Repositioning to the PNW

Following our arrival back in the U.S., we spent our days preparing to reposition from the ranch in Texas to Skagit Valley RV Park in Mount Vernon, WA. That is no small trip, it is 2,000 miles across seven states in the American Southwest and into the Pacific Northwest. In Europe, that would be like driving from Moscow to Marseille or Istanbul to Madrid. We took the shortest route possible because we were on a bit of a time crunch. More on that later. 

To prepare Ruby Red for travel, the most important thing was to install an Excalli-bar III tow bar so that we could hook Toadie Hopper to Ruby Red and bring her along. Also, Toadie needed new tires and a good service. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, (I resisted as long as I could…) we had to unpack all the stuff we shipped from Europe and buy all the additional necessities we needed generally. Moving house in any iteration is not an inexpensive endeavor. Also, I believe it is now more expensive to live in the U.S. than it is in many parts of Europe. 

As I planned our trip north, a couple of things took me by surprise. First, the cost of campgrounds has soared and, second, the number of places to boondock for no or low cost has diminished. We had made a point of rejoining the Elks, which would give us access to all of the lodges along the way that offered camping. For our European friends who may not be familiar with the Elks, it is a fraternal organization dedicated to charity, community service, and fostering fellowship among members across the United States. (Thanks, ChatGTP!) Many lodges offer camping to traveling Elks members, with amenities ranging from golf courses and swimming pools to little more than a dusty driveway where we can park up for the night. We had been members since we became fulltimers in 2014, but let our membership lapse when we moved overseas. Since we just had a massive amount of solar installed on our rig, we figured now was as good a time as any to start using it and what better place than a big ol’ empty Elks Lodge parking lot? What I forgot to take into consideration was the heat. It is difficult to boondock in 90 degree temps with no electricity to run the air conditioners. So, we jumped to Plan B, which was to pay whatever we needed to pay in order to be comfortable. 

Our first travel day was very inefficient. What should have been a four-hour day turned into nearly 6.5 hours, primarily due to multiple fuel and food stops, plus we got lost going through Lubbock. Who gets lost in Lubbock? We had gotten the Open Roads fuel discount card so we wanted to use that as often as possible. Since we were new to using it, it took us a couple of tries to get it right, and it really eats up time to make a fuel stop where you have to wait in line only to find out your card doesn’t work. Grrrr. By the time we figured it out and got back on the road, it wasn’t long until it was time to eat. Stop and go. Stop and go. My least favorite way to travel. In any case we made it to Clovis, New Mexico where we had originally planned to boondock at the Elks Lodge. But it was hot, so we sprung for a full service campground and paid a bunch. Then, because we were starving and didn’t want to cook, we ordered burritos from a nearby restaurant, which doubled in price because we used a food delivery service (DoorDash). We didn’t do that again!

The next day we made our way to Santa Fe. This time we actually did boondock at the Elks lodge for three days and it was fabulous! What’s not to love about being in the mountains of New Mexico? We have been there several times, but on this trip we had but one goal, and that was to visit with my high school roommate, Suzy. We hadn’t seen each other in decades and since she lives in Santa Fe, it was the perfect opportunity to reunite. 

After Santa Fe we were on a mission to make good time heading northwest. We hadn’t anticipated being on a deadline as we repositioned, but plans had changed. Last Christmas when we were at the ranch, our son Zac, who was graduating from Western Washington University in Bellingham in June told us that he had no desire to attend and walk in his graduation ceremony. So we said we would just celebrate once we arrived in Mount Vernon, and that was that. Until it wasn’t. A few days before we left the ranch, Zac began to have second thoughts about skipping the ceremony. He reached out and wanted to make sure that he wasn’t just automatically nixing something that might have been important to us and he wanted our input. We talked it through and indicated our support in whatever he decided, and he decided to participate. Now we had a deadline. 

We still had plenty of time, but we’d be loafing around less. We made our way through New Mexico, dipped into Colorado to have breakfast with friends Mike and Wendy Lawerence (no photo!!!), and then headed into Utah. We stayed again at the lovely Provo Elks Lodge for two nights so that I could drive to Salt Lake City for a big shop at Crate & Barrel, a store that has been on my No-Fly list for years. I decided to take it off the list just this once, and I actually managed to keep my spending to under $100. That is very hard to do in C&B. I love that store with all my heart.

Leaving Utah we crossed Idaho, staying at the Elks Lodges in Rupert and Mountain Home. We stayed three days in Rupert because it was lovely and relaxing. Plus, one of Toadie’s dash lights came on so we had to visit the Chevy dealer for a fix. We could have probably done it ourselves if we had lifted the hood and looked around, but we didn’t think of that. Anyway, it was minor (a hose reattachment). Before we left the Mountain Home lodge we took Toadie over to Les Schwab so they could give her wheels a once over. We were hearing a clunking noise that we could not identify. They drove her around, spent a good half hour looking her over and said everything looked fine, so we headed out and all was well. We talked about how much we love Les Schwab, because all of that attention they gave Toadie was at no charge. We have been customers for many years and it was good to be back in Les Schwab country!

