Better than planned......

 7:40 am - Saturday - October 2nd, Longview, WA - Walmart Super Center - 42° F, 96% humidity, wind - CALM.....partly cloudy skies today with a forecast high of 66° F, but we will not bear witness to that high as we will be somewhere else this afternoon....Port Townsend, WA were the high will be just 59° F.  On this date in 2016 it was snowing at Tahoe Valley Campground......↴

There are plans, and then there are times when what happens is even better than the plan, and Friday was just such a day.  Our plan was to be on the road rolling our wheels north to Washington State between 11 am, and 12 pm.  Our original plans had us dropping the trailer on the hitch, dragging the artificial turf into the trailer, dumping our tanks, and disconnecting the water and sewer lines Thursday afternoon, but it rained all the day long changing the 'Plan'.

I was awake early Friday morning thinking about all of the deferred tasks awaiting my attention, and finally got up around 6:30 am to type my latest missive so I could begin my work.  It was still quite wet outside from the rain on Thursday, and I was not looking forward to walking around in the wet grass taking care of everything which must be done before we coasted down NW Cross street to US-101, so I didn't begin to do any of that until after 8:30 am. Delaying the inevitable did not help, as the grass was just as wet at 8:30 am as it was at 6:30 am, nevertheless, I forged ahead.

Amazingly, by 10 am we were ready to drop the trailer on the Newell receiver hitch, and within 30 minutes I was coasting down NW Cross Street with TLE trailing behind in the VW.  There is no room in site A-2 to  insert the VW into the trailer, and it is impossible for me to turn into SRRVC's entrance with my length going down NW Cross Street as the turn is too sharp going that direction.  Knowing this we planned to head north on US-101 to the Ona Beach parking lot which is usually not too full in the morning, and insert the VW there.

We arrived there within 10 minutes, and within another 10 minutes had the VW secured inside the trailer.  By 11 am we were leaving US-101 and merging onto US-20 to I-5.  It's been 6 months since we topped off our 60 gallon propane tank, and we had used less than 30 gallons as of Friday, but wanted top it off again as we begin our winter travels.  There is an ARCO fuel station right near the entrance to I-5 north, so we stopped there and took on 24 gallons at $1.99/gallon....that is the best price we have seen in years!  Normally you have to go inside the store and get someone to come out and pump the propane, but as our perfect day would have it he was already there....lol!

Traffic on I-5 northbound was heavy, but as we passed through Salem it began to lighten quite a bit.  Our next planned stop was the Travel Centers of America truck stop in Aurora, OR where we scored another great diesel price using our TSD card.  We took on 54 gallons of diesel at $2.92/gallon....not the best we have paid, but way below the current going rate of about $3.68/gallon in Oregon.  This is the best price we will see for a long time to come.

The traffic through Portland at 2 pm was the terrible 'stop and go' variety......

....but at last we saw the 'Oregon Thanks You' sign meaning the border crossing was just a short distance ahead.....

.....and then the sign in the middle of the bridge spanning the Columbia River welcoming us to Washington State for the first time in a year....

....our destination for the day was the Walmart Supercenter in Longview, WA (a 190 mile driving day for us), and we arrived there without incident at 3:40 pm.  After leveling the coach, and then relaxing for a while I took a quick shower, and then we walked into Walmart to buy a 'footlong' All American Club  sandwich from Subway for dinner.....

....and so came to a close the perfect, uneventful travel day.  Everything went better than we planned, and what a quiet Walmart parking lot we found.....so, so quiet!  In a couple of hours we'll continue our trek northward to Port Townsend, WA where we will spend the night before driving onto the Port Townsend/Coupeville Ferry on Sunday for the last leg of our drive to our friend's home near Coupeville.

Thanks for stopping by!

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