We said goodbye to Klamath before 8 o’clock this morning since we had a drive of close to four and a half hours to get to. Everything started out just great, we got on the 101 and Nell told us to drive for 205 miles, so off we went. The road was fairly quiet and really foggy as we climbed in elevation to get to Crescent City but it was smooth sailing. That is until we got to about the Oregon border, then Xena started smoking. Although she was driving just fine, thick black stuff was coming from the exhaust so when we got to the rest area in Brookings we stopped so mike could look under the bonnet – although what he was hoping to see I don’t know. We decided to drive back into town and try to find a mechanic so we went to NAPA and they gave us the name of a guy who worked on diesel engines. Trouble was he was booked solid and couldn’t come out and see us, but he did tell Mike what he thought the problem was and after adding some water/coolant we got back on the road. It didn’t get any better as we drove along and it wasn’t too long before she started making noises as well as blowing smoke, but we kept going since there was absolutely nowhere to stop.
We made it to Port Orford and looked up another mechanic who took a look at Xena but still couldn’t work on it as he wasn’t sure what the problem was and he couldn’t get any parts. But we were informed that we could keep driving and so off we went again.
The smoke and the noise just kept getting worse so we decided to stop in Coos Bay as that was the closest Ford dealer. I called ahead to an RV park at Mill Casino and reserved a space, and we finally pulled into the park around 2 this afternoon. As we drove through Coos Bay everyone was waving at us – seriously people, do you think we couldn’t see the smoke!
We got unhitched and Mike took off to the Ford dealer while I got everything straight. We had booked in to this place through Tuesday but it turns out Ford can’t even look at the truck till then so we are here now until Thursday. I guess that's what comes of traveling on Friday the Thirteenth!

Mike: We need a little more excitement in our life! Poor Xena!!!