Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Still in Hoquiam at Hoquiam River RV Park

This morning I was awakened at 6 am by people talking outside of my trailer. They were loud and the guy talked really fast for it being so early. I laid there moaning and stretching. I hadn’t planned on getting up until 7:30 am and I’m not a morning person. I don’t tolerate noise well in the morning. So I got up and cleaned up a little bit and was grateful when my neighbor took his trailer and left.

About 9:15 am I headed down to Finn Electric Automotive to have my truck worked on. I sat in his lobby for a while writing. He came in and told me that the headlight socket or outlet was bad. He needed to order the part. We further discussed the wire that was chewed on by a rodent and I showed him where it was.  He said it needed fixed immediately.

I figured that it was going to be awhile and headed out on foot in search of breakfast.

Aberdeen, WA doesn’t have a lot of options at 10:00 am. I ended up at Billy’s Restaurant.  I had eaten here last year for lunch during the brief time that I lived in Aberdeen. It had been good then. I ordered a ham & cheese omelet with hash-browns and a biscuit. The biscuit was great. Hash browns were very crispy with a slight burnt taste. The omelet was just weird. It was like a blanket of scrambled eggs wrapped around a pile of chopped ham. It was okay, but not great. I’m not a good judge of breakfast foods though.  I really like any breakfast foods. Every once in a while, like this morning, a traditional breakfast sounds good.

While I was sitting in the restaurant, I overheard the manager telling another customer about the history of the restaurant. She also made recommendations on sites to see. One of the suggestions was the Armory, but I didn’t really hear the directions. When I went to pay my bill, I asked her about it. She googled it for me and printed me a map.

I headed back to Finn’s. My truck was in the parking lot. So I slowly trudged towards it fearing the bill. It was $85.00. I was very pleasantly surprised.  It’s nice to run a crossed honest and fair people in the automotive repair business.

I stood there and talked to the owner’s wife for a while and let her know how appreciative I was of their services and reasonable rates.

From there I decided that I would check out the Armory next, since I was in Aberdeen. Even with the map, I ended up a little lost. Some of the streets don’t have signs. Eventually I got there and discovered the museum was located in the Armory building.

Like breakfast foods, I have to be in the right mood for a museum.  The museum entry fee is a donation. That was fair, so I went on in. I saw the sculpture of Kurt Cobain and the couch he used to sleep on (whoopee..lol).  There were a lot of other interesting exhibits, but there wasn’t a lot on the actual history of Aberdeen. The only thing that I learned was that in 1903 a huge fire destroyed most of the downtown area. There was an interesting panoramic picture of before the fire and right after the fire. There also was a little information on logging.

I left the museum and headed out to Ocean Shores to go horseback riding. I had looked at the website a couple of days ago. It didn’t say weekends only and it’s only $20.00 for an hour unlike a place I found on the Oregon coast that charges $75.00 for an hour and then cuts the ride to 40 minutes.

It was pretty warm today and the beach is always colder, so I figured horseback riding would be a good option. I drove the 15 miles out to the beach and the horse weren’t there.

I was standing on the beach, I’m sure looking disappointed. A couple walked by. The man said something about it being a nice day.  I agreed and then proceeded to watch him drive his car into the deep sand and get stuck. Driving is allowed on the beach in Ocean Shores, you do have to be careful. It is beautiful white sand and in spots it’s really deep.  Every time that I have visited that beach, I have watched people get their cars get stuck.

I watched them for a while, trying to dig their car out. They were about 100 ft away and so preoccupied that they didn’t notice that I was watching.

Finally I got back in my truck and decided to drive into Ocean Shores. I’ve been to the beach a few times, but never into the town. There’s not much there. A few restaurants and businesses line both sides of the road for may be a half mile, then you come to a traffic circle and the properties become residential.

I wasn’t really impressed. As usual it was about 10 degrees colder out there (62 degrees instead of 72 degrees) and really windy.

So I chalked it up as a nice drive to the beach and headed back to town. As I entered Hoquiam, there were signs for downtown. I ventured in the direction the signs pointed.

I was getting hungry again. It had been 6 hours since I had eaten.  There were a few restaurant choices. I found the 8th Street Ale House and a family diner.  As soon as I walked into the Ale House, I wished that I had gone to the diner.

