Visiting the Dopps

We had a delightful day. JoAnn sent Fillmore up at 8 AM to waken Doug so we could get an ‘early’ start. We called a small engine repair place we found on the internet and took off with our generator on board.

After dropping it off we had about an hour and a half drive to Canby OR which is south and east of Portland. Doug started to retune the truck with his Super Chip which we have used for years and absent mindedly turned off the ignition after he started the reprogramming procedure. He may have fried the Super Chip because the truck is back in factory mode and won’t do anything else. Not a pleasant prospect!

We found Richard and Marlene’s house with ease and had a wonderful day. Now we understand why they don’t want to full time. They have a magnificent flower garden and vegetable garden. Their lot is long and narrow and they have room for us to come back with our rig and park in their side yard. The house and yard is beautifully landscaped and very well tended. That is what they say they love to do and it shows in their garden and grounds.

Inside is a house they bought and restored to their liking some twenty years ago. It is open, colorful, warm and pleasant. Marlene made one of her homemade soups fresh from the garden along with homemade bread for lunch. She topped it off with fresh homemade blueberry pie topped with Tillamook ice cream. What a delightful meal!

They are vegetarians and much of what they eat, they grow themselves.

Their garage houses, two cars, their motor home, an airplane, two huge lawnmowers, seven bicycles, a couple of work benches, a bathroom along with storage space and it is spotlessly clean as well. Doug doesn’t know whether to trust anyone who is that clean oriented; they must have something up their sleeve.

We visited until about 2:30 and drove back to Hood River via a scenic route which took us in near proximity of Mt Hood. It hid from us for quite a while but we managed to sneak up on it for some pictures.

We got back to the small engine shop just before it closed and the generator was ready. The man said that motors don’t run too well with mud in the gasoline and didn’t charge us a penny. What a nice thing! Guess the desert dust just got to be too much for that generator.

We stopped at a grocery store for ice tea and water and then back to camp. All in all it was a great day thanks to Richard and Marlene.

Jul 8, 2009

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