It has been a busy few days. On Thursday we pulled out of the Fallon driveway for the l
ast time at noon. The new owners were already there…they were like, don’t let the gate hit you in the ass on the way out…jeez. It was sunny and no wind. We stopped in Fernley at the Black Bear Restaurant for lunch/dinner. It was such a relief to be done with the house after the headaches we had while it was a rental. We love the house, just not where it is located. I think it’ll take some time before we really feel free of it!
We left Fernley at 2 p.m. and headed for Oregon. It kept getting warmer the further north we went…unusual…Fallon had been so very, very cold. We stopped for the night along highway 89 west of Bartle. We backed into a little “road” in the forest and had a very peaceful night “boon-docking”. Larry had replaced our trailer batteries before we hit the road so we had plenty of “juice” for the furnace over night…it was warmer than the nights most recently in Fallon so it didn’t go on that much.
Yesterday after getting ourselves ready for the day we hit the road around 8:40. The truck was making a funny noise every once in awhile and we couldn’t really pin point where it was coming from. We fueled up in Weed and soon after as we were heading north on I-5 we heard a dispatch go out on the scanner about a head on collision north of us on the Klamath River bridge right at the rest area. A wrong way driver hit someone and both north bound lanes were blocked…we anticipated being stuck for hours, but because the emergency personnel hadn’t arrived on scene yet and there was an exit right before hitting the bridge that trucks were starting to dive off on we followed along. Sadly both vehicles…what we could see from the distance looked pretty badly totaled…two pick-ups. We were able to go down under the bridge past the rest area and back up onto the highway. As we hit our brakes heading down the off ramp there was this huge noise from the rear of our truck…sounded like the rear end or transmission was falling off as the weight of the trailer shifted on the bed of the truck. We stopped alongside the river and Larry looked all under the truck, but couldn’t see anything glaringly wrong or loose, so, on we went.
We heard on the scanner that one victim was 11-44, which is deceased and another was real bad and they were wanting a helicopter, but because the surrounding areas (not there at the accident site) were fogged in they couldn’t fly….I told Larry I bet that poor person wasn’t going to make it because they wouldn’t survive the long drive to the nearest trauma center…it was a long way back to Redding. Sadly I was right…we read an article online this morning and the elderly male who was the wrong way driver was dead on scene and so was the 34 year old woman driving the other truck…her passenger was expected to survive, a man…they had camping and fishing gear and were from Washington state.
We’ve seen a lot of accidents over the years, but this one was disturbing…timing and all…that grace of God thing. Our first week out Full-timing in ’04 I encountered a wrong way driver on I-5, after dark, but I had plenty of room to get over…scary. Your brain just can’t believe what it is seeing because it is so wrong.
So anyway on up the road we went yesterday and we saw two other accident sites…one was a freight trailer that had been on fire and was a melted mass…the truck was already gone from the scene (this accident was before the head on and was what had prompted the scanner getting turned on) and further on up there was a minivan that had burned really bad. We also hit really thick fog going over the Siskiyou pass and people were going way too fast for the conditions. People take their lives sooo for granted and while rushing through theirs they jeopardize the lives of others.
Our truck made that noise again and lost power and the brake warning lights came on and then the engine light came on and the speedometer needle was bouncing all over the place…it was a “what the hell” moment. Larry never panics and tries to understand what is going on…was it an electrical or sensor problem. I think we were around Medford somewhere…we pulled off again, Larry checked everything over. We didn’t really want to get towed and stuck there, so we decided to see if we could keep going. We had lost our higher gears so we couldn’t go much above 50mph, and if we didn’t strain things too much the noise wouldn’t start up. I’ll spare you the rest of the slow details, but we pushed onto Albany…it just took us a lot longer at the speed we were going, but we got there. Being Friday afternoon we can’t get the truck looked at until Monday. Larry is concerned that it won’t make the same noises without the trailer weight on the back…we’ll see. It is definitely more than just sensors, but we’ll find out on Monday.
We arrived here in Albany at our usual place around 4:30. We got all set up and then Larry decided he wanted to see how the truck would run without the load, so we took it over to Michelle’s…she is about 3 miles from us and now the truck wouldn’t get out of the really low gears…we couldn’t even
get up to 45 mph now.
Michelle and Darel moved into this new place in July so we hadn’t seen it yet…very nice and spacious. Seth was happy to see us as always and was bouncing off of the walls…we got blamed for the hyper behavior….whatever….laugh.
It rained early this morning around 2 a.m. and was in the 50’s over night…there was some sunshine peeking through this morning so we took our walk. The sky was getting really black by the time we got back. I baked some cookies and did a load of laundry and of course when it was time to bring the laundry back from drying the sky opened up and it poured for about 10 minutes…I waited. It looks like Oregon might be back in its usual wet weather pattern…very damp and humid compared to the high desert of the Great Basin, but we usually don’t stay long enough to get moldy!
Michelle and Seth came over to see us…Seth spent the afternoon with us, playing with Grandpa on the floor with those magnet things, building stuff and he played with me on the computer with the Fish game cleaning tanks and rearranging my fish tank “décor”. He is a very busy boy…always moving.
