We left home June 3rd... Monday morning after a short stop over in town for a couple of new tires for the trailer. Once that was done... it didn't take long to be out of town. The first "glitch" was trailer lights that didn't work so we spent an hour in Port Townsend with a very nice handy man who came to assist us and got us up and running.. and it was a cheap fix. Then off to the ferry and up Highway 20 to the North Cascade Pass. It is an incredibly high pass and the location of our first disastrous attempt to go north eight years ago..
but... that is a story for another time.
We started heating up as we went over the passes, and seemed to really be lacking in power. With a Dodge cummins diesel one would not expect that. But yes it was definitely struggling. We pulled into Winthrop to a beautiful campground about dinner time and decided to work on the problem in the morning.
PEARRYGIN LAKE STATE PARK
In the morning we headed into Omak and spent 2 days at a park there, while the wonderful guys at the Dodge dealership put in a handy little computer (chip).. a hand held gadget that attaches to your trucks computer. It reads all the info and we discovered that who ever had owned the truck before us had made some major changes to it.. and it just wasn't tuned properly. So.. after a couple of hours of messing around.. this little gadget re tuned the truck... brought it back to factory standards.. and then also allows us to just click a button and we have our own little "Turbo Boost". Well, not really but with changing the settings, we get the extra power needed to pulling heavy loads. Another $320 but at least we can make the mountain passes now with no problems.
On Wednesday we started out for Grand Forks B.C. to visit our daughter, but only 20 miles down the road, we turned around and headed back to Omak. This time... to replace a water pump. Still had a squeaky noise and heating up a bit.. so better safe than sorry. $380 later... we finally left Omak on Thursday afternoon, arriving in Grand Forks at 7pm.
We will be here until Monday morning and then it is northward bound.. no more actual plans, but where ever the truck takes us in a day. Before we leave here, we are taking the trailer into our daughters shop and we are getting a little welding job done on it, just to be sure the trailer actually makes it over all the rough roads ahead.
I don't know when I will get on here again, but hopefully in about a week. Take care everyone, keep smiling and have a great summer.
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