Today was our last day in Wenatchee. We are now headed to the Tacoma area for a few days to visit our friends Casey and Esther and then a leisurely cruise down the Oregon coast. The night before at dinner, Susanne and I were talking about how nice and relaxing it was to have a month to spend just exploring a new area. You don’t really get that luxury when you are on a 10-day vacation somewhere. That, and the fact that it gave us a really comfortable way to settle into to our new existence of being homeless and unemployed. I have to say, it is not nearly as scary as it sounds.
I think we have both been on a personal journey of unwinding years and years and years of working hard and living a wonderful but complicated life. I know at some point we will have to settle ourselves down, but hopefully that will be in New Zealand.
Lewis and Clark are back together again as well. I had taken Clark in for a few repairs and basic maintenance. It is amazing that for all the abuse that I have inflicted on the poor guy in the 5 years we have owned him, this is the first time I have taken him into the shop.
The guy at the shop saw my handiwork on the stairs from my encounter with a large rock in the Wind Rivers and offered to fix it for me. $140 for the stairs plus a couple hours of labor. As cool as having a mashed up pile of metal on the trailer is, I decided to go ahead and splurge and have him fix it.
At one point I called to get a status report and they informed that what they had in stock actually didn’t fit so they had order a different one and that was supposed to be there that day. I reminded them that I absolutely had to have the trailer by the morning of the 8th. “Sure, no problem” they told me. I called again on the 7th just to make sure all was good and then they told me that the stairs that they had ordered were defective and they had another set coming today and all was good. I again had to remind them that I had to have the trailer on the morning of the 8th. I added that if it wasn’t ready, I wasn’t going to pay them. He said “no problemo.” I relayed the information to Susanne and she was not amused.
The weather had definitely gotten a lot colder up in the mountains and there was a big cold front headed our way, so the timing of our departure looks pretty ideal. We spent the day packing the mountains of stuff we had brought up to the house. In the afternoon, I decided to do one more ride up that big ass hill to the ski area, around on Pipeline trail and back down via Beehive reservoir. It was cold but beautiful day. My front brake was rubbing, so I had to stop and do a roadside rebuild on it and then it was good as new. Yeah!
I made it to the top, took a selfie and then headed down. It was mo’ colder than I expected and I was really wishing I had brought my wind jacket. By the time I got to the house I was pretty frozen, but I was glad I had time for one more ride. I got in the shower and just luxuriated in the hot water for quite awhile. Since we are getting back in the trailer, it may be awhile before we can take long, water-wasting showers.
We got up in the morning, had coffee, and started packing the rest of the stuff. Sadie hates packing. It really freaks her out. I think all that packing up in Flagstaff traumatized her and now she sees it as nothing good. I think she thinks we are going to leave her. Poor thing.
We did our usual morning walk at Squilchuck park, said goodbye to the elderberry bushes and went back home to finish the final packing. Oh, and I needed a haircut.
We drove down to Omar’s RV parts and service and thankfully they had the stairs on and the trailer ready to go. I will confess, I had assigned a probably of that happening at about 25%, so I was pleasantly surprised it all worked out. We spent about 45 minutes repacking Lewis and Clark and then headed out of Wenatchee.
We had a great time in the apple capital of the world, but it felt good to be on to some new and different adventures again.
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