She's back!!!!!

 8:03 am - Saturday - July 31st - Seal Rock, OR - 52° F, 100% humidity, wind - zero mph out of the north....heavy marine layer today with a forecast high of 62° F.  On this date in 2018 we were having dinner at Beale's Lobster Pound in Southwest Harbor, ME....we started out with a couple of Allagash Whites (Belgium white)......↴

Lobster Roll and chips!

We slept in Friday until almost 8:30 am.  My in-laws, Glenn and Laureen were slated to arrived between 2 and 3 pm, and  I was hoping we would get a little sun, and a light wind so I could wash the VW and the Newell.  After all the salt laden fog we've had lately they were both looking pretty sad.  Fortune smiled upon us around 11 am......a little sun, and almost no wind.  I quickly donned a hoody sweatshirt, and retrieved my washing tools from the trailer.  Since the VW was sitting in the sun already I did it first hoping the sun would crest over the trees to the east of us and eventually bath the Newell in warm sunlight.  I was done with the VW in about 25 minutes at which time TLE headed into town to do the weekly shopping whilst I tended to the cleansing of the Newell.  It's amazing how a little Dawn laden soapy water can bring a smile back to our girl.  I was just finishing the Newell when TLE returned about 90 minutes later.  

We got a text from Glenn and Laureen a little after 12 pm that they had left Portland, and would be here around 3 pm....perfect.....time for a nap.  Laureen sent TLE another text around 2:30 that they were passing through Newport so we knew they would be here in less than 20 minutes, and they were.  Just before 2:50 pm I saw them turn left onto NW Cross Street, so I scampered down the hill to give Glenn the game plan for getting into site A-3.  Within minutes they had their Honda Element detached from the rear of their Newell, and Glenn was driving up the 12% grade hill to the site.  He did a great job of backing their 35' Newell into the site, and by 3:05 pm they were settling in for a three, or four day stay.....

....it's been over a year since our coaches were parked side by side, and it makes me happy to see them reunited.  We sat talking about their travels this summer for about an hour, and then bid them adieu to finish settling in, and agreed to meet again around 5:30 pm to drive into Waldport for dinner at 'Fresh Mexican Food'.  We arrived there around 6 pm, and were quickly seated in their alfresco dining area....perfect....actually alfresco dining was our only option as every table inside was occupied....lol.  We had a lovely dinner, and talked nonstop for over an hour before the advancing fog spurred us to pay our bill, and retreat to the warmer confines of the VW for the drive home.

We were home around 7:30 pm, agreeing to reconvene inside their Newell at 8 pm for some ice cream and single malt Scotch.  We again talked nonstop until around 9:30 pm we all decided we were all ready to call it a day.

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I hope that 'augers' well.....

 8:44 am - Fifth Saturday - July 30th - Seal Rock, OR - 52° F, 100% humidity, wind 3 mph out of the north by northwest......heavy marine layer beginning to clear around 1 pm today with a forecast high of 64° F, and winds reaching 11 mph.  On this date in 2010 TLE and I were in Austin, TX attending the graduation of our niece, the daughter of Glenn and Laureen Parker, who, coincidently, will be arriving here in Seal Rock, OR in their 1984 Newell today.......↴

Thursday was another of those days where I had a plan, and events took me in a different direction.  As you might recall over the past week, or so we have visited site #19 three times to clear a clog in the sewer connection.  Each time we thought we had successfully cleared the clog, but we were mistaken.  Since this was a steadily recurring problem Greg rented an electric powered auger to ream out the sewer connection down to the main line....about 50 feet away.  Each time we ran it to the main line 'T' we pulled it back out to find TP wrapped around the auger, and each time we then stuck a hose down the sewer and ran water to see if it would continue draining, and each time until the last time it overflowed.  On the fourth try we again pulled out more effluent debris, but this time when we stuck the hose in the sewer line the water ran for 20 minutes and never overflowed.  I looked at my watch and it was 11:20 am.....one hour and twenty minutes of my 3 hour shift 'down the drain', literally.

