Life, family, and travel

When the sun comes out in the northwest- camping spots become as precious as gold!

July 21^st

I got up this morning and guess what? It was raining! Imagine that... in a rain forest. I fixed breakfast and was sitting on my bed about 5:30 listening to the rain, the next thing I knew it was 9:00. That rain hitting the roof of the trailer had put me fast asleep.

I took a couple more scenic photos of the moss covered trees while I was driving out of the rainforest jut because the trees are so pretty.

 

 

After I got back onto hwy 101 going south, I saw another photo of the low clouds hiding the mountain. I sure can’t say this enough. If you do make a trip like this, you really should get the best camera you can afford. These photos do not do the scenery justice. I’m sure that later on in life I’ll look back and say something like “if only I had”.

 

I stopped near Ruby Beach to take a photo of the Pacific Ocean for Cindy. It was a great looking beach. It was secluded without the normal tidewater junk etc. No big rocks that I could see but I’m sure that there are sharks out there somewhere!

As I was going to visit my cousin in Olympia, I didn’t want to pull my trailer into town so I got a spot at the Elma RV resort for the night. When I checked in, the lady running the place said I really needed some cookies. So she gave me six, fresh baked cookies in a little bag. I think I like this place already.

By stopping here, it actually helped in 2 ways. First I didn’t have to pull my trailer through Olympia. The second is that I could just cut down hwy 12 to Interstate 5 and bypass Olympia altogether on my way to Oregon!

I met with my cousin Tim and his wife Pat in the middle of the afternoon and sent a most enjoyable time talking. Unfortunately, both of their daughters were out of town so I didn’t get to see them. We went out for an evening of fine dining at a Chinese buffet by the name of: get ready for this, “Super Buffet”. The food was pretty good and the conversation was stimulating. They then took me for a drive to see downtown Olympia and the “weirdo’s” as Tim calls them. It was a lot of fun. Here is a photo of them (Tim and Pat, not the weirdos). As I promised, I am not posting the one I would have picked, but will live with this one.

 

July 22^nd

Last night, Tim’s wife Pat expressed that she would like to see the trailer. She arrived about 7:30 this morning. After a cup of coffee (yes, she is special so I brewed a pot for her!) I showed off the trailer a little bit. Kind of what’s what and where does that go, etc. She took a couple photos of the trailer, and of ME!

I decided to get a little work done on the trailer because I was just going down to Portland today. I emptied and washed out the tanks and cleaned up a little. I went ahead and did a load of laundry because it was pretty inexpensive there. I finally hooked up and left about 11:00 just ahead of checkout time.

I didn’t hurry too much, I just cruised along at 50 mph and enjoyed what little scenery there was. I stopped at a rest area on I-5 to eat lunch and heard on the radio that it was going to be in the 80’s and sunny for the next 5 to 6 days and it was over a weekend. I realized then that I was in for problems finding a place to park tonight. I started stopping at every state and Federal Park I came to check on availability and every one was already full. I guess in Washington or Oregon, they can reserve the site over the internet and the parks don’t hold any back for walk-in’s. I finally gave up and started calling all of the RV resorts and Parks that were even close. I located one called Tri Mountain RV park in Ridgefield Washington. They had a few openings left. I back tracked up north on I-5 and told them I would keep it for at least 3 days until Cindy got here. After she looked at it, we would make a decision then if she wanted to rest up here for a couple of days or go ahead and head out. This was just fine with the owner. This park is not too expensive and offers electric, water, sewer and restrooms with pay showers for $27.00 a night. That’s not bad after what I had to pay up north. The only thing they didn’t offer was Wi-Fi but I think there is a coffee shop not to far that does and I did see a MacDonald’s that usually has it also. Tomorrow I’ll just hang out a little and get ready for Cindy to arrive (I can’t wait!).

Mt. St. Helen’s is not too far, I may take a few minutes to run up there. If I do, I’ll take photos of it and post them tomorrow.

Olympia WA, Sitka trees, and wild elk!

