Back in the USA…

Flew back into Sea-Tac airport in Seattle arriving late…around 5:30 or so. Since I didn’t have any luggage to pick up, I was outside waiting for my brother shortly after. As I said last blog post, he picked me up and we headed off to a brew pub to watch the end of the Seahawks game and have dinner. And Dan missed the turn so it took us 20 odd minutes to backtrack to the brew pub. Dammit. Missed more of the game than I wanted to.

As soon as we got back to his home in Lynnwood, I quickly checked the weather predictions and sure enough, it was supposed to snow in Snoqualmie the day after next. Snow along the I-84 route though the Columbia Gorge too, my backup route. Not looking good for sticking around. Certainly didn’t want to get snowed in though it would be likely to be no more than a couple days.

I was all packed anyway, didn’t need to stay at Paul & Dan’s place though I wanted to stick around, but it was just to dangerous. So as I said last time, I prep’ed the car, woke up around 5 AM and headed off at dawn to eastern Oregon and my home initially aiming for the pass rather then the gorge. Stopped for fuel and got a b-fast sandwich and coffee so I was on the freeway by 6AM. Heading for Snoqualmie pass. The weather prediction gave a chance for snow to start falling in the pass by 11 AM but I knew from past events that it wouldn’t likely stick until late that night, making the day after the ‘dangerous pass’ day.

For those of you who have never had the pleasure of traveling through Snoqualmie pass, here’s some shots.

First, before I left the eastern area of Seattle. Grown quite a bit over the decades that I’ve taken this route:

Several miles later, getting up into the high ground of the pass. Started seeing lots of snow in the area and some rain fall on my windshield.  

And then, boom, sun peaks out from behind the cloud cover. Those clouds come off the ocean at Seattle, and bump into the Cascades, dumping lots of rain and snow in the process. They were struggling to get over them when I passed by and hadn’t reached this part of the pass yet. I could see a wall of billowing clouds over Seattle area in my rear view mirrors though.

And soon I was over the summit and shortly after down into the foothills. But the temp was steadily dropping too. It got to be 14 F eventually. And stayed that way for a couple hours.

And here I was crossing over the Columbia from Kennewick to Pasco Washington…which means I was just 60 minutes from home. But note the snow pack alongside the nice dry road. Did I plan my trip days perfectly or what!!??

So late that afternoon I was back home and got the heat turned on, checked for frozen/broken pipes, none found, run over to the store and got $100 of food as I’d eaten all before I left because I didn’t want some disaster to befall my RV and the food to all rot in the refer. And soon was settled in.

A couple days later, after that storm that chased after me hit, this is what it looked like, what a mess…but I was still resting after a months vacation:

And here’s the out of doors. Nice. My RV was/is pretty good in cold weather and here it was in the 30’s – 40’s so didn’t bother me much.

 A light dusting as we in eastern Washington/Oregon call it. Most of the moisture is wrung out of the clouds before they bump into the Blue Mtns to the east of us so usually this is what we get.

So that takes us through xmas. I stayed home, didn’t go anywhere. Son came over for a visit but that was about it. Low key, just watched some games on the telly. Went out to a local tavern for a few minutes.

And then on the 29th of Dec., 2022, the snow was all melted. Time to get my butt outta town…

On Dec. 30th headed south. Lots of snow around but the roads were all clear. The first day of travel, it got weird as I ventured deep into south eastern Oregon. Some areas had some left over snow but the roads were pretty much clear.

And then a few miles further on heading south, not much snow at all.

  Usually I’m traveling 55-60 MPH and it’s only a 6 hour drive to Winnemucca, but as I got closer to McDermitt OR, I couldn’t get the RV to move above 55, then 45, then 35, etc. And then as the day waned and the temps dropped the snowfall started getting thick. And by then I couldn’t get the RV above 25 MPH anyway. Definitely something wrong.

So I bailed out and stopped at the only campground in McDermitt Oregon, Mitchell’s Stateline RV Park. Just across the border from Nevada. My destination had been Winnemucca but obviously, I wasn’t going to make it with there as there was something wrong with my RV. Cost was a freakin’ $40/nite for 30 amp! In a crappy ass RV park which looked like a parking lot.

But I had electric. And a cell phone signal. Parking there gave me the opportunity to do some online searching for a truck shop in Winnemucca that could work on it. Next morning, I’d developed a plan and then looked outside. The campground was basically one giant melted snow puddle. Had to wade through around 4″ of water over to the shore power, flip it off, drag the cold wet stiff 50 amp cord back and stow it in my RV while working in freezing water. Damn. Anyway, got that finished and headed to Winnemucca.

