Washington Coast and Olympic Peninsula
(July 31 to August 29, 2005)

You can click on "photos" to get directly to the first photo page, which has a connector to the second page (if there is one).

CHINOOK  and LONG BEACH AREAS
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Although we were in Chinook for five days, the first three were used as a base to tour the Astoria, Oregon area. We officially started our tour of Washington on July 31. Not far from Chinook was where the Lewis and Clark Expedition ended their journey to find a northwest passage from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean. On November 15, 1805 they set up camp along the Columbia River and called it Station Camp. Realizing that it was not a good place to spend the winter of 1805-06, the captains wanted to explore the south side of the river for a winter camp. The two captains put it up for a vote to the people who comprised the Corps of Discovery. The amazing thing about that vote was that they allowed an Indian woman (Sacagawea) and a slave (York) to also vote. That was unheard of at the time. It would be another 60 years before slaves were freed and allowed to vote, and 115 years before women were allowed to vote.

We also used Chinook as a base to tour the Long Beach peninsula. On a misty day we drove up to the northern part of the 28 mile long peninsula, all the way up past Oysterville and into Leadbetter State Park. On the way back, we stopped in Long Beach to take a short walk on the boardwalk and get some photos. Long Beach is a seaside resort town with all the trappings of shops, restaurants, arcades, carousel, etc, but didn't have the same charm as Seaside in Oregon.

On our last day in the area, we drove back over to the peninsula and Ilwaco to check out the two lighthouses in the area, the North Head Lighthouse and the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse, both of which are functional and run by the U.S. Coast Guard.

On the way, we stopped to check out the Eagles Nest Coast to Coast (C2C) Campground. Eagles Nest was a fairly large campground, but mostly wooded. There were some sites way in the back that were a bit more open and might allow use of a satellite dish.

The first lighthouse we came to was the North Head Lighthouse. It is situated two miles north of the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse and was commissioned in 1898. It sits 190 feet above sea level and stands 65 feet high. The light has been changed several times and the current light can be seen 17 miles out to sea. The Cape Disappointment Lighthouse was built in 1856 and guides ships into the mouth of the Columbia River. We watched and listened as a lighthouse keeper talked on his radio to a couple of ships coming into the river. A couple was standing near us who lived in Warrenton (outside of Astoria) who explained that a boat or a chopper would take a bar captain out to an incoming ship. That person would then stay with the ship until he guided it past the sand bars in the river. At that point, a river captain would board the ship and guide it up the river to Portland.

OCEAN SHORES AREA
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Our next stop was Ocean Shores. It was 21 miles off of 101 towards the shore, but we wanted to do two things: boondock for a few days at the Quinault Beach Resort and Casino, and check out the four Coast to Coast parks in the area up on Route 109. Here are our opinions about these parks:

*  Ocean Shores (Western Horizons) - much too wooded and dark for our tastes

*  Oceana RV Resort (Leisure Time) - gated park and the lady at the booth wouldn't even let us in to look around because we weren't members. She was pleasant, but what a snobby atmosphere. Maybe they think they are an Outdoor Resorts with its million dollar rigs where strangers aren't allowed to drive through without an escort. Do they think we are going to steal one of the million dollar motorhomes? Actually, I don't think they call them motorhomes. In any case, we don't like snobby atmospheres.

*  Ocean Mist (K/M) - this would be our #1 choice.  Our RV friend, John Churn, suggested we drive over the bridge to the beach area and check it out. We saw some folks sitting outside their Dutch Star, so we stopped and had a nice chat with them.  The lady in the office told us they only had nine sites allocated for C2C and they were full.  Also, only members can park in the back near the beach.

*  Copalis Beach (Sunrise Resorts) - this would be our #2 choice and is near enough to the beach.  Actually, it might be our #1 choice given it's closer to the beach, 50-amp and full hookup.

On the way home we drove into Ocean Shores. Nice town. We saw Mexican and Chinese restaurants, which we both love, but then Diane saw the Galway Irish Pub and, being a former "Casey", that was that. So we ate there. I'm not a big beer drinker, but I do love Guinness every now and then. Well, the pint of Guinness I had was GREAT and brought back some nice memories. Back in 1999 we spent three weeks in Dublin when I was working. We ate out every night and I couldn't resist the Guinness. It was two pints a night.  The first one went down real smooth and quick after a day's work, and then one with the meal.  Of course, then I wondered why I extended the size of my gut.  Diane looked at the menu and was delighted.  She saw they had colcanna as an appetizer, a mashed potato and cabbage mixture that she hadn't seen, or had, for a long time.  Then she ordered the Shepherd's Pie, which she also loves, and I had the Beef and Guinness.  YUMMY!!!

