#35 – Coveys Great Adventure – April 2017 – Winchester Bay, OR

April 2017 – Winchester Bay, OR

When our volunteer commitment at Honeyman State Park fell apart we headed south on US 101 looking for a cell signal. We needed to find a place to stay that night, and then to figure out what to do next.

View through the windshield at WBRVR

Winchester Bay is a very small town on the coast just south of the slightly larger community of Reedsport, the first place we found a usable cell signal. A quick web search for RV parks popped up Winchester Bay RV Resort, which had stellar reviews on Google and on a couple of sites that we use to check out parks. I also remembered that Ed Woznicki had given it his approval on one of his trips. WBRVR turned out to be a great park in a lovely setting. Not only was it affordable, it also had cable TV and possibly the best WIFI we have seen in years. We decided to stay a week while we sorted out our plans.

Best chowda since Maine

Our site at WBRVR was right on the harbor edge, giving us a
panoramic view across the channel to the marina and the town. The park is actually a county facility, part of the overall harbor development that includes commercial fishing piers, pleasure boat docks, restaurants, shops and marine-oriented businesses. We discovered good food and great chowder at Double D’s, outstanding pies at Kittie’s Kitchen, and quite decent sourdough bagels at the Sourdough Bakery. Fresh oysters, crab, fish and clams are
readily available at several places. The ice cream shop isn’t open for the season yet, and we are looking forward to it, too.

Over 100 years old, Umpqua Lighthouse is still an operating navigation beacon marking the treacherous bar at the mouth of the Umpqua River. It was automated years ago and the former tender’s quarters and the original Coast Guard lifesaving station have been converted into a small museum operated by Douglas County. A few times a day museum docents give tours of the lighthouse, which we both really enjoyed; so much so that we sent in an application to be docents. They have no openings this year, but we’ll see what comes up in the future. The camp sites for the docents are on the grounds of the museum and have world-class ocean views.

Looking up through the lighthouse lense

After settling into the park, our next priority was to repair our schedule. Oregon Parks and Recreation Department has a great webpage where the state parks post their volunteer openings. We were surprised to find that Umpqua Lighthouse State Park, a couple of miles away, still had host openings. To make a long story short, we signed up to camp host there through June.

Site 40 is a little tight but quiet and very pretty

ULSP is a little-known gem in the OPRD system. It is a small park with just 50 tent and RV spaces and an active day-use area on the shore of Lake Mary. It also has a couple of small yurts and cabins, and six “super yurts” that contain kitchens and bathrooms. These large yurts are very popular with families and are usually booked well in advance, even during the winter and early spring.

We moved into site 40 at ULSP on April 8 and quickly settled into the camp host routine: clean the yurts and cabins, and the camp sites and fire pits between guests.  There are five camp host couples sharing the duties so it rarely takes more than a couple of hours a day. The rest of the time is usually spent on grounds keeping jobs. On April 29 we moved across the street to a site next to the park headquarters and

The neighbors come calling

workshop for May. Site 40 was ok, but a little tight for us and very shaded. This space is quite sunny and has a lawn and flowers. We all love it, especially the dogs, now that the rains have tapered off. We’ll be back in 40 for June, since this site was promised to others for the summer.

When we searched the OPRD volunteers page we noticed that Collier State Park near Klamath Falls was looking for people to staff the store and visitor center. That caught our attention for a couple of reasons: First, we want to try something other than camp hosting, and second, Collier is the home of the state logging museum. We contacted the ranger and hit it off with her. The upshot of it is that we are going to spend August and September tending the store and helping out in the museum, including giving tours. We are really looking forward to this new experience.

Home for May: we get PBS!

We also appear to have made substantial progress on the two major problems that we had with Ripley. As you know, the leak in the rear slide was driving us nuts. We spent a lot of money at Monaco in March and left with it better but not completely fixed. I have been going a little batty trying to figure out how the water was getting in and got really frustrated with it. Kayeanne decided to take a look and, as she has done in the past, asked the right questions to put us onto the real problem and what turned out to be an easy solution.

When Monaco built these coaches, almost the first thing they did was lay the
carpet. Unlike houses where the carpet goes in after the cabinets, in this coach the cabinets were placed on the carpet. The builders did not trim the carpet correctly in one small, unseen area where the slide gaskets channel water away. You literally have to lie down, wedged between the bed and the back wall and look up under the lip of the slide to see it. In effect the carpet became a wick that brought water past the sealing gaskets and into the interior. All it took was to cut away a small section of the carpet to break the wick and the leak stopped. We couldn't belive it was so simple! We watched it like hawks for weeks, but it appears to have stopped for good. We have had lots and lots of rain and not a drop has come in for a month. I can’t tell you what a relief it has been to stop worrying about that.

The other issue has been with the Aquahot system that supplies our heat and hot water. We've had problems with it since we bought the coach. We have spent over two thousand dollars replacing components and countless hours in one of the bays under the coach trying to fix a long series of intermittent problems. If stuff just breaks it is pretty easy to fix, but intermittent problems just drive me nuts.

I have thought for some time that there was a subtle electrical issue somewhere that was the culprit. I recently replaced half of the wiring harness in the hope that it would cure it. Nope. The Monaco folks found and fixed a connector buried under the front slide that carried the Aquahot switch wires that wasn’t properly seated. For a few days it looked like that was the fix, but when we got to River Bend it wouldn’t fire up at all.

It's not all hard work

I crawled into the bay and removed the access panels to begin testing components to see if I could find the problem. The first thing I noticed was the fuse for the furnace motor wasn’t seated completely in the socket. When I barely touched it the motor came on and the burner fired up just like it was supposed to. The fuse wasn’t actually disconnected, it tested fine with a meter and the socket tested good, too. I am not convinced that it was the problem, but the Aquahot has worked properly about 95% of the time ever since. It still occasionally turns itself off at the end of a cycle rather than going into standby mode. That means it won’t restart automatically the next time it is needed. So far, it has always fired up when we manually switch it back on. As long as it only happens every few days and fires up when asked to we can live with it.

So, the unpleasantness at Honeyman has more than turned around. The coach is working fine at the moment. Winchester Bay is a great place to be and the park folks here are a pleasure to work with. Life is good.

More soon,

Bob