Let's Just Go Somewhere: One of those days...

Do you ever have one of those days where EVERYTHING seems to go wrong or just doesn't seem to go quite right? Well, Friday, July 26th, was one of those days for us.

I had cleaned the motorhome last night and Chuck had taken the wheel covers and windshield cover off last night so that we could leave around 8 am Friday morning. We were going to drive either halfway to North Cascades National Park or all the way depending on how the day went.

We got everything disconnected and ready to go and pulled out of our site. The first thing that happened is that the step didn't come in like it normally does when the engine is started and the door closed. Chuck did not realize it (nor did I when I was following behind him in the car) until someone in the campground flagged him down and told him. He stopped, worked with the step button and got it to close...no problem.

Next, I was going to dump the trash before we hooked up the car. Because I was watching Chuck talk to the campground person telling him about the step, I forgot to dump the trash and had to walk back and find a dumpster while Chuck was hooking up the car.

We got the car hooked up and we took off down I-90 heading west. Earlier in the week, we had researched the mountain grades over the Cascade Mountain range and had determined that Hwy 2 probably had the easiest grade to contend with both up and down plus it should be a prettier drive than staying on the interstate. But we had to drive west on I-90 about 120+ miles before turning north to go up to Hwy 2.

The eastern part of Washington is surprisingly flat and dry.

And because it was a hot 93 degrees, the dryness everywhere made us feel like we were in the desert. Despite the dryness, there were a lot of wheat and hay fields along through here.

We also went by Moses Lake which was a place my mom and I remembered camping at years ago on one of our family pop-up camping adventures out west.

We began to barely see some mountains coming up to the west and saw what I'm fairly sure was Mt. Rainer.

I got up to get us some oranges to snack on and I noticed the display on the inverter panel display was not reading correctly. Normally, it reads "inverting" when we are driving down the road; but instead it was reading "absorb charging." The inverter was working because the microwave and the refrigerator were on; but neither the display nor any of the selector buttons (like for the auto gen-start) were working except the on/off buttons for the inverter and the charger.

The problem with the inverter not reading properly is that we were hoping to be dry camping (camping without hookups) in the North Cascades National Park in a few days and we needed to be sure the inverter was working to keep the refrigerator running and to charge the batteries a couple of times a day via the generator.

I got into my usual "worst case scenario" mode and assumed that the inverter was going bad. I called Magnum Energy who manufactured the inverter and left a message for them to call me back since but I was 5th on hold. Then, I started checking for authorized Monaco service facilities (in case we did need to have the inverter worked on) and the best service center was about 7 miles from where we just left this morning in Post Falls, Idaho. Great!

We pulled into a rest area a few miles before we would be exiting I-90 to begin heading north to investigate the inverter problem further. Chuck checked the batteries and they were just slightly corroded but not enough to affect anything. However, he noticed that the Trickle Start that keeps the engine batteries charged when the motorhome sits for long periods was not working either. What's going on here?

We had tried turning the generator on and off before we pulled off at the rest area to see if that would have any effect on the remote inverter display but it did not. The only other thing I could think of to do was my solution for fixing anything that might have a computer chip or some memory in it: cut the power to it, leave it off for a few minutes and then try turning it back on. So that's what we did. And guess what? It worked! The remote inverter display began working like it was supposed to and even the Trickle Start began working like it was supposed to.

With everything working now, we decided to continue driving towards North Cascades NP. After turning off of I-90, we began driving north towards Hwy 2. We descended into what was almost like a canyon...

...and began following the Columbia River.

With the help of massive irrigation, there were a lot of orchards and vineyards and farmlands in the midst of all this dry terrain.

We drove by Rock Island Dam...

...and some rocky-column hills.

We began seeing the Cascade Mountain Range ahead of us.

At this point, we were now about halfway to North Cascades NP. After filling up with diesel in Wenatchee, we decided to continue driving and go all the way if I could get a campsite where we had reservations for tomorrow night at a KOA in Concrete, WA. When I called, I got an answering machine (of course) but I was able to make reservations online for tonight so we headed west on Hwy 2.

We drove through the town of Leavenworth, which is kind of like a very small Gatlinburg...

and then began heading across the Cascade Mountain Range.

Hwy 2 is a windy, curvy, two-lane road with additional lanes for passing in some places when you were headed uphill.

There was a creek by much of the road until we started heading up towards Stephens Pass.

By the way, look at how much our granddaughters have grown since they started riding with us! :)

Even with a very hot 94 degrees, we could see snow up on the mountains.

We began climbing Stephens Pass (4,061 elevation)...

...reached the top...

...and then headed back down encountering only one switchback.

The road leveled out at the bottom of the pass...

...and we began encountering more traffic the closer we got to Everett, Washington, which is just north of Seattle.

When we reached Everett, we headed north on I-5. We could now see Mount Baker in the Cascades to the east...

...and crossed this inlet off the Puget Sound.

I guess we can now say we have been just about coast-to-coast since we began full-timing over a year and a half ago.

At exit 232, we turned back east and drove about 25 miles to the KOA where we had two separate reservations (one for tonight and another for tomorrow night) which of course totally confused everything. But they were very nice and helpful and were able to put us on a site where we could stay for 2 nights would not have to move tomorrow. And the site is pretty nice too.