Wed 27 Jun 2007
We made it to Portland, but barely. Apparently the coolant leak we had on the way to Boise wasn’t just the hose, the coolant reservoir was leaking as well! We got about 60 miles out of Boise towards Portland on Friday and the bus started overheating. So we pulled over in some dinky little town outside of Ontario, Oregon to work on it. The only thing we could really do was patch up the leak with some JB Weld stuff. Well, that stuff sucks for coolant reservoirs.
We stopped again in Baker City and got a different type of patching stuff. It held a little better, but we basically had to stop every hour or two to add coolant and check (and often re-do) the patch job. We finally arrived at my cousin’s house after 2 am. Thankfully the bus made it though!
Saturday was my cousin Joan’s wedding. Joan & Jake had a beautiful wedding (the happy couple is shown here). While I was on babysitting duty for her adorable two year old before the wedding, Seneca was tracking down a new coolant reservoir for the bus. Luckily the first place he found had one, although they don’t make the exact one we needed anymore (that seems to be common for the diesels, since they only made them for a few years). So he went to go get the part, and in the process missed the ceremony! The reception was a lot of fun and it was great to see all my family. Seneca hadn’t seen most of my family for a few years, so everyone was excited to see him and marveled at how long his hair had become (it is longer than mine now).
Sunday was spent running around town (thanks to my cousin’s awesome wife Bridgette – thanks!) finding hose fittings to get the different sized hoses attached to the new reservoir. Seneca then installed the new one and she ran great after that. It sure is nice having such a handyman around, and he has definitely gotten to know the bus very well after working on her so much. We got to test out his fixes on the way to Roots Brewery in Portland. They are Oregon’s first Certified Organic brewery and it was AWESOME! They even had plenty of vegan options and the beer we had was a heather ale from a 3,000 year old recipe!
Monday we got ready to head back to Boise and decided to camp around Mt. Hood. The bus did well on the trip as we headed out of Portland (after stopping at the wonderful Paradox Cafe in Portland for yummy vegan grub of course). Once we got to the Mt. Hood wilderness area, we started looking for a perfect place to camp (campgrounds, we don’t need to stinkin’ campgrounds!). We’d pull off onto every little dirt road we saw until we found one that led up a ridge to a secluded area. When we got out, we could see the top of Mt. Hood right from our campsite. It was an awesome spot, although it looked like some not-so-cool people had camped there before, because there were bullet shells and broken bottles everywhere. After a hike we cleaned up the campsite and camped for the night.
Today we drove from Mt. Hood back to Boise. The bus did get a little hot a few times (we found out that the engine runs hotter on grease, so we had to switch to diesel on big hills to keep it from overheating) but she ran great and we had no problem getting back. This week we hope to get some work done on the bus (install the new glow plugs we bought and track down the air leak that keeps her from starting up well every time) as well as give her a good bath – which we still haven’t done on the exterior! We’ll also plan our next stops and then hang out with old friends at my friend’s wedding reception on Saturday. Hopefully we’ll be heading out for Montana and then Canada by early next week. Unless of course we change our minds and decide to go somewhere else…