Trip Four In A Pandemic. Back On The Road-Not On The Road. Seattle and Wenatchee

11th Nov – 3 Dec 2021

Our last trip ended at the end of Sept 2019 and we left the USA planning to return in May 2020. Well, we all know by now that life can quickly turn into a sh*t show and the best laid plans can be packed into a cannon and blasted off into oblivion. The world got Covid and we all had to stay in. By ourselves. For ages.

Nick & I chose the eve of a global pandemic to relocate from NZ back to the UK and the USA, along with many countries, shut its borders to visitors in March 2020. We couldn’t get back and Tin Can Travelling was put on hold, indefinitely. We settled in, made an unplanned house purchase near my folks, supporting each other in a bubble and we killed time doing home improvements, gardening, walking our local countryside, creating interesting meals, making cocktails and watching Netflix. We stayed safe and well, got vaccinated as soon as we could, and waited. Life for us was not bad. Just a bit boring.

We waited. Continued paying our storage fees and waited. Finally, after more than two years of being away and a lot of world-wide ups & downs, news & non-news, facts & figures, protests & heroism, fatigue, heartbreak, triumph, successes, failures, frustration and joy, we are back in the USA. The American drawbridge was lowered on 8th Nov, and we returned on the 11th. Life has started to go on. It is not as certain as it was, but we have insurance, boosters, masks, a healthy level of caution and a need to get back on the road.

We flew into the Pacific NorthWest on an atmospheric river, touching down in Seattle in heavier than normal pouring rain and were astounded to be standing outside the terminal building a mere 30 mins later (and that included a trip to the loo). It was a relief to take our masks off after 15 hours of travel. Immigration, baggage claim and customs had been uncharacteristically speedy. Hardly any of the usual grilling and our chap didn’t even glance at any of the Very Important Paperwork that we had spent days obsessively collecting and that I was expectantly clutching. Vaccination certificates and PCR tests? Paff. Come on in!

For the next 4-5 days we were guests of Dean & Jill at their place in Edmonds, a coastal suburb of North Seattle. We spent a lot of that time chatting, eating and drinking and battling the twin monsters of insomnia and jet-lag. Mask wearing indoors in public places is still required and respected here and most venues were checking for proof of vaccination, making it feel much safer than the free-for-all that we left in the UK. A lot of restaurants have outdoor dining with heaters and even with the ongoing rain it was quite cozy. After dinner one evening, between downpours, we walked down to the jetty by the marina to witness an unusual spectacle. Every inch of the railings was filled by hundreds of people standing shoulder to shoulder, fishing lines with glowing lures dangling into the water. The air was filled with the exhaust fumes of countless small petrol generators that were powering powerful arc lamps that lit the sea below. This was squid fishing! It was noisy, smelly and crowded and everyone was having a ball.

One of our days here saw us take to the water in a small ex-commercial fishing trawler, the Cape Decision. Its owner, Dean’s uncle, spends his summers up in Alaska on it, recreationally fishing. Dean & Jill had volunteered to bring it home for him to Seattle at the end of the season. Their trip had taken just under a month, and in an alternate reality was one that we had discussed doing with them in 2020. The best plans start with a pipe dream…then get cancelled due to global pandemics… Anyway, the boat needed refuelling and although the fuel dock was only a short trip across the marina it was a great excuse to spend a few hours messing about on the water. We wrapped up warm (although, in retrospect, not warm enough) and having taken on the fuel and two other friends, Rich & Wendy, we set off to Lake Union. Boating is always interesting, but there was something special about chugging around in front of a major city skyline, especially if you add in the coming and goings of float-planes and the odd ‘hot tub boat’. Yup. You can hire a floating hot tub, complete with chimney and small outboard engine and meander around a major boating thoroughfare whilst sous vide-ing yourself with your drunken mates in chilly ambient temperatures. What could go wrong??

Just as hypothermia was getting nicely established in yours truely we tied up at the dock of a fish restaurant that served us a takeout lunch of hot chowder and portions of fish and chips. Some meals just really hit the spot.. I was revived. We continued around to see the local University college football stadium, home to the Huskies, which was just preparing to host a home game. The usual tradition of ‘tailgating’ is elevated here and a significant number of Huskies flag-flying boats were gathering on or near the docks just below the stadium to party, and in lieu of ‘fan buses’ there were several loaded passenger ferries transporting beer drinking game-goers from the city.

Our time in Seattle came to an end, and it was time for us to head over to Wenatchee. This is is the town two and a half hours east of Seattle on the other side of a small mountain range called the Cascades, is where Lori lives and where Big Dave & Tin Can are stored. Dean dropped us at the pick-up point of the minibus shuttle that we had booked, and we said our grateful goodbyes. The seating in the bus was a snug affair, but all were masked and the driver took our minds off the proximity of our fellow travellers by driving like a getaway driver. We arrived in good time and in one piece. Seattle seems a million miles away once you get here. The mountains soak up all the rain and Wenatchee is a veritable desert. The town is divided into two halves by the mighty Columbia River and is surrounded by some very lovely large hills.

Lori, our friend and all round Good Egg was not here. She is, rather sensibly, spending the winter down in the warmth of Palm Desert, Southern California. She generously was letting us stay in her home in her absence, but it would not be free for 3 days, because her generosity is not limited to just us. We were happy to have our first few days here in a hotel in town. Having collected our seriously mediocre hire car, a Nissan Versa saloon, we collected our rig keys and guff and headed up the hill to the storage unit to see what state BD & TC were in. We needed to know what we were dealing with.

