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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Watching the ocean kiss the setting sun.......

 7:28 am - Wednesday - July 21st - Seal Rock, OR - 46° F, 100% humidity, wind - zero mph out of the north.....clear, blue skies today with a forecast high of 60° F.  On this date in 2020 we were at the Elks Lodge in Kalispell, MT which is located adjacent to a municipal airport......↴

Tuesday I was back to mowing and trimming whilst Fred toiled in the picnic table refurbishing aisle.  I mowed site #38 which is Greg's site, and is quite long, sites 42, 43 and 44 as well as 3 before calling it a day and heading for home around 12:30 pm.

A few days ago I ordered complete open end/closed end ratchet sets in metric and SAE.  I have a few of these wrenches in the SAE format, but it always seems the one I need is not there, so I finally bit the bullet and ordered complete sets off Amazon.....they were delivered via UPS about an hour after I got home......

.....the SAE set goes from 1/4" to 1" and everything in between......15 wrenches in all......

.....while the metric set includes 6 mm all the way up to 24 mm......eighteen wrenches in all!  I mounted the SAE wrenches on the wall next to the light switch, and the metric ones come in a roll bag format....easy carry around, and open up to find the wrench you need.  I have crescent wrenches, but it is easy to ruin a nut, or bolt end with them, and I have come to prefer the exact fit....now I have that option.

The sun was out during my shift, but shortly after I arrived home the marine layer began to roll in again, and we thought there would be no sunset.....were we ever wrong.  The sun set at 8:54 pm Tuesday and we got good one.....

.....the marine layer had fled to some other locale, and there was a small bank of clouds just above the horizon which perfectly framed the moment as we watched the ocean kiss the setting sun one more time.

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Litter patrol.....

 7:35 am - Tuesday - July 20th - Seal Rock, OR - 55° F, 100% humidity, wind 5 mph out of the north....heavy marine layer this morning, clearing later with a forecast high today of 62° F.  On this date in 2013 we were at Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada.....it was a cold day......↴

Seal Rocks RV Cove adopted a mile stretch of US-101 running about 1/2 mile north, and 1/2 mile south of the park entrance a number of years ago.  Every few months someone (4 times every 12 months) SRRVC must send someone out to do litter patrol along that stretch of adopted highway.  Monday was the fourth time TLE and I have done that job since we arrived here last September.  We actually enjoy the job because we get to work together outside the park. After donning our safety vests (bright orange, or bright green), gathering together our equipment (pickers and trash bags) we headed out by crossing US-101 to the west side of the highway to walk north against the traffic.  Usually we fill up one large trash bag each (up to Seal Rock Beach parking lot, and back to the park entrance) on this stretch of highway consisting mostly of cigarette butts, and other forms of litter (single socks, face masks, price tags from recently purchased clothing, soda cans, beer cans, Qtips, dental flossing tools, etc.), but comprised mostly of the former.  

After we return to the entrance of the park by crossing back over US-101 and walking against the northbound traffic we take a bathroom break, and then continue south on US-101 walking against traffic.  This section of US-101 (park entrance south to Seal Rock Street and back) usually requires two bags each to complete the litter pickup.  It is usually much larger stuff, and why that is I have no idea....larger stuff consisting of cardboard boxes, gallon water jugs (empty), plastic liter soda bottles, liquor bottles, car parts, and of course, the ubiquitous cigarette butts.  On this day I picked a sun visor that appeared to be from a VW, a newborn baby mattress with fitted sheet (yeah, right?), roofing material, a serpentine belt form a car, a cardboard box. There are three turnouts on the west side of US-101 in this stretch, and man are there a lot of cigarette butts.

In all it usually takes us three hours to do litter patrol, and we cover about 2 miles walking, and that was the case Tuesday.  We started at 9:30 am, and finished at 12:30 pm.  I think we must have picked a thousand cigarette butts Monday between the two of us....mostly filter tips by the way, but I did garner four Marlboro cigarette boxes, and TLE found a whole pack of filter tips....that's a first.  We were home just before 1 pm after dropping off our gear, and talking with Terry and Michele for a while.  By the way, Terry had his should surgery last Friday.  They were able to repair the torn rotator cuff, and reattach the torn ligament via arthroscopic surgery on an out patient basis.  Now comes the 6 week recovery, and rehab plus another 6 months of gradually returning to full duty.

