Seeing Some Light?

We had a recommendation from Barb, the camp manager, to contact Larry's Mobile RV Service. He lives near here. He said he would stop by on his way back from a job in Royal City. It was so neat to find someone who knew exactly what our electrical problem was. The guy definitely seemed to know his business. He recommended that we go into Moses Lake and see his son Chris who runs C&C RV to see about getting the inverter replaced - or perhaps rebuilt. (He also refused to charge anything for making his diagnostic service call!)

We had been wanting to take the old portable dishwasher to the Moses Lake Transfer Recycling Station. So we loaded it up into the back of Toad II and headed for town. They have an interesting setup at the transfer station. You pull up on a long scale where your rig is weighed and you are given a numbered tag. The attendant directs you to an area where you drop off your load, then you come around to a scale on the other side, getting weighed again. You give your tag back to the lady and she tells you the charge. The minimum charge is $6 which is what we paid.

From the Transfer Station, we went back to the junction of Highway 17 and I-90 where Chris's shop is located. I had to chuckle. When I tiold him his Dad had sent us, he said, "what did he not want to deal with this time?!" When we asked about inverters, he right away asked if it was a Xantrex? He said he had several in stock AND volunteered to come out to the rig so that we wouldn't have to bring it into town. He said he was going to be pretty busy until after the Labor Day holiday. We're going to be in Spokane the first part of that week for our friend's birthday party and Forry's second cataract surgery, so we settled on him coming out on Thursday, the 8th. I guess we can live with our jury rigged system until then. At least it sounds like there is hope!

Quiet Day

The maintenance fellows came over this morning and installed a new 110 plug-in on the pedestal. While they were there they redid the 50 amp plug-in that had been installed upside down. They thought whoever had installed it in the first place ran short of wire. They figured he was probably too lazy, or too tired, to get more, so installed it the way the wire he had could reach..!

We enjoyed half of one of the yellow watermelons I got at the fruit stand the other day this afternoon. They are so juicy and sweet. Just the nice cold thing for a hot afternoon.

I cut up some cucumber, purple onion and little orange cherry tomatoes into a bowl of orzo pasta. With a lime juice, rice vinegar, garlic and avocado oil dressing, the salad went well with hamburger patties for supper - and there is some left for breakfast tomorrow.

The Electrical Saga Continues...

Forry has been plugging in and using the microwave without any difficulties, but evidently using it as an oven is more than our jerry-rigged electric cords could handle. I was going to bake orange rolls with some of Brother Pat's walnuts for breakfast, but preheating the oven blew the power...

So fresh pears for breakfast it was!

We went over to Mike's at the nearby golf course for supper. Forry had a cheeseburger while I had my usual BLT. I continue to have to ask that they use butter to make the toast, not mayo, but these guys are good about it. (Mayo belongs in salads, NOT sandwiches!)

We went over to the clubhouse to charge our phones and the iPads. I don't understand it, but during the hour we were there, three different guys came in, used the restroom and left. I can understand if you are at a park without sewer, but every site here has a sewer hookup! And one of the fellows said he lived in one of the mobile homes?!

An Evening Out

At what seems to have become an almost annual event, we went tonight to Kay and Dennis' house for BBQ dinner. The dinner was one they had bid for at an auction benefitting the Christian school in Moses Lake their grandsons attend. I didn't count, but there must have been twenty or more people there plus four young boys.

Some of the people there are ones we only see at this event, so it's always fun to catch up on what folks are doing, who's getting new grand babies, etc. the food was good and the company even better. It was fairly late when we got home, but we had a good time.

And Life Goes On

Life goes on no matter where you live. Today I got started on the laundry, Forry drained the tanks and put the cases of water and Pepsi we got the other day away in the shed. I moved the new dishwasher back into the corner where the old one had been. I had thought maybe I'd like it over on the edge, but I decided I missed that foot of counter space too much.

We drove over to the fruit stand, loading up on peaches, a few apples and melons. We really like the little yellow watermelons - so sweet! There are lots of semis with loads of apple boxes going up and down the roads as the early harvest begins. We also passed trucks with the large square bales of straw and some of hay.

The Mariners were playing the White Sox and Felix pitched a masterful game with Diaz finishing it off for him. Very nice!

I Meet the Ladies

With my hair still a bit damp from my shower, I walked over to the Clubhouse for the Thursday morning Ladies Coffee. It's my understanding that they meet there (the men meet over at Mike's at the same time) every Thursday morning about nine for coffee and just to chat. There were a dozen women there sitting around a double table. I introduced myself  and met most of them - though I'll never remember all the names. Though we've been here three weeks, this is the first Thursday morning I've been free.