My general plan for the day was to finish trimming hedges in the remaining 6 tent sites, but that was out the window.  It was time to do site checks, and get the sites with incoming guests ready for their stay.  There were only 5 sites with incoming guests, but one of them, site #41, had a fire pit which needed to be moved from it present location, next to one of the cabins, to a spot further away......

Where the fire pit used to be

.....I knew it would probably take me at least an hour, if not the entirety of the remainder of my shift.  I retrieved a round point, and a square point shovel from the landscape shed and got to work.  I first removed the cement pavers from the old pit, moved them over to the new location, and then used the round point shovel to trace out the circle in the grass.  Once that was done I moved the pavers out of the way and began to dig out the new fire pit site.  I cut the circle of grass into thirds, then moved each third to the old site.  Once they were in place you could hardly tell there had been a fire pit there (see above).  Within a week, it will almost be invisible.  The new pit turned out well, and is now far enough away from the cabin that smoke getting in through their sliding glass door will no longer be an issue.....

......by this time it was approaching 1 pm, and time to put away my tools.  I was going to just head home, but decided the poor golf car needed some TLE so I took a few minutes to wash her off before putting her away for the night.

As the afternoon progressed the winds continued to freshen, and by mid afternoon you could feel gusts of wind rocking the coach......oh that north wind!  All that being said, it continues to be quite cool here in Coastal Oregon, and the folks coming from inland where it is 90-100° F every day are flocking to the coast.  The great thing is we get to stay here on Sunday when they head back to their workaday lives, and the ever present heat.

We discovered quite by accident that the 7th season of 'The Flash' is now up on Netflix......we binge watched the first six season months ago (like a year ago), and frankly I had forgotten about it, but there it was so we decided to watch a few episodes Thursday night.  It didn't take us long to get back into the storyline.  With that we are off for two days and are looking forward to spending time with our in-laws, and their 1984 Newell!

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Hedge fund.....

 7:50 am - Thursday - July 29th - Seal Rock, OR - 48° F, 100% humidity, wind - zero mph out of the north......mostly sunny today with a forecast high of 66° F. On this date in 2012 we were near Raymond, WA (on the Olympic Peninsula) having breakfast at Hamp's 101 (US-101 runs through Raymond).....↴

Wednesday began sort of like today (Thursday) with sun, and little wind, but by the time I reported for work at 10 am the wind was blowing out of the north in the 10-15 mph range, and the fog was rolling in and out.  I spent most of my 3 hour shift back in the tent site area trimming hedges, and mowing grass in preparation for the possible, future reopening of those 11 sites.  I managed to get 3 more sites trimmed plus the area around the Landscape Shed.  That was the easy part....lol....with the wind blowing it became more and more difficult as my shift progressed to rake up the hedge clippings and successfully deposit them in the trailer before hauling them up the hill to our 'burn pile', which is on hiatus until the Fall.  It seemed that half of every load of clippings I was carrying to the trailer would blow away in the wind.

We are well past the Summer Equinox here in late July, and it is obvious that the sun is steadily moving back towards the southern horizon.  Normally around 8 am I have to close the curtains for a little bit as the rising sun is glaring in the window....not so this morning....it is once again behind the trees to the east of our location.  Tomorrow, Friday, the sun will rise at 6 am, and set at 8:44 pm here in Seal Rock, OR.

As I wrote about a week ago  Terry (manager) had his shoulder surgery about 10 days ago.  He went back in for the 10 day check up on Tuesday and was approved to begin physical therapy, so the healing process is well under way.  He'll go through 6 weeks of PT, but the complete recovery will take between 6 and 12 months....that is a long road back!

As you know it has been difficult to get many sunset pictures lately, and I was a little slow on the uptake Wednesday night, but did manage to get some post sunset pictures for your viewing pleasure.....

