A few hours of blue sky and sun!

Tuesday had a few hours of blue sky and sun!

On our walk around the campground, we appreciated the beauty of sunshine through the trees.

We met friends Mark and Wendy at a coffee shop in town and enjoyed chatting with them.

Then we walked a short distance down Bay Street to the weekly Farmer's Market.

This produce stand had a line of folks wanting to get their goods. (https://www.letoilefarm.com/#/)

On their sign (and on their website) they indicate "Oregon Tilth". I asked Mark and Wendy if they knew what that meant, and they didn't... I looked online and it seems to be an Organic Certification in Oregon (https://tilth.org/). I had never heard the word "tilth" before but looked it up:

Now I suspect Wordle will have that as the word of the day since it seems they prefer words that I don't find in common usage!

There was a musician entertaining.

Mark and Wendy and Patti

Wendy with Patti and Carl

 

View of the Siuslaw River Bridge

 We enjoyed our visit to Old Town Florence and particularly our visit with Mark and Wendy!

Lookin' for a warm spot

Miss Kitty is on a never-ending quest for a warm spot. She is not very pleased with our campsite for these two weeks as there is very little sun coming in (that is related not only to the cloudy rainy weather but also the big trees around us). 

However, she has found that there are these wonderful heat ducts at various places around the rig...

... they warm the air when they are blowing and warm the floor for a long time afterwards!

Because her humans have a hard time seeing her on the dark floor, she has condescended to accept a brightly colored towel to mark the place she has selected as it seems to help to keep her from being inadvertently kicked or stepped upon. And, it works as a pillow for her head too!

We all have our challenges to bear!

Results of lots of rain

It has been raining off-and-on ever since we arrived here in Florence on Thursday (it is now Tuesday, and predicted for no rain today - Hurrah!). On our walks around the South Jetty campground, we've seen several sites that are flooded:

These are two sites that are underwater... you can see the electric box on the right side one - it happens to be up on slightly higher ground -- and also RVs in sites behind these two that are on higher ground and on another road in the campground.

Another view of those two sites - the pedestal for the electric box on the left site is down in the water.

Lest you think "no one would park in a flooded site" - I hope that it was not flooded when they parked there, but, if the park was full, they may have had to settle for that. I hope they have boots...

Our drive to the Oregon coast on Thursday and pictures from Saturday

After finishing our video session at Hendersons, we headed a little ways north and then west to the Oregon coast, Florence, Oregon, to be exact.

A little over half the trip was on "ok" state roads...

... very lush green forests.

We got to the South Jetty Thousand Trails in Florence, Oregon in the afternoon... almost all Thousand Trails are set up where you have a reservation, but you pick your spot based on what is available when you get there. We unhooked the Jeep and started driving around the E section where the lady at the ranger station had recommended we try. We found a site - it was *just* long enough for Gracie... we weren't sure where we were going to park the Jeep, but decided to go for it.

In addition to it being *just* long enough, it had a very difficult entry - narrow and on a curve (going the "wrong" way - not helpful for entering the site). We came to it from one direction and tried multiple times to get into the site without success, so we drove around and came in from the other direction -- it still took us several attempts, but we eventually got Gracie into the site.

There was a dirt bank at the back of the site, and to get Gracie as deep as possible into the site, we backed up all the way to the bank.

We knew that when we leveled, the back end was likely to go down (as the front end had to be raised up), so Carl created some extra space under the tow bar to ensure that we did not end up damaging the tow bar.

It has been rainy pretty much continuously since we arrived on Thursday. We walked around the campground during a lull in the rain on Friday. On Saturday, we drove into town looking for cinnamon rolls to celebrate Carl's birthday... We thought that they had a farmer's market on Saturday, but we didn't find any evidence of one...

...so instead, we found a coffee shop...

..."Old Town Coffee Co" -- where Carl got coffee and a muffin and I got a bagel. We also asked about the farmer's market, and one of the other customers in the shop was a vendor at the market. She said it had been rained out the last 3 weekends.

A picture of Gracie in our spot and the Jee-rage carefully parked in front. When rigs go by our site, they seem to give a wide enough space, but we try to park the Jeep as close as we can.

Thursday before leaving Henderson's

Rich had let us know that he would like for us to participate in a couple of video segments for Henderson's, so, on Thursday morning, before leaving, we worked with him to get those recorded.

While he was setting up, I took a video of a rig going up on the Koni lift (they can set this up outside and lift a rig to put the shocks on and have full access to the undercarriage without having to use a pit):

 

The rig up on the lift. The owner told me that I owed him, as the "agent" of his motorhome, an artist's fee!

