Rain, Rain, Go Away

Rain, rain, go away. We have had nearly 2 weeks of rain starting back in Oregon, all through Washington, and now Canada. Since it rained all day we drove and drove, 381 miles to be exact. We saw in the Milepost (a travel guide to Alaska) that their was a free camping place just up the road from where we were in a town called Cinema, Canada at the Cinema 2nd Hand store and campground. This couple, Theresa and Vic, has a nice store that has everything you could want. They would give Walmart a run for its money. They have 5 floors of goods from kitchen supplies, to camping items, to bathroom towels, to furniture, bedding, food, and fireworks, you name it, they have it.   They have a free camping area next to their store and told us that one time they were driving a long distance and needed to stop to sleep for a few hours. The campground charged them the full rate of $28 to just sleep. They did not hook into utilities and would be awake in a few hours and leave before the sun came up. The full fee stayed. This angered them so badly that they decided that on their piece of ground no one would ever have to pay to camp. So they cleared out the area, put up an outhouse for tenters, put in picnic tables, and said it is free to all. Every night they provide a campfire, coffee, and many tall tales.  Their generosity was amazing.

While sitting at the campfire a couple on a motorcycle pulled in, pitched their tent, and came up to  chat. They were from Germany and have been touring the world for three years on this motorcycle. They have a pup tent, 2 sleeping bags, a one burner stove, a 3 piece mess kit, rain gear, a jacket, and 1 extra pair of jeans. Now that’s traveling lite. The only countries they haven’t gone to is Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Africa. They will be going to Africa after they see Alaska and the Eastern part of the US. I asked how much longer will they be traveling? They shrugged their shoulders and said they like living like this and will continue to go to an area and work a few months then travel on. Sounds neat, romantic, courageous, but I would need a few more changes of clothes and mascara!

Canadian Boarder

I don’t know why getting ready to cross into Canada has been a big deal to Tommy and I,  but it has. We don’t have weapons, pepper spray, mace or anything like that. We have made sure we have our price stickers for meat that we will bring into Canada. We are ok on the amount of beer (only 24 cans are allowed in) but we are over on the amount of liquor. Only 1 liter is allowed and we have about 3 liters, so we know we will pay duty on this. We have been fretting the crossing, again, we are not sure why, but we have. We have heard horror stories about peoples RVs been searched and torn apart, being held for hours after inspections etc. We were looking at our maps and it looked like we still had about 5 or so miles to go before the border. So, I peeled our last apple since apples are not allowed in (even though they import apples from Washington State) and before we ate the apple we are at the border. This took us both by surprise, we never saw the last town that we were looking for to fill up with gas. It took us by surprise so much so that I did not even grab the camera to take a picture of the border. We expected more of something, what I don’t know, but something. We pulled up to where the woman was in what appeared to be a toll booth and she asked us for our passports. She asked where were we going and how long would we be in Canada and did we have any firearms or pepper spray, tobacco or liquor. We said no to the firearms and pepper spray, no to tobacco, and told her we had a 30 pack of beer and several open bottles of liquor totally up to about 3 liters. She said ok have fun on your trip and away we went. Didn’t they want to check my meat? What about the refrig? I made sure I didn’t have any of those dreaded apples or potatoes. Nope, just have fun! So here we are in Canada and it’s getting late, about 7:30 pm and we need to find a place for tonight. Wow look ahead of us, Yes! a Walmart! Ahhh feels like home!

Seattle – Day 3

Seattle has so much to offer, you could be here a week and love every minute of it. When touring this town, your days are certainly full from morning to late evening.

Ok a little factoid: there is over 500 Starbucks coffee houses in the 5 mile loop of downtown Seattle and over 900 in the whole city. Now this does not include other coffee houses such at Tulleys, Seattle’s Best (which Starbucks now owns but keeps the Seattle’s Best roast and blends), and other small espresso shops. That floors me. Everywhere you look there is another coffee shop.

The Asian Art Museum was first up after a trip into the Apple store to get help on downloading iTunes. I could not get that downloaded, it kept getting stuck, and after several tries that took 2 1/2 hours each, I said forget it. Apple you do it. And they did, but it took them awhile too.  Sorry back to the Asian museum. Kimonos, some dating back to 1600’s and 1800’s were so beautiful.                                  The sculptures were amazing.             The Argosy Lakes Seattle cruise was up next. I have been looking forward to this cruise on Lake Union and Lake Washington. I wanted to see all the houses on the water on Lake Union. The homes are not on pilings, they rest on cedar logs.   This is the Sleepless in Seattle house,  The house they used on the show the Bachelor. (Jason, the bachelor, did not live in this house even though the show chose to use it because of the Sleepless in Seattle link, but he does live close by). The multimillion dollar houses on Lake Washington, including the 66,000 sq ft home of Bill Gates, were outstanding.This was such a nice cruise with the draw bridges and homes. I could go on this cruise again.     We were lucky to have an opening.      After the cruise we had to jump back on the monorail one more time. Hey for you Grey’s Anatomy fans, this is the building they use for the show. It’s not a hospital though, but we had a great view of the building while we were on the monorail.        We had so much fun here and saw so much more than I can put in this 3 part blog. It would take at least 6 parts to show all the places we went to and I did not even talk about what we saw when we were just walking around.  Thanks again to all of my co-workers at Brandywine Counseling for the wonderful gift to tour this town. I miss you guys!!!!

