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| Beautiful wildflowers along the river |
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| Our very nice cocktail hour at our site! |
So with that out of the way, we noticed a small imperfection on our newly painted door we thought we should address before we left Oregon. We called Ricki Mackin of Mackin Street Customs and RV's in Eugene, OR where we had our coach painted. I said I would name the shop after we went through our job and could evaluate the entire process. We had a few bad spots on our entry door which would involve all 3 colors on our coach and we also had clear coat missing on our rear cap and awning rails that needed repainting. We had a very good experience, we had to leave the coach while it was in the shop, but we knew it going in, he let us in the coach each day so we could tend to our cat, Bert, and even got the job done a day earlier than estimated. We felt the price, the job, both the color match on the door, and the clear coat was great and the communication was spot on. Ricki delivered in our estimation, so if you're in Eugene, OR, we would definitely recommend him for your painting needs. So having said all that, we told Ricki we found a small spot we wanted to take care of before we left Oregon, and he said come right in on Monday morning and he'd take care of it. The reason we didn't see it on the day we picked up the coach was the sun needed to be directly on it to see it properly.
So we changed things around a bit, and headed back to Eugene, really not a big deal as we were only 55 miles down the road. Now Jan's sister, Karen was dropping her coach off that morning to have her clear coat repaired as well, coincidences, huh? So as we were driving back to Eugene, Karen texted to see if we wanted to join up for lunch before they headed to their AirBnB? Sure. We enjoyed yet another great visit and great seafood while our coach was being fixed up beautifully. Ricki took care of the small spot completely.
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| Enjoying some more awesome fish! |
So after we said good bye to Karen and Tom, we decided with the detour we'd change our route again. We opted to forgo our foray into Nevada, and see if we could work things out to change a few reservations. We had tried to get into Bend/Sisters Garden RV Resort before with no luck so we gave them a call and managed to get a reservation.
We were really glad we did, what beautiful place! You are met and escorted to your site through a pristine park like environment to, in our case, a pull in site that overlooked a small lake. The grass is like a golf course, flowers everywhere, all paved streets and lots of room, concrete or brick patios, and when you get there your guide explains that they are a concierge type park, anything you need, firewood, propane, things from their store, etc, just give a call and it will be delivered to your site. They pick up garbage at your site all day long. We needed propane and sure enough they took our tank and in a few minutes, it came back full. Really nice.
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| Our beautiful site! |
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| The view out our window |
Jan and I have been in a lot of parks that call themselves "resorts", but this one means it.
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| But through it all, Bert remained unimpressed:-) |
So after this delightful detour, we needed to get back on track to make our reservation for the 4th holiday in Picabo, ID. It made for a pretty quick, longish trip but we made it. Picabo is a neat little 17 site campground with only water and electric in the middle of nowhere, but very near the famous Silver Creek. We actually were here last year and liked it so much, we booked it this year as well. It is quiet, dark, and near a whole lot of fishing. We took a loop trip up into the mountains first, then will concentrate on the fishing.
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| We found a somewhat picturesque spot for lunch:-) |
Then we happened upon some kayakers, and decided it made for a cool coffee spot.
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| These guys and girls were having a blast |
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| Another group |
I also wanted to mention a fuel program that is new for us. We have used Good Sam's fuel program associated with Pilot/Flying J truck stops for years. By joining the program, you get a card that enables you to turn on the pump in the truck lanes, and gives you $.08 off the cash price. We thought this was pretty good and have sure run a lot of diesel through our rig using this program.
We heard of a new program being offered this year while we were still in Florida. It is called the TSD Logistics Fuel Program. It sounded a little too good to be true, so we did quite a bit of research on it before we joined. It asks for your SSN, and it asks for a bank account they can pull money from for payment, both of which made us a little nervous. But in literally hundreds of web, forum, Facebook posts, we heard nothing bad about it. So we decided to join up, we set aside a bank account that is just for this purpose. They negotiate prices on fuel all over the country and post those prices on an app called EFS. You go on your phone and can search the area or any area for the fuel prices that are current. You get a card with a PIN number that you use in the truck lanes of a station. You pump your fuel and then in just a few minutes you see on the EFS app what you paid for the fuel, then in a couple of days the money is taken out of your account. I'll give one quick example of a transaction we had recently.
We bought fuel at a TA truck stop. The posted price was $2.559/gal. I bought 79 gallons of diesel and the pump when I was done said $202. I checked the EFS app and found I actually paid $156, saving $46 which was $.58 per gallon. They charge a $.65 fee and take 10% of the savings as their fee. The price of $156 has already had the fees subtracted. I am not selling this and am in no way associated with it, but this is a real savings! If you are interested you can use the link above and check it out for yourself.
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