Repairs

We've been driving around the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, climbing mountains, looking at the stunning scenery, walking through rainforests, and Mark notices that the coolant level is low. So we buy some distilled water and top it up. We drive another day or two with no evidence of leaks, Mark checks it again, and it's low again. Uh oh. If it's not leaking from the radiator, a hose, or anyplace we can see it, there are only a few other places it could be going and all of them are bad.

We call Julie's son, Dan, who's a mechanic with loads of experience & certifications, and who also just happens to live in Redding, CA, about 500 miles south of us. After discussing the symptoms with him he says "Sure sounds like a head gasket." Dang. So we decide to go visit him sooner than we'd planned, aborting our plans to head farther north to visit friends and family in the San Juan Islands and Vancouver Island. We stop in Eugene, OR and spend 2 days with Julie's niece, Sabrina and her family, then hightail it down to Redding.

Dan tests the radiator for exhaust gasses in the coolant system and sure enough, there's exhaust in a place where it doesn't belong - proof of a leaking head gasket.  So now we need to pull the head and put in a new gasket.

Of course, in the way these things often do, things escalate. Without going into the technical details, suffice it to say that broken castings, sheared off bolts, and various other issues slow our progress.

The following Saturday we spend all day getting the engine put back together. We start it, it fires right up and starts making a bad noise from behind the timing chain cover.

We all sit and look at the engine, nobody says anything, nobody has to. We then drag back into the house, wrack our brains trying to remember if we forgot this or didn't tighten that correctly and finally decide we're just going to have to go back in there and see if we can find the problem.

So Sunday morning we pull the oil pan (so we don't have to pull the head) and remove the timing chain cover from the front of the engine again. Everything is where it belongs and all the bolts are tight. There's a spot of silicone sealant inside the oil pump where it doesn't belong and one of the timing chain guides could stand a bit of adjustment, but we don't see any real problems. We clean things up, put it all back together, start it up, and thankfully, the noise is gone.  The engine is purring and we're happy campers once again.

Luckily it's only lunch time, so not wanting to entirely ruin Dan's weekend we head to the lake with his boat, girlfriend and 2 kids to spend the afternoon in the water, just the thing in this 105 degree F weather. 

Last time we went to the lake a surfboard blew loose on the boat and hit Julie just above the eye, giving her a big cut in the shape of her sunglasses frame. We took her to an urgent care center where she got 7 stitches. Since then, she and Dan have repaired the board securing system so it won't happen again. This trip, the old rope swing we find breaks and one of the kids goes flying, luckily into the water. No trips to urgent care this time, thank goodness.

Mark & Dan having some down time watching a 3D movie.






We decide to give Dan a break and head up to Whiskeytown Lake National Recreation Area for a few days. The engine gets a bit warmer than we'd like on the way up the mountain, but we're already at the top, so we continue on to the campground.

A deer helps Mark get his drawers sorted out

Dan, who expresses concern about the engine heat, seems to be sincere in telling us he likes us being around because he comes up after work for a visit and dinner 2 of the 3 nights we're up there. He even brings up a new fan clutch for Mark to install.

We have been with Dan for almost a month already! We had a wonderful time catching up on too much time apart, and, thankfully, it wasn't ALL spent working on the RV.

A flock of wild turkeys cruises the neighborhood almost daily.

We head off for a week for a "shakedown cruise" to visit friends in the San Francisco area. We stop in Ferndale to walk around and look at the Victorian buildings and discover a lovely cemetery.

When we return to the camper, there's a puddle of coolant on the pavement. Dang. Turns out the bracket on the side of the radiator has broken loose, allowing the radiator to flop around and puncture itself. So it's off to the first auto parts store we see – Autozone. They actually have a radiator in stock and let us change it in their parking lot. Great store and a great bunch of people working there – thanks, guys. Three hours later we're back on the road.

Fort Ross a Russian settlement built in 1812

Scenic Route 1 


We continue on to see our 3 sets of friends in the San Francisco Bay area. Have a great visit with all, who we have not seen for ages. It is great to catch up with everyone and all their news. After a week we head back to Dan's to pick up more parts and make some tweaks to the engine. Dan has been the perfect host, he's saved us so much money and time all we've had to do was keep him supplied with cold beer. We have all enjoyed each others company.

With all these new parts it looks like our overheating days are finally behind us! The engine has been tuned up, adjusted, inspected, and tested, and is purring. Lots of small, pesky camper jobs have been taken care of, not the least of which are two leaks, one by the bed and one on the passenger side floor. We're actually looking forward to a rainy day so we can see how well we've done.

 6 weeks later it's finally time to say goodbye to Dan and head back out to our land cruising. We take one last hike together, this time up to Brandy Creek Falls before saying "Adios until spring".

From Sea to Shining Sea

Well, we made it. We last saw saw an ocean when we crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel and from Chincateague Beach, both on June 10th. Today, August 6, almost 2 months later, we got our first view of the Pacific Ocean at Ocean City, Washington. A cool, overcast day but still a momentous day for us in our little RV.

We've seen quite a few roadside chain saw wooden statuary artists. Most of them are quite impressive. It looks like some even used Mark as a model!

Quinault Lake has LOTS of activities to offer for tourists – this is the busiest sign of its type we've seen so far.

Quinault valley is home to 6 "champion trees", some World record and some US record holders.

