Good Start, Bad Finish

It was 9:45 when we finally got on the road yesterday. Part of the delay was last minute goodbyes and conversation that lasted longer than it should have. The early part of the drive was on winding, twisting roads out of the foothills and on to level road. We finally reached I-5 in Sacramento by noon and it was smooth sailing the rest of the way. We arrived at the campground in Redding at just about 3 PM which should have given us plenty of time to relax and enjoy the rest of the day.

The first problem we had was that the campground wasn't expecting us and they had no reservation. The VP of Operations for the company, and the gentleman that hired us, failed to make the reservations because he thought we wouldn't be in until Thursday. I rechecked my email later and verified that I had the correct dates, so he somehow got confused. They tracked him down in Lincoln City and verified that we were to be given a space. Of course, they were almost full and needed to do some shuffling to get a space for us that would be large enough for our fifth wheel. We finally found one but it didn't have a sewer hookup which was OK for us for one night.

We proceeded to get set up in the space and as Josie opened the door to go inside, I heard this loud "Uh Oh". You guessed it. The refrigerator door was not locked and with the winding, twisting roads we were on, everything was scattered on the floor. The milk dumped, the ice dumped, the Italian dressing dumped, and everything else that was in the refrigerator was on the floor. We will have to get a check list put together for departures so this kind of thing doesn't happen again in the future. Another lesson learned.

The next challenge was to get the satellite up and locked on to a signal. Even though there were lots of trees, I was able to get the dish locked on. The problem was that I kept getting an error code from the DirecTV receiver. When I contacted their customer service they informed me that the error code indicated that the hard drive was dead, and I would need a replacement receiver. Great! We're leaving here and can't take delivery until Wednesday in Lincoln City. Of course, that also means that all of our recorded programs and movies are lost. So, we hooked up the cable - free here - and watched TV with a very snowy and grainy picture. Don't know what settings need to be changed that weren't.

Josie is preparing our snacks for travel as I wrap up this entry. Let's hope that today is a better day...