Some of the ladies were long-timers, I think one of them said she had been here since 1999. A couple were getting ready to close up their mobile homes and head south for the winter. It sounded like a few of them sort of used the park as a home base while they traveled around to various time shares - I heard mention of Hawaii, Whistler and Idaho. It was just kinda nice to be around a group of women for a change.

The clubhouse is very nice. It's not real large, but it is one of the nicer ones I've been in. The usual kitchen, a library, nice sitting area with a large TV and several tables and chairs. The laundry facilities are in a small room off to the side.

Spokane -- AGAIN!

Ugh, Forry's appointment for the last left eye visit to the ophthalmologist was at 10:30, so we got a fairly early start this morning. The cataract surgery done on his left eye two weeks ago appears to be healing well. While we were at the Eye Clinic, Forry signed the consent forms for the surgery on his right eye which they will do on September 6th. Today we dropped one application of the eye drops and will only be doing them twice a day for the next week. After that they drop to once a day for one more week. At that point it will almost be time to start the eye drop routine for the right eye!

We were done at the Clinic a little after eleven. Since we had just been in Spokane on Monday, we had no further errands, so decided to just head home. We badly needed groceries, so stopped at Safeway in Moses Lake to shop and get gas as well. Since it had been a while, I needed quite a few staples. Which meant a lot of carrying stuff in and putting it away - not the favorite activity of either of us!

I did find the key to Lockbox 10A sitting on Auntie Violet's front step when we arrived home...

Columbia National Wildlife Refuge

We wanted to get a mailbox here at Desert Sun for things we might want to order while we are here. I called the manager to see what we had to do (there is a bank of locked mailboxes at the top end of the campground.). She said we'd need to go into the Post Office in Othello to fill out the paperwork. When we got to the Post Office, it turned out that if we didn't want to change our address by filling out a Change of Address form, we didn't need to do anything at the Post Office, just get a key to Box A10 from the manager. We definitely do not want to change our permanent mailing address in Mount Vernon! We did get a chance to meet Kelly who is the mail delivery person for the area. She told us there are over a hundred houses on that hill behind Mardon Resort.

On our way home, we went by the Headquarters Building of the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge and decided to stop in. We picked up a nice booklet with a map and a history of the geology and decided to drive through the Refuge. Although it was a washboardy gravel road, it took us through some incredible scenery. The basalt cliffs and seep lakes along the Crab Creek Coulee are incredibly gorgeous. The road brought us past Soda Lake and then out at O'Sullivan Dam. It is going to be fun to drive it again when the Fall bird migration begins. We both lamented that neither of us had brought our cameras.

Spokane Again

Life with Forry this summer means lots of trips to Spokane. Today it was the annual visit to Dr. Elmer, the pulmonologist who started him on a CPAP machine two years ago. His appointment wasn't until two, so we didn't have to leave terribly early. After a stop in Ritzville for gas tank fill up and Frappucinos, we still had time to stop by the Group Health pharmacy to pick up a couple of prescriptions.

Dr. Elmer's office is in the Fifth and Browne Medical Building that is slated to be torn down soon and replaced by a new 100 bed psychiatric hospital. You could tell staff was in a bit of a frenzy about it as they were already packing up for next week's move. The visit with Dr Elmer was a routine review of how Forry was sleeping that didn't take long at all.

From there we took a quick trip out to Apria Healthcare to pick up a new memory card for Forry's machine. We also ran out to RnR RV in Airway Heights to see if we could talk to someone in their Service Department about our electrical problem. But they are in the process of getting ready to move their operations out to a new site on Francis and no one was available to talk with us.

We thought about staying in town to take Son Sean out to dinner, but decided since it was only 4 o'clock, we should just head on home. We stopped in Moses Lake at the new Denny's for dinner and arrived home in time to listen to the Mariners game against the Yankees.

Tired Today

You can tell we're getting old. We just don't bounce back like we used to. After two late nights in a row, we just couldn't get going this morning. I thought about heading into Menno for church, but we definitely were not up in time.

The wind started blowing mid-morning. The winds since we've been here have been from the east, but these gusts came from the west. It has blown all day, sometimes in hard gusts that shake Auntie Violet. The big willow trees all around the property have been dancing - they look like they are possessed. Kind of remind me of the "Whomping Willow" in the Harry Potter books.

The clouds began moving in towards evening and made an absolutely gorgeous sunset. I put a couple of pictures up on my Facebook page. (I sure wish I could figure out how to add my iPad pictures to my blog...!)

Some of the sweet peppers I got the other day are flat and pumpkin shaped. They are a perfect size for stuffed peppers for us. We had those for dinner along with cucumber sticks and of course, peaches and ice cream for dessert.