15-30APR09 - Monroe, WA (via centralia)

Wednesday, 15APR, we stopped in Centralia, WA, 130 miles short of our destination Monroe, WA, to celebrate Tax Day. Not really, we stopped because if we continued driving, we would have hit Tacoma and Seattle at the height of evening rush hour and we didn’t want to deal with that. We had dinner at the Country Cousin restaurant, where Corrie had the Yak burger. Turns out someone actually has a herd of Yaks in the local area.

http://www.countrycousinrestaurant.com/

Next morning as we got ready to leave the RV park we discovered that our tow bar for towing the Toad was broken. Amazingly the park owner was also a dealer of Blue Ox towing equipment and he was very willing to sell us a new and improved model. Soon we were driving north on I-5 with beautiful views of Mt Rainier off to the east. We arrived at the Evergreen State Fairground RV facility that we have stayed at in the past (see below BLOG).

http://theryanrvexpress.blogspot.com/2007/09/13-16sep07-monroe-wa.html

We immediately headed out to our property outside of Sultan, WA. It turns out that western Washington had one of the “wettest” winters on record. The effects of all the rain and snow were clearly evident on our property; including one big pine tree that had fallen over due to the saturated soil. And thankfully our Toad had four wheel drive, because we got stuck in the mud several times. Saturday, 18APR, Dan’s cousin Paul Peters and his friend, Chris, came out to the property on their dirt bikes. Unfortunately, Chris’s stopped running for an unknown reason. We even tried to “pull start” it behind our Toad. Dan wasn’t sure this was a safe thing to do. But we gave it a try; the bike still wouldn’t start and no one was hurt.

We have quite a bit of tree limbs to dispose of on our property, so Dan has been looking a wood chippers that you run off the back end of the tractor. Dan found what he thought was quality model made in Canada. Corrie thought the price was too high and wanted to negotiate. The end result was not only the purchase of the chipper, but we also ended up getting something called a box blade.

Before we can build on our property, we need water; and since we are not near city water, we must install a well. Jerry Senner who Dan met at the Tractor Museum last summer, offered to “douse” for water & sighting of the well. Jerry even showed Corrie how to douse and it turns out she is a natural. The last four days of April Dan was in San Jose, CA, on a business trip for LSU.

http://theryanrvexpress.blogspot.com/2008/07/26-30jun08-monroe-wa.html