The Ale House is pretty new. It was opened in 2010, but was designed to look like an old tavern. The building is wood and inside the bar and tables are wood. The bar was huge and there were probably more seats at the bar than at tables.

It is beautifully decorated, but like the bar and grill yesterday, it was obvious that it is more a bar than a grill. You may be saying, no kidding it’s called an Ale House, but I have been in Ale Houses with more tables than seats at the bar.

Despite appearances, the 8th Street Bar and Grill has a decent menu.  I found a Cobb salad and ordered.  During my meal, I was entertained by the fact that once again I was inside a bar and my cell phone signal was strong. As soon as I walked out it returned to a poor signal.

Following my meal, I roamed around the town taking pictures. I got some strange looks, which I ignored.  In the center of town is a Veteran’s Memorial. Along the waterfront is a walking trail with signs telling about the history of the town. The trail followed the river down to the bridge that separates Hoquiam from Aberdeen.  From this perspective, you can clearly see the bridge construction. It was interesting, but creepy at the same time. I watched to see if the bridge shook when cars were driving over it. It didn’t. It was solid, but I still find it to be scary.

From the bridge, I made my way back to my truck in Hoquiam that was parked by the 7th Street Theater.  I returned to the RV park and was preparing to clean my black tank out when Elvis, one of the park employees approached on his motorized scooter thing. It’s not a golf cart, but it’s also not a wheelchair scooter. It’s somewhere in between. He asked me “Do you want to hook up”? Having just come from a bar, I looked at him confused. He’s been really nice to me, so I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Very slowly I said “no”. So he followed up with “so you don’t want to hook up tonight?” There was subtle nod towards the trailer. Then I realized that he was talking about hooking the trailer to the truck. I laughed and said “oh you mean the trailer to the truck”.  He then explained how he could help me back it up on an angle, so that the truck wouldn’t be out in the road.  I agreed. Another gentleman came over to help too and we had the trailer hooked up (to the truck..lol) within a few minutes. It is so much easier with help! We all talked for a while about hitches and stabilizer bars.

They left and I returned to the fun job of cleaning my black tank. I have a spray nozzle that is long and thin that is designed to go down into the toilet. You connect it to a hose and then spray water deep into the black tank. Every once in a while I have to do this. I have been in the trailer over a month now and gradually toilet paper clogs up the tank even with using toilet enzyme stuff.

One of the mistakes common when new to RVing is to not use enough water in the toilet. I did this. I don’t like wasting water and didn’t want my black tank to fill up too quickly. But what happens is the toilet plugs up. You drain it and only the liquid comes out and the toilet paper stays in the tank. There are buttons in the trailer that when pushed will show how full the tank is. Even after emptying it today, it still indicated that it was full.

I was really excited when I found the gadget that I have to clean the tank.  It has a water on/off valve right on the handle and when turned on it has a high pressure spray that comes out of 4 holes in order to get all sides of the tank.

At the last RV park I was talking to a lady about the black tank and she told me that they had a travel trailer before their 5th wheel and the sensor would just get stuck.  In my case I don’t know if the sensor is stuck and the water unsticks it or if the toilet is actually clogged. When it gets to a point like it is now, I get concerned. I am happier when it indicates empty, right after I emptied it. The spray nozzle does a great job.

I have read that having an RV place unclog your tank is very expensive. I think that’s ridiculous, because they could just use one of these nozzles and get it unplugged within minutes.

Ok enough about the toilet. Once I was done with it, I vacuumed and cleaned some in preparation for traveling tomorrow.

Then I settled in to look for an RV park in Astoria, OR. Yes I am going to leave WA tomorrow!!  (Knocking on wood now.)  Of course the Wi-Fi isn’t working with my computer and my cell has no signal, but Google on my phone works (hmm who knows).  I found a place in Warrington, OR just outside of Astoria, OR on Hwy 101 called Sunset Lake Resort.  It’s $20.00 per night vs. the $33-35 that I have been paying lately.  The resort sounds nice, but I really liked the price.

Off to some sleep now. I plan to get up at 5:00 am and head out by 6 ish.

(Photos to be added later when time permits- might not be until I get back to Florida. I generally take about 900 photos a day. It is a lot to sort through)