....if you don't pay attention the sunset will come and go before you know it....Tuesday it kind of lingered for about 30 minutes....sweet!

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Unplugged Tuesday.....

 7:27 am - Wednesday - July 28th - Seal Rock, OR - 48° F, 100% humidity, wind - zero mph out of the north......partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 65° F.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I circumnavigated Two Medicine Lake in Glacier National Park with a couple of waterfalls thrown in for good measure.....↴

You know how you kind of have an idea, a game plan for a day, and sometimes it turns out completely different than you imagined?  Tuesday was such a day.  I thought Fred and I would do the WDS dance (clean the filters) first thing and then get back to trimming hedges.  The WDS chore usually takes less than 30 minutes, but on this day it took close to an hour.  The filter cleaning part went as it usually does, but when I turned the pumps back on we got two alarms, and a bunch of flashing red lights.....not a good thing when you are dealing with effluent....lol.  I was able to silence both of them, but the lights kept flashing as a reminder we had to fix whatever it was that was wrong, and neither of us had any idea.  Greg is the resident expert on the inner workings of the WDS plant so I drove over to his RV to let him know what was happening.  Much to my surprise he said the two alarms were not related, and gave me some instructions for abating each.  I returned to the plant, and within seconds of following his instructions all the red lights stopped flashing, and solid green ones replaced them.  By the time all that excitement had passed it was after 11 am.  

Before we could heave a sigh of relief we were notified by TLE that that pesky sewer connection in site #19 was backed up once again.....doh!  What is the deal with that?  I let Greg know of our continued woes in site #19, so he drove over and joined us to figure it out.  After some discussion we decided to use the inflatable ball thingy to clear the clog again, but let it run for over 15 minutes this time.  He believes there is a clog way down line, and we may have to get a motorized roto rooter to clear it if it comes back again.  At any rate Fred and I followed his instructions, and restored order for the customers in that site.

By this time it was 11:40 am, and our two hour shift was almost at an end....well, not to worry...we had barely put away our equipment when a customer from site #10 walked over to let us know he was having electrical issues, and that his surge protector was indicating 'reversed polarity'.  He said everything had been fine since he arrived in the site two days prior, so I was pretty sure it was his issue, and not ours.  Upon arrival in that site we saw what the problem was immediately.  This inline surge protector he was using was a beast, and must have weighed 20 pounds.  Its weight was partially pulling the 30 amp plug out of of the socket and causing the ground pole to touch the metal casing of the pedestal causing the 'reverse polarity' reading.  He provided us with a bungy cord which we used to pull the surge protector upward, and take the pressure off the 30 amp connector.....as soon as we did that the error message disappeared.

I looked at my watch as we drove away....it was a tad after 12 pm, and time to call it another day.  It's kind of funny, if you think about it.  We've been here at SRRVC about 10 months now, and we rarely, if ever, have had issues with sewage lines clogging, or electrical malfunctions, and no problems whatsoever with the WDS plant.  All of those rare problems lined up to happen in one two hour shift.

TLE worked a single 9 am to 12 pm shift, and she beat me home by a few minutes.  Just as happened Monday, the fog was rolling in again, and I thought we were doomed to another blustery, foggy afternoon, but then the sun came out, and the wind abated.....another wrinkle in the day....lol.  Perfect.....since it was sunny, and almost windless I decided to dump our black tank.  While the tank was being flushed each time I spent the intervals cutting the weeds out of the area between the coach and the cement slab on our left side.

By early evening the marine layer had returned, and as the light of the day waned we watched waves of mist blowing past our windows....another day on the Oregon Coast.

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Foggy July.....

