Following the Gorge into Portland

Whew, it’s been a crazy and amazing couple of weeks and I’m a few miles behind on updating the travelogue. I’ll try to rectify that this week now that we’re settled in at our lighthouse hosting gig and will have lots more free time for writing.

Let’s see… last we updated we had finally just left Montana and enjoyed an evening in Idaho…  next up is our arrival and time in Portland, Oregon.

Columbia River Gorge

Given that we had a hectic business week ahead of us to finalize the transition of our last major client off our servers, we decided to push on and make some miles. We pulled a long driving day of 233 miles to make it the mouth of the Columbia River Gorge in Kennewick.

We left the following morning with fresh eyes to explore and enjoy the drive through the gorge.

We drove the Washington side, and had our eyes on a couple different campgrounds. We wanted to find something chill, scenic and with good connectivity.

We pulled into Memaloose State Park (our review) in Oregon, just outside The Dalles – and they had a full hook-up spot available for the next 3 nights. Perfect!

It wasn’t one of the awesome waterfront sites, but we really enjoyed our site despite the interstate passing overhead. It was quiet enough that we were able to do a live video chat to show off the new engine rebuild.

Unfortunately, as we were backing into our spot we noticed our transmission leak again, and some other leaks were starting to crop up too. During the engine rebuild, somehow the plug for the old back-up sensor relay in the transmission got cracked, and now it seemed the patch job done in Billings was not holding.

It’s not a major leak, and only happens when in reverse.. but still, not something we want to let go. So Chris put together an e-mail with photos of the leak and others we were seeing and sent it to Interstate. They responded with options for Detroit Diesel shops on our upcoming route where they could make arrangements for us to go for warranty work.

Memaloose was the perfect stop for us – just pretty walking and views to keep us active, but nothing around that would be a tempting distraction. The sites were spacious and well thought out, reminding us how much we love Oregon State Parks.

With a 1pm check out time, we were able to stay put long enough to find a break in the workload to make the final push into Portland..

Portland, Oregon

We had only briefly visited Portland in the past, and had been looking forward to exploring the city especially now that several dear friends had recently moved there. Our primary goal with our visit was to complete our client transfer, catch up with friends and do a little bit of exploring.

Unfortunately, the RV Park we had wanted to stay at (Janzen Beach) was not available – so we booked at Columbia River RV Park (our review) instead. This turned out to not be the best choice for our visit.

 

First of all, when they handed us their rule sheet, one of them was ‘We reserve the right to have your RV towed if it leaks oil!’ – which was intimidating having just discovered leaks we were in process of making arrangements to have fixed. Thankfully we had a pull thru site, but it was extra stressful to try to nail it right the first time to avoid needing to back up.

Next, the park is not exactly close to where our friends live – which added extra effort to get out and meetup with them after completing some long and stressful work days.

It’s also just not our style of park – rather closely packed in sites, no views and nothing to walk to nearby. And actually, when we did try to walk around the neighborhood surrounding the park, a driver shouted obscenities at us for no apparent reason. Adding to the experience, some of our neighbors at the park used our spot for their personal guest parking (despite there being an official guest spot right behind us) and another used our spot as a short cut to walk through.

We definitely weren’t getting the Portland-vibe of friendliness that so many have glowed about.

That’s when our friends pointed out that there was plenty of space in front of their home for us to park on the street and they could toss us a power cord. For a night or two, we’re usually ok street camping – but for longer than that, we just dislike needing to be a little ‘slealthy’ to avoid neighbors getting upset having people sleeping on their street.

This concern was alleviated when several of the neighbors insisted we should bring the bus over, and invited us to a potluck dinner to welcome us to the ‘hood!  Now there’s that Portland friendliness!

We ended up forfeiting 4 nights of our pre-paid week at the RV Park (a first for us) – but it was absolutely the right decision. We now had access to the light rail system for public transit, lots of local places to walk to and were parked across the sidewalk from our friends which enabled lots of casual hanging out.

Now that we were free of all our clients, we took full advantage of the location.

One afternoon we took off on the Max train into downtown, and then explored on foot for about 8 miles. We enjoyed dining at the food carts and then hiked our way up to the International Rose Test gardens and the Japanese Gardens.

Both very lovely, but we kinda liked the rose garden more. They were in bloom and very vibrant (and admission was on a donation basis).

In contrast, the Japanese Gardens were very well maintained and a different kind of beautiful. But for the $9.50 admission price per person, our expectations were higher.

Another evening we joined our friends for the final performance of  Trek in the Park. Which is exactly what you might think it is… a live performance of the Star Trek episode ‘Trouble with Tribbles’.  It … was… awesome! So much quirky fun!

We also took a class at a local culinary workshop venue on knife techniques. While the class wasn’t the more interactive style I prefer (it was mostly lecture, with just a little practice at the end), we did pick up some nifty skills.

While in Portland, we also confirmed an appointment at Pacific Power up in Ridgefield, Washington – just a few miles north. We drove the bus up early on Tuesday morning, and we had a great 2-stroke mechanic and service manager who identified all the leaks and laid out a plan of  action with Interstate.

Unfortunately, one of the plans was completely draining the transmission and needing it to fully dry before they attempted a weld patch.. which would be overnight. This is not a shop where we could stay in the bus – so we’re very thankful our friends with the street parking also had crash space for us.

We returned in the morning, and all of the issues were addressed and completely covered under warranty (thank you Interstate!). We also had them perform our first oil change – getting rid of the original 30w break-in oil. We’re now back to straight 40w oil and should be good for another 10,000 or so miles.

All and all, despite the less than ideal start – we had a great visit to Portland and got a little taste of why so many of our friends have moved there.

Next Up

I’ll add to the travelogue soon about our two additional stops before reaching Cape Blanco Lighthouse, where we are now settled in at.

This will be our home for the remainder of the month as we explore being volunteer tour guides and hosts of the lighthouse. We had our orientation on Sunday and we’ll have our first shift on Thursday.

We’re very much looking forward to the month ahead and are already head over heels in love with Cape Blanco State Park.

And as a super awesome bonus, we are neighbors and co-hosting with Nina & Paul from WheelingIt. It’s completely surreal to finally catch up with these two in person after years of being RVing blogging buddies and forming an online friendship. Check out their Cape Blanco arrival post for a taste of what this amazing place is like.

Oh yes… there will be many stories and pictures to come! For those who follow both blogs, prepare to be inundated with lighthouse porn!