In 2012, my employer asked me if I would run an eight-month job in Tillamook, Oregon.  After leaving Jackie home the previous year while I ran off to San Francisco for twelve weeks to run a job down there, she made it clear that she wasn't going to be left at home again. I certainly wasn't going to commute a hundred-plus miles to work every day, so we decided to sell the house and buy a fifth wheel and move to the beach.  So we did.  We purchased a 38' toy-hauler (the BFT) and headed off to the Oregon coast for what turned out to be a whole year.  Our only campground that year was Camper Cove, just about twelve miles south of Tillamook.

     In 2013, we were already camping full-time at Camper Cover RV Park just south of Tillamook, Oregon.  After I completed my work in Tillamook, I continued to work at different jobs along the Oregon Coast.  Once work for me at the beach slowed down, we moved to a KOA park just east of Corvallis, OR.  We stayed there for a month and then moved thirty minutes south to River Life Resort.  The park was really nice, all sites had concrete pads and a nice lawn.  The park was later bought out and is now part of a church resort.  When the "out-of-town work" slowed, we moved back to the Portland area.  This time we landing in a park just off the 5 north of Vancouver, WA, Tr-Mountain RV Park.  Again, we stayed there for a month and then had the good fortune to park on a friend's (Dori) property right on the Columbia River just east of Vancouver.  We stayed there for the next three and a half years until I retired.     We started the year living on Dori's property in our BFT (fifth-wheel).  After a couple of months we decided that we'd sell the truck as it was costing us about $20 a day to keep and we weren't driving it at all. On Father's Day we were at an RV at the Portland Expo Center and wound up buying a forty foot diesel pusher and trading in the BFT.  We're very happy we did so.  Once we had the coach, we decided to take it out once a month on a weekend camping trip.  Funny thing was, every time we took it out, something happened.  I thought I was jinxed.

      2015 was our second year living our Dori's property on the Columbia River.  We did our best to take a camping trip one weekend a month and found a few new parks to add to our experiences.  Every trip, we learned a new way to break our rig; fortunately, nothing too serious.