 7:31 am - Tuesday - July 27th - Seal Rock, OR - 52° F, 100% humidity, wind - zero mph out of the north.....heavy marine layer with fog today and a forecast high of 63° F.  On this date in 2013 we had just arrived in East Glacier, MT (just outside of Glacier National Park)......↴

I swear, I think it's colder now than it was in June....lol.  As I sit here at my laptop composing today's missive we have three electric heaters running.  They will run until we go to work, and most likely will be turned on again when we return from work.  I don't think we ran more than one heater at a time in June, and some days no heater at all.  Here we are on July 27th and it seems as if it were still April weather wise.  All that being said, I have to say I love it.  As I wrote yesterday, I don't remember a summer in my life, including the 9+ years we have been on the road where we didn't run our A/C at least a few times during the summer.  Just a little over a year ago when we were still in Wittmann, AZ we ran both A/C's for most of the day for a couple of weeks before we escaped to the 7,000' altitude of Flagstaff, AZ.  Even in Southwest Harbor, ME we ran our A/C quite a bit from July to September, but not so here on the Oregon Coast.

Monday I walked to work wearing a long sleeve shirt, and shorts, the sun was out, there was no wind, and it seemed as if it would be a nice day.  By 12 pm I was walking home shivering in a completely fog enshrouded, blustery environment, and that is the way it remained the rest of the day.  Needless to say I did no personal work outside in the afternoon.  In most places I have lived over the years the wind chases the fog away, but here in Seal Rock, OR the wind just seems to make it more foggy.

Fred and I spent our entire two hour shift trimming hedges in sites 11 and 18.  Between trimming the hedges, and then raking and picking up the clippings it takes about an hour per site with two people to trim the hedges in most of the sites here at SRRVC.  After dropping another trailer load of hedge clippings at our burn pile I drove Fred back to his RV, and then headed back to the office to put the golf cart in its shed for another night.  TLE worked a 3 hour shift from 11 am to 2 pm, and was home around 2:05 pm shivering from the short, damp, wind blown walk up the hill.  When that north wind is blowing it becomes difficult to close the Newell door as the wind immediately grabs it as soon as you open it a crack.

Life continues to be good here in Coastal Oregon, and even though it is cold much of the time right now we still love where we are living.  It is such a contrast to spend a summer living where it is not hot, right?

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No A/C.....

 7:33 am - Monday - July 26th - Seal Rock, OR - 58° F, 84% humidity, wind 6 mph out of the west by northwest......that's a change I can get behind!  The forecast high for today is 63° F.  On this date in 2013 we were headed to Billings, MT in our 2002 T-Bird to take care of some personal business after being in Canada for the past three weeks.....we left the Newell in Browning, MT for the day trip.....↴

US-2 in Montana....straight as an arrow

On Sunday's we don't usually do any work in individual sites as the park is pretty full...full that is until around 11:30 am when the workaday folks begin to exit the park in droves to return to their non nomadic lives.  Fred and I spent most of our two hour shift delivering freshly painted picnic tables to sites with picnic tables needing fresh paint.  In the process we spent some time repairing some of the painted ones.  When we lifted one of them onto the trailer one of the seat boards came loose, so we had to drill some new holes, and install new stainless steel screws....on another we had to cut to fit a new brace, and a third needed some attention to one of the legs.  When all the dust settled we had a total of five tables back in the tent sites where we work on the tables needing a fresh coat of paint.  Thankfully, we are almost done with painting tables this year.  I'm sure there will be a whole new crop next year.  I was home a few minutes after 12 pm.

Once again the wind was out of the north all day, and intensified as the day progressed, but the fog from Saturday was gone, and we did get some sun showers throughout the afternoon.  Nevertheless, it was too chilly to spend much time outside.  TLE worked her 2-4 pm shift and was home just as I was awakening from a great afternoon nap.

My brother-in-law, Glenn Parker and his wife Laureen (TLE's sister) will be arriving here at SRRVC on Friday to spend 3, or 4 days with us as their summer travels in their 1984 Newell continue.  It will be the first time our two Newell's have been in the same vicinity since last summer when we were boondocking at The Big Eddy near Driggs, ID on June 1st.....

