August 22

August 22

Today marks 3 weeks on the road, 5 to go. It’s been a blast. Somehow Kari is still sane, and seemingly happy in spite of her close quarters with me. As if on cue, I started the day in a bad mood. I was battling the cable company that serves the cabin-they disconnected us incorrectly. Long story, but suffice it to say there’s nothing like arguing with bureaucracy that trips my trigger. That, and my hip was sore this morning as well. But there was no time for grumpiness, this was a moving day. We packed Shirley up and headed for our next stop, Cape Lookout SP a couple hours north. 

It was a gorgeous drive. Oregon’s coast is amazing. It’s combination of attributes is unique. Spectacular beaches, mountains, beautiful farmland, and the most amazing forests. The forests are simply majestic, thick, lush, gorgeous, much more lush and healthy than forests in other western states. It’s also largely wilderness, with few people. And of course, sunsets…

Then there’s the seafood🐟 So far we’ve had rockfish, halibut, albacore tuna, smoked steelhead, fresh crab, crab cakes, grilled oysters, fried oysters, oysters on the half shell, oyster shooters, smoked salmon, ground chinook salmon burgers, calamari, halibut ceviche, pacific cod, black cod, and clams.

Here was lunch on the way, one halibut sandwich, one rockfish, two hash browns, at Otis’s Cafe in Lincoln City. 

Little did I know it, but today was my day to be declared Mr Preparation. Self-declared of course. One of the realities of traveling in a rig is that you really have to prepare. They’re so small you have to think about what you need-there just isn’t room for anything extraneous. And of course it opens up a whole new world of gear. Guy AND gal gear. We bought Shirley in 2019 so we’ve had a lengthy shakedown period to figure all this out. We even subscribe to Airstream Life and RV Magazine, go figure. Like good marketers they ply you with lotsa wares and test your will power. 

I had sprung for two recent items that were about to save us. A trailer tire pressure monitoring system, and a new towing/service company (like AAA) that caters to RV nerds. We were tooling along a back road, a serious back road barely wide enough for Shirley to pass-hilly, windy, etc, when my tire monitor went off. One of our 4 trailer tires was leaking air, fast. Instead of discovering this when the tire actually blew or went totally flat, Mr Preparation knew early, giving us a chance to get somewhere other than the side of a country road. This was doubly important since we had no cell service, meaning Kari would have had to hike for help while I rested comfortably inside Shirley. We careened forward blindly, certain that we’d soon be stranded 15 miles from the SP. Alas, as we rounded a corner we stumbled on an RV park (even Mr Preparation needs a little luck) We pulled in, hooked up to their Wi-Fi, and called our new towing service, who promptly sent Eric. Eric was a jocular chap who changed our tire and had us back on the road in about an hour. Amazing.

We were in the park and set up before we knew it. The park was fantastic, we were about 100 yards from the beach, where we were soon planted. This proved one of our best sunsets to date-the lighting was particularly striking, there was a whale frolicking in the bay and blowin up a storm, and we were of course thrilled to not be wandering the Oregon countryside asking random rednecks if we could use their phone. 

A little later my girlfriend did her thing, check out her Indy-themed garb: 

As they say, all’s well that ends well. This day ended well: