Wednesday, October 7, 2009

AUTUMN IN EUGENE

With shorter daylight hours and cold night temperatures, Eugene is wearing the fall color palette.

We spent most of the day at Carrier & Sons RV Service Center on the north side of Eugene.  As I write, we are at Valley River Center (click here to read our review), dry camping in the back corner of the lot (with three other motor homes), testing our new AGM battery bank.  Yippee! 

With winter’s cold temperatures on the way, we had Carrier do the “annual” (ha – we’ve never had it done in seven years!) servicing of the furnace, and had the generator serviced.  Besides our four AGM “house” batteries, we replaced both of our 8 year old “chassis” batteries (the ones that start the engine). 

My very favorite repair: they adjusted the big living room slide so it doesn’t slide out QUITE as far.  Over the years, the slide has slid a fraction of an inch farther every year – I was beginning to think it would knock out the side wall one day.  It turned out to be a very minor adjustment that made me VERY happy!  We were impressed with the quality of the service we received at Carrier, and the attitude of everyone we dealt with there.  Based on our experience, we recommend them.

Crater Lake We’ll be here for two nights, making sure the batteries and generator are back to tip-top condition and making a run to Trader Joes to restock for our next stop: Crater Lake.  It looks like we will have a four day window of clear (though cool) weather. 

Our last visit there was 5 years ago, when we took a day trip in our Jeep from the SKP park at Sutherlin, Oregon, on I-5.  This time, we’re taking the motorhome to a state park not far from the lake – where overnight lows have been dropping below freezing and they’ve seen a dusting of snow.  Good reasons to have the pre-winter servicing done, I think.  :)

5 comments:

  1. GORGEOUS pictures!!!! Thanks!

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  2. If I was a fish I think I just might like living in Crater Lake:))

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  3. Your pictures are geat. Can you tell me what type of camera you use?

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  4. I use a Canon PowerShot SD870 IS Digital Elph, 8 megapixels. It is pocket-sized (really, it fits in the pocket of my jeans, though I usually carry it in a case clipped to my pack or belt).

    It has a zoom lens and the widest angle lens you can find on a pocket-sized camera, which means I can get more of a building, a huge tree, or a beautiful landscape into the photo that is normal for a pocket-sized camera. The downside is that the horizontal lines on some photos what use the widest view are slightly distorted (curved). For a traveler, trying to capture wide vistas or big "things", it is great.

    Like many other bloggers, I use Picassa (free software) to crop and edit my photos. I ALWAYS "sharpen" my photos for the blog. Also, photos look particularly good with the dark background of this blog...

    The photo of Crater Lake was taken with my first digital camera, 5 years ago. It was probably around 4 megapixels, and Picassa was not yet available. Just goes to show that good lighting and decent composition is more important than the camera you use when dealing with the small photos typically posted on a blog. :) Thanks for your complement.

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  5. Laurie,Thanks for your idea of the background color. I did it for the pictures but can't seem to get the whole page colored. Can you helP?

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