We will be crossing into Canada tomorrow on our way to Alaska. I don’t know when I will have internet again while we are in Canada. So my posts may be few until we make it into Alaska in about 2 weeks. We have about 2000 miles to drive through Canada to Alaska. I may be pleasantly surprised, I may have internet quite often. If I do, I will post.

Seattle - Day 2

I could not resist, I had to go back to Pike Place to see a few more fish be thrown.   While walking through the Market we saw this “work of art”, the gum wall in Post Alley.                     This is listed as the 2nd most unsanitary attraction in the world, the first, the Blarney Stone.

We met Sam and Sue at the Market. We talked and talked for a couple of hours. It was like we already knew each other. Nice people!  We went down to Pioneer Square to take the Under Ground tour of Seattle. Seattle, after many years being at sea level and being subjected to the tides coming in and out and leaving the town in muck, was raised many feet up after a fired leveled the town. It took many years to complete the raising and during this time you had storefronts at street level while the sidewalks were 8 to 10 feet higher. The businesses needed to have 2 store fronts, one low and one high, and the lower one would eventually become the basement. This tour showed us how Seattle was raised and what life was like prior to the raising. Have you ever seen glass squares in sidewalks and wondered what they were for. I did and now I know. They are skylights! When the city was elevated, people continued to use the lower levels and needed light under the sidewalks.           On to the Space Needle.           Amazing views!              Lake Union   The Stadiums    

The Experience Music Project is a rock and roll museum. This was really fun. Not only did you see many instruments and a lot of history behind all types of music, but this is an interactive museum. You could play the drums and guitar etc and you could make a DVD of you being a rock and roll star in front of 200,000 people.

Next is the Science Fiction Museum which is the first museum devoted to paying tribute to the creators, writers, artists, publishers, and filmmakers of Sci-fi. Brought back memories of many shows I watched growing up and in fact I still say “warning, warning, Will Robinson” from Lost in Space” when something is happening that isn’t quite right. For those of you who don’t remember this robot would warn young Will Robinson when something bad was going to happen.

Seattle has a 1% rule. Whatever the cost of new construction is, 1% of that will need to go towards art. There is art of all types all over the city. These eyes are also chairs on the back side.        

This is a stainless steel tree and in the back ground you can see a red star like           sculpture

 

 

 

 

 

                     Of  course you have “working man” outside of the  Seattle Art Museum.         Not only do you have art all over the city but you have artists. There are street acts all over making there living playing.

On to the Lady Mary for a harbor cruise of Elliott Bay.   

We walked over the town and jumped on a tour bus to get more details of what we were seeing.

Seattle is known for the coffee, Starbucks being the most popular and my least favorite. Tulleys is their competitor and we stopped at the cutest little shop for a pick me up. We had an Americana which is a double espresso then the remainder of the cup is filled with water. Really good and smooth. Nice way to top off our day.

Seattle Here We Come, Thanks BCI

We decided to stay just outside Seattle in Tacoma, WA at McChord AFB. It’s an easy 40 minute ride into Seattle and you can’t beat the $11 a night fee to stay in the quiet and peaceful surroundings. The weather has not been cooperating with us for the last several days and doesn’t look good for the next few, but that didn’t stop us. We have the Seattle spirit… it’s just water.  Even the weather guy on the news is surprised about this much rain and the cold temps at this time of the year.

We have a 3 day Go-Pass that allows you entry into all of the participating attractions in and around Seattle thanks to my co-workers at BCI.                       When I resigned at BCI they gave this to Tommy and I as Bon Voyage gift. And what a great gift it has been!! We would not have seen or done so many things without this. What a great city Seattle is. Thank you again BCI!

The first day here we went to Pike Place where the farmers market is.  I could have stayed there all day and watched the fish mongers throw the fish and chime in, almost  in a song, when a customer purchased something. They were autographing books that they sold and made a show of it. One guy would sign a book and yell “sign the book” then all the guys there would yell back “ sign the book”, this continued until all the guys signed the book. It would start over when another book was purchased. They are good with slinging those fish.    They even allowed customers catch the fish they were buying. They would jump up on the counters to get the attention of potential customers and take their orders.     It was fun to watch the customers look at this ugly Monk Fish. Tied to the fish’s tail was a rope that led to the back of the counter.         On occasion an employee would pull the rope to make the fish move and of course the customer really moved. Too Funny!!!!

We looked at all of the goods the merchants had and of course some of the fresh produce made their way home with us.

When we returned to McChord we thought we would bowl a few games.                               What form!

 

 

 

 

 

We had a great time. Tommy and I have only bowled 2 times in the 15 years we have been together.

Not too bad for only bowling two times in all of these years.

Victoria

We caught the 8:20 am ferry to Victoria, BC and unbeknownst to me, today is one of their biggest holidays. They celebrate Queen Victoria’s birthday. This was the longest parade I have ever seen. They invite schools from the US to participate and had schools from WA and OR there. What an honor that must be and exciting for the kids. There is a large Chinese community here and had several entries in this parade. There were local businesses advertising there services.

There were clowns,

characters from children’s stories, bikes, and even Elvis.

Of course the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were present and accounted for.

We watched the parade for several hours and it started two hours prior to us arriving and continued for quite some time after we left to explore the city.

Chinatown was beautiful

. The Empress Hotel is the hotel of hotels. It is so regal looking with the ivy. So many beautiful details, gardens, even the mail box is shiny and beautiful. The Parliament Building is exquisite. Unfortunately we could not tour it because of the holiday and most stores and official places were closed.

What a nice day in Victoria. Hope we are able to return someday.