After our week at the Columbia Gorge, it was time to take care of some “business” stuff. This allowed us to be in three states and two countries in just a week – South Dakota, Oregon, Washington and back to BC, Canada!
When we embarked on our full-time RV lifestyle, we had the opportunity to choose any state to call “home.” Of course, we cannot escape the realities of paying taxes and other financial matters. In our research we found that South Dakota is an RV-friendly state where vehicle registration and taxes are not sky-high like California where we resided previously. So, after dropping Betsy off at Dave and LJ’s RV Interior Design in Woodland, WA to have the modifications installed that we measured with them in May (new recliners and a mini-office for the blogmaster), we caught a flight out of Portland to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. This was for the sole purpose of getting our SD driver’s licenses and finalizing our residency there. Our CA licenses would have expired in February, but we sure as heck didn’t want to go to SD in the middle of winter. By 8:00am the next morning we had our new licenses, and after a late breakfast we were able to catch early flights back to Portland and made it before sunset. Mission accomplished!
We picked Betsy up the next day, thrilled with our new recliners and beautiful woodwork installed by LJ. We drove to a nearby RV park (Columbia River Front RV Park) and went to bed early so we could get up at 3:30am for our drive to Seattle. You see, we were bummed that we had not had a chance to visit Victoria, BC on our trip through Vancouver in June, so Steve threw together a 2-day trip up there via the fast-ferry out of Seattle. We will talk about our trip there in a future blog, but suffice to say it is a beautiful city and we had a great time there and enjoyed fantastic weather!
So that was the Lowe’s jet-set week. Next we move on to Harrisburg, OR for a repair of the RV’s pneumatic system and then to Grants Pass for a check of the suspension upgrades to make sure everything is OK after our rough drive over the Canadian and Alaskan roads.
Lowes Travels 
RV looking good. If you don’t mind me asking, what did you use to prove residency in SD at DMV? I’ve heard mixed stories. We’re getting our RV ready to head to the desert before the snows start 🙂
We presented passports, our CA DL and the receipt from the hotel we stayed the night before. We made sure that our names and SD address are correctly spelled. We set up our SD forwarding address months ago.
We are heading to AZ so I sure hope our paths will cross.
Thanks for the info. We’ll be in the Phx are mid Nov. I think we’ll spend a better part of the winter going between Lake Pleasant, Cave Creek, McDowell and Lost Dutchman. Maybe do Quartzite in Jan followed by Lake Havasu. Very open. So hopefully we’ll run into each other.
The remodel looks fantastic. Congratulations.
Great remodel! Chuck and I want to do something similar. You’ve given us some ideas 😉
What a whirlwind week you’ve had and so sweet of Steve to put together the Canada trip for you.
We got this idea from another couple who had replaced their entire floor with wood as well as the valances. We had a short grand time in Victoria.
We will need to have something done in our bunkhouse to get better sleeping arrangements for when the kids grow bigger. Since they are small now, we get by, but as they grow, the slim bunk beds will be too narrow and hard. It is good to know there are businesses who specialize in remodeling RVs.