Aug 2nd to 6th - Spokane to Monroe

Aug 2nd - Sun - Spokane
Lazy morning with coffee and the newspaper. Skip & Kathy were coming home and I decided to make dinner for all of us so we went for a few groceries & lunch. When we returned, Skip and his friend Pat were there. Skip & 11 other men had been on a golfing & fishing trip to Canada so he & Pat were cutting & vacuum sealing salmon. Kathy returned home from her “girls’ weekend” about 4:30 and we had the evening for dinner and catching up.

Aug 3rd - Mon - Spokane
We finally had the time and a bunch of Kathy’s CDs so we could load music on Terry’s MP3 player. Those little things are amazing. It has 8 gigabytes of storage and it took 1.6 GB (and several hours) to load 307 songs. I also loaded Picasa on Skip’s computer and gave him a crash course in using it.
We went to Bill & Georgia’s for dinner. It had cooled down enough to eat out on their beautiful new patio. Then we moved inside so we could see the cards & board for one of our marathon sessions of Sequence which the women won.

Aug 4th - Tues - Spokane
Skip left early to run errands so Kathy made breakfast for her & us. We decided that we needed a speaker system for our MP3 player so we could listen to music other than on ear buds. First we made an appointment to get our transmission fluid flushed and then shopped for speakers. Went to visit EllaMae & Don where Terry tried out the speakers. Turned out a cable listed on the package was missing and we couldn’t use it so he took it back to Big Lots where they opened a couple of others and found the cables missing in them also. Terry got his money back and returned to EllaMae’s just in time to go for the transmission flush.
But it just wasn’t his day! They got the truck up in the hoist and said “Oh, this is an Allison transmission and we can’t do it”! This is the same place that put new brakes on the truck a few days ago.
We stopped for a few groceries on the way back to S&K’s where they made us a wonderful dinner. Kathy had bought some “flameless” candles (an LED light in a wax shell) so, since the temperature had cooled down below 90, we moved outside to enjoy the candles, more wine and the great view.

Aug 5th - Wed - to Leavenworth WA
We had an 8:30 appointment to get our 5th wheel brakes worked on this morning. After checking out the wiring and pulling the tires it was determined that the best thing to do was replace all the brakes. We also needed one tire as for some unknown reason just one tire had worn through to the steel belts on one side and Terry had noticed it when we were packing stuff to leave Skip & Kathy’s. The tread on that tire and the others is still fine. The brakes were supposed to be delivered at 11. They called us at the casino at 11:30 to say they thought we needed new leaf springs. We had to go back there so Terry could show them two of the old springs that we kept when they were all replaced last year in New Jersey. When we left for lunch at 12:30 they hadn’t stated putting it back together.
We finally got on the road at 3:30 and decided to take Hwy 2 to Leavenworth. Nice drive through lots of wheat fields and then a long hill down to the Columbia River. We made the mistake of staying at the KOA in Leavenworth without asking the rate first - $50.50, no sewer and parked away in the back in “the meadow”. Won’t do that again.
Still hot all day. It was 91 at 6:30 when we arrived in Leavenworth.

Aug 6th - Thurs - to Monroe WA
Did some cleaning before leaving at 10:00 to visit our friends Larry & Barb who we met a couple of years ago in Alaska. It should have been an hour and 45 minute drive but about 25 miles from Monroe there was an accident on the highway. A semi had taken a curve too fast, pushed a large section of concrete barriers several feet towards the river and tipped a load of very smelly sludge. The tractor was off the road but the trailer was on it’s side in the middle of the 2 lane highway. Shortly after we stopped (3rd in line), vehicles came through from the opposite direction by driving partly on the grassy shoulder. Just as we were about to move, the police showed up and stopped all traffic because there was slippery brake fluid on the road and “there wasn’t room to drive past” even though a huge commercial bus had gone through there minutes earlier.
An hour later the trailer had been moved slightly so it was only blocking one lane and we got to go. Luckily, our side moved first. I counted about 300 vehicles lined up for 3 miles waiting to go west. Unfortunately, we had to drive through the sludge spilled on the road so when we stopped for fuel just down the road we cleaned off the front of the 5th wheel before the splatters dried completely.
Barb had lunch waiting for us which we enjoyed outside. The weather is much cooler but comfortable with long pants for the women and shorts for the hardier (!) men.
The guys took the truck to a car wash to get rid of the sludge behind the wheels and in the wheel wells. We spent the rest of the afternoon visiting, had a great dinner and retired to our home parked in the long driveway.