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West Glacier and environs

We found a campground the day before heading to Glacier outside the small town of West Glacier.    The campground was right on US 2, but we lucked out and got a site as far from the road as they had available.   Since we arrived on Friday afternoon, we decided to wait till Monday morning to hit the Going to the Sun Road in an attempt to miss the crowds.

Saturday we drove toward the small town of Whitefish, MT, parked the car near the train depot and checked it out while close by.   Just as we got around back, a freight train decided to pull out.   They sure have long trains out here,  had to be a few hundred tank cars being pulled out by BNSF locomotives front and rear, although it took about 15 minutes to find out there was one in the rear.    Checking the flammability placards, they were all loaded with alcohol.   It doesn’t specify what type, but probably not the drinking kind.   It appeared that no Amtrak trains were due today as the depot building was closed, so we headed over toward the main part of town.

Whitefish is a pretty nice place to walk around,  lots of covered sidewalks lining the streets,  even benches every little while to relax on while Kathy perused each shop along the way.   We passed by lots of small restaurants and bars where the food smells were making me hungry, so we started in the direction of the car and our picnic lunch.

There was a big log framed gazebo in the park across from the train station, and we ate our lunch there in the shade with a nice breeze.

Afterward we drove around the lake on the north end of town;  mainly it was surrounded by homes, but we did find a small beach area.

We drove back up to West Glacier late in the afternoon.

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Coeur D’Alene and Blue Lake area.

We drove about 70 miles north of Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, to camp on Blue Lake.   It’s an extremely small and deep lake that may have been blue sometime in the past, but was very green while we were here.   It turns out to be in between two busy railroad right-of-ways as both lines have  grade crossings right here.    Can you say loud horns blowing a lot?  I’m not sure how we slept thru the night, but neither of us heard them.   Could have been the wine bar on the patio overlooking the lake that helped that along.

While driving thru Coeur D’Alene up US 95, the traffic lights thru town are synchronized to make you stop at each light for a long, long time,  presumably for you to notice all the chain stores lining both sides of the highway for many miles.   There were so many chain stores along that route, I think every national company must have been  represented.   Thankfully it only took about a half hour to go those 5-6 miles, then we were back on the open road till we hit Sand Point, which looked like a really nice area with a huge lake and lots of folks boating and kayaking.

When we were getting closer to the road to the campground, I started thinking about the guy mentioning the truck turnaround a little ways up the road if we missed the turn.    Turns out the extreme oblique left turn was almost too much for us to maneuver, but luckily our coach has a very sharp turning radius due to its 57 degree cut and we narrowly made the turn without going down an embankment to the RR tracks prior to the actual crossing.  Now I knew the real reason he mentioned the turnaround.   It was almost a straight shot into the turnoff if you were coming from the north;  but coming from the south with a long rig and toad will be a problem for most drivers.   If I stayed there again (which I probably wouldn’t, due to the train noise) I would use the truck turnaround to come in from the north.    Luckily, when we leave for West Glacier, we head north for a bit, so getting out of here should be a lot easier.

Thankfully it’s a lot cooler here than it was in Electric City.    It was in the low 100’s there and mid-80’s here and we are fully in the shade here.

I broke a strap for one of the awnings while at SunBank Resort, so I found an adjustable strap and installed it.   It works but is not a permanent fix.   Will start the search for the exact replacement part and have it shipped home.

When we woke up Friday morning to get the coach ready for the drive to Glacier there was smoke in the air.   The wind was really blowing so I went over toward the windward edge of the park.   I couldn’t see any flame but there was a lot of smoke coming from the south east.  We decided to pack up quick and get on the road sooner rather than later.  Once we were almost ready I attempted to call the local fire department but only got voice mail.  I also checked the local incident web sites but found nothing except a fire at least 80 miles south west of us.   We finished stowing everything and headed out before 8:30 am.   Pretty early for us,  but the smoke was only getting worse so we pulled down the hill a bit to attach the car.   There was a train blocking the only way out of the park when we were ready but it soon finished passing the grade crossing and the four lined up motorhomes pulled out toward the highway,  three made the incredibly sharp right turn to head south on US 95 and we took off to the left toward Bonner’s Ferry then US 2 over to Glacier NP.

