Leaving the Olympic Peninsula
Today we are in Aberdeen, Washington on the southern edge of the Olympic Peninsula in Grays Harbor County. Aberdeen appears to be a hard working town and has a colorful history. We drove over two drawbridges on the way here. Aberdeen, Wa. is the home port of the tall ship “Lady Washington”, a reproduction featured in the Pirates of the Caribbean film The Curse of the Black Pearl.
It’s a many errands day for us. In Aberdeen in the morning it was 44 degrees F., raining and is supposed to rain for the next few days. Folks around here say usually the weather is better this time of year and that it doesn’t usually rain this much. We’ll take their word for it as rain is all we are seeing right now. Will likely spend the night in a Walmart parking lot tonight and head to Seattle tomorrow to meet up with Jerry’s neice for dinner.
Gas and Propane–
Went to an Arco in Aberdeen for gas, $3.99/gal and they had a propane refill tank for RVs with propane tanks that do not detach from the RV. Got our gasoline and drove over to the propane tank for a refill. Made sure that we had turned off all ignition sites; stove, heater, hot water heater and refrigerator and a young man came out of the gas station mini mart to fill the propane tank. (Just a little history; somewhere in Arizona, one of the times we filled the RV propane tank, someone left off the propane cap to our tank. We’ve been trying to replace it ever since. The cap is only important to keep mud and debris out of our propane spigot. We didn’t worry about it too much since there is a door covering the propane fill spigot and that,we were told, should keep it clean.) So the young man from the Arco station tried to attach his propane hose to our fill spigot. He man-handled the tank and still could not get it to fill. His boss came out and neither were successful.
Uh Oh. We must have propane to run the refrig. and cook in this motor home so having no propane was not an option. Went to a Valero gas station about a half a mile away, drove up to their propane tank and found a propane cap that had been left off someone else’s tank. The guy told us we could have it so now we’ll use it for our tank. The Valero attendant had our tank filled in about three minutes, no problem. Propane cost $3.00/gal. Maybe there was no problem because Jerry had cleaned off the spigot, maybe the Arco propane tank was the problem or maybe the Valero attendant was more competent. We will never know the answer but we will always make sure the propane cap to our tank is replaced after each refill! I think today we “dodged a bullet”. I really dreaded spending the day trying to solve this propane problem.
Next… Laundry–
Boy Howdy! Did we need to do laundry!?! After all the hiking and muddy walks these past few weeks, we had lots of things in need of hot water. Add to that sheets, towels, etc. and a long day at the laundromat was in store. We brought our large supply of quarters that we save and got to work. The laundromat we went to was recommended by many folks in town and it turned out to be clean and had lots of BIG machines. Plenty of parking for big vehicles and free Wi-Fi made this a good stop for us. So we recommend Valley Cleaners and Laundromat in Aberdeen, Wa.
Walmart–
Got a few basic supplies at Walmart that should tide us over awhile.
Stock Market–
Oops! The stock market is down. Just riding that roller coaster!!!
