A Trip To NC & Camper Projects

We moved from the Oregon coast to Washington and our daily conversations changed from tide tables to “whether or not the mountain was out”. The mountain under discussion, Mount Rainier, happened to be out the day we arrived and it was just breathtaking. Similar to the feeling we had the first time we saw the Grand Canyon or Zion Canyon, which was honestly unexpected.

We left our camper at Rainier View RV Park while we flew home to visit our family in May/June. Packing and preparing the camper to be left for a month ended up being a bigger job than we expected. We checked the roof for potential leaks, ate up all our food (meals got weird for a few weeks prior), plastic-wrapped the toilet bowl (not kidding, we didn’t want the water to evaporate and the seal to dry out), drained the water heater, and turned off the fridge.

We had figured no Uber would want to pick us up at 4:30 am for our early flight, so we planned to stay in an airport hotel the night before. This turned out to be a great plan because no Uber wanted to come to get us in the middle of the afternoon either. The permanent residents of the RV Park turned out to be very nice and one of them drove us and picked us up when we got back, too!

Finally, in the air, we got to see where the mountain normally lives, above the clouds.

In NC, we got to hang out with my brother and the best nephew in the world on Memorial Day weekend! We hiked in the mountains, went to downtown Asheville, played at the park, and with a virtual reality headset.

In June, 60 of Michael’s family gathered in Hendersonville, NC where we rented adjacent B&B’s for a spectacular family reunion weekend! There were family history slideshows and movies, pizza/pasta dinners, and wine made from the family’s Cleveland, OH grape juice business that’s been in operation since 1940! Also, tons of homemade cookies and karaoke.

Meanwhile, I finally made our travel maps from the last couple of years and added them to our website. Every stop is pinned and if there was an accompanying blog post, you can go to it by clicking the link on the pin.

Michael tried out our new Dishy in NC. Dishy is Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet that seems very promising, as long as there are no trees obstructing its connection to the northern sky. It should work well in the desert west where there is no cell service, opening up a lot of new boondocking locations. We also hope we can stay longer in more National Parks, where cell signal is incredibly lacking.

When we returned to Washington, we paid dearly for all our downtime in NC. There is so much going on in the photo below. The water tank/lines are being sanitized and filters changed. Dishy’s new cables are being run through the ceiling to our wifi router. And our fridge is in the process of being replaced.

Before our NC trip, we noticed that our fridge was broken. We never really liked the RV-style fridge and decided it was a great excuse to get a 12-volt compressor-style fridge.

Of course, the new fridge didn’t work after we installed it. We momentarily panicked because we had purchased it from a dealer that was closed for the day and their website said returns have to be worked out through the manufacturer’s warranty. That would take forever. What in the world were we going to do? The summer travel plans must go on, should we buy a bigger cooler? Are we crazy? Probably, yes.

Thankfully, the dealer was very reasonable and was willing to connect it to their own battery to make sure it wasn’t our installation. When it proved to be a bad fridge, they allowed us to exchange it.

Travel and meals that do not include protein bars or canned tuna can resume. Next up are day trips to visit Seattle and Mount Rainier National Park.