20230813 Portland Shopping and Heat Wave

 Sunday, August 13, 2023

There's no better excuse for a road trip than going on a sales tax free Portland shopping trip.  Ben's laptop is pushing 12 years old, and an upgrade is needed to allow Vlogging for an upcoming extended cruise trip.  So Ben placed an order on Apple.com and even though the drive to Portland takes time and diesel, it's an excuse to hit the road with the RV.  It turned out that one of our friends also needed a lift down to the Olympia area to pick up a truck he was buying from a friend for his son.  He also wanted to check out used camper in the Portland area.  So we picked him up on our way down.

We made a stop at the Tulalip Cabelas for a merchandise return, Marysville for DQ lunch, and then the Costco in Lacey for diesel, pizza and rotisserie chicken to stock the RV fridge.  Traffic had been decent until we hit Lakewood, where an accident backed up traffic for miles.  Our friend's destination took us in the vicinity of the Mima Mounds, which are a peculiar geological curiosity in south central Washington state. We dropped him off and continued our way south.

Our destination for the night was a Boondockers Welcome host in Toledo, WA.  There are several hosts in this stretch of I-5 including a site at Grand Mound and another in Castle Rock.  This host is a recently retired full time RV'er who has now settled into a sticks and bricks home, but who wants to stay involved in the RVing community through hosting.  She has several sites on her property including one with optional power.  When we arrived on a Sunday afternoon, she had 4 guests including us that she was hosting.  It was very kind and generous of her to allow us to spend two nights- one for us heading south, and the other for heading back north.  All of the sites are nice and level, and gravel surfaced.

The weather was beautiful and sunny, but a heat dome was building over the Pacific Northwest, and record high temperatures were predicted for this trip.  When we arrived at the host site around 5pm, the temperature was 90˚F.  She did not have a site with power for us, so we parked so our generator was facing the road and ran our generator to run our air conditioner until the outside temperature had dropped to below 80˚, which was about 8pm.  Since there were clear skies, the temperature actually dropped down into the upper 60's overnight, and we were comfortable opening the windows and using our MaxAir fan to create a cool breeze through the RV overnight.  

The Perseid meteor showers just happen to be peaking this weekend, so after then sun set, Ben set up outside with a tripod and lawn chair to try to capture some on camera. But it's a great big sky and it proved nearly impossible to catch a falling star.  Some did streak across the camera's field of vision, but proved too faint to register without massively overexposing the background stars and sky.  But between 10pm and midnight, Ben did managed to see about a dozen falling stars, despite not being successful in capturing many.

Small meteor streaking through the handle of the Big Dipper