Aug 21, 20214 min read

Goldendale, Part 2

Ok, change of plans.

We decided to have the spare bathroom converted to a pantry. We will have the toilet and sink taken out with the cold water line left in. Then we will have bottom cabinets put in with the water line coming up through the counter. We will also have upper cabinets put it. This will give us more storage. We don't really use the bathroom except to store stuff in the medicine cabinet and under the sink.

This will change our travel plans. We will leave here one day early and drive to Bend, OR. We will stop at the RV guy's place to have the measurements taken. They will then start building the cabinets. We will continue on to Eugene, OR. On such short notice, we couldn't find any place in Bend to stay. The RV guy said we should be ready for installation in a week. That means we have to drive back to Bend and drop the trailer off for a day, then drive back to Eugene. The countertop will just be a piece of plywood for a month. We need to order the counter top to match the counters already in the trailer. It turns out that Home Depot carries the same brand and color of counter. That may take 3-4 weeks to be made and installed so we will do that in Sacramento.

We want the water line left in so Jan can get a Keurig machine with a built in water line.

So far we haven't changed our plans past that. We will head from Eugene to the coast and get back on schedule. Our stop in Kelso, WA was canceled.

Yesterday, we went to The Dalles to hit Home Depot and get a sample of the counter top to make sure it will match the trailer. It does. While we were there, we stopped at a Chinese restaurant for lunch. It was a mistake. The food wasn't great and our stomachs were not happy for the rest of the day. The fortune cookies were the best part of the lunch and one of the fortune cookie packages was empty. It was just a plastic bag of air. It was still inflated with air too. The fortune for the cookie said 'A short vacation is in order for you.' That's fine, but how would I know if I went on a short vacation?

Today's lunch was much better. We went to a bakery run by a Greek Orthodox monastery. It's called St. Paul's Bakery. All the food is Greek. We each had a kokopita, which is chicken and vegetables baked inside bread. It looks like they make a tube of bread filled with the chicken mixture and then the tube is twisted into a spiral and baked. It was good. For dessert, we each go the dessert combo. Each had a piece of baklava, a piece of kourambiedes (an almond cookie topped with powdered sugar). My third piece was butter koulourakia (a butter cookie shaped in a twist). Jan's third piece was a biscotti. We would go back there.

We had one almost clear day found we can see Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens. Then the smoke came back in and they disappeared again. On a clear day we should also see Mt. Ranier and Mt. McAdams.

There is a public observatory on the hill outside of town. We haven't bothered going to it because the visibility has been terrible. Their website has visibility forecast and for the foreseeable future, they won't be seeing anything.

The Klickitat County Fair has been going on, but we haven't gone over there yet. Yesterday was cold and windy. Well, maybe not cold, but down to 70º. After 90's and 100's, 70 seems cold.

The RV park is nothing special. It has gravel sites with dirt roads. It's very dusty. The water pressure was terrible until I noticed they had a water pressure regulator on the spigot and I think it is set for 40psi. Just barely enough for the water heater. Showers took twice as long because you have to wait for the water to heat up, then it would go cold (for no reason), and then you had to wait for it to heat back up again. We should be fine without the regulator.

The dog park looks like a cattle corral converted to a dog park by zip tying some plastic netting on the bottom. Brie can get out underneath the gate, but Porter is too scared of the gate to escape. Inside, it is just dirt and tall dead weeds. We put Brie in and she made one circuit of the place and was ready to go. That's unusual for her.

One of our day trips was to the Columbia River. We drove up and down the gorge. There is World War 1 Veterans Monument that is a life sized replica of Stonehenge. I took some pictures of it. You should see Mt. Hood looming in the background, but the visibility was too bad. Here are some shots of the Stonehenge monument and the veterans of all wars memorial.