Portlandia

We made the move to Portland on a Wednesday since it was the first of the month. It was a pretty uneventful drive. The only hitch was we took an exit to get some gas and the station was too small and had a delivery truck in it so I couldn’t get the motor home in there. We had to make another stop. That’s always something we have to be prepared for, especially when we’re towing the jeep.

Our new RV park is really nice and it’s big! We love that there is grass around our spot so the dogs can go potty right outside – awesome for that early morning/late night trip. Our other spot was gravel and Bailey won’t pee on that so we always had to walk them somewhere. There aren’t any trees but that’s okay. Oh, it is really close to the airport so we get that noise but that doesn’t really bother us. Dexter was scared at first but he’s over it.

Megann has been working in the office instead of the motor home so she’s been riding the train in from Expo Center. I take her and drop her off every morning but it’s only 5 minutes away. She’s really realizing now how nice it was to work from home all these years! For some reason it is a lot more exhausting to be in the office and have to be “on” all the time for all the people around you.

Mostly we’ve done a lot of running around, discovering where our staple businesses are like the grocery stores we like, going to Fry’s (see below), and aimlessly driving around just to get the lay of the land. Megann also had to do some weekend work but we managed to fit in a couple of fun things. We made it to a movie at Cinema 21 that was part of Portland’s queer film festival called First Period. It was a high school drama/comedy set in the 80’s and it was pretty darn funny! We also went to a downtown dive bar (we like those) called the Cheerful Tortoise to watch the Seahawk’s game.

Internet

So with the move we no longer have high-speed internet since Megann is working in the office. We tried to use the parks wi-fi but the signal strength was so low it was horrible. We were only here two days when we decided we can’t live without the internet easily accessible. We use it to find nearby services, things to do, update the blog, research, and of course use Facebook. 🙂 Our first trip to Fry’s resulted in a range extender that we thought we could get connected and boost the signal but not with the security they had set up. Returned that and the second trip resulted in a new external wi-fi adapter (Netgear A6200 AC1200 dual band Gigabit adapter). This boosted our signal from 1 or 2 bars to 3 or 4 depending on where we set the adapter (it’s got a long USB cord and cradle). It’s been working really great! We are going to be doing a couple other things to get prepared for when we’re parked and there’s no wi-fi. We are going to get a Mi-Fi hot spot with Millenicom service which uses Verizon’s network. In addition, we will get a Wilson Sleek 4G cell signal booster for when we’re in remote areas. Megann has done a ton of research and these solutions and they come highly recommended by the tech savvy RV community right now.

Bailey

So much of our focus has been on Dexter because he’s crazy but ol’ Bailey has just been trucking along. Well, she has this tumor that has been removed before that has grown back and she keeps licking it. So we took her to a vet and he pointed out that she also has a swollen lymph node on her back leg. They shot the tumor with cortisone and said if the tumor shrunk it was a bad thing, meaning it was a mast cell and cancerous. It didn’t shrink so that’s good and we go back this week to get blood work and histology on the lymph node. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that it’s benign since Boxers are so prone to cancer. More to come on this story.

Well, we look forward to getting more of a flavor of Portland, doing some tours, seeing some sites getting rained on!