The beach at Playa del Carmen, Mexico.
Where are Kevin and Ruth now? Playa del Carmen, Mexico.

Where are Kevin and Ruth going next? Toluca on December 24th!

Sunday, November 4, 2018

Back to the Pacific coast!

First thing we did yesterday morning was go for a walk around the campus of the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum. It's a big property and we probably did 1.5 miles (2.4 kms) just walking around it.

Lots to see even if you don't go inside the buildings. They have a very cool indoor water park on the property as well.

Here's some of the stuff from our walk...




Water park, with the water slides starting out from the 747 Jumbo Jet!

The main building. There are two more smaller buildings that are similar.
The Spruce Goose, is located here.

Front end of another 747.

From there, we headed to the Pacific Coast and Lincoln City, Oregon.

Scenery along the way.

More scenery.

More scenery.

We needed a laundromat, and found one just at the entrance to town, right near the Chinook Winds Casino where we thought we might stay the night.

Yesterday's drive, 51 miles (81 kms).

This entire coast seems really difficult to find decent free camping. There are tons of "No RV Parking" and "No Overnight Camping" signs everywhere and we've pretty much resigned ourselves to the fact that we may have to pay to stay at some campgrounds along the way. So, we'll take advantage of free parking at a casino when we can!

The Chinook Winds Casino here in Lincoln City does allow overnight RV parking, but with very strict regulations. And, good for them... it prevents people from taking advantage.

You need to have 20 gambling points racked up on your casino membership card in order to get a permit to spend the night. It takes $1 of gambling to gain 1 point. So you need to gamble $20 to get 20 points. But, the membership card is free, and they give you $5 free money to start it off. And, Ruth got a further $5 of free money because November is her birthday month.

However, the free money does not count towards points.

So, we went to the penny slot machines and gambled our $15 free money away. I walked away with $2.55 profit, and Ruth got lucky with almost $23! She then used that $23 to get the 20 points necessary for the RV overnight pass. 

So, we never touched a dime of our own money, and walked away with the overnight RV parking permit and $2.93 in cold hard cash!

Taken this morning.

It rained again overnight, quite hard at times. But that's supposed to be finished now, and there's only a 20% chance of rain throughout the day.

The RV parking area is quite slanted... it's not ideal, but what do you want for free? 

It took a bit of effort to get Sherman level.
I can't stand not being level.

Heading out for a walk to explore a little bit this morning, then doing some more driving south. With the time change, it now gets dark around 5:00pm so we have to make sure we're parked up at a decent hour!

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The popular Zinus Memory Foam RV Mattress is back at a decent price again...


And in Canada...



14 comments:

  1. So much convoluted scheming to get out of level "free" parking. Awesome.

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    Replies
    1. Yep, it is a little confusing but I guess this way it gets people into the casino.

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  2. Ottawa also moved the clocks back last night. At least it will be light at 7 a.m.

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    Replies
    1. We are not sure which way we would prefer it, dark later in the morning or dark earlier in the evening.

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  3. I saw the Spruce Goose in Long Beach, CA some years ago. That would have been worth the price of admission alone. The SG is a real engineering feat that something that big could get off the ground.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It would have been neat to have seen the Spruce Goose up close and personal but that kind of admission is just a little too much for us, perhaps if we were real big aviation nuts then we may have bit the bullet and gone in. It sure did look interesting. Apparently the Spruce Goose only flew one time in it's life, I guess it was just to prove it could get off the ground. It is definitely an impressive plane.

      Delete
  4. Not being level will drive a person nuts.

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    Replies
    1. It would drive us nuts for sure but there were a few units there that never even made the attempt to get level!

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    2. Unlevel back to front is OK as long as my head is higher than my feet. Side to side is another thing!

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    3. Yep, that is much the same for us but Kevin tries to do everything to make us as level as possible.

      Delete
  5. Replies
    1. So did we! We would have loved to have had our grandchildren with us. They would have had a ball there. They actually had at least four slides coming out of the top of the plane down to the bottom and a pile more slides inside of the building.

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  6. Okay, you hung out in Frederika’s hometown, now you’re in my neck of
    the woods! I grew up in Lincoln City, 26 miles North of Newport...Chinook Winds is about a mile north of the house I lived in from the age of one month to 17 years, when I headed for Alaska the day after graduation. We park at the casino often (which was sand dunes that were called the Indian Land, and where we used to pick wild strawberries when were kids...)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wow, you had a great place to grow up in. What a beautiful area!

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