The second of the two games we attended of the Seattle Mariners vs Los Angeles Dodgers at T-Mobile Park in Seattle.
Mister Softee:
Ice cream nachos:
View from our seats:
Play ball:
Sushi and pizza:
Clayton Kershaw retiring:
Removing the rubber for Kershaw:
We stayed a night in a Seattle hotel and attended two games of the Seattle Mariners vs Los Angeles Dodgers at T-Mobile Park in Seattle.
Edgar’s Cantina:
Nachos:
Grasshoppers:
Jenn with a grasshopper (yes, we ate several; tastes kinda nutty):
Selfie from our seats (mustaches were a meme with the team, with most players growing them; Jenn got some, but forgot them at home, and a nice lady at the entrance gate gave her one):
View from our seats:
Jenn with her shiny jacket:
The Mariner Moose:
Seize the Moment:
Play ball:
The ballpark captures photos and GIFs of everyone’s seats:
We attended a Banana Ball game of the Savannah Bananas vs The Firefighters, playing at T-Mobile Park, home of the Seattle Mariners.
Merch:
Pre-show:
T-Mo:
Banana Ball World Tour:
The mascot Split tossing a football with the crowd:
Fan Challenger:
Balancing a ladder:
Man-nanas:
Bananas:
Firefighters:
Play ball:
World’s Slowest Race:
Female pitcher:
Dancing ump:
A proposal disguised as a game:
Closing the roof after the game:
We attended a game of the Tacoma Rainiers vs the Reno Aces at Cheney Stadium in Tacoma, along with Jenn’s father, plus her brothers and their significant others.
An interactive map of the stadium and environs; there are two separate entrances and parking lots, and if you go out the wrong exit, it seems that you have to walk around the outfield to get back to your car (ask me how I know):
View from our seats:
Flyover:
The mascot, Rhubarb:
Play ball:
Exploring the ballpark:
Rhubarb:
The game didn’t go great for the Rainiers:
But it was nice to hang out with fam.
Speaking of home, a real-time update: we are back in the US from our trip to New Zealand. It was nice to see my family, and explore more of the country.
We took lots of photos during our trip, of course, so I plan to do blog posts about it. Probably one post for each day, since most days were traveling from one location to another, with lots of sightseeing along the way.
We still have a couple of months backlog of posts about our travels before the trip, plus the traditional yearly summary posts, so look for the NZ posts around the end of January.
We stayed for a month at our official domicile, aka Mom’s house, in Shelton, Washington.
It was good to be home! An opportunity to catch up on dentists, doctors, optometrists, etc, and of course with family.
Dates:
Weather:
Noise:
Site:
Utilities:
Internet (in usage priority order):
Amenities:
Our coach parked in front of the house, with our Starlink dish on the flagpole, to peek over the trees:
Using the macerator to dump our waste tanks (as previously documented):
The other end of that 200 feet of hose goes into septic tank:
This time I kept the hose in place, with foam weather stripping sealing the gaps on either side of the hose; this let me just turn on the macerator and open the tank valves to dump, without having to go around to the septic tank to open it, insert the hose, then remove the hose and re-close it after each time:
The RV electrical outlet box we added on the house last year had an issue, so we had it replaced with a better one, so were able to have 50 amp power:
Nice to have full hookups at home.
While there, we cooked some pizzas in my Ooni pizza oven, which had been stored in our shed:
I decided to take the pizza oven with us, as we’ll be staying in one place for even longer early next year.
It was good to be home!
A timelapse of driving our RV, a Tiffin Allegro Bus motorhome, 250 miles from Ephrata to Shelton, Washington.
We drove our coach about 250 miles, about four hours of driving, from Ephrata to Shelton, Washington.
Here’s a map showing our route, heading west (with the ultimate destination omitted for privacy):
An interactive map, with potential stops pinned:
There was roadworks on the bridge over the Columbia River, with a 9-foot width restriction, so we considered avoiding that and taking a more scenic route, as follows, but it would have added 1.5 hours to the travel, and been more stressful with curvy highway roads, so we stuck with the above route instead of this alternative:
I-90 West and the aforementioned Vantage Bridge:
Narrow, but good enough for trucks, so good enough for us:
Thorp Fruit & Antique Mall:
Rest area:
Wildlife bridge:
Keechelus Lake:
Snoqualmie Pass:
Crossover intersection:
Joining I-5 South:
Fuel stop:
Tacoma Dome:
Route 101 North:
We previously took this exit, but it is more difficult getting through Shelton:
Instead we took this exit, which is much more straightforward:
Downtown Shelton:
We sometimes explore areas without cell service, as we travel around the US… plus we are exploring New Zealand in a van.
We really enjoy using Starlink with our coach, and wanted to bring a dish to NZ, but our gen 2 dish is rather bulky. We decided to get a Starlink Mini dish, which is much smaller, and has the router built in. It was small enough to fit in carry-on luggage for our NZ trip, and mounts on our truck and the NZ van via a magnetic mount, powered from a 12V outlet (aka cigarette lighter).
It isn’t needed all the time, so we can pause the dish when not needed. In fact, with Starlink’s current policies, they charge $5/month for Standby Mode, which has unlimited slow data (500 Kbps), so is still useful for occasional or minimal use.
Here’s the 12V power in our truck (the white USB dongle is a wireless CarPlay adapter):
The cable is routed out the rear window, which can still latch closed:
The cable is clipped to the roof, with a couple more clips on the edge to hold the cable when the dish is removed from the roof:
The Starlink Mini dish is securely attached to the roof via a magnetic mount:
Handy!