When we were in the Astoria area we went to see a movie one day and noticed that the car we parked next to had an Escapees sticker on the window. So I put one of our cards in their door. When we came out of the movie, the couple who owned the car were sitting there so she could do email before heading back to Ilwaco (they were staying at Eagles Nest). That's how we met Bud and Dixie Johnson. We had a very nice chat and found out we would both be in the Ocean Shores area. They were at Ocean Mist and remembered that we said we would be boondocking at the Quinault Beach Casino. So one morning there was a knock at our door and it was Bud and Dixie. We visited for a while and set up a time to go over to their place to play cards the next day followed by dinner at the Chinese restaurant in town. They had met another couple at Ocean Mist, Larry and Eileen, and invited them to come along for dinner. The six of us had a fun time chatting over dinner. We may hook up with Bud and Dixie down the road a bit as they may be in Sequim (pronounced "skwim") around the same time we'll be in that area.

Our plans were to stay at the casino for three days, but we decided to stay an extra day. It was a pretty big parking lot, but not very full. The RV parking was behind a gate and up into a not very level gravel area. Given that it wasn't very crowded in the asphalt car lot, we asked some workers about how touchy the casino was for RVs parked on the asphalt. They said "not very touchy", so we stayed there. If it became crowded with cars, we would have moved. There were other RVs that parked there over the four days we spent there. We did donate a few bucks to the local economy via the slot machines, so we didn't feel guilty in staying in the parking lot.

KALALOCH AREA
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We drove from the Quinault Beach Resort and Casino to Kalaloch (pronounced "clay lock"). The Days End directory mentioned a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) beach overflow area on a bluff overlooking the ocean where we could boondock for a few days. A guy I met via one of the RV Internet sites, Tom McIlwain (also an Escapee) had been traveling up the coast about two weeks ahead of our travels and was sending me notes alerting me to boondocking spots. He stopped in Kalaloch for a couple of days and updated Days End to indicate that this "campground" was now owned and run by the National Park Service and the name was the South Beach Campground. However, that was a bit of a misnomer as it was nothing more than a gravel road that looped around and you picked a spot to park an RV or pitch a tent. There were no sites. You signed up at the board and when 80 "sites" were claimed, the "campground was deemed to be full. Some locals we talked to told us that it used to be a real overflow area for the Kalaloch Campground up the road (179 sites) until someone realized there was money to be made by charging folks for parking a rig or a tent on a piece of dirt overlooking the Pacific. So now it's $8 a night for a "site". If you had a Golden Age Passport, and I can't wait to get mine in November, it was $4 a night.

We signed up as number 43, but there sure didn't look like there were another 37 "sites" left. There were a few motorhome, mostly smaller ones, one other big rig besides ours, and the rest were popups, trailers and lots and lots of tents. The view, when it wasn't foggy, was great. The sky cleared during the afternoon, so we had a great sunset. The downside was the lots and lots of tents I mentioned. That meant lots and lots of fires. The air in the area was very thick with a smoky smell. We were going to stay three nights, but decided on two. Diane runs the risk of the heavy smoke triggering an asthma attack, and even though I have a pretty high tolerance for smoke, it really was quite heavy in this area. We took a walk down on the beach at low tide and the air was crisp and clean.

Another possible downside was the mess made by all the seagulls. I saw them landing on other rigs and knew they were also on our roof, plus we could sometimes hear them up there. So I guess boondocking at the South Beach Campground is great if you love an ocean view from your kitchen or living room and don't mind lots of smoke and don't mind seagulls making a mess of your roof and don't care about cell phone access.

As we were unhooking the car after pulling into a spot alongside the road, a motorhome was coming in. There wasn't enough room for it to park behind us until after we moved the car. I waved at him and told him if he didn't find anything further down, he could get in behind us in a few minutes. It turned out they found a spot off the road below us as the road looped back to the entrance. As we were walking up to sign up for a site, they were out of their motorhome and we got to chat with them for quite a while. That's how we met Dennis and Patsy Gudgell. Most of the time they live on a 44' Harrier sailboat, which was currently docked in Australia. They were doing some traveling in the USA and planned to head back to Australia in September to get their boat out of storage. Their plans were to take two years to get back to Washington. They will sail the South Pacific to places like Borneo and Bali and make their way to Thailand.

