Day 18 - meandering through WA in the truck

After "The day the rain got me," we took a bit of a day off.  After I spent a few hours futzing with the phone that has now survived drowning twice, I repacked the camper with the folded bike inside and we headed off again very late from the Parkhurst motel.

As I said before, it's an interesting old style motel, with more room than you'd ever see in a modern motel room, although it probably hasn't been redecorated in 50 years:

The Parkhurst Motel

The owner says that they're refurbishing and rebuilding units, and that they're aiming to keep its historical nature intact - I hope that they succeed.  It's a neat place.


We then headed off to The Rusty Tractor, which is in fact surrounded by rusty tractors and other old farm implements:

Rusty Tractors at the Rusty Tractor

More Rusty Tractors

After we ate, we drove to Centralia, where we explored a few antique shops and purchased a couple of things for the camper.  When everything in Centralia closed down (about 5PM), we headed to Lewis and Clark state park, where we picked out a campsite and set up in the rain.  Because the bike was in a disassembled state, I put it in my tent for the night so that it wouldn't get soaked.  I dunno why I worried, given the rains that I've ridden through, but the tent was also useful to throw other stuff in to keep it clean and dry.

Sharon and I then proceeded to have dinner of clam chowder and turkey sandwiches, and set about to build a fire in the rain.  We managed to smoke ourselves pretty thoroughly, which did keep the mosquitos away.  We also discovered that my aluminum plates make a fine fan for the fire,and each of us spent a fair amount of time playing with the campfire - Sharon got it to finally take well, and then I worked on seeing if I could get it hot enough to destroy any of the aluminum cans that the previous users of the campsite left in the fire ring.  After a late evening playing with fire it was time for bed - where we discovered that the camper is leaking, especially around Sharon's bed.  Oh well, we'll have to figure out something.