Lousy drive, happy stop

It’s our very first RV park. Easy freeway access! It seems just fine. Yellowstone it’s not, but, really, geysers are overrated.

Spacious end-unit campsite. Do they call it a campsite? It’s a parking pad. Quite nice, for what it is.

It was quite the trip today. Google Maps says it’s a 4.5 hour drive, but that’s at the speed limit, and we never got close. Just poked along at 55 mph, sometimes a little faster, sometimes a little slower. This was almost entirely an I-5 experience, which is another way of saying… trucks. Oh so many of them. About 6 hours for us, including stops for dog-walking and sandwich-consuming.

In the right lane, with Wally’s window behind me slightly cracked. (Has to be, or he starts panting and then does his chimp impression — quite good at it, he is.) Going 55. Next lane over? A few cars, I think, possibly. But mostly 90,000-ton trucks, going 70. It’s what they do. (I think it’s what they have to do, what with their schedules and their economics.) A few other vehicles, but mostly these behemoths.

No big deal, really, except it was also raining a bunch. Nothing torrential, just a light, steady rain, a saturated roadway, surrounded by billions of droplets, suspended, waiting, until our windshield arrives, then splat. The wiper blades are still fairly new but they were working hard. The road noise, admitted by Wally’s window, triples with all the water. But, really, it was only distracting, only relentlessly irritating, only enough to make you dig your fingernails into your thigh just for the distraction, when a behemoth truck went by. Only about every 27 seconds.

NOTE: I don’t mean to complain here. This is a kind of working vacation for me, and I’m privileged to be able to do it. And I have the whole team with me to make it ridiculously easy. For example: the tuna sandwich on Dave’s Killer Bread, enjoyed at a lovely rest area somewhere near Woodland, Washington. The wagging tails when we brought the dog’s vest-harnesses out this morning — when they knew, at last, that they were coming with us, wherever it was we were headed.

Before Portland, the rain abated. Then, when we took the 205 bypass to avoid downtown, the traffic abated — somewhat. I began to focus on Gas Mileage. Was it any better than it had been on our earlier trips?

Yes. We had re-distributed weight — remember, we talked about weight — and yesterday I had removed the kayak rack from the roof, in an attempt to enhance TinMan’s aerodynamic qualities for this long, sans-kayak trip. One more thing: I drove, perhaps, just a bit slower than on our previous trips. I tried to stay around 55 instead of 58. We had planned short travel legs each day, so why hurry?

Our best gas mileage to-date had been on our February trip to Cape Disappointment — 13.1 mpg. Today we got 14.5. Glorious. Isn’t it? Sure it is.

On the forum I visit far too often, some of my fellow Escape Trailer enthusiasts say they rarely venture on to a freeway. (Most of these people seem to be retired; they owe their time only to themselves; nice!) I think they might be onto something.

So… it’s an RV park by the freeway. They call it an RV Resort. What? They must have marketing people involved. It’s really pretty nice, given the location.

Sure, it’s right by the freeway. But look at this view, steps from Toto’s parking pad.

That’s all for the moment… back on the road and over the mountains today.