldeStoneVillage.com

4155 NE Three Nile Lane, McMinnville, OR 97128

We stayed at Olde Stone Village from April 2, 3, 4, 2013 lot #240

Full disclosure, the only reason we stayed here was it was next door to our RV Dealer while we was getting some maintenance done. With that said, YES, we would stay here again and plan to the next time we are in Oregon when we get the window replaced.

It was about 25% full, it was quite, people were polite, and we heard lot’s of birds. The only con’s I can think of was, it was next to the airport, so you will hear helicopters fairly often.

The Wifi was wonderful! However, again, the park was only about 25% full.

It’s hard to rate a park, when you don’t have much to compare it to, but we give this park a 4 of 5.

We paid $31.50 a night with Good Sam, normal is $35 a night

Pauline here with my 2 cents =)

Torn covered the pricing. Concrete flat pads, used a pull through, full hook up, good wifi, picnic table, and it had all the bells and whistles we didn’t use…laundry, showers, rest rooms, club house, pool, mail service.  It was very well taken care of.  For those who have them, it is kid friendly.  Recommend it and in fact plan on staying there next year when we get some work done at RV Warehouse.

Go a visit the town and you’ll notice how friendly and helpful Oregonians are….one of the reasons why we are proud to claim it as our state.

We spent 9am to 1:45pm today at the dealers getting the tow master issue resolved. It APPEARS it has been fixed and it is working as it should. We have hooked everything up and tested it about 12 times today and we will do it a few more times tomorrow. We just want to be sure while we are here and not 1,200 miles away from free warranty work.

Last night around 10 pm the furnace decided to not work again. It did work at 8am today. It did not work at 10am at the dealer, and the technicians witnessed it, so there was a issue. We had 3 guy’s at one time or another working on it. We discovered there is such a thing as “bad propane” so they drained the line’s and when that didn’t resolve the issue they did more test and decided to once more replace the “brain” as well as more wire’s around the furnace just in case there is a bad wiring issue etc.

And since they had to order part’s we get to be back at the dealer’s at 9am tomorrow.

Joy.

And to make the day complete, Pauline discovered moisture build up between the passenger side window. Directly in front of the mirror. This was taken care of 2-3 months ago. Or so we thought. It cost us $350. It took 3 days. I am not at all amused.

We meet with the “window guy” while we are at the dealers in the morning. I am not pleased of the known option’s. I am hoping he can perform magic.

Tonight I discovered water leaking from the water heater (outside). It COULD be as simple as the plastic drain plug needs replaced or tightened.

Yeah, sure it could be.

We are getting more efficient and comfortable in Ackbar. He is so close to be “perfect” right now. Well perfect by our definition. We just have to resolves these final issue’s and we can be going on our way.

Due to staying here longer and the need/desire to get to the area we want to be, we are planning our route and it appears we will be doing a 7-10 hour driving day. It just works out better for us if we make this sacrifice.

When we go on hike’s we always try to do the hardest part of the hike as soon as we can, that way when you accomplish the hard part of the hike, it’s all easy from there. So we wanted to do the hard day as soon as we could to get it out of the way.

At the moment, the planned route is from McMinnville, OR to Grant’s Pass, OR (About 4 hours) and stay 1 -2 nights. From Grant’s Pass to Chowchilla, CA area for 2-3 nights which would get us time to spend a day in Yosemite. No hike’s this time. Damn. From Chowchilla to the Joshua Tree National Park area and from there to Yuma, AZ and from there to Patagonia until August.

All we need to figure out is the dates.

Daphna and Allen was nice enough to allow us to live in our box in the back alley of their house from February 20, 2013 to April 2, 2013. It did not have sewage hook up’s and the power was only 20 amps (Ha!) and it was cold and too damn cold at time’s, but it was a great month plus for us.

We got to do some projects without worry of a park manager telling us “you can’t do that here” or whatever. They have a 40′ RV parking lot in their back alley, and once you close your eyes and just do it, parking there is easy.

Of course, if just 1 of the 3 obstacles (Garage roof corner, end of fence next to bamboo, and neighbor across the alley’s fence post.) I had to deal with was just 6″ farther, this would have been a breeze. But they are not 6″ farther, so I just did what I needed to do and closed my eyes.

I got in/out about 6 times total with only 1 mishap, I scratched the front bumper on drivers side by a 3″ nail no one saw sticking out of the fence. That is how close I had to get Ackbar to all 3 obstacles at one point or another during this adventure.

I learned a lot on just parking Ackbar in such a tight area. I am much more confident in driving and parking. Not too confident to get cocky, but confident enough I know for a fact, I can parallel park Ackbar, since I have done it.

Daphna and Allen will never know the appreciation we will always have for them allowing us this great honor of staying in the back alley. They have done so much for us already. It’s good to be Loved.

04/01/2013 – Everett, WA – Living in a box in the back alley of my best friend’s house. – Why yes I can parallel park a RV, why do you ask?

04/01/2013 – Everett, WA – Living in a box in the back alley of my best friend’s house. – Why yes I can parallel park a RV, why do you ask?

04/01/2013 – Everett, WA – Living in a box in the back alley of my best friend’s house. – This fence post was 1 of 3 obstacles.

04/01/2013 – Everett, WA – Living in a box in the back alley of my best friend’s house. – The left side fence post (front of red tarp) the corner of the roof on right side and the fence behind me (as I take this pic) are the 3 obstacles.

04/01/2013 – Everett, WA – Living in a box in the back alley of my best friend’s house. – Allen wanted to put the bridge outside our door to the fence gate. I said no.

04/01/2013 – Everett, WA – Living in a box in the back alley of my best friend’s house. – Don’t mess up the dirt pile.