We’re still waiting on Rodger to be fixed. They’ve found a few things as well as the steering that need fixing including shocks, water pump and timing gasket. We knew these things would need attention at some point, so it was worth getting it done now. It’s costing a small fortune though!

Meanwhile, we have a nice hotel across the road. It’s a suite with microwave, fridge, dishwasher etc. it also is costing a small fortune, but oh well, not much we can do about it.

Hopefully we’ll be on the road again soon.

Today was another slow start, not leaving Walmart until lunchtime.

We stopped off at a freedom camping place, but there was no shade, so we continued driving. We will be in the Sierra mountains soon, and it should be cooler there.

As we drove into Reno, I noticed the brakes were smelling. Mike thought it was because we’d just come down a steep hill, but the smell was really strong, and didn’t disappear on the flat.

It was stinking hot and we didn’t want to stop, but I suggested we get the brakes checked before we leave town.

We pulled into a garage and the mechanic had a Quick look and said our power steering was leaking. Great! And it’s Friday afternoon and they can’t fix it until Monday.

I rang another place that works all weekend and they said to bring it in. They will look at it Saturday afternoon and hopefully fix it Sunday.

We thought about sleeping in our van outside the mechanics but it’s just too hot. So we checked into a hotel across the street, which is nice and airconditioned and we’ve booked it for two nights while we wait for Rodger to be fixed.

We keep on saying how we’re gonna drive early to avoid the heat, but we don’t end up leaving camp until lunchtime. Today was another one of those days. We also stopped in a little town to upload our latest video at the free wifi at the library. Thankfully it was fast.

We stopped at a lake in Whiskeytown which had a $1 shower, much needed!

We drove through wildfire smoke, but it wasn’t as bad as other smoke we’d driven through in Canada and Alaska.

It was mostly a driving day and super hot. We gradually climbed up to about 5000 feet and it was much cooler. all the national forest campgrounds were closed because of the fires, so we just kept on driving until we reached the town of Susan ville, where we slept the night in a Walmart carpark.

This morning the van didn’t start. The battery was completely dead. We just hoped Mike had accidentally left our isolator switch on.

Thankfully we had just bought a jump starter the other day, and it worked a treat. We drove ten minutes to Walmart to stock up on supplies and have a poo.

Thankfully Rodger started again and we think that the problem was, Mike left the isolator switch on overnight and it drained our battery.

Today we continued down the coast. Did I mention we’re now in California? The coast here is just as nice as Oregon.

We stopped at Baker beach, a charming beach a short scramble down a steep hill. It was also a clothing optional beach so Mike got a bit of naked time.

After the beach, we started heading inland towards Vegas. There is a massive wild fire burning not far off our route, apparently the 4th largest in California history. We just hope we won’t be too affected by it.

We stopped at a little national forest campground for the night at only $5 per night!

Mike thrashed me at cards, but other than that, it was a pleasant evening.

We hung around at our beach camp this morning. We got chatting to another van lifer. All the van lifers we meet are all like minded.

The coastal drive keeps getting better and better. Giant rocks jutting out from the shoreline and white sandy beaches. We’ve seen loads of sea lions lazing around on the rocks like giant slugs. The sea lions in Oregon this time of year are known as the losers who didn’t mate this year. The ones that did, got to go to California.

The weather has been amazing. We did a few hikes today and wandered along the beach.

We parked the night on a pier and watched a beautiful sunset over the ocean.

We had another lazy morning, leaving our camp around 11am. There’s no point rushing as our flight isn’t until early sept.

The Oregon coast is getting more spectacular as we head south.

We had seafood chowder for the third day in a row and this was probably our best yet. We also had fish and chips for lunch and these were yummy too.

We found a nice place to stop for the night, overlooking the ocean and beach. We watched the sun set which was incredible.

Today we woke up to a stunning day overlooking the Pacific Ocean. We mucked about a bit in the morning, doing some editing and drinking coffee. At around 10am I looked up and the view had disappeared, replaced by sea must.

We continued along the Oregon coast. The coast’s scenery is incredible. We had another clam chowder for lunch but it wasn’t as good as yesterday’s.

We couldn’t find any free spots to camp tonight, so we stopped at a small national forest campground for just $10 for the night. We took a walk over a massive sand dune to a beach, but it was really windy.

We tried to watch the meteor shower but we didn’t see any.

we left our free camping spot and crossed a really long bridge over the harbour and into Oregon.

The Oregon coast is much busier than the Washington coast, or it could be that it was a Saturday. We are not far from Portland so it could be all the weekenders heading to the beach.

Not much happened today. We drove, moaned at the traffic, bitched about the campgrounds all being full and the lack of free places to stay.

Then we found the perfect place to camp, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It was perfect, except there was no sunset.

Today we had a late start at the campground and left around lunchtime. We continued down the Washington coast.

We stopped at a quaint town called Westport where we had an amazing clam chowder for lunch. It was one of the best we have had.

As we headed further south along the coast, there wasn’t many options for camping. All the state park and RV parks were full up for school holidays. A lot of other places banned overnight parking.

We kept on driving and at about 7.30pm we found the perfect spot overlooking the ocean. Quite a few other ‘interesting’ characters were also camped here, but we felt safe enough.

Our Alarm went off at 4.30am but I think we were both already awake, it’s like that when you know you have to get up early. The pressure to sleep keeps you awake.

After waking, Mike went and bought our ferry tickets, then the Canadian police came and checked our passports and told Mike to take them to US customs, It was such a low stress process.

It was only a 1.5 hour ferry ride from Victoria to Port Angeles in the USA. We met a lady on board who has the same model and year as our Dodge and she is living full time in hers.

In port Angeles it was such an easy process. We had to throw out our limes and eggs, but otherwise no questions!

Back in the USA things seemed a little grubbier, or it might have been our imagination. We went straight to Walmart for supplies and a top up for our SIM cards.

We drove until about 2pm when we decided to stop for the night in an RV park. We both needed showers, laundry and to dump our waste. As well as that, we were both exhausted after our early start.