The Big Eddy on the banks of the Teton River, June 1, 2020

.....there are no days left in July with a forecast high 70° F or higher, and it won't be until August 6th when it does actually hit 70° F, and then only for two days until it dives back into the low 60's.  I have never been anywhere during the summer where it is this cool into August, and I love it!  Here we are in late July still running our electric heaters in the mornings, and evenings, and have not run our A/C since last September when we were in Forks, WA on our way to Seal Rock....we have never run our A/C here in Seal Rock, OR.  The question remains, however, will there come a time when we do?  The next 60 days will tell the tale.

On the 'pandemic' front Coastal Oregon is pretty much mask free, and I have not worn a mask while working for two weeks, which means I haven't worn a mask in a long time.  We still occasionally see folks driving in their cars with the windows up wearing masks, or riding bicycles down US-101 wearing masks.....I don't get that, but to each his own.  We continue to be in great health, and asymptomatic.  Meanwhile there has been just one death attributed to the Wuhan flu in the last 5 months, and total diagnosed cases in Lincoln County are still well under 1,500 for duration of the 'pandemic'.

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Our fans......

 7:43 am - Sunday - July 25th - Seal Rock, OR - 50° F, 100% humidity, wind - zero mph out of the north.....foggy right now with sun later today and a forecast high of 63° F.  On this date in 2013 we were hiking in Glacier National Park......↴

The Highline Trail near Logan Pass, GNP

Wild Goose Island, Lake Mary, GNP

After several sunny days Coastal Oregon threw us a curve ball...we awoke to north wind, fog, and a very, very heavy marine layer.....no sitting outside sipping coffee on this day, for sure.  Around noon time when the sun made a very brief appearance I pulled out our telescoping ladder to get up on the roof to remove, and clean the fan (motor and fan blade) which vents the hot, sometimes smokey air from the stove area.  I have never cleaned this fan in the 13+ years we have owned the coach.  Due to its location, and purpose it there was a lot of grease build up, needless to say.

There is a shroud which covers the fan vent hole which is affixed by 3 sheet metal screws to the frame of the fan......

The vent screen was almost completely plugged with grease

.....once I had the shroud removed I was saddened to see it was way worse than I expected.....the vent screen was almost entirely plugged with grease, and the entire area around it is covered with grease and pine needles.  Two bolts hold the fan in place, and unlike the difficulty I had removing bathroom fan from the inside of the coach, removing the bolts from the top was much easier.  I took the fan assembly into the trailer to clean it on my work bench using WD40, Formula 409, and a bristle brush to remove a few decades of grease......

Before degreasing.....very sad

......in all it took me over an hour to clean the fan motor and fan itself.....

Reassembled

....then it was time to clean the vent screen, and the roof area outside the fan vent....the Formula 409 worked the best at degreasing the fan vent and roof top......

Who would have thought that screen was gold in color?

.....once the vent screen and roof was clean it was time to reinstall the fan assembly, and screw the shroud back in place....

.....by the time everything was back together the wind was blowing pretty hard, and it was time to put things away and retreat to the warm confines of the Newell for the balance of the afternoon.  After a suitably long, hot shower I retired to my recliner to watch TV, and take a nap.  The fog rolled back in around 4 pm, and soon everything outside was wet, and shrouded in mist....about as opposite as you can get from Friday's weather.  As we slipped off to slumber land around 10 pm one could hear the wind whipping our flag ferociously....yup, a very different day.

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Your junk, my treasure.....

 8:30 am - Saturday - July 24th - Seal Rock, OR - 54° F, 100% humidity, wind - zero mph out of the north.....marine layer this morning with a forecast high today of 64° F.  On this date in 2014 TLE and I were riding our bikes along the Truckee River out to Squaw Valley, and back to Tahoe City.....lunch at The Bridgetender Tavern........↴

We did something we have rarely done lately because it has been so overcast, and cold in the mornings, but when you get your fourth straight day with sun in the morning you have to take advantage of it at some point.  After I finished my blog TLE and I went outside with our morning coffees, and ensconced ourselves in the Adirondack chairs......just being in the moment....enjoying the view of the sun hitting Seal Rock, and the ocean.  Basking in the morning sun with a 'cup of Joe' (coffee for the uninitiated) is one of my delights in life, and Friday morning did not disappoint.

