Test Flight of the Free Spirit

We recently sold our 2010 Winnebago View that we have used for the past four and a half years, and purchased a 2013 Liesure Travel Vans Free Spirit. Our desire is to have a smaller, simpler, more manuvable RV to facilitate our free spirit for short trips and birding adventures. 

Down sizing into a smaller RV required quite a bit of inginuity. After a week of moving into the van and checking all systems, on Thursday we took it on a test flight. Jeanette and Buster are shown here boarding the Free Spirit for take off.

The monthly challenge by eBird for this month is to turn in 15 observation lists from new locations. This means searching out locations we have never birded before.  This became our routing guide for our test flight.  Our first stop was Gentle Woods Park in Monmouth, where we enjoyed some wonderful sunshine and a short list of birds.

Our second stop was Winegar Park, also in Monmouth. Again more sunshine and a few birds. We had expected our third stop to be the Main Street Park, but it was totally torn apart with new construction, so we opted to use a coupon for lunch at Subway.  It was easy to park the van on the street, and we had our first meal curbside enjoying the sites of Monmouth with no one aware of what we were doing behind the tinted glass, eating lunch.

Our third stop was at Ankeny National Wildlife Refuge at the Eagle Marsh Overlook.  Incidentally this site is where the Salem Audubon Society is going to build a new visitor and education center. Our forth stop was for an appointment Jeanette had at Keizer Skyline.  While she met with a doctor, I stretched out on the couch and worked on my computer. We were jazzed about our first use of the Free Spirit.  It is so much fun to explore with all the comforts of home.