Saturday, November 8, 2008

Americas Friendliest Town - Eugene, Oregon

If all goes well this morning we will finally be back on the road. It appears that the Matt and the folks at Guaranty RV in Junction City have fixed all the leaks that we have identified. To recap, there was one under the bathroom vanity that had previously been looked at and fixed, at least temporarily, at Woody's RV near Calgary, one under the kitchen sink that had just made an appearance, and the fridge which seemed to have two, one from the ice maker and the other from underneath and probably something to do with the defrost system.

We now have a pretty flash solar system consisting of the latest and greatest 100 Watt solar panels X 4, a high tech solar monitor and an upgraded battery monitor. All that was installed by Deb and Greg and their folks at AM Solar in Springfield, just down the road.

It certainly hasn't been an uneventful stop here as even the Jeep felt the need to participate in the crisis a moment club. Yesterday as we were traveling around town killing time waiting on the RV the instrument panel started flashing warning signs regarding the four wheel drive system. We got it into Lithia Chrysler and they told us they would have a look. We arranged for a rental vehicle from Enterprise and continued on our quest for the perfect place to waste time. After a couple of hours we got a phone call from Bob at Lithia to inform us, at no cost to us I should mention, that although they had identified the problem, a wheel sensor, it would take them a number of days to acquire the parts. It appears that it will not hurt the vehicle to use it until that comes so we have made the decision to continue to head south and get it fixed somewhere along the way. The next couple of days it will just be hooked on the back of the Discovery anyway.

We now appear to have exhausted all the shopping opportunities here and have visited most of the grocery stores in town, so it is off to south of San Francisco, probably with a stop around Redding, California for the night.

One thing that is worth commenting on here though. This certainly must be Americas friendliest community. Everywhere we went, from the eating establishments, to the service places we dealt with, as well as the folks we just bumped into on the street, everyone went out of their way to make sure we were feeling welcome in their community. Every individual had a suggestion of what to see and where to go while we were here and always a smile on their face. Maybe there is a job for me here, I could sit on the corner downtown and be the local curmudgeon, every town needs one and there seems to be a shortage here. Although we had no intentions of being here for more than one day, our stay, although longer, has certainly been made more enjoyable by the citizens of the Junction City, Springfield, and Eugene area.

GO DUCKS, as they seem to say here.

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