Friday, September 18, 2020

A COVID Home Companion: The Maiden Voyage of The Titsworth (Part II , Day VII Arrival and Docking)

 When last we spoke, The Titsworth was moored at Wolf Lodge Campground outside of Couer d"Alene, Idaho.  Couer d'Alene essentially sits on the Idaho/Washington border so the final leg of the trip was essentially the width of Washington and around Lake Washington to home.  As we were leaving the campground and getting in to the swing of another travel day, we passed a swimming area on a river that was clearly visible from I-90.  This kind of sparked a desire to swim (which we had not even done once during the trip despite plans to have done so).  This would prove to be the largest challenge of the day.  

Having passed up the opportunity to stop and swim (looking back memory suggests that the "swimmin hole" was on Banks Lake, but I didn't specifically note it down, so it could be anything), we were well on our way with the co-pilot scanning ahead for potential destinations to access water at least a little bit.  Beyond that – to which we will return in a moment – it bears noting as this is a blog concerning the driving and use of an RV van that we should speak about the actual driving of the van instead of the quest for swimming. 

 For the first time in several days, there was an amount of challenge in the actual driving of the van during the morning time as we passed through several wind farm areas.  It turns out that they put those things in places for a reason.  Being an old hand at the breezes by now, I managed to minimize the substantial cross breezes for the most part with the combination of wind from semis and cross breeze in combination providing the biggest challenge.  

At this point, remember, we are still operating on a pretty strict 100-mile gas leash (give or take) which was pushed a little from stop to stop on this day.  Ultimately, we were never in any real fuel danger (although I was nervous enough when we approached Ellensburg that I stopped early) but our first fuel stop at The Gas Station In The Middle Of Nowhere did provide us with our second incidence of COVID nervousness after the lack of masks and social distancing at the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone.  Like to the point where Laurie, who had gone in to use the restroom, was uncomfortable enough with the number of people, the proximity of people, and the mask/people ratio that she turned around and came back to the van.  I hear at this point that eastern Washington is one of the hottest spots in the country for COVID positives.  One only needs to drive through in order to scratch that curiosity as to "why?".  

So we get out of there as quickly as possible.  Cross breeze cross breeze semi semi semi and we're approaching Ellensburg, WA.  We sadly did not stop in George, WA this time around.  We had intended to get into Ellensburg for gas, but we were pushing our 100-mile leash (I think we were close to 120 as memory serves) so I was nervous enough that we stopped early.  We had been carrying a small 2-gallon gas can with us so had we run into trouble, we would not have been in trouble, but it's the principle of the thing, right?  So we stop.  It turns out that we were like a mile from where we intended to stop anyway, but c'est la vie.  Fully gassed, we're now looking at the trip through Snoqualmie Pass, maybe one last fuel stop for funsies, and then home.

BUT FIRST: It appeared that in Ellensburg there was a pretty accessible park that had listed that there was swimming access, so we took our Carls Jr. lunch acquired at our last fuel stop and headed that way.  We got landed wihtout any real problem and went to check out the river.  As it turns out, I have difficulty figuring how anyone would swim in this place at all.  On this day, the river was FAST.  I don't swim particularly well so there was no way I was getting in it.  Laurie is a fish and even she did not feel like it was a great idea.  So we sat at a picnic table on the bank of the river socially distanced from groups of what I presume were Central Washington University students and ate our Carl's Jr. as we stared wistfully at the river as it sprinted by.  

The remainder of the trip was pretty uneventful.  The climb into Snoqualmie Pass (which I personally was a little worried about) was nowhere near as severe as what we had done outside of Estes Park and went off beautifully without a lot of tax on the engine which in turn was nicer on fuel economy and so on.  As a result, we were well positioned to make it home if we were to want to, but we did make a safety stop in Issaquah just because.  Pulling out from Issaquah, we were well positioned to make the final leg to home.  This went off without a hitch in spite of the introduction of heavier traffic.  By this point, I had a good feel for exactly how much road I took up and what kind of buffer I might need to the front or sides for slowing and winds.  We pulled up behind home in the early evening and learned a couple things pretty quickly.  1) our puppies had missed us a LOT and 2) 19' of vehicle is a little longer than you might figure.  This, though, brings us to the next set of write-ups: How Do You Solve A Problem Like The Titsworth?

                    One town's very like another when your head's down over your pieces, brother


from the vault toilet at Manor's Ferry in the Tetons. I tried it with my arms straight out like that, but I'm not sure it helped.

0 miles to home

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