Update time - August 25, 2023

 After 9 days camping at the Thousand Trails park in La Conner, WA, we headed back over the mountains to Yakima to be close to our daughter Kim & family.

Kim's In-laws invited us to stay on their property in Yakima. We got parked and were very thankful to have water, 30 amp electrical, and a place to dump right next to us. 

On July 11th, we had a birthday party for Jessie (her 3rd) and a belated celebration for Ally (5 years old). 

Later in July, Donna and I drove our truck down to Yuma and emptied our 10 x 10 storage unit and moved it all up to a bigger unit in Yakima. 

On the 1st of August, we thanked our moochdocking hosts and moved into downtown Yakima to the Yakima RV Park. The housing market was still bad for buyers and we were ready to possibly spend the winter there.

In August, we watched Ally & Jessie while Kim & Chris took a cruise to the Bahamas. Right after that, we decided to pursue a different path towards a home here in Washington. There was nothing in our price range that was decent. So we started looking to just buy a used double wide mobile home in a senior park here in Yakima. And we found one. 

We looked at and fell in love with one. We made a cash offer, $4,900 less than the asking price, and they accepted. 

Bam!! And fast forward to today. We have emptied our storage unit and we are still getting everything organized in our new place. We have now spent 4 nights here. I have a big honey dew list of things to do, but we have a home.

There is even a place here to park (store) our RV. They want just $25.00 a month. I think our plans now are to clean up the RV and post it for sale. Then sell or trade in our truck and get something smaller and cheaper to drive. We shall see.

We even got our Washington State Driver's License. 

It is all coming together...

The Fergs out .......

Happy 4th Of July - House hunting in Washington - And An Oops! - July 4, 2023

 It was good to be in one place after our big trip around the US. We were at Crescent bar RV Campground for 11 days, and left there on June 10th. We traveled 100 miles to Yakima to visit our daughter Kim & family. We were fortunate to be able to stay at our son-in-law's parents' house in Yakima. 

We boondocked there for 8 nights and stayed at our daughter's house in Selah while they took a mini vacation to Las Vegas. We had a good time catching up with our granddaughter's Ally & Jessi.

Then on June 18th, we headed over the mountains to Monroe, WA and the Thunderbird Thousand Trails RV Campground. After a 162 mile, drive, we checked into space #17. It was a FHU site for 12 days. 

They have upgraded the park since we were here. They now have new electrical to every site, new 50/30 Amp power peds. 

While here we visited with our son Tim & family in nearby Snohomish.

Brisket time on the Trager!

Our Son Tim, master Trager meister.

Nana and Ryker

On June 30th, we moved on to the Thousand Trails RV Campground in La Conner, WA. It was a 68 mile travel day, but not without some issues. We arrived just after noon and they seemed to be pretty busy checking folks in for the weekend. We drove around the park, through the pretty narrow roads looking for a spot to park. There wasn't a lot to choose from because they were pretty full. We drove through a couple of loops, that had brush and small trees brushing off the side of our RV, with no open spots. Then we found a loop that had an opening. Site 115 was our choice. 

Man, was it a tight back-in spot! It took 3 tries to get it in, and we finally did, but it was just not my day! I didn't know that you could back a travel trailer in and cause your truck to make contact with the RV. Yep, I put a big goober in one of our big dually fenders. That sucked big time! Thank goodness no damage to our RV.

But no damage to our rig.

But the 'bad' day wasn't done yet.

While Donna was setting up the inside and I was connecting everything up outside, the next issue happened. When I plugged into the 30 Amp ped power, Donna verified it was good by looking at out Progressive Industries EMS-HW50C display. Then turned on our AIMS Power 2500 Watt Pure Sine Wave Inverter/Charger. Then while I was hooking up the water, I could hear the inverter beeping and the fan cycling on and off. I went inside the RV to find out the inverter was inverting and not using shore power. I turned the inverter off and checked the incoming power on the remote display. The ped was giving us 121 VAC on both legs, and no errors. I turned the inverter back on and ... there was a big 'click or clunk, from our EMS and the inverter went back into 'invert mode'. I got my meter out and verified the power at the ped wasn't an issue, and the power going into the inverter was good. After killing the inverter outputs and we still had the EMS clicking and going into invert mode problem, I determined the EMS was the most likely culprit. So I pulled the breaker panel out and un-wired the EMS. And now everything works as it should. Issue eliminated...but now running without EMS protection. It is what it is...

We went to visit our son that night and when we got back, found that our rig was running in invert mode. Oh, No! Did I disconnect our EMS for nothing? No power from the ped? I went out and verified that our power ped had no 30 amp power. But I did find that the 110 VAC outlet was just fine so I used an adapter and now our house is running off 15 Amp, 110 VAC.  Probably just a bad 30 Amp breaker in the power ped.

