What a week this has been… First we were able to totally enjoy a couple of days with Ricardo and Suzie in Gresham. As I have mentioned before, they live and have their studio in one of the most beautiful homes in the Portland area and besides that, they have room in the back for us and about 4 others to park their motor homes. For those who know them, I’ve got to tell you they are both doing and looking GREAT and are looking forward to getting back to Cabo for the winter. Monday morning we drove down to AM Solar in Springfield to have the solar system installed. Dale and Deb (the owners of AM Solar) immediately welcomed us in and made us feel as comfortable as family. We were directed to a spot behind their building to hook up to water and electrical and then invited into their office. No sooner than the introductions were over and they were telling us of all the interesting locations in and around Eugene/Springfield. We would be staying overnight and then first thing in the morning we would be moving inside for our installation.
They suggested that we stay one more night just to make sure that we thoroughly understood our new system and then we could continue on heading south. Just after we moved into the stall, Dale and his crew made a test on our electrical system to make sure that all was in good working order. Unfortunately they found that we had a large unexplained amperage draw. Dale told us that with the installation of the solar panels would only be making as much electricity for our batteries as we are now losing. I’ve been thinking about going back to Colbert to have a service completed so this will give us another excuse to go see the plant were Holiday Ramblers are made. We did have a little bit of luck, they were able to take us right in. We had them do a complete lube, oil and filter change, and then check to see if they could help us with a water leak around the bedroom slide and check out the electrical “problem”. We’ve now been here for 2 working and 2 non-working (Saturday and Sunday) days. Fortunately they have a nice camping area with water and electrical hook-ups and free laundry facilities (we took advantage of those right away). Louise and I rise early and move across the parking lot by 7:30am as they are on their way to take the coach into the shop. Saturday morning we decided to take a day trip. After seeing a picture hanging in a bakery we decided to find Silver Falls State Park. The picture was of this beautiful waterfall,
and with us not having any schedule, we decided that this would be a perfect destination. Silver Falls State Park is one of those local secrets that you can fall into once in awhile. There are some great walking trails that take you to 10 different waterfalls that have drops from 30+ to over 170 feet.
We could even walk around the backside of one of the largest falls…the sound of all that water crashing on the rocks below was deafening. It was a beautiful day for such a great place to see nature at its best.
On the way back to the coach we stopped to see the wood bridges of Scio. In this little community they have 5 wood bridges that are still being used and one that was moved to the city park. Someone told us that this little area is known as the “Wooden Bridge Capital Of The World”….(true???).
