Oct 22, 2012 - Burlington WA

October 22, 2012 Very cold! Rick, Connie and I had work to do this morning and Bob was happy to read the NYT on line. A little before noon we took Wiggy for a walk along the Swinomish Channel. Stopped at Cathy and Jerry’s, good friends of the Bolducs and fellow Rotarian, who live on the channel. Rick and Connie house sat for their dog so we picked up Wiggy’s “herding” companion. Nice walk! Afterwards we went to the La Conner Brewery for lunch. Jerry joined us. Just shortly after we ordered, Cathy and her friend, Sandy who were purportedly...

Oct 22, 2012 - Burlington WA

October 21, 2012 Up early in order to take the ferry to San Juan Island from Anacortes at 9:30. The ride was a little over an hour and we arrived with the sunshine! San Juan is 55 square miles, the largest of the 20 island archipelago and known as the Pig War Island. In 1872, San Juan became an undisputed part of the US following the “pig war” dispute settlement with Great Britain. (San Juan is the last American soil occupied by Great Britain.) The island is very rural with cedars on the peripheries. We opted not to visit the 19 acre...

Oct 12, 2012 - Back Into The Rain Forest

I left sunny Idaho about 10:00 am and headed north-west. By mid-afternoon I'd crossed cloudy Oregon and by the time I made it to Washington state, it had started to rain. I was headed for the dealership where I bought the trailer as they still have some warranty work to do on it, and I convinced them that I was going right by their door, so they may as well do it on Saturday (plus a few other things that have cropped up). Anyway, the mistake I made was to travel too close to Seattle to pick up the 205 highway which connects to the I-5 and...

Sep 16, 2012 - Day 79

When we parked last night, our neighbor was a Good Sam Member of the Cariboo Sams Club. They were having their monthly get together with some other clubs, a total of 28 units. He gave us some very good tips about driving back to the lower 48 and RVing, some of which we will use and others we will put aside until needed. We left Cache Creek, BC this morning, driving south-westerly towards Vancouver on Trans-Canada 1. For most of the drive, we were paralleling the Fraser River and driving in the Fraser Valley. One of the tips that we were...

May 25, 2012 - Day 4

Today I spent my time in Burlington, Washington at the RV dealership where I bought the trailer. It seems well made but it is a complicated system and it needed some fixing while the warranty is still on. I won't bore you with the things that they fixed, but here's how my day evolved: I was scheduled in the shop at 8:00 am (confirmed yesterday afternoon when I moved onto their lot for the night). At 9:00 no one had arrived to pick up the trailer so I walked up to the service area and they said, "Oh you're here. You should have told us!" I...

May 24, 2012 - Day 3

OK, for those of you who were wondering whether or not I won any money last night at the Spirit Of The Wind casino - no! However, I didn't lose any either. Instead, I watched karaoke singers until my ears couldn't stand it any longer and then I retired. I figured it this way. They gave me $5 to join their club membership, a mug, a discount gas coupon (I had to fill up anyway), a free Keno ticket and some other discount coupons so I had pretty well eaten into the $15 they charged me to park in their lot with free electricity. I lost with the...

May 10, 2012 - Burlington WA

We left the campground at 9:30 and after a quick gas stop we were headed west on I-90 before 10:00. We jumped off the interstate just west of Spokane and onto US 2 for what ended up being a very long days drive. US 2 runs east-west a ways north of I-90 and picking that route probably saved us some miles, but it did take longer because it’s a 2 lane road that slows as it goes through some small towns and across the Cascade Mountains. Just beyond Spokane we started west through miles and miles of wheat fields, small towns, prairies, across...

May 8, 2012 - Washington area

We woke up this morning and did an RV inspection at Camping World. It was a free service Good Sams RV Club offered to us. Everything came up in good condition for us to continue driving. After buying out the camping world store we headed off to Sequim. We had to get on a small ferry in order to get there which only took 30 minutes or so. Unfortunately we miscalculated what time Olympic Game Farm closed and missed it for the day. Instead of continuing on, we decided to stay the night and go to the farm in the morning. So to pass the night...

Mar 31, 2012 - Back in Canada

March 29 - 31 These days were spent traveling, it was overcast and raining most of the time. Couldn’t drive through Idaho without stopping to see the state capital building in Boise. Slept that night at Wild Horse Casino in Pendleton Oregon. The Snoqualmie Pass is 3022 feet, it was snowing through there and the snow banks at the side of the road were high. The night of March 30 we slept at a KOA in Burlington, Washington and entered Canada at the Aldergrove Border crossing the next day around noon.

Aug 4, 2011 - Burlington, WA, USA - today's entry

This morning we left McLeese Lake, BC and headed for the US border. We passed through some country that looked amazingly like western Colorado. Dry, sage brush, shale cliffs, in contrast to the lush alpine forest we had come to expect from BC. But as we got further south, the country returned to what we had been seeing for the last couple of months - green, spectacular scenery. We crossed the border at Sumas, Washington with little difficulty. They did confiscate our tomatoes. They didn't care about our lettuce, blueberries, bananas, plums,...

Jul 17, 2011 - Camping World, Burlington, WA

The morning of July 17 we left Gold Trail RV Park in Clinton and headed south to Abbotsford, crossing the Canada/US Border at Sumas, WA, then to Burlington, WA to stay overnight at Camping World. On the way south from Clinton we traveled through Frasier Canyon following the Frasier River. The landscape changed from forested to a dry, arid landscape and then back to forest closer to Abbotsford. A very beatiful drive. When we arrived at the border there was a long line and it took us the better part of an hour to cross into the USA.

Jul 16, 2011 - Crash and Rain

Mt Vernon Thousand Trails RV Park July 16, Noon PDT Bow WA The big news of the last few weeks concerns Rascal’s house-training and my computer. Rascal at 8 months is much better vis a vis training – let’s me know when he wants to be walked and most of the time it’s not a fake – he really does need to go. We’ve definitely gone over a hump, but it may not be the final one. He likes to go out about every 4 hoursand usually lets me know when he needs to go out. Unfortunately, he uses the same signal for other things he wants, such as “play...