Lots of stuff has been happening in the last week!

We left you last week arriving in the Eugene area and having our TV pulled out, repairing our windshield, and replacing our microwave/convection oven.  Well a lot has transpired since then.  But before I get into it, since we were in a rush to pull out early from the Portland area I didn't want you to think we hadn't done a bit of sightseeing there, even though, at least for Jan and I, we won't be going back, Portland is NOT our kind of town:)

Even with some smoke in the area, Mt Hood looms large!

A view of the Columbia River from the Historic Columbia River Highway

And another

It is a dark, narrow winding road

With lots of waterfalls, and LOTS of people!!!

So as I said the first thing we did in Eugene was stop by Amazing Creations and they measured and pulled our rear TV out to make the new cabinet front.

Gonzo

Then we replaced our oven over the weekend, actually in about 3 hours while we waited to move sites at our campground.

The old one ready to come out

Jan reaching in our secret hole to remove the bolts that hold it up

The secret hole needs some explanation.  We originally had a Sharp oven in the coach, that's how it came.  But Jan and I had a Sharp in one of our previous motorhomes and knew we didn't like it and replacing it with a GE was one of our very first projects.  Well we found out the GE needed 3 bolts through the top to secure it whereas the Sharp didn't.  So in addition to modifying the opening a bit we had to come up with a way to access the absolutely inaccessible area above the oven, hence the secret hole.  We experimented to find the smallest possible hole in which Jan could get her arm through to be able to start and tighten the bolts, and then we used a hole saw to cut it into the face of the cabinet.  We covered it up with a decorative tile and nobody knows the hole is there.

New oven in position 

Tada!  New oven installed, just need to cover the secret hole:)

We killed the rest of the weekend tooling around Eugene and doing a few odds and ends, now Eugene we thought was a very nice small town, actually much bigger than we thought.

So first thing Monday morning we pulled into Elite and were directed right into the bay.  We are so impressed with this outfit, while you are there it is as if there is no one else around.  Their entire attention is on you and your issues, fantastic and incredibly rare!  We needed a slide seal replaced on the passenger side rear and Erik hit that first.

He has to jack up the slide first

Another view of the jack

Erik putting on the new seal

Then we found we had some wear on the bottom of the other rear slide.  These slides go in and out on rollers and tend to wear through the plastic coating, especially after almost 10 years:)  The fix is to install aluminum "skis" on the slide bottom where the roller touches.

If you look close you can see the break in the coating

Lucky guy, he even got me to help:)

Erik lining up the first "ski"

All 3 skis attached

The last thing was to try to fix our errant light problem.  We lost our running lights just at the rear of the coach, the turn signals, brake lights, flashers, and clearance lights all work, so driving is not an issue.  Now these guys are some of the very best if not the best in the industry, so we all were very hopeful that they could fix this weird problem that I couldn't fix after spending at least 5-6 hours on with much help from lots of folks.  

Erik working on the lights

Unfortunately, even the master couldn't do it in the time I allotted him.  They worked their butts off on this problem and just couldn't solve it other than running new wire which may be the answer down the line.  This in no way is reflective on their expertise, these guys, in my opinion are the best repair facility on the west coast, probably the country, bar none!!  

So after our time at Elite, we went back to the campground chilled out for the evening and showed back up the next morning at Amazing Creation where Scott installed our beautiful new TV mount and cabinet front.

Scott installing the TV mount

Our new shelf behind our swinging TV mount!

Looks beautiful, the cherry will age and darken to match in no time at all

Awesome, thanks Scott and Bobbie!!

So after that whirlwind time we are now in Vernal, UT, yeah we've beat feet, cut through Oregon, Idaho, and Utah to get to Colorado where we will spend the next 7 weeks or so.

A beautiful view of the Sisters in Oregon as we blew by:)