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Electric City and the Grand Coulee

There is a tour of the dam every hour, so we left thinking we might be able to make it into the 10 tour.  We were a bit late for that so we had to wait for the 11am tour.  It was already pretty hot that morning when I took a walk out the dead end road that goes along Lake Roosevelt to snap a few pictures from that side of the dam while we waited.   I had heard some time back that they pump water up to a lake during low electric usage times (night time) and then let it flow back when they need more power generation during the day.

Our tour guide was leading her first tour ever,  so everyone’s questions went pretty much unanswered.   I know the government runs this tour, but it’s got to be the most inefficient thing I’ve ever seen.    They have you drive over to the other-side (east) of the dam from the main road to join the tour and go thru metal detectors, no purses, fanny packs, or backpacks.    Then you get on a small bus and drive right back the way you drove in, then all the way back to the top of the west side of the dam you passed quite a time back.   They park right next to the main road on the edge of the dam  and you walk into a building and into one of the largest elevators I’ve seen that wasn’t a huge loading dock type elevator with doors that opened vertically.   Supposedly you can fit 56 people in this one, although we were pretty tight with 28!   You go down about 80 feet to an observation deck over the main pump and pump generators.

The main pumps there are just to pump water up to the reservoirs that feed the agriculture canals.  Those are the green things in the foreground.   You might be able to make out the grey ones all the way back.  They are pump/generators.   They also pump the water up to the reservoirs, but when more power is needed, use that water from the reservoirs to generate electricity by letting gravity pull it back down thru the impeller and out into the river again.

After just a few minutes in that gallery we were back in the elevator and off to the buses again.  But then they drove across the top of the dam (it was the old road pre-9/11. )  They made you use the seat belts for that part of the ride.  Why, who knows?   They did drive a bit odd on top of it, not following in a line, but using both sides of the road.   No idea why, but it was strange.   At the other side, where they added powerhouse No. 3 back in the 60’s, the buses each made a U-turn and drove halfway back across, where they stopped and let us out, all the time explaining that in pre-9/11 you could just walk anywhere “inside” the dam for as long as you wanted.  Kids from the high school were getting lost inside the dam often, so they started teaching a class to tell them that at any staircase, just walk up and eventually you would get outside.  (Must have been some pretty stupid high schoolers to need that class.  A simple sign could have had the same effect.)

We walked around for a few minutes, over to the long drop side down to the water, and then to the side where the water was just a few feet below us,  snapped some pictures and got back on the bus for the long ride all the way back to the east side again.   Not sure why they didn’t just continue over the top of the dam.  We had made that U-turn less than 75′ from where our cars were parked.

Had the tour started at the visitor center,  just a few feet from the pump house, the tour would have taken  15 minutes and not required any buses or drivers.    Instead there were two bus drivers, two buses and two tour guides and about 50 minutes to do the tour.   I would not suggest taking it,  kind of boring and it took way too long for what you got to see.

We had read about the laser light show they put on every night at 10pm, so we made plans to be there.   They open all the gates at the top of the dam to let a lot of water come over the spillway.  It was very loud  once they started opening them.  The laser show is a history of the area and the building of the dam and what it does for the area.  It was done mainly for kids, but interesting to see the laser animated pictures projected on the water cascading down the face of the mile-long dam!

 

 

One thing we did learn on the tour was a little about the new pump house built between 1967 and 1975.   I hadn’t realized we were in a Dam Race with the Soviet Union,  they were going to build the largest dam in the world so we extended the Grand Coulee so it would be larger then theirs.    It also allowed them to put in much larger generators and pen-stocks than the original dam has.   They told us, that each of the six new pen-stocks can transport 2 or 4 Colorado Rivers amount of water in a comparison with the Hoover Dam and generates 3.5 times the amount of electricity.  6.8 Gigawatts vs Hoovers 2.0 Gigawatts.

