Back In Eugene

By Jim.

Every time I come to Eugene, a little part of me feels like I’ve come home.  Maybe everyone feels that way about the town where they went to college.  All I know is that I sure do.

Last night, we hosted Ralph and Kim Klinke for our first dinner party in the Iz, which was a blast…

…although Roxy didn’t like being banished while we ate.

This morning, we started the day with a walk/hike on a beautiful, seemingly endless trail near our RV park in Sisters (next town over from Bend).  Then it was finally time to scale big, bad Santiam Pass.

Happily, it was a no-brainer – warm (40ish), with dry pavement.  We could even enjoy the vistas on the drive.

On the other side of the climb, we descended into the magical Willamette Valley.

However, my wingman for the drive, Stinger, was underwhelmed.

Soon enough, we were in Duck Country!

Okay, now comes the hard part of this post.  For those of you who’ve been following us (thanks for all the nice notes, by the way), you’re no doubt tired of reading about our stairs.  But they crapped out on us again Thursday, so our Eugene to-do list includes getting them fixed once and for all.  We have bought replacements for all of the parts in the stair mechanism (so we’re told) and had them FedExed to us here.  If we get lucky, we’ll get the new furniture installed Monday morning (the reason we planned to be here in the first place) and get the stairs fixed that afternoon at Fleetwood’s regional service center here.  Call me a cynic, but I’ve also booked an appointment with an independent tech (the Eugene version of Curt, hopefully) to do the fix Tuesday morning if Fleetwood doesn’t get it done Monday.  And if that doesn’t work, we may resort to pole vaulting to get into this thing.