Mar 19 - End of Winter; Journal on Hiatus

We're in Vancouver Washington. The 180 mile drive up from Sutherlin yesterday, Monday, was good, but we always marvel at the amount of traffic on I-5... even on a Monday when it's presumed many folks are at work. We took on 73 gallons of #2 diesel between Salem and Portland where we found it for $3.999/gallon. I'm told it's good to have the tank as full as possible when parking for a longer period of time in order to keep condensation from forming in the tank. And in a wet climate like the Pacific Northwest, especially in the Spring, they don't get much wetter than this.

The plan is to be here for the next 6 weeks or so. The project jar is full so there won't be much lounging around. We'd like to get a start on outfitting our apartment at our daughter and son-in-laws house... one of the early steps in moving on to Sabbatical II. (My son, the engineer, thinks we really ought to call it "Sabbatical 2.0") We have child care responsibilities on the calendar, including a few overnight (full-time) stints. And there's a number of projects that we'd like to get a start on up in Seattle at our son and daughter-in-laws house too.

And on top of all that we experienced problems with the levelers (the jacks) on the bus-house when we parked in the RV park yesterday. Other than mentioning it, I won't go into detail on this one as it could take up more time and space than I'm willing to give it right now. I will say that we're sorta' level at the current time and there's no emergency that has to be dealt with immediately, but I've got to talk to the manufacturer and some experts before I know how I'm going to proceed. The one good thing is that we're here, in a land with a lot of those resources close-by, instead of out in the middle of the desert and hundreds of miles from anyone who even knows what a leveler does.

Our life in the bus-house consists of alternating periods of travel and "sitting" (being parked in one place for extended periods of time). This post represents the end of our Fall/Winter 2012-2013 travel leg, which started on November 5 when we left our Summer/Fall camp in Wisconsin. If my math is correct, this was the longest period of travel that we've done since we started fulltiming. During those 134 days, we put on a hair more than 5,300 miles, bought 675 gallons of diesel for which we paid about $2,600 (an average of 3.86/gallon), spent about $2,100 for camping and RV parking (an average of about $16/night). So, for fuel and camping, ($4,700/134) we averaged $35 per day. I don't know how that stacks up compared to other folks doing the same thing, but it seems reasonable to us.

During our stay here in Washington, I'm going to put this Journal on hiatus. Don't look for any updates... although I reserve the right to pump out something if I'm motivated. We plan to start the next leg of our travels about May 1 and our regular updates will resume at that time.

Thanks for following along.