I always thought of the Hoover Dam as being very large, but seeing the Grand Coulee made me realize the Hoover dam is pretty small in comparison.   The GC is just a few feet short of a mile long.

Here are some pics from the “Resort” we stayed at outside Electric City.   No ATT or Verizon signal out there,  and the WiFi was unusable.   $100 a night,  never again!

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Sliding over to Electric City

We left the Port Townsend area Sunday morning with a quick navigation around the the asphalt sealing team that was about to start the second half of the park road repairs.    We headed south toward Tacoma and Galloping Gertie.   Well, I guess it’s really the replacement for Galloping Gertie.   I noticed the Tacoma Narrows Bridge on the map and that reminded me of a video we watched as a kid.   It was on one of the routes we could take east, and that settled the path to take for me.

Today as we got close, I could see there are two spans now.  Each looks different.   I’m wondering if they reused the old towers for one of the spans?    Once over the bridge and onto I5 north, we hit a lot of traffic.  Sunday morning?   Geez.   Between Seattle and now Tacoma, I think they are attempting to wrest the “worst traffic” award away from LA.

We took a shortcut over to the I-90 that, based on all the red I-5 roadway on google maps, would save us a bunch of time sitting in bumper to bumper traffic.   We made it to Cle Elum fairly early in the afternoon and pulled into the park to check in.   We got a shady spot, which was good as the thermometer said it was 101 degrees there.   We parked in a pull-thru site, so there was no need to detach the car in this heat either which was very nice.    Luckily we were still up in the mountains not far from the Snoqualmie Pass, so not down in the desert which is eastern Washington.     We were off early the next morning before 10 and crossed the Columbia River again about an hour later down in what looked like desert all around.   After a bit we started heading north off I-90 toward Soap Lake.

That is one large lake out there.  Not sure how it doesn’t just evaporate away with all the heat we were experiencing.    After finally passing Soap Lake —  which took a long time — then there was another long, large lake and another after that.  We were to stay on Banks Lake, which looked to be another in that long line of large lakes in the middle of nowhere.

We filled up along that way at Shree’s Truck stop in George, Washington,  Nice Name!    Diesel fuel was a reasonable $3.32.  It looks like it may go down when we hit Montana.   The odd part about Shree’s was the cash price was only 1 cent less than the credit price.    Most places that have both prices have been 10  cents difference.   So the 1 cent doesn’t really make sense when my Costco Visa gives me a 4% rebate on fuel.

 

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Hurricane Ridge and Salt Creek

We didn’t get on the road till after 1 pm on Thursday afternoon.   It was turning out to be one of the warmest days since we left San Diego over a month ago.   We headed west on the 101.   Yes, it’s 101 west up here where it makes a big loop around the Olympic Peninsula and reconnects back to itself down near Olympia, WA.   We are still wondering how we missed the other 101 as we must have driven right past it on our way north on the 101.   Kathy was very curious what it would have been called there,  also 101 West?

Anyway,  we went searching for Salt Creek Park and Tongue Point that juts out into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.   Not long after leaving the park,  which is buried in the woods, we came around a sharp corner and a small deer was slowly walking across the road.   I had to slam on my brakes,  and the deer wasn’t fazed.  It just kept slowly walking till just before the guard rail where it bounded over it.   Unfortunately, it looked like a steep drop on the other side.   Kathy was upset at me for almost hitting it and causing it to jump into the abyss.  It didn’t even seem like it noticed us to me.

After about an hour’s drive, we found a small sign for the park campground.   I assumed we still needed to drive further along the road to find the point, so I kept driving.  Within a couple of minutes we were down at a large crescent-shaped beach with actual waves.   We were at least 30 miles from the ocean at that point, so seeing what looked like ocean waves was a surprise.   There was this nice looking campground on the other side of the road from the beach and we saw a few folks crossing the road to get to it.

