Long Beach to Chehalis, WA

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Blog 09-25-17 Long Beach to Chehalas, WA

To go east in Washington you have to go into Oregan and use their roads, the ones in WA are not suitable. We left the beach this morning much to Linus's displeasure, and headed east and north. We are heading to Chehalas, another Thousand Trails campground near Mt St. Helens. But first we stopped in Longview, WA to go to an RV repair place to see if they could help Ginnie with her electric cable. Somewhere along the line there was a power surge that semi-fused the 50 amp cable to a 30 amp adaptor. They were impossible for us to disconnect from each other rendering the 50 amp cable basically a 30 amp. That is fine as long as you don't want to run everything in the rv at the same time and going into warmer climates that could be a real problem trying to keep the camper cool. There are 2 ac units and you can only run one on 30 amp power so if it's really warm outside it will be warm inside.

I had spoken to the rv service dept and they were expecting us and took the cable right away as soon as we got there. In about 15 min Tom came out carrying the cable and said he was able to get the cable and the adaptor apart and the cable was fine to use, just needed a new adaptor. We had all sorts of terrible thoughts in our heads about the cable not working at all, then what would we do, they had no replacement. But all was well and we walked out of the shop with big grinns and lots of gratitude.

Chahalas campgound is very nice but over half is closed for the season and we had to find a site out of what was open. We settled for a site that was pitched downhill but Ginnie was able to get the motorhome into the site with just a minimal pitch and used the levelers to put the front end up so we are just fine.

The fencing went up in no time and the kids came out running and sniffing all over. They seemed to like their new surroundings and when we talked about a walk we had their full attention. We noticed that somewhere in this park they have a dog park so that was the first place to find. It turned out to be just down the road from us and when we got there there was a little Bosten Terrier playing around. The little dog turned out to be a devil, attacking whatever dog was closest. It didn't matter that Alfie and Linus were 3 times his size, he just threw himself at them and was determined to be dominant. Well finally, it's owner took the dog home and it was just the 3 of our guys there. The park was really nice, fully fenced in and grass covered with a huge area for the dogs to get a really good run. Alfie had a big grin on his face as he raced from on side to the other, sometimes with Watson barking on his heels, other times chasing Watson under the bench. Both dogs got a terrific workout while Linus watched not believing how foolish they were racing around. He missed the beach.

Back at the campsite we met 2 of our neighbors who had great ideas about how to best view Mt St Helens tomorrow. We came here just to visit the volcano. Then they gave us a better route for the next leg of our trip to Crater Lake by way of Bend, OR. So great to have experienced travelors for advice. The one couple have been full time rving for 12 years and have yet to visit Wisconsin and Minnasota, I'm sure they'll get there.

We cleaned the dogs off from the mud at the dog park which took a bucket of water, paper towels and a cloth towel to dry. Watson had debre hanging from his long hair especially his tail, which took careful brushing to remove. Ginnie and I had happy hour then made the dogs dinner and ours.

We can't believe how early it is getting dark these days and lately we have been sleeping til 8 because it's dark til then. The weather has been really good with warm afternoons and cooler nights. It did rain this morning but let up enough for us to pack up without getting drenched. The forecast promises beautiful weather for the next 3 days, sure hope it's true.

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