Awake: 7:07am Temp 37 sleep 6+55 sunny overnight @ Issaquah, WA.
After retracting the remaining (2) slides & disconnecting the shore power, we leave the Issaquah RV Park @ 10:40am, head east on I-90, then southwest on US-18 to I-5 to Flying “J” for a fuel stop. We don’t need fuel now but looking ahead, Oregon has (2) Flying “J” stations & both are inconvenient for our travels. 115 gal @ $3.48 per gal.
With our cell phone, we are in touch with Bill & Debby M. who lead us off I-5 @ exit 111 to park our bus @ Hawks Prairie Casino parking lot for RV’s. Bill & Debby look tough; for the last year, they’ve been clearing brush, landscaping, & had a pole barn built on their property in the Olympia area. They offered to give us a tour & we accepted. They’re eager to start building their house but are caught in bureaucratic delays over the septic & water permits. Bill & Debbie were our good neighbors in Alaska & we haven’t seen them since Jan 2005, so it was really nice re-connecting.
A (20) min drive in the country brings us to B & D’s beautiful Pole Barn with a lean-to apt. attachment on one side; on the other side, a lean-to workshop. The barn has a very sturdy upper storage level as well. A few yrs ago, my good buddy, Ray, convinced Bill that the pole barn idea was a better way to go in lieu of an all metal building. Bill & Debby are well pleased & they should be.
Back to Hawks Prairie where we give D & B a cheap tour of our shrunken bus (slides retracted), then we all have an early dinner @ the H P restaurant & gab some more. Kathy has a ground round steak dinner with garlic mashed potatoes & salad & I have fried oysters with garlic mashed potatoes & soup.
During our exciting gab fest, I lost track of time & all of a sudden it dawned on me that darkness will soon to be upon us & we have 120 miles yet to travel. We thank B & D, wish them “happy traveling” with their motorhome as they are traveling tomorrow & we get back “on the road again.”
I would rather not pull into a campground in pitch darkness but, fortunately, we have been at this campground before & we did fine; arriving @ the Columbia River RV Park in Portland, OR @ 6:50pm.
Melissa calls from PA. Their return trip was uneventful. The boys actually slept ‘til 6 am on Sun, a record. How long will the time difference affect their sleep schedule?
K & I watch some of the 4th & last game of the World Series being played in Denver, a sweep for the Boston Red Sox. We looked for our friend, Gary, who was there as a guest of his son, but we didn’t see him. Then a satellite movie with popcorn: “Miracle Worker” with Barbara Stanwyck, David Manners, Sam Hardy, Beryl Mercer, etc. Stanwyck plays an evangelist whose splashy sermons become big business. Manners is a blind man who falls in love with her. 1931. Kathy reports: “It was OK.”
Lights out: 10:39pm
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