We kept driving and the road kept getting closer and closer to the water until the road started to climb a cliff along it and then turned in toward the highway, all the time getting narrower.  It wasn’t wide to begin with and was just a lane wide when I decided to pull into a dirt road to check the map.   I noticed that we should have turned off at the park sign, so we turned around and headed back to it, passing the beautiful beach and wondering how cold that water was in the middle of July.

Turns out that the park was bought from the military after it was decommissioned due to not needing 16″ guns to guard the entrance to the Puget Sound anymore.    They removed the guns but left the bunkers.   They reminded me of the gun emplacements I saw in Normandy many years ago.    After driving thru both bunkers, we headed over to check out the campground in the park.  It was quite nice, but was raised up from the beach below at least 50 – 60 feet, and the edge of the campground was eroding away with just orange barrels and netting to keep you from falling down it.

While there, I programmed Hurricane Ridge into the GPS and we started out to find it while heading back toward our home base for the week here.    There was a lot of red on the map, and we figured out quickly what it was when we arrived at the beginning of the road that goes to the top:   road construction and lots of it, probably 10 miles of the 19 miles to the top.   That was a long, slow trip up the mountain, but worth the wait as at the top it felt like you should be singing Edelweiss in the Sound of Music.   The scenery was spectacular!   This could have been the place they filmed the mountaintop scene.  Huge meadows and stunning views in all directions from a short hike to the overlook at the top.

Lots of deer up there too.   Dusty would have been in heaven if we would just let him run free!   They didn’t appear to notice the visitors and would walk right past you as if you didn’t exist.   We snapped a lot of pictures up there!   It was just such a stunning vista with all the mountaintops ringing the area; and if you glanced north, the view of the strait and Vancouver Island in Canada was right there too.

To think I really wanted to go to the rain forest, but the drive there and back was over 6 hours.   Way too much time in a car.

We stayed up at the top so long that the road crew was all packed up on the way down, so we made it down in record time.    On the way home, we decided to find another Mexican restaurant and we found one in Sequim with a large patio and pretty good food for being so far from Mexico.

It was probably a 30-minute drive back home from Sequim.  When we got back, a neighbor came over while I was still gathering stuff from inside the car and said he needed to apologize to me.   I asked what for.  Turns out earlier in the morning I had asked why he had a small plastic step outside his coach where his automatic steps should be.   He mentioned they had stopped working recently.   I had asked if he had checked the magnetic sensors that are there right inside the door, and he said he had.    Turns out he hadn’t and it got him thinking.   Later he looked at them and they were not mounted back correctly after having someone install new carpet in his coach.    I can now see he has moved that plastic step aside and the steps are deployed!

On Saturday I got a text from Verizon that I had used $50 of International Roaming already.   I had to call them and it turns out while we were at Tongue Point my hotspot latched on to a Canadian cell tower.    I told them I wasn’t in Canada and asked them if they could turn off International Roaming.   They did and credited the $50 charges too.   Turns out its $2 per megabyte for international roaming data.  Ouch!

 

 

 

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Ferrying over to Seattle

I really wanted to take Kathy to Friday Harbor for her birthday, but the timing from Port Townsend just didn’t work,  either a long waiting time or not enough time to make it onto the next ferry; so we opted for a trip to Seattle.    The ferry system takes a bit to get used to.   Only some of the routes you need to make reservations, but those are not tickets, just $10 each reservation.  It’s unclear if that money is applied to your ticket or not.   It may just be charged if you are a no-show, but that wasn’t clear either.    Also, to get to Friday Harbor, you have to take two ferries, and the second ferry is over an hour drive from the first ferry landing.   It’s an all-day thing, and the best route I could find wouldn’t have gotten us back to the coach till after 10 pm after leaving around 8 am.  Sounded too much like work to Kathy.   I had to agree.   Although it’s only just getting dark at 10 pm.

So we opted to drive in to Seattle,  just one ferry ride, no reservations needed.    It’s about an hour drive to the ferry on Bainbridge Island and then it was about a half hour’s wait to get on.   While waiting I walked over to the water and snapped a picture of a couple spare ferry’s parted just south of us.