We sat there for about an hour talking about this and that, and then TLE mentioned she needed to defrost the Dometic absorption refrigerator, and I mentioned I needed to take care of a few things in the trailer, plus we wanted to go into Waldport to do our weekly shopping, plus visit a few of our favorite junk shops to see if there was anything without which we could not see ourselves living one more day.  TLE was done with the defrost pretty quickly, and we were off to Waldport by 1 pm.

Our first stop was the local clothing donation kiosk near Waldport Flea Market to drop off a large bag of clothing we were putting back into circulation, then into the flea market for our first round of 'junking'.....

.....the flea market is right next door to 'Fresh Mexican Food' where we have dined twice before.  As we were getting back in the car to drive over to the other two junk stores in town (Enough and Lil Joes General Store) I suggested to TLE that we return to Fresh Mexican Food after junking for some lunch in their alfresco dining area to which she immediately agreed.....

The alfresco dining area located to the left of the restaurant

....after browsing through the other two stores (we bought nothing this day) we headed directly to Fresh Mexican Food, and were seated at one of their outdoor tables within seconds of our arrival.  We both had ice tea, and for our entrees I ordered their Camorones de Monterey (bacon wrapped shrimp), and TLE their Camorones del diabla (shrimp with sauteed mushrooms).....

Bacon wrapped shrimp.....simply amazing!

....the chips and salsa were as good as we remembered them, and our entrees were just the perfect portions......just enough to make you want a little more, but not too much to overfill your tummy.  We had a nice view of the Alsea River as it flows into the Pacific Ocean, and the outside temperature was just perfect for a nice, leisurely late lunch.  After paying our check (the prices are quite fair by the way) we headed over to Ray's Food Place to do our shopping, and then home where we arrived a little after 3 pm.  I purposely avoided imbibing any brews with lunch as I wanted to avoid a long nap after we got home, but it was to no avail.  I still ended up taking an hour long nap in my recliner.....lol....all that fresh air, and great Mexican food got to me anyway!

For the fourth night in succession we had another beautiful sunset.....

.....I managed to get outside just as the sun touched the western horizon once again.....it does not get much better than this, and such is life on the Oregon Coast.

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Hitchin' a ride.......

8:57 am (slept in!) - Friday - July 23rd - Seal Rock, OR - 59° F, 72% humidity (very low), wind 5 mph out of the northeast today with a forecast high of 65° F.  On this date in 2013 we were touring Glacier National Park, and spent the night in the Visitor Center parking lot......↴

We still had the 2002 T-Bird then

Lake MacDonald

Visitor Center parking lot

Thursday is our Friday, and one of the days I work alone.  Terry asked me to begin sprucing up the tent area which consists of 11 short sites (11-21), each with 20 amp electricity, and a fire pit.  There are water spigots at each end of the area along with restrooms/showers.  The tent sites have been closed to tenting since we arrived last September, but we rent them out occasionally to Class B, self contained vans.  Each tent site is delineated by hedges on three sides like most of our full hookup RV sites, and those hedges have not been trimmed in a few months.  Since the owner is talking about reopening the restrooms, and tent sites it is time to get them looking their best.  Of all the Stihl power tools I utilize in doing my job the pole hedge trimmer takes the most out of me physically to operate it.  Typically you are trimming above shoulder height, and the hedges can be quite thick so you are extending your arms to help the pole trimmer reach as far as possible.  It is pretty much all upper body, and most upper chest and arms work.  Over the years I've broken both shoulders, and as you know you begin to pay the price for injuries of your youth when you get into your 60's and 70's....I am no exception.  On a positive note I have noticed I get less tired after 10 months of doing this type of work.