What an interesting lifestyle. We were asking questions of them that RV fulltimer wannabes ask us, like how do you handle banking, mail, etc. They told us they do a lot of bartering as they travel the islands. Dennis told us they have gone five months with zero dollars spent as they traded services for goods, or goods for goods. Their website is at http://www.imageevent.com/harrier. I can't imagine living life on the water. I would be totally paranoid, no, more like scared to death to be out on the open sea in a 44' sailboat. But Dennis grew up around water and boats, so he was very comfortable. Now THAT is an adventurous lifestyle.

We had NO cell service in Kalaloch. The ranger at the information station up the road told us there was an AT&T/Cingular tower in Queets, which was only three miles away, but we could get NO signal from either phone. None. Not even voice, although the Verizon phone would sometimes show a one bar signal for a few seconds and then fade.

FORKS AREA
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Two days at the campground in Kalaloch was enough for us, so we moved north to Forks and the Forks 101 RV Park owned and managed by Bob and Arlene Zornes. This campground offered gravel back-in, or grass pullthru, full hookup sites with 50-amp service, plus free WiFi. It was a nice campground with friendly owners. The WiFi network, however, worked fine for two days and then ran into problems. Bob worked hard on the problem with his provider of service and finally got it working again for the last two days of the week we stayed there. It's a good campground to use as a base to visit the Hoh Rain Forest and the northwestern tip of the Continental United States. Information about the campground can be found by clicking here.

Forks is located 14 miles in from the ocean on a broad prairie. Considering there are only about 5,000 people who live in Forks, there were a lot of motel rooms and restaurants in town. The first thing we did in Forks was to pick up our mail and I took the opportunity to wash the motorhome. It wasn't until I got up on the roof that I saw what a mess those darn seagulls made up there. They loved to park their butts on the air conditioners, so both of the covers were a mess. I'm not sure what value seagulls have, but it seems all they do is eat and crap. It sure was nice to be able to wash the motorhome and car and was worth the $5 charge to use the extra water.

After getting the vehicles washed we drove to the coast to a town named La Push, which is the home of the Quileute Indians. There wasn't anything out there except the coast, a marina, a Coast Guard station, and a restaurant (River's Edge). It was close enough to dinner time to eat, so we decided to eat there. We ordered a crab and shrimp sandwich and a halibut sandwich, both of which were very good.

Diane and I had been in a rain forest once before when we took a land tour in Puerto Rico while on a cruise way back in 1982. We found it very interesting and wanted to check out the Hoh Rain Forest in the Olympic National Park. We drove south on US 101 to the entrance and then another 18 miles in to the rain forest, which is one of the only coniferous rain forests in the world. The area receives an average of 140 inches of rainfall per year. Of course, we were there in the dry season so it is possible to get no rain at all in August. There were several trails in the forest that provide easy walks to see the fauna and trees in the forest. We walked two of the trails, the Spruce Trail and the Hall of Mosses Trail. There was a walk with a ranger scheduled for 1 p.m. on the Hall of Mosses Trail, so we timed our walk on the Spruce Trail to finish in time for the ranger lead walk. It was scheduled for 1 1/2 hours, but we split from the group after about an hour and finished the trail on our own.

It was a beautiful day when we headed out to see the northwestern most point of the contiguous United States at Cape Flattery. The drive took us on Route 112 that went along the Strait of Juan de Fuca and out through the Makah Indian Reservation and Neah Bay. Unfortunately, the strait and the cape were pretty much fogged in when we got out there, so the views weren't as spectacular as we had expected. We kept driving and hoping the fog would break, but it didn't. The road turned to gravel after we went through Neah Bay and we followed it up until it ended. At a small turnaround we came up on a couple of sisters who were vacationing from California. They had their trunk open and were enjoying a snack and a glass of wine. I could only think that it would have been even more enjoyable if there was a view out to the ocean. Diane and I stopped and chatted with them for a while. We had been told the trail out to Cape Flattery was a bit difficult, but the two ladies said it wasn't that bad. So we bid them safe travels and headed down to the trail head for the .7 mile hike out to the cape. There were four lookout points along the way and we stopped at each of them. The women were right, the trail wasn't all that bad except for a couple of short steep spots. It was mostly a wide, well kept trail with several sections of boardwalk over some rough areas. Although it was foggy, we were able to see down to the ocean and rocks, but not out to Tatoosh Island or Vancouver Island.

Also in the Olympic National Park was the Sol Duc Hot Springs, but we opted not to go there on this journey to the northwest. Gotta leave something for another time.