It always amazes me how many cars and trucks can get on one of these “real” ferries.   It reminded me of that Monday night Larkspur ferry, except this time it was zillions of cars and trucks streaming out for a long time.   There were lots of pedestrians too, but they were up on an overhead walk so you had to look for them.   They vehicles were right in your face.

Finally, the first row got the signal.   We were in the fourth row, but it was just a few minutes and we were heading onto the ramp down to the ship.    Turns out Kathy made a video while I was driving on.   There was so much glare, I had difficulty seeing the guys directing me till my windshield went into a shadow, and then they were pointing me in two directions.   I chose to the right.

We parked and walked up two flights to the sun deck where it was a gorgeous sunny morning with a cool breeze.   I headed up toward the bow to snap some pics.   We could see Seattle way off in the distance.   As soon as the ship got out near the Sound, it got really windy,  making it difficult to keep the camera steady.   It took about a half hour to cross the Sound and land right downtown.   The crew has this down to a science.  The chime went off, then the speakers announced it was time to get back to our cars.   We weren’t in the car more than  2 minutes before I had to start it and move off the ferry.    A very efficient operation.

We headed out to find the Pike Marketplace.  I had been there once before on a business trip back in 1998 or so.  It was a Wednesday afternoon and the place was packed.  Even the streets around it were packed with people that seemed oblivious that there were cars driving around them.    Somehow as we turned onto the street right in front of the market, a car started backing out of a space.   My first assumption,  it was probably a handicap spot.  But it wasn’t, must have been our lucky day.   We pulled in about 15 minutes later as that’s how long it took the folks to back out with all the people walking around their car like they didn’t exist, and then them doing the same to me as I inched forward toward the spot.    It took so long I was thinking I wouldn’t get there in this lifetime.

We got out and walked over toward a small park at the north end.  By then it was just about lunchtime and the park was crowded with people.    Dusty found just the right tree and all was good with the world again.    We crossed back across the street and entered the market.  Must be a great place for pickpockets, as “really crowded” was a huge understatement.

They sell all sorts of junk in there.   Surprisingly there were even a few produce sellers in the mix of jewelry, soap, pictures, clothes shops, and artsy things.   We found a hole in the wall to each lunch as we were very hungry by the time we got toward the southern end of the market.

After lunch Kathy wanted to vamoose that place.   I think both of us were feeling claustrophobic by then.    That’s when Seattle started to suck.  The streets were really steep, traffic was horrible with cars and pedestrians, and it was only Wednesday afternoon!  We missed a ramp to get over to Lake Union where I figured it would be a bit calmer, but attempting to get around that block was tedious to say the least.  We couldn’t turn and all lanes went on the “unmarked” on-ramp to highway 99.   And then within a mile or so it ended on the left side of I-5 north with the next off-ramp a quarter mile up the road and on the other side.   Needless to say,  we couldn’t get over for close to a mile,  way past the off-ramp we needed.   We ended up getting off somewhere near the WU campus,  even drove right past their expensive football stadium.

The traffic here was almost as bad as downtown.  I’m starting to dislike Seattle… did I already say that?    Anyway, we finally got to Lake Union, and to my surprise, there wasn’t anywhere to park.   It was getting late and we didn’t want to find out what rush hour looked like; so I mapped a way back to the ferry, bypassing the freeway that we saw was completely stopped on the southbound side as we were going north a bit earlier.   We took an interesting drive on older mostly residential streets that eventually got us back downtown and very close to the ferry.

Unfortunately, Google took us to the ferry car loading ramp, but it  had just moved about a mile south from where Google thought it was; so we again had to reroute to the new location.    We finally made it into the lot and queued up just as a ferry was shoving off.    Great, another one-hour wait for the next ferry,  but at least we weren’t out in that traffic anymore!!

We finally got back around  5 pm and it felt like we were gone 18 hours.   After that day,  Kathy said she no longer thought it was a good idea to take the motorhome on the ferry across to Seattle  on our way east.

