Sydney to Portland and onto Aberdeen, Washington State

Finally time to go, I had everything packed last night and woke at 4am to get ready to leave. Could not find any suitcase locks with keys with them, must have been packed up with my moving boxes the other week.

A quick check on the computer and the shuttle bus arrived to take me to the airport right on 5am. Suitcases loaded and with no traffic at that time was at the terminal by 5.35am. Unfortunately at that time of the morning there were no shops open before customs so my bags have gone onto the plane without locks. Hopefully nobody pinches my clothes or paperwork!

I was able to achieve Gold frequent flyer status with Qantas on my last trip so I am able to use the less crowded check-in and there was no queue for check-in anyway so that was a quick experience as well. Cleared customs and made my way to the Qantas lounge, another perk of the Gold Frequent Flyer card. Set up my new tablet to the free Wi-Fi and started checking emails and writing a few to people in the USA that I will be catching up with while I am there.

I normally carry a laptop with me on my overseas trips and it is a big bag to carry around on top of my other two bags and carry on bag I travel with. Well this trip I have changed it up by purchasing a Samsung Tab A tablet, a blue-tooth keyboard and blue-tooth mouse to do my diary and computer work on. Hopefully I will find it just as easy and they all fit in to about 1% of the space the lap top and bag took up.

Had a very good Facebook post from my best friends Neil and Mandie. Following on from yesterdays Gold Medal win by the Australian Women’s Rugby 7’s team, The Australian newspaper did an article on the growth of Women’s  rugby and the participation by teenage girls in the game. Neil was quoted in the story and their eldest daughter Meg and some teammates where shown in a photo at Rugby training. It was a great story that will only go to help the growing rate of participation of Women’s rugby.

The plane took off on time at 9.50am and I am seated in Row 33G. It is in the five rows of economy upstairs at the rear of the plane. I find it a lot better than the normal economy area as it is less crowded and a lot easier to move around for toilets etc. Even better in the row of 4 seats I am in there is two spare seats in the centre of the row so there is plenty of room. The flight was very comfortable and with plenty of dozing and some music it passed o.k. I watched the movie Eddie the Eagle which was alright but definitely not Academy Award standard!

We arrived at LAX on time and with the new arrangement for Customs control I was kerb side 38 minutes after I got off the plane. I then took the walk to Terminal A to get to the Southwest Airlines counter to check-in my bags. After going through the security again I had a three hour wait for my next flight so I spent the time checking emails and catching up with some Facebook posts that I needed to reply to.

It was only then that I noticed that the flight to Portland was going to travel their via Las Vegas. I did not notice this when I did the booking and if I had I might have planned a 24 hour stop there! Anyway I got an exit row seat for the first section of the flight and then when everyone going to Vegas got off the plane I was able to move up the front of the plane for the second leg of the flight and got a front row seat for the ongoing leg.

Arriving at Portland was on time (I should have seen the total flight time was a lot more than a direct journey) I got my luggage and went outside to the carpark and met Michael from Vagabond Vans who I am renting my camper off. It is similar to an Australian Toyota Tarago van and set up for travelling in. I will put some photos up as I m travelling around over the next 3 weeks. The van not new but the company has very good reviews from previous people who have rented from them so I had no hesitation in going with them for my journey. After a walk through of everything in the van I was on my way.

I straight away crossed the border from Oregon into Washington State and headed for my first stop which is the Lucky Eagle casino. Most of my friends know I collect $5 casino chips from every casino I visit. I have a long list of casinos in Washington, South Dakota and Wyoming to visit on this trip.

 

The casino is quite new and they are building additions to it already, so the take from the gambling must be good! I picked up their only $5 chip and was on my way to casino the Shoalwater Bay Casino in Tokeland county. This area is on the Pacific coast and if it was not dark when I got there I am sure would have ben in a beautiful setting. I was disappointed when I entered the casino as they do not have any gaming tables and therefor no chips to collect.

I had checked over all the casinos online before I left home and only listed the ones with gaming tables so I obviously did not check correctly. This was a two hour journey from the first casino but half the journey was on the way to the third stop so I did not waste the whole trip. On the way there I passed a Walmart store in Olympia so after my disappointment at not getting any chips went back there and did some shopping for food for the trip.

Some Walmart stores offer overnight parking to RV vehicles and campers so I joined about another 8 vans there and spent my first night in the Campervan. Before I left home I paid for an App called “Allstays Camp and RV” that shows all the Campgrounds and other camping places in the USA and it lists the Walmart stores that overnight stops.

It is a great resource for all camping ideas and has a feedback button that people list their experiences at those sites. This one listed that there could be goods trains coming past the parking lot at 5.30am and that the blast their horns quite often as they pass. Well I can definitely tell you that this is the case as about 5.35am I was woken by those horns.

So day 1 of the trip was a long one. From getting up at 4am in Sydney and going backwards over the International Date Line it was 39 hours before I went to sleep in the Walmart carpark. Luckily I got plenty of sleep and rest on the flights in between.