SEQUIM AREA
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We had a nice week in the Forks area. Our next stop was only about 80 miles away in Sequim (skwim). We parked at the 7 Cedars Casino for four days and used it as a base to tour the north Olympic Peninsula. Hurricane Ridge sits at an elevation of 5,107 feet. We stopped at the visitor center and had some lunch as we looked out to Mount Olympus standing 7,980 feet high. Everyone we've met said we should also drive the extra 1 1/2 miles past the visitor center and walk up the Hurricane Hill Trail. It was mostly a paved trail that wound its way up another 650 feet over 1.6 miles, which meant another 1.6 miles back down. Yes, we did walk all 1.6 miles for a total of 3.2 miles. It was a beautiful sunny day. Very warm, but not hot. We thought it would be cool at that elevation so we had jeans on instead of shorts, which would have been better. On the way up, we stopped at one of the benches for a rest and got to chat with several of the 15 family members walking up the trail. They spanned four generations and the grandmother and grandfather made it to the top, albeit well after the others made it to the top. Slow and easy was the way to do it. We crossed paths several times with the two sisters whose kids and grandkids were doing the walk and got to chat quite a bit. They were from different places in California vacationing up on the peninsula. One of the daughters was an engineer, another a doctor. We didn't see any husbands on the walk. Maybe they were out golfing. We had a great time chatting with them and I offered to take a family photograph for them. I ended up taking the photo with five or six different cameras that turned out to be fun as they all tried their best to put on their best smiles for each photo. Seemed like a fun family.

Everyone told us the view was not to be missed, and they were right. We had a 360 degree view from the top that was magnificent and spent a good half hour up there before starting back down. We stopped in Port Angeles on the way home to catch a movie at the local theater and saw Four Brothers (a mindless shoot em up, but it had its moments).

There I was on a very nice driving range in Sequim minding my own business trying to find a golf swing when I decide to practice hitting my 4-iron off a tee. It's not my favorite club. I hit about five shots and then the next shot had the club head go further than the ball as the shaft split right at the hosel. I have never had a club break like that. The only club I remember breaking on me was a 6-iron that somehow managed to get smashed around the wheels of a pull cart as I was trying to "master" this stupid game.

So I went the Calloway website and sent them a note and got an automated response back saying they were busy and it could be four or five days before I'd get a response but I could call customer service if it was about a broken club. I called and waited and waited and waited and finally got to talk to a person. She was pleasant and said it would cost me $50 to get the club fixed and that included shipping both ways and a new grip. Not bad. Then I had this revelation that I really don't like this club and would rather have a 9-wood, but they are expensive. She pointed me to callowaygolfpreowned.com, or an 800#. So I called. The guy had only one 9-wood and it was $180, more than I wanted to spend. So I decided to get my 4-iron fixed. I called Calloway again and spoke a nice guy named Mark. He took the mailing information and said "have a nice day". I asked him if he wanted money given that his colleague, Taylor, asked for the 50 bucks.  He said "no, you got lucky, have a nice day". How nice.

VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA
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It was a bit foggy when we left Sequim to take a ferry over to Victoria on Vancouver Island for a day. It was still a bit foggy when the ferry left the dock, but it cleared up beautifully as we crossed over to Victoria and we ended up with a beautiful day. There was a person selling tours at a kiosk on the sidewalk in front of the beautiful Empress Hotel. We opted for a bus tour of the city and signed up for the 10:30 a.m. Grand City Tour and Craigdarroch Castle. It was a tour on a double decker bus, and there was one parked at the curb. However, it never loaded and we wondered what was going on. The young gal signing up folks for tours was very busy, but took a second to tell everyone that a bus would be coming shortly as the one that was parked at the curb was being repaired. It turned out the bus had a flat tire. A service truck showed up and changed the tire. Given the tires were the same size we have on our motorhome, and these are big tires, it was amazing at how quickly he got the new tire on the bus.

In the meantime, the lady selling the tours moved the line of people waiting for the 10:30 tour down the street to wait for a different bus that was coming to replace the bus parked at the curb. A bus did show up, but the guy changing the tire was done, so the entire line then had to move down the street to the first bus. Now we are running about 20 minutes late, which we didn't figure was a problem, until later. The first part of the tour was in the downtown shopping area and through Chinatown as the driver made his way to Craigdarroch Castle. When we arrived at the drop off point for the castle, the drive said he doesn't stay with the tour, but we should walk back down to the corner and pick up the next bus that would be along in about 40 minutes. That meant our tour of the castle was cut down by about 20 minutes.