 

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Fort Flagler and Mystery Bay

After a leisurely morning, we drove over toward Indian Island and then onto Morrowstone Island and Fort Flagler.    On the way we spotted a large government facility that turned out to be the Naval Weapons Arsenal.   There were miles of tall chain-link fence topped with Constantino wire.   Not long after that we drove by signs for Mystery Bay and thought we should check that out on the way back.

First thing we saw upon entering the park were deer eating their way across a small field.  Then we found a great little beach with a large quantity of driftwood.

After wandering on the beach for a bit and spotting a few shells and smooth pebbles, we headed toward one of the old battery’s.   This has been the first battery that actually had artillery pieces on their mounts.   They were small 3″ guns.    There were quite a few other battery’s on that point, but none of the others had their guns mounted.

Afterward we drove over to the other side of the fort, and while doing so, passed a very large concrete bunker system that was probably where the generals would hide during a battle.   It was buried deep in the woods away from the water.    Once we reached the other side, there was a very nice campground and another beach with lots of kids playing.   From there you could see Port Townsend across the water and a huge crane apparatus over on Indian island apparently for loading the Navy ships with ammunition.

On the way out, we turned down the road to Mystery Bay.   I saw nothing indicating why it was called that, but it was a nice county park that had a long dock for tying up your boat.   The signs stated you can tie up there for up to 3 days.   Now that’s pretty cool.  There was even a picnic table on the floating dock.   I cannot ever remember seeing a picnic table on a boat dock,  to bad we didn’t bring a picnic basket.

On the ride back we spotted a Mexican restaurant and looked it up on Google.  Had high ratings from hundreds of reviews.   We were very glad we stopped by for dinner.  It was really good Mexican food!

 

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A visit to Port Townsend

Nice small town where the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Puget Sound meet.  We drove the 12 or so miles from our campsite to the tip of the peninsula driving thru Fort Worden so we could check out the Pt. Wilson Lighthouse.   It wasn’t open to the public, but we were able to walk right up to it and around the property to snap some pics.

It looked like it was in a lot better shape in the pictures that Google brings up when searching, so they must be fairly old now.    It’s located on a pretty spot on the point that separates the Strait of Juan de Fuca from the Puget Sound.

While we walked around, a fairly large ship rounded the corner and, in what seemed like just a minute or two, was barely visible in the distance down the Sound.   After we had taken too many pictures, we headed back toward the town.

While traversing this large hill between the fort and the town, we came upon a beautiful home overlooking the Sound with a really whimsical low brick wall snaking its way between the trees and the road.   We had to turn around and go back to look at it.   The home itself was a slightly modern take on a craftsman home with the great woodwork and amazing leaded windows, but that fence was like nothing I had ever seen.    I thought I could live there with the great view and high up off the water.   It was for sale; but when we looked it up on Zillow, they are asking 2.5 million…   Not sure our house in SD would qualify as the 20% down for it, so we moved on.

A few minutes later we were in downtown Port Townsend.   We found a place to park across from a waterfront park where we decided to have our picnic lunch.   No picnic benches were to be found, so we ended up sitting on a bench that was on a pier over the water.  Not bad but a table would have been a bit nicer.   We watched all the boats go by and also the large vehicle ferry coming back from Whidbey Island then a little bit later head back.

After lunch we headed down the main street to look at all the Victorian era architecture with Kathy looking inside all the buildings for their wares.   The buildings where great, and some of the old advertising was just visible enough on the side walls to tell what was being sold back in the day.   I also found the fireman’s bell tower while walking down one of the side streets.

We stumbled across a Victoria Era Steampunk shop.   That was a trip to see all the cool stuff.      They even had a lot of wooden ships’ mastheads that I couldn’t tell if they were old or just recreations.  They were great though.

We sauntered over to the ferry landing to pick up a schedule and check out the workings for our next journey to Seattle via a different ferry on Bainbridge Island.    But that’s for another post.

We left the ferry landing and walked up the other side of the street in the direction of the car.   Lots of pubs and shops along the way.   We did find another waterfront park with picnic tables, but the park at the north end of the town was much nicer and much more wide open, not just a vacant lot between two buildings like this one.