We have driven this repositioning route before and been in these areas multiple times, so we had plenty of experience overnighting at Walmarts along the way. Unfortunately, most of the ones we are familiar with no longer allow overnights. We only found one that would and that was in Oregon. It was a tight squeeze but we managed. I know not everyone enjoys staying at Walmart, but we have stayed at many across the country and never had a bad experience.

Two weeks after leaving the ranch we entered Washington state where the mountain was out, snow-covered and beautiful. Well, it is always snow-covered, those are glaciers up there. It is amazing to me how visible Mt. Rainier can be on a sunny day. We were over 100 miles away and it was just stunning. We both were so happy to be back in the state we call home. We moved to the Seattle area in 2000 with three little kids and never left until we sold our lake home and became full time nomads in 2014. Two of our three adult kids are still here, while Tara is in San Diego. 

We arrived at the Elks lodge in Yakima and spent one night. We were actually ahead of schedule with regard to Zac’s graduation, so we had made reservations at Wenatchee River County Park, one of our longtime favorite campgrounds. We had five days there and we were going to kick back and decompress. The best laid plans and all that . . . 

The morning of departure from the lodge, we fired up Ruby Red and positioned her so Steven could hook up Toadie. Once that was done I started her up and noticed two yellow lights on her dashboard indicating there was an issue with her engine and DEF. Engine lights we are familiar with, but DEF, diesel exhaust fluid, is completely new to us since it was introduced in 2010. Scoopy, our first motorhome, was a 2002. So we sat there staring at those lights as it slowly dawned on us that we shouldn’t go on to our next destination which we were really looking forward to. Instead, we should take the rig to Freightliner, the maker of our chassis, and get the issue diagnosed and repaired. Not wanting to stay another night at the expensive Elks, we drove about six miles to Cabela’s which was the closest place to Freightliner that we could find to overnight, because naturally, it was a Sunday and Freightliner was closed. A motorhome is just like a cat. It gets sick on the weekend and needs lots of expensive diagnostics to find out what’s wrong. We spent the rest of the day feeling depressed and eating a bunch of junk food (the only upside to waiting for repairs.) 

We called Freightliner early Monday morning and they said they don’t handle these kinds of issues. (??!!) So the recommended calling the nearby Cummins, maker of our engine, and they said come right over. Long story short, after a day of diagnostics, they wanted $2,400 to replace the DEF header, which is a known issue in Freightliner chassis with certain Cummins engines. The issue is so widespread that Daimler Trucks, owner of Freightliner, has extended their warranty to cover this replacement. The thing is, the extension was so new that no one knew about the extended warranty. No one at Cummins. No one at Freightliner. The folks that did know about it were a few motorhome owners who had recently received a letter outlining the new warranty, and who had posted said letters on a few online motorhome forums. In the midst of my depressive sugar high (day two), I scoured the Internet for information on this DEF issue and I soon learned about it, too. It was kind of like winning the lottery. I had a list of part numbers that were covered, and I asked Steven to read the number off our Cummins estimate, and as he called off each number I got more and more excited until, BINGO! The next morning we kindly informed Cummins and Freightliner about the warranty. Freightliner was cool about it, Cummins was really pissy about the whole thing, but in the end, they made the repair and we didn’t pay a dime. Yay! I don’t know why the folks at Cummins were so annoyed with us, they got paid by Freightliner.

After a night at Cummins, the repair was made and we split as fast as possible to try and salvage what was left of our time at Wenatchee River CP. We got three glorious days there before heading on to Bellingham where we reunited with our kids and attended Zac’s college graduation. We are super proud of him and were incredibly happy that we could be there to celebrate. 

All-in-all, we had a really enjoyable repositioning trip. Including our down days (planned and unplanned) it took us 20 days to reposition. Our costs for fuel, repairs and camping totalled $2,075.55, or $103.78 per day. In the breakdown for these expenses you can clearly see how boondocking and being an Elks member greatly reduced our cost of camping. 

Ruby Red Fuel – $1069.14 

Propane – $75 (we are still running off that same fill)

Toadie Service – $170 

Toadie Fuel – $93.74 

Camping – $667.67 (average cost per night $33.38)

11 nights @ Elks Lodge, for $215 (average cost per night was $19.50)

3 nights free boondocking at Walmart, Camp Cummins and Cabela’s. (average cost per night was $0.00)

6 nights at commercial campgrounds for $256.26 (average cost per night was $42.71)

We plan to continue supporting the Elks and boondocking at Walmart (Cabela’s, etc.) on our travels. The one thing we can’t really control is the price of fuel. We can either buck up and spend the money to travel or stay put. While we plan to do the latter for a little while, we don’t plan on doing it forever. 

Next Up: Settling into our space in Mount Vernon.

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