RV Trip: Days 9 and 10

We got up, all excited to explore Crater Lake. Our plan was to do a hike and explore. First we ate breakfast, where Josy insisted on wearing his “gasses.”

Then we packed up the rv and Pat went to start it so that he could put in the popout…and the key wouldn’t go in. At all. 

I’ll save you the drama of the back and forth, but they key would not go in the ignition no matter what he did. We both attacked it with tweezer in case there was something in there, he tried to go in through the back panel, he tried everything. Eventually we decided that we had to call roadside assistance, however, we had no cell service. I had one bar that would occasionally send out a text message, but only if I was standing in the exact right spot and even that would go in and out. So we had to walk 1/3 of a mile to get to reception to use their landline, which was still a terrible connection. 

After multiple phone calls with roadside assistance and piles of texts with Francis, the owner of the RV, they told us they’d send a mechanic in three hours. After 4, Pat went back to reception and called to find out what had happened. Apparently they called reception and whoever answered the phone was rude, so they decided not to come. They could send out a mechanic on Thursday. Um, what? By this time, we’d spent all day waiting by the rv for a mechanic, which was the only place I could get texts, so it was a long day. But the boys got a good nap in, we read some books and we taught the kids how to play yatzee. We had electricity, but no water or ability to dump, but the bathroom was close and there was a faucet nearby to wash our feet and fill up water bottles.

Roadside assistance told us they’d text me at 7am, so we went to bed, planning to deal with it the next day. At 7:30 I texted Francis as we’d heard nothing. He called them for us and finally told us that they would be there in an hour and a half. We took that opportunity to go on a walk, so that we could at least explore the area a bit.

Lunchtime hit and still no mechanic, so we left a note on the rv and headed over to the restaurant, thinking that it would improve morale. Unfortunately, Josy’s pizza broke and he burst into tears because “Pizza. Bokin.” That pretty much summed up all of our feelings about the day…

We got another message from Francis that the morning mechanic hasn’t come because he hasn’t been paid yet, so they finally found another one, who was a semi mechanic who could maybe fix the ignition, but could at least get the popout back in so we could be towed.

Eventually he showed up and determined that the problem was definitely the ignition, but he had no way to fix it and we would need a Mercedes mechanic. He also couldn’t find the manual override to put the popout in, so we couldn’t even be towed. There was nothing he could do.

We talked to Francis again and started talking about trip interruption. At this point, we were ready to just go back to Portland and be done with the whole thing.

Josy woke up from his nap and was eating a banana when his banana broke. This was clearly a disaster. “My. Nana. Bokin.” He sobbed. Unfortunately, this just made his brother and sister laugh, which added to his misery. Once again, it was a perfect description of our day.

Pat decided to play with the key for the unpteeth time, to try and get it to work. He found a paperclip and stuck it in there, even though the mechanic had also just tried to pick things out of it and looked image to see if he could see anything. He didn’t feel anything in there and nothing moved…but this time the key went in. The whole thing turned on just fine. We quickly threw everything together, put in the popout and started driving. We were definitely ready to be done with Crater Lake…

We talked to Francis and he gave us the go ahead to keep going, rather than going straight to the mechanic so we ate leftover pizza in the parking lot of a gas station and drove to Sisters. We got there at 10:30pm and all fell into bed, completely exhausted from the drama of the last two days…