We arrived in Wilsonville (near Portland) mid-morning and converged on our son and daughter-in-law and our grandkitty Douglas. Our intent was to visit for a few days and then head out to start our adventure. We decided to sleep in the van instead of the guest bedroom the first night because, well, we had spent all these months making the van into a home and we wanted to use it! The temperatures were just above freezing but we have our trusty Webasto heater to keep us toasty. We easily fell asleep to the whirrrr of the heater but woke around 4 am with no whirrrr and no warmth. The Webasto has a mechanism that shuts it off when the gas tank gets low so it doesn’t run the tank dry. We were parked on a sloped driveway which made the gas tank appear low so the Webasto shut down like it should! So we gathered our blankets and quietly snuck into the kids house and crashed on the couch. I’m sure this is the first of many ‘lessons learned’ we’ll experience on our trip! We slept in the guest room for the rest of our stay.
The next day we played disc golf at one of our favorite 9-hole courses close to our son’s home. Read all about the course, Memorial Park, in our disc golf blog here.
While visiting the kids, we planned to get a few last-minute things done with the van. We were out shopping and the tire pressure sensor on the van showed one of our tires were low. Phil checked the tire pressure and filled them to the Ford specifications and then went through the process of resetting the tire pressure system (TPS). Now I don’t know if you’re familiar with the process to reset the TPS on a Ford Cargo van but it resembles tapping your head while rubbing your tummy, standing on one foot hopping backwards while facing north, and pushing the hazard light button on and off three times within 20 seconds. This initiates the TPS reset process. Starting with the driver side tire, deflate it until the horn honks and then continue the same procedure with each tire. Once that is complete the TPS is successfully reset. Seriously! It worked!
The kids have a clear bird feeder attached to the living room window and we noticed a curious critter hanging around and each day getting closer and closer to the bird feeder. We all assumed if the squirrel tried to get into the bird feeder it would fall, but nope. One afternoon the squirrel jumped from the storage eave right into the bird feeder and had a feast. Our grandkitty, Douglas, was not too pleased but the squirrel ignored him and us and continued to munch away.
After five days of a great visit, we decided it was time to stop mooching off the kids and head out for our next leg of the trip.
