finding Florence & other Oregon fun

On Friday night we said goodbye to Tori and Jurell, and on foggy Saturday morning we headed out of Portland over bridges, past berry fields and grazing sheep, on mossy tree-lined roads and through tunnels, and made our way to Florence, Oregon.

NEWS FLASH!! We LOVE Florence, Oregon! After two quick days of exploring, and some online research, we’ve decided it’s definitely on our list of possible future homes. First of all, it’s BEAUTIFUL: it’s sandwiched between the Siuslaw River and the coast, is full of trees, creeks, waterfalls, and sand dunes(!), and has a super cute downtown area right on the river. Secondly, Oregon has no sales tax, low income and property taxes, and low car registration fees, and the housing prices and overall cost of living in Florence itself are low. Third, the weather is just how we like it – mostly cool and rainy with no hot days and very little snow. The bigger part of the equation, whether there’s a church family there for us, will have to wait until we’re able to visit for longer. (Florence Christian Church (FCC 😊) might be a possibility!!) Knowing we only had two days in Florence on this trip, we made the most out of our time – we explored the dunes and hiked to Sweet Creek Falls, tested Mo’s clam chowder (delicious!), walked/shopped the downtown area, drove through the residential section, and enjoyed dinner outside the Bay Street Grill and coffee at the local shop – River Roasters.

On the way out of Florence, we got a call from the Harvest Host winery we were scheduled to stay at that night – their driveway and grassy area were flooded and too soft for us to park on. So I had to find a new place on the fly. Thankfully, we found a KOA (Kampground of America) in Medford, not too far from the winery, that had one site left. The next two nights we had already booked in another KOA in Oroville – so Deron finally broke down and bought a KOA membership (saved us $15 right then). Probably should have done that long ago, but oh well.

We saw several more cute towns on the way down to Medford – if Florence isn’t a fit, one of those might be. Who knows?

The rest of the week was uneventful, other than we have noticed a sporadic coolant leak that might mean we have a cracked head gasket, which we obviously need to take care of (though the coach has been running so beautifully that it’s hard to believe anything is wrong with it). Every day we’re so thankful that though we’ve had plenty of mechanical issues (which, according to my Facebook RV group is absolutely to be expected), we’ve never been in a dangerous breakdown-on-the-highway type situation.

Next week we’re looking forward to celebrating Thanksgiving in Chino Valley with my bestie!

learning curve / random observations

• We just discovered that our speed uphill with empty tanks is far different than with full tanks – probably should have tested that a while back! So despite the sparkly benefit of filling the black and grey tanks with clean water and suds to slosh around during the trip, when there are hills on the horizon, empty tanks are the way to go.