It's been over a week since we dined out so after changing our clothes we drove south to Waldport to have a late lunch at Hilltop Cafe Bistro (4.5 stars on 366 reviews - Yelp).  You may recall we ordered takeout from the restaurant back  on November 21st (I wrote about that here) when most restaurants were closed for dine in service.  Since they are now open for dine in service sans masks we decided to check them out again.....

.....we arrived at Hilltop around 1:30 pm, ordered a couple of Porters, and a Crispy bacon cheeseburger for moi, and a Rueben for TLE.  We chose an alfresco table and settled in to await our food.....

That's ocean in the distance

.....the service was a tad slow, but like our friend Karen says, "put your patience in your pocket, because the food is going to be great!", and it was.  When we arrived the patio was full of customers, but by the time we left we were the last ones standing.  We were home by 2:30 pm, and a few minutes later I was taking a nap in my recliner....fully reclined....sweet!  By the time I woke up from that nap it was going on 4 pm!  Nothing like a good brew for lunch to result in a good nap.

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Scraping by.....

 7:35 am - Monday - July 19th - Seal Rock, OR - 50° F, 100% humidity, wind - zero mph out of the north......slightly foggy, but the sun is beginning to burn through for another beautiful, sunny day on the Oregon Coast with a forecast high of 62° F.  On this date in 2014 I was at Mammoth Mountain riding in their mountain bike park with my good friend Paul Hood......↴

Sunday began with a mild marine layer, but by 9 am the sun was out, and although there was a little breeze out of the north, it turned out to be a great day.  We've switched back to a five day work week effective Sunday so TLE was off to work at 9 am, and I was there by 10 am.  With the 5 day work week I return to two hour work days Sunday through Tuesday, and then three hour work days Wednesday and Thursday.  Sundays are always pretty easy in the park as the park is pretty full until check out time (11:30 am) when you can almost hear the vacuum cleaner sucking the workaday folks out of the park and back to their real lives.  Since there is not much to do work wise within the sites since they are occupied, Fred and I returned to scraping picnic tables  so they may be painted later in the week, something I haven't done for a few months now.  It is finally dry enough to finish the job Blake and I began so many months ago.  It takes just shy of two hours for one person to scrape down one table, so Fred and I managed to get two done between us.  For the last 15 minute of our shift we ran through the sites with arriving customers to make sure the fire pits were clean, and to remove any trash left behind.  

I was on my way home by 12:05 pm, and within minutes I was seated in my recliner watching the final 5 holes of 'The Open'.  Collin Morikawa (USA) was the leader at 15 under par with Jordan Spieth (USA) just two strokes back at 13 under par.  Jordan had a couple of birdie chances in the last 4 holes, but they didn't drop, whereas Collin saved two pars with long puts to retain his lead, and to finish in first place.  Once 'The Open' was decided we switched gears to watch Stage 21 (the final Stage) of Le Tour de France.  It was a very exciting finish to see if Mark Cavendish would prevail, and win his 35th Stage of his career and break Eddie Merckx record, but alas it was not to be he was edged out at the line by a few inches and finished in 2nd place for the final Stage of this year's edition of Le Tour.  I don't now what I am going to do mornings and afternoons after 21 days of watching Le Tour....maybe I'll spend a little more time outside....lol.

TLE asked me a few days ago to give her a refresher course in dumping the black tank, and Sunday was the day for that deed, so I led her through the steps verbally while she did the actual work.  She did pretty good.  This time she wrote everything down for future reference.  Next up was to show her again how to set up the Honda 2000 generator in case we lose power, and I am indisposed, which is always a possibility.  I just went over this with her before I flew down to SoCal to get my dental work done back in early April, so she still remembered most of what needed to be done, but again she wrote everything down this time for future reference.  She was actually able to pull the generator out of the through bay without my help, which made me feel a little more confident.

The fickle marine layer always leaves us guessing as to whether we'll be treated to a beautiful Coastal Oregon sunset, and it has been some time since I was able to post sunset pictures, Sunday was no exception to the guesswork except for the fact that we actually got one at the last minute.......

Thanks for stopping by!

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