We walked up the hill to the castle to take the self-guided tour. It was completed in 1890 by Robert Dunsmuir who made his fortune as a coal baron. You could see the wealth in the four floor dwelling in the stained glass, the intricate woodwork, and lavish Victorian-era furnishings. The original estate encompassed 28 acres. The name "Craigdarroch" means "rocky oak place" in Gaelic. The castle, including the basement, is 25,572 square feet. There are 2,128 oak panels that were shipped in from Chicago. The castle has 17 fireplaces. It had gas lighting and electric lighting, running water, central heating, telephones, and an alarm system. We were awed by the beauty of the wood used in the castle, including white oak and Spanish mahogany. The views from the upper floors were magnificent as you can see the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Olympic Mountains in Washington.

After Joan Dunsmuir's death in 1908, the Castle has been used as the Craigdarroch Military Hospital; Victoria College; offices for the Victoria School Board; Victoria Conservatory of Music; and the Craigdarroch Castle Historic House Museum. It is currently owned by a not for profit charity.

We moved through the Castle rather quickly to leave time to walk back down the hill to catch the next bus for the remainder of the city tour. We were at the bus stop about 10 minutes prior to when the driver told us it would arrive. We waited and waited and waited and no bus arrived. One of the guys waiting decided to call Gray Line and they said the bus had come early and would anyone want a taxi to get back to the Empress Hotel. Several of us said we would and he relayed the message. No taxi ever arrived, but a bus did finally arrive. We lost about an hour to do other things we wanted to do around the city. Needless to say, we weren't very happy with the tour, although the second driver did provide a nice commentary on the remainder of the city tour. When we got back to the hotel, Gray Line was willing to refund the city tour part of the fee, so we ended up just paying for the tour of the Craigdarroch Castle.

Diane and I left the hotel area and started walking towards the shopping area to see some of the things we saw from the bus. We stopped for a light lunch and continued our walk down to Chinatown and back along the shoreline. Diane prefers to shop and I am always attracted by street artists. A sound caught my ear that I recognized as marimbas. I saw a crowd and moved in that direction. There was a group of five young folks, three guys and two gals. Four of them played marimbas and one was on drums. They were great. I have always liked African rhythms and sounds, so I was glued to them for the few songs they played. The name of the group was Jambanja. The music was lively and one of the marimba players (I think her name was Ilana Moon) stopped playing to dance with a couple of little children who were having a great time. It's always hard for me to bypass a CD by a street musician I like, so I bought their CD.

PORT TOWNSEND AREA
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Our tour of the Washington Coast and Olympic Peninsula was rapidly drawing to a close with only Port Townsend and a planned weekend in Seattle left to do. We got the Dutch Star ready to roll and drove all of 15 miles to our next stop, the Evergreen Coho SKP Park in Chimicum. This park is an Escapees co-op park, which means it is owned by the people who lease the lots in the park. However, like other SKP co-op parks, they reserve some sites for rent by other SKP (Escapees) members. What a nice park. It's a big park surrounded by trees, but the sites are open, so no problem using our dish.

We drove into Port Townsend a couple of times. We followed the scenic driving tour that was highlighted on one of the maps we picked up. It took us around the town and up into Fort Worden State Park. At the far end of the park was the Point Wilson Lighthouse which was activated on December 15, 1879. It was automated in 1979 and has been closed to the public since then. From Fort Worden State Park, as well as the downtown area, one can look out across the Strait of Juan de Fuca and see Whidbey Island. We didn't go to Whidbey Island or any of the other San Juan Islands. We'll leave that for another visit to the Northwest.

SEATTLE
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However, we did plan to visit Seattle. It was a perfect opportunity to do that as we were able to leave the motorhome at the campground and just take the car on the ferry for a three day weekend. We decided to trade in some of the Marriott points we've been sitting on since I retired and haven't used. Due to the downtown Marriott requiring $21 per night to park, we opted for a Marriott Courtyard up in the Lake Union area. The ferry ride was from the terminal in Winslow on Bainbridge Island. We actually lucked out in being able to do that versus a three hour drive around the Hood Canal. As we were traveling north up the Washington coast we saw some news articles about major work being done on the Hood Canal Bridge that would require it being shut down for several days. It wasn't until we got to the northern section of the Olympic peninsula that I realized the bridge was in our path to the ferry and that it was going to be closed for four days prior to our plans to catch the ferry. What they were doing was pretty amazing. The engineers were sliding out a large section of the bridge onto supports and then sliding in a pre constructed new section onto the bridge. Much to their credit, they got it done without a hitch and opened the bridge a day and a half early.