We have now been running off of the 15 Amp 110 VAC plug for 5 days. We have even used the microwave, TV, electric hot water heater, and Keurig coffee pot with no problems (one at a time). I am amazed. But I am glad we do not need an air conditioner right now. 

But we are enjoying the area of La Conner, WA. It is beautiful here beside the San Juan Islands.

Still on the lookout for a house, or some land that we could buy. Let's just say, the market just plain sucks right now. Guess we will just keep looking.... and buying lottery tickets.

The Fergs out .......

Our Big US Loop Trip Stats and RV Life Winding Down - June 9, 2023

 We left Washington (Vancouver, WA) on October 12, 2022, and returned to Washington (Crescent Bar  RV Park) on May 30, 2023. We were traveling the US for 230 days, with the intent to complete our USA travel sticker map by spending at least one night in our RV in each state.

We traveled in 35 states, 21 were new to us states and completes our travel map. The lower 48 completed!

On this trip, we set up our RV camp 70 times. Our average length of stay was 3.29 days per stop. We spent $1,627.91 for campground fees. That comes out to $7.08 per night. Thank goodness for our Thousand Trails membership, Elks, and boondocking.

We towed the RV 13,447 miles

We used our TSD card for our many of our diesel purchases. Washington state had the highest price for diesel (we did not go through California) before we left and when we got back.

We did spend $6,442.85 for diesel for the whole trip, with and without towing. Our average was 11.5 mpg.

We had a great time and saw & visited lots of our bucket list items and visited many of our friends.  Of course, you can't see it all in one trip, but we gave it a try.

We are just finishing up our stay at Crescent Bar. We have been here for 10 days and a week of that, we had our granddaughter Ally stay with us. 

Ally and her sister Jessi.

It is good to be back.

We have gotten ourselves pre-qualified to purchase a house and are in the searching process. It will be somewhere in eastern Washington. 

I have cancelled the auto-renew on several of our RV clubs and memberships, like Harvest Host, Passport America, RPI, Escapees, Elks, RV Trip Wizard, ect.

Kinda sad, but it is time to settle down. It has been quite an experience!

Since we sold our house in Washington back in 2012, these are the RVs we have had.

Wow!

The Fergs out .......

Back Into The Pacific Northwest! What A Trip! - May 31, 2023

 From Pathfinder Village, we went south 233 miles to get on Interstate 90. We will be taking I-90 all the way to Washington. We stopped at the city park at the Faribault County Fairgrounds in Blue Earth, MN. 

We just stayed one night here and visited the Jolly Green Giant and museum here like we did over 9 years ago.

As we got ready to head out the next morning, our TPMS indicated a low tire on our RV. It showed 48 psi. Upon closer examination, I discovered some nasty wear on the inside of the rear tire.

It was pretty bad. We were lucky it didn't blow. I replaced it with our spare.

Then we were off towards Rapid City, SD, 487 miles away. I did stop after 100 miles or so and checked for wear and to retorque the wheel. We had only 13,381 miles on the tire. Maybe a bent axle? I also pulled into a CAT scale and got weighed. Our truck was 4,580 front axle, 6,300 rear axle, and we have 7,680 pounds on the RV axles. That is really good. Our RV unloaded weight is 6,588 lbs. and with a payload capacity of 3,104, we were underweight by 2,012 pounds.

After a long drive and into South Dakota, 

As we passed through Mitchell, we had to at least drive by the famous Corn Palace.

Then on to Rapid City, we checked into the Elks Club there at the golf course. 

I had planned on buying a new tire since we now had no spare. Then I noticed another tire that was wearing bad. The other side front axle. 

Definitely an alignment problem. I bought a Goodyear Endurance tire and now all my tires look good, and we have a badly worn tire (that holds air) for a spare. We will figure it all out when we get back to WA.

We did do some exploring in Rapid City. We walked around town

and had lunch at the Firehouse Brewpub.

We stayed in Rapid City 3 nights. Besides fixing our tire issues, I was able to change out our truck fuel filter. Then we were off, through Wyoming. 

which looked like this the entire way. We did see lots of wild horses in Wyoming.

Then into Montana. 

We stopped at a Cracker Barrel in Billings, MT

and another one in Missoula. 

I also stopped several times to retorque lugnuts and make sure the tires weren't shredding.

Into Idaho.

Then one last stop at the Elks in Coeur d'Alene, ID.

And we were back in Washington state. We are camped at our old stomping grounds, Crescent Bar Thousand Trails. 

It is good to be 'home' again and will be stopped for a while. 

Stay tuned for a re-cap of the entire trip around the states. 

The Fergs out .......