Sat. June 23

Well, not to be.  It seems the wireless signal isn't any stronger at the office than it is at the trailer.  I used my phone to see if there was a strong signal when we were at the office that morning, but I got the same number of bars as I did at our trailer.  Oh, well.  It seems to come in stronger at times, but is erratic.

After we got ourselves together, we thought we would go off and explore Silverton a bit.  It is a quaint little town with a lot of antique shops.  We parked in a shopping mall parking lot, and walked to the main street.  We went into a few stores and looked at a lot of the antique stuff that was there.  We found a store that had some pottery in the window, and inside we found out it was like a collective for a group of artists - pottery, painting, sculpting, weaving, etc.  There were many interesting things.

Right next door was a knitting shop that Dawn had seen when we drove by earlier.  It opened while we were in the artists shop, so we went in and looked around.  There was a young boy in the store who was looking after things for his grandmother who was away on a knitting convention (or something like that), and he seemed to know a lot about the things in the store.  Dawn asked a few questions about some of the items, and found out that he was a sophomore in high school, and knitted/crocheted himself.

She bought a pattern, and then we went on to the next store, which handled antiques.  We met up with the Baileys in there, and generally walked around with them for the next hour or so.

At one store, Dawn and Faith went inside, and I went down the street to find a bank machine.  A Credit Union was open, so I went in and asked if they had an ATM.  They did. It was right outside the door I didn't come in, so I was able to get some cash.

I walked down the other side of the street and found a small Radio Shack and went in for a look around.  Pretty much like they used to be in Kamloops, before they became The Source.

As I walked outside, I could see Faith and Dawn looking around.  It appeared they were looking for Al and me.  Al had gone down the street for a walk, and I came up the street and met them.  We could see Al coming back to where we were, so waited for him there.

Dawn and I had about enough, so headed back to the trailer.  Faith and Al came back a while later, and we played some more cards before supper.  We didn't feel much like playing cards that night, so we packed it in and stayed home for the evening.

Sunday, June 24

After getting up and having coffee, Faith came over to see what our plans were.  She thought we might be going to head off towards home that day, but we hadn't planned on that.  We both had to register for that night at the RV Park, so that is what we did.

The Baileys headed up to Silver Falls State Park to do some hiking and to look at the falls (there are 11 of them in a fairly close area).  We decided to look around some more.  There was a sign that indicated there was a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Silverton, so we decided to go looking for it.  We didn't find it, but did end up at the State Park.  I asked if we could go look around, and the lady at the booth gave us permission to go around the camping/RV area for a look.

It took us a while to find it, the sites, but after a couple wrong turns, we finally found the area.  They were quite nice sites, but because there was so much rain overnight, everything was quite muddy and wet.  We were happy that they did not have room for us when Faith was making reservations because of that, but they would have been nice spots to be in.  Not like Champoeg park, but there was power and water at some of the sites.

The road up to the State Park was very windy and narrow, and I was quite happy to have not pulled the trailer up there.  It was also mainly uphill, which would have been quite a pull.  However, there were lots of RVs in there, so I guess if they could do it, so could we, if we had to.

Anyhow, after that we headed back down to our trailer.  We had to do a bit of shopping first, for some things for lunch, so found the local Safeway.  Then back to the trailer.

Baileys came back about 2 hours later, tired, but quite happy with their hike.  Faith showed me some of the pictures they had taken of the falls.  Al said that they could walk behind 4 of them, which made for some interesting photos.  They were tired, though, and after they had a break, it was back to playing $1.35.  Funny, this time, Dawn and I won most of the pots - this was the only time that I had won much, so I guess it's like golf - if you hit the last hole well, you'll come back.

We planned on leaving fairly early (for us) in the morning, so went to bed somewhat early.  Baileys were going to take their time heading back up north, meeting one of their sons in Osoyoos on Thursday.  We planned to head over to the coast, and then head north from there.

Monday, June 25

By 8:30, we were on the road.  I set GPS Jill to take us to Olympia, but had to also program in some smaller places on the coast so she would get us there.  Initially, she must not have understood, because we seemed to be going the wrong direction, and before we knew it, we were back to where we had come off I-5 to go to Champoeg park.

Well, the next thing was to tell her to take us first to Salem, OR, so we could at least go the right direction.  She took us onto the freeway, and at least we were heading south.  Then as we got to near Salem, it seemed like she was trying to get us to the centre of the city.  That was NOT what we wanted, so we had to program in a small town on the coast (Otis) that the map indicated was on the road we wanted to take.

It was a bit of an adventure to get turned around, starting with a short excursion through a residential area with narrow streets.  At one intersection, there was a very small round-a-bout, which I couldn't get the trailer through.  The truck fit, but the trailer was too long, so I had to take it up over the curb, and hope that the back stabilizer jack wouldn't get torn off.  It didn't, and we were able to get back on the main street (finally), and follow directions to get on the highway we were looking for.

