Living on the Road

with Jim and Gayle

July, 2018

We started July in Desert Aire.  Both boat motors needed a lot of work done to them this year.  Jim wasn't sure that he'd be successful repairing them.  If he couldn't repair them, then we would need to take the boat to a boat repair shop.  Boat repair shops have several months waiting so Jim needed to work on them early in case he couldn't fix them.  He successfully replaced the entire lower unit on the big motor and the water pump on both the big and the small motor  A job well done!

This put us in eastern Washington.  We decided to visit friends Scott and Joan in Richland.  Joan spoiled Max.

Leaving Richland, we went to northern Idaho to Stoneridge.  This was the first time we've been back since our good friend Mary Ellen died (they had an RV lot there and we'd visit them).  We enjoyed our stay.  We rented a very nice lot for the week.  My friend, Libby, lives there.  We were able to play pickleball together several mornings.
Mike and Libby took us to the Bird Aviation Museum and Invention Center, founded by Forrest Bird, inventor of, among other things, an infant respirator.  The planes in the collection were his personal airplanes.

On our way to Stoneridge, we were hit by a rock, knocking a huge chip out of the windshield.  Luck was with us as our friends, Dick and Rosemary, probably two of the best windshield chip repair people, were also at Stoneridge.  They successfully filled the chip so, hopefully, it won't run.

One evening, I noticed we didn't have any "shore" power.  We were running off of our batteries.  It took Jim a while (in the dark) to determine that the power cord's power reel was shorting out.  He was able to remove the reel and rewire the power cord directly into the coach.  He now has to manually stow the cord until we get someplace where he can order a replacement reel.

The day we were scheduled to leave Stoneridge, Max wouldn't get out of bed.  When we stood him up, he collapsed immediately.  Crap, this is not good.  We immediately thought he had another ruptured disc and we needed to get him to the WSU Vet School.  Fortunately, we were only 3.5 hours away.  We quickly "broke camp" and headed to Pullman.  I called them and they said they would see us in their emergency clinic as soon as we arrived.  By the time we got there, Max wouldn't stand at all.  We handed him over to the neurology department and held our breath.  An hour later, they came out all smiles.  They had run a battery of neurological tests (twice) and he had passed them all.  There was nothing wrong with Max's back.  The problem -- he had a very sore rear foot.  With his weak back, from the previous operation, he was unable to "pack a leg", so couldn't hobble on three legs, so he'd just collapse.  Whew!  We stayed a week in Pullman, just to be sure he was okay.

While we were hanging out in Pullman, I happened to text our fishing guide friend, Brett, to see how his fishing was going.  He is fishing all of July for sockeye salmon in Brewster, WA.  Sockeye are the size of a large trout.  We decided to go check it out.  Brett generously took Jim and me fishing two afternoons.  Wow, what a difference from fishing for King salmon.  There's a goodly number of sockeye, but you have to fish with barbless hooks and they easily steal the bait without getting caught.  The first day, I must have had over a dozen bites, but only managed to land one.  Jim was better -- he landed 5.  The second time, we both landed 3.  It was fun and really nice of Brett.  We will probably spend next July there with our own boat.

Our toilet broke the last day in Brewster.  Fortunately, we were heading to the Spokane area where there are a lot of RV stores.  Jim was able to buy a new toilet and install it.  Not a fun job!

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