Road Trip to Oregon and a Walk in Bellevue

Remember, in my last post, I made the comment it's always something?  It is always something.  While we were in Europe one of the maintenance items we had done was the replacement of the black and grey holding tank gate valves.  A few days after arriving in Issaquah we noticed an odor.  Those of you that RV already know where this is going.  There was leakage underneath the black gate valve.  Mercifully, it was not a lot, but any is not good.  So Monday afternoon we launched back to Harrisburg.  It was late in the day, we didn't get there until 8:30, but it gave the shop all day Tuesday to work on us.

It turned out to be a really good decision.  We needed a grease fitting, called a zerk, for the steering column.  It was totally and completely dry and needed grease.  Anyway, we ended up going to a fasteners place, a rubber place, a bearing place and motion and flow control place to find a zerk that would fit into our non-standard opening.  Erik filled the column with grease, and the steering is now noticeably improved.  The gate valve issue was a pinched gasket.  It's fixed.  We also learned why our dash air conditioner starts out blowing through the floor vents and then switches to the dash vents.  There's a vacuum generator that's failing - it's original equipment, it's tired.  We'll have to deal with this at some point.  We also had a new starter solenoid installed (also original equipment) so I'm pretty happy about that.   We headed back to Issaquah Thursday morning, traffic was not horrendous through Portland.  Yay!

We stayed at River Life RV Resort (formerly known as River Bend).  You just have to love these people.  The resort has been bought by a church, they plan to expand the main building to they can have more space for church stuff.  They're digging up the pavement in front of the office.  There are construction fences blocking off the turn that RVs need to make to get in to the pull throughs.  We had to back into our site.  Do you think they're offering a discount? No. Do they mention this state of affairs when you call for a reservation?  No.  Do they always act like they're really full on the phone?  Yes.  Are they full?  No.

The oil life on the truck was down to 4%, so we took it in to Bellevue Chevrolet today.  They are a good dealership.  They're nice and they get it done when they say they will.  We set out on foot to pass the time.  This is Bellevue.  It used to be an also ran to Seattle, but no more.  One of the cool things about Bellevue is their tall buildings are not boring.  They do need to work on increasing pedestrian safety.  We waited for a walk sign, and when the light went green, the car to our left jack rabbited into the cross walk.  We knew she would do it, and thus were ready to yell at her and scare her and her passenger.  They jumped; it was gratifying.  Walking around here is dangerous, there seems to be a complete lack of awareness that people do walk and it's bad to run over them.

This is as seen from the overpass over 405. 

The Bravern, very high dollar shopping.

Check this out.  See the touch screen top left in the picture?  That's for the $4,000 coffee maker.  The thing on the right is a coffee cup warmer, so your cup is always at the perfect temperature to receive the nectar from the brewing system.

Apartments.

Look how the buildings, especially the one on the left, sort of blend on the sky. They're very interesting to look at.

So we are now back and settled in to summer in Issaquah.  It's supposed to hit 92 this weekend, which is really atypical for this area.  Saturday morning 10,000 or so bicyclists will head out from Seattle and ride to Portland, OR.  They are going to have a hot ride.