As we got closer to the car, we found an ice cream shop, and while Kathy was inside getting our order, I snapped this picture of a building I wouldn’t want to be in when the big quake hits here in the not to distant future.   It’s still hard for me to imagine they only found the Cascadia Fault in the late 90’s and are just barely telling folks about the overdue 9.0 quake on the Oregon and Washington coastal areas.    They have put up a lot of Tsunami Evacuation Route signs here in Washington.   On the coast of Oregon, there were lots of entering and leaving Tsunami zones, but the Evac route signs were few and far between.    The powers that be probably think it would hurt tourism and/or population centers for folks to start seriously thinking about that.

The sun went behind the clouds as we were heading north, and I wished I had brought my windbreaker with me.   Sort of got a bit chilly on this July afternoon.   We found the car and drove back to the campground to plan a trip for tomorrow.

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Mount St. Helens

We took off around 10 am on Saturday morning to find the Johnston Observatory at Mount Saint Helens.   It was about an hour ride on some of the smoothest roads we have encountered while driving around this country.   Incredible views along the way with bright blue skies and few clouds hanging around.

On the way there, as we came around a corner, my vision got blurry looking at the trees.  I immediately started wondering what was wrong, some sort of eye problem or maybe a stroke?   I was figuring out all the scenarios of what was happening to me when Kathy exclaimed that all the trees were giving her double vision.    Holy Cow,  it was the trees!!  The forest service had planted thousands of Nobel Firs to reforest the land, and seeing them all in a row made them look blurry.   It was uncanny.   I had never seen anything like it before.   You can almost see it in the pictures I took, but when driving thru there it’s very surreal.

We passed by quite a few view points along the way up.    But I think the best view as at the observatory.   The guy that was at that spot the morning it blew didn’t have a chance in hell, it looked like the mountain had aimed at that spot when the side blew out.    I had read the book about the area a few years back and the guy from the USGS that was there the morning it blew was only there filling in for the normal volcanologist that had to fly to California for some reason I cannot remember.

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Camping at the Hillbilly Hideaway on Silver Lake

The campground was called Streeters Resort and it was right on Silver Lake.   First thing I noticed as we drove up to find the office was the crowds around it.   I can’t remember another campground with crowds around the office,  not one.   I started thinking this place might be a bit different.   The reviews I read didn’t indicate anything odd.   Maybe I need to go back and reread them.

I parked right in front as there were no signs indicating anything at all except Zip Line office arrow, which explained some of the people.  It just seemed to be a hang out spot.   I went inside and talked to Jose.   He asked if I knew my site number.  I did not.   Now I was remembering a review that mentioned they got there after calling where the office said to come over, they had plenty of space, and when they got there, there wasn’t any space for them…    I was starting to get apprehensive now.

I told him I had called earlier in the week and had a reservation.  He asked my name and flipped thru a few loose sheets of paper that had once belonged in a binder but had been ripped out and partially crumpled up.   Concern started to grow.    After quite a bit of time shuffling those sheets, he seemed to find my name and said I was in 19.  I said great,  very relieved!   I paid him and he just pointed in a general direction for a site.   I said I would walk over first, and he said he would bring me there.

We got there and the trailer to the left of our space had strewn paraphernalia, tables, large innertubes for pulling behind a boat, all over, including one of those canopy things screwed into the logs on the side of my parking space.   The gal sitting on the trailer steps told us there was no room and said we would like the campsite two over to the left as there was no one camping there.    We walked back to the office and he was muttering under his breath about “idjits” or something similar.   He also mentioned that we probably wouldn’t like that spot two over as the shack right behind it was going to get loud that evening.

In the office he consulted with the three women inside, and after about 10 minutes, they figured out someone had already paid for the other site.   So I was going to back into  #19    I would have rather pulled straight in as it was 5′ from the edge of Silver Lake,  a very large lake about 30 miles from Mount St. Helens,  but that would have put our door smack dab into their piled-up stuff.    We backed in…

I maneuvered the coach far to the left as possible so there might be space for my slide to extend on their side of the site.   The guy next door unscrewed his canopy back a bit  and moved some other stuff back so there was room for our rig in our spot while I was backing in.

