12-8-08 Monday (Slide into Seattle)

Today was travel to Seattle day. We like to call it, "Travel to Seattle Day". Ingenious, no? Anyway, as we retracted the slide, it was jambing a little and stuck out about an inch. We couldn't get the slide to come in all the way. I even asked it nicely. Somehow, it managed to scrape some of the rubber coating into a ball on top of the slide roof. We put it back out. We trimmed what peeled and tried again. It's so out of whack we couldn't get it to go in all the way. I think some of the weatherstrip is damaged now from it coming in all crooked. We tried so many different things. In the meantime, Jim stepped in shit. Life just isn't complete without a little shit on the sneakers. Anyway, finally, he made some adjustments enough to get it closed all the way. We secured it with the tether straps and began the journey.

We're behind our schedule. We'll now arrive after dark. I hate that because we have to use lanterns and flashlights to setup. Sometimes it's so dark we can't see the site numbers.

We stop off at a rest area. Jim walks the dog and steps in shit. Yes, again. This time on his boots.

Next rest area stop, we decide to have lunch. As I get the food set up, Jim smokes a cigarette while walking around the RV and notices that on the driver's side, the wheel skirting is broken off. We can't find any impact damage. It looks like it came loose, and then broke in half. Now it's real attractive looking.

Why must we leave RV parts in different states? Why? We left paint at a gas station pump pole in Missouri. We left our awning in Arizona. We've left hydraulic jack fluid in many a state. Now, we've left our wheel skirt in Washington.

We've named the RV "Rolling T.U.R.D. (Torn Up Road Demon)".

Here's some photos from the day's drive.

In the photo above, the frost made everything pretty.

In the photo above: Should we pass? We did, successfully.

We arrived at "Blue Sky RV Park" in Issaquah, Washington (outside Seattle) in the dark. There's about 30 of those nylon inflatable Christmas things around the park. It's really nice to look at. You know, the ones with the fan running inside it, and they're lit up from within? Really impressive. It was too dark to take pictures of the park, I'll take some tomorrow. The park is also terraced so all of the sites are staggered up and down. The highway is very close but since the park is heavily wooded and up higher, we can barely hear it. Yay, a nice park so far.

We grabbed the lantern and it won't work. I recently replaced a bulb in it. One of the 8 batteries leaked. We'll deal with that later. We set up, and here I am. Sigh.