The ferry ride to Seattle was only 35 minutes and dropped us off in the downtown area right near Pike Place Market. We had planned to take the 10:25am ferry, but got there for the tail end of folks lining up for the 9:40am ferry. We were one of the very last cars that made it onto that ferry. Given that it was too early to check into the hotel, we found a place to park and walked through the market. CBS Sunday Morning did a piece on the market a few months ago, so we knew we wanted to go see the place, especially to find the guys who throw large fish around when someone buys a whole fish, such as a large salmon. Pretty cool and a crowd pleaser. The market was huge and is the longest running market in the United States at 95 years old. Diane was very impressed with all the beautiful flowers at fantastic prices. One could buy a large bunch of fresh cut flowers for $10. After walking around the market and also finding the original Starbucks location near the market, we drove to the hotel, which was all of about two miles from the market, and checked in. It was great to find out that they had FREE broadband Internet service in the rooms, and that definitely made me a happy camper for the weekend.

The story about Seattle is that it was settled mainly by bachelors. One of the founding fathers went east on a mission to lure young women to the area and he made two trips trying to do that. A total of 57 women made the journey to Seattle and settled into married life.

On day two we walked from the hotel to the Seattle Center, site of the 1962 World's Fair. The site encompasses 74 acres northwest of downtown Seattle. The site is home to the ballet, the opera, theater companies, and the Key Arena for sports teams. The signature Seattle landmark is the Space Needle, which was built for the World's Fair. It rises more than 520 feet above the city offering magnificent views of the area, including out to Mount Rainier. It houses the obligatory revolving restaurant found on such towers. Diane and I ate in the revolving restaurant on the CN Tower in Toronto, so we opted not to eat in the Space Needle (not to also mention that they are very expensive).

Our next stop was to go walk around the downtown area. We could have walked downtown, but the other hold over from the World's Fair was the monorail and we like to ride on monorails. It was only a 90 second ride from the Space Needle to downtown. It works just like the one at Disney World, only not as nice looking. When we got down on the street we realized there was some type of festival activity going on as some streets were closed. There were some bands, food, people building sand castles. It was fun to walk around and check out the activities and do some people watching.

The Seattle paper was running an ad from time to time about a performance by someone who used to work for Cirque du Soleil. We love those artists, so we made sure we timed our walking around to end up in the Pacific Place Mall to watch the 5pm performance. It was an acrobat who worked on ribbons and was now performing for a new show called Teatro Zinzanni. He definitely drew a crowd for his ten minute performance.

As we walked around the mall awaiting the performance we checked out the restaurants and decided on one of the two Italian restaurants in the mall. We had eaten at an Il Fornaio in the Palo Alto and San Jose areas in California, but the other restaurant downstairs from Il Fornaio was Rosotteria that specialized in rosotto, a rice based Italian meal. So that's what where we chose to eat. It was delicious.

Day three found us again downtown to visit the International District. Diane likes to check out the different Chinatowns when we visit cities. This one wasn't as big or nice as others, but we did stop at a small restaurant for lunch before heading back to Pike Place Market one more time. This time we decided to learn how to use the bus system to get downtown and back to the hotel. We have always done that in our travels when we were overseas during our working years and it was always fun and an adventure. We figured out the best deal was to buy a day pass so we could get on and off different buses in the system. It was fun. Then it was back to the hotel for one more evening and one more chance for Diane to soak in a tub. She relishes soaking in a tub when the opportunity presents itself.

EPILOG
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With our visit to Seattle, we concluded our tour of the Oregon and Washington coasts, and the Olympic Peninsula. We spent 30 days touring the Washington coast and the peninsula. Although the coastal scenery wasn't as stunning as the Oregon coast, we enjoyed our travels up the coast and found some interesting and beautiful places, such as the views from Cape Flattery and the magnificent view from the top of Hurricane Hill and the Space Needle in Seattle. We ate lots of fresh fish that we bought whenever we saw a fish market. There is nothing like eating fish caught earlier in the day.

As I finish this travelog we are boondocking at the Camping World in Bakersfield, California.  Following are our travel plans for the next couple of months:
Our future looking plans for early 2006 are to travel out to the desert and visit Quarzsite and Puerto Penasco, Mexico. We will once again travel with Norm and Linda Payne as we did in 2003 to the Maritimes.

Until next time, safe travels.....
Copyright © 2005, Roaming America with Rich & Diane Emond - All Rights Reserved

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