Setting up with Rich...

Nice older Airstream motorhome behind us -- we talked to the owner of the Airstream a bit in the customer lounge - he had gotten it for his daughter to use -- they camp in state parks a lot and were getting a lot of scrapes from low tree branches. This was the shortest motorhome he could find.

Rich setting up the drone for our "leaving" shot.

Drone in the air

I think Carl has drone-envy -- Rich's drone is really nice. Rich let us know that he is working on getting his drone pilot's license - I think he said that is required since he does professional drone videos (i.e. he gets paid for his drone videoing). I liked his drone because it was very compact.

The components we had installed at Henderson's

After our "post install Road Performance Assessment (RPA)", Eric showed Carl all the new components which had been installed. Carl took pictures at this point while they are still nice and shiny (as compared to the dusty condition of the rest of Gracie!).

New rear Koni shock (the gold thing). The blue thing behind is a new Motion Control Unit (MCU).

MCU - these are to govern the airflow between air bags to give a smoother ride.

Rear sway bar (I would call it an "anti-sway bar" as it is intended to help moderate sway from side to side).

Another MCU

A front Koni shock (red)

Another view of one of the front Koni shocks

Both front Koni shocks

Replaced rubber boot on end of tie rod

We also had a complete wheel alignment that corrected a slight toe feather, and a 4-corner weigh (actually, 6 corner since Gracie has a tag axle) which identified that we should increase the air pressure all around -- this may also give us better fuel mileage.

We noticed small differences on the post-work Road Performance Assessment, and noticed even more when we were driving from Grants Pass out to the Oregon coast on Thursday.

Just a couple more pictures from Wednesday -- I had posted that we ate at Yumberry Bowl on Tuesday (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2022/06/tuesday-at-grants-pass.html) -- well, Carl was inspired to try creating our own Yumberry bowls at home:

We had gotten fresh strawberries at a farm stand, and had berries in the freezer. Crushed up Life cereal was our substitute for granola...

They not only look good, but they were tasty too!

I'm posting this on Saturday, June 11, so I'll end by saying, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CARL!!!"

We decided this year that he'll start aging in reverse until we reach the same age, and then we'll think about whether we should age forward or backward from that point!

Wednesday at Grants Pass

The folks at Henderson's had installed the new front shocks and motion control units (MCUs) on Tuesday, and the rest of the parts for the rear axles had arrived late on Tuesday, so we knew that they should be able to complete the work on Wednesday. 

Gracie backed into the shop on Wednesday morning.

We decided to take the opportunity to go visit the Rogue Creamery, located a short distance out of town.

The farm stand and start of the tour.

Dwayne and I had toured this creamery back in 2017 (https://trekincartwrights.blogspot.com/2017/10/producers.html)... we mentioned that to the tour guide and she said that the tour had changed some... they don't allow folks to get as close to the animals. During COVID, they had to reduce contact, and they found that overall their animals (particularly the calves) were healthier... leading to a decision that it was better not to allow external folks to come into the barn areas.

Some of their cheese products

The Rogue Gold Dairy went out of business, but Rogue Creamery bought the rights to use the name and logos. We purchased a wedge of their "Caveman Blue" cheese to enjoy at home.

We could not go into the robot room but we looked through the window and saw one of the cows being milked.

Information signs provided more details -- I remember that when we were here before I was impressed by how much data they gathered and how it was used. Our tour guide this time told us that the milker "maps" the udder of the cow when it is first introduced to a new cow; the first "introduction" is accompanied by one of the herd managers to make sure that the cow doesn't get freaked out by this odd thing moving around her -- the notes on the board that I included above indicate that cows have 300° span of vision, only missing directly in front and in back. Each cow has a somewhat distinctly shaped udder with uniquely positioned teats. Once the robot "knows" a particular cow, it can attach more quickly and get her milked and on her way!

Inside the barn - there are different areas for cows in different stages of lactation...

The cows to the right are the currently active milkers.

This is the calving area. One of the cows had given birth a few days ago and she is still in there with her calf. The calf will eventually be removed to the nursery where it will be bottle fed and the cow will go into the active milkers. The cow on the right was due to calve at any time.

Grinding grain and hay to feed.

We got back to the farm store and looked around a bit. We decided to get lunch there -- grilled cheese with tomato soup - Yum! We got one of each of the sandwich options - they were both good -- the one with blue cheese was very distinctive and tasty!

A picture of the big barn with the cow-jumping-over-the-moon logo on top.

It was fun to share places in Grants Pass with Carl that Dwayne and I had visited a few years ago.