Saturday, July 23, 2022- Centralia Oak Manor Harvest Host site and Onalaska
Ben fixed Joey’s mail box which had the lock broken in a prying attack. She had a replacement lock, but the threads on the shaft were stripped or damaged. Prior attempts to repair had also mounted the latching arm backwards, leaving excessive clearance and causing failure of the latch to engage the flange. Ben repaired it using epoxy on the nut and correctly mounting the arm. We dropped John and Price off at Sea-Tac Rental Car facility to pick up John’s rental car. The pick up lane has plenty of clearance for shuttle vans and buses. John ended up with a Hyundai Elantra sedan.
We caravanned to the Black Bear diner in Federal Way, but had an over 35min wait. Instead of waiting, we caravanned to the Tacoma Lakewood Black Bear diner and got seated in 15-20min. We ended up parking the RV near the casino in back parking lot because the front lot was full.
Our next stop was the Lacey Costco for refueling. 27622 miles on odometer. 9.951gal @ $5.899/gal. 14.6mpg since last fill up.
Our caravan continued to Oak Manor Harvest Host site in Centralia (2961 Harrison Ave, Centralia, WA 98531), arriving around 3pm. John and Price ended up taking a Google Maps detour to a Target store parking lot in the Olympia area after entering in "Oak Manor Winery" in Google Maps, but eventually ended up in the right place after texting them the correct address. It was sunny and warm (79 degrees) so we ran the awning out and set up chairs and the carpet.
We took John’s rental car to visit Sharon in Onalaska and check out mint processing plant. Jack and Sharon’s new Trex deck looks nice and we toured the gardens.
Jack was doing a coin show in Portland. John then took a preview of the Essex Laboratories mint oil processing plant location that is a subsidiary of Firmenich. He is helping them trouble shoot a broken boiler that has shut down their operations since January and provide corporate process engineering services to optimize the return of the facility to productivity.
We then returned to Oak Manor and did their wine tasting program which featured a flight of 3 wines along with an interpretive narrative by the wine maker himself ($15pp). It was very educational, learning how small batch wineries and American wineries in general function behind the scenes. We had a lot of fun and ended up buying 2 bottles each of Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec, and one bottle of Merlot ($20ea).
The Harvest Host camping area is a flat lawn adjacent to the vineyard. It was very quiet and comfortable. We ate leftovers from Chiang’s Gourmet and Black Bear Diner for dinner. The awning, chairs and carpet were put away as the sun set. We watched Charlie’s Angels with Kristen Stewart and Naomi Watts on DVD via MacMini. The temperature did drop into the upper 50’s overnight so we were able to sleep comfortably without air conditioning or heating.