The Olympic Rainforest receives about 12 feet of rain per year! The tree roots are very shallow as they do not need to burrow down to get the moisture they need. Therefore they tend to be top heavy and are prone to falling. The downed trees, as well as felled tree stumps, serve as a water and nutrient source so seeds that fall on them can root in the rotting wood. These "nurse logs" and their adopted children make for intriguing tree structures.

 We'd heard that Fork Timber Museum was great and it was – well worth the price of admission.

On a whim we decided to drive up to Neah Bay. Ozette is the most NW town in the contiguous United States. It was a rainy, cool day, typical weather that the Olympic peninsula is famous for. What a great drive along the rugged coast to the Makah Indian Reservation! In spite of the rain we could even see Vancouver Island, Canada across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. We paid a visit to the outstanding Makah Museum where we learned lots about these Pacific Northwest natives. An archealogical dig nearby has uncovered many artifacts that were buried in mud 500 years ago, showing what life was like before the white man arrived. See http://makah.com/.

 Can't leave the yard art and roadside fun out of the mix.

 After parking atop the windy, pot-holed, cliff-hanging Elwha Valley road, we trekked another few miles to the natural hot springs. Do they always smell like sulpher?

 Our last two days in the Olympic National Park were also the most outstanding. We once again drove up a long, steep, windy road in 1^st gear to the overflowing Hurricane Ridge parking lot and found a spot. There were lovely trails and we happened upon the news that an astronomer would be giving a talk and allowing visitors to look through his two telescopes at 10pm. While waiting for this to start we spent a romantic hour on top of the world, watching the sunset with another great view of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

 After getting up close and personal with Saturn's rings and Titan, one of his moons, we looked at other astronomical features like galaxies and shooting stars. We were also treated to a surpise visit from the International Space Station which whirls around the earth so fast, we saw it twice!

We spent the night in the car park at Hurricane Ridge along with one other couple in a camper van at the far other end of the parking lot. We rose early in the morning (at sunrise - yawn), walked the trails again (this time we had them all to ourselves), then sat drinking our coffee watching the light change and shift on the glaciers as the sun rose slowly in the sky.

We dragged ourselves away from this magical place at around 10am as the new batch of day tourists started to arrive.

 Our last stop in the peninsula was at Port Townsend, a great Victorian town on the water famous for it's wooden boat centre. We sat and watched small sailboats zipping around the foggy bay along with the massive ferries heading back and forth to Seattle.

Washington State

We spent our first night in Washington State in a town named Colville. Of all the wildlife we have seen so far this was our closest encounter. While sitting outside the camper at dusk we saw 3 deer foraging maybe 20 feet from us.....where were we? A Walmart car park - really!

The National Forest Service has escalated the fire risk from 'Very High' to 'Extreme'. It's dry, dry, dry out here.  There were fire alerts for the North Cascades National Park and we were hoping we wouldn't have a rerun of our experience in Glacier. So far, so good.

Looking at the map, we decided to deviate from our planned route to the North Cascades National Park, leaving Rte 20 to take yet another beautiful scenic route through the Colville Confederated Tribes Reservation. It took us south through the Sanpoil River valley which was stunning. A high sided, magnificent rocky canyon with the Sanpoil River meandering down the narrow, lush, green valley. We eventually rose out of the valley and travelled up through high range land. We barely saw any other cars as we headed back north to rejoin Rte 20. (Sorry no pictures)

Statue of Chief Joseph in Nespelem, WA.
This land was given to the few remaining members of 12 tribes after they had been forcibly moved around, starved, and humiliated for many years, like so many other American Indian tribes.

We have spent a lot of time in 2^nd (and sometimes 1^st) gear going over passes from 3,200 – 5,600 feet above sea level, but after seeing the covered wagons that made this same trip almost 200 years ago we feel like we are flying. Wheee!

We spent a few days at North Cascades National Park where we managed to snag a great campsite right on Diablo Lake by arriving at 8am. This is the first place we have camped for more than 1 night since we left Collingwood, Ontario. We walked some great trails in the mornings, but it was so hot we spent the afternoons relaxing. In the evenings we attended interpretive talks at the amphitheatre – it was a very nice, relaxing three days.

Julie decided to take a dip in the lake one afternoon, but she only made it up to her knees - there's a reason it's called a glacial lake! Brrrr!!

We decided to head east back over the Cascades on Rte 20 again for our second trip over Washington Pass at 5,476' above sea level. 

Welcome back to 1^st gear!! The reasons for our decision to backtrack were first, because we had missed a lot on our way in, and second, so we could take yet another scenic route we didn't want to miss.

   Town of Winthrop




So we headed south to rejoin Rte 2. As we drove we started smelling smoke and by the time we reached Chelan it was thick and acrid. We stopped for groceries and asked where the fire was, hoping they wouldn't say it was along our route. We learned that it was at the top end of Lake Chelan, 50 miles NW of us, but the wind was bringing the smoke right down to us. There was no chance of it reaching us so we headed up Rte 2 back up into the mountains for a nice smoke-free night.  

The next day we stopped at 2 awesome roadside interpretive trails. The first was the Iron Goat Trail which follows the abandoned Great Northern Railway through Stephen's Pass. More info on this wonderful trail can be found at "http://www.irongoat.org/history.html". We got to walk beside the concrete backwalls that are the remains of the snowsheds built to protect trains and tracks from avalanches in the winter.

The second was Deception Falls, a lovely walk through a beautiful forest to another dramatic waterfall.

We then dawdled our way west to Seattle to spend a few days with our cruising friend Connie.

At one point we were following a small biplane on a trailer with wings folded along the sides – very cool.