How old is Cindy today? I hope somebody called her and asked! All I do know is that she is getting older than me quickly. When we first got married, I was 33% older than her. Now I think that I’m only 20% older. Pretty soon she is going to pass me up like I was up on jacks.

I woke up around 2:00 AM and I noticed that something was wrong. I worried over it for quite a while until it dawned on me. IT WAS DARK OUTSIDE! With that realization came the fact that my great Alaska bucket list adventure was officially over. It hit me pretty hard because I was not ready for it. But I can put a check mark beside it on my list. Now I can concentrate on some of the other items that I’ve wanted to do for a while. 

I continued driving on hwy 101 around the Olympic Peninsula. It rained off and on most of the morning with pretty low cloud cover. I took a couple of typical scenery photos that were a little out of the ordinary.

Typical cluster of fishing shacks I would run into every now and then.

 

Typical road scenic.

 

Here is one of a mountain trying to peek out of a low cloud.

 

I stopped at a forest office for some advice on where to go. She started with “this is nice and at that one I can see the ocean etc. I told her what I wanted and she said I just had to go to a place called the HOH rain forest. I debated about this as it was raining and rain forest sounded wet. I finally decided to try it and it turned out to be wonderful. I saw huge old trees that were 5’ to 6’ in diameter. They had one huge Sitka Spruce that was 12’6” diameter and over 270’ tall. It was huge. I talked a guy into standing beside it to give a reference. After I got the photo we talked for a while. He and his wife were college teachers from the Univ. of Nevada, Las Vegas and were on a 2 week vacation trip. Nice couple.

 

 
 

 

I saw some stumps where they had been logged off many years ago that were huge. This one was right beside the road. My trailer is +- 8’ wide, note that it looks to be about 6’ in dia.

 

As I was driving into the campground, I looked at the river and saw 5 elk laying down trying to get cool (it was at least 65° by that time). Imagine, after driving almost 11,000 miles, I had to come back to the states to see an elk in the wild.

 

After checking in (my senior pass saved me another $16.00 today! Life is good sometimes) I went for a hike on a couple of trails close by. One was called the trail of moss and I sure can see why. The moss hung from the trees and sure was pretty.

 
 

I came across an old trunk that had been cut to clear a trail. It was only about 3’ in diameter. And I started counting rings. I got up to about 150 one time and lost my count. I wonder how old some of these really big trees are?

 

I was unloading some stuff out of the truck later when I looked up and 2 elk walked through my campsite and then on into the trees. I stayed on the opposite side of the truck for a long time. You can just see the rear end of the 1^st elk on the right side of the photo. When they got to the trees, I went inside and took a photo through my side window. How can anything be better than this?

 

 

 

Seattle

I took a couple photos of the trees as I was leaving the park. There were quite a few pretty large trees as well as several with the moss hanging off of the limbs. I can’t wait to get down into California to see some of the huge redwood trees.

 
 

Here is just a scenery photo that I took about halfway between the park and the US border.

 

When I got to the border I had to wait +- 1 hour because of the backup of vehicles. I had absolutely no problem getting across. He asked me where my hometown was. He then asked what I bought. I told him not too much in Canada because it was so expensive and that I was waiting to get into the US to stock up on food items. He looked at me and said to have a safe trip getting home. I still didn’t feel comfortable taking any photos at the border, so I waited to get a shot of the welcome to the US sign. Trouble is I never saw one. I did see a sign welcoming us to the state of Washington.

I had always heard that they grew a lot of apples in Washington. I drove down a couple of back roads and all I saw was berry farms. I guess the apples are further south.

I got onto the interstate because I wanted to get to Olympia and look up a cousin of mine. It took me a couple of hours to get into, then through Seattle, and then another hour or so to get into Olympia. Due to a comedy of errors, I didn’t have his correct address and his phone is unlisted so I continued on towards the Olympic Mountains. I plan on doing the complete circle then I’ll try him again.

Here are a couple shots of traffic in / around Seattle and of the skyline (with the needle thingy).

 
 

  

The traffic sure is a lot more hectic down here than it was in Dawson City or Tok Alaska.

I finally stopped to spend the night on Highway 101 somewhere close to Bremerton WA.