We rolled up the large unit door, and there they were, just as we had left them. They looked brilliant. We were 99.9% sure that Big Dave’s batteries (he needs two) would be flat as flukes, but there was still a tiny glimmer of hope as we turned the ignition. Obviously nothing happened. We were unfortunately not at this stage the proud owners of a set of jump leads and nor was the only other person on the premises. We made the 6 mile roundtrip to the nearest auto parts store, and armed with our new purchase, headed back. The previously maligned Nissan Versa was given an opportunity to save its reputation. We connected them up, let the Versa run for 15 minutes, then tried Big Dave again. He started! What a relief. There may have been a bit of joyful dancing in the twilight. Now we knew he was start-able we could relax. We went back to town , checked into our hotel and headed out to a local brewery for dinner and celebratory beers.

The next morning we returned to the storage unit. The plan was to off-load Tin Can up here and take Big Dave to a mechanic in town for a service and to get a few things fixed. Before we off-loaded we opened up and got inside Tin Can. All was perfect. Not even a slightly fusty smell. Amazing after two years. We grabbed a few things, closed up and dropped TC into an outside space that the owner of the storage place had let us use. Spirits were high, but unfortunately it was not to last. Big Dave, who had been running all this time, suddenly died. Versa was unable to revive him despite multiple attempts. The place was deserted. After an hour or so of considering our options whilst being very grumpy with each other- exacerbated by thirst and hunger-a chap arrived in a big truck to drop off a trailer. He was kind enough to help us start Big Dave again. Sprits were raised up again. We just needed to get him to town. I drove him around the storage facility for a while and then, as town is down a steep hill, I checked the brakes. This killed him again. This time it felt terminal. Unfortunately he had conked out right in the middle of a roadway so we (Nick mostly) pushed him to the side. He is a leviathan (he tells me…)He probably is actually as Big D weighs 4.5 tonnes. We were left with no choice but to arrange a tow truck to take him to the mechanic. Unfortunately the original (modestly priced) outfit that we had been in touch with had been a bit unhelpful and sounded like they were too busy to be interested in our business. The main Chevy service centre in town was a completely different story and we ended up taking him there, resigned to spending a bit more. A bit depressingly Big Dave’s first miles of this trip looked like this.

36 hours later we had the verdict of the diagnostic foray into Big Dave’s ailments. He had lots wrong with him. He is, after all, no spring chicken. It was going to be time consuming and expensive, but all fixable. We briefly looked at the option of cutting our losses and buying a more modern truck but in the current climate there is very low inventory of vehicles and values have gone up significantly. A fixed Big Dave will be worth more than we paid for him 4 years ago. We gave the go ahead for the work. Without him, the Tin Can don’t travel.

In all it took two weeks for him to get fixed. We had another couple of nights in our hotel before we moved into Lori’s place. It was great to get back to a normal ‘at home’ environment and home cooking. Burgers and fries are all well and good, but we don’t want to add a travel bulge to a lockdown bulge. We went to ground a bit, opting not to stray very far. We had thousands of miles of travel coming up and were happy to stay put in the short term. There is a great 10 mile paved circular river-side trail that goes right past Lori’s house so we did some walking and cycling most days. After some early snow which quickly melted the weather was mostly cold and bright and dry, but with some bizarrely high temperatures in the second week. We had three very enjoyable dinners with Jan, Lori’s friend and next door neighbour who we had met before. And there was A LOT of Netflix in our lives. We started watching Seinfeld from the beginning. It is an epic opus of comedy (some of which definitely wouldn’t pass today’s standards of acceptability) and we whiled away many amusing hours binge watching that and many other things. Thanksgiving came and went. We half-heartedly joined in with a turkey drumstick each for dinner. These were very disappointing. We should have known better. We opted not to recreate one of the most awful sounding traditional Thanksgiving dishes: Sweetened mashed sweet potato topped with marshmallows. What the…? We did brave the local Macy’s on ‘Black Friday’. It was pretty busy but we didn’t get trampled in stampede of possessed bargain hunters. Nick did get a pair of good jeans for $33.

Finally, Big Dave was discharged from hospital. It was a very big bill and ran to 4 pages of work on the invoice. He was practically a new machine. Like the ‘Six Million Dollar Man’, literally and metaphorically. We Uber’d to the service centre, drove him back to the house, threw the bikes in the back, drove up the hill, loaded Tin Can back on (first time success, no marital fallouts) and put the bikes on the rack. I swept out the storage unit, handed back the keys to the office and then we drove the whole sharabang back down the hill to the RV service centre. Now Tin Can needed a few things doing that were going to take a day or so. We cycled home and were back by 12pm. In the Hampson world of late starts and slow days this was officially classed as ‘a busy morning’. We were making progress.

Eventually, 24 hours later, we had collected them headed back to Lori’s. Finally our ducks were all back in their very short line. Our final couple of days here was spent de-winterising Tin Can, checking all the systems, rediscovering all the guff that we had left here, moving in all our guff that we had brought with us and all the guff that we had bought since we arrived and cleaning ourselves out of Lori’s. On 3rd Dec we were finally on our way! Unfortunately this was briefly via the RV service centre again as we had discovered a moderate, but not disastrous, leak from a water pipe associated with the outdoor shower during the de-winterising, and then half an hour later we were finally, finally on our our way.