At a Loss for Words

  Just last night I was thinking that I probably wouldn’t have much to say on the blog over the next week or so since we are getting close to the end of our time here and haven’t been doing anything very exciting due to weather and being tired from work.

I shouldn’t think so much! This  morning at 6:45 we were rudely awakened by an electronic beeping sound. Jim checked our digital watches. which were quiet, and the sound persisted. It was hard to tell where it was coming from, and then it dawned on us that it was the water leak detector under the bed. Yes, water pump #4, the new model that was more reliable,  seemed to be leaking at one of the compression fittings.  Since they should only be hand tightened, Jim was able to tighten it just a bit, but it still continued to leak.  What was even more disturbing was that we didn’t even have the power on to the pump.  Last week we decided to hook up to the city water even though the pressure was low, to avoid having to fill the tank in the cold and rain. So this meant no water unless we could fix the leak or replace the pump again. We had an extra compression fitting, so after talking to his good buddy at ShurFlo,  Jim removed the old one and replaced it with the new fitting.  Unfortunately it still leaked, so they are sending us a new pump.  Luckily we had a spare 5.7, the kind that failed 3 times before. So after a few hours wasted again working on the pump, we now have a working 5.7.  We both took showers tonight and so far so good. At this point we have no hopes for it lasting, but maybe we’ll get lucky.

We did go on another Gorge hike this afternoon to relieve some stress from the water pump issue, and took a wrong trail so never made it to the falls we were trying to find. It was a beautiful hike, though very steep at times. Here are a few pictures. Since we promised Debbie a waterfall, we stopped at the big one, Multnomah, for an ice cream cone and so she could say she’d been there.

On the way home, Jim took a little detour to a town called Warrendale, right on the Columbia River. There were only a handful of houses on 2 dead end streets. This was a lovely big house, but I guess the owners got tired of gawkers like us driving by. If you click on the image to enlarge it, the effect is even better.