Finally Settled....I hope!

Well, we are finally settled in in our winter location....I hope! It seems that all of my careful, time staking, planning was absolutely pointless - as absolutely nothing went according to plan. I find it very, very, difficult to 'go with the flow' but that is just what we did - and it was just fine!

After one more day at our campsite in Canada - and a great day it was, with an attempted hike up to Bridal Veil Falls.  It was a beautiful walk through the mossy, fall forest even though a few steps prevented us from reaching the falls.

The hike turned out to be a beautiful farewell to Canada, as the next day we received the longer lift which we had had to wait for, and were able to cross into the United States of America!  The border crossing was pretty hassle free, considering all the horror stories I'd heard, the customs officers didn't look at any of the documentation I had gathered, and only confiscated some baby bell peppers!

We stayed near Seattle the first night as we had originally planned to spend a couple nights there, so I had had a parcel shipped to a mailbox there (can I tell you how nice it is to have an American mailing address!  No more Amazon error messages that "this item cannot be shipped to your location").  Seattle looks like a funky, fun city and I wish we had had the chance to explore it - oh well, there is always next time!

(on another thought I don't think I have ever used 'had had' so many times before....whats up with that?)

The next day we headed for Salem, Oregon for a LOT of tax-free shopping! Even with the exchange rate from Canadian to US dollars, we were astounded at the prices for many things! We outfitted our trailer with neat gadgets from Camping World, shopped for a bike for Hazel, a coffee maker for us, shoes and a jacket for Violet - so much that we had been delaying until we were in the USA.  One of our purchases was Halloween costumes for the girls - we took them trick-or-treating at a mall, and house to house.  It was a novelty to not have to bundle up in winter gear under/over their costumes! And the candy haul was a good chance to sample some candy that is only available in the States...not that we ate any of the kids treats, mwhaa ha ha ha.

The next day, we hit the I5 and headed south to our winter location. It was a much nicer, and more beutiful drive than we had been led to believe....until we turned off the I5 at Grants Pass and onto the 199.  While it was beautiful, through the mountains and redwoods, along a river....the narrow, windy, curvy road was INSANE!! No photos as I was gripping the door handle and closing my eyes.  As usual, my Superman, drove us safely through.....

We pulled into what we thought would be our home for the winter, the girls and I went and explored the very pretty river garden while Jose set up the trailer. We were surprised to find out that the campsite didn't allow children, despite their website which misled us to believe otherwise. The owner said she would 'give it a try'...

We had a great weekend exploring the area, finding a great playground, dog park and beach (where we were thrilled to finally get to test out my Power Chair's claim that it will drive through sand - IT DOES!!!!), despite the worry about whether our children were being quiet enough. 

 Thus, on Monday morning it was almost a relief when we were informed we couldn't stay.  After getting the kids schooling done, we headed out to check out RV parks in the area.  We settled on a park in the harbor area of the town, which we moved into yesterday.  We actually like this place better so far, the neighbours seem friendly and best of all - WE CAN WALK TO THE BEACH! As well as shops....like an ice cream shop much to my kids delight!

Please excuse the poor quality photo's, hopefully my new camera (Thanks for the early birthday present Mom!) will get here by the weekend!