As I got out and started hooking up our electric and water, the guy came around the back of his very large 5th wheel trailer and asked his wife if she knew how to dump the tanks.  She said, “Of course not.”   His reply was he had been talking to me, not her.    I finished up and explained he should open the larger valve first,  the 3″ one,  then after that is done open the 1 1/2″ pipe valve.   He looked at me kind of funny like those sizes made no sense.   I walked over and pointed out what was what.  Then he mentioned he had another set of them.   Turns out he had two sets of tanks, one in the front and the other in the rear.  Who knew?!   I looked at all the piping and suggested he dump the rear one first and then the front.   Then I went back to finishing our setup.

Once I was done with everything, I went back outside to check the basement doors were closed and locked, and the guy asked me if he should move his pig.   Just then I noticed a pig was right behind my coach tied to a small tree.   I said he was OK there as long as he didn’t start gnawing on my tires.   He also mentioned there was a rabbit around there too.   I haven’t seen it yet, but Kathy says she has.

A little while later I saw the pig coming down the 5 steps from inside the RV.   Now that is something you don’t see every day.  It’s not a really large pig, but has the requisite little stubby legs that made it look pretty awkward coming down the stairs.

On the other side of us were a couple of good ole boys with friends drinking all afternoon and evening.   I even overheard one of them on the phone.  Appears he called the wife or gal friend at work to have her bring more beer on the way from work.

I went in to take a nap a few hours after getting here, and I’ve now decided to call the family to the right of us the “loud family.”  Beside the pig and rabbit, there is two large dogs and many children with the wife and husband yelling at the brood to “not to do something” every few minutes.   Remember, there is a lake just a few steps away, a large floating dock with many jet skis and small water ski boats tied up, many flotation devices, kayaks, and lots of kids on and in the water surrounding the dock.   There are even a couple racing type ski boats with huge four or five hundred horsepower motors that make it sound like we might be at the Englishtown Dragstrip.  For any Californians reading this,  think Pomona and Don “The Snake” Prudhomme, only on a mirror flat lake…   BTW,  the lake is about 5 square miles of water.

About 5 pm the karaoke shack got loud.   It almost sounded like there was a band in there, so I walked over to peek inside.   No band, just a karaoke machine and a bunch of folks sitting on couches strewn about the place, drinking beer and reading the screen with the song lyrics scrolling by.    Earlier in the day I had walked into the shack over the water.   The floor felt spongy and had miscellaneous pieces of thin plywood nailed down in various places.   In the back of that “karaoke” space was another room strewn with old boat junk.

Dusty got to meet his first pig from a short distance that first evening.   The pig was quite nice and only squealed when the kids got too close and bothered him 🙂

We were packed in like sardines that first night and when everyone lit their fires, the air quality went into the hazardous range of the index.   The shack was pretty loud till about 10:30, but then the people around their fires were loud and rowdy until about 11:30.   I was hoping they didn’t go till 2…   I’m not really a country music fan, although Kathy is.

Seems like we went from the most rigid rules for a campsite to the most lax!!

Saturday morning we took off for the volcano and when we returned, the good ole boys to our left were gone.    It was a beautiful evening and we sat outside enjoying the view now that we weren’t packed in on that side.    Dusty got nose to nose with the pig as you can see in the pics.   Turns out tonight there was a guy with a guitar singing in the shack till around 8:30.   He wasn’t bad.   While we were outside listening, more folks moved into the site in front of the shack and we got to watch a few of them try to set up a one-person tent for at least an hour and a half.   They did finally get it set up, and to my surprise, it’s still standing this morning when I got up!  Although they left their stuff all out and even their car trunk hood up.  I hope the birds didn’t bomb it!!

 

 

 

 

 

We are heading out today (Sunday) to go to an Escapee’s campground outside of Port Townsend, Washington.

PS.  I never saw the rabbit.