It was around 7 AM so I couldn’t call any of the shops I’d researched the night before but I just choose one that I liked the looks of and the reviews were pretty good too. I was able to nurse the RV up to 50 MPH on a down hill section of the 1.5 hour route and stayed above 35 MPH most of the way as it was mostly downhill or on the flat. Engine sounded okay, but I had a strange vibration when I crossed 35 MPH heading higher. My online research from the night before convinced me that it was okay to drive like that so I didn’t bother with getting a tow into town, I just drove to the shop…had set up the GPS to take me right there.

I get there around 8:30 AM, Dave Schirrick Truck, met the owner as he was walking in the parking lot, explain the symptoms and he got me right in. And it was as we guessed, a fuel issue. There was water from the last diesel fill I’d gotten and it had worked it’s way back to the water separator. But the filter was years old and didn’t do a good job so some water had made it to the engines intakes. But this Cat engine, a 3126e, has a computer that senses the fuel was wrong and so had throttled back the RPMs to prevent damage. I hope. The shop replaced the fuel filter, did an oil change for me, and I was back on the road in around 3 hours. Feeling pretty happy about the fact that it wasn’t something more serious. A bit worried that by stupidly letting fuel filter replacement go by for years without changing it, I may have damaged the engine and it will show up later.

Here’s some shots of the shop. Lots of neat things to look at.

Remembering I was trying to stay ahead of the storm that was sweeping south, I wanted to push on to Tonopah and to get there from Winnemucca, I had to pass through Austin NV which is a steep, two lane road that looked like this when I got there. Yikes! I hadn’t considered Austin when I left the shop. But when I saw all the snow as I gained elevation, I kept it at 25 MPH nice and steady, didn’t have to brake for anything luckily, and eventually crested the pass and headed on down into warmer valleys with hardly any snow yet. It was nerve racking though that pass area though. Especially during those parts where there was a steep drop off and snow on the road with lots of sharp corners.

Eventually it got to looking like this after I got down into the valley beyond Austin.

I didn’t want to press my luck so when I got to Tonopah, NV around 4.5 hours later, considering I’d seen some flakes of snow as I got closer I should have kept going, but I wanted to stop, so I did. At Tonopah Station RV Park & Casino. At the check in desk they have a caged 3 die tosser that if you roll 3 of anything you get your room free, so I rolled it and got three 3’s. Cool. Saved $35. Got all set up in my space and stupidly took a 30 amp space instead of a 50 amp space. Got all lazy I guess. Anyway, with my savings, I went to their cafe and had dinner, very good, just like I remembered their food from previous stops here. Got back home, online, and found that the storm front had followed me and was to hit Tonopah late that night. Bringing snow. Like a dummy, I didn’t want to leave, and next morning, I was completely snowed in. At least 12″ of snow. Much to much to trust my giant RV to not slip down the parking lot’s fairly steep incline at the access I’d pulled into when I arrived. So bundled up, went into the casino and had a very nice breakfast, found out maintenance had little idea of when the snow plow would get there, and was reasonably certain that the main roads I’d need to travel after leaving would be cleared by the time it got to work on the casino’s parking lot. Wasn’t until 11 AM that he had it mostly cleared but by then I’d figured out that I could take the other exit that went around the other end of the hotel. So that’s what I did. Took advantage of the removed snow from in front of my RV and headed back around and through the grocery stores nearly empty parking lot, and on to the completely clear and dry main highway. Yes, driveway was all covered with snow all around the hotel and grocery store as was their parking lot, but it wasn’t as steep as the entrance road to the RV parking so the RV was on fairly firm footing and didn’t slip or slide. Woop!

After leaving Tonopah, no snow hardly at all. The highway and either side of the highway was like 90% clear of snow. And of course I’m heading south, the elevation is dropping so it just got better and better, warmer and warmer. So 50 minutes later I parked at Beatty in long sleeve shirt weather with sunshine and bought myself nearly $50 of nuts and sugar free candy. After that it was a short jaunt to Pahrump, were I settled into the Preferred RV park space for a few days rest in nice warm weather. Yea!

And that was the end of 2022. Arrived in Pahrump on Jan. 1st.

Thanks for reading, and next time we’re heading to Tucson and more eye work.