Back in Portland

We just blend right in.

We stayed quite busy in Seattle for the rest of our stay. Thursday and Friday I worked, and dad helped off and on with RV fixes. Kristin stayed busy on inside items - hanging hooks, organizing, etc. The kids spent most of their time in the house with grandma, eating and reading all their magazines.

Half of Friday and all day Saturday, dad and I worked on rig stuff. We installed the rear seat covers, folding bed cover, and rear mud flaps. (The lack of mud flaps left big skunk stripes up the generator bay after the rainy drive north!) Dad finished the front door lock and re-attached the handrail. Both of us cleared out the underbelly storage and opened up the service hatch to find the inverter and diagnose that. Turns out the inverter got in a weird state and just needed a power cycle. The factory installers left out an inverter DC disconnect, so we had to pull the fuse to cycle it, but after doing so it started right up! This was an unexpectedly large relief, as we didn't know how expensive fixing it was, and it could be a lot.

The previous owner’s mud flaps didn’t keep several inches of wet sandy dirt from piling up inside this fairing behind the driver’s side rear wheels. :-/

While our time in Seattle was busy with maintenance and fixing stuff, working was made easier by a proper desk and wifi (though masked Zoom meetings are weird), and I at least felt really comforted by just being home. It's been nearly a year since I saw my parents, and they were so happy to have us, so welcoming and helpful, it filled my heart to be there. We're doing some crazy stuff this year, and doing it alongside them helped me feel like I was launching from solid ground.

The kids mix their crazy stuff in every day.

I was going to need that to get back to Portland, as it turned out. For all the challenges of getting Solomon parked on their property, it was going to be even harder getting out. Hitching took nearly an hour, as the truck sloped away from the kingpin, requiring several dodgy attempts at backing up in line and some close calls pushing on the trailer. Once hitched, we were to go down the street a bit, then back into the main street so we could get pointed in the correct direction. It was about noon by the time we were ready to actually leave with everyone in the car.

We headed south to a tucked-away RV park in Bothell so we could dump our waste tanks. We made our first official dump at their station which was right on the lake. Probably be the nicest view of any dump station we'll visit! It didn't take very long, maybe 20 minutes at most and we weren't rushing at all. We took potty breaks and rolled out to continue south.

One thing I've left out is that ever since the beginning of the hitching process the cats have been in their carriers. They can't be in the rig when it's moving, or when the slides are in (no one can), so as soon as we're ready to start hitching, they go in carriers and then into the truck. So at this point they've been in carriers for about 2 hours. Nearly that entire time they've been fussing, crying, and generally sad. We learned all kinds of cat curse words. They aren't being aggressive or anything, but they're clearly not happy. This really began to stress everyone out by about 1pm. We need lunch, so we stop, and everyone sort of stares around with shell-shocked tunnel vision. It's a beautiful travel day, the fall colors are in fullness, and we're making great time. The trip would be peaceful and fun if there weren't two sad cats crying for 3 hours of it.

Taking a breather at a rest stop north of Tacoma. This was on the northbound leg, on the return trip we were all too nose-down focused on getting it over with that we didn’t take any photos.

We know they're not hurt, and when we bring them into the rig for dinner at 4pm, they're fine. They eat, they go potty, they walk around. They don't want back in their carriers, but they let us know without scratching or biting. We think they just really hate the bumps. On smooth freeway, they calm down, but when it's bumpy they get upset. They were more calm for the back section of the drive, as the road is smoother and they're full of dinner.

It's clear that if we can find someone to take them for a year, they would be much happier staying at home than doing this every week. We have 3 travel days in a row scheduled for next weekend to get from Portland to Klamath, and while each is much shorter than this one, the prospect of doing this for 3 consecutive days makes nobody happy. Even Audrey, who has been the most vocal about how nice it is having the cats with us and how she'd miss them if we didn't, now talks about how we'd get used to them not being there, and how they'd be happier at a house not traveling.

“What’s next?”

So this looms large in my mind. I don't feel ready to give them up entirely, but I fear that *if* we don't find someone to take them this week and *if* this doesn't get a lot easier soon, we may not have a choice. Those are two big *if*s that worry won't change, so I'm doing my best to wait and see.