Friday, Sept 15 to Saturday, Sept 16

What a difference a week makes! A week ago today we were rolling into Brenham in a U-haul truck pulling our travel trailer back home, having sold our dead Lincoln to the dealer in New Mexico. This afternoon we crossed into British Columbia and are about 20KM from Canada Place in Vancouver,  where we will board the Sojourn on Thursday.

We have had an interesting two days. On Friday, in Butte, MT, we wake to heavy, wet, fluffy snow and 32 degrees!  We get off to a slow start and the snow follows us for an hour or so as we drive West on I-90. The highway is clear, but wet and fortunately there is not too much traffic.

By the time we get to Spokane, WA the sun is out, but hazy and it is in the low 70s. We leave I-90 and head North to the Grand Coulee Dam. We drove through this area coming home from Alaska in 2009, but did not stop at the Visitors Center. This time we stop and look at the Museum.

By 4PM we are in the beautiful Okanogan Valley on the East side of Cascades National Park. After a bit of looking, we find a Best Western Motel in Omak for the night. They are very proud of the motel, but guess when you are the only show for miles, it works! Actually the hotel is OK, but the local “restaurant” is awful! We should have gone to Dairy Queen, the other choice!

We wake early this morning to a cool, smoky day. There are a number of forest fires in the area and we have had hazy skies for the last two days. After cleaning out the ice chest in preparation for crossing the Canadian border we head out on our half day drive to Vancouver.
  
Actually, as of this morning we have caught up with trip “Plan A”.  Originally we were to camp tonight in the National Park campground at the Cascades Visitors Center.  We drive the northern part of the Cascade Loop. The National Park is full of trail heads and all the various parking lots are full of cars and horse trailers. Everyone is out on the many trails this Saturday morning.

The loop drive follows several rivers and the geography is interesting, especially the dramatic difference in the dry East side and the lush, green, wet, West side. You can almost see the dividing line of the rain pattern. The craggy peaks with pockets of snow and turquoise-blue Lake Diablo are very beautiful. 

We stop at the Visitors Center about 11:30AM to tell the ranger we will not be needing our camping spot tonight. She gets a surprised look on her face and says that this has never happened before, but the people in our space from last night are broken down and have been worrying what will happen. Well, now they have another night to try and solve their problem...glad we could help.

We leave the park and head to I-5. After a stop at Subway for lunch we turn north to Canada on I-5 arriving in Richmond just south of Vancouver about 3PM.

 

Once squared away in our room we head over to Richmond’s waterfront area for some fish and chips for dinner. Richmond is a neat, old fishing village with a historic cannery. We will have to explore it on Wednesday after we get back from Vancouver Island.

Tomorrow we catch the 10:15AM ferry to Vancouver Island......