Driving, cleaning, brew pubbing

Sunday afternoon we did a dry-run drive to Northside Ford in northeast Portland, where we had an appointment Monday morning to get the rig's oil changed and have a safety check done.  Northside Ford is 32 miles north of where we're staying in Tualatin, but the closer Ford places told us they didn't take trucks -- plus the Lady Daze Yahoo site had some decent reviews for Northside.  The shop is right off of Portland's belt route, so we took I-205 instead of I-5.  Plus, who wants to face I-5 in a motor home on Monday-morning-Portland-rush-hour traffic.

Jim, of course, had scoped out potential breweries near Northside Ford, so we had lunch at the Columbia River Brewing company just a couple of miles away.

We also checked out another possible kayaking location:  the confluence of the Tualatin and Willamette Rivers.  There's a nice park there, and it was a great stop and walk, but we decided it was not a place we'd want to put the boats in -- not that we had time to do so anyway.

Monday we drove to the Ford place and sat around while Jim asked this question:  Why did they give us an appointment time of 8 a.m. and then take the rig in the shop at 9:30?  Only thing out of the ordinary was that we needed new wind shield wipers.   Monday evening we went over to Season and Lee's to see them and the boys. 

Today (Tuesday) was cleaning day.  We cleaned the entire rig, including (I'm not kidding) using q-tips on the window tracks.   If only we were that fastidious with the outside of our rig -- the poor girl has a lot of bugs on her.

We also washed the throw rugs, did three laundry loads of clothes, and took Cooper to the dog wash. And after washing Cooper, we needed showers.  Then we had lunch at another Portland brewery, Laurelwood Brewery.

Tomorrow we're headed for Oregon's coast. 

These are "Muscovy" ducks.  From a distance they looked like big, floating chickens, even making that forward thrusting motion with their head and neck like chickens do when they are walking -- although these guys were floating.

After I saw the duck, I turned around to talk with a boy who was at the lake.  Then I realized the ducks had gotten out of the water and walked right up to me. After realizing I didn't have any food, they left.

Jim at the Columbia River Brewing Company on Sunday.  You can see his IPA and my stout sitting on the table.  I have a lot more photos, but neither our router or the RV park's WIFI is working very well tonight (It took 30 minutes to up load the three photos above) so I'll add more photos later.