Hello Mr. Jello........

 8:06 am - Friday - October 15th - Cle Elum, WA - 39° F, 100% humidity, wind 1 mph out of the northwest....heavy overcast today with a forecast high of 59° F.  On this date in 2016 TLE and I were having dinner with long time friend Don Neff at Christy Hill Lakeside Bistro in Tahoe City.....it was a stormy night on Lake Tahoe......↴

On a stormy day Lake Tahoe looks like the ocean

Our Jello plan for Thursday, our departure day, was to be at the Clinton/Mukilteo Ferry (on the south tip of Whidbey Island) before 12 pm, and hope to make it on the 12:30 or 1 pm ferry to the mainland.  We only had around 146 miles to our planned destination for the day.  No reservations are allowed on this ferry, so you just show up, and they put you on when they can.

By 9:45 am we had moved the Newell up the hill to pavement, and then Bob dropped the trailer onto the hitch of his 2004 Ford dualie to do the same.  By 10:30 am we had the trailer dropped onto the hitch of the Newell and we were ready to roll our wheels, but then Mr. Jello winked at us......before we depart each location TLE walks to the back of the trailer and we do a 'light check'.  A 'light check' means we check to be sure the turn signals, the brake lights, the emergency flashers, and the running lights are all working.  When we arrived 11 days prior all were working fine, but on this morning only the right turn signal worked, and the running lights.....nothing else worked...doh!  The trailer is connected to the Newell 12 volt system via a 7 pin connector at the rear of the coach.  Each pin controls one thing....it could be the brake lights, or turn signals, or running lights.  I first checked the ground terminal for all the wires going to the trailer, and saw a little corrosion, so I cleaned all the connections, and things improved slightly.  I sprayed some electrical miracle juice into the female end of the cord from the trailer, but sill nothing.  By this time it was around 11:15 am, so I decided that at least we have running lights on the trailer, so we would proceed south to the ferry, and then while waiting to board the ferry I would do some more trouble shooting.  

It's about a 1/2 hour drive to the ferry, and we arrived there just before 11:45 am and were put in lane #4 to board the 12:30 pm ferry.  While we were waiting I asked TLE if I could have one of her emery boards, which I whittled down to fit into the female pins on the trailer cord.  I sanded each of the seven pins, then reinserted the connector into the 7 pin connector on the coach.  I noticed that two of the pins in particular were showing a lot of corrosion, so I gave them special attention.  TLE then walked back to the back while I went through the turn signals, brake lights, running lights, and flashers......to each she gave a 'thumbs up'.  I've said this before, and I'll say it again.....it is almost always something simple.

With our electrical problem solved we boarded the ferry for the 10 minute ride to the mainland......

....TLE managed to get some video of us exiting the ferry and merging onto SR-525.....

.....SR-525 would take us to I-405, which would take us south avoiding the terrible Seattle traffic to I-90 eastbound.  As we edged southward the traffic became lighter, and then we merged into the eastbound lanes of I-90 where traffic became even lighter.  It rained occasionally, but never hard, and never for very long.....

....we even caught sight of a rainbow......we were about 14 miles from our destination, and it appeared we would arrive by 3:15 pm.....

.....as luck would have it Mr. Jello winked at us again, and traffic stopped....never for long, but I actually turned off the big Detroit Diesel a few times while waiting for traffic to move again.  As it turned out there was some road construction at a bridge around 5 miles from our destination, and the delay caused us to arrive at our destination around 4:15 pm....an hour later than we hoped....oh well....where do we have to be, right?

Many Washington State Rest Areas allow overnight parking, so for the first time in our almost ten years of travel we spent the night in a Rest Area.  Most of Washington's Rest Areas also have free dump stations for RV's, and the one we overnighted at  (Indian John Hill Rest Area) is one of those.....there were several other RV's spending the night with us.....

....TLE and I spent the night reading, and I would check my phone occasionally to see what the score of the Dodger/Giants game was.  This was a do, or die game for both teams to see who would advance to the NLCS.  Around 9:40 pm the news came in....Dodgers win 2-1 in San Francisco.  Now on to the NLCS (National League Championship Series).

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