We plan on staying here through next weekend…unless they still have our truck……
ast time at noon. The new owners were already there…they were like, don’t let the gate hit you in the ass on the way out…jeez. It was sunny and no wind. We stopped in Fernley at the Black Bear Restaurant for lunch/dinner. It was such a relief to be done with the house after the headaches we had while it was a rental. We love the house, just not where it is located. I think it’ll take some time before we really feel free of it!We left Fernley at 2 p.m. and headed for Oregon. It kept getting warmer the further north we went…unusual…Fallon had been so very, very cold. We stopped for the night along highway 89 west of Bartle. We backed into a little “road” in the forest and had a very peaceful night “boon-docking”. Larry had replaced our trailer batteries before we hit the road so we had plenty of “juice” for the furnace over night…it was warmer than the nights most recently in Fallon so it didn’t go on that much.
Yesterday after getting ourselves ready for the day we hit the road around 8:40. The truck was making a funny noise every once in awhile and we couldn’t really pin point where it was coming from. We fueled up in Weed and soon after as we were heading north on I-5 we heard a dispatch go out on the scanner about a head on collision north of us on the Klamath River bridge right at the rest area. A wrong way driver hit someone and both north bound lanes were blocked…we anticipated being stuck for hours, but because the emergency personnel hadn’t arrived on scene yet and there was an exit right before hitting the bridge that trucks were starting to dive off on we followed along. Sadly both vehicles…what we could see from the distance looked pretty badly totaled…two pick-ups. We were able to go down under the bridge past the rest area and back up onto the highway. As we hit our brakes heading down the off ramp there was this huge noise from the rear of our truck…sounded like the rear end or transmission was falling off as the weight of the trailer shifted on the bed of the truck. We stopped alongside the river and Larry looked all under the truck, but couldn’t see anything glaringly wrong or loose, so, on we went.
We heard on the scanner that one victim was 11-44, which is deceased and another was real bad and they were wanting a helicopter, but because the surrounding areas (not there at the accident site) were fogged in they couldn’t fly….I told Larry I bet that poor person wasn’t going to make it because they wouldn’t survive the long drive to the nearest trauma center…it was a long way back to Redding. Sadly I was right…we read an article online this morning and the elderly male who was the wrong way driver was dead on scene and so was the 34 year old woman driving the other truck…her passenger was expected to survive, a man…they had camping and fishing gear and were from Washington state.
We’ve seen a lot of accidents over the years, but this one was disturbing…timing and all…that grace of God thing. Our first week out Full-timing in ’04 I encountered a wrong way driver on I-5, after dark, but I had plenty of room to get over…scary. Your brain just can’t believe what it is seeing because it is so wrong.
So anyway on up the road we went yesterday and we saw two other accident sites…one was a freight trailer that had been on fire and was a melted mass…the truck was already gone from the scene (this accident was before the head on and was what had prompted the scanner getting turned on) and further on up there was a minivan that had burned really bad. We also hit really thick fog going over the Siskiyou pass and people were going way too fast for the conditions. People take their lives sooo for granted and while rushing through theirs they jeopardize the lives of others.
Our truck made that noise again and lost power and the brake warning lights came on and then the engine light came on and the speedometer needle was bouncing all over the place…it was a “what the hell” moment. Larry never panics and tries to understand what is going on…was it an electrical or sensor problem. I think we were around Medford somewhere…we pulled off again, Larry checked everything over. We didn’t really want to get towed and stuck there, so we decided to see if we could keep going. We had lost our higher gears so we couldn’t go much above 50mph, and if we didn’t strain things too much the noise wouldn’t start up. I’ll spare you the rest of the slow details, but we pushed onto Albany…it just took us a lot longer at the speed we were going, but we got there. Being Friday afternoon we can’t get the truck looked at until Monday. Larry is concerned that it won’t make the same noises without the trailer weight on the back…we’ll see. It is definitely more than just sensors, but we’ll find out on Monday.
We arrived here in Albany at our usual place around 4:30. We got all set up and then Larry decided he wanted to see how the truck would run without the load, so we took it over to Michelle’s…she is about 3 miles from us and now the truck wouldn’t get out of the really low gears…we couldn’t even
get up to 45 mph now.Michelle and Darel moved into this new place in July so we hadn’t seen it yet…very nice and spacious. Seth was happy to see us as always and was bouncing off of the walls…we got blamed for the hyper behavior….whatever….laugh.
It rained early this morning around 2 a.m. and was in the 50’s over night…there was some sunshine peeking through this morning so we took our walk. The sky was getting really black by the time we got back. I baked some cookies and did a load of laundry and of course when it was time to bring the laundry back from drying the sky opened up and it poured for about 10 minutes…I waited. It looks like Oregon might be back in its usual wet weather pattern…very damp and humid compared to the high desert of the Great Basin, but we usually don’t stay long enough to get moldy!
Michelle and Seth came over to see us…Seth spent the afternoon with us, playing with Grandpa on the floor with those magnet things, building stuff and he played with me on the computer with the Fish game cleaning tanks and rearranging my fish tank “décor”. He is a very busy boy…always moving.
We plan on staying here through next weekend…unless they still have our truck……
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