I began my shift working on site #21, and managed to get that site plus #20 done (hedges trimmed, grass mowed, and edges trimmed) by 11:45 am when I needed to turn my attention to readying the sites with arriving customers.  There weren't many, but each site needed attention so it took me around an hour to finish....I was home just before 1 pm to greet TLE on her way down the hill to work the second half of her Thursday split shift.

As part of my preparations for our departure in two months I decided to spend time cleaning up the receiving hitch with which we tow our trailer.  I removed it just before we left on our one month hiatus back in February, and it has been sitting in the trailer under a table since then.  It's been a couple of years since I cleaned it up, and it was looking pretty sad.  I attached the wire wheel accessory to my Porter-Cable cordless angle grinder and went to work.  I went through both batteries over the course of an hour, and ended up finishing the hard to get spots with my Dremmel.  It looks much better now.....

I keep a zip lock baggy on the main hitch ball as it is covered with grease....the small ball on the right is what I attach the anti sway bar to

....next step is to clean off any grease/dirt residue then freshen up the black paint.  There was a lot of rust for the five months it was still attached to the Newell here at SRRVC (September to February), plus a lot of dirt and grease from two years of use.  

TLE was home by 4 pm sharp, which marks the beginning of our two day weekend.....thanks for stopping by!

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The brakes......

 7:19 am - Thursday - July 22nd - Seal Rock, OR - 48° F, 94% humidity, wind 3 mph out of the east.....an offshore breeze for the first time in a few weeks.  Forecast high for today is 62° F.  On this date in 2012 we were staying near Coupeville, WA at the home of our good friend Bob and Karen Fenstermacher whose property has a magnificent view of Puget Sound.....we spent three weeks at their property this past August on our way to SRRVC......↴

I spent about 90 minutes of my 3 hour shift  Wednesday up at the big house (owners house) helping clear out a storage room in their garage, moving most of the stuff up to the barn for storage.  At 11:30 am I headed back down the hill to run through all the sites with arriving customers to be sure they  were ready for occupancy.  Most were, but one site (19) had developed a sewer blockage according to the departing tenant.  I think that is the first time since we have been here that there has been a sewer blockage in any site.  I let Terry and Greg know, and then went to the tool shed to retrieve the large fitting we use to unblock a sewer connections here at SRRVC.....we used this same device at Romona Oaks.  It is a rubber ball/bladder with a female fitting for connecting to a water hose.  Once that is done you push it down into the sewer connection and then turn on the water.  The rubber bladder expands until it makes firm contact with the sides of the sewer connection, and once a certain pressure is reached the check valve opens and you get a jet stream of water pushing the blockage down the sewer line.  It took a couple of tries, but I was victorious in the end.  By the time I put away my equipment it was almost 1 pm, and time for me to call it a day.

TLE was leaving for the second half of her split shift as I was arriving home.  We had sun from sunrise to sunset.....something with which we are not too familiar here on the Oregon Coast.  Nevertheless, the north wind was blowing making it quite chilly.  I wanted to sit out in the sun in one of the Adirondack chairs, but it was just too chilly.  I spent some time in the trailer making mental notes of things I need to get rid of before we depart the end of September....there is a lot:

1) The portable electric fireplace

2) The dorm refrigerator we bought when our old Dometic fridge bit the dust

3) Parts and accessories from the old Dometic which we will gift to Glenn and Laureen when they arrive here the end of July

4) A bag of clothing we will be donating to Goodwill

5) The beach chairs I rescued from the dumpster

6) Etc.....I know there are more things, but they escape my memory at this time

I need to order new electric brake assemblies for the trailer as the last time I checked the brake shoe thickness they were getting thin....I think we've gone about as far as we can before they are replaced.  The last time I replace the brakes was December of 2012.....wow!  Yup, in spite of the fact we have about 2.5 months to go in our stay here it is time to begin to think about fitting the VW back in the trailer for the first time in a year, and getting the trailer ready for the open road once again.

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