Ok, I know the blog silence has been deafening (you can't hear the blog at all now, can you?), but hey, we've been on the road! For almost three weeks in July, we were exploring eastern Washington and the Idaho panhandle. Our first stop was Palouse Falls State Park. The toasty temperatures warmed us up from the cool, wet summer in western Oregon. With temperatures in at least the 90's, no electrical hookup, and a refrigerator full of food, it was the perfect time for our RV batteries to give up, and so the morning of our first full day of vacation was spent trying to locate deep cycle batteries in the middle of nowhere in southeastern Washington. Fortunately (?), we have experience being stuck in the middle of nowhere. Some may recall a few years ago when we blew a tire in southeastern Oregon, only to find that, unlike most other vehicles, our truck came equipped with a spare tire, but no jack! The end result of that adventure was a trip to Les Schwab's, where I happened to have picked up a map of the western United States showing every Les Schwab location. We figured this was our best shot at locating the batteries we needed, so we visited the smallest Les Schwab store I have ever seen, in Basin City, Washington (the term "city" being used very loosely here). Anyway, that was the worst thing that happened on our trip, which was otherwise very good. More pictures will appear on our website. 
posted by Cathy Crandall at 7:02 AM