Smoky Washington & Idaho - Dalton Gardens, ID - August 20 - August 26, 2015

Another trip to the RV shop. Jacks are fine now, but still not working. Seems the control board is bad now. It is on order. But we defrosted our refrigerator again, and this time used the blow dryer on the door seals. I heated, softened them, and 'pooched' them out.

The next morning, the temp was 24 degrees in the food section! Never seen it that cold. I have the temp setting on 4 of 9 and everything sure looks good.
Again, we'll see.

While still at Crescent Bar, I still did my morning and evening walks. There are so many fires in the state, the smoke is thick ... everywhere.

Donna has a job here at Crescent Bar next year. We will get here in April next year. It should be fun.
Sunday, we had a move day, 188 miles Eastward

to the Little Diamond Thousand Trails Resort by Newport, WA. This is a combination KOA/TT park pretty close to the WA/ID border. Still smoky, but a little better than central WA.
We got a nice 50 Amp pull through site.

This is a nice clean wooded park, with a lake.

One of our 'bucket list' items was to visit and stay in all the Thousand Trail parks. This is the last TT park in WA state that we needed. We have now stayed in all the TT parks in WA (12), OR (5), and NV (1). Later this year, we hope to add all of CA (16) later too. That is  27 TT parks we have stayed at.

We also traveled a few miles into Idaho and found a couple of geocaches. Now that we have 'claimed'one in Idaho, we have now found geocaches in 20 states. A total of 109 finds. This is me as we claimed an Earthcache along the Pend Oreille River.

After 2 days at Little Diamond, we moved on a few miles to Dalton Gardens, Idaho. We are moochdocking at a friend's house. We are with several members of the Christian Fellowship BOF (Escapees Birds of a Feather) group.

Four of the rigs here belong to Solos. The Solos are another Escapees BOF. What a great bunch of folks. Great fellowship.

Two headed out this morning. The rest of us are heading to Newport, WA Thursday. We all will be meeting up with Chapter 39 (another Escapees Chapter group) and we will attend the Newport Bluegrass Music festival.
Fun, fun!

Some Goodbyes, Windows 10, & Future Plans - Quincy, WA - August 13 - August 19, 2015

As we complete our current stay at the Thunderbird TT Park, these 8 days here have gone by quickly. We watched our Grandsons, Rome & Ryker, a couple of times.

Our oldest daughter, Candy, is back again and visited us. She spent the night with us on the way back to Vancouver. Our prayers go with her and her road to recovery.

And Tim & Shannon had us over on our last night here for dinner. Tim made a great spaghetti dinner for us.
We said our goodbyes and see-ya-laters. We will miss them and the boys. Maybe we will fly up for a visit between now and next year.

It was also, while we were at Tim's and a good internet connection, that we did the Windows 10 upgrade. Donna and I have identical computers and her's seemed to do just fine. Mine didn't. My sound didn't work, neither did my bluetooth. But most troublesome, was that the screen resolution was not right and Windows couldn't detect my video card. This made my screen look goofy.
I ended up re-installing Windows 10 again, but this time it blew away all my apps. I had to re-install 17 software programs that I regularly use. Good thing I still had all the DVDs and CDs. I even had to re-install Office and Streets & Maps. You would think that Microsoft products would go through this process ... but no.

Anyway, my computer is all better now.

Now Donna's computer, that seemed to upgrade ok, didn't. When she opened some apps, the screen would go black (black screen of death I guess), and everything would lock up. Needless to say, her computer got restored back to Windows 7 Pro. And works great now. Sheeeeesh!

And what's up with Verizon? Technomadia said on the 13th, Verizon was changing their plans. So on the 14th, I logged in and sure enough. I now have 12 gigs data per month to use with our 2 smart phones and Jetpack. And it is now $50.00 a month less! (and no contract)!
Now what would have happened if I never checked??? I'm sure they would have been happy to continue collecting my money without letting me know of any changes I could have made.  I win!

Monday was moving day. Over Stevens Pass on Highway 2, through the incredibly smoky valleys, to the Thousand Trails park at Crescent Bar. We got parked in the same site as last time we were here, right next to my sister Karen.

Karen is still work-camping here and asked if we wanted to next year. Hmmmm. That probably would screw up my SS Disability pay, but Donna said she would. She got interviewed and I think she has a job here come next April. A place to park the RV for $30.00 a month (electric charge), $10.00 an hour, and three 8 hour days a week. Cool!

That will sure help,.... if we have to replace our refrigerator. Yep, it doesn't like the hot days here. In Monroe, where the temps were around 80, everything ran pretty good. Here where temps are 90-95, the fridge got up to 54 degrees.

Since the RV tech said he thought the door seals were the issue, we have tried a couple of things. I stuck a bead of one half inch foam weatherstripping around the doors to try to get a better seal. That's not working as good as I had hoped. Now I am trying this:

This keeps the doors closed really tight. A little better, but no.

Options.... residential model - need additional batteries, and solar panels. We enjoy boondocking a lot.
A new RV refrigerator - Man! these puppies are spendy!
New doors with new seals - I'm just not sure this would fix it.

Tomorrow, I'm taking the RV in to get our new leveling jacks installed. They finally came in. I'll talk to the tech again and get some options.

We'll see how it goes.

In a few days, we are heading East to Newport, WA. We will meet up with our Escapees Christian Fellowship group and attend a Bluegrass Music Festival. Looking forward to that. Then I think we just may start heading down the Oregon coast.

Future plans include Death Valley in Oct/Nov. And Donna has her annual doctor's appointments in Livingston, TX right after Thanksgiving.

Rockin' &  Rollin'

Tulalip Casino & Thunderbird TT - Monroe, WA - August 6 - August 12, 2015

While at the park, I have been doing a lot of walking and discovered a few neat hiking trails. Here is a couple of pictures of the scenery in the area.

