Monday morning we got up to (you guessed it) more rain but we were scheduled to move southwards so Neil put on rain gear and set up the outside while Connie did the inside. We pulled out about 0930 or so for our 250 mile trip back into the US in northeast Washington state. Our original destination was planned to be Oroville which is about 5 miles over the border; but we decided to press on another 30 miles or so and stop at Omak where there is a nice city owned park right on the river. Our decision came about because we discovered our original destination didn’t have pull throughs and since we were only staying one night before continuing our move to Leavenworth further south made the change.

We stopped at the border for about an hour as we got grilled by the Border Patrol ladies; they did an agriculture inspection on us and confiscated our limes and garlic head…turns out that both of those potentially have bugs in them that we’re trying to keep out of the US. After finishing that we headed out…glad to be back in our home country…and pulled into Carl Precht Memorial RV Park in Omak about 1400 or so. This was a pretty nice little park; full hookups although we didn’t use the sewer since it was just an over night stop. We didn’t bother unhitching; just put the forward jacks down to keep us from rocking all night. We ran out to Walmart and picked up some groceries and other stuff we had on our list, came home and had a pizza for dinner, and went to bed pretty early as we were really exhausted.

Tuesday morning we drove a mile into downtown Omak for breakfast. Our original plan was to eat at the Corner Bistro…but as we drove by we noticed that they had zero customers so we changed our mind and went to Magoo’s Family Restaurant instead. We knew we had made the correct decision when we noticed (a) that there were a dozen customers and (b) two local cops came in for breakfast about 5 minutes after we sat down. Connie had what was called “The Lighter Side” for breakfast; this consisted of 1 egg, bacon and a pancake so big the plate almost needed outriggers to hold it. Neil had a bacon, egg and cheese croissant. Both were pretty yummy. After breakfast we headed out on what we thought would be an easy day of travel to Leavenworth; about 110 miles or so.

We mostly drove right down the edge of the Columbia River as it heads south, then west toward Seattle. Along the way we stopped at the Davis Dam so we pulled in for a potty break and to look at the scenery. The dam creates Lake Pateros…and naturally we got a couple of pictures.

By this time the rain had pretty much stopped so we thought we were home free (boy, were we wrong). We arrived at the Pine Village KOA Campground in Leavenworth about 1230 and checked in. This park is actually really nice…but unfortunately isn’t quite a big rig friendly as the KOA main web site would lead you to believe…we made the reservation online and when the lady at the desk saw us she wondered if we would actually fit in our scheduled site. She said they would have never given us that site if we called them directly as it was really not suitable for a 5ver our size. Nonetheless; we headed up with our escort Rob to see if we could make it in. Here’s a shot of site R1 which we were originally supposed to park in.

As you can see from the above photo which was taken from just about as far forward as BAT could get without hitting a tree; the road comes uphill from the right side past the red car, does a 180 degree turn uphill and disappears out of the lower right side heading back toward the camp office. Site R1 is the empty one in the middle of the photo and it slopes up from the road. This means that we had to back the house back down the road, across the dip, and then up into the site. We gave it a good try for 30 minutes or so but our rear idler wheels which prevent the back end from dragging gouged up the graveled surface of the site; you can see the trench we cut (it’s the dark just down from the picnic table). Rob agreed with us that we just weren’t going to get into that site so he headed off to see where the office could relocate us. The basic problem is that they really don’t’ have good sites for a 5ver our size. After a couple of discussions between the park staff they decided to put us in site 25 instead; this is a pull through on the inside of the 180 degree turn you can see here about 2 sites further along. While this site was level enough for us to get into; it was really a tight squeeze to get the house in so that our forward jacks would not break the patio stones and still have enough clearance to get the bedroom slide out and park BAT and the car so they were out of the road. Here’s a shot of our final parking location; once we got to the site Neil spent almost another 30 minutes getting us situated so that all of the above items worked out ok; there just wasn’t much room to maneuver back and forth to reposition the rig to fit in the space.

As it is; the right side of BAT is within about a foot of the front of the house, the bedroom side is within about 6 inches of the tree you can see on the left front side of the house, and the car is parked behind the house (again with maybe a foot of clearance). It was a struggle but we finally made it. Connie was sort of bummed out that after such a nice travel day we had as much trouble getting situated as we did. Site R1 (our original site) is right out of the picture on the rift here; the SUV you can see at the far right here is the RV on the far left of the picture of site R1…Neil was standing just past the camper you see to the right of BAT looking towards the right of this photo when he took the picture of R1. We would have to think twice before we booked here again…although the park itself is beautiful the sites are really just too small for big rigs to fit into most of them.

To console ourselves; after Neil had had a bike ride we headed off to town for a beer. A quick search revealed the Muchnen Haus which is an nice outdoor biergarten (that’s German for beer garden) where we had a couple of brews…they were Dirty Face Amber from the local Iceberg Brewery.

Pretty decent beer; although not quite as good as the Sleeman Honey Black Lager we had the other day in Salmon Arm.

After that we came home and had a steak salad for dinner and sat down to watch some TV.

Tomorrow Connie picked out a 3.5 mile hike for the morning…it’s supposed to rain in the afternoon so our plan is to hike early then she’s going to work after lunch while Neil does some computer stuff.

Cyas.