Not Leaving Town

We got up this morning knowing we had finished at AM Solar and it was time to leave Eugene, Oregon. But we had a few things to do first.

Greg stopped by our RV on his way into the shop to be sure everything was working right and we visited awhile. Then Deb joined us to take pictures in case we decide to write a testimonial for them once we figure out how all this works for us.  

After breakfast when we went into the office to say goodby to the rest of them we mentioned we had errands to run before we left. When Deb learned one of them was to buy packing tape so we could mail back the seat we will not be using on the Segway she insisted she should help us do that. So she packed it and weighed it and checked rates and told us she could send it by UPS cheaper than we could do that or mail it. So we gave her the postage money and let her do her thing.  She really likes to help people.

We finally left AM Solar about 11 a.m.

And went, of course, to WalMart. It’s amazing to me how quickly we run out of stuff. We are going to have to learn to plan our food supplies better if we are going to be able to park out in the boonies for extended periods of time.

That done we went to the gas station to get diesel and propane. It’s still weird to me to have station attendants fill our gas tank for us. I think Oregon is the only state doing that.

Then we went to the post office to pick up our mail. We don’t get a lot of mail since we do everything we can online but we do try to remember to have mail forwarded to us whenever we know where we are going to be at least four days in advance. Since we tend to make our plans by the hour instead of the week that can be challenging.

Then we went to the local Social Security office. Dave will be 62 next month so he spent part of last evening on the computer applying for social security. But they need to actually see certain documents. So we took those documents into the local office today and finished the application process. Sometime early next year money will start magically showing up in our bank. It will be nice to have some coming in instead of it all going out.

Then we went shopping for a book. At AM Solar I discovered one called Adventures on America’s Public Lands describing all the Bureau of Land Management Lands and what they have to offer. Since we can camp free or cheap on those lands we want to own this book. Border’s said they could order it for us but we won’t be here when it comes in. Barnes and Noble said they could order it for us but… REI didn’t have it listed on their website so we didn’t even try their store. I guess we’ll have to order it online when we know where we are going to be far enough in advance to get it there.

As we began discussing what we’d like to do for lunch we saw a Red Robin restaurant. We really like their burgers so we decided to go there. Their parking lot was too small for us to get into so I directed Dave into a lot next door.  

I really must learn to look up when choosing parking places. We broke some branches off some low hanging trees. Dave actually had to climb up the ladder on the back of our RV and pull the branches off our rig. Oops.

We’ve been using Google Maps on Dave’s iPhone to help us find places. We needed to buy a couple of small file boxes so Dave entered Staples into the search box and it found three of them not far away. So we drove to the closest one but it didn’t look like an area where there would a Staples store. So we stopped at a curb and Dave looked at the details of this one. It’s a place that sells nails, wire, staples, etc. So he looked at the details of the next one and it was a real Staples office supply place.

But on the way there we passed an Office Depot so we turned into the next driveway which connected with Office Depot’s parking lot. That meant we were able to buy file boxes that match the one we bought at Office Depot before we left Minneapolis. I guess some wrong turns become right ones.

Now it was late afternoon and we were finally ready to leave town. So we drove four miles south on I-5 and stopped at Deerwood RV Park. At least we are now on the correct side of town for leaving tomorrow.

TTYL,

Linda