This was interesting country, but we met rain a bit before the coast.  From there until almost Astoria, it rained.  The road was very windy, narrow, and hilly.  The small towns we went through meant slowing down and speeding up, a lot.

Dawn indicated that she wanted to stop in Seaside, OR to look in some of the stores.  Well, that was a mistake.  We got gas right as we came into Seaside, and then went looking for where there were some shops.  I got off the highway, and went down one of the streets.  It was narrow, old, and not too inviting looking for us.  Dawn didn't see any stores she was interested in going into, so we finally decided to get back on the highway and head out.  Well, that was another adventure as again, the streets were very narrow, and once we were at the highway, we had to find a space among the traffic to get back on it.

Finally, we did, but it was shortly after that the we decided to get to Astoria, and then head back inland to the main highways, as this was too slow.  After going across the bridge at Astoria, and entering Washington, we headed east, finally joining up with I-5 at Longview.

It was getting late, but we felt we had to get to around Tacoma before stopping, so that we didn't have too long a drive the next day.  Our plan was to go home from wherever we stayed that night.

Let me tell you, that the closer we got to Tacoma, the fewer RV Parks were advertised on the freeway signs.  We finally saw one that looked promising, shortly before Tacoma, so got off the freeway to try and find it.

We finally found it.  It didn't look overly great, but we were only stopping for the night so figured it wouldn't be too bad.  Little did we know then, that this would be the most expensive spot of the whole trip, and the one that was the least pleasant.  We weren't overly happy with where we were directed.  The site was very narrow, with trailers on both sides of us.  Unfortunately, they were both partially in our site - one one side, their slides were about 2 feet into our site, and on the other, their awning was about 2 feet into ours.  If we had slides on our trailer, we couldn't have opened them, and if we wanted to put out our awning, forget about it.

Oh, well.  We were only there for the night, and at least it was level so I didn't have to unhook the truck.  Once the jacks were down, things were stable and level, and we basically had supper and then watched some TV before bed.  Our roof had started to leak a bit, so we had to make sure that we put down a bowl to catch water that dripped from our air conditioner vent.  One more thing to be bothered by.

Tuesday, June 26

Off again, fairly early (again, for us).  We headed out at about 8:20.  I punched in HOME for GPS Jill.  Funny, she finally took us out onto the freeway (I-5), and we headed toward Seattle.  Well, before we got there, she directed us to get off the freeway, and follow some other major roads.  It didn't feel right, but we seemed to be going the right direction, and we could see the city.  I was able to fill up with gas at a station that was fairly easy to pull into, and we continued.

Jill had us moving from one highway to another, but at least heading in the right direction.  I became a little worried when the traffic got much heavier, and we could see the new baseball and football stadiums.  However, we saw them from the other side that we would have from the freeway.  Yup, you know it.  Jill took us downtown.

Suddenly we were driving down near the wharf area, with narrow roads, that had steep hills.  I had an idea where we were because we had parked there long ago when we were there for some baseball games.  Jill was taking us back to the freeway, but there were some very steep hills for us to climb in order to get to the entrance.  Fortunately, there wasn't a lot of traffic, and other drivers were either being nice to us, or were afraid of getting too close to this truck and trailer from BC.

Then back onto I-5, where it was very busy.  This is the only thing I can think of as to why Jill took us away from the freeway.  As Dawn said, there is not way to tell her we are pulling a 30 foot trailer.  She just didn't know what she had done to us.  It was pretty straight sailing from there, until we got to Bellingham.

We knew we wanted to go through the Sumas border crossing, and Jill took us off the freeway before I expected her to.  However, she seemed to know what she was doing, so we went right along with her.  This route took us through a bunch of farmland, with lots of sharp corners as the road seemed to follow the township and range lines.  Finally, she brought us to the highway we knew, just before Sumas, so she clearly knew what she was doing.

We stopped and filled up our one tank in Sumas, and then had to figure out how to get to the duty-free shop, for the orders that we had from the kids.  Well, I parked just outside the shop, and Dawn went in to make the purchases.  A fellow from the Duty Free came out and asked if my wife was inside buying alcohol or tobacco.  I said yes, and he said I would have to drive inside the compound as they weren't allowed to let those things outside their fence line.  He opened another gate and I was able to drive in to wait for Dawn.

Once she was back, we had to wiggle our way into the line up at the border (less than a block from the Duty Free).  It took us about 15 minutes to get to customs, and after a couple questions, the border guard let us back into Canada.

We were hungry as we hadn't eaten breakfast before leaving, so decided we would stop at the White Spot in Chilliwack for lunch.  After that, it was clear sailing (except for the areas of road construction on the Coquihalla) to home.  We pulled into our driveway at about 5:00 pm, and it felt great to get back in our house and to not have to be setting up or pulling the trailer.

It was a great trip.  We drove lots, and saw lots.  We had a great time, and really enjoyed ourselves.  Now we have to pay for the trip - lots of gas to pull the trailer that far.