I knew we were going to do a couple of days casino boondocking soon, and finally, the weather has cooled off enough, I decided to try to finish my solar/inverter install.

All I had left was to strap the 2 AGM batteries to the 2 we had been running on, and splice the romax runs behind the power panel that I wanted to be 'live' when the inverter was on.

The last of the major cabling done.

All 4 batteries in the circuit now.

I re-routed 3 circuits through the inverter.

Now when I power up the inverter, all the living room, kitchen, and bedroom outlets will work. Not the air conditioners, refrigerator, washing machine, or microwave.

It feels good to get this project wrapped up.


Our last day at the Thousand Trails in Leavenworth, we met my brother Randi & his girlfriend Andrea, in Leavenworth for dinner. We ate at Gustav's and walked around for a bit till we ended up at Cold Stone Creamery for ice cream. Here are a few pics that day.

We left the Leavenworth TT and proceeded over Stevens Pass on Highway 2 and pulled into the Tulalip Casino around 2 PM. We parked in a different section this time.

I got out Tailgator setup, and fired up the inverter, and by golly ... it all worked. We were able to watch tv each morning and evening with no problems.

Here is a shot of the inverter control panel as I was making coffee. We use a Keurig 1 cup coffee maker, but it really draws some current. Just for a minute though.

It really sucks the batteries down, but when the coffee is done, the battery bank voltage jumps back to 12.9 volts. During the day (even in the Seattle Area), the battery bank charges to 13.5 volts.

It is good. We are ready for Quartzsite this winter.

We noticed that there were many Washington and British Columbia license plates all around us. There were also quite a few Class C's and Class A's pulling boats. We were just going to do 2 nights here. The Thousand Trails in Monroe (Thunderbird) was full up and we couldn't get in till the 9th. This is a good place to kill a few days.

We were going to watch our grandsons (Rome & Ryker) for the weekend. Their house is just about 16 miles away from the casino. We spent the weekend with the boys, and I drove back to the RV each night. It worked out good.

On the 9th, Donna followed me to the Thunderbird with the boys, and I set up along the river in site # 95.

The cats, Tinker Belle & Rumble Bunny, seem to like it here. 50 Amp site with no sewer, but we are only gonna be here for 8 days.

I updated our web page (www.thefergs.com) with our current location, site picture, and also updated RVilliage.

These are our travels since joining RVilliage.

I think the popularity of RVilliage is slacking off. It used to be that everywhere we park, there is another RVilliage traveler here. Well, I'll keep doing it. We will see if it continues or not.

The refrigerator seems to be doing pretty good. We de-frosted it again and stuck some sticky foam weather-stripping around the doors to help seal things up.

So far, so good.

Still waiting for word that our 2 leveling jacks have come in so we can get that work scheduled. We are running out of time left here in Washington state.

Till next time .......

Leavenworth TT - Pain, WA - July 28 - August 5, 2015

The tech at A's RV had to remove the brake assembly from all 4 jacks, then manually adjust the height. Then by bypassing the limit switches, he was able to operate them. What he found was that the left front jack had a broken wire on the brake assembly, and another jack had a cracked housing. The extended warranty people approved the 2 new jacks, and they were ordered.

He had all the tech papers.

I thought it was the 'Brain'. But not.

The toilet seal, he showed us how to use some Pam spray, to lube the round ball so it would move across the seal. What do ya know, it really worked. I think we will just 'Pam' it once a week so. The other item we were having trouble with, was our refrigerator. The temp inside was 44 degrees. Thank goodness we haven't lost any food yet. He determined that the left door seals were pretty weak. He said they couldn't just get door seals, only new doors with new seals on them. And the extended warranty folks said no. They cover all the electronics and working parts, but not the casing. That blows!
So I started researching the possibility of us getting a residential fridge. But we really like to boondock a lot. I'm just afraid that our 2000 watt pure sine wave inverter and 400 watts of solar, along with our 440 amp-hour battery bank, just wouldn't be quite enough. New RV fridges are around 3K and up. Hang in there fridge!
The temps were mighty hot and he fridge temp was up to 46 degrees. We will see how long we can make it last.

I finally got done posting all the pictures from my 45th High School reunion online. I have them posted on www.classreports.org. This sure is a great site for getting re-acquainted with school mates. No advertising or spam, and it's free. Just go there, pick your State, City, and school. They all are listed. There was no administrator for our class, so I took the job. If you want to see my work, Visit the Wenatchee High School, class of 1970, in Wenatchee, Washington.
Can't wait for 5 more years and our 50th get together.


One day, we headed into Wenatchee and picked up Oli (our Great Grandson) and spent the morning with him. We played at the park.

And went toy shopping at Target. Then it was Happy Meal time at McD's. Another great visit.



Saturday, August 1st, we lifted our jacks, which do seem to work for the moment, and headed up the valley to the Leavenworth Thousand Trails park. I took a couple of pictures of the rig while we stopped along the way.

Another beautiful travel day.

The TT park had a music festival happening that weekend and was pretty full. But we had reservations. They told us when we checked in, find a spot, make sure the power box didn't have yellow caution tape on it (quite a few of those), and we may be able to move to a better site on Sunday afternoon. But, we were blessed again. We found site #11 right away. And it was perfect. Good power with full hookups. Cool!

Later that day, Tim & Shannon and the boys came over from Mill Creek to visit us. We swam in the pool, played mini golf, and goofed around in the lodge.

I even beat Tim at ping pong. Oh yea! Still got it!

Today it is cooler. The high today is only 78 degrees. And our fridge is down to only 40! It's hanging in there.

And we finally had our social cards re-done. I put them together online at Staples